Matt & Zoe

  I shake my head. “It was the only third grade room open.”

  He smirks. “You ready to go?”

  “Yeah. Is Peggy meeting us there?”

  He nods. “If she’s still alive.”

  I shake my head. Peggy Young is the head of the English Department at the high school, my high school counterpart with the South Hadley Education Association. In truth, the high school teachers have more to lose than we do if the contract negotiations fail. The school committee wants to eliminate extra pay for coaches and phase out department heads in favor of curriculum coordinators who will do the job of a department head but with no extra pay. That, along with increases to the cost of our health insurance and a freeze on pay raises for another year have pitted the teachers union against the school board.

  Tyler and I step out of the room and I close and lock the door, then we head for the parking lot. Of course I have to get a ride. My car insurance doesn’t cover rentals, which may be the dumbest decision I’ve made lately.

  I get in the passenger seat of Tyler’s Hummer. I can’t imagine how he affords to drive it, unless it’s fueled by surplus testosterone. He drives us out of the parking lot, crushing lesser vehicles under his wheels—well, that’s not true—as he turns out of the school and toward Newton Street. I find myself thinking back to this morning’s meeting with Zoe and Jasmine Welch. Zoe is nothing like I assumed when we had the accident. My first assessment was irresponsible college student. I couldn’t have been more wrong—she was stepping into the role of mother after her parents were killed. Which makes me … a jerk.

  I’m pretty sure it is too late to erase that first impression. But at least we’re on board and in agreement on how to best help Jasmine.

  Still… it’s hard to set aside the sad look in her blue eyes. She’s a damned attractive woman, with exquisite features. And clearly overwhelmed with grief and the weight of her new responsibilities.

  I try to imagine how I would have felt at twenty-four? How would I have felt if my parents had been killed and I’d suddenly been the sole guardian of an eight-year-old sibling? When I lost my father, I had no one to worry about but myself, and even that was more than I could handle. I find myself feeling admiration for how well she’s holding up.

  Tyler comes to a stop at the light at Newton Street. It’s the main thoroughfare through South Hadley, running from the bridge to Mount Holyoke College, where the name is changed to College Street. Tyler turns on his left turn signal and taps the steering wheel. I glance over to my right and my eyes fix on Zoe Welch.

  She’s a hundred yards away, on the other side of College Street, getting the mail from an ancient mailbox in front of an old worn-down colonial. The house looks impoverished, in need of a paint job and probably a lot more. A UMASS police car sits in the driveway, along with her minivan, and Jasmine is sitting in a rocker on the porch next to a female cop.

  That explains how the Amherst cops knew Zoe—this woman must be a friend.

  “Check out that chick’s butt,” Tyler says. “God I’d love to get a piece of that.”

  “Don’t be a dick,” I say.

  “Why the hell not?” He asks, chuckling.

  I shake my head. “Light’s green.”

  He jerks a little, taking his eyes off Zoe, then steps on the gas and turns left toward South Hadley Falls, the area that passes for a downtown in this sleepy little town.

  After a couple of thoughtful minutes, Tyler says, “Smoking hot.”

  I ignore him. Five minutes later we’re parking in front of the town hall, a three-story structure across from a park and field that butts up against the Connecticut River. This part of town doesn’t have the bucolic feel of the rest of South Hadley. A number of derelict homes compete for space with several condemned buildings. The liquor store, gas station and police department line one side of the street just around the corner, right across from an old house, long since condemned.

  The town hall, however, is a nice building, three stories of stone and marble built in 1908 as a combined town hall and high school. The high school moved out in the fifties, but the town hall is still here. I’ve had some of the most stressful moments of the last school year here.

  I never wanted to take on the job of union representative. For one thing, I’m pretty new to the district and teaching in general. Some said I’m too young. Or too inexperienced. Or too much an outsider. And for other reasons, I try to keep a low profile whenever possible.

  We climb the three flights of stairs to the third floor and the school department.

  Peggy Young is standing in the large vestibule outside the school department. She’s a formidable woman. Seventy years old if she’s a day, she has a sharp wit and makes plenty of self-deprecating comments mixed in with acid remarks about the youngsters running the school committee. She’s been teaching at South Hadley High School since before I was born, and almost every member of the school committee was once one of her students.

  It astonishes me she hasn’t handed out detention slips to them.

  “There you are,” she says to me. “It’s about time, the meeting begins in less than five minutes. I see you brought along your jock friend. Is he going to keep his mouth shut this time?”

  “Well—” That’s all I manage to sputter out before Tyler speaks.

  “You old battle axe. I’ll keep my mouth shut when you retire to the nursing home where you belong.” His words are rude as hell, but he says them with a grin. Tyler and Peggy have a unique relationship. I have the feeling he antagonized her just as much when he was her student.

  She whips up her cane and taps him, hard, on the shoulder. “You don’t talk back to me, jocko. You might be a teacher now, but I remember when you skated by with nothing but C’s.”

  Tyler says, “How are ‘ya, Miss Young?”

  “I’ll be better when this contract business is over and I can get back to focusing on my teaching. How are you doing? Still chasing inappropriate girls?”

