Showers in Season (18 page)

Tory didn’t know why she had chosen to do her grocery shopping on Saturday, when it was so crowded. She wished she had waited until Barry got home so she could have left the kids at home. The grocery store was like Toys-R-Us to them, for they could find the desires of their hearts—or stomachs—on every aisle, in every section, on every shelf.

At the moment, Spencer was begging for a pack of bean sprouts, which he’d never tasted in his life. He didn’t know what they were for, but he liked them because they looked like worms. He was willing to fight for them.

“Spencer, I want you to quit asking me for things. I told you, we just came here to get things we need. We don’t need bean sprouts.”

“But look at them, Mommy. Please, can’t I have them? I promise I won’t scare Britty with them.”

“Shut up, Spencer,” Brittany said from the bottom of the basket. “You’re gonna get her all mad before we even get to the candy aisle.”

“She’s got a point,” Tory said.

Sighing miserably, Spencer put the bean sprouts back. That was when Tory spotted the boy with Down’s Syndrome, bending over the produce and picking up the carrots, feeling the stalks, then moving to the cucumbers and the kiwi. He picked up each one there, ran his fingers over it, then grabbed a ball of lettuce and spread both hands around it.

His mother must have seen her staring. “Phillip? Come on, honey, let’s go.”

He didn’t turn around and come right away. Instead, he pushed his high-magnification glasses up on his nose and moved faster down the produce aisle, feeling things more quickly.

“How old is your son?” Tory asked the woman.

She looked surprised at Tory’s interest. “He’s fifteen.”

Tory’s eyes followed him. “What’s he doing? Stroking the vegetables?”

The mother grinned. “I can never come through the grocery store without him feeling every single one. We have a garden in the backyard, and he likes to help tend it. There’s something about the texture and shape of all the different things that interests him.”

A sweet smile fell across Tory’s lips, but at the same time, her eyes misted over.

“Excuse me,” the boy’s mother said. “Is something wrong?”

Tory shook her head. “Uh, no.” She looked from Spencer to Brittany to see if they were listening. They were both preoccupied with scanning the shelves for anything they might have missed. She turned back to the woman. “It’s just that, I’m carrying…” She didn’t want to say the word “baby” yet because she hadn’t told the children, but she patted the little paunch below her waist. “Down’s Syndrome,” she said.

The woman’s eyes filled with compassion. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Tory looked at the boy again, unable to say more.

The woman followed Tory’s gaze. “My little vegetable-feeler over there is about the best thing that ever happened to
our family,” she said. She reached into her purse and pulled out a piece of paper, jotted a phone number down. “Look, my name’s Marlene. If you ever need to talk to anyone about this, or if you have questions…please give me a call.”

Tory took the phone number gratefully. “Thank you. I appreciate that.” She watched the boy as he felt the zucchini and the squash. “Does he go to school or anything?”

“Oh, sure he does,” she said. “He goes part of the day to the public school and the rest of the day he goes to a school for kids with Down’s Syndrome. He absolutely loves it. You know, you really ought to stop by there sometime. It might put some of your fears to rest.”

“I’d like that,” she said. “Where is it?”

“Down on Brandon Street, behind the old post office. Listen, why don’t you call me this afternoon? There’s a lot I can tell you to make you feel better.”

“Thank you,” Tory said. “I will, as soon as I get my kids down for a nap.”

The woman patiently waited until the boy had gotten to the end of the produce aisle, then she took his hand and pulled him along beside her. He went willingly, babbling in words Tory couldn’t understand about the produce that he had just examined. She couldn’t wait to finish shopping so she could get home and talk to that mother.

That afternoon, when she’d gotten the kids down for their nap, Marlene gave her the name of the school Phillip attended, as well as the number to several other resources that Tory could call on for help and answers. With great trepidation, she waited for Monday morning, so that she could visit the school and see if there was any hope for her child.

Monday morning, all four of Brenda’s children popped up earlier than usual, excited about resuming their homeschooling routine. She made French toast and scrambled eggs, and they all laughed and chattered as the family ate breakfast together.

But when eight o’clock came, Mark wasn’t there. Cathy had warned Brenda that she had to get to the clinic at 7:30, so she wouldn’t be able to stay with Mark until he crossed the street. Brenda feared that Mark had gone back to bed after his mother left for work.

She sent Daniel over at 8:20, and he banged on the door until Mark finally answered it. He confirmed her suspicions when he showed up in his wrinkled T-shirt and gym shorts. She suspected that was what he’d slept in. He hadn’t brushed his hair or his teeth, and his eyes were barely open. He carried his sneakers in his hand.

