Judgment

50

At a minute before nine o’clock the next morning, just as she was about to walk into the courtroom, her phone buzzed. A text. She was on edge, with everything that was going on, and anything could be urgent. She grabbed her phone.

From Duncan. Call me immediately.

He picked up the phone after less than one ring.

“Duncan,” she said, her heart pounding. “Everything okay?”

“You’ve got to get over to Jake’s school. Now.”

“What?” she cried. “Is he all right? Did he get hurt?”

“No... no, he’s fine. I mean, he’s not fine at all. He is in serious trouble here.”

“Oh, God. What’d he do?”

“He’s being expelled. For drugs.”

“Drugs? For weed? Shit. What—?”

“Can you get over here now? I know you’re in court.”

“I’ll be there,” she said.

She hated to cancel court. Especially when she had a jury in the box. Sixteen average citizens had disrupted their lives for this. The jury was deliberating in the medical malpractice case, and the stakes were sky-high. An obstetrician was fighting for his reputation, for his livelihood. And a young couple had lost a baby because of his failure to detect distress, they believed.

But she had no choice.

She called Kaitlyn into her lobby. “Can you call the lawyers, advise them that I’m unavailable, and reschedule?”

Then she got her car from the parking garage across the street. As soon as she was on her way, she called Duncan over speakerphone and talked as she drove. A bad habit, and something she would ordinarily never do. But she was worried, and she wanted to arrive at Jake’s school with a plan.

It was good to have something else to worry about for the moment, she thought. Was she being a bad mom, she asked herself, to think of her son’s situation as a diversion, a distraction from far more consequential things? She felt protective of Jake and concerned about him, about how lost he seemed to be. It was actually strange the way she was feeling. The blank, helpless terror seemed to have abated and given way to a kind of ferocious focus. She was a lioness protecting her brood.

“What did he do?” she asked.

“They found a vape pen and a couple of pen tops in his backpack.”

“Pen tops are...?”

“Cartridges of marijuana extract. THC oil. Cannabis concentrate.”

“Shit, Dunc. So he didn’t give it up, as promised.”

“Did he promise us? I don’t think so. We didn’t exactly tell him to quit the stuff. It was kind of left hanging.”

“Great.”

“They’re saying he was dealing.”

“What? Was he?”

“He says he wasn’t.”

“You believe him?”

“Yes. I do.”

“They’re expelling him?”

“Right.”

“I want to talk to Dr. Cole.” Dr. Cole was Pamela Cole, the head of the school. She was always “Dr.” Cole, though she wasn’t a medical doctor. Juliana had met her, talked to her at school events, but didn’t really know her. Dr. Cole sort of floated above things. “If they intend to expel our son, at least we can hear it directly from the head of the school.”

“I’m on it.”

“Tell them Judge Brody wants to talk with her right away.”

“I know,” he said. She could hear the smile in his voice. “I know how it works.”

“Okay.”

“He brought THC concentrate into school,” Duncan said. “That was not bright. But I’m more pissed off at the school.”

“Because?”

“Because if they’re going to expel a kid for something as minor as this, they should let you know.”

“They probably do in the student handbook, and we just haven’t read it.”

“Okay. Maybe you’re right. But let me take the lead in there, with Dr. Cole.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want you doing your Judge Judy routine in there, tangling with her. Being the pit bull.”

“It’ll be Judge Juliana, and I will be the velvet hammer.”

“Maybe better if you don’t. Let me handle it. Let me do the talking.”

She let out a huff. “Okay,” she said.

She met Duncan in the school parking lot. When they arrived at the headmistress’s outer office, they found Jake slumped in a chair. His face was red, and his hair was wild. He looked as though he’d been crying. He eyed Juliana warily as they entered.

“I’m really sorry,” he said.

Juliana felt warring impulses. She wanted to hug him, console him, tell him everything was going to be okay. He was her baby. She was also angry, wanted to tell him off. But she wasn’t a yeller, and this wasn’t the place anyway. So she gave him a hug and murmured to him, “You are in such trouble.”

Pamela Cole emerged from her office. She was a short, stocky woman, a Sherman tank with platinum blond hair, cut short in a modified pixie. She wore oversize round blue-framed eyeglasses.

She had an unnervingly deep voice. She had been the head of the school for seven years and was said to be a master fundraiser. She favored knit pantsuits. Today she was wearing a navy suit with white piping.

She took each of their hands and said sadly, “Judge Brody, Professor Esposito.” She was a very formal woman, dignified, remote. Not a natural people person, Juliana had always thought. But somehow great at fundraising. “Let’s sit over here,” Dr. Cole said, walking them into her book-lined, high-ceilinged office, flooded with light, and over to a long oak library table. Jake was left in the outer office.

Dr. Cole sat at one end, the head of the table. Next to her, Juliana and Duncan sat on opposite sides from each other.

She folded her arms across her chest. “This is very difficult for all of us,” she began. “We’re never happy to expel a student, particularly one as bright and well liked as Jake.” She gave them a long, disappointed look. “As you know, we have a zero-tolerance policy on drugs.” She seemed to be directing her attention to Duncan, who, with his head of long curly hair, probably looked like a hippie to her. Which wasn’t far from the truth. “Now, I realize I’m talking to two lawyers here, and I’m of course aware that possession of small amounts of marijuana has been decriminalized in this state. But it is still illegal for anyone under the age of twenty-one to possess or use marijuana. And more to the point, it’s against school rules.”

Duncan was nodding, attentive.

“A search of Jake’s backpack yielded several electronic vaporizer pens as well as a number of vials of what appears to be a highly concentrated form of marijuana. These vaporizer devices look like thumb drives, easily disguised. It seems that Jake has been selling this equipment to his fellow students. And the school’s policy on this is quite clear. The penalty is expulsion.”

