The Lost Children: Part 3 of 3. Mary MacCracken

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СКАЧАТЬ Just what she needs, he says – a trip, to get away from it all. He likes the doctor, and I am glad. He will need someone to talk to.

      I go for one more visit.

      “Ahhh,” he says, even before we begin. “I am sorry. Perhaps if you had come ten years ago …”

      I shake his hand before I go. Is that how you say good-bye to a psychiatrist?

      “Thank you,” I say, “for all your time.”

      “Yahrmph.” A combination of yes and throat-clearing. “Is there anything more? Anything I can do? Where will you be?”

      “California, I think. I’ve never been there.”

      He stands silently.

      “There is one other thing,” I say. “The guilt. I feel a big ball of guilt … Here.” I touch my stomach. “Is there anything I can do about that?”

      “Guilt. Why is that? What do you mean, guilt?”

      It is so difficult to tell him and I think again how hard it is to communicate through words, and I marvel to myself that we all do as well as we do. We are all interpreters by necessity, even though we are not trained or suited for the profession. Simultaneous interpreters, hearing one language and then speaking another, our own. Ahh, we need more tolerance, more admiration for one another.

      “I feel guilty about leaving him alone. Who will make the coffee in the morning or put flowers in the silver bowl? And the animals, will they be all right? How will Larry know how to order the meat or which slipcovers to send to the cleaner’s? He doesn’t know how to work the dryer or where I packed his winter things …” I stop in confusion.

      “You are not his mother, Mary?”

      And I want to say, I know, I know, and yet, part of me is. Just as I can see separate parts of me, parts that are satisfied working with the children and other parts that are man-oriented, so I also see blended centers of me. Where does the mother end and the lover begin? Which is student, which teacher? Is being a wife supposed to be a separate, isolate thing? I do not think it can be.

      But before I can speak again Dr. McPhearson interrupts my thoughts. “It will be all right,” he says. “It is like grief – the guilt – you must just work it through.”

Chapter 14

      Coming in from the hot June air, I notice that the halls of the school are cool and dark, strangely quiet and empty without the children. The Director is there, though, talking on the phone, and she waves as I walk through her office on the way to my classroom.

      There are books and papers I want to take with me to California, and I had thought merely to drop by the school and pick them up. I had not realized how strange the school would seem without the children, and now as I kneel in front of the small white bookcase thumbing the speech manual, images of Brian and Matthew superimpose themselves upon the pages and I cannot concentrate.

      The Director’s voice floats down the hall, echoing in the silent spaces: “I think it’s going to come out all right, Arthur. I’ve just gone over the books again and I’ve made a list of the most urgent bills. Yes. I know. There are quite a few, but a lot of them we can stall until fall. We’ll be all right then; the school boards will be sending in half of the tuition.”

      Arthur must be Arthur Siegal, the school’s accountant, Doris’s cohort in fighting the never-ending battle against the drain of money.

      “Yes, all right. I can give you the list of the ones I’ve marked most urgent now, but I’d like to get together with you soon, get these things paid before I leave. You didn’t? Oh … Guatemala. No, no, just for the summer, teaching in one of the colleges. I’ll be back in the fall.”

      Doris reads off a list of names and amounts, including bills from the phone and electric companies. “No. Skip that. Leave it until fall.”

      Irritation now in her voice, no cheeriness, just irritation and weariness.

      “Arthur. Look. I told you – I don’t need it. I know I didn’t get last month’s salary either; I can read the books as well as you. But I don’t need it. I’ve got my ticket in my pocketbook, groceries till the end of the week, and I’ll get an advance when I get there.

      “The Board meeting is Thursday night, you know that, and I want to be in the black. I mean I want the school to be in the black. When you read the figures to the Board, I want them to look good, positive. The Board’s enthusiastic now; the fund-raising for the new school is moving right along. If they think we’ve gone in the hole they’ll let down, get discouraged.

      “Mmmm. Right. Well, that’s your job, Arthur. You print up the sheets so they don’t notice my salary’s not there.

      “All right. Good. Thanks a million. See you tomorrow then.”

      Chris and Brad and Tom and Billy, Ivan and Jeffy, and more, more. All the children of the school join the images of Brian and Matt; all the children Doris has made room for, all the problems she faces without complaint.

      Unexpectedly, she appears in the doorway of my small classroom. “Mary, how are you? Can I help you with anything?”

      “No,” I say. “I’m just picking up some books to go over during the summer. Did I hear that you’re going to Guatemala?”

      She sits down quickly on one of the tables; her bright brown eyes move over my face as if to read me, to see how much else I have heard.

      “Yes; I’ve been there before. I’ve found it’s good to get away, get a change of scene during the summer.”

      We sit quietly, Doris and I, in the dim classroom until she says, “Fourteen years now since I opened the school. We started with just four children – half a day.”

      “How did you know about them? How did you think to open a school for emotionally disturbed children?”

      “Well, you know, when you look back, it’s strange how it happened. The parents really began the school. They got the idea, four of them, and then came to me and asked if I’d be in charge.

      “I’d done all kinds of things when I was younger. Then I began teaching and it turned out that I had a knack with the ‘problems,’ as the other teachers called them, and one thing led to another, and the next thing I knew, there we were starting the school.

      “Harry … well, I wish you could have known him. He supported me all the way, baby-sat at night with Mike while I got my master’s, built furniture for the school, painted walls. I didn’t marry until late, but he was worth waiting for. I could never have started the school or kept it going without him.

      “I remember right in the beginning, fifteen years ago, saying to him, ‘Harry, I don’t know anything about emotionally disturbed children,’ and him saying, ‘Well, Doris, it doesn’t sound to me like anybody else knows either, and at least you admit it.’”

      I smile at Doris; she makes it seem so real. I can almost picture Harry.

      “We built our own house, you know, little by little. Bought the property, then put it up a СКАЧАТЬ