A Good and Happy Child (37 page)

“I’m going to the juvie place?” I said, licking dry lips.

“The other one.”

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“Forest Glen?”

He nodded.

“What about getting me a bed?”

“Your doctor twisted a few arms. For an emergency.”

Rather than jumping to my feet and screaming, I responded to this catastrophic bit of news quite coolly.

“Before I go, I want to see Richard,” I said. “At the clinic.”

r r r

Richard—tall, careful Richard, with his baggy eyes, mustache, and ubiquitous cardigan—was summoned, and while I sat in the scooped chairs in the Mental Health Clinic waiting room, Kurt stood next to Richard in the corridor and explained in soft tones and a few hand gestures what had transpired. Richard listened, wearing a poker face and nodding. Kurt approached me. He leaned down, looked me in the eye.

“Okay, George, go ahead,” he sighed.

We sat next to each other, as before. Same room. Same view of parking lot and trees. Richard and I faced each other grimly like co-conspirators, one of whom was about to do hard time. Evidently Richard’s viewed it the same way.

“You probably don’t think much of the treatment you received here.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well . . . I was forced to break your confidence. I may be getting your friend’s clinical license revoked. And now you’re being committed to psychiatric care despite my best efforts. Not exactly an A-plus.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said.

“You’re kind to say so. I’m glad you wanted to see me. After the last time . . . I wasn’t sure.”

“Kurt told you what happened.”

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“He told me his version. Do you want to tell me yours?”

I lapsed into silence. “What does it mean,” I said at last, “to have a demon come after you?”

He smiled thinly. “It’s not my area of expertise.”

“You must have some patient, somewhere, who thought
something
like that. Right?”

It was his turn to shrug. “When I worked at a hospital, yes.”

“So . . . when those patients told you about demons, what did you think?”

“I thought they needed help very badly,” he began. “And I tried to find ways the demons fit into the story of their lives.” He warmed to the exercise. “Why those voices came when they did. Did they represent a person or event they’d had trouble coping with? In your case, for instance, I’m sure they are connected to your father’s death.”

I reflected on this. “Maybe it’s all happening because my father is trying to tell me something.”

Richard shifted in his chair. He saw an opening and was trying to hide his professional excitement.

“If your father
could
say something to you,” he said softly, as he always spoke when he felt he was close to the point, “what would it be?”

“‘I’m sorry,’” I blurted. “That’s what he would say.”

“Why would he say ‘I’m sorry’?”

I shrugged. But Richard waited me out.

“Because,” I admitted, “because he didn’t take much of an interest in me.”

“What makes you say that?”

But I shrugged again. Such plain words.
My father didn’t take much
of an interest in me.
Telling Richard the truth flushed my brain with the warmth of embarrassment and relief. Just as these feelings were curdling into self-pity, Richard rescued me.

“Put it this way: What do other fathers do that your father didn’t do?”

It was a mouthful, but it helped.

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“I don’t know,” I said. “Toby’s father takes him fishing. They have a cabin down by the river. They go out there, and cook out.”

“What else?”

“They play basketball. His dad built a hoop.” I thought some more. “On holidays his father comes in and gives him and his sister Torture Sessions, where they wrestle. I know because I was there on Thanksgiving one year.”

“You don’t feel you and your father did things together?”

“Some things.”

“Like what?”

I told him about the walks.

“Anything else?”

“Not really,” I said. “My father was in his study a lot. He was doing research for another book.”

“What about?”

“Milton.”

Richard laughed. I tried to.

“That was hard for you to share,” he said, serious again.

“Yeah.” I felt gloomy now.

“So you think your father would want to apologize for that?”

“Maybe.”

I slumped over. I was wearing a thick wool sweater my father had brought back for me from England that never quite fit me properly. I felt ugly and tired.

“You said you felt your father didn’t take much of an interest in you. It’s possible that you could not spend much time together, but he could still love you very much.”

“I guess,” I said.

“Were there other things that made you feel that way—like he did not take an interest in you?”

“It’s like those meetings,” I said. “I know I’m not supposed to talk about them. The ones with Clarissa and Tom Harris and Uncle Freddie.”

