Promises We'll Be Okay (Slow Update)

The school calls at 2:47, thirteen minutes before I can leave work, leaving me a voicemail.

Mrs. Marlow, Elias has been involved in an incident. We’d need you to come andcollect him.

I look at the clock. I look at the bar, at the forty glasses I still have to wash,at the manager who’s already looking at me the way he looks at me when I’m about tocost him something.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” I say, and I’m already untying my apron.

“Grace.” He doesn’t raise his voice. “We’ve talked about this.”

“I know.”

“Three times this month.”

“I know.”

He lets me go, which is worse than if he’d stopped me, because letting me go meanshe’s counting. One day he’ll finish counting.

Once in the elementary school, I find my way to the head’s office once more. Elias is sitting on a chair, arms folded with the look he gets when he’s decided he’d rather be hated than sorry.

Across from him, a boy with a split lip and a mother who’s already decided howthis is going to end.

“Your child,” she says, before I’ve even sat down, “attacked my son.”

I sit down.

“What happened?” I ask Elias.

“He said I was a liar.”

“So you hit him?”

“Yes.”

He says it without a flicker. No shame, no fear. Just a fact, like he’s told me heate his lunch.

“Mrs. Marlow,” the head begins.

“May I speak to my son for a moment?”

He nods, and I take Elias into the corridor and kneel down so we’re the sameheight. His eyes are dry and furious and so much like someone’s I have to look athis mouth instead.

“Elias. You can’t hit people.”

“He said I was a liar, Mom! He said my dad doesn’t live in space.”

The corridor goes quiet around us.

“He said nobody can live in space, that I made it up.” His voice cracks on thelast word and he fights it, hard, the way he’s learned to fight everything. “Ididn’t make it up. You said it. You said he lives there.”

“I know I did.” I sigh, angry at myself.

“Then why is everyone saying I’m wrong?”

I don’t have an answer. I haven’t had one for eight years. I put my hand on theback of his neck, which is the only place I can touch him when he’s like this, andI say the only true thing I have.

“You’re not a liar.”

He blinks, surprised that I agreed with him.

“But you hit that boy, and that part I can’t let go. Okay?”

He nods, as always when I’m calm. It’s the shouting he doesn’t respect.

“Now I need you to apologize to him.”

“But he deserves it!”

I open my mouth to argue, and he keeps going before I can get a word out.

“Jack’s an idiot. He called Missy stupid yesterday. In front of everyone. She didn’t even say anything back, she just went quiet, and he kept going.” His jaw tightens again. “I told him to stop. He didn’t stop.”

I close my eyes.

“Okay,” I say, when I open them again. “You were right to protect Missy. You were wrong to hit him. Both of those are true at the same time.”

He stares at me, trying to work out how two things can be true at once.

“Please, Elias. Just say you’re sorry.”

He looks away, and for a second I think he won’t. Then he steps around me and goes back into the office. I follow and watch him walk up to Jack and plant himself right in front of him. He glances back at me once, then at the boy.

“I’m sorry.”

Jack’s mother looks at me the way you’d look at something you found under a shoe, then turns to the head.

“I want assurances this won’t happen again.”

“I understand, Mrs. Harlod.” He sounds tired.

“No, you don’t seem to understand. What happened here is serious.” She turns on me, and her whole face tightens. “Then again, I suppose we shouldn’t expect anything else, given her age.”

Elias moves before I can. “Don’t talk to my mom like that!”

The woman stops. She actually takes a half-step back, like she’s been slapped.

“Alright, Mrs. Harlod.” The head doesn’t raise his voice. “He’s apologized. I’d like a moment with Elias and his mother now, please.”

She gathers her son by the elbow and lets herself out, and the door closes on the three of us.

Elias and I sit down across from him.

“Mrs. Marlow, I’d like to suggest we bring in a behavioral specialist for Elias.”

I nod. He slides a sheet of paper across the desk with three phone numbers on it.

“I’m really sorry this happened. I promise you he understands what he did, and it won’t happen again.”

The head looks at my son, then back at me.

“I hope so. This is his second warning. The third one’s an exclusion.”

“I know.” I turn to Elias. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah...”

“Good. Then have a good day, both of you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

We walk out without saying anything. He keeps his hands in his pockets and for six blocks neither of us tries to talk. I take him to the bar with me, because there’s no one else.

My manager looks up when I come in and, for half a second, he’s just glad I’m here. Then he sees Elias, and the relief goes out of his face.

“Elias, sit at a table, I’ll bring you a soda.”

He obeys, without an argument as I go over to the manager.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t have a choice. He’ll be quiet, I promise.”

“Grace.” He shakes his head slowly. “I’ve been more than patient with you.”

“I know...”

“Tonight’s your last shift.”

“What? Wait, you can’t just fire me.”

“I can, and I am. Now please... go take care of the customers.” he says, walking away.

So I do. For another four hours, I take care of the customers. Elias does his homework at table nine, drinking his soda without a word.

At the end of my shift, I take off my apron, fold it, and leave it on the bar. I slip Elias’s backpack over my shoulder.

Back at the apartment, I leave everything in the hallway, bag, keys, coat, and I don’t have it in me to pick any of it up.

“What do you want to eat?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’re eating something before bed. And we’re going to talk about today.”

He sighs, the one that’s meant to make me back off.

“You want Grandma’s mac and cheese?”

“Yeah...” He drops into a chair at the kitchen table.

I take a tray out of the fridge, put it in the microwave, and sit down across from him.

“I know what you’re gonna say, Mom. Next time I’ll just let him.”

“No, you won’t. If he bothers you, you go and tell your teacher.”

“I’m not a snitch.”

“Words, Elias. You use words before you use your hands. Okay?”

He rolls his eyes. Not convinced, not even close. The microwave beeps, and I slide the tray in front of him with a fork.

“Mom?”

“Yeah, baby.”

“Can I have Missy over this weekend?”

“Missy, huh?” I keep the smile out of my voice and fail.

“I really like her. I wanna spend the whole weekend with her. And I wanna give her a present.”

“A present?”

“Yeah. I saved the birthday money Grandma and Grandpa gave me, so I can buy her that bracelet she told me about. The really cool one.”

“Alright. Tomorrow morning I’ll take you to school, and you can ask her yourself. But Elias, you heard what the head said. You’ve got one warning left. One. And then you’re not going back to that school...” I let it sit for a second. “...and you’re not seeing Missy.” I add the last part on purpose.

He doesn’t hear exclusion. He hears Missy.

“I promise I’ll be good,” he says finally.

“Do you?”

“Yes.” He holds up his pinky.

I wrap mine around it and hold on, because it’s the only promise either of us can actually keep tonight.