Mourning Becomes Cassandra (8 page)

We were all inspired by now and sitting forward in our seats; even I felt like I might be able to manage, since I only had to be dedicated, rather than impressive.

Mark Henneman answered a few questions that arose and wound up by giving each of us an application to fill out and return. Once they’d checked references they would work on matching us up, schedule the monthly trainings, and invite us to the kick-off group activity.

We briefly went around the circle introducing ourselves—name, occupation, how we got interested in becoming a mentor. I stumbled some on the “occupation” part and said “freelance writer.” Hopefully the School would recognize you could hardly beat freelance writers for dedication, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to confess I was an unemployed widow doing housework for reduced rent. As for how I became interested in being a mentor, I could only say, “When the student Ellie gave her testimony in church, I felt very strongly that this was something I was supposed to do.” Never mind that I did my best to ignore that strong feeling until circumstances cornered me today.

The woman I had chatted with was named Louella Murphy, and she was altogether more honest and brave than I was. “I’m retired, of course, but I used to be a nurse. Recently I lost my husband Frank after fifty-one years of marriage, and I want to see what God has for this new stage of my life. Frank and I used to go on medical mission trips to Central America, but that gets harder with age. I figure I can still get around and talk and love and pray, so here I am.” What did I tell you? The woman made me look pathetic.

When we got around the circle, the young man introduced himself as “James Kittredge, project manager at a video game company,” and I only managed to keep my mouth from popping open in surprise. Could this be Chaff James? The cute new guy who had all the sharks circling, as Joanie would say? Wait till she heard this! James, too, seemed more excited than intimidated by the mentoring thing; he had volunteered with Young Life all through college.

As everyone gathered their things to go, I saw James hanging back. Like Kyle, he unceremoniously relieved me of my pile of books and checked out the titles. “I definitely need to meet this kid. He knows his stuff.”

“His name is Kyle,” I volunteered.

“Kyle,” he repeated. “I’ll remember that. So what exactly are
you
doing with a pile of expert
Star Wars
books? Some of your freelance writing?”

I suppressed a squirm. My project sounded dumber each time I had to explain it. “I’ve mostly done grant writing and wanted to try some fiction, so I’m trying a movie novelization. You know, those dumb books they sell with the actors’ photos on the cover. This way I thought I could compare my novelization to an existing one and see if I’m any good at it. Kind of like when you try to break into screenwriting, and they make you start with writing episodes for existing shows. Kyle actually promised to read it and tell me if it was crap.”

James grinned. “I like this kid! The world doesn’t need any more crap. If Kyle thinks it’s any good, you should let me take a look. We’re always looking for writers to do the game narrative and dialogue.”

My eyes widened. “Really truly?”

“Really truly—if it’s not crap. And on a related note, have you ever done any acting work?”

If I had heard Daniel ask someone that, I would think it was a creepy pick-up line. “Acting work? Not really, unless you count high school drama,” I confessed. “I was Hermia in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and Rebecca Gibbs in
Our Town
.”

James laughed. “We most certainly count high school drama. I don’t know if you play many video games, but they don’t exactly call for Oscar-winning performances. I know it’s a weird question, but we need actors to record game dialogue, and you have a nice voice, kind of low and sweet.”

That absolutely floored me. After a moment I managed to joke, “So I wouldn’t be Chewbacca, then?”

We were outside by now, standing by a motorcycle. When James handed me my books back and unhooked the helmet, I realized this bike didn’t belong to any student. My husband Troy had been a bike fanatic for as long as I’d known him, only giving up riding after Min was born, and it took me only half a beat to recognize that James rode a pretty sweet Ducati. “Is that a Monster City?” I breathed.

It was his turn to stare. “You a Ducati fan too, or just doing some freelance writing about them?”

I shook my head. “No. My husband had an M750, a couple years ago, and I—I remember him reading about these.” I hoped I wasn’t blushing when I mentioned Troy. It was one of the awkwardnesses of widowhood. Should I be saying “my late husband”? It sounded too ominous and opened up a conversational can of worms for which I didn’t have the time or energy.

