Day By Day

Judy sighed. “Well, isn’t that dandy? I call that woman for three days, patiently waiting for her to find the time to call me back, and now that she’s ready…Mrs. Worth will just have to wait for me for a change. If she calls back again, tell her I’m booked until five so I’ll stop in to see her in the morning when I take Brian to school. I may not be an important lady like she is, but my customers are.”

“Got it. I’ll take care of her for you.”

“Thanks.” Judy hung up and returned to her customer.

“Trouble at school?”

Judy shrugged and resumed cutting. “Nothing that can’t wait till tomorrow.”

“It’s hard being a grandmother and raising your grand-baby, isn’t it?”

“Not all the time.” She snipped at a few pieces she had missed. “I hadn’t seen Brian since he was a toddler, so we’re really just getting to know one another. Between school and work, we don’t have all that much time together. He spends more time with his teacher every day than with me.”

“I was a teacher, you know.”

“Really?”

“Fourth grade. I only taught for a year or two before I met James. As soon as we got engaged, that was it. I got called down to the principal’s office, and he fired me on the spot.”

Judy gasped. “Fired you? For getting engaged?”

Mrs. Edwards laughed. “We were getting married right away and back then, teachers weren’t allowed to be married. We couldn’t do a lot of things teachers do today, but I didn’t mind trading a classroom full of students for married life. Not one bit.”

Judy checked to see that the ends were even. “That’s it for today. Shall I braid your hair again for you? It’s still a little damp.”

“Don’t bother, dear. I’ll sit on my couch by the window and let the sun dry my hair first. Since you’re going to Hannah’s next, tell her to call me when you leave, will you?”

Judy agreed, packed up and cleaned up. “You’re good for another five or six weeks,” she suggested.

Mrs. Edwards smiled. “You’ll do fine with that boy. You might be his grandmother, but you’re a good woman. You’ll be a grand mother to him, too.”

Judy swallowed hard. “Thank you.” She left for Hannah Damm’s apartment with a five-dollar tip for herself, all in quarters inside a little plastic bag, and a box of animal crackers for Brian. But the notion she was a grand mother as well as a grandmother was a priceless memento she tucked into her heart.

She rang the bell at Miss Damm’s door on the fourth floor twice. No response. She tried twice again, but no one answered. It was not like Miss Damm to forget an appointment, but she was hard of hearing and wore two hearing aids. Judy sighed and decided to go back down to the office again and try calling before moving on to the next appointment with Mrs. Thompson. If Miss Damm was not wearing her hearing aids, she would not hear the doorbell, but she might hear the extraloud bell on her telephone.

If Judy had a cell phone, she would have been able to call from where she stood, but a cell phone was out of the question, along with any hopes for a new winter coat this year. Brian needed an entire winter wardrobe. She retraced her steps, with her quarters jingling in her pocket, and walked back to the elevator that arrived before she had a chance to push the call button. Oddly, the elevator was empty, and she rode back down to the first floor hoping and praying Miss Damm was home and would hear her telephone.

Penny tried calling Miss Damm’s apartment. No answer. She tried again. “Still no answer. I know she’s here. She stopped in this morning for a package the mailman left and said she was going back to her apartment to wait for you. No problem,” she said and jangled a set of keys she retrieved from a drawer. “I’ll go up and let you in. She probably fell asleep watching television.”

“I don’t think I heard the television,” Judy countered as she followed Penny to the elevator.

Penny pushed the call button. “She keeps the volume turned down. Don’t ask me why. I haven’t a clue.” When they got to the apartment, Penny rang the bell several times before opening the door with her master key.

Looking over Penny’s shoulder, Judy could see the television. The screen flickered with life, but there was no sound. Miss Damm was lying in her recliner, apparently sound asleep. Penny had been right, but how she knew all the little idiosyncrasies of the residents still mystified Judy.

“She’s asleep. Just like I thought,” Penny whispered and approached the brown vinyl recliner with gentle steps. “Miss Damm? It’s Penny. Judy’s here to do your hair. Miss Damm?”

While Penny tried to wake the elderly woman, Judy held back and stayed just inside the door. When Penny looked up at Judy, the ashen look on her face confirmed an odd premonition that Miss Damm had slept her way from this world to the next.

“Call 911. There’s a telephone in the kitchen. Hurry. She’s still breathing, but I think she’s suffered a stroke.”

The next half hour was a blur of sirens, paramedics, police and fire personnel, who routinely responded to all emergency calls, and hosts of residents who filled the corridor and filed down to the Gossip Garden to share whatever they had been able to see or hear. After Miss Damm had been placed into an ambulance and peace had been restored to the Towers, Judy was not surprised when Mrs. Thompson canceled her appointment. She was simply too upset about her neighbor and friend to have her hair cut.

A bit shaken, Judy stored her canvas bag back in the office while Penny listened to the telephone messages that had been left in her absence. She called out when Judy started to leave. “There was another call from Mrs. Worth for you. She says it’s urgent.”

Judy stopped and checked her watch. “It’s only two-thirty. I suppose I could call her back now. I don’t have to go back to the salon to do more than clean up,” she murmured, although she had half a mind to make the woman wait until morning, just on principle, pun intended. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to be the bigger person. Can I use your telephone?”

“Sure. Use the one in Patricia’s office. She’s not in today.”

Judy went into the assistant manager’s office, found the telephone and punched in the number for the school. This time, the secretary put her call right through to the principal.

“I’m afraid you need to come to school right away,” she urged.

Instead of panicking as she had the last time, Judy forced herself to remain calm. “If it’s about the counseling for Brian, that’s all been arranged. I’ve met with your guidance counselor and his first appointment with a private counselor is already scheduled for five o’clock this afternoon. If it’s about another picture he’s drawn—”

“No. It’s not about the counseling or another picture. I wish it were.”

