The Dad Next Door

“I’m in middle school!” he had said, his voice rising in panic. “Nobody’s mom meets the middle-school bus!” Her heart had ached. He had started calling her Mom the way her own children did. He was such a waif, with no real mother and his father away on business half the time. He was trying so hard to grow up and also trying to hold on to the childhood he had never really had during his parents’ turbulent marriage.

They had settled on her standing half a block down, so if the bigger boys started hassling him, she could start walking toward the corner. At the sight of an adult, even a short one, approaching, the tough kids would skulk off and leave him alone.

She stopped at the designated place. The bus was late today. She needn’t have hurried. The rain was light and intermittent, but the wind swept it this way and that up under the umbrella. Kate shivered. Raymond had worn only a sweater this morning, so he would probably be cold.

The great yellow lumbering vehicle appeared down at the far end of the street. Hurry. This was a hot-chocolate day for sure. Her own two children, Tommy, eight, and Joy, six, were already home and were alone in the house. She had left firm instructions not to turn on the burner under the pan of milk until she and Raymond got there. They were pretty good kids, and she was reasonably sure they would wait.

The bus stopped at the corner, its air brakes letting out a whooshing sound. The kids, in their hideous collections of many-layered clothing, began to get off the bus. Something was different today—they didn’t loiter at the stop. Some of the bigger boys got off and fairly ran from the area. She waited for Raymond to get off, straining to see. The driver was an older woman who took a real interest in her charges. Kate watched now as the driver got out of her seat and went toward the back of the bus. The bus was still about half-full of kids, who seemed unusually subdued.

Something was wrong.

Kate took a chance of embarrassing Raymond and hurried the half block to the bus. Surely Raymond hadn’t missed it. No. As she came up to the open bus door, she saw the driver coming back up the aisle, her arm around Raymond’s shoulders.

“See. They all went. And here’s your mom. It’s okay,” the driver was saying.

Kate’s heart was suddenly pounding. “Raymond! What happened!” She could hardly recognize him. His face was swollen and bruised, badly scraped on one side. Blood was smeared over his sweater and T-shirt. He was limping.

“Oh…Raymond.” She held out suddenly shaking hands as he got off the bus. He shrugged away from the driver’s protecting arm, looking sick and miserable.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” the driver said. “I told him he should see the school nurse, but he said he didn’t know where she was, and he couldn’t miss the bus. I wanted to go find her myself, but I’m not allowed to leave the bus when there are kids on it.”

“But what happened?” Kate gasped.

“Nuthin’. It’s okay. I wanna go home,” Raymond said.

“It’s those tough kids, ma’am,” the driver said. “They can be so mean. It’s because he’s skinny and he won’t fight back. If he’d just fight back a little, I tell him. It’s awful to tell peaceable kids to fight back, but how else can they cope?” Her kindly eyes filmed over with tears.

“I wanna go home,” Raymond muttered, twisting the strap of his backpack with a thin hand.

“Thank you,” Kate managed to say to the bus driver. “Come on,” she added to Raymond. “We’ll go and see to that swelling.” Both his eyes were almost shut.

“Here,” Kate said. “Put this on.” She draped the windbreaker around his shoulders. What will Ian say? A wave of belated fury rushed through her. “Who did this to you?” The bus roared away and a shudder went through the boy. He looked after the bus with sheer hatred showing through his slitted eyes.

“I’m not going back!” he said through his teeth.

“Who did this to you? Tell me what happened!”

“Okay, but at home. Let’s go home.” He was watching the bus disappear out of sight around the corner.

“All right.” She put her arm around him, trying to shelter him with the umbrella from the dashing rain, but he pulled away and started a half run back toward the house. He was limping. She hurried to follow him and they reached the door together, which Tommy held open. The wind and rain blew Tommy’s light brown hair. He was her own small image, whereas Joy had inherited Claude’s dark hair and bright blue eyes.

“What took you so long?” Tommy demanded. “We waited and waited…” He fell silent when he saw Raymond’s face.

“Keep quiet!” Raymond commanded. “Do you want the whole neighborhood to hear?” He darted into the house and Kate followed, pausing only to partly close her umbrella and shake out excess water onto the porch. Inside, she dropped it into the umbrella stand.

“Settle down, you two. Raymond will tell us about it when he’s ready to. Go in the kitchen and wait. We’ll make the cocoa after I see to Raymond. Raymond, you come with me into the bathroom. I’ve got to look at that scrape.”

