Circumstances 44

I saw Mr. Johnson in the hallways a couple of times later that day.  Each time, he was down the hall, but looking right at me, glaring.  There was something about the man.  As he stood there, no one was right next to him.  It was as though he had a protective shield around him, a force field of some kind. 

At least he just watched me.  He made no effort to walk in my direction, and he didn’t wave at me to come to him.  If he had, I’d have pretended not to see him.  But, he didn’t.

At ‘home’ that evening, Mr. Jenks told me he had some news, and he’d tell me about it after dinner.

“Uh, can’t you tell me now?  I’ve been worrying and, uh, well, I really don’t want to wait.”

He didn’t laugh, or tease me.  He simply said, “Sure.  Come into my den.”

I loved his den.  It had shelves of books covering an entire wall, a large desk with a computer on it along with an old-fashioned blotter set and pens in a wooden stand and a floor lamp beside it, too, one with moveable spotlights that could be moved to focus on whatever paper was on the desk.  There was recessed lighting along the walls and a large window behind the desk overlooking the landscaped back yard.

An oriental rug covered much of the hardwood floor, and the room was large enough that, besides the desk, it had a couch and two chairs set up in a conversational grouping.  I sat on the couch, and after glancing at one of the chairs, he chose to sit down next to me on the couch.

“Keith, I’m afraid you’re not going to like hearing some of what I have to tell you, but you’re old enough to hear it, and you both deserve and need to know.”

I gulped.  In the back of my mind, I’d known there was no good reason my mother would have neglected to call me, or tell me she was selling our house.  So, I had anticipated hearing bad news.  I wasn’t going to be disappointed.

He half turned toward me on the couch so he could see me while he was talking, and I did the same toward him.  He reached to put his hand on my thigh, patted it, then said, “I spoke to one of our in-house lawyers.  He drove down to San Diego.  He knows people.  Good lawyers know other lawyers, and he’s worked with some of the men in the office where your mother is working.  He had an in with them, and because of that, was able to interview her.

“She didn’t want to talk about anything personal, and told her employers that, but they insisted.  I guess they were more concerned with not having a problem with our lawyer than they were with keeping her happy.  Anyway, they told her to talk to him, and she did.”

His hand was still on my thigh, and he squeezed it lightly now before withdrawing it.  I figured that meant we were coming to the hard part.

“He told me the meeting with her was unpleasant.  She was very intense, and that resulted in there being a lot of tension in the room.  He talked to her about her current job, about the one she’d done here, about selling the house, and about you.

“The answers he got were, well... let me just tell you what he told me.  He found out before talking to her that she’s going to be given notice.  She’s expected to finish up the case she’s working on now in about two more weeks, and then they’re letting her go.  The reason for that is they don’t think she’s mentally stable.  They say they suspected something was wrong when she started there, and she’s gotten worse.  That’s not the reason they’re giving her for the termination, but that’s really why she’s losing her job. 

“She must know things aren’t working out there because they’ve learned she has put in some applications for work at firms back here.  They don’t think she’s got any responses from them.  I guess she acquired a reputation as being difficult to work with from all the legal firms in this part of the state. 

“When my man talked to her she admitted that she’s looking for another job, and as of right now, until she’s found one somewhere and is back on her feet, she’s planning to go back to where her parents live stay with them.”

He stopped, and my stomach, which had been tight since I’d walked into the den with him, started hurting. 

“Keith,” Mr. Jenks continued, his voice softening with compassion, “what she’s going to do is take you with her.  She said there isn’t really room for you at her parents’, but she’s going and you’re going too.  She plans to put you on the living room couch.  She said maybe you can get a job and help pay the expenses.  When she was asked if you didn’t need to go to school, she said maybe she’d home school you and then you could work instead and no one would know the difference.  My investigator said when she spoke about all that, her thoughts seemed sort of disjointed, like she hadn’t really given any of it much consideration.  He said she acted as though that part of it wasn’t very important.

“He asked her why she hadn’t called you to tell you about any of this, so you’d be prepared for it, and she said it was her business and no one else’s, that you were her responsibility and no one else’s, and that you’d do what she told you to.  He asked her if she had a cell phone, and for the number so you could call her.  She said she didn’t want to talk to you, she’d come get you when she was leaving for Dubuque, and that he wasn’t to tell you in advance because you always argued and whined about everything and she didn’t want to deal that before she had to. 

“He asked if she’d meet with you if you came down for a visit, that someone could drive you down, and she said no, she was too busy.  She said she wasn’t sure when she’d be coming for you, but said she had the idea, just from the attitude her bosses seemed to have toward her lately, that she might not be at that job for very much longer, and she wasn’t going to stay for the full two weeks if she was given notice.  She said she’d leave when she felt like it, if they fired her.”

I looked at him, and I felt tears in my eyes.  I shook my head and refused to let them fall.  I stood up, then sat back down.  My stomach was killing me.  He put his arm around my shoulders, then pulled me to him, and I realized I couldn’t hold the tears back any more.  They came and came and soaked his shirt and he simply held me.  My world was falling apart, and all I seemed able to do was cry.

When I finally stopped, he said in a soft and tender voice, “Keith, listen to me.  You’re living here now.  When someone is living under my roof, nothing bad happens to him.  Don’t lose faith.  You’re still here, and if you don’t want to go, I’m not letting her take you away that easily.  Trust me.”

I wiped my eyes, fighting for control.  “But you can’t do anything, can you?  I’m 14.  Don’t I belong to her, legally?”

“Don’t give up, Keith.  Oh, and I have something else to tell you.  I don’t want you to make too much of it, but you should know.  This afternoon, I put $75,000 in a trust fund for you.  I want you to know you’re going to be able to go to college, no matter what, so you won’t be worrying about that.  Think about that, rather than where you’ll be living for the next couple of years.  The money is there, and it’s certain.  Your living arrangements until then are still something we need to work on.”