Because she liked for her homeschool situation to be as structured as possible, she had divided up areas in the room they
used for class. She showed Mark where he would be seated with Daniel, since they shared the same curriculum.

Mark compliantly took his seat, then laid his head down on his desk. She got Joseph, Leah, and Rachel started on their assignments, then came back to Mark and Daniel.

Mark’s head was still down.

“He’s sound asleep, Mama,” Daniel whispered.

Brenda stayed calm. She had known Mark would test her today. This was no surprise. “Mark!” She shook him, and he sat up and squinted sleepily at her. “Mark, this is school! I expect you to sit up with your feet on the floor and listen to what I say.”

“You were talking to them,” he said.

“Some of what I say applies to all of you.” She pulled her chair up to their table and took in a deep breath. “Now, we just got off to a bad start, but I know that things are going to turn around.” She smiled and patted his hand. “I’m so excited about teaching you, Mark. Daniel needed somebody to challenge him and you’re so bright, I knew you’d be the perfect person.”

Mark rolled his eyes and propped his chin on his hand. “Give me a break. The only reason I’m here is because I was flunking out of school and my mom overreacted.”

She wasn’t used to being spoken to that way by a child, but she quickly rallied. “Mark, the way we do things here is that we do a lot of reading on our own. I’m familiar with all the material because I’m a little bit ahead of you. But then we discuss it and we do activities around it. And sometimes we take field trips that have something to do with what we’re all studying. We try to be flexible. We try to be spontaneous if we can, but there are a few things I expect from you in return.”

“Here it comes,” he said, looking at Daniel. Daniel began to snicker. Brenda shot her son a warning look.

“Mark, I expect you to show respect for me and for Mr. David when you see him. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together and that’s not very much to ask. I also expect you to listen and do your assignments. My goal is to make learning fun for you and to make you learn even more than you would
have if you were at school, so that at the end of the year when you take the test—”

“Test?” Mark cut in, horrified. “We have tests?”

“Of course we have tests,” she said. “I give tests all the time, don’t I, Daniel?”

“All the time,” Daniel said with a groan, mirroring Mark’s bored posture.

“That’s how I can tell your progress. I give grades just like every other teacher does, and I expect you to try as hard as you can.”

Mark looked down at the circle between his arms. “I don’t want to be here.”

She smiled, because she had no intentions of getting angry. Leaning forward, she got close to Mark’s face. “Mark, why do you think my kids are so excited about doing this?”

“Because they’re lazy and they don’t want to get up and go to school every day.”

She only stared at him for a moment, as several different emotions clashed like competitors through her mind. “No,” she said, keeping her voice level. “It’s actually because we have a lot of fun doing this. They like learning. Even Joseph is going to be studying, and he has a good excuse not to. He’s studied all through his recovery, because he loves it. It can be the same for you, too, Mark.”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong. I just had one bad report card. If I could go back to school, I know I could pull my grades up.”

Leah, Rachel, and Joseph stopped working and waited for her reaction. This was a test, she thought. And she could pass it. “You don’t have that option, Mark. You’re here. Now why don’t you try to learn something?”

Mark brooded, and finally, she got up and reached for the books she kept on the shelf. “Now, we’re starting with Bible study. That’s always our first subject of the day.” She knew he hadn’t brought a Bible, or anything else, so she got one of hers off of the shelf. She handed it to Mark. “We’ve been continuing to study the Bible even while they were in public school, and we’re up to the captivity in Babylon…”

Mark came to attention. “You gotta be kidding,” he said. “Does that mean I have to read all of this?”

“Not all at once,” she said. “But you’ll love this, Mark. You’ll just soak this up, like my kids do. You have the potential to learn a lot more than you’ve learned, Mark. And you’ll like it when you start doing word studies and cross-referencing. Daniel’s already been through the Bible once.”

“Can’t I just watch the movie? Don’t they have
The Ten Commandments
on video?”

Daniel snickered again, and she began to sense the possibility that Mark could have more influence on Daniel than Daniel had on him. The other children could adopt his bad habits as well. She made a decision to nip that in the bud.

“You know what? I thought it would be nice if you and Daniel shared a table, since you’ll be doing similar material, but now I see that it’s probably better if you work alone. So Mark, let’s get your books and move you over to this table.” She began to move his things over to the table where she usually sat to check the children’s work.

