The One I Trust (19 page)

“Well, why didn’t you help them instead?”

“Because I was working at the manipulative station!” she cried. “I designed these centers specifically so that the kids could do the newspapers all by themselves so that she could be over there at the stencil center.”

“Well, maybe you could do stencils and she could do manipulatives.”

“She’s supposed to do what I tell her! Why are you defending her?”

“I’m not,” I said, “I just—”

“I’m the teacher!” Emily exclaimed. “If I tell her that I want a kid working at the computer center, then that kid needs to be working at the computer center! She was actually moving kids around yesterday and getting them all mixed up from where I put them. I have a schedule! I want them at a certain place at a certain time and I need to know what they’ve done and what they haven’t done and she’s ruining everything! Plus, I’ve written up all these stupid lesson plans and if the principal comes in and they’re not doing what I said they were going to be doing, then I’m going to get in trouble!”

“Why don’t you sit down with her,” I suggested, “and explain to her that you’re the one with the four-year degree and you’re in charge and you need her to do things the way you want?”

“That’s not going to do any good, Reid,” Emily insisted. “You don’t have any idea what this woman is like.”

“Then tell your principal—”

“I can’t go marching in there after the first week of school and tattle on her!”

I thought about it for a few moments and then suggested, “What if I came in and volunteered one day?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what if I took off half a day of work and came in and volunteered and maybe she’d . . . I don’t know. Maybe she’d be afraid to buck you if someone else was in there.”

“Would you really do that?”

“Sure I would.” I would have done just about anything at that point to help her calm down.

She looked at me for a moment. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

I stepped closer and put my arms around her waist.

“You’re welcome.”

“I love you,” she said, laying her head against my shoulder.

She let out a sigh and as I tightened my arms around her, I noticed the picture I’d given her for her twentieth birthday hanging on the wall behind her desk.

“Hey,” I said. “You hung up the picture I made you.”

“Of course I did,” she said. “It was the first thing I did. I love it.”

“I love
you
,” I said softly into her ear.

“I love you, too,” she said. “But Reid?”

“What?”

“I still need to find my papers.”

The papers never did turn up, but she had the kids do a new assessment on Monday and once she got those graded, I never heard any more about it. I went in to her classroom that Wednesday during a time when the kids were working on math, and I helped out in a geometry center where kids were cutting various shapes out of sandpaper and gluing them down in their folders.

Julie did exactly what she was supposed to do and she seemed very nice from what I could tell. I made the mistake of mentioning this to Emily when I got home that evening.

“Of course she was nice while you were there!” she said, rolling her eyes. “
You’re
the one who said she probably wouldn’t buck me in front of you, remember?”

“How was she after I left?”

“Okay, I guess.” Emily shrugged. “We had a few minor scuffles, but nothing too bad.”

“So overall she was better?”

“I guess,” she admitted.

“So I just need to come in every day and volunteer?” I smiled.

“Would you? That would be great.”

I laughed and then said sincerely, “I wish I could. It was much more interesting than scanning barcodes.”

“I’d gladly trade places with you,” she said unhappily.

“Come on, now,” I said, putting my hand on the back of her neck and massaging the tight spots. “This is what you’ve always wanted to do. You’re brand new—I’m sure things will get better soon.”

“Well, so far all they’re doing is getting worse.”

“Worse how? I thought you had a good day today.”

“Things were better with Julie, but now I’m having problems with a parent.”

“What kind of problems?”

“I got this email from some mom today telling me that her kid is scared of me. She says he’s afraid to come to school every day and she has to pry him out of the car screaming and crying each morning . . .”

“Which kid is that?”

“Remember Isaiah?”

“Not really . . .”

“That little kid with the Mohawk?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “He seemed pretty happy to me . . .”

“Exactly. He’s fine in class—he’s doing great. I haven’t had any problems with him at all, but she says he’s terrified of me.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her I hadn’t noticed anything but that I’d keep an eye on him.”

When I got home on Friday, Emily was in tears.

“Apparently I missed a meeting today,” she cried. “Everybody was waiting for me and I didn’t show up.”

“What kind of a meeting?”

“An IEP meeting for one of my students. The assistant principal was there and the EC teacher, and the parents took off from work and everything and then they had to reschedule it because of me.”

“They couldn’t have it without you?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “The classroom teacher
has
to be there.”

“How did you miss it?”

“I didn’t know anything about it!” she exclaimed. “Nobody ever told me. They said there was an email but I never got it.”

“Why didn’t they just come get you?” I asked.

“It was after school,” she said. “I left today as soon as we were allowed to leave.”

“They couldn’t call you?”

“I forgot to turn my phone on until after I got home.”

“Well, if you didn’t get the email, it’s not your fault,” I pointed out.

“No, but it makes me look really bad.”

“It’s just one meeting, Emily,” I assured her. “It’ll be okay.”

“And then the principal said he never got my lesson plans for this past week,” she went on. “I sent them—I submitted them to that stupid site—and now they’re gone. All that work, completely down the drain.”

“Do you have a copy to show him?”

“No,” she said. “You can’t make a copy. You have to enter everything into these fields—all the standards and everything—and then you have to upload your handouts.”

“Well, don’t you have those?”

“Yeah—I mean I have the scans and everything, but I don’t have my objectives and my outline and all that. It’s all gone.”

“Maybe you should make a copy next time,” I suggested.

“You’re missing the point,” she said. “The point is that I missed an important meeting, and the principal didn’t get my lesson plans, and I’ve got a parent complaining that her kid is scared to come to school every day because of me . . .”

The point actually was that Emily was only two weeks into her first school year and she was already so stressed that she could barely function. That night, after we climbed into bed, I reached for her. She had her back to me and I tentatively touched her shoulder.

