Virginia Myers - The Dad Next Door

“It means I’m off the hook for alimony, Kate. I don’t have to pay it after June. I’ll have enough to send Raymond to a good private school. I guess I’ll have to give in on that point. It’ll please his grandparents, anyhow… Kate? Are you okay?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m okay,” Over my dead body. That boy needs family. “Is that absolutely carved in stone? Can’t we just go and see Pastor Ledbetter?”

“If you want me to go, Kate, I’ll go. But let’s be honest. I’ve pretty much made up my mind. I had to, as soon as I saw Raymond’s face tonight. He’ll be much better off in a good boarding school.”

After Ian had gone and the children were in bed, Kate started her evening routine of living-room tidy-up. She was tired but not sleepy, having just successfully completed one of her mental conversations with Ian, during which she said all the things she should have said. Halfway through her task she noticed the time. Eleven o’clock. She might as well get tomorrow’s weather report. She flipped on the TV and sat down, straightening the newspapers she held for the recycle bin, only half listening.

There was another freeway drive-by shooting. A serial arsonist was taken into custody. The city council was deadlocked about something. A Siberian cold front was moving down from Alaska. Kate’s hands became still and she watched the screen. Snow! A real blizzard! Oh, wonderful news. None of the kids would go to school tomorrow. In a heavy snow Seattle came to a dead stop until it was over. The news media would give constant updates twenty-four hours a day, and at some point some news anchor would interview somebody from Minnesota who was having a good laugh at Seattle’s snow hysteria. Seattle was a city of many hills and had never come to terms with the occasional heavy snowfall. Yes, the anchor was now listing the school closings for tomorrow. Kate listened for and heard what she wanted to hear. Raymond would be elated. So would the other two.

But this left uncertain their appointment with Pastor Ledbetter for early tomorrow. Before Ian had left, she had called the pastor at home. He, hearing the concern in Kate’s voice, had agreed to meet them for an earlymorning appointment. Now if the streets were impassable maybe they couldn’t go. But even as she thought it the phone rang. She flipped off the TV. It was Ian.

“I knew you were still up. I saw your lights on,” he began. “Were you looking at the news?”

“Yes. Snow. The kids will be over the moon. I’ll have to dig out the snowsuits and extra sweaters. I thought winter was winding down.”

“Does this do anything to our early appointment with your pastor about the homeschooling thing? Will he be in the church office?”

“Yes. The parsonage is right next door. He’ll just shovel a path through. He did last year.”

“Well, we can keep the appointment, then. I’ll use my sports van. It’ll get us anywhere. Haven’t used it in a while.” There was a hint of wistfulness in his tone. The sports van, purchased just after Marsha had left and he had received the promotion that required traveling, had been another good idea gone wrong. He had bought the sports vehicle planning good-father fishing trips with Raymond to some of the many rivers nearby, but it hadn’t worked out.

Kate knew Ian was on the fast track at his company, being groomed for bigger things. He was employed by a manufacturer of security and surveillance devices, and the latest in laser and other equipment. His travel was usually as a consultant to rural police forces needing to upgrade their equipment for new procedures.

It wouldn’t have worked anyhow, since Raymond was a child who disliked fishing intensely. He had sat politely in the boat—another wasted effort—because he didn’t want to disappoint his father. But he had managed to cut several fingers on fishhooks, become nauseated at the motion of the boat, gagged when he watched Ian remove the fishook from the fish’s mouth, and had spent the rest of the day under a tree on the riverbank reading a book he had brought along. Kate thought again that Ian should have taken Tommy, who was the nature boy, with his rock collection, his leaf collection and his dead-fly collection.

“Fine,” she said. “We’ll go as scheduled, then.”

In the morning they awoke to a world of white. The children were elated, and by the time Kate and Ian had left for their seven-thirty appointment, all three of them were out in front, building a snowman. Ian had contributed a rakish, broad-brimmed safari-type hat she had never seen him wear and a red muffler. Kate got the feeling that he would rather stay with the snowman and the kids, but he dutifully drove her to Pastor Ledbetter’s office.

“It’ll be warm in a few minutes,” Pastor Ledbetter said as they settled themselves in the chairs around his small conference table. “I just turned on the heat.”

Everything in the pastor’s office had the look of leftover rummage sale, from his battered, paper-strewn desk to the refinished kitchen table and odd repainted chairs he used for conferences.

“I’ve laid all this stuff out for you,” he said. “There are many curricula and plans to choose from. If you want my recommendations, I’ll give them to you. But I need to start with a few cautions.”

Ian was leafing thoughtfully through some lesson plan material. “This does look very thorough,” he commented.

“It’s prepared for nonteachers,” Kate said hopefully.

“What cautions did you have in mind, sir?” Ian asked.

Cyrus sat down. Kate wondered again how old he was. He certainly never seemed to run out of energy. She knew this was the beginning of another long day for him.

“First and foremost, school authorities oppose homeschooling on principle. They are convinced that only credentialed teachers should teach, which has been proved to be invalid. With all the built-in wasted time in some of the large structured school districts, plus busing of students, often from a long distance, surveys have found that some students are spending less and less actual time in the classrooms. But they routinely object to homeschooling.”

“That seems a bit much,” Ian said. “Do you think this school district would actively object if Kate homeschooled Raymond?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But remember that homeschooling is perfectly legal in this state. Sometimes a district can put up roadblocks, but usually they can’t stop you. You can take precautions.”

“What precautions?” Kate asked, feeling a distinct qualm.

“I would suggest the first thing you do is join the Home School Legal Defense Association. It only costs a hundred dollars, and they are your counsel, your protection, just in case. If necessary they’ll go to court for you, but it doesn’t usually come to that. It sure beats hiring your own lawyer if push does come to shove. You need to first bone up on your rights, so you can’t be bluffed.”

“My rights?” Kate asked faintly. Suddenly the idea of homeschooling Raymond seemed very intimidating.

The pastor leaned over and patted her hand. “Don’t give in to faint heart yet, Kate,” he said, smiling. “Homeschooling is a grand solution in some cases and I think, in the case of your Raymond, it should work. Some public schools are very good. Some aren’t.

“Everything—remember this—everything depends on your child passing the exams. If he or she can pass the exams at the proficiency level for his or her grade, then the goal of teaching has been achieved, regardless of how, or where or from whom.”

Kate felt a bit overwhelmed. She’d be taking on a huge responsibility here. She wasn’t sure she was up to it.

“Do you know anything about actual results?” Ian asked. “How do homeschooled students compare with children from public and private schools?”