Mark just sat there. “Anyway, isn’t Bible study against the law?”

Yes, she thought. It was a test. “It is not against the law to teach the Bible,” Brenda said, making a Herculean effort to keep her voice calm. “I can teach anything I want to at home as long as I also teach you the basic skills. So there’s no point in contacting the ACLU just yet.” She walked him to his new station, and plastered that smile back on. “Now open your Bibles.”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong yet,” he argued. “Why do I have to read the Bible? It’s like you’re expecting me to mess up!”

The test was getting harder. Her smile fell off again. “What do you mean, you haven’t done anything wrong? This is not a punishment.”

“Sure it is,” he said. “My mother only makes us memorize Scripture when we’re in trouble.”

Brenda wilted. She would have to talk to Cathy about this. “Well, that’s not the case, not here. We do it every day. It’s part of
our curriculum. Today we’re going to be studying King Cyrus and how God used him to bring the Israelites back from Babylon.”

“King who?” he asked, looking thoroughly frustrated.

She almost felt sorry for him. “Just read the passage I wrote on the board.”

“Board?” he asked. “What board?”

“The dry erase board on the door, Mark.” She tried not to let him get to her, and went to the front of the room. “Kids, I want you to read the passage that I wrote on the board. Then look in your concordances and find other places where Cyrus was mentioned. And I’ll give you a hint what we’re looking for. There’s a very important prophecy that was given hundreds of years before King Cyrus was around, that told in advance that God was going to use him in this way.”

Her kids got to work quickly, anxious to be the first to find the prophecy, but Mark stared at her as if she had asked him to detonate a nuclear bomb. “Mark, do you know how to use a concordance?”

“I don’t even know what that is!”

She pulled out the concordance at his table. “Here it is. You can look up any word, and it will tell you where in the Bible that word appears. Let’s look up Cyrus. The first one is in Second Chronicles.”

He looked as if he was in genuine pain. “Where is Second Chronicles?”

As irritation rose inside her, she realized that she was taking the wrong approach. Before she could expect stellar work from him, she was going to have to help him catch up.

She thought that over for a moment and looked around at her children. How could she keep them progressing and still help Mark? If she went back to the beginning, to the books of the Bible and the creation itself, it wouldn’t hurt her children. They could always use review. It might teach them responsibility to have them help Mark memorize the books. She could always assign Daniel more advanced word studies, and Leah and Rachel could do a study on all the other biblical references about
the creation. Even Joseph could dig a little deeper than he had before. But Mark
had
to start at the beginning.

“You know, let’s just forget about Cyrus,” she said to the kids. “Turn to Genesis 1. We’re going to start back over with the creation.”

“But we’ve already done that,” Joseph protested gently.

“It never hurts to start over,” she said in a bright voice. “It’d be nice to be able to dig a little deeper.”

“You’re only doing this for me, aren’t you?” Mark asked. Her children turned to look at him.

“Of course not. I want all of the kids to know the Bible. I just thought it’d be nice if we could start over. Since we last studied Genesis, I’ve learned some new things.”

“You think I don’t know anything about the Bible,” Mark said. “You think I’m some kind of heathen, don’t you?”

“Of course I don’t,” she said. “But your mother asked me to teach you for a reason, and I think the number-one thing we should learn is the Bible. To me, that’s first in importance. In the morning we study the Old Testament, then we do history and English and then math and science. And then in the afternoon we do New Testament.”

“So when do we have electives?” he asked.

“Oh, we work art and music in throughout the day,” she said, “but we concentrate on academics.”

He looked as if he was going to cry. “This is a nightmare!”

“Mark, it’s not a nightmare. It’s going to be fine. You’ll see. My kids love learning this way.”

“But you’re starting completely over with the Bible just because of me, and everybody already knows this stuff. Even Joseph. It’s humiliating.”

“So, they’ll help you, they’ll challenge you.”

“I don’t like to be challenged,” he said. “That’s just a nice word for slave driving.”

She was getting her first headache in weeks. “Mark, open the Bible to Genesis 1.”

She knew he hadn’t brought a pencil with him, so she dug through a box for one, then found him a notebook. She hoped tomorrow he would come more prepared, but she blamed herself that he hadn’t. Cathy had been so busy with the clothing drive and her work at the clinic that she knew school supplies hadn’t really crossed Cathy’s mind. Besides that, she had probably assumed he would bring his backpack. She’d have to set Cathy straight on that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, she was determined to teach Mark
something
before she sent him home for the day.