Showers in Season (21 page)

When they got home that afternoon, Brenda went around the house to the workshop. Through the window, she saw Mark working hard to cut out a shelf. David stood over him, encouraging and supervising, and Mark seemed to be listening. He looked so industrious with his goggles and gloves on that she almost hated to disturb him.

She opened the door, and Mark looked up. Suddenly, that look of concentration on his face changed to an angry scowl. “So how are you two doing back here?” she asked.

David gave her a wink. “Mark’s been a real big help today.”

Mark pulled off his gloves and slammed them down. “Can I go home now, or do you want me to dig a ditch or something?”

Brenda started to remember the hostility she’d felt earlier. She’d had peace today without Mark, but her problem obviously was not solved.

“You go ahead home,” she said. “I just saw your mom drive up. Steve’s with her. He had a truckload of clothes they’re sorting through in the garage. Maybe you can help them.”

“After working all day in here? I’m not helping nobody do nothing.”

Brenda decided to let Cathy handle that. Mark pushed out past her, and she turned back to David.

“That kid needs a lot of help,” he said as he went back to what he was doing.

Across the street, Cathy grabbed an armload of clothes from Steve’s truck and went to drop them on the table she had set up in her garage. She saw Mark coming with a grim look on his face, and hopeful that he’d have a better attitude than yesterday, she abandoned the clothes and met him halfway. “So how was your second day of homeschooling?” she asked, her voice dripping with enthusiasm.

“Mom, you should never pay her,” Mark snapped. “She’s just using me, that’s all. She’s not trying to teach me anything. This is all just a trick.”

Cathy shot Steve a look. He was grinning and trying to look busy with the clothes. “So what did she do? Make you work?”

“They went on a field trip, Mom. She made me stay and work with Mr. David all day in his stupid workshop.”

Cathy’s own smile faded. “Mark, what did you do to get punished?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I just didn’t understand my work. She goes around and gives us assignments without teaching us anything, and then she disappears so you can’t ask questions. We’re supposed to be mind readers, I guess. I waited till she got back so I could ask her, and the next thing I know, she’s telling me I didn’t get to go on the field trip ‘cause I didn’t get my work done.”

Cathy was still skeptical. “Mark, I know Brenda. She wouldn’t punish you over a misunderstanding. Why is it that her kids could figure out the assignment, but you couldn’t?”

“Because she explained it better to them. She treats me like the wicked stepchild. Like I’m just getting on her nerves if I ask her one thing. I can’t help it if her kids are smarter than me!”

That did it. Until now, Cathy had reserved her judgment until she could talk to Brenda, but she hated it when Mark thought he was dumb. His older brother and sister had told him that for twelve years. He’d embraced that lie in school. She didn’t want Brenda perpetuating it. “They are
not
smarter than you. They just listen better.”

“I’m telling you, Mom, she just didn’t want me with hen She took off with her own kids and left me here.”

Cathy glanced across the street. Brenda wasn’t out. “So where did they go?” she asked weakly.

“They went to the park at Lake Brianne, spent all day there. I had to stay in that stupid workshop breathing sawdust and varnish and listening to a buzz saw all day long.”

Cathy was getting aggravated. “Mark, there’s got to be more to this.”

“There’s not, Mom! It’s not the last time she’s gonna do it. She’s gonna take advantage of me every chance she gets. She hates me. She’s only doing this so she won’t have to work a real job. Mom, she’s nothing like you think.”

Cathy was getting angry. “Well, maybe I need to have a talk with Brenda,” she said. “Mark, you go on in and put your stuff away.”

“Mom, I’m telling you. You don’t want to keep paying her. Let me just go on back to school. It’s not too late.”

“Go in the house, Mark,” she said. “I’ve got to go talk to Brenda.”

When the door closed behind Mark, Cathy swung around and started down the driveway.

“Now hold on there,” Steve said, stopping her. “You don’t want to go off half-cocked and start yelling at your friend. Keep in mind, this is Mark we’re talking about.”

She glared up at him. “And what is that supposed to mean? He’s my son!”

“I know, but I’m just telling you kids have a way of exaggerating things. It’s probably nothing like he said.”

“Are you calling my son a liar?”