“Another guy I’m going to have to meet,” said James, swinging his leg over the bike. Oops, probably should have mentioned it, then. Well, presumably they’d meet in heaven, and it was too weird to clarify now. He held out a hand to me. “It was great meeting you, Cass. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you at that first group activity.”

We shook hands—his grip was more assertive than Kyle’s limp fish—and he was off, leaving me to walk home bemused. What did Phyl mean by calling him too tame? I would have thought working in video games and tooling around town on a Ducati Monster would have gained some traction with her. I picked up the pace, suddenly eager to run my day past Joanie.

“Chaff James? It was Chaff James?” Joanie’s voice rose with excitement. “And he liked your voice? He must think you are so cool, knowing about
Star Wars
and motorcycles! Didn’t I tell you he was cute? And taller than you, am I right?”

“For the last time, Joanie, I’m not thinking of meeting anyone right now. I still email my mother-in-law almost every day, for crying out loud!” She sighed exaggeratedly and went back to dusting the bookshelves. After a moment I couldn’t help adding, “Besides, he thinks I’m married.”

The duster paused. “Because of your ring, you mean? He probably didn’t even notice it.”

“Noooo…” Sheepishly I recounted my misleading comment about Troy. “And I’ll just have to leave it at that, not that it matters. If we get to know each other through this mentoring thing, it’ll just come up at some point.”

“Yeah, and he’ll feel like an idiot for saying he’d like to meet Troy and you not mentioning that, oh by the way, Troy is
dead
.”

“Oh, well,” I said helplessly. “It’s done already, so stop picking on me.” As it happened, Joanie would turn out to be right, but that was months in the future, and I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

The next week was my turn to clean the Lean-To. I’d never been inside Daniel’s place, and it was pretty spare. The kitchen was practically empty and untouched, since Daniel did all of his eating at the Palace—only a few wine glasses and coffee mugs in the sink which he hadn’t bothered to return. In the bathroom I found one meager hand towel and bar of soap, and in the laundry room there wasn’t even any detergent—I would have to bring it over from the Palace.

There was, however, a cozy living room with built-in bookshelves surrounding a fireplace. When Daniel was home, he spent his evenings in the Lean-To, even if Missy wasn’t over; I assumed he watched television or worked when he was alone, but there didn’t appear to be any television here, while his book collection was vast. People’s libraries are irresistible to me, so my dusting went pretty slowly. He seemed to be a fan of the classics, and I ran my finger fondly over leatherbound editions of my favorites, but there were other, more unusual offerings:
The Complete Works of Francis Bacon
, volumes of travel essays, polar exploration, history of science, presidential biographies, British editions of
Harry Potter
. Ancient and contemporary maps hung on the wall, but the only photograph I saw was one of him as an adolescent beside a little Joanie on a fishing boat, holding up an impressive salmon. They were more wiry but recognizable and already hinting at their future extraordinary good looks.

When I went upstairs to get the laundry, I was relieved to find that Daniel was as much of a neat-freak as Phyl. His closet, like hers, looked like it had just been organized by a professional, and all the laundry was in a hamper, rather than on any available surface, floor to ceiling, like Joanie’s. Even though we each did our own personal laundry, it was challenging even to dust Joanie’s room, as everything lay buried beneath a thick layer of clothing and clutter. I stripped the bed, trying very hard not to think about the hard usage the sheets had been put to, and had just started the load when my cell phone rang.

It was Mark Henneman. I had only turned in my mentor application the day before, so maybe my recent history set off auto-rejection flags.

“Is this Cassandra Ewan?” he boomed. “This is Mark Henneman of Camden School.”

“Hello, Mark. Yes. Please, call me Cass.”

“Cass, it was great to meet you last week. Your application looks perfect, and your references checked out, and I would love to hook you up with one of our students.”

I felt a butterfly in my stomach. They must be more desperate for volunteers than I thought. “You already talked to my references? I mean, that’s great news.”

