Camilla Layton was on her way to meet the Willises in the school library. Jason Willis, their son, was in Camilla’s honors sophomore English class, failing at the moment. He had been sliding steadily downhill during the course of the year, finally settling on the bottom last month.
Camilla liked the Willises, for reasons she didn’t feel comfortable telling them, and actually hoped to gain something—advice of sorts maybe—from this conference; she herself would be as generous as she could without giving Jason too much of a break. The Willises wouldn’t ask for a break.
When she’d met the trim, attractive couple on back-to-school night three months ago, Dr. Willis had shaken Camilla’s hand with great cordiality. “I recognize most of the people here,” he had said, nodding in the direction of the parents assembled in her student desks. She remembered that he was a local dentist. “I’ve been treating their kids for years.” Peg Willis had smiled warmly, too. She signed her e-mails “Peg,” leaving Camilla to the stuffy “Ms. Layton” or the too-chatty first name.
The Willises appeared punctually at 12:15 at the pre-arranged small table in the library’s center stacks. They were each tautly muscled, as though they spent their free time playing tennis, and their teeth gleamed whitely. Camilla led them past small groups of students giggling over propped-open books to another room, “less public,” she said, although really there were no private spaces. Nothing was the way one would have it. The Career Center, often filled with meetings and microwave popcorn, was now thankfully empty except for a few students clicking at computers in a far corner. Camilla indicated a round table, and the parents sat at either side, leaning in, both with tendony arms extended and hands clutched.
“We want to talk about what we can possibly do at this point,” the mother, Peg, said.
“We were alarmed—but not surprised—at his recent report grades,” the dad, Don, added. They nodded solemnly to each other.
“We realize he has fallen behind—we just didn’t know how much—and—and we wanted to fill you in on Jason’s situation.”
“Not to ask for leniency,” the dad said.
“But just to get him through.” Camilla completed their rhythms. She had written as much in her last e-mail.
That morning Jason’s behavior in class had been particularly distressing, but Camilla wasn’t sure she wanted to tell this to the Willises. The boy kept raising his hand to answer questions about characterization, and each time Camilla called on him he would start a sentence and stare blankly, his buggy eyes protruding in alarm, and then shrug: “Forget it! I don’t know!” He was on too many medications.
“And you know about his diagnosis,” Dr. Willis—Don—was saying; “He’s had to change psychiatrists and they’re going to switch his medications again.”
“He can barely function now,” his mother said; “He keeps trying.”
“What’s he on?” Camilla asked; “Now?”
“Lithium,” the dad said. “Wellbrutrin. Prozac.”
Camilla sucked in a breath, more sympathetic than the Willises knew. Her own son—a man probably only a decade or so younger than this overwrought father before her, although thankfully not a parent himself—was on lithium. Or was supposed to be. She couldn’t be sure he stuck with the regimen. “That’s a lot,” she acknowledged.
The parents agreed. “Not that we’re making excuses,” Don said. “We just wanted you to know. Fill you in. You see–” Here he leaned in and lowered his voice, “The reason Jason really fell behind the past few months was, well, with bi-polarism the patient sometimes self-medicates.”
Camilla’s heart beat faster. She remembered the first time she heard that expression about six years ago, after her son’s second re-hab treatment for alcoholism: self-medicates, and the other expression: dual diagnosis. It was soothing, in some strange way, to hear the words used to describe another family’s son; she’d thought the burden was solely her own.
“So, Jason got involved in drugs, and we’ve had him in a rehab program for several months. It has taken up his time.”
“So much time!” the mother said. “Several evenings a week.”
“And his focus,” the dad said.
“Our focus,” the mother said. They were imploring Camilla, the teacher, to understand how these demands caused them all to be removed from ordinary high school life.
“All our focus,” they both exhaled wearily.
Camilla sighed with them. It was despairing to know your son was in some lonely, unreachable stupor of alcohol, particularly while the rest of the world went on, while you yourself drove to school and efficiently taught your classes, your despair hidden or even escaped from briefly, until you remembered once again: the constant heartbreak of it. Then the tentative relief of hauling the drunken man (your son, your lovely son!) to the rehab unit and leaving him there, visiting every chance you could, listening attentively to the latest “tool” he was acquiring in the program, once again. There was absolutely no room for anything else. “Recovery takes all one’s attention,” Camilla said. .
“Exactly.” The father seemed appreciative. Was she supposed to know all this as a teacher? Maybe. He probably didn’t think about it.
