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Bernadine hated it when it was operator error. After teaching school for forty years, she didn’t think she had any operator error left in her, but apparently, she was mistaken.
Ellen shook her head. “No. I did not have a baby.” She looked around once more, like she wasn’t quite sure where she was again. Which made Bernadine very suspicious. So far, Ellen had been just as good as an adult as she had been in the classroom, but sometimes adults went off the deep end.
“Where’s your swimming suit? And your bag?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at Ellen. If there were drugs in her life, Bernadine was going to turn her in. Although, maybe she should have her friends stage an intervention first. Was that what they called it nowadays?
Back in her school days, she’d send the kid to the principal and let him handle it. Not that they ever did, they just sent the kid back to the classroom where they did the exact same thing all over again. Bernadine had finally figured out that if she wanted a problem to be solved, she had to do it herself. A lot of times, the kids who acted up didn’t have a good homelife, and she ended up organizing after-school classes for them.
The ones who attended always did better.
But sometimes you just couldn’t help people who didn’t want to be helped.
“You know what, I totally forgot it!” Ellen said, smacking her forehead and laughing. “I was up all night with the baby.”
“The one that’s not yours, but Travis’s?”
“Yeah. Alice. Her name’s Alice, and she is the sweetest little thing.”
“Who’s the mom?”
“Um. I don’t know. I’m not sure he knows her name.” Ellen closed her mouth. She looked both ways, maybe to see if any of the other ladies had arrived, and then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m not sure what he’s going to say about her. But... Please don’t tell anyone. Okay?”
“Tell anyone what? Everybody knows you guys have a baby now.”
“That’s right. We have a baby.”
Ellen gritted her jaw and grimaced, like she hadn’t meant to say that, and Bernadine understood, even if she wasn’t sure exactly what Ellen was saying, that whatever was going on with the baby wasn’t something that they wanted everyone in the town to know.
“Well, you’re probably going to need to get it together a little better if you don’t want anyone else to be suspicious. I can keep from saying anything, but the ladies who are showing up today have mouths that run like faucets.”
“I know.” Ellen sighed.
Bernadine felt bad for the girl. She and her husband had never had any children. Maybe that was part of the reason that she felt so alone in her old age. All these choices which seemed like such good choices at the time came back to bite a person as they got older. She had been young and carefree once. She had all of her summers free, and she and her husband had traveled a lot. But now that he was gone, and she was too old to do the things that she used to do, she didn’t really have anyone.
So she had to make her own family. It had taken her a while to figure that out though.
Still, Sweet Water was home and felt like family to her, and if Ellen needed her protection, she would give it.
“If you want to go home, I’ll teach the class for you today. I can just tell people that you’re under the weather, and you can figure out what you want to tell them eventually, but I suggest you not go out and about until you’re ready to answer some questions.”
“I’m sorry. I really hate to leave you in the lurch, but I can hardly teach without my swimming suit. And...” Ellen looked at her with tired eyes but a grateful smile. “Thanks for the advice. I... I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
That seemed like an odd thing to say, but Bernadine nodded, like she understood when she really didn’t, and watched as Ellen looked around the locker room again, and then slowly made her way to the door.
“Do you need someone to drive you home?” she asked, usually believing that a person did best if they were made to be responsible, but in this case, Ellen looked so tired Bernadine was actually concerned that she might not make it.
“No. Thank you. I’m fine,” Ellen said and walked slowly out the door, greeting Rhoda and Agathe as they walked in, confused when Ellen walked by them, fully dressed, and turned and went toward the outside door.
“She’s leaving? Is class cancelled?” Rhoda said as she walked in, her bag slung over her shoulder. Rhoda was younger than many of the other ladies in the group, since she wasn’t even to retirement age. She was only sixty years old, but her husband had been some highfalutin surgeon, and after he had died of a heart attack, Rhoda had taken his life insurance and retired comfortably.
She was a sweet lady and one of Bernadine’s favorite people. Her two sons were both doctors, and her daughter had become a lawyer. All of them were busy and didn’t spend much time with their mother.
Agathe, on the other hand, had moved from France to marry the American with whom she’d fallen in love with on vacation. She had been living in the United States for more than forty years. Her husband had not passed away but was slowly succumbing to Alzheimer’s.
“What’s going on?” Agathe said in her lilting voice that still held a trace of her French accent.
“Ellen wasn’t quite up to snuff, so I’ll be teaching the class today,” Bernadine said, her voice brokering no nonsense. She hadn’t learned to control classrooms of thirty thirteen-year-olds by being weak-willed and lily-livered.
“Oh. Well, that’s nice,” Agathe said, the sadness that never quite left her eyes fading for a bit as they brightened. “I love it when you teach. You do such a good job. Although, I love Ellen as well. Such a sweet girl. About the age I was when I left France.” Her voice grew a little wistful.
