Return To Little Hills

“Peter,” a counselor called from the copier machine. “Got a problem I need to discuss with you.”

“Hey, Pete.” Ray Jenkins, the assistant principal, clasped Peter’s arm. “We’re still on to meet at two?”

Peter nodded. He didn’t often instinctively dislike someone, but just the sound of Ray Jenkins’s plaintive nasal twang irritated him. Equally irritating were Jenkins’s overly chummy insistence on addressing him as Pete, his habit of parking the bloody great monster of a truck he drove in a way that took up half of Peter’s own space, and the assistant principal’s stunning familiarity with, seemingly, every section of the Missouri Educational Code.

In his office, Peter sat down behind his desk, folded his hands and regarded the girl with the silver earrings who had followed him in. Melissa Fowler wore the unofficial Luther girls’ uniform. Jeans that, threadbare knees aside, might have been sprayed on, a minuscule pink shirt and enormous clunky black shoes.

“How are you, Melissa?”

“Good.”

He met her eyes for a moment and her face went red.

“Well, my Mom got fired, so it’s been kind of crazy. I have to baby-sit my little sisters—”

“They’re how old?”

“Two and three. And my brother’s four. My mom had this really cool bartending job. She was making a ton of money, but then I guess she got into this thing with her boss—he’s this huge jerk—and now she’s looking for another job.” Her face worked and she twisted one leg behind the other one. “See, the thing is, I know I didn’t do so good last semester…”

“Well,” Peter corrected.

“Well, I didn’t.” Melissa said. “But now I’m doing really good, right? And now, like, I really want to graduate from my old school, Stephen’s High, with my friends.” She hesitated. “I want to be like that lady who came to talk to us yesterday. The reporter? She was really interesting. I’m thinking that’s what I want to do. I feel really, like, inspired.”

“Good.” Peter sat back in his chair. “Very glad to hear it. You’ve seen the error of your ways, as it were, and are eager to diligently apply yourself.”

She grinned. “I guess.”

Peter swiveled his chair to face the computer, tapped in her name and brought up her record. Melissa was luckier than most of the students at Luther. No father in the picture, but a mother who at least cared enough to attend the teacher-parent nights. Which did little to alter the reality that Melissa was essentially a fourteen-year-old substitute mother who, between meal preparation, child care and other domestic responsibilities, had precious little time left for schoolwork.

As her record came up, Peter reminded himself, as he did on a daily basis, of the parting advice the former principal had offered. “These kids can get you right here.” He’d tapped his chest. “You can care deeply. You have to care. But at the same time, you must keep an emotional distance. If you don’t, you’ll destroy yourself. And you won’t do the children much good, either.”

“Right, then,” Peter said. “You need one hundred and twenty credits to graduate. So far, you only have fifty. Shall we talk about what we need to do?”

Fifteen minutes later, Melissa was gone and Ray Jenkins was sitting in the chair she had occupied. Ray was, Peter guessed, at least five years his senior and had thinning fair hair, faded blue eyes and a pallor that suggested most of his waking hours were spent indoors. Peter had seen framed pictures on Ray’s office wall of his two sons in football uniforms. Both had the tall, blond, athletic looks that Peter imagined Ray had once possessed. And, something else about Ray, a weary sort of bitterness about the assistant principal made Peter suspect that not being promoted probably wasn’t the first disappointment in his life.

“She’s basically a goof-off,” Ray said after Peter described the course he’d laid out for Melissa. “Don’t let her con you. The real reason she’s so hot to go back to Stephen’s is she started hanging around my son again.”

“She has a boyfriend, doesn’t she?” Peter thought for a moment. “Yes, I know she does. Marcus Adams. I managed to get him into an auto-shop program and he was absolutely rhapsodizing about her. No driver’s license yet, but he rides his bicycle over to her house and helps her baby-sit.”

Ray’s lips curled slightly. “That’s this week. All I know is she’s always calling the house to talk to Brad. He said he felt sorry for her once and took her to a movie. Now he can’t get rid of her.”

“Yes, well,” Peter said. “I’m sure we all dimly remember what fourteen was like.” He got up from the desk and wandered to the window, where out on the quad, a vigorous game of basketball was under way. After a moment, he turned to look at the assistant principal. “Melissa is a bright, resourceful girl and I personally have a great deal of confidence in her.”

Ray smirked. “Well, good for you. I guess I’ve just been around these kids a lot longer than you have.”

Peter said nothing, and they moved on to other matters. Twenty minutes later, Ray stood as though to leave. Hands in pockets, he hesitated at the door.

“So what d’you think of my sister-in-law, the hotshot foreign correspondent? Ms. Been-Everywhere-Done-Everything?” His tone invited criticism, but when it wasn’t forthcoming he smiled. “Still, the kids seemed interested. She knows her job, I’ll give her that.”

Peter allowed the remark to drift into a vacuum of silence, broken after a while by the sound of Ray jingling change in his pockets. As he filed away a couple of folders, Peter recalled the assistant principal’s whispered remark after Edie’s speech, and decided that it was unlikely that the relationship had ended in the way Ray had described. What he found remarkable was that it had ever gotten off the ground in the first place. It would be interesting to know the real story, he thought, picturing Edie again. “I’ve had four students express an interest in a journalism career since her talk,” he told Ray. “In fact, I’m turning over the idea of starting a campus newsletter—”

“Won’t work,” Ray said. “Waste of time and money, I’m telling you right now.”

Peter eyed the assistant principal. Pity it was so damn difficult to fire state employees, he mused.

