The Better Man. Amy Vastine

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СКАЧАТЬ likely Mr. Jordan will have some as well. We expect him any minute.”

      Mr. Jordan was the restaurant manager who was already twenty minutes late. Kendall had no problem waiting.

      Until her phone vibrated in her pocket.

      She knew immediately that it was the school. Her family, Owen and the school were the only ones who called her. Her family knew not to call right now and Owen stood next to her.

      “Excuse me.” She faked a smile for the Satos and looked to her partner for reassurance that he could handle this on his own.

      “I got it. Go.”

      She grabbed her bag and pulled out her phone as she headed out of the room to take the call. Not today. Not today.

      “Kendall Montgomery,” she answered on the fourth and final ring.

      “Mrs. Montgomery, it’s Lisa Warner.”

      “Hi, Lisa.” Kendall sucked in a deep breath. Lisa was the social worker at Simon’s school. Lisa was always the one to call with the bad news.

      “We need you to come in.”

      “I’m in a meeting. Is he with you? Can I give him a pep talk over the phone?” She hoped but knew the answer would disappoint.

      “No, he won’t come out of the bathroom.”

      Kendall pinched the bridge of her nose as she made her way outside and prayed for a taxi. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. What happened?”

      “We had a dad volunteer in class today,” Lisa said solemnly. The word dad was all Kendall needed to hear. She hung up and texted Owen, feeling every bit like the burden she had warned him she would be when he’d asked her to go into business with him.

      The drive to Wilder seemed long, longer than it should have been. Kendall shoved money at the driver and jumped out of the cab. Her feet moved swiftly across the pavement, up the steps and into the building. Deep breathing did nothing to ease the knot in her stomach or the pain in her chest.

      Trevor would have had mixed feelings about this school. He would have liked that the children wore uniforms, and not just because he was a military man. He had loved the simplicity of them. “No nonsense” had been his middle name. Trevor believed time should not be wasted worrying about things like “What color should I wear today?”

      Trevor would have wanted a school with a male administrator, however. Not because he was sexist, although it might have come off that way, but because he felt more men should show interest in the development of young minds. Trevor, like his own father, took the role of father seriously and believed boys needed a strong male presence in their lives to survive in today’s world.

      Familiar faces greeted her in the main office. Her welcoming committee consisted of Lisa, the social worker, the principal, and the school nurse. They quickly ushered her to the first grade hallway, into the small boys’ bathroom with blue-and-white tiles on the wall and worn-out linoleum on the floor.

      “Simon, it’s Mommy.”

      Black sneakers with neon green striping poked out from under the one closed door. He knocked as if she was the one who needed to open up for him.

      “Can you unlock the door for me? We can go back to class together.”

      His little feet shuffled back, recoiling from the suggestion of going to his classroom. Avoidance, escape—these were his friends. These were his comfort when the anxiety took over.

      “I talked to Nana and she said you can hold Zoe’s leash when you go to the groomer, but you have to make it through the school day. If you don’t make it through the day, then there’s no playtime with Zoe.” It was a bribe, plain and simple, but sometimes that was the only thing that worked.

      Silence.

      Kendall hated the silence. She wished it was a tangible entity that she could strangle and put out of its misery. Her hand rested on the stall handle.

      “Come on, Simon. Open up, honey.” She resisted the urge to say she would take him home. As soon as she made that promise, she was done for. One thing she learned from Psychologist #1 was that she couldn’t make a promise in the middle of one of these episodes and not follow through. His trust was essential. He had to be able to rely on what she said.

      She wanted him to stay and finish his day of school. She wanted to try to save the mess she might have made of the Sato project. Yet what she wanted was of little importance when the anxiety was in charge.

      “I’ll stay for lunch. We can have lunch together. Then you can tell the yucks to take a hike and finish your day. I know you can do this. I know you can.”

      Silence.

      Sometimes she wished the silence would finish her off. It was good at choking her, but she always survived its evil games. Survived but never won. No, the silence was always the victor.

      Kendall could feel the three pairs of eyes watching her. Watching. Judging. Pitying. She hated that the most. The pity. Pity and sympathy made her almost as angry as silence. Almost.

      Everyone at school knew why the boy didn’t talk. Kendall had sat in the principal’s office on more than one occasion to discuss the difficulties Simon was having at school, at home, in life. She had accepted their referrals for counselors and behavioral specialists. They had done the charts and incentives. She had taken him to Rainbows grief support groups, which ended up being filled with more children dealing with divorce than the death of a parent. She had read every book written on both grief and selective mutism. Still, she felt lost. She refused the medication because he didn’t need medication. He needed his father. There was no pill to cure a broken heart. She would have taken it a long, long time ago if there was.

      “I’m going to count to ten and then I want you to open the door for me. Ready? One, two...” she counted slowly, each number that went unacknowledged by the boy on the other side of the door tearing at her paper heart. “Ten.”

      Silence.

      In an alternate universe, she pounded on the door with both fists, making it quiver and rattle. She screamed at the top of her lungs, “Knock it off! Stop being afraid!! It’s just school!” In her fantasy, she stormed off and back to her meeting with Mr. Sato.

      But in the real world where she had to live, Kendall dropped to her knees and pushed her pride and dignity aside. She buried her rage and her fear. She crawled under the door and into the stall with her son. She righted herself and pulled him into her arms. He melted against her.

      “I love you. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to make the world okay for you and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, baby.” Kendall’s tears fell on top of Simon’s head as the weight of his world began to crush her.

      He clung to his mother, not caring that her body had been in contact with an elementary school boys’ bathroom floor. He hugged his mother like he wished he could make the world right for her, too. But the world would never be right because his dad was dead and he was never coming home. He was never going to help out at school or eat lunch with him. Dead was forever.

      “Let’s go home,” she whispered. Resigned. Defeated.

      The СКАЧАТЬ