Now I'll Tell You Everything

  * * *

  We figured the guy was either clueless or a grade-B actor who was having as much fun as we were. But we put our minds to other things that night, eating at a Cajun restaurant that Moe had recommended before we left, then strolling along the streets in the French Quarter, listening to the sounds of jazz coming from various clubs, ever alert for a man in a pale yellow suit. We managed to squeeze onto the floor where the Preservation Hall musicians were playing Dixieland, and we fell into bed about eleven, declaring that this was the most fun we’d ever had.

  Pamela had just come out of the bathroom when there was a light tap on the door and a man’s voice called, “Room service!”

  We looked at each other.

  “I didn’t order anything,” said Elizabeth.

  “Neither did we,” I said.

  The three of us tiptoed to the door and took turns peering out the peephole. We could see a man’s shoulder, garbed in a white shirt, but he had turned away from the door and we couldn’t see his face.

  We didn’t move. The hand knocked again.

  “Room service,” came the call, a little louder.

  “Marcel!” we whispered to each other as we recognized the voice. We still didn’t answer, and finally, at long last, he went away.

  “How did he know what room we were in?” I wondered.

  “He probably has an in with the night clerk,” said Pamela. “Gave him some story about researching a novel . . .”

  “If he bribed someone to tell him the room we were in, he could bribe someone to give him a key,” said Elizabeth.

  Laughing hysterically, we chained and double locked the door, then pushed a chair, two suitcases, and a lamp in front of it.

  Marcel didn’t press his luck. He never returned or called, and after talking well into the night about Gwen’s practice, her family, and her marriage, we slept contentedly, deliciously, until late the next morning.

  * * *

  When we got back home, Patrick asked if I’d had a good time. He and the kids had made a welcome-home dinner of chicken, macaroni and cheese, and applesauce, but, hey! I only had to eat it. I didn’t even have to clean up afterward.

  “A wonderful time!” I said.

  “What all happened, Mom?” asked Patricia Marie.

  “Well,” I said, “a strange man in a pale yellow suit sat down with us one day at breakfast, chased us around a cemetery, and tried to get in our room at night.”

  Patrick lifted one eyebrow and surveyed me across the table. Tyler looked at me with wide eyes. But Patricia balanced a bite of macaroni on her fork, gave me a sidelong glance, and said, “Yeah, Mom. Right!”

  22

  DECISION

  For the next few years, my job kept me busier professionally than I’d ever been before, but I loved it. Patricia was in sixth grade now, Tyler in third, both at very manageable ages.

  It would be nice to say that I had been successful with each of the students I counseled, but I wasn’t. Sometimes I was asked to take over some of the more difficult cases, and one of them, in one of the schools, was an eighth grader, Nicole Butler. She had been referred to a counselor for her suggestive behavior with her boyfriend, and had been admonished by the vice principal. It hadn’t affected her at all, however, and she’d told the overworked counselor that she would not even talk with her unless she could guarantee 100 percent that their talks were confidential and that her parents would never know what they talked about.

  Sensing that this was going to take far more time than she could give, the counselor asked if I would see Nicole. I had time that week for only a short preliminary session, and when I arrived for it, I found myself looking at an attractive brunette in a too-tight jersey top who sat with her arms crossed, staring at me defiantly. What made it interesting was that she obviously wanted to talk, but only under her conditions.

  “I know why the teachers want you here,” I said, “but I don’t know why you wanted to come.”

  “Because there are some things I want to talk about, but not to my parents, especially my mom.”

  “Then I’ll tell you up front that if you’re involved in anything illegal, I have to tell them. If you are drinking and getting drunk or taking drugs, or if you are being sexually molested, I have to report it.”

  “Define ‘molested,’  ” Nicole said.

  “When an adult is taking advantage of you sexually, whether you agree to do it or not.”

  “And if it’s not an adult and you’re not doing anything you don’t want to do?”

  “Then, technically, I suppose, it’s not molestation.”

  “And you don’t have to report it? To my parents, I mean?”

  “Not unless you want me to.”

  “God, no,” she said, and for the first time in our session, she relaxed a little, letting her hands drop in her lap.

  “From what your teachers tell me, you and your boyfriend are behaving pretty inappropriately in the halls and the classrooms. Any thoughts on that?”

  “Define ‘inappropriate,’  ” said Nicole.

  I smiled. “Your turn,” I said. “What would your definition be?”

  She didn’t hesitate, and stared straight into my eyes as she answered: “The teachers would say it was touching a guy in any way, shape, or form. It freaks them out.” She almost smiled, sure, it seemed, she had shocked me.

  I didn’t hesitate: “They report long tongue kisses, groping each other in the genital area, rubbing bodies together . . .”

  “If it’s so offensive, they don’t have to look. It doesn’t involve them,” she said quickly.

  “You’ve heard the expression ‘Get a room’?”

  “Yeah, we would if we had the money. Where are we supposed to get a room if both our moms are home all day? I’m highly sexed, what can I tell you?”