Judy’s pulse began to race. “Is he sick?”

“No, he’s not sick or injured. He’s been in a fight. I have one of the other children’s parents here with me now, and the other one is on the way. I’m hoping you can join us momentarily. Otherwise, Brian will be suspended from school, and he will not be permitted to return until you can arrange to meet with me.”

Judy swallowed hard. “Suspended? He’s only in first grade,” she grumbled. “Since when does a six-year-old get suspended from school?”

“When that six-year-old gets involved in a fight. We have a zero tolerance policy for bullying behavior.”

“I’m on my way,” Judy murmured. She hung up the telephone and shook her head. Two weeks of school. Two different problems. Two summonses to the school. Maybe a suspension for fighting or bullying. “I wonder where he learned that,” she whispered, seeing Duke’s image in her mind’s eye, and shoving it away.

At this rate, Brian might break his mother’s poor school discipline record before he reached his seventh birthday! “If I survive that long. There’s a reason why God made mothers young. Some grand mother I’m turning out to be,” she grumbled and headed off to answer her summons to the school.

Again.

Chapter Seven

N o panic. No fear. Only a dreadful sense of déjà vu.

Judy climbed the front steps of Park Elementary School with her mind playing flashbacks of raising her daughter. Candy had partied hard, fought hard and rebelled her way through high school and graduated next to last in the Class of 1987, but at the top of the list of students with discipline infractions.

Judy reached the top step and took a deep breath. When it came to her own child’s outrageous behavior in high school, she had passed embarrassment and humiliation a long time ago. By learning to distance herself, to separate the child from the behavior and the parent’s responsibilities from the child’s obligations, she had managed to survive with her own sense of worth only slightly bruised and battered. Would she be able to do the same with Brian?

She had a good idea of what lay waiting for her inside the principal’s office. Still, the process was never pleasant. She was also certain she was about to face down a pair of professionals and a pair of parents young enough to be her own children, all of whom were educated far beyond her own high school diploma and license as a hairdresser. She squared her shoulders and reached for the door.

“Judy? Wait!”

She turned and saw Barbara Montgomery rushing up the steps. Sunshine danced in the highlights of her hair, a casual, yet elegant layered cut now, but misery and panic shadowed her face. When she reached the top step, she held on to the railing and stopped to catch her breath.

“Sorry. The car…is in for repairs…. I closed my shop…and ran here as fast as I could in heels.” She took a deep breath and lowered her voice. “Are you here about the fight, too?”

Judy frowned. “I’m afraid so, but please don’t tell me the twins were involved.”

Barbara’s eyes filled with tears. “Only Jessie, but I think Melanie was there. She’s too timid to fight. She wouldn’t argue with her own shadow.” She groaned. “I’ve never been called to school before. Not once. The boys were always so good at school, but these girls are going to be a whole different story, I guess. This is terribly embarrassing.”

“You didn’t get into a fight. Jessie did. Keep that in mind. It’ll help. Trust me, I know,” Judy assured her.

“I’m sorry Brian was involved, but I’m awfully glad you’re here,” Barbara said. “Facing the principal will be hard enough, considering she’s a paragon that the administration lured away from another district this year. The other parent is bound to be a thirty-something, career-building powerhouse. Or a stay-at-home soccer mom whose husband has a six-figure income, while she’s a combination of Mother Earth, sultry siren and last year’s finalist for Mother of the Year.”

Barbara shook her head. “They’re going to take one look at me and assume because I’m a grandmother, I’m too old to be raising two six-year-olds effectively. I might think I’m too old once in a while, but I defy anyone else to think it.”

Judy looped her arm with Barbara’s. “I’d like to see them try. There’s safety in numbers and power, too. We’re not just grandmothers. We’re grand mothers,” she whispered, sharing the gift Mrs. Edwards had given to her. “Let’s go inside and prove it.”

Barbara sniffed. When she reached into her purse for a tissue, she eased out of Judy’s hold. “Grand mothers. I like the sound of that,” she said and dabbed at her eyes.

“Me, too.”

“Okay, I think I’m ready now. I’m not sure I’m up to doing this. It’s been a week since John talked with Detective Sanger, and there’s still no news about whether or not they’re going to arrest those two girls and charge them with Steve’s death. Maybe if I didn’t have that on my mind, I wouldn’t be so anxious about being called up to the school. Thanks, Judy. I really needed a friend right now.”

“Me, too,” Judy repeated and led Barbara into the school. When they arrived at the principal’s small office, the secretary ushered them to the door of an adjoining conference room. “Mrs. Worth wanted to meet with the adults involved in here. The children are all with Mrs. Booth, the guidance counselor, in her office. They’ll be joining you later, after your meeting,” she explained and opened the door.

Judy stepped inside, studied the positions of the two women seated at the long, rectangular table, and assumed the woman seated at the head was Mrs. Worth, the principal. Perfectly coiffed and made up, she wore a navy-blue power suit that had to be tailor-made. Mrs. Worth could not be a day over thirty, yet she looked every inch the capable administrator Barbara had mentioned earlier.

Judy’s heart sank to her knees as she eased into a chair. Across the table, the other woman met Judy’s gaze and offered a brief, tenuous smile. The fact that the woman sat opposite Barbara and Judy implied that she was the parent of the child who had been bullied, but Judy tried not to leap to conclusions or allow the slightest hope to rise that Brian had been the injured party here. The woman was even vaguely familiar. Judy could not place her. She assumed she had just seen her about in town. Returning the woman’s smile, she looked at her closely. Her heart skipped. Another grandmother? Or was she?

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