  Tyler bursts into loud laughter.

  Moments later, the superintendent appears, followed by two members of the school committee. Silently, we follow them into the meeting room. With any luck, we’ll get a settlement before things get much worse.

  The superintendent sits down at the head of the conference table. A bad sign—Michael Barrington has been a thorn in the side of the teachers of South Hadley. He took over the job a couple years ago—the third superintendent in four years—and morale in the school system has been at an all-time low. Today his lips are tight, and he says nothing as he takes his seat.

  The two school committee members sit at the table across from us.

  Dianne Blakely is in her fifties. She had two daughters in South Hadley Schools until last year, and has been a vocal critic of the high school faculty ever since her youngest daughter was expelled from the high school for vicious bullying. The school system still hasn’t gotten its footing after a bullying-prompted suicide made international news a few years ago. Sometimes penalties are too harsh and sometimes incidents are swept under the rug. Blakely’s daughter caught the wrong end of that extreme—a series of twitter posts including some graphic photoshopped images of another girl resulted in her being thrown out of high school for a year. I’m not supposed to know any details about that, but the fact is—everyone knows. There are few secrets in a town this size.

  I’m grateful my secrets are my own.

  The other school committee member is Susan Greeley. Susan is younger than her counterpart, thirty or so, and she has two children at the elementary school—one of them was in my class last year. Susan is reasonable and well liked, and I suspect she’s here to soften whatever blow is coming.

  Blakely leans forward and says, “Let’s bring this meeting to order then. Susan, can you take minutes? I’d like to record everyone who is present.”

  Susan nods, her face a little strained. She begins writing on a pad of paper, as Blakely speaks.

  “Mister Paladino, first of all, I h
ope you are doing okay. Your accident yesterday, was it serious? Any injuries?”

  I shrug. “My car may be totaled, but no one injured. So that’s good news.”

  “Well, then. Let’s get to business. Has the union accepted our latest proposal?”

  I shake my head. “I’m afraid not. The proposal still doesn’t address our primary concerns. First is the elimination of department head positions and replacing them with this curriculum coordinator. We’ve addressed this several times—you’re giving teachers the same workload for this position, but taking away the extra pay. That’s not acceptable. It’s not acceptable that you did it by fiat after the union’s proposal last Spring.”

  Blakely shakes her head. “That’s an unfair characterization. The school committee acted out of fiscal needs, not—”

  “You eliminated the position after the union demanded a pay increase.”

  “The Department Head positions are not negotiable—”

  I interrupt. “During our last union meeting, the members agreed to file suit for unfair labor practices.”

  The room drops into silence. Barrington, who has been silent up until this point, clears his throat. “Do you think that’s wise, Matt?”

  “Mister Barrington, the decision was unanimous. You changed the terms of employment for all of the department heads without consulting the union or modifying their contracts. The lawsuit was a compromise position. A significant number of the teachers are arguing for a walkout over the health insurance and retirement provisions.”

  Barrington looks frustrated. “There will be no walkout while I’m superintendent.”

  “Then I would urge you and the school committee to come up with some kind of compromise, because in the absence of an agreement, that’s what is going to happen.”

  Peggy says in a stern voice, “Superintendent, you won’t intimidate the teachers of this town like you and your football jock friends used to do when you were a kid.”

  Barrington flushes red. “Mrs. Young, you can’t—”

  “I’m seventy years old. I’d already been a teacher for decades when you were a pimply boy in my freshman English class. And I’m telling you now, if you don’t concede on something then you’ll have to figure out how you’re going to educate the children of this town without teachers.”

  Blakely’s mouth forms a prim line. “It seems we are at an impasse.”

  I sigh. “So you don’t have any alternative? No new proposal?”

  Blakely shakes her head. “No. This is as far as we go.”

  I look to my left. Tyler frowns and nods. I look to my right. Peggy looks resigned. I nod slightly, then say, “Miss Blakely, Mister Barrington. On behalf of the South Hadley Education Association, I’m informing you that you have a one-week deadline. If the school committee is unable to consider a compromise by next Thursday at midnight, then the union will vote on a strike.”

  Barrington jabs a finger toward me. “You’ll regret this, Matt. Don’t think I won’t forget it.”

  I swallow. Barrington likely isn’t making empty threats. I’ve heard rumors of retaliation against teachers he doesn’t like.

  Blakely stands. “We’re done here.”

  My chair scrapes against the floor as we all come to our feet. “Mister Barrington… Miss Blakely … Miss Greeley. Thank you for your time.”

  I don’t trust myself to say anything appropriate as I lead the others out of the office.

  Chapter Five

  Miss Welch? (Zoe)

  “I don’t wanna eat my vegetables,” Jasmine says for the four-hundredth time. Just in case I didn’t hear her before. It’s been a little more than a week since I came home, and her grief is starting to turn sullen.

  I wave a fork in her direction. “I’m not arguing with you, Jasmine. If you want ice cream after dinner, you’ll eat.”

  Nicole, still in her uniform after a day on patrol, leans close to me. “You’re starting to sound like a mother.”

  That sets Jasmine off. She slams her little fist into the table, sending her plastic cup full of milk flying across the table. Milk splatters everywhere, including on me.

