Read Online Keeping Time: A Novel by Stacey Mcglynn - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Stacey Mcglynn
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thin that she was afraid shredded wheat was more together than she was? Was that what might be troubling Michael? Long ago when she and Richard had started having all their children, he had been working reasonable hours and she had been part time, but as the family costs increased—college tuitions, music lessons, property taxes, and so on—Richard had had to join the frenzied rat race of law firm partnership, and Elisabeth had had to go back to working full time. And to make matters worse, she h, not having any idea what itDaisy Phillipsated her job—now more than ever, because they had just fired Palmer and handed her all his clients. If she had to do another one of his tax returns, she’d die. She was sure of it.
She should have gone to art school. It was her mother’s fault that she didn’t. But who could blame her mother? Her father abandoned his family when Ann was six. And Ann’s husband went and died on her, leaving her with five daughters to raise on her own. Naturally, she had advised her daughters to take the safest paths.
“Um,” Elisabeth, aware the teacher was waiting, aware that she had to say something. “I don’t know.” Feebly. Thinking, “I don’t know where to begin.” Feeling so tired. Sleep had become a luxury for the young. It was as if she had grown out of it, leaving her with drenched night garments.
“I just don’t know what to do here,” Mrs. Caulfield, scratching her head.
Elisabeth, thinking that that made two of them.
“Other than scheduling a mandatory meeting between him and the school psychiatrist, which I’ve already done, and allowing him to retake the final. I’ve never done that before, not once in my twenty-two years of teaching, but I’ve never seen this before, either. On Monday I’ll let him retake the final, a different one.”
“Thank you,” Elisabeth, holding her head in her hands.
“You’re welcome. Now, the Regents is next week. What he gets on it can’t be undone. It will be on his high school transcript permanently. And a fifty-nine going in? A fifty-nine on his final exam? I’ve spoken to his other teachers. They all report the same thing. Something must be going on with him. You must have noticed it at home.”
Elisabeth, looking down at the half-finished overdue corporate tax return on her desk, the one she was supposed to have finished three days ago. Closing her eyes, wanting it all to go away, or back to where it once was. To freeze the time when all her boys were still small and their problems were small, too. To a time when she had had all the answers.
“You must have noticed a widespread falling off of all his grades.”
A kaleidoscope of tests, rushing into Elisabeth’s head: fifth-grade tests, seventh-grade tests, ninth-grade tests, twelfth-grade tests; Josh’s, David’s, Michael’s, Pete’s; math, science, language arts, reading, Spanish, French, history. All of them swirling around at a dizzying pace.
“Well,” Elisabeth, struggling to say something that would belie the obvious conclusion this teacher must be drawing, that she was a totally checked-out parent, “you see …” feeling very much the forty-four-year-old she had become, perimenopausal, period-skipping. This mustbe it, she thought. The slow decline, rapidly accelerating. Wishing that someone else would step in and do the talking. How about Richard, for example? He would do a much better job. “Let me see … his last math test—” Her eyes falling upon her computer screen, stopping her in her tracks. The headline news: Dart Man struck again.
Mrs. Caulfield’s voice cutting into her thoughts. “Okay.” Sounding exasperated. “We must come up with a strategy to get through to him the importance of the Regents exams and getting his grades back to where they should be. He has a math and English Regents, too, I understand.” conclusionhabme
“I, uh …” Elisabeth, scanning the news story to see when and where Dart Man had struck. Incapable of
She should have gone to art school. It was her mother’s fault that she didn’t. But who could blame her mother? Her father abandoned his family when Ann was six. And Ann’s husband went and died on her, leaving her with five daughters to raise on her own. Naturally, she had advised her daughters to take the safest paths.
“Um,” Elisabeth, aware the teacher was waiting, aware that she had to say something. “I don’t know.” Feebly. Thinking, “I don’t know where to begin.” Feeling so tired. Sleep had become a luxury for the young. It was as if she had grown out of it, leaving her with drenched night garments.
“I just don’t know what to do here,” Mrs. Caulfield, scratching her head.
Elisabeth, thinking that that made two of them.
“Other than scheduling a mandatory meeting between him and the school psychiatrist, which I’ve already done, and allowing him to retake the final. I’ve never done that before, not once in my twenty-two years of teaching, but I’ve never seen this before, either. On Monday I’ll let him retake the final, a different one.”
“Thank you,” Elisabeth, holding her head in her hands.
“You’re welcome. Now, the Regents is next week. What he gets on it can’t be undone. It will be on his high school transcript permanently. And a fifty-nine going in? A fifty-nine on his final exam? I’ve spoken to his other teachers. They all report the same thing. Something must be going on with him. You must have noticed it at home.”
Elisabeth, looking down at the half-finished overdue corporate tax return on her desk, the one she was supposed to have finished three days ago. Closing her eyes, wanting it all to go away, or back to where it once was. To freeze the time when all her boys were still small and their problems were small, too. To a time when she had had all the answers.
“You must have noticed a widespread falling off of all his grades.”
A kaleidoscope of tests, rushing into Elisabeth’s head: fifth-grade tests, seventh-grade tests, ninth-grade tests, twelfth-grade tests; Josh’s, David’s, Michael’s, Pete’s; math, science, language arts, reading, Spanish, French, history. All of them swirling around at a dizzying pace.
“Well,” Elisabeth, struggling to say something that would belie the obvious conclusion this teacher must be drawing, that she was a totally checked-out parent, “you see …” feeling very much the forty-four-year-old she had become, perimenopausal, period-skipping. This mustbe it, she thought. The slow decline, rapidly accelerating. Wishing that someone else would step in and do the talking. How about Richard, for example? He would do a much better job. “Let me see … his last math test—” Her eyes falling upon her computer screen, stopping her in her tracks. The headline news: Dart Man struck again.
Mrs. Caulfield’s voice cutting into her thoughts. “Okay.” Sounding exasperated. “We must come up with a strategy to get through to him the importance of the Regents exams and getting his grades back to where they should be. He has a math and English Regents, too, I understand.” conclusionhabme
“I, uh …” Elisabeth, scanning the news story to see when and where Dart Man had struck. Incapable of
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