They looked from one to the other. “So,” Camilla said.
“So,” the parents said in unison.
“He needs to read Crime and Punishment,” Camilla said. She almost laughed. The suggestion sounded as bizarre as saying, He needs to learn the Russian language. Which the mother was probably doing—she had said at a previous conference she was a graduate student in Slavic studies. Camilla had been tempted then to tell the woman about her own son, who had also been in the same International program, except he hadn’t finished, had had another relapse and that was that. “I mean,” Camilla now amended, “Jason needs to have some sense of the book. We’ve been on it two months—and he has joined in only a few classroom discussions.”
“He’s probably read parts,” the mother said. “Or at least I remember he started it.”
“Cliff notes?” Camilla suggested. She was glad the purest of her colleagues were not over-hearing her.
“Cliff notes,” the mother repeated. “I think we’ve already resorted to that. As well as the Internet—any shortcuts. You mean you just want him to understand basically what it’s about.”
“It seems an absurd request,” Camilla said. “But I’m thinking of Jason. He’ll be in groups with his classmates next week; he likes knowing things.”
“If you could have seen him before!” The father sought Camilla’s eyes, the appeal pleading. “He loved to concentrate on projects—he loved to read, to discuss. Oh, if only you could have known him then.”
At the same time, she knew this supplication, too. Rehab units were filled with people who didn’t think they—their families—belonged there. “I can see that,” Camilla said. It was the truth, at least part of the time. “Jason likes philosophy, ideas.”
“Yes, yes,” the parents agreed.
The three sat there for in a moment in their own thoughts, “Do you have any guides—or anything—you used?” the mother said.
Camilla frowned, but just for a second. At first she’d taken the question to mean a guide to get through life with a bi-polar son who self-medicates. Of course the parents meant the book. “Well, yes—all the stuff we’ve used in class. I don’t expect you to teach him Crime and Punishment.” Camilla felt awful; she felt if she asked these parents to memorize the phone book to get their son through his classes, they’d rush to find a phone book. Well, so would she. She laughed a little at the irony.
The Willises laughed a little, too. “Maybe he can do summaries?” the mother said.
“A good idea,” Camilla agreed. “Brief ones—one for each part.”
“A schedule.” The mother took out a small tablet and pen and wrote that down.
“The rehab place suggested we let him manage his own affairs for awhile,” the father said. “And we’ve tried. We’ve tried just letting him figure out what to do.”
“You see where that’s gotten us.” The mother made a weak smile.
Camilla’s own son, back at his apartment and doing well for a while, hadn’t recently answered his phone. “How hard,” she said; “Hard for you all. We’ll get him through.”
“Our daughter has all A’s at the university,” the father said. “Would you believe it?”
This was Camilla’s opportunity to tell him that she of all people was not judging them, but she felt she couldn’t betray her son She felt that the Willises might be resentful that at least her son had gotten through high school and college first, unlike Jason. She also didn’t want them to know that possibly there was no resolution, that the anxiety could go on and on. This moment, for instance, when Camilla seemed magnanimous to these parents, she wasn’t sure why her own son hadn’t returned her call. She couldn’t check, couldn’t nag a grown man. “Of course I believe it. You’re all bright and talented people. Jason’s struggling with demons now.” She cringed at her use of such a cliché.
“Demons. Yes. That’s exactly what it is,” the father said, then sighed deeply again. “Well, it’s not as bad as it was last year at this time. I’m glad it’s not last year.” Camilla didn’t ask, but recognized the technique of carving hope from where one was.
The school bell rang, signaling lunch, and the Willises stood up. “We really appreciate your time,” Dr. Willis said.
“He’ll get this done,” Peg Willis said, indicating her notepad, as though it were a prescription. “Thank you.”
“Thank you.” The father grasped Camilla’s hand and asked for directions out of the school building. Camilla could see him returning to his office as Doctor Don, the kiddies’ friend, envying the other parents, not knowing their lives beyond their kids’ teeth.
Camilla gathered her own things. She felt mildly heartened. She’d go home and check her phone message machine, almost hearing his voice. But she feared the silence, the let down; she fought against thinking about it. She had to remain hopeful. There was nothing else she could possibly do.
Jackie Davis Martin’s stories are published in anthologies, including Modern Shorts, Love on the Road, and Road Stories, as well as in print and online journals. Her first memoir, Surviving Susan, was released in 2012 and her second memoir, Those Several Summers, in 2024. A novel, Stopgaps, came out in May, 2021.