“GIRLS’ NIGHT OUT,” Vivian said when she dropped by Maude’s around six that evening. “Pitchers of margaritas, waiters in tight black pants. Move it, Edie. Drag yourself off the couch. You’re turning into an old woman. Speaking of which…”

“She’s upstairs resting.” Edie pushed her glasses over the top of her nose and looked at Viv, all dressed up in snazzy designer jeans and a leather bomber jacket. “Count me out,” she said. “I’m exhausted. A bubble bath, a glass of wine and a book in bed strikes me as the perfect way to spend the evening. Old woman or not.”

“Oh, come on, Eed. How often do we see you? Come on, go upstairs and fix yourself up. It’ll be fun. You might meet Mr. Right, fall in love and have half a dozen children in quick succession.”

“I hate to break it to you, but that scenario does nothing for me.”

“Get up.” Viv pulled at her fingers. “Make yourself pretty, and when you’re done I’ll tell you Peter’s latest crazy idea. Ray just got through ranting about it. Anyway, I want you to get together with Beth. We can all drink margaritas and reminisce about the days when we were all young and sexy. There’s going to be a whole bunch of us…”

As Vivian began to name names, Edie tried to think of a convincing reason not to go. She hated girlie gabfests, mostly because they invariably involved too much self-revelation, something she considered an unwise indulgence. What was the point of sitting around talking about your fears and insecurities? She’d never yet heard of anyone’s life changing as the result of one of these sessions. Mostly you drank too much, got maudlin, and then toddled on home to behave the same way you always had.

Anyway, she’d spent too many years creating her self-protective coloring. If she started yammering about how she really felt inside, in no time others would see her that way too. Once at a conference, she’d had drinks in a hotel bar with a colleague whom she had always seen as supremely confident but a little cool and aloof. After a third glass of wine, the woman had confessed to being scared to death much of the time; the cool exterior really masked a basic shyness. Edie never saw her the same way again and, she hated to admit, she had lost confidence in the woman’s decision-making skills.

But she dragged herself up off the couch, anyway.

“Sue Ellen Barnes?” Edie asked several hours later as she dipped a tortilla chip into a bowl of salsa and glanced from Viv to Beth. They were in Casa Julio’s, perched on stools pulled up to tall tables. Vivian had ordered a pitcher of strawberry margaritas that sat, nearly empty now, in the middle of the table. The others had left and it was just herself, Viv and Beth. “Who did she marry? That guy with the red hair? What was his name?”

“John Yardley,” Beth and Vivian shouted in unison.

“Now she’s Sue Ellen Barnes-Yardley.” Edie giggled. She’d eaten nothing but bar snacks for hours, and the margaritas were making her feel slightly buzzed. “What about Helen Anderson?”

“She’s on her second husband, I think,” Beth said. “And so is Frana Van Bergen.”

“You know who else just got married again?” Elbows on the counter, Vivian looked at Edie. “That really stuck-up girl who transferred from Ladue, Karen something-or-other.”

They all shook their heads, baffled that snotty Karen could even snare one husband, let alone two. Earlier, the focus had been shoptalk—problem students, mostly. All the women except for herself and Viv worked at Luther; Edie had just tuned out. Every so often, a fragment of chatter from the dressed-for-success crowd had risen above the ambient noise, drifting over to where she sat. “A hundred grand in five years, that’s my goal.” “You gotta be focused. If you’re not, there’s someone right behind you who is.” “Nah, she’s lost her edge.”

She’d tuned back in to hear Beth, her face impassioned, say, “But the whole goal of the program is to help the next generation of students get off to a healthy start.”

Around the table, heads had nodded in agreement. “…difficult for anyone who isn’t in this field to really appreciate how fantastic it is just knowing that you’ve truly made a difference in the course of a student’s life,” one of the teachers had said with a glance at Edie. And then, “You must be bored, huh? Bunch of teachers sitting around talking shop.”

And then Vivian, apparently sensing a need to draw Edie more fully into the conversation, had said, “Almost anything would seem boring compared to what Edie does. She’s the family success story. I married her reject and stayed home and had babies. Edie went off to live a glamorous life in New York.”

And Edie had protested that it wasn’t all that glamorous, but all the women had been looking at her and, she knew damn well, imagining a life that bore little resemblance to their own reality. She’d felt fraudulent, envious of these women who could talk so passionately about changing lives. Suddenly, feeling profoundly alone, she’d excused herself and found the rest room. Two women had stood at a bank of mirrors, laughing and talking as they applied lipstick.

She had a glimpse of loose blond hair and red lips as she’d slipped past them and into a cubicle. They were at least a decade younger and she’d thought, I hate them. I hate them because the tarnish and weariness haven’t set in. They don’t know yet that they won’t always be beautiful; that they won’t conquer the world, marry the man, have the babies. Make a difference. She’d draped the toilet seat with a paper cover and sat until she heard them leave. Stood then and leaned her forehead against the cool metal surface of the door. I need, she’d thought. I need, I need, I need. But what?

“Earth to Edie,” Viv was saying now. “She’s in a foxhole,” she said with a wink at Beth. “Shoulder to shoulder to a hunky marine.”

“Right,” Edie said, rallying. “And I haven’t showered for a week and neither has he.” She drained the margarita, tasting the gritty strawberry seeds, the sweet, fruity ice. “So, Beth,” she said. “How come you haven’t joined the married-with-children club?”

Beth smiled sadly. “I don’t know, really. One minute it seemed as though I had all the time in the world, and I just knew I’d have children and a husband, the whole thing. And then I woke up and I was forty and there was no one even on the horizon.”