Steve closed his eyes. “No, Cathy, I’m not calling Mark a liar. I’m just telling you that when things are filtered through a child’s eyes, they don’t come out exactly right. You know that as well as I do.”

“Well, I don’t care. I’m going to talk to Brenda and get to the bottom of this. Do you want to come with me?”

Steve seemed to consider getting back in his truck, but then he glanced toward Brenda’s house. “Yeah, I’ll come. Maybe I can keep you from ruining a friendship.”

“Fine.” Cathy started across the street, and marched around Brenda’s house where she had seen her go before Mark came home. She found Brenda in the backyard, encouraging Leah as she jumped to a hundred on her jump rope. Tory was with them, sitting on the swing next to Brittany. Tory waved at Cathy, but Cathy barely noticed.

“Brenda, I need to talk to you.”

“Ninety-nine, one hundred. Oh, hi, Cathy. Hey, Steve. Leah just passed the hundred mark.” When Cathy didn’t respond, she looked up at her and saw the anger on her face. “Uh-oh. What did he tell you?”

Cathy sat down. “He says that you went on a field trip today and left him behind to work for David,”

Brenda nodded. “That’s right.”

“He says it was because he didn’t finish his work.”

“Right again.”

“Well, maybe he needed a little more explanation about the assignment.”

“It was easy, Cathy. He just refused to do it.”

Tory got up. “Listen, I’ve got to get home.”

Brenda nodded and Cathy didn’t say anything. But Tory couldn’t leave until she found Spencer, and at the moment, he wasn’t anywhere in sight.

Brenda tried again. “Cathy, I probably should have talked to you yesterday, but I didn’t want you to get a bad feeling about the first day. You obviously didn’t get the whole story from Mark.”

“How do you know what I got?” Cathy asked. “I didn’t tell you everything he said.”

“If he told you that I took the kids on a field trip and left him to work for David, that’s only part of the story.”

“That’s enough,” Cathy said too loudly. “Brenda, I’m paying you to teach my son. Not to apprentice him in carpentry.”

“Calm down, Cathy,” Steve said quietly.

She turned on him. “Calm down? Would you calm down if this was Tracy?”

“Cathy, please,” Brenda said. “Just sit down for a minute, would you?”

Cathy didn’t want to sit down, but when Brenda did, Steve pulled her down. He sat down next to her with his arm around her.

“Tell us what’s going on, Brenda,” Steve said calmly.

Brenda met Cathy’s eyes without any anger. “Yesterday I had a terrible time with Mark. Cathy, he didn’t want to do anything. He went back to bed after you left for work, then Daniel had to go get him, and he came over barely awake. He kept laying his head down trying to sleep. Every time I gave him an assignment, he refused to do it, and he was disruptive and disrespectful all day long.”

Cathy’s face fell by degrees. “Oh, no.”

“By the end of the day I was very frustrated with him,” Brenda went on, “and I gave him an ultimatum. I told him that if he didn’t finish his science assignment within thirty minutes, that he wouldn’t be going with us on the field trip today.” She leaned forward, locking in to Cathy’s eyes. “I only dreamed up this field trip as incentive to make him finish. I thought I’d give him something positive to work toward, instead of a threat of punishment. I
wanted
him to go with us.” She reached across the picnic table and took Cathy’s hand. “Cathy, I love you, and I love Mark, but I’ve got to teach him that I mean business, and he called my bluff. I really wanted to take him to the lake. But when he refused to do his work, I had no choice but to follow through.”

Cathy covered her face. Steve began to stroke her back, trying to calm her down.

After a moment, she looked up at Brenda over her fingertips. “Brenda, I’m so sorry. I should have known.”

“I know you’ve been busy and I thought I could handle it. I thought if I could just teach Mark this lesson today, that tomorrow he’d come back and he’d know that when I said to do something, he had to do it, that there were consequences if he didn’t. He’s going to have to learn that sometime.”

Cathy felt attacked. “I guess that implies that I haven’t taught him consequences. I know I’ve done an awful job, but I’ve tried…”

“I know you have,” Brenda cut in quickly, “but you’re just one person. He just needs some authority. Some discipline.”

Cathy groaned. “So what happens now? Are you going to keep teaching him?”

