Page 55 of Single Dad Problems
"Okay. I'm on the chapter about octopuses."
Darren's door was already open and Karla's desk out in front of it sat empty and tidy, and my stomach did a slow roll. I usually hated seeing Karla the way I hated seeing a parking ticket on my windshield, but right now I would have given anything for her to be parked at that desk.
He was leaned back behind his desk with his hands laced over his stomach, and the cologne reached me before I'd cleared the doorway.
"Miss Morgan. Sit."
I sat. I set my phone face-down on my knee like a nervous habit, which, to be fair, it mostly was.
"Thank you for coming in on your holiday. I know you have your son." He smiled the school-board smile. "I've been doinga lot of thinking since last night. About you, and about whether you have a future at this school."
"Okay."
"You've had a rough year, Callie. The parent complaints. The classroom incidents. And lately the way certain fathers behave around you, which people have noticed. People talk." He shook his head slowly, sad about it like a man burdened by the weather. "A teacher's reputation is a fragile thing. Yours is hanging by a thread, and I don't think you even realize it."
"My classroom outperformed every second grade in the district last spring."
"And yet here we are." He spread his hands. "Now. I take my responsibility for my staff very seriously. So I'm prepared to invest some personal time in correcting your course. Some one-on-one mentorship, outside of school hours, where we could go over what would be required of you going forward. Appropriate conduct. Professional standards. The behavior this school expects from its teachers." A pause. "We could discuss it over dinner. Tomorrow evening, perhaps."
His explicit offer was wrapped in so much administrator packing foam that on a recording it would sound almost reasonable, a principal sacrificing his Saturday to mentor a struggling teacher. He clearly was good at this. It was almost like the prick had practice.
"No, thank you," I said flatly. "If my conduct needs correcting, you can put it in writing and copy the district like every other administrator."
The sad-about-the-weather face flickered. "I'd think very carefully, Miss Morgan. I'm offering you a lifeline here."
"I don't need a lifeline. I need you to schedule any concerns through proper channels." My heart was going like a rabbit but my voice came out level, and I watched him register that, and I watched him not like it.
He looked at me for a long, long moment. Then he sighed, opened his desk drawer, and took out a folder. He'd had it ready the whole time, a loaded gun a toddler had been cocking all morning, waiting to see if he'd get his way.
"Then you leave me no choice. Effective immediately, your contract with this school is terminated."
The floor dropped out from under the chair. "On what grounds?"
For a second, I couldn't feel my feet and wondered if the floor had indeed turned into lava.
"Documented parent complaints. Repeated classroom management failures. And conduct unbecoming, including the appearance of inappropriate familiarity with parents of current students." He slid the folder across the desk. "It's all in there. I've been documenting all year. It's a principal's job, documentation. Most teachers never realize how much of it there is until a day like today."
"This is because I said no to your inappropriate advances last night and just now. You know it and I know it."
"What I know," Darren said pleasantly, "is that a terminated teacher with a file that thick can say all kinds of things on her way out the door, and not one person will believe a word of it." He checked his watch. "You have thirty minutes to clear your personal belongings out of your classroom. If you're still in the building after that, I'll call security and have your departure added to the file. The clock's running, Miss Morgan."
He picked up his reading glasses and a budget report like I'd already left. I'd hoped the voice recording would be enough, but realized he probably played it too smart for that.
I don't really remember standing. I remember setting my keys and my badge on his desk, and I remember being proud that my hand didn't shake until I was out the door.
Oliver looked up from the bench.
"Mom, did you know an octopus has three hearts? And two of them stop every time it swims. That's why they mostly crawl. Swimming costs too much."
Three hearts. I stood there in an empty hallway, freshly fired, with a maybe-baby and a folder full of lies twenty feet behind me, and my eight-year-old told me that even an octopus can't afford to run all its hearts at once, and I almost went down right there on the tile.
"That's so cool, baby," I managed.
Oliver studied me. "You're doing the face."
"What face? There's no face."
"The one where your mouth smiles and your eyes don't. The hiding face."
