Just Another Kid: Each was a child no one could reach – until one amazing teacher embraced them all. Torey Hayden
both of us, but for the moment all proprieties were suspended. A word from either of us would have broken the spell.
Bill came in, pushing his clanking mop bucket. Smiling at us, he produced a canister of Vomoose and sprinkled it blithely around. Then he went to work with brush and dust pan. Then the mop. He was whistling “Oh! Susanna,” and cleaned up the mess as casually as if it happened every day. The sour smell of vomit was soon overpowered by the almost equally nauseating odor of floral-scented disinfectant.
“See you around, Tor,” he said and marshaled the mop bucket out of the door.
Bill’s cheerful ordinariness displaced some of the tension in the room. I took the dishpan and cloths back to the sink and rinsed them out. Dr. Taylor turned her head to watch me. The color was coming back into her cheeks.
“Would you like some water?” I asked.
She nodded slightly.
All I had back there was my used coffee mug. Rinsing it out, I filled it and brought it over. She took it from me but then drank very little, pausing after only a few sips and lowering the mug. I folded the floor cloths and laid them on the table. The box of baking soda was still to be put away. I held it up.
“This is good stuff,” I said. “It takes the smell away.” Carefully, I pushed the little three-sided flap back down to close it. “I always keep some around. With the kids, you know. It’s very good for getting rid of that horrible odor, and it tends not to hurt your clothes.”
She very briefly caught my eye. Immediately, she looked away and then down. There was a moment of acute discomfort between us as the last seconds of obligatory intimacy melted away. I was as embarrassed about all this as she was, which no doubt had produced my sudden commercial for baking soda.
She stared down at her hands. “You’re disgusted by me, aren’t you?” she said, her voice soft and matter-of-fact.
“Well …” I shrugged and smiled self-consciously. “I’m sure you didn’t come in here intending to do this.”
She kept her head down.
“It was just one of those things,” I said.
“I’m sure you must hate me.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t even know you.”
Her chin quivered.
“I must say, however, that I do think you need to get some help with your drinking. This kind of situation isn’t doing anybody any good.”
Bringing a hand up, she covered her eyes a moment, pressing against them in an effort to keep the tears back. “Some days I want to kill myself,” she said.
Unexpectedly, I found myself feeling intense compassion for the woman. Her distress was suddenly so powerful that it filled the air around us. I could have touched it with my fingers. My feelings were intensified, as I watched her struggle so desperately to keep the tears back. After all the humiliating things she had already done, this rather minor loss of control seemed to be the one troubling her most. In an odd way, that moved me.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“I don’t mean just here, now. In general. Is there something I can do to help?”
Again she shook her head.
Bringing her hands down, she snuffled back unfallen tears. She groped in her coat pocket for a tissue.
“I’m sure things must be hard for you,” I said quietly. “From all I’ve heard about living with Leslie, you’re under a lot of pressure. Coping must be very difficult in such circumstances.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Perhaps I could help you with Leslie,” I said. “If you want, I think I could probably make it a little easier for you.”
She shook her head.
“You don’t want that?”
“It’s not Leslie, it’s me. I just wish I could kill myself.”
Concerned, I regarded her.
“I can’t sleep. I lie in bed and think about how I’m going to do it. I make lists in my head.”
“Lists?”
She shrugged slightly. “Of the people to call. You know, the lawyers and such, the things you’ve got to arrange.”
I didn’t know quite what to say.
“I lie there and think about those things,” she said. Her voice was very soft, almost apologetic. “I’m scared to death of screwing it up. Tom’d never forgive me.”
“I see.”
“I think about it all. And then I go downstairs and I think, I’ll just have one drink to give me courage to do it. But one drink isn’t enough. I’m still too chicken.”
Her facial muscles tensed; the tears reappeared but still did not fall. “And then Tom comes downstairs and he looks at the clock. It’s maybe like 6:30 in the morning. And he says, ‘What a disgusting bitch you’ve turned out to be.’”
I collected Leslie and drove her and her mother home. I was reluctant to let Dr. Taylor drive as I had no idea how much alcohol was still in her system, and I was even more reluctant to leave her to her own devices. The journey was fairly long and took place in virtual silence. The change in location from the classroom to the car had broken the last of our intimacy. I could feel her defenses being put back into place, and I became a stranger again.
At last, I pulled into the long drive and came to a stop in front of the Considynes’ house. It was a magnificent affair, sprawling in all directions, set in a literal forest of trees. But there was little sign of life. Dr. Taylor fumbled at the side of the car door, trying to find the handle to open it.
My mind had been racing during the trip over in an effort to come up with something to say. “Dr. Taylor?”
She did not answer, did not turn toward me, but she paused in her efforts to get out.
“Can I help you in some way?”
No response.
“I know this afternoon has been a pretty dreadful experience and I imagine you never want to see my face again, but I mean it. Is there something I can do?”
“Like what?”
I smiled apologetically. “I’m not sure. Could we perhaps just talk again?”
She nodded very slightly. The car door opened. “Thank you for everything,” she said, her voice barely audible. Then she got out. She opened the back door for Leslie, and I watched as they walked up the drive to the house.
Dr. Taylor didn’t take up my offer to talk. In fact, over the next few days she seemed to studiously avoid me. Tom Considyne brought and picked up Leslie, and I didn’t see Dr. Taylor at all for the rest of the week.
Initially, I was disconcerted. I didn’t know how seriously to take her talk of suicide, but I didn’t necessarily think it should be ignored. On the other hand, I was unsure what I, personally, could do. At the time, it had seemed most important simply to get her to return, because until she was willing to do that, any offer of help from anyone would go unheeded. But if she did return, I didn’t know precisely what I intended to do about her situation. I did make the effort to collect a few brochures on AA and other locally available programs for alcohol treatment, but beyond that, I hadn’t done anything.
However, as time passed, the sense of urgency in the situation diminished. The immediacy of that horrific afternoon in the classroom receded, and ordinary day-to-day life with the children