He hesitated. “I talked this morning to Margaret Russ, and that was good enough for me.”

Margaret Russ was the Congregational Care pastor at church who had led my Grief Recovery class last winter. I had listed her unwillingly—what could she say besides, “She was younger than most in the class but equally grief-stricken and angry at God”?—but in such a big church she was the pastor who knew me best. I guess if Camden School still wanted me after talking to Margaret, who was I to say no? I cleared my throat. “I can’t wait to meet her—my student, I mean.”

“You’re going to love her!” declared Mark. “Her name is Nadina Stern, and she’s a sophomore. She just joined the school this year. All the kids have heard now about the mentor program, but we haven’t told them more than that because we don’t know how many mentors we’ll have. But you can give her a call and explain who you are, and she’ll understand. Do you have a pen and paper?”

I scrambled through Daniel’s empty kitchen drawers until I found a stubby pencil and an old receipt. “Shoot.”

He rattled off her cell number and then told me the first optional group activity for mentors and their students would take place the Saturday after this one: a sailing trip on Lake Washington followed by a barbecue. “I’ll send you that information in an email, but we’re encouraging our mentors to hang out with their student before that.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “At least, I’ll call Nadina and try to set up some times to hang out and get to know each other.”

“That’s the spirit! Give me a call or shoot me a message if you try to contact her and can’t get a hold of her. She’s got a kind of fluid living situation at this point, but she’s making it to class. And remember, you don’t need to solve any of her problems, just love her. Call us if you feel something’s over your head.”

“Okay,” I said weakly. He hung up, and I sagged against the kitchen counter. What did “fluid living situation” mean? Why exactly had I thought I was qualified to do this? I remembered Kyle complaining that all the other students were druggies. Were those the problems Mark had referred to? Oh, well, too late now. But at least I could procrastinate until I was finished with the Lean-To.

On auto-pilot I put on fresh bedding and changed the towels and gave the shower stall a good scrubbing. In a hall closet I found a nicer vacuum than we had at the Palace, but after I finished the carpets, I couldn’t find a broom anywhere. Guess Daniel’s condo hadn’t had any hardwood floors, but what had he used in the kitchen and bathrooms? I borrowed the Palace broom but made a note of everything we would need to buy for the Lean-To to make this easier in the future.

Finally there was nothing left to do, and I locked up and went back. I debated whether I should wait till after school to call Nadina, but I chickened out: voice mail would be easier to begin with. That way she could call me back when she felt like it.

To my dismay, Nadina picked up her cell phone. Glancing at my watch I saw it must be lunch. “Hello?” came her voice, high-pitched and slightly skeptical.

I cleared my throat. “Hello, Nadina. My name is Cass Ewan, and I’m calling because I signed up to be a mentor, and Mark Henneman paired us up. Have I caught you at a good time?”

“Oh, great. Well, I’d love to meet you and get to know you. Would you have time to get coffee after school one day this week? I could meet you at school, and we could walk to Tully’s.”

She must have covered her phone because I heard her voice, muffled, and some laughter. She came back on. “Yeah, okay. You wanna do today? I’m working tomorrow and Thursday, and Friday my boyfriend and I are busy.”

Butterflies. “Sure, Nadina. Today would be great. What time do you get out?”

Crap! That was in two hours. Scrambling to my mirror, I made a hasty assessment: hair in a sloppy ponytail, smudges of dust on my face, World Vision t-shirt I’d thrown on for cleaning duty, frayed jeans. One of the consequences of being a young mom was that I hadn’t bought any new clothes since before I got pregnant with Min; the most I could hope for from my existing wardrobe was vintage-three-years-ago cute.

It occurred to me that Phyl was roughly my size—a tad taller—and much better dressed, but I didn’t know how she would feel about me rifling through her closet to borrow something. With Joanie I would have raided and pillaged without hesitation, as I’m sure she would do in my situation, but we didn’t wear the same size. In the end I kept my faded jeans but managed to locate a more form-fitting top in a shade of brown, Troy had remarked, that exactly matched my eyes.