Donorboy (5 page)

Ugh. I still haven't cried. Jen says she stopped crying too, that she used to cry every time she heard her mom and dad fighting, or anyway every time she heard yelling and her mom slapping the shit out of her dad, that she had this little room in her house she used to go to to cry and rock back and forth holding her knees, but now she just sits in her room and watches that plastic surgery show on cable and it's just like the normal background noise. It's like people who live next to the airport who don't hear the planes taking off anymore. Anyway, that's what Jen says but I don't know if she actually knows anybody in East Boston or if she's just kind of using that as an example. Also she is smoking in the bathroom at lunch and having therapeutic setting meetings, so maybe she should cry and not watch that show, even though it is actually kind of good. I've watched it a couple times before Sean gets home from work while I am not doing my geometry homework.

I wish I could get some kind of grief-oplasty and be like that kid who got her ears pinned back, all “the kids called me Dumbo and now I am happy and have an ugly prom date because I got my ears pinned back.” Could I be like “I used to smoke in the bathroom and hang out with this girl who kind of scared me but I also liked and also I used to fail everything, but then I got my grief redacted and now I am going to the prom with some mullet-headed loser who will try to cop a feel in the limo!”

I want to be with Jen all the time. But I don't really feel like I want to kiss her. I don't know what that means. Maybe Lisa the adolescent grief queen can tell me if there's some kind of lesbo checklist or something. I guess I could ask Aunt Karen. I don't know. I love her and everything but I think she still thinks I'm this little kid and I don't know how I would ask her how she knew, when she knew or what. I think I might have been able to ask Mom and she would have been cool about it, but then we get back into the icky thing about moms having sex or even thinking about sex and so maybe I wouldn't have even asked.

I am tired, tired of being me all the time.

CHARLESBOROUGH HIGH SCHOOL 10/07/04.

INFORMAL MEETING.

Participants: Rosalind Butterfield, Sean Cassidy, Richard Mould

SEAN CASSIDY:
Is it okay with you if I record this? It's one of those lawyer things.

RICHARD MOULD:
Sure. Is that some kind of digital thing?

SC:
Minidisc.

RM:
So you get, what, about eighty minutes on a disc?

SC:
Something like that. If my batteries hold out. (
Laughs.
) Once I had to take this deposition (
pause
) well, never mind.

RM:
So, before we begin, I just want to turn to Rosalind here and ask if you have anything to say before we begin.

ROSALIND BUTTERFIELD:
No.

RM:
So I have here, and Mr. Cassidy I've made copies for you, e-mails from all of Rosalind's teachers. (
Pause.
) You can see that it's much the same thing across the board. With the exception of English, which is a notable bright spot. All of your teachers, Rosalind, are very worried about you. (
Pause.
) Right now you are not on track to pass anything but English this quarter, though Mr. Stinson says if you pass the constitution test, it is still possible.

(
Pause.
)

SC:
So she could still pass history and English for first quarter.

RM:
Yes. Now, of course, failing for the first quarter is not necessarily destiny in terms of failure for the year. But I do need to tell you both … well, Mr. Cassidy, we consider ourselves to be a family here, and we're frankly very concerned about Rosalind's success. As I said, it's mathematically possible to fail the first quarter and pass the remaining three, but I have to be honest with you and say that I don't see it happen very often.

SC:
Well, in the cases where you do see it happen, what makes the difference?

RM:
Well, of course a variety of factors—

SC:
I am a little concerned about what I'm hearing here, because it sounds to me like you are writing off Rosalind's ninth-grade year here based on four weeks of grades. It just feels premature to me.

RM:
No no no, not by any means. But I would like to just have you keep an open mind about all of the possibilities here. We all hope that Rosalind will turn things around, but down the road, if she doesn't, it wouldn't hurt to consider the idea that a therapeutic setting might be more appropriate given the nature of the trauma—

SC:
Are you suggesting that you can't meet Rosalind's needs here?

