A Safe Place for Joey (6 page)

“Ms. Answera,” Mr. Templar said, “I know this isn’t the best timing, but Mrs. MacCracken isn’t in our school very often, and I wanted you two to have the chance to meet. Mrs.
MacCracken works with Joey Stone.”

Ms. Answera peered at me through violet-tinted glasses, big as saucers. “Pleased to meet you,” she said.

“Listen, I’ll come back tomorrow before school, if that’s all right? You don’t need interruptions on a day like this.”

“Sure thing,” Ms. Answera answered amiably. “That’d be fine.”

I waved to Joey before I left, but if he saw me he
gave no sign. He slouched against the coat closet, headphones in place, eyes focused on something out of sight.

I was more concerned than ever after my visit to the school. I didn’t blame Mr. Templar or Ms. Answera, and besides, blaming the system wouldn’t help Joey. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have fought so hard to keep him in a regular class. If Joey was in special ed now,
there would be fewer kids and less confusion, and probably the same teacher as the year before.

Mrs. Stone was watering the lawn when I pulled up in front of her house.

“Thank you for taking time on a Saturday,” she said, as we walked down the front walk.

She smiled, but before she could open the door, her smile disappeared. A loud, angry, male voice shouted, “Get out of here!
Right now! Damn it! I told you a hundred times! No food in the den! I don’t care if that’s where the television is. This place is a mess! Now get that plate back to the kitchen, you little pig.”

“That’s Grandpa.” Gail Stone sighed. “The boys drive him crazy, especially Joey. Mom died early this summer, and with his blood pressure I didn’t dare leave him alone. So we sold their house and
he moved in here. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Anyway,” she said, “let’s go out back. Al will be right down.”

There was a small terrace at the far end of the yard, and Mrs. Stone motioned me to a canvas chair and handed me a glass of iced tea.

Al Stone came out from the house and across the backyard. He looked tired, thinner than I remembered. Something in his hair
glinted in the sunlight, and I stared in disbelief. The metal sidepieces of headphones identical to those Joey wore reflected the afternoon sun.

Al slipped the headphones off as he approached and shook my hand. “Good to see you. How’ve you been?”

“Fine,” I replied, still riveted to the headphones.

“Oh,” he said, following my eyes. “These? Only way to survive around here.”

“Gailllll? Where are you? Gailllll?” Grandpa stood in the back doorway, calling plaintively.

“Excuse me. I’ll just be a minute,” Gail Stone said apologetically, as she scurried across the yard.

Although the sun shone and the birds sang, I shivered in the canvas chair. It was clear that Joey’s world was coming apart, both at home and in school.

Al Stone said nothing all afternoon.
It was as though he too had turned off the world. Although his headphones were off, he was still listening to something else. He was pleasant but quiet, and either resisted or ignored every attempt I made to draw him into the conversation. Mrs. Stone and I talked, but all the important things went unsaid.

Gail Stone did not mention that she was torn between her obligations to her father
and the resentment of her husband. All afternoon she ran back and forth between them, trying to keep the peace, while we talked in snatches about what was happening to Joey.

Al Stone did not talk about the anger he felt at having his home invaded by a querulous, demanding old man – he just tuned out. He stayed at work as late as he could and put on his headphones when he got home. When I
commented on the inappropriateness of Joey wearing headphones in school, Al Stone smiled pleasantly and said that he hadn’t realized Joey wore them in school.

But I never did point out to Al Stone that his actions spoke more strongly than his words. Joey, like his father, was shutting out the confusion of his world by putting on his headphones. In fact, Gail Stone murmured as she walked
me to my car that both father and son often fell asleep with headphones in place, music blasting into their eardrums. Who knew what effect this had on Joey’s auditory processing? How was Joey ever going to make it? His world at school was a jumble of confusion; his world at home was filled with anger, resentment, guilt, and noise. I didn’t see how things could be any worse for Joey.

But
I was wrong. Grandpa dropped dead from a heart attack two months later, just before Thanksgiving, and instead of improving, things got even worse. Now Joey stopped talking almost completely. He did no homework and, according to his mother, “didn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.” Gail Stone and I talked by phone once or twice a week. She was as troubled as I was and just as confused. None of us could
figure it out. As far as we knew, Joey had been frightened of Grandpa, and it would certainly be expected that Joey would be relieved not to have Grandpa after him all the time.