“You can talk about whatever you want.”

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“I learned about my father from those guys. Things I never knew. My father had visions. He wrote a book so brave and different that people turned on him. And for me, listening to them talk, it’s like I’m hearing about this great person. They looked up to him. They talk about him like I talk about Steve Garvey.” Don’t ask me why, but I was a Los Angeles Dodgers fan and owned a shoe box full of little cardboard Steve Garveys.

“Heroic,” Richard nodded. “But?”

I frowned, suddenly struck silent.

“But he wasn’t heroic toward you,” Richard offered. I shook my head.

“How was he toward you?”

“He was either lecturing, or he was gloomy, or he would yell.”

“Would he yell at you?”

“Oh yeah.”

“When?”

I went blank. It was hard to capture a hundred little moments in a phrase.

Richard understood. “He had a short temper,” he offered.

“He used to tell me I was awkward when I would drop things. He would come home from class talking about his students, how they were brilliant. And I would say I was smart, too, maybe even smarter. And he would say I would never be as smart as them.”

“Why would he say that?” marveled Richard.

I shrugged unhappily. “Maybe they were smart.”

“But you’re only eleven,” he said.

“That’s what I said. I told him I’d be smarter than they are,
one day.
”

“And how did he respond?”

“He laughed.”

“Because you were being funny, and defending yourself.”

“No,” I said despondently. “He was laughing at me.”

Richard pursed his lips. “How did that make you feel?”

I thought hard. “Small.”

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“Small, because he had belittled you.” I nodded. “Did you also feel betrayed because your father, who is supposed to stick up for you, was putting you down?”

I nodded. “I guess so,” I said. My voice was hoarse. I suppose sometimes therapists decide you’re ready, and just come out and give you the answers.

“Your father sounds like a very conflicted person who held himself to high standards. Probably too high. When he couldn’t live up to them, he forced himself to pay a price. For instance, his trip to Central America. That sounds like a penance. A cruel one, even,” he added.

“He held deep religious convictions, so he forced himself to try to become a saint. If
you
couldn’t operate on his level, he was dismissive and harsh. He made you pay the price. But it wasn’t fair. Even if it were possible to live up to those standards—which is unlikely—you were too young. It wasn’t fair to you.”

I nodded. The tears started to flow. Richard said everything for me. I felt the oceanic crush of emotion; Richard translated it into the beautifully neutral language of psychotherapy. Richard performed with athletic skill in those moments.

“But then I hear about all the things he did,” I said, my face wet,

“the book he wrote, and the people he helped, the way he talked, making anything interesting,” I said, “and I think about the good things . . .” Here my voice cracked. “I miss him so much!”

I bawled. Great big heaving wailing sobs. The way my mother had cried, I realized, the day she found out he died. It had finally arrived. During the dry months since his funeral, I had not cried over him. I had not even realized I needed to. My mother and I were so intent on moving ahead, keeping up with school and work, we had forgotten the grief. I lost myself in the hot tears and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. I moaned deep in my chest and found myself shaking. I wiped the tears and snot on the sleeve of my English sweater and tried to stop; through the watery film over my eyes I saw Richard, an expression of cool sympathy and understanding on his features. But a g o o d a n d h a p p y c h i l d

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I kept crying, and crying, until the walls of the room seemed to fade away, and I rose out into the cold, blue dusk, over the sleepy houses and the black-boughed trees and the rolling frozen ground hidden by snow, and I hung there in the sky, eyes shut tightly, listening to whispers on the cold breezes and wishing I could disappear among them. N o t e b o o k 2 0

An Unexpected Visitor

Igazed out the window all the way home, memorizing details, storing them as visual postcards for later, like a prisoner on his way to the clink.

Preston decorated in Christmas gear. The wreaths hung across Main Street. Twinkling lights and spray-on frost in the windows of the bank. The life-size, and somewhat bizarre, painted crèche in front of the white Baptist church. Christmas generally pumped a lively and sentimental spirit into Preston. But today the sky hung heavy and low, like the belly of a bomber about to dump its payload. Only a few people trudged on the twilit streets, all bundled up, one man in a hunting cap with earflaps.

