I nodded.
“That’s not to say she isn’t loved. Or wanted.”
“No, I know.”
He smiled, his features creasing into a tender expression. “You could say Leslie’s been one of life’s unexpected pleasures.”
Silence came, and this time it stayed. Neither of us spoke. I glanced at my watch. Mr. Considyne, appearing comfortably draped over the small chair, gave no indication of preparing to leave. I was wishing he would. If he went now, I’d have an excuse to say nothing more. But he just sat, unperturbed by the silence.
My stomach knotted. The tightness started around my navel and worked its way upward, tensing muscles all along my trunk. I thought absurdly of the image of being squeezed by a python.
“I’m finding it sort of hard to say what I’m going to have to say next,” I murmured.
He looked over. “What’s that?”
The python was up to my neck. “It’s regarding your wife.”
“You mean the fact that my wife’s an alcoholic?” he asked, his voice as casual as it had been all along. He remained in his relaxed pose, but his eyes had left my face and gone to gaze on the steel shelving and the posters I’d stuck up on them in an effort to disguise their presence. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Yes,” I said softly.
“It’s no secret, love. Wish that it were, but it’s not, least of all to my wife and me.”
“Has anyone encouraged her to join AA or something like that? Has anyone talked to her seriously about her problem?”
A derisive smile came to his face. He laughed slightly. “You obviously don’t know my wife.”
“No, I don’t. That may be one of my problems.”
Still the sneer. He was looking back at me now, and I could feel the mood changing almost imperceptibly. The pleasant camaraderie we’d shared was slipping away.
“There are a lot of good programs around these days. I’m sure if she’s not interested in AA, there’s still something suitable available. There are plenty of alternatives. I’d be quite glad to find the information for you.”
“Thank you,” he said, and there was a patronizing tone to his voice. “It’s sweet of you to be concerned, but I doubt Ladbrooke would be interested. She’s not a joiner. She’s really not into that kind of thing at all.”
He was still looking over at me. His eyes were very watery, giving him a look of permanent tearfulness, but the expression in them had hardened and they had become veiled in much the way I’d seen Shemona’s do. He turned away finally, scratched his head, then shrugged wearily.
“Look,” he said, his tone gentler, “it is sweet of you to be concerned. I’m sure you mean well. But we’re used to it. The way I see it, you’ve just got to accept certain things about people. I wish Ladbrooke didn’t drink. I wish, if she did, she wouldn’t feel obliged to make such a public ass out of herself in the process. I wish she could just pull herself together, once and for all. But it’s like with Leslie. You’ve got to accept people for what they are, not what you wish they’d be.”
“This is perhaps a little more acceptance than is good for either one of them. I’m scared to death every time your wife comes to pick Leslie up. I’m terrified that sooner or later someone is going to get killed. I know I’m going to upset your wife something terrible if I interfere, but one of these days I’m going to have to. I’d feel entirely responsible if anything happened to Leslie as a result of my letting her go with her mother.”
“Don’t worry about Ladbrooke’s driving, if that’s what you mean. It’s only two-and-a-half miles, and I’ve gotten her a good, safe car. She’s never had an accident. I doubt she ever will. She’s a very reliable driver.”
I didn’t know what further to say.
Tom Considyne reached across the table for his coat. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “In a way it’d probably be better if she did have an accident. It’s going to take something like that to wake her up.”
“Or kill her.”
He shrugged. “She’s doing that to herself anyway.”
On Monday morning Mrs. Lonrho came in, carrying Shemona. Geraldine was home with the stomach flu. Shemona had been sick over the weekend and was now recovered, but she wasn’t feeling very enthusiastic about the idea of coming to school by herself. I shut the door before Mrs. Lonrho set Shemona down. From the expression on her face, Shemona was considerably less than enthusiastic.
I, on the other hand, was tickled pink. Here was just the opportunity I needed. After Mrs. Lonrho left, I took Shemona over to the table and opened her folder. She sat silently beside me while I reviewed her morning’s work.
“Where’s that other girl gone?” Dirkie inquired when he arrived. I had never heard him ever refer to anyone by name. We were all simply girls, boys, ladies and men to Dirkie.
“She’s home sick today and won’t be here.”
“It’s just this girl then,” he said and grinned. “This girl with the long yellow hair.” He leaned way over the table toward Shemona and her folder. Shemona shot a hand out and swiped at him in an irritated way. Dirkie hooted.
“You got a girl’s pisser,” he said.
Shemona pursed her lips to spit.
“Hey, both of you,” I said. “None of that.”
Mariana leaned forward. “Shemona doesn’t like that boy, Miss,” she said, in a perfect imitation of Geraldine.
Once I had Dirkie and Mariana settled with their work and Leslie listening to a cassette, I took Shemona around the corner of the shelves into the area by the chalkboard. It was gloomy there. The steel shelving blocked off the light from the windows and the overhead fluorescents. Taking out a stick of colored chalk from its box, I handed it to Shemona.
“Make me a seven,” I said.
She did.
“Good job. Now, draw a set of seven squares.”
She drew carefully, making each square precisely and coloring it in. As I had hoped, the colored chalk appealed to her immensely.
We went on like this for several minutes, making numbers and corresponding sets of objects. I drew some too, and had her make lines to connect the sets with their numbers. Shemona was good at numbers. I wanted to relax her, to involve her in the pleasure of this new medium, to please her with her own expertise. It was a trick I’d often used with other elective mutes that had always been very effective, because once involved and relaxed, the child took readily to my increasing the speed of the activity, of making a racing game of it. I then took over more and more of the game, so that I did most of the writing and most of the answers. I verbalized what I wrote. I speeded the pace up even more. And if I did things right, the excitement became enough that when I eventually asked a question and didn’t answer, the child would. It was a simple trick that had worked so often for me with elective mutes that I’d videotaped it and used it in presentations of my research. One colleague, intrigued by the results shown on the tape, maintained it was a kind of hypnosis. I’d never thought of it that way. To me it was simply mental sleight of hand.
It took effort to get Shemona going. She was more interested in drawing with the chalk and wanted to make her drawings carefully. She would erase with her finger and try again in an effort to make her triangles exactly straight or her circles exactly