Just Another Kid (26 page)

Another pause, and Lad grew introspective. “That’s not what I meant to tell you,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to get sidetracked.” Pause again. “I guess I just wanted to explain why I was so frightened. I just wanted to be good for my teacher. You know how you are at that age. You want people to like you.

“Anyway, we were doing this particular worksheet. One of the words to put in the blanks was ‘carry,’ and I’d stuck it in the wrong sentence. The teacher came along and leaned over me and said, ‘What word is this?’ And I’d answered, ‘Carry.’ And she said, ‘Carry doesn’t belong in this sentence, does it? It doesn’t make any sense. What does the word “carry” mean?’ And she waited for me to tell her. But I couldn’t. I mean, I knew what carry meant, but I couldn’t say it. So she asked me again. And again. And again. I was starting to get upset. I wanted to tell her, because I wanted her to know I wasn’t dumb. I
knew
. But I couldn’t say it. And she just kept asking and asking, without letting up. I knew I was going to cry and I felt really embarrassed. There was this unsaid thing in first grade that only babies cried, and it was very important to never cry in front of the other kids if you could help it. But she kept saying, ‘Come on, Ladbrooke, you’re a big girl. You know a little word like that, don’t you?’ And I
did
know. That was what was so awful. But I couldn’t say it; I just sat there like a dumb bunny. Then right out of nowhere, without any warning at all, she brought her pointer down on my desk. Right in front of me, right across my paper really, really loudly. It alarmed me so much, I wet my pants.”

Ladbrooke shifted slightly in her chair and drew her arms in around her. She looked over. “To this day I can feel the humiliation of that moment.”

“What I did with Mariana wasn’t the same kind of thing, Lad. Mariana’s not afraid of me. I wish she were sometimes. But she
can
do all the work in her folder. She was just horsing around.”

Ladbrooke frowned. “That’s not the point.”

“What is?”

Still the frown. “I don’t know exactly. How to say it, I mean. But it’s not whether or not she can do it. Or if she’s horsing around. It’s treating someone like that.”

I regarded her.

She shrugged. “I don’t like to think of you doing that kind of thing, Torey. You’re a better teacher than that.”

Picking up her felt-tipped pen, Ladbrooke returned to her work. I sat a few minutes longer, watching her, and then finally went back to what I’d been doing. We worked in silence for a very long time, perhaps forty-five minutes or more.

“Torey?”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask you something?”

I was still writing. “Yes, of course.”

“Will you tell me the truth?”

“If I can.”

“Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”

Lifting my pencil, I looked over at her. “How do you mean?”

“The way I am.” She paused. “I’ve been thinking about what I was telling you earlier. I can remember so distinctly sitting there and
knowing
what that word meant, but not being able to make myself say it. It wasn’t there to say, if you know what I mean. Is everyone like that?” She paused again and leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “Or is there something wrong with me? You’ve got to be really honest with me, because I think I need to know.” She searched my face a moment, but before I could respond, she continued on. “It seems to be the way I think. I mean, not what I think, but how I think. And how I talk. Because, like sometimes, I just … it just … what? Stops? Freezes? Or maybe it was never there to begin with. I don’t know. But I keep watching everyone else and they don’t seem to have this kind of problem. You don’t. Tom doesn’t. Cripes, nothing stops Tom from talking. Is it just personalities, do you think? Am I inhibited or something? Tom says I’m mentally frigid. And although I’d hate to admit it, that’s what it feels like sometimes. Is he right? Or is it some kind of deep-down emotional problem that I don’t know anything about, like maybe down in my subconscious or something? Like Shemona’s got, only different. Is it that? What do you think? You’re the expert in these kinds of things. What’s your opinion?”

So I told her. I said I thought she had some kind of organic disability that made verbal expression difficult and unpredictable, that this unpredictability had caused a lot of tension and anxiety for her, that the anxiety had magnified the effects of the disability, and that these together had sent out tentacles into many parts of her life. Ladbrooke listened intently, her brow furrowed, her eyes never leaving my face.

“Has anyone told you anything like this before?” I asked.

Pensive for several seconds, she then slowly shook her head. “Not really. I’ve been told I have emotional problems, that that’s what caused it. That psychiatrist I told you about before—the one we saw when Leslie was being diagnosed—said it was just a hysterical reaction. I’d told him about this, about how I felt like I didn’t talk as well as other people, and he said I could talk if I wanted to, that I just thought I couldn’t. He said I used silence as a defense to keep from facing my problems.”

“And what do you think?” I asked.

“I wasn’t using it to keep from facing my problems. It
was
my problem.”

She fell abruptly silent. Bringing up one hand, she began to energetically chew the thumbnail. Eyes down, she gazed thoughtfully at the tabletop. “On one hand, I’ve been desperate for years to ask someone who knows about these things. If I’m honest, I’ve got to acknowledge that’s why I ended up volunteering for this job. Because I thought I might find out. I
need
to find out. I need to understand what’s going on better. But at the same time, I’ve been scared to. I’ve been frightened to death that if I ever did find out, it would just confirm what I’ve always pretty much assumed the answer was going to be.”