At East Preston, we turned onto Kurt’s road. Kurt took the curve gently for my mom’s sake. She sat in the front seat; her pain medication, and a few effects from the hospital, lay on the seat beside me in the back.

On the bald-headed hill, on the right, yellow grass pricked the surface of the thin layer of snow. On the left, the river seemed immobile. The enormous rope-swing tree hung dolefully over the water. We crunched up Kurt’s drive, headlights bumping as we maneu
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vered over the ruts—then came to an abrupt halt. A strange car blocked the way. A nondescript, newish red sedan.

“Does that car look familiar to you?” Mom asked. Her voice slurred through her swollen lips.

“Nope,” muttered Kurt, shifting into first gear. “Should put up a no-parking sign here.”

We inched forward. As we came round the circular drive, we saw two figures standing by Kurt’s kitchen door. One was a familiar figure, tall in a long black overcoat, standing with the aid of crutches. The other was smaller. A pair of glasses reflected our headlights.

“Who is that?” asked Kurt without killing the motor or turning off the lights. The little man raised a hand to shield his eyes.

“Tom Harris,” said my mother. “Paul’s friend.”

“Ah,” said Kurt, and turned the key.

“My plans for burglarizing the house are foiled,” called a hearty voice as we stepped from the car. “I’m Tom Harris,” he said to Kurt, limping toward him and extending a hand. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” said Kurt, shaking hands. “Excuse me.” He circled the car.

“Goodness gracious—Joan!” exlaimed Tom Harris when she emerged. “What’s happened?”

It took several minutes to help my mother out of the car. Her right arm hung in a sling; her face had been padded with gauze. Moving her torso, though, required the most effort—she could not bend without pain due to the broken ribs, so we had to, in effect, slide her out of the car and to her feet.

“Broken ribs, broken wrist, lot of bruises,” said Kurt, taking her arm. “Been a rough few days on Miss Joan, here.”

“But what happened?”

My mother murmured something. Through the gauze, and the swelling, it came out unintelligible, “Krrrr rrr.”

“I—I’m sorry, Joan?” questioned Tom Harris.

“Car accident,” said my mother, louder.

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I looked to my mother’s car—as, on instinct, did Tom Harris—

and saw it parked, whole and scratchless, in the drive.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Tom Harris said soberly.

He and his guest watched in silence as Kurt helped ease my mother across the drive. She kept her head bent, watching her feet to avoid slipping on the snow. I followed, carrying the bag and the pills. When at last she reached Kurt’s porch steps, she stopped, sighed with relief, and straightened.

“Tom,” she said, slowly and carefully, intent on maintaining her dignity. “I think you understand why I don’t ask you in.”

“I do understand,” he began, but hesitated. Clearly Tom Harris had come prepared for a fight. Finding my mother in this condition threw off his plan of attack. “I came . . . I wanted to discuss something with you. Ah . . .” He gestured to his guest, an elderly man, who waited patiently with hands folded. “Joan, this is Finley Balcomb. He was my professor at Calhoun and knew Paul very well.”

Our attention went to the man next to him. He was around seventy, stood a full head shorter than Tom Harris, and seemed underdressed for the wintry weather: he wore a light trenchcoat with a jacket and tie underneath, and his trouser bottoms were wet from dragging in the snow. His shoes—leather wingtips, in contrast to the bucket-sized galoshes Tom Harris wore on his good foot—were dead wrong for the weather, and dirty and damp from the gravel drive. His nose was sunburned. Finley Balcomb smiled sheepishly at us and raised a hand in a tentative wave of greeting. Wisps of white hair blew in the wind, and with a finger he pushed up his most noticeable feature: a pair of large, black-framed glasses that continually slipped down his small square nose. His features were doughy, collected in folds around an apologetic mouth. It was as if his whole physical being—frail little body, head like a large pea, face, clothes, glasses—had all been issued to him at random that morning, and he was trying to communicate that he knew how ridiculous he looked, and was willing to share in the joke.