Page 21 of Falling for Mindy

“It’s the kind of job that, if you do it right, it eats you alive. It’s an essential job, and you have the chance to help a lot of people. It can be very discouraging, and mainly it demands a lot emotionally. You get invested in helping these families reunite and then, whether it’s addiction or mental health or relationship problems or just screwing up and not showing up for court dates or visits, making mistakes—you watch it crumble. You try everything humanly possible to make it work, to give people chance after chance, begging them to just do this one thing or attend this one meeting or court date. The bottom line is, you can’t do it for them, and you can’t singlehandedly tear down a system that in many ways is built to put up roadblocks to success,” I said.

“That sounds like it was really exhausting,” she said, and I looked up almost involuntarily, drawn by the softness in her voice.

The curves of her lovely face were frowning in compassion. I stopped short of telling her the rest of the story. It wasn’t necessary to make my point, and I felt I could spare her that knowledge.

“It was draining. It’s valuable work, as I said.”

“You do valuable work here, too. Like warning me so I don’t run headlong into traffic or the next thing to it—just throwing my heart at the first case that comes my way and then being trashed when I can’t make everything line up perfectly.”

“That’s going to happen no matter what I say. There will be cases that wreck you. People who get their kids back, and it feels like all’s right with the world, and then the kids wind up right back in care the same year. You do everything you can, and then you have to do the hardest thing.”

“Realize that I’m not in control of all of it?” she asked.

“Good answer, but not just that. The real challenge is that you can’t blame yourself for other people’s actions. You can’t second guess that if you had just done one thing differently you could have changed the outcome,” I told her, “That’s the most useful thing I have to teach you. Right there. Write it down,” I said earnestly.

“So I can skip your class from now on, is what you’re saying? Since that’s the most important thing you have to teach me?” she asked, a little cheeky.

I had to clear my throat and remember not to banter with her, no joking around, no giving into the temptation of developing a rapport, a sense of friendship or camaraderie. I couldn’t let her tease me and take liberties like we were colleagues or friends. I was her advisor, and it was my responsibility to keep the meeting on track.

“Not at all, Ms. Sayers,” I said, my voice sounding stuffy even to me. “It’s wise to take notes in my class as well. You’ll be graded on your exams whether the material is as useful as that bit of information or not.”

“Sorry. I was just kidding,” she said, a little downcast.

I had made her feel badly, like her informality had been something other than adorable and tempting. I resisted the urge to tell her it was okay.

“Tell me how Jenna’s application went, then,” I said, getting back to the topic at hand.

“I helped her fill one out for work at a discount store, and I formatted her resume to take with her if she gets an interview. I even gave her the manila folder out of my bag so she could carry it in something official looking. She seemed really proud of what we got done. She said her boyfriend’s been calling her since he got out of jail and she’s trying not to answer. I don’t understand how she could even consider it, knowing what he’s like. This guy, this asshole knocks out her teeth and she’s having to try hard not to talk to him?” she shook her head.

“It’s hard to understand, I agree,” I said, “but you know by now that people don’t make sense a lot of the time. And people go with what they feel or what they want to believe instead of what’s staring them in the face. It’s not easy to accept that. But we all do it, make some incredibly stupid choices because we think we have to, or we think it’ll make us happy.”

“She had to go live in a shelter because her mom wouldn’t take her back in. She said she had a man and she better stick with him and quit thinking it’s all gonna be sunshine and daisies,” Mindy shook her head. “I know my sister and I are really lucky. We have great parents, and a lot of advantages. I can never imagine my mom telling one of us to go back to a man who beats us. Like, don’t be a quitter, he just knocked out your tooth.”

“I understand,” I said shortly, “now tell me what you plan to do on Thursday at the job center. What duties have you been assigned?”

Mindy started talking, but all I saw was the light in her eyes. The fact that she was so smart and so compassionate and determined, such a warrior. She was so much more than the pretty face and the energy between us that had first captured my attention. She was damn near perfect.

Passionate about the same things I’ve dedicated my life to, eager to help and to understand, deeply indignant when people were inconsistent or irrational, but generous enough to accept it and help them anyway. She may have thought Jenna was foolish to think of answering her abuser’s calls, but she still wanted to help the woman. Mindy had a loving, open heart and wanted to help everyone. It made me feel protective of her in a way.

I had to stop thinking like that.

I noticed that it was quiet. She had stopped talking and was looking at me expectantly. She had clearly asked me a question and I hadn’t been listening to her. I shut my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose.

“I’m sorry. Please repeat the question,” I said, feeling like an idiot for not paying attention.

“I just asked if you had any example you could give me of the sort of goal I’m supposed to formulate for my internship,” she said.

“Of course. Yes. Here, I jotted down a couple of general ones earlier to show to you and Mr. Chambers,” I said, passing her the sticky note and still kicking myself for getting distracted.

“Thanks. I’m sure you’re very busy. So I’ll just be going.”

“No, I apologize. We need to get a goal in writing today, and from there you can develop two measurable objectives for Thursday’s meeting.”

“Most of the goals I actually want to achieve don’t lend themselves to testable results, like I want better understanding of the obstacles for domestic violence survivors to build a new life, like with job, housing, everything on their own. Like, is it credit scores or having a deposit for an apartment or is it getting transportation,” she asked.

“We can phrase that as something like, the intern shall increase knowledge of concrete obstacles to emancipated living through the course of the internship, which will be assessed by intern’s composition of an essay not to exceed five thousand words detailing three or more specific practical life roadblocks to escaping a domestic violence situation permanently,” I said.

“Good, good, say that again, I have to type it out. I can do a paper on that, or I could do a slide deck. What do you prefer?”

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