I tried to talk to Joey, but he tuned me out as effectively as if his headphones were in place. He worked while he was in my office and most of his skills were still there, but he handed in absolutely no homework
and Ms. Answera reported that he did not “contribute” in class. Mr. Templar called to say that Ms. Answera had told him she didn’t think Joey belonged in a regular class.

I strongly recommended that the Stones arrange for Joey to see a psychologist, but Al Stone wouldn’t hear of it.

“Joey’s not crazy,” he said. “Grandpa was the crazy one. Joey’ll be all right now that Grandpa’s not
around. Just give him time. It’s only been a few weeks.”

I wondered if Al Stone had taken off his headphones yet. I knew that Joey hadn’t.

It was almost Christmas, a month since Grandpa had died. I put a little tree at one end of my office and decorated it with paper chains and ornaments that the children brought in. There was a small wrapped gift for each of them beneath the tree
to take home after their last visit before the holidays. My other children were all thriving. Only Joey remained cold and silent, nervously chewing his fingernails.

Just before Joey arrived for his last session before the holidays, I impulsively scratched out the lesson I had planned and decided to read to Joey instead. If he couldn’t tell me what was wrong, maybe we could at least share
a story. It was a gentle tale, and the boy in the story had small worries of his own. There was no fireplace or chimney in his house, and he was certain that Santa wouldn’t know how to find him. Finally his mother persuaded him to hang his stocking from a post at the foot of his bed and to go to sleep thinking loving thoughts. Santa, of course, found the stocking, and in the morning the boy woke
to find it fat and overflowing with toys and candy.

In the center of one page there was a black line drawing of a narrow bed with four spool posts; a bulging striped stocking dangled from the post at the bottom of the bed.

I started to close the book, but Joey, sitting beside me, pushed it open. Silently he traced the bed with his finger. I moved my hand to cover his, but he shoved
me away impatiently. Over and over he traced the drawing of the bed from head to foot.

I thought I heard him say something and I leaned closer.

“The bed,” Joey mumbled.

“What did you say, Joey?” I asked softly.

Joey didn’t hear me, or if he did he gave no indication of it. But he was surely talking, if only to himself. “On the bed. On the bed.”

“On the bed,” I repeated.
“Something was on the bed.”

Now Joey responded, nodding his head. “On the bed. He was on the bed.”

I willed myself to tune to Joey, to understand what he was saying.

I repeated, “He was on the bed.” I took a chance, adding a little more. “He was lying on the bed.”

Joey continued nodding, almost frenzied now. “Lying on the bed. Lying on the bed. Grandpa.”

Grandpa?

Suddenly Joey turned his body so that he faced me squarely. His voice was flat and cold, but he was talking directly to me, not to himself or the book. “Grandpa was on my bed when he died. I killed him.”

“No,” I said. “No, of course not. You didn’t kill him.”

“Yes,” Joey insisted. “Yes, I did. I even listened to him die.”

My eyes stayed locked with Joey’s, and he went on
talking in the same flat voice.

“See, he chased me,” Joey said. “I didn’t know he was going to. I just ran out of the TV room ’cause he got so mad when I imitated the way he yells. I ran up to my room and hid under my bed so he couldn’t get me.

“But then I heard him coming after me, running all the way up the stairs and sort of bumping along the wall. Then all of a sudden he came crashing
into my room and fell down on my bed real hard and began making these choking noises.”

The way Joey told it made it so clear. Joey’s facility for imitating and dramatizing must have infuriated Grandpa. No wonder he’d charged after the boy, forgetting his own high blood pressure.

“Then after a while he stopped and it was real quiet … and that was even worse,” Joey went on, “because
then it began to get dark and I knew I had to get out of there before Rich and Bill got home and found me under that bed. If they found me there, they’d know for sure I’d done it.”

There were three loud knocks on my office door. My next child had arrived. “Just a minute,” I called as softly as I could, never moving my eyes from Joey’s. “Go on, Joey. Don’t stop.”