“Of course I am,” she said. “Mark’s going to be fine. Probably by tomorrow, if you’ll just go home and reinforce what I’ve done today. Let him know that he’s not going to get away with treating David or me with disrespect, that horsing around with Daniel in the classroom is not going to be tolerated, that he’s not going to smart off to me, that when I tell him to do his work, he needs to do it. I need your help with that.”

Cathy realized that Tory was standing back, still waiting for Spencer and pretending not to listen to the whole scene. Cathy was embarrassed, humiliated, and wanted to do worse to Mark than make him learn carpentry. “I could just die,” she whispered.

Steve touched her hair. “Cathy, don’t. You knew Mark was having problems. That’s why you made this move. This isn’t new. You’re doing fine.”

“Steve’s right,” Brenda said. “And the bright side is that he made a really nice bookcase today.”

Steve began to chuckle and Cathy shot him an unappreciative look. “It’s not funny,” she said.

He quickly wiped the smile off of his face. “Sorry.”

Cathy moaned. “All right, Brenda. You did the right thing. I’m sorry I jumped on you. I’m just so sensitive about my kids.” She wiped the wetness under her eyes. “I’ll do my best to reinforce
what you’ve done, and he’ll be back bright and early tomorrow. And, trust me, he’ll be wide awake and ready to work.”

Brenda nodded as if she knew that would be the case. “One more thing,” she said. “Try not to teach him Scripture when you’re mad at him.”

Cathy met Steve’s eyes. She really didn’t want him to hear this, but the damage had already been done. “What do you mean?” she asked in a weak voice.

“I mean every time I try to teach him Scripture, he thinks he’s being punished,” Brenda said. “He says you only make him memorize it when you’re mad.”

Cathy’s head was beginning to throb. “I guess that’s true. Whenever they smart off to me or get me flustered, I start to remember how much catch-up I need to do in their spiritual education.”

“But the Bible isn’t something that’s negative and angry,” Brenda told her. “It needs to be treated like it’s critical information, pertinent to their lives. They need to be shown how it applies, and if you only do it when you’re mad, they won’t ever want to learn it at all.”

“She’s right,” Steve said.

Cathy covered her face again. “But when do I do it, then? I only seem to have power over them when I’m mad at them.”

“You have a lot more power than you think,” Steve said carefully.

Looking defeated, she got up. “Well,” she said, “I guess I’d better get home and take care of this.”

Brenda came around the table and gave her a tentative hug. Cathy was stiff as she returned it. “I do appreciate what you’re doing, Brenda. It’s just going to take a little adjustment.”

“I know,” Brenda said, “and I’m willing to do whatever I can. I’m a pretty patient person, you know.”

“That’s why I picked you.”

As she and Steve crossed the street again, Cathy was thankful for his silence. She hated the fact that he had witnessed this whole thing. Now he knew just how bad things were. She wondered if she would ever get Mark through this stage.

Rick and Annie were pulling into the driveway just as they reached the house. “I need to go in and talk to Mark,” she said.

“No problem,” he said, grabbing a bunch of hangers out of a box. “I’ll just work on these clothes.”

Cathy went in and stormed up the stairs, and found Mark sitting on his unmade bed with dirty laundry all around him, eating a bag of potato chips and watching his television.

She leaned in his doorway with her arms crossed. “Mark, I got the real story of what happened today, and Brenda was absolutely right to make you stay home.”

“Oh, right. I should have known you’d take her side.”

“Not only am I going to take her side, but as of this moment, you are grounded from the computer
and
the television until further notice.”

“Mom!” he cried.

“When Miss Brenda tells me that you’re behaving properly at her house, then I’ll consider giving you back your privileges.”

“This is just plain child abuse!” he screamed. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me! I haven’t done anything wrong! I smoke one stupid joint in the bathroom and you rearrange the rest of my life!”

“Mark, stop raising your voice to me right now!”

“I
have
to raise my voice to you!” he screamed. “I have to yell to be heard over you!”

She knew that Steve could probably hear from the garage. Part of her knew that she should close the door and do this quietly, but the other part of her needed for Steve to know that she was taking care of this, that she did crack down on her son when he needed to be cracked down on, that she did have some measure of authority over his life.

Mark was the only one who didn’t realize it.

She pulled the plug on the television and marched down the stairs as Annie and Rick came in.