Time For Another Dispatch

Dispatches From the Edge & Other Stories From The Margins:

Facts & Figures & The Rest Of Her Life

She sat in the waiting room chair the way people do when they have been waiting a long time for something, not just the appointment, but the reckoning that tends to arrive when you finally are invited into the office. The chair she was sitting in was vinyl. It sounded like it sighed when she shifted her weight, and it had a small tear near the seam that looked like it had been there since the Reagan administration. Across from her, a low table held outdated magazines and a box of tissues that had seen better days. A clock ticked away on the wall across from her.

Carrie folded her hands in her lap, and her thoughts landed, not for the first time, on elementary school.

She remembered the smell of pencil shavings and floor wax, the way the classroom radiators hissed like irritated snakes during cold winter days. The teachers stood at the front with their rulers and their calm certainty, asking questions as if the answers were loose change everyone just kept in their pockets. Facts. Figures. Dates. Times tables. Spelling words that seemed to rearrange themselves the moment she looked away.

She tried. God knows she tried.

The popular girls shot their hands into the air, wrists snapping upward with confidence. The quiet girls answered too, softly but correctly. Even the obnoxious boys, the ones who flicked erasers and passed notes, somehow knew the capitals of states and the order of the planets. Carrie watched all of it as though from behind a pane of glass. The information came at her fast and left just as quickly, like rain hitting hot pavement.

She wondered then, and wondered again now, why it had been so hard. Why her mind seemed to refuse the neat filing cabinets everyone else carried around inside their heads. No one ever explained to the adults charged with teaching her that some people learn sideways, or slower, or through stories instead of having to hold onto every fact and figure leveled at them. Now, all these years later, she just remembers the feelings she had as a child in school. Like she was a burden to her teachers.

Middle school passed. Then high school. The same struggle, different schools.

And then, in her junior year, a boy noticed her.

She smiled at the memory despite herself. How electric it felt to be seen. To be chosen. To be wanted by someone who leaned close and spoke her name as if it mattered. They dated, which mostly meant sitting in cars, whispering love-filled words to one another, and crossing lines she had been told were sacred and fenced off until marriage. She did not feel reckless. She felt loved, or at least something that looked enough like it to pass inspection.

Nine months later, Aiden arrived.

Two months after that, the boy left town with a duffel bag and the particular kind of silence that says, " Do not wait for me."

Carrie never went back to school.

Instead, there were jobs. A long string of them. Restaurants where her feet throbbed, and the smell of grease followed her home. Retail stores where customers treated her like part of the shelving. Cleaning jobs that took place after hours, when office lights glowed dim, and the building seemed to hold its breath. She scrubbed toilets, emptied trash, wiped fingerprints off glass that would be smudged again by morning.

Her supervisors liked her. They always told her so. Dependable. Hard worker. Never complains. Those words showed up on performance reviews and disappeared when rent was due.

She thought of the offices she cleaned, how she overheard conversations while vacuuming. Men and women talking about ball games and school plays, about grabbing burgers afterward because it had been a long day, and everyone deserved a treat. Carrie would nod to herself as she worked, imagining Aiden in a uniform, sitting in the bleachers. She imagined the cost of gas, the late hour, and the way her body felt at the end of a shift. She imagined it all and then folded the thought away.

She knew she worked hard. She worked herself down to the bone. Still, her work did not seem to stretch as far as other people's did. They ended the day with something left in the tank. She ended hers feeling hollowed out, like a house after a hurricane.

The clock ticked. Somewhere down the hall, a copier groaned as it spat out paper.

She turned her gaze to the window. The sky had gone the color of old pewter, and it looked like rain was gathering its courage. That was when her thoughts wandered to her dad.

He had loved her in his own way. She never doubted that. He made sure she and Aiden had a roof over their heads, and slipped her grocery money when rent week came around. He showed up with practical solutions and careful timing. She loved him for it.

Still, there was her deep wanting.

As a girl, she had waited for him to say she was pretty. The word never came. Now, all these years later, she would have settled for something simpler. Just four words. I love you, Carrie.

She felt foolish for wanting it, guilty even. After all, he had given her so much. But his words, when he used them, could be sharp. Careless. He spoke freely about everything else. Politics - Neighbors - The weather - What was wrong with the world that week.

Why not that?

Why not love?

The pain of it sat low and deep. It was a stone she had learned not to turn over too often. After a while, a person learns which questions are too dangerous to ask. You understand that some answers can hurt more than the mystery of not knowing.

Carrie looked up at the clock and drew a deep sigh. Waiting is very often the long, uneasy labor of trying to keep hope from overpromising while fear quietly sharpens its knives. Carrie was now feeling nervousness creep in.

She thought of Adien.

Always Aiden.

From the moment she found out someone was growing in her belly, and every day since, her central preoccupation has been that boy of hers.

She pictured him the way he looked before school, backpack slung low, hair falling into his eyes, that long pause before he spoke that reminded her painfully of herself. More than anything, she wished she could be home when he walked through the door. Not just present in theory, but there. Sitting at the table. A snack waiting for him. Someone to ask how his day really went and mean it.

She had trusted him. Trusted his good heart. Trusted that he would not do foolish things, loud things, desperate things. The kind of things boys sometimes do when they are alone too long and growing too fast. The kind of things that adults later describe with words like disruptive or concerning, words that can quietly lean toward criminal if you let them.

Now here she was.

A social worker's office. A ticking clock. A future that suddenly felt less like a curvy road and more like unpredictable weather. She wondered what the coming days would hold. The weeks. The months. She did not want to fear for her son's future. But the fear had arrived anyway, uninvited and insistent, and it sat beside her like a second shadow there in that waiting room.

The door opened.

Janice, the Social Worker, stood there with a gentle smile and a practiced calm. Beside her was Aiden, sitting in a chair, feet barely touching the floor, eyes fixed on a spot on the carpet as if it might offer answers.

"Carrie," Janice said, holding the door wide. "Why don't you come on back and we'll talk together."

Carrie stood up, drew a deep breath, walked in, and shut the door behind her.

Well, that’s today’s dispatch, from the dusty places, and the far off corners, keep the faith, friends, and pass it on!