  It was an interesting case, because her grades were above average, she hadn’t been in any other trouble with her teachers, and she was active in a few extracurricular activities, but she was determined at thirteen to have sex, as much of it as she could get.

  “Are you prepared for sexual relations, Nicole?” I asked. “I assume you’ve started your periods, so you know that pregnancy is a possibility.”

  “Ha. My mom would call it a catastrophe! But we’re going to do it! Yes, we’ll use condoms. Ethan’s got them already.”

  “So . . . what is it you want from me?”

  Here she took a deep breath and slid down a little farther in her chair. “I don’t know, just . . . Well . . . We sort of tried it once, before his mom came home, and I don’t think we were doing it right. I just . . . And he’s got this pimple down there, and we don’t know if that means anything or not.”

  She was still testing me to see how I’d react. I could tell by her eyes and the hidden smile, but at the same time, she was fishing for information. I decided to play it straight.

  “I certainly can’t take the place of a doctor,” I told her, “so Ethan should at least have the nurse look at it. But we cover a lot of things in the sex education course we give to eighth graders in the spring.”

  Nicole gave a sardonic laugh. “Mom won’t sign the paper. She’s already said.”

  What the girl wanted, I realized, was a short version of the sex education course here in my office. What she wanted, in fact, was a far more graphic explanation than what she’d get in the spring. And I had no authority to give it to her.

  I remembered my twenty-year-old self (was I really that old?) walking into a Planned Parenthood clinic, the embarrassment I felt then, and here was a mere child of thirteen, fumbling her way into sex. . . . A girl who obviously thought that if I outlined the moves like a football play, she and her boyfriend would know how to do it.

  “The best sex,” I told her, “is between two people who are in a private, comfortable place, with all the time in the world, and who really care about each other.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” she said, and then, immediately apologize
d. She also glanced once or twice at the door, as the halls were filled with the chatter of students changing classes. I wondered if her boyfriend was waiting for her. “It just . . . really hurts,” she said, a bit more humbly.

  “Most girls need plenty of lubrication the first time,” I said, knowing that this alone had crossed the line, but if I gave her nothing of value, I was certain she would not come back and I’d have no chance of influencing her decisions.

  “What kind?” she asked nervously.

  “You can buy it in any drugstore, next to tampons,” I said.

  She suddenly picked up her books. “I have to go.”

  “Well, I’m going to get together some materials for you, and I think you’ll find them helpful,” I said. “We’ll go over them together in our next session when we have more time. Okay?”

  She nodded and stood up, then opened the door. The minute she stepped out into the hall, I heard her say, “Kirsten, what are you doing here?”

  And a younger girl’s voice sang out, “I have just as much right . . .”

  “Quit spying on me . . .”

  Their voices faded off as they moved away, and I’ll never know what happened, because Nicole didn’t keep the next appointment. Nor did she attend the sex education course when it was offered in the spring. I had to chalk it up as one of my failures.

  Summer came and the semester ended. What could I have done differently? I kept asking myself.

  Two weeks into the fall semester, however, I read in the Post that a parents’ group had gathered the necessary number of signatures for a proposal to be sent to the school board advocating abstinence-only sex education. I hadn’t read the article yet, but several faculty members asked if I’d seen it, and the health teacher running the program begged me to come out strongly for continuing the present program.

  “Of all people, counselors know how desperately students need this information,” she said.

  “Of course I’ll support you,” I told her. “Let me read the article, then I’ll know better how to respond.”

  I had to visit two other schools that morning, but I finally got a copy of the Post on my lunch break and sat down in a Panera Bread café to read it over an egg salad sandwich.

  The reporter quoted one of the founders of the TTT movement—“Tell the Truth” (about abstinence)—and the facts were questionable from the get-go: that students who attend abstinence-only courses instead of the usual sex ed courses have fewer out-of-wedlock pregnancies than students who are introduced to contraceptives; that teens who have access to contraceptives misuse them; that the rate of sexually transmitted diseases is higher; and so on. All the statistics quoted were highly debatable, and I was particularly interested in a few lines near the end of the article: “Everyone knows that once our young people have experienced sex, they are far more reluctant to give it up. And it can become as addictive as drugs or alcohol,” said Emma Butler, co-chair. “Put simply, we believe that we have a mission to save our middle school students from themselves and to let the school board know that we are a force to be reckoned with.”

  I closed my eyes, but I think I’d already made the connection. When I got back to the office later, I checked Nicole’s records, and yes, of course, her mother’s name was Emma, and already there was a message from a Post reporter wanting to talk with me about the guidance department’s slant on abstinence-only education.

  “I think I’m in this deeper than I ever intended to be,” I told Patrick that evening. It had been fairly easy to challenge the statistics that the TTT was distributing, but that didn’t get at the heart of what was worrying the parents. For them, life was moving too fast. Their children were more sophisticated than they’d been at their age, and while parents couldn’t stop what came on TV screens or what their kids heard on the bus, perhaps they could have some influence on what their kids learned in the classroom. Teachers should not be making it easier for young teens to have sex, they should be teaching that no sex until marriage equals problem solved. Except, as Nicole and her boyfriend demonstrated, it didn’t.