“I got out,” he said,
his voice just above a whisper, “but it was hard ’cause the bed was way on top of me ’cause Grandpa was so fat, but I squeezed out and ran downstairs and turned on all the lights. The TV was already on, and so I just stayed there in front of it, real quiet.

“When Mom found him … see, Grandpa didn’t come to supper like usual, so they started calling him and then they went looking for him,
and after a while Mom found him in my room. And she began to scream and cry and yell that he was dead. That’s when I knew I’d killed him for sure. I’d been thinking he was maybe just sick. But he wasn’t, he was dead.”

The knocks sounded on the door again. “One more minute,” I called back.

“Don’t tell,” Joey said, panicking, pulling at my sleeve. “I didn’t mean to tell you.”

“Joey, listen. Grandpa was very old and very sick. He had a heart attack. Your mom told me he did. That happens to lots of old people.”

“I don’t even know when he died,” Joey said. “Maybe he was still alive when I left. Maybe if I’d called a doctor, he would’ve been all right. Besides, I wanted him to die. Sometimes I even prayed that he would. Maybe my praying made it come true.”

No wonder Joey hadn’t told anyone. He must have been terrified, lying there alone trapped underneath Grandpa while he died, later convinced that he had killed him.

Joey put his head down on the desk. I put my arms around him for a second and then I phoned his mother.

Joey stayed in my office through my next two appointments. He lay curled under a woolen afghan on the couch and either
slept or pretended to, until his mother arrived.

In the waiting room, I asked Gail Stone if it was true that she had found Grandpa in Joey’s room.

She nodded. “Why?”

“Why didn’t you say something at the time?” I asked in return.

Tears gathered in Mrs. Stone’s eyes. “I don’t know. Joey was taking it so hard I thought it would just make it worse if he realized that I’d found
Grandpa in his bed. Joey was downstairs watching TV the whole time it was going on. I think Dad must have been on his way to the bathroom just across the hall from Joey’s room. All I can think is that maybe he felt sick or dizzy or had a spell and thought he’d go in and lie down on Joey’s bed for a minute. Nobody will ever know for sure. What does this have to do with Joey, anyway? Why’d you call
me? Is anything wrong?”

The next day Gail Stone and I met in my office during her lunch hour.

“Al and I talked for hours last night after the boys were in bed,” she said. “It really shook Al up to realize what had been going on in Joey’s head and he – Al, I mean – had never suspected it.

“Al’s a good man. He works hard, he’s smart, he loves his family. He’s been true to me through
thick and thin. It was my fault – bringing Grandpa home. I know that now. I think I was still trying to please him, like I did when I was little. It never worked then either. I should have just hired somebody to stay with him, seeing that his house was so close by.

“Well, never mind,” Gail continued. “It’s over now. We’ll mend. But will Joey? That’s what we want to know. I know you probably
think we should all go into therapy, but Al’s dead set against it. He says we at least ought to give ourselves a chance first. He says he’ll talk to me, he’ll talk to the boys, but he doesn’t want to have to start talking to some stranger – at least not now. I understand that. But I have to know that we won’t lose Joey again.”

“I know,” I said, struggling for words. I did believe family
therapy would help, but not if it were forced. “How do you feel about it?” I asked.

“I’ve been thinking all night,” Gail replied. “I didn’t sleep much. I guess none of us did, except Joey. He slept the clock around, and this morning he seemed the best I’d seen him in months. Ate two bowls of oatmeal – told his dad all about Grandpa, when I would have thought he wouldn’t mention a word. I
let him stay home from school today, and Al took the day off, too. When I left, Joey was watching TV and Al was reading the paper, peaceful as could be.

“I think we can do it. Al and I go back a long way, and we’ve seen a lot of troubles along with the good times. Besides, Al’s a determined one. Once he puts his mind to something, he sticks to it.”

I thought about Joey as she talked.
He had made such progress the year before. He had turned his high level of energy toward active learning. He had stopped playing the fool, although he still liked to joke and kid around. He loved people; he was intelligent and well-coordinated; he had a good ear for music and an unusual flair for the dramatic. His strengths were all still there. They just couldn’t get through in the confusion of
school and the tension at home.