There was a long silence. Dr. Cole looked at each of them, one after the other.

Duncan was shaking his head. He sighed. “Look, I get it. In my day you were technologically advanced if you had a roach clip.”

Dr. Cole chuckled, and some of the tension in the room seeped out. He had the ability to do that, to connect with people, put them at ease. Dr. Cole didn’t look like someone who might have gotten high when she was young. In fact, she didn’t look as though she had ever been young.

Duncan went on. “All these — what did you call them, ‘electronic vaporizer devices’? — freak me out a little too. So here we are, the grown-ups, with our rules, and here’s this kid who, you know, thinks rules mean ‘strongly consider.’”

Dr. Cole smiled and nodded.

“I totally get the frustration,” he said. “Jake hears his old man going after the ‘rules’ of neoliberal patriarchy and — I gotta own this part — he gets mixed messages. So you, you’re stuck in a situation where you’ve got an institution to protect. School kids to protect. Rules to lay down. That’s heavy. That’s your truth. But can we talk for a moment, parent to parent?”

Juliana thought: That’s where Jake gets it. The art of blarney. She kind of admired it.

Dr. Cole said, “Of course.”

“One thing all of us here know is, Jake’s a kid with a good heart. So let’s figure this out together. God bless the rules. But he really belongs here. How do we get to that truth?”

Dr. Cole looked at Duncan for a long while and kept nodding. She seemed to be mulling something over.

Duncan said, “I think this is a teachable moment for Jake.”

“I hope so.” Dr. Cole smiled.

Juliana remembered all those times when Dunc talked his way out of a traffic ticket, or into the head of a line, or into possession of Toys R Us’s last Marvel Legion action figure, which Jake had once desperately wanted.

He’d even coaxed a smile out of Dr. Cole.

Dr. Cole cleared her throat. “Alas, we’re not able to make an exception for one student, as much as we might like him. That’s why we have a zero-tolerance policy. This... vaping or dabbing, or sometimes it’s called Juuling — these e-cigarettes, the marijuana use — it’s an epidemic at this school, and the only way for us to stop it is to be firm in our response. Challenging us only makes us the best we can be.”

Duncan nodded again, looked thoughtful, and Juliana could see he was trying to figure out another approach, another way to Dr. Cole’s cold heart. But she could also see that it was useless. Dr. Cole would not be swayed. Duncan’s approach was falling flat.

Juliana spoke up.

“This drug use at the school, you said it’s ‘epidemic’?”

“There’s a high baseline incidence of drug use, an increasing use of this sort of equipment, yes. So Jake’s recent academic troubles all begin to make sense.”

“A ‘high baseline incidence,’ is that right?”

“Yes, quite disturbing. Quite widespread.”

Duncan glanced at Juliana, alarmed at whatever she was doing.

He knew she was a shark smelling the chum in the water. Or a pit bull.

“Huh,” she said. “So essentially you’ve just confessed to me that this institution has utterly failed in its responsibility to — how do you put it in the student handbook? — ‘create and maintain a safe and optimal educational environment.’ I’m pretty sure I’ve quoted that accurately.”

Dr. Cole sat up straight in her chair. Her eyes were angry. “Judge Brody—”

“And that fascinates me, because I’m thinking of your remarks on that recruitment panel in Boston last spring — the one that was on YouTube? — when you indicated there was no drug problem at this school.” She looked directly at Dr. Cole. “It makes me wonder whether this school has changed drastically overnight — or whether you simply don’t know what’s going on here.”

The headmistress started to speak, then thought better of it.

“That would suggest that this issue desperately needs outside intervention.” She took her iPhone out of her purse. “Now, the state Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education, as you should be aware, released a statement earlier this year proposing that receivership be considered for any school — I have it on my iPhone here — ‘unable to ensure a safe and drug-free environment for its pupils.’ From your own account, it sounds as if this school should receive a Level 5 designation. Receivership. Meaning they take over control of the school. Do you follow me?”

“Yes, but—”

“Good. So should we report the situation to the Massachusetts Department of Education? Should we talk to Lester Milbank about launching an inquiry? Or the Boston Police?” She paused, took a breath.

Dr. Cole’s cheeks had reddened, as if she’d been slapped.

Juliana went on. “I can either infer that you are publicly lying about this institution — or that you have simply lost control of it. It’s difficult to see any other explanation.”

“Judge Brody,” said Dr. Cole.

But Juliana was on a roll. “So you’re telling us you’ve made a decision to expel our son. And looking ahead to what’s going to happen as the result of his expulsion, I’m sure the good name of this school will recover, though it may take a few years. And it won’t be under your leadership, of course. But challenging us only makes us the best we can be, right?”

“That was very sexy in there,” Duncan said.

They were standing outside of her car, in the front parking lot. They’d left Jake behind at school, to begin serving his sentence of detention, which was about three rungs down the punishment ladder from expulsion. Her son had looked at Juliana with stunned disbelief, as if she had just walked on water right in front of him.

“You don’t think I was too hard on her?”

“Not at all. She was going to expel him. You had to get serious. You were a goddamned tiger in there.”

Lion, she thought. Lioness. It had felt good, actually, laying into the headmistress that way, taking control of something finally, when she felt so otherwise helpless.

“Maybe the thing about ‘challenging us’ was a bit much,” Juliana said.

“I enjoyed it.”

“Okay, then.”

“Hey,” he said softly, “so I’ve been thinking a lot. I’ve cooled off a bit. I mean, we’re in this thing together, and we’ve got to work it through together.”

She nodded and said, “I’d like that.”

“We need you at home. Jake clearly needs you. And I miss you.”

She nodded again, not trusting herself to speak.

“I still want to work out our marriage,” Duncan said.

“Me too.”

“Come on home. Okay?”