  “You’ve got to choose your battles, and if this is one you want to fight, go for it,” Patrick said.

  “It’s going to mean endless meetings, conferences, press quotes, rebuttals . . . ,” I said. “But yes, I really want to fight.”

  Patricia Marie came through the living room just then in her Snoopy shirt with a box of crackers she was returning to the kitchen. “Are you guys talking about that sex ed course at school?” she asked, stopping long enough to pop one more cracker in her mouth.

  “That was the topic of discussion,” I said wryly, one eyebrow raised. “Have you been listening from the stairs?”

  “No, I just heard you talking when I came through the room. We took a poll on the bus, and everyone we know can take that course, except I don’t think kids would admit it if their parents said no.”

  And that was another problem, I realized. No kid should be ostracized because of a parental decision.

  “Well, if you hear any more talk, remember that every parent wants what’s best for her child. We just don’t always agree on what that is,” I told her.

  Patricia lingered a bit longer.

  “Since I’m here, I might as well ask another question of both of you,” she said, and waited.

  “Yeah? Shoot,” said Patrick.

  She leaned against the door frame, feet crossed, and gave an embarrassed little giggle. “I know that when a man and a woman get engaged, either one can pop the question, but it’s usually the man, right?”

  “Right,” said Patrick.

  “So when a guy and a girl—well, a man and a woman—want to have sex, who asks?”

  That was a new one. I deferred to Patrick, trying not to smile.

  “Well . . . uh . . . I’m not sure asking is actually necessary. I mean . . . if their sexual activity is that far along, then it’s the next logical step and . . .” He looked at me helplessly. “Of course, I would expect they’d known each other for a long time. . . .”

  “Actually, either one could suggest it, Patricia, and the next logical step would be to make sure the boy was using a condom,” I said.

  “Okay, thanks,” Patricia said quickly, and disappeared.

  Patrick sat staring after her. “Did that just happen?” he asked. “Is that the kind of question you get from students?”

  “You’ve no idea. A few months ago she wanted to know if you can tell by a girl’s fingernails whether or not she’s a virgin.”

  “What? Did you have all those questions when you were in seventh grade?”

  “And then some,” I told him. “And I’ll bet you did too. You just don’t remember.”

  * * *

  It was only October, and the critical decision coming up for spring semester was whether the sex ed course should be canceled until a committee had a chance to study the issue further. Never mind that the committee had studied it to death before it was ever decided to teach the course in the first place. The TTT group wanted even more, however. Not only did they want it canceled, but they wanted an abstinence-only course to be taught in its place, and they already had the materials they felt we should use.

  I already knew of half a dozen middle schoolers who had engaged in intercourse and countless others who, according to their peers anyway, “fooled around.” Did we abandon these pseudosophisticated kids to a no-sex rule even after they had experienced the thrill of it and then trust that our admonitions and persuasions would be sufficient? Or did we equip them for their soon-to-be-even-riskier sexual life so that they would have a basic knowledge of what “a pimple down there” means and other matters? At the very least, we felt—and experience bore this out—the fact that we were talking in the classroom about sex meant that it was okay for kids to discuss it with us.

  As the battle became more heated, Emma Butler became more strident. Every other day, it seemed, the Post reported a new allegation or statistic from TTT, and because there was such emoti
on on both sides, a reporter was always around to pick up the next newsworthy pronouncement, and these would land on my desk seeking a rebuttal.

  And then one night the phone rang still again. As soon as I said hello, this steely-sounding woman said, “Am I speaking to Alice Long?”

  “Yes,” I said, trying to be pleasant. “And you are . . . ?”

  “Emma Butler,” she replied. “And I think you should know what you are doing to young minds in the schools.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Butler,” I said, “I’m glad to have the chance to talk with you personally. Would you like to come to the office and we could have a discussion?”

  “No, I would not want to waste my time. Everything I have to say to you I can say over the phone,” she replied.

  I’ve learned when to let silence bring out feeling, and when I didn’t reply, her words came out in a rush: “Little children enter middle school just after fifth grade. They come as innocent youngsters off the playground, used to skipping rope and playing kickball. Most of them don’t even know what a condom is, and we don’t want them to know! Call us old-fashioned, but we think of ourselves as sensible; with all the sex going on on television, magazine covers that make you blush, stories about priests seducing children and homosexuals hugging right out in public, someone has got to say, ‘Enough.’ We can’t stop the movies and TV and the perverts, but with God’s help, we can stop the schools from the early sexualization of our children.”

  She stopped for breath, and her voice was trembling. I think she had just coined a new word, but I really felt for her then. In my mind she was one woman struggling to hold back a crumbling dam, water already pouring over the top.

  “Do you have children, Mrs. Butler?” I asked.

  “Yes, I do—a ninth-grade daughter and another in seventh. Sex is the last thing on their minds. I know, and our daughters know, that the only way they’ll get a car when they graduate from college is if they remain virgins till then.”