Patrice Sosna
August 27, 2021 1:25 AM
Adjustments by Patrice Sosna
Patrice Sosna was not having a very good day.It was never just one thing, she reflected as she walked into the middle school for the second time in as many months. It couldn’t just be her boss having a meltdown because his daughter had chosen a college he didn’t like, or the people she was supposed to be training all being unspeakable idiots who couldn’t shut up long enough to take instructions, or her kid’s homeroom teacher wanting to talk to her and the VP in charge of sixth graders when it was only September. Oh, no. It had to be all of them on the same day. On one hand, her boss and her coworkers had been like this for weeks while Euan hadn’t been in trouble for…about a week, but on the other, Euan knew she and his father were already tired of him acting out about Eben going away, and Eben had only been gone two weeks….
“What is it this time?” she asked Euan irritably, seeing him kicking his feet against a wall outside the glass structure the wing’s VP apparently worked in. “And quit doing that, I just bought those shoes.”
“I don’t know what it is and I don’t care about the stupid shoes,” said Euan, sulking.
“Yeah? You want to tell Dad you don’t care about wasting this family’s money on your stupid shoes? I’d think about how comfortable flip-flops will be in December before you answer that,” she said.
She tried to look less stressed and annoyed about being here than she was as she met the home room teacher for the second time and the vice principal of A-wing for the first. “Sorry we’re having to meet like this,” she apologized to the second woman. Her hair was a bit shorter than the teacher’s; otherwise, they could have been sisters. They were both the sort of woman invariably called Carolyn or Marilyn: the sort who still got her hair permed several times a year and who wore too much make-up - especially cakey mineral foundation and ugly pale pink shimmer lipstick - for someone who also wore her ghastly dowdy clothes and who Patrice always mispronounced words arounds. “What seems to be the problem?”
“We’re concerned about your son,” said the principal. “Ms. Hensley tells me he’s already been in detention three times this year - the latest one today, for…throwing a lunch tray with spaghetti at another student? And twice for having an electronic device on campus - and that he doesn’t pay attention when he’s in her social studies class, and looks at her disrespectfully when she corrects him for it. Some of his other teachers have said similar things - all of them have mentioned eye rolling and not staying on task, or refusing to stop or start working on things when asked, and he’s been especially disruptive in science class, with Ms. Ashby. She wanted to be here this afternoon but she had to pick her baby up from the daycare.”
Patrice had to make an effort not to give Ms. Hensley a disrespectful look of her own. Where did she think she and her frosted nineties hair got off, telling Euan what facial expressions he could have? Plus, that was just going to make things worse; if one of the boys ever decided he couldn’t possibly win, he tended to double down, hard. Plus, it was an utterly stupid thing to waste Patrice’s afternoon over. “Isn’t that just being a kid?” she asked. “Except the throwing. That was wrong and he’s grounded for it. But he’s not a bad kid, he’s just…I was worried he’d do even worse, really, being in a new school, and we’re having some family adjustments, since his brother’s going to a different school now…”
Patrice liked to think she was a good tale-spinner, especially up against a pair of church bake sale hypocrites like Ms. Hensley and Dr. Kent, but she still felt like she had been through her great-grandma’s hand-operated laundry mangle before she managed to talk her way out of the room again. In the car, she found herself aiming her frustration at Euan again.
“You got anything to say to explain all this?” she demanded, to no response. “I understand why you threw that spaghetti at that Mahoney brat, but why did you answer your social studies test about Aztecs with something about your brother being abducted by - “ she tried to remember what Ms. Hensley had even said - “the people who talk about ancient aliens from the History Channel? Did you forget what that man from the wizards said about getting in trouble if you keep drawing attention to Eben being gone?”
She continued her lecture all the way back to the house, but might as well have delivered it to the air. That evening, she took her husband’s plate out of the oven where it had been keeping warm while she waited for him to get home after she and Euan had already had supper, and put it on the table at the same time she made an announcement.
“I think we’re gonna have to move,” she said.
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Patrice Sosna
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Patrice Sosna
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