“I’m okay,” Raymond muttered, but followed her into the bathroom, as did the other two children, ignoring her command to wait in the kitchen.

“No, you’re not okay. Now, I’ve got to get you fixed up. I mean it.” The “I mean it” was the no-nonsense code phrase that usually got results.

Raymond submitted, somewhat sullenly, while the other children watched. The bathroom was crowded, but Kate managed to wash the caked blood from Raymond’s face and observe the extent of the damage. She did the best she could with water and disinfectant. In a few hours, when the bruising surfaced, he was going to be a sight. She wished that Ian wasn’t coming back to Seattle tonight. When she had done the best she could, they went into the kitchen.

“Raymond, I need to know what happened. Your dad is coming in tonight. What am I going to tell him?” She kept her voice steady with an effort because she wanted very badly to cry. He looked so pathetic, trying to pretend it didn’t matter. Since before Claude’s death, when her life had collapsed, and through her long journey with her grief to this present point of acceptance, if not content, she had become very good at not crying in front of the children.

Tommy and Joy were unusually silent as they stared at Raymond’s battered face. Raymond, twelve, and in middle school, was their hero. They were both deeply shocked.

“Okay,” Raymond said through swollen lips. “So I got beat up. It’s no big deal.”

Kate turned from the stove. “It is a big deal, Raymond. It should never have happened. Tell me how it did.”

“Well,” he said reluctantly, “there’s this bunch of big kids, see. They’re really big guys.” He paused, seeming tired, and pushed one grubby hand through his fair hair. “Well, what happened is they want to get in this gang. In that school, if you’re a guy and you’re not in a gang, you’re nobody. So there’s this test, this initiation.”

“Initiation? What kind of initiation?” Kate felt a sudden chill. These were children they were talking about. Kids, just about to enter their teens, like Raymond.

The boy sighed. “Is the milk hot yet? I’ll never get warm again.”

“Raymond, what initiation?”

“Well, it was three guys.” It seemed the boy was pushing the words out, one at a time. “These three guys can get in this gang if they can prove they’re tough. Really tough. If they can deliver. If they can follow orders. So they had to beat up somebody. Really bad. To prove it, you know.”

“Three of them had to beat you up to prove they were tough!” Kate sat down suddenly in a chair. She was physically sick. They could have killed him.

“Now, what’s going to happen is this,” Raymond added. “I’m not—repeat not—goin’ back to that school! Ever!”

Tommy broke the silence that followed. “Ray, when I get to middle school I’ll help you.”

“But Tommy, I’m not going back. Ever.”

Joy spoke softly. “Mommy, the milk is moving.” And Kate returned her gaze to the milk pan, watching the surface of the milk in its preboiling state. Raymond cannot go back to that school, she thought Nor did she want Tommy and Joy continuing in public school after the primary grades. Something was very wrong. She’d have to face it. This was not the way her children were going to grow up. They must not be cheated out of their childhood.

Kate lunged forward to pull the pan of suddenly-boiling milk from the burner, and poured the hot milk into the big metal pitcher over the sweetened chocolate.

“Well, you certainly don’t need to go back to school tomorrow anyway,” she said to Raymond. “We’ll talk to your dad about it tonight.” Kate poured chocolate into a mug and handed it to him. “Don’t drink that yet It’s too hot.” She poured two more mugfuls for her children.

“I wish he wasn’t coming back tonight. I’d like to heal up a little first,” Raymond muttered.

“Oh, Raymond, I’m so sorry.” She poured another mug for herself. She shouldn’t have. She was getting too rounded again and she had made a resolve not to eat between meals anymore. But she needed this.

“Your father’s going to be upset. He’ll think I’m not taking care of you.”

“Not your fault,” Raymond said quickly. “You can’t help what those goons at school do. Dad will just have to understand it. See, Dad’s always been first string. In everything. All his life he’s total success. So he freaks out when I can’t cope, which mostly I can’t. But he’s gotta face it. I’m an inferior kid. He can take it or leave it.”

“You’re not an inferior kid. You’re a great kid. I wouldn’t want you to be any different than you are. Your father wouldn’t, either!”

“Don’t sweat it, Mom. It’ll be okay.”

Kate wondered again how Ian’s former wife, Marsha, could have simply walked out on this boy. He was struggling so hard for some sort of family. Thank heavens Ian was paying Marsha so much alimony that he couldn’t afford to send Raymond to boarding school. That would have stifled the boy completely.