RM:
Well, we are unclear right now about exactly what Rosalind's needs are, but it is clear she's suffered a terrible tragedy, and while we certainly will continue to do our best for her here, we may find down the road that she needs more of an intervention than we are equipped to provide.

SC:
Well, she is going to counseling.

RM:
Which is fantastic, but it seems to me that Rosalind may have some issues that she is working out that may supersede her academic—

RB:
Bingo!

RM:
I'm sorry?

(
Silence.
)

SC:
Rosalind, what are you doing there? Is that a buzzword bingo game?

(
Silence.
)

SC:
Now, when we do this at diversity training at work, you actually have to raise your hand and work the word
bingo
into your comment. I mean just to shout it out like that—

RM:
(
Clears throat.
) This is the kind of behavior that—

SC:
Yes? Have you had complaints about Rosalind's behavior?

RM:
Well, not as such, but her teachers—

SC:
Are very concerned about her, as you said. So am I, but I have to tell you that I find the content of this meeting frankly disturbing from both a personal and professional standpoint.

RM:
I'm sorry?

SC:
Well, Mr. Mould, Rosalind and I were under the impression that we were here to talk about solutions, to try to move forward, and you've opened with the suggestion that Rosalind find an alternative placement. It seems to me that should be the very last thing we consider.

RM:
Well, no, I am not suggesting that a therapeutic setting would necessarily be more appropriate, but I do think we should investigate all of our options down the road if it becomes clear that Rosalind is not succeeding here. I'm just trying to open the conversation so that if, down the road, we reach that point, we'll have a clear idea of what we're looking at.

SC:
Is this district willing to foot the bill for a therapeutic setting?

RM:
Well, most of our parents naturally choose private facilities that—

SC:
Yeah, yes, I'm sure that they do. And the district pays for these settings?

RM:
Well, on a case-by-case basis we review the—

SC:
Mr. Mould, I'm sorry, I wonder if I can just talk to Rosalind privately here for a moment?

RM:
Certainly.

(
Sounds of papers shuffling, door closing.
)

SC:
So, let me see what you've got: “consider ourselves a family,” “therapeutic setting,” “investigate our options,” “issues that supersede,” “down the road.” Well, you really shoulda put that one at least twice. You were briefed for this meeting, huh? I mean, you knew what was coming?

RB:
Yeah, I guess.

SC:
I wish you would have told me. If I knew this guy was this full of shit, I never would have wasted our time coming in here. (
Silence.
) Ros?

RB:
Don't call me that, okay? It sounds weird coming from you.

SC:
Fine. Rosalind? (
Silence.
) We're on the same side here. You know? (
Silence.
) Did they make you read
A Man for All Seasons
in English? (
Silence.
) You should read it. There's a whole thing in there about how silence implies consent. Thomas More tries to use it as a defense to stop Henry the Eighth from cutting his head off. Anyway, so if I say, “We're on the same side,” for example, and you say nothing, for example, we can take that to mean that you assent to the statement.

RB:
Whatever.

SC:
Do you want to stay here?

RB:
You mean now?

SC:
I mean do you want to keep going to school here? Because I think this guy is an idiot, and you should stay here just to spite him, but if you'd rather start over somewhere else, we can do that. I just want to help you get what you want here.

RB:
Yeah, you care a lot about what I want. Drop me off at Karen's then.

(
Silence.
)

SC:
Okayyyy … Well, I guess we're done here.

END OF RECORDING

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Counselor meeting

Good afternoon. I've just returned from a meeting with Rosalind's guidance counselor, which, apart from providing the food and shelter, was supposed to be my first official real dad act and ended horribly. The guidance counselor essentially wants me to put Ros in some kind of group home for troubled teens, and Ros doesn't want me to call her Ros and wants to live with Karen.

I really didn't know what to do, and it just went horribly. I started getting all lawyerly with the counselor, which didn't appear to make any progress, though I thought up a good line to use: “Do you understand that I sue schools for a living?” But I want to save that one for something special.