  “You’re not my mother!” She bursts into tears and runs out of the room. Moments after she runs out of the room, I hear the back door slam.

  I stare after her. I know I should follow. I know I should hold her in my arms and comfort her and do all that motherly stuff. She’s right. I’m not our mother, our mother is dead and we’re all alone.

  Nicole squeezes my shoulder. “It’ll get better,” she says.

  “I hope so.” I throw my napkin on the wet table and stand. “I’ll be right back.”

  I don’t hurry. Jasmine needs a minute to collect herself anyway. Instead, I dawdle to the back door and switch on the outside light, illuminating the space between the house and Dad’s garage.

  I still haven’t been in there. It sits dark and hidden in the twilight behind locked doors. I have a compulsion to call a contractor and have the thing bulldozed and taken away.

  Instead, I open the back door and step down the cinderblock steps to the gravel pathway behind the house. It’s still warm, and the scent of turned soil, hay and manure drifts my way. South Hadley, like much of the Pioneer Valley, is a weird mix of college town and rural paradise, with working family farms across the street from eclectic bookstores and coffee shops. Mom and Dad rarely locked the doors when I was growing up.

  The light is on in the stable, the building backlit by a sky washed with orange and red.

  A thought nags in the back of my mind as I approach. I never expected to be taking care of my little sister. Much less my little sister and a nine acre horse farm and three horses. This morning I met with Veterans Services and the admissions department at UMASS Amherst. Veterans Services is trying to get an exception to the normal admission procedure so I can start college this semester. I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but either way I’ll either be working full time or going to school soon. I can’t afford to take care of this place, to take care of my sister and the horses and everything else. The life insurance will pay off the house, but there won’t be much left after that—maybe enough for a year. A cold pit of anxiety runs through me as I approach the stable.

  Jasmine sits on the top rail of Mono’s stall. His gigantic head is in her lap, his tail swishing about.

  “Hey,” I say.

  Jasmine leans closer to the horse. She has a look of intense concentration on her face. Her hands move carefully, taking long strands of hair on the back of his neck and deftly braiding them together.

  “He loves you,” I say.

  She doesn’t respond. I’m not equipped for this. I stand helplessly, overcome with a surge of grief. Why didn’t Mom and Dad make any provisions for this? I’m not cut out to be somebody’s mother.

  “I miss them too, you know.” The words come out of me, even though I know it’s the wrong thing to say. “I loved them.”

  She looks up at me for the first time. Her face is streaked with tears. “All you did was yell at Mommy.”

  I wince. Her words are correct. My last leave, a two-week visit, was punctuated by half-a-dozen skirmishes between me and Mom. It was always the same thing. When was I going to stop playing soldier? When was I going to come home and go to college? Didn’t I know the Army was dangerous?

  That was a laugh. Didn’t I know it was dangerous? Who had she thought she was talking to? I was there.

  I blink, once, twice, then several times, because my vision is blurring. The last thing I’d said face to face to my mother had been … cold. Not hateful, but angry. I’d just finished loading my duffle bag in the back of Dad’s Austin Healy so we could ride to the airport. I don’t normally take it out in the snow, he’d said. But this time I’ll make an exception.

  Mom had hugged me, but I hadn’t responded well. Then she looked me in the eye and said, “You know I just want you to have a good life, Zoe.”

  “I do have a good life,” I said. Then I got in t
he car.

  I didn’t tell my mother I loved her. Now I’ll never get the chance..

  What should I say to Jasmine? How could she understand? I don’t even understand. I say, “That’s true. Mom and I fought a lot. I still loved her.”

  She turns away, back to her task.

  My shoulders sag. I need to talk to someone. A professional, or… or a mother. Because I don’t know how to help her through this. I don’t even know how to help me through this.

  I blink back tears again and say, “I want you in by full dark, Jasmine. Okay?”

  She shrugs.

  “I mean it.”

  Jasmine lets out a sigh and says, “Okay. I’ll come in when it’s dark.”

  I stumble back toward the house.

  Inside, Nicole has already cleaned up the table, except for Jasmine’s plate with its cold vegetables, and she’s hand washing the dishes. “Thanks,” I whisper.

  “Is she okay?”

  I shake my head. “No. I don’t know what to do.” After a few silent breaths, I tell her about the visit I’d received earlier in the day.

  “The court’s appointed someone called a guardian ad litem… she came out today. Wanted to see the place, and interview me.”

  “For the guardianship hearing?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “I know… but… I worry anyway.”

  Nicole looks out the window toward the stable.

  “She’s braiding Mono’s hair,” I say.

  Nicole shrugs. “Maybe that’s what she needs right now. But… Zoe? Can I suggest something without you getting mad?”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “I think you should consider a therapist. Not just for Jasmine. For you.”

  “What… I don’t need—”

  The house phone rings, interrupting me. I stand there, mouth open, for just a moment. The phone rings again, a harsh ringing tone. My parents have had the same phone since the 1980s, an old Slimline phone mounted on the wall with a rotary dial in the handset, heavy enough you could use it as a weapon. I walk across the kitchen and snatch the phone off the wall.