“I’m so tired, Reid,” I heard her say.

“I was just going to rub your shoulders.”

This wasn’t a total lie, but if it had turned into something else I wouldn’t have objected. I wasn’t keeping count of how long it had been since we’d had sex or anything like that, but it had been exactly eleven days.

“I’m really sorry,” she said. “I hope you understand.”

“I understand perfectly.”

I’ve been married before . . .

“I love you though,” she said.

“I love you, too,” I said, and I moved closer to her and held her for the thirty seconds or so that it took for her to fall sound asleep.

Monday she came home with a new complaint.

“Something’s wrong with my email.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said, “I’m not getting stuff that people are sending me.”

“What happened now?”

“Now some parent complained to the principal that she’s been trying to contact me and that I never respond.”

“Isaiah’s mom?”

“No,” she said. “Apparently this is someone else.”

“She says she emailed you?”

“She said she left phone messages, too,” Emily said. “I haven’t gotten any of them either.”

“Are you checking your spam?”

“Yes,” she said. “They’re not there.”

“Have you got an IT guy at work?”

“It’s a woman, actually, and I’ve already talked to her.”

“And?”

“And she doesn’t have any explanation.”

“It’s probably a computer glitch,” I said. “It’ll get worked out.”

“What about the phone messages?” Emily asked. “How come I didn’t get those?”

“Maybe Julie took them and forgot to tell you?”

“Forgot.” She rolled her eyes. “Probably deleted them to make me look bad.”

“Emily,” I said, tilting my head at her.

“That woman’s sole purpose in life is to make me miserable.”

I gave her what I hoped was a sympathetic look.

“I have work to do,” she said.

“Can I do anything to help?” I asked as she headed toward the couch.

“No.”

“My sole purpose in life is to make you not miserable,” I reminded her.

“I know,” she said. “But you can’t help.”

By Wednesday, Emily couldn’t even get
into
her email.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It wouldn’t recognize my password for some reason. I had to go and have the lady reset it for me from her computer.”

“That doesn’t sound like that big of a deal . . .”

“It makes me look so incompetent,” she complained. “Like I couldn’t even remember my own password or something. But I was using the
same
password I’ve been using since school started.”

“Are you sure you were putting in the right one?”

“It’s the day we got married, Reid,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I remember the day we got married.”

“I remember the
night
we got married,” I said, looking at her hopefully. “Do you remember that night?”

She actually rolled her eyes at me.

I walked into the kitchen and started dinner.

Later that evening, while Emily was in the living room working away as usual, I went into the bedroom to make sure I had clothes for work the next day. Finding something to wear each morning had been growing more and more challenging lately, and even after I looked in the three baskets that were on the floor of our bedroom—all full of clean clothes—I still couldn’t find any socks.

Deciding that I’d better get a load going, I went into our small walk-in closet to gather an armful of clothes from the mountainous pile that was on the floor and realized that this was probably another task I was going to have to start taking care of if it was ever going to get done. As I carried them into the kitchen, I thought about how there were still over nine months left until school was out.
Nine months.

Sighing, I dumped the dirty clothes on the floor and opened the door to the closet that held our washer and dryer. When I opened the lid to the washer, I discovered that it was already full of wet clothes. Fortunately they weren’t too stinky yet, so I opened the dryer to move the wet clothes over and saw that
that
was full, too.

Sighing again, I walked back into the bedroom, dumped out one of the baskets onto the bed, and returned to the kitchen, resolving to fold and put away everything that was already clean and dry before going to bed that night. I started pulling clothes out of the dryer and putting them into the empty laundry basket, but it didn’t take long for me to notice that something wasn’t right . . . something wasn’t right at
all
.

Everything was bleached . . . stuff that wasn’t supposed to be bleached was bleached.

My jeans, my boxers, my T-shirts, and . . .

No. No, no, no, no, no . . . not the jersey I’d gotten when Noah and I had gone to his first NC State basketball game.

After the game, the starting forward had signed that shirt while I was wearing it but—much more important than that—
Noah
had signed it. He had been so impressed watching this giant basketball player signing my shirt that he’d wanted to do it too . . . so I’d let him. I remember how he’d held his tongue between his teeth in concentration as he’d carefully printed his name in big black letters with a marker.

N-O-A-H.

That was completely gone now.

“Emily?!”

“What?” she called from the living room.

“Come here.”

“I’m busy.”

“Come here!”

“What’s wrong?” she asked, stepping into the kitchen.

“Why did you bleach this stuff?” I held up the shirt and shook it in front of her.

She looked at the shirt and then at my jeans and the rest of the ruined laundry.

“I didn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I didn’t bleach anything.”

“Why was this even
in
the laundry?” I asked, shaking the shirt some more.

“I . . . I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t touch it.”

“Well, you must have,” I argued, “because I never would have washed this and I certainly wouldn’t have
bleached
it!”

“What is it?” she asked.

What is it?

I was so upset I couldn’t even answer. I walked past Emily and into the bedroom, closing—okay,
slamming
—the bedroom door behind me. I sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the shirt and turning it over in my hands. Maybe there was a faint trace of marker . . . some small evidence that Noah had once touched this shirt.

Not finding any, I took my watch off and rubbed my thumb over my tattoo. I felt my eyes fill with tears.

The door quietly opened.

“Reid?” Emily said softly.

When I didn’t say anything she stepped into the room and walked over to the bed.

“Reid,” she said again, sitting down next to me. “I’m really sorry.”

“Why would you bleach this stuff?” I asked, my eyes looking at the shirt again. “Why would you do that?”

“I didn’t do it,” she said. “I didn’t bleach anything.”

I looked at her.

“Someone broke into our house and decided to do laundry?”