In any case, it's clear that Rosalind is having a hard time with her grief, and I appear to have hooked her up with a real dud of a therapist, at least to start with, and the school is just flummoxed. I suppose they have fifteen hundred kids there and just have nothing in place for the small percentage in crisis, but it really made me angry. The counselor made it clear that Charlesborough is not a school for kids with problems.

So, at the end of the day, the counselor is angry at me, I am angry at him, and Rosalind appears to be angry at both of us.

Then again, she pretty much appears to be angry at all times, but her playing the Karen card seems to indicate a spike in her anger level.

I am once again finding that I have no talent for this parenting business, which may be why the eligible bachelorettes have been less than inclined to stick around in the last few years. Do you think they have some sort of radar about that? Well, given the number of troglodytes who father children, I suppose the answer there has to be no.

Ugh. Please tell me that this is going to get better.

—Sean

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Counselor meeting

Hmm … so the counselor was a tool and the teen was sullen? Sounds like every parent meeting I've ever been to. Seriously, I go to like five or six of these a year, and if you didn't scream at anybody, you did good. I've seen parents look like they were about to hit their kids and also sat there for twenty minutes with the counselor and the kid and no parent while the kid looks at us like, “Well, failing stuff to get attention was evidently a bust.” But I have also seen people who appeared normal and loving hit a brick wall with their kids. Nobody knows what to do with teenagers, and most administrators are dicks. Give yourself a break.

I don't know what to tell you about the bachelorettes and why they haven't stuck around except what I've already told you a million times. I will say that whenever I am at the playground with just Max, there are many opportunities to mingle with the single moms if I wanted to, so maybe taking Rosalind in will pay some unexpected dividends, like you will meet some nice woman when you are both bailing out your kids or something.

That was supposed to be a joke.

Call me later.

—D

Dear My Favorite Grief Journal:

Hey I never noticed this but when I typed that the computer tried to make it say Dear Mom and Dad which would be a funny kind of letter for me to write.

Well, Lisa is much better than Denise, she will at least say stuff to me, I mean say not ask, so when I said I was sort of worried about the lesbian thing she said something I had to stop listening to because it bored the shit out of me but basically I think she said that's not something I have to make up my mind about right now or really even ever.

And when I told her that I can't cry she said that was normal and probably me trying to protect myself but that it will happen and it doesn't mean I don't love my moms or maybe I guess I should use the past tense there.

Today I was thinking about them a lot. I miss them a lot even though I can't cry about it. That was probably why I was a bitch to Sean even though he kind of stood up to Mould which I did appreciate because he is a dick. But I was like if they were still alive I would be getting A's and Mould would barely know my name and they'd come home from parent night all “your teachers say the most wonderful things about you” and all that stuff and I was sitting there in that meeting like I just slipped out of my own nice life and into somebody else's crappy one. That's not really Sean's fault, I don't think he made the turduckens, but it is his fault he took me instead of giving me to Karen which probably would have been the humane thing to do but then I probably would have had to change schools since she lives in Dedham and who the hell wants to live in Dedham.

But I did kind of change schools already because there is a whole school here that I never knew about but I actually walked into the caf to get some fries and saw Jen and her friends sitting at a table and they kind of motioned me over and I got all like I think I blushed or something but I went and I was really happy to go and to see how Sasha and Kristen and all of them looked at me like quickly looking and pretending not to look and then huddling close so they can talk about how I'm a druggy now, which I'm not even though I had lunch with Bitches With Problems. That is what Kate said anyway and she is an artist who shoplifts or that's what Jen told me. But when I sat down Kate was like welcome to the Bitches With Problems table and I was like, okay, I guess I fit both categories. Nobody asked me what my problem was. Maybe Jen told them already, but even still they didn't look like they wanted to talk about it and they didn't ask me anything about oh my god how am I doing and I liked that.