“Which was what?”

Tilting her head to one side, she gave a slight shrug and kept her eyes averted. It was an oddly poignant gesture. “That I’m just not very smart. That I think this way because this is the way dumb people think. And talk. Or rather, don’t talk. I’ve always had the feeling that maybe it’s just been some kind of idiot savant thing that I was so good at math and science. Just a fluke, you know? I’ve felt even more like that since I had Leslie, because I’ve seen how she can be so gifted in some ways and still be so totally out to lunch. I’ve just assumed she’s gotten it from me.”

My heart melted as I listened to her. She spoke in such a soft, matter-of-fact manner. What an evaluation to be carrying around inside oneself.

“You’re not dumb, Lad. Idiot savants don’t ponder about their condition. They don’t hold down research positions at Princeton. There’s nothing wrong with your IQ.”

She sighed quietly.

“I’m not just saying it. You’ve asked my professional opinion and that’s it. There’re plenty of things for you to worry about, but your IQ isn’t one of them. Neither is the fear that you’ve given Leslie her handicap. In her case, I’m afraid Fate was just in a malevolent mood.”

Ladbrooke continued to regard the tabletop. She simply stared at it, bracing the side of her head with one hand.

“I’m not saying I have all the answers either, kiddo. No one does in these kinds of things. But having you with me all these months and seeing how things go for you, I’d be very surprised if this wasn’t a physical problem. That’s not to say there haven’t been emotional side effects. It’s no secret to either one of us that you’re being eaten alive by anxiety on occasion. And there’s plenty of other things causing you grief. But for the most part, I think it’s your inability to express yourself easily that’s setting you up for the emotional problems and not the emotional problems making you unable to talk.”

Ladbrooke was chewing her nails again. Removing her hand from her mouth, she examined her fingers thoughtfully. She picked at one. Then cautiously, she nodded. “Okay. If what you say is true, then what? What can be done about it?”

“Well …”

She looked over.

“This is the hard part. I’m afraid I don’t have any answer. Except learn to accept it. Come to terms with it as a part of your physical self—your body—that just doesn’t work quite as well as it should and learn to live with that fact, the way epileptics or diabetics do.”

She said nothing.

“Probably the thing to concentrate on is lowering the stress and getting rid of the panic you feel when you find you can’t talk as easily as you’d like.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Yes, I’ve got to admit you’re right about the panic. I hadn’t realized I was being that obvious. I’ve tried to keep it to myself because I know it’s just in my head. I know it’s just me—being stupid. But Jesus, Torey, sometimes I feel like I’m having a heart attack, I really do. I think I’m going to die.”

“It happens quite a lot, doesn’t it?” I said.

She nodded.

“Has it been going on for a long time?”

Again she nodded. “Yeah. For years and years now.” She sighed. “All it takes is strangers.”

A small pause came into the conversation. I momentarily lost myself in thought, pondering what it must feel like to experience such agony in the kind of special encounters I normally didn’t even give full conscious attention to. Which in turn led me to thinking what hard work her academic accomplishments must have been, not only in terms of her learning problems, but also emotionally.

“How on earth did you do your doctorate?” I asked.

“I was okay with that,” she said. “It was all in an area I’m good at, so I never had any problems.”

“I wasn’t thinking so much from an educational point of view. I was thinking of your oral exams for your dissertation.”

“I knew my examiners pretty well. And I
did
know my material.”

“I’m sure you did, but it must have been a nerve-racking experience nonetheless, with your examiners asking questions and your having to defend your research orally. Did you drink?”

A faint, sheepish smile followed. “I took Valium. About fifteen milligrams, as I recall. I was hardly awake.”

“I see.”

The smile faded, and she shrugged. “That,” she said softly, “and I slept with my advisor.”

Ah, well, I didn’t have much of an answer to that.

“But I
did
know my material. It wasn’t cheating. Not really. I’d earned the doctorate. I just needed to make sure I got it, that’s all.”

O
ver the next several days Ladbrooke and I spent a vast amount of time discussing her problem with expression. Once the topic was opened, Ladbrooke seemed to have an insatiable need to explore it. Mostly, she wanted to talk about the experience of being trapped inside a brain that refused to cooperate. Episode upon episode came flooding back, and she wanted to relate all of them in minutest detail. What rose from this sudden flood was the poignant specter of an unwilling captive, locked inside a cage no one else saw. Isolated, unable to make herself understood, frenzied by the humiliation of perpetually being thought stupid, she’d grown angry both with herself and with others. And she sought relief where she could find it. Considerably before she mentioned discovering alcohol, she had found another powerful weapon: her appearance.

This was the first time Ladbrooke ever spoke directly of her beauty, the first time she ever acknowledged it as a notable factor in her life. She didn’t feel beautiful, she said flatly. An empty box with pretty wrapping. But it was there. It was something to use, something to assuage the terrible helplessness. In the end, I could tell that it had become just one more expression of her frantic anger, as she enticed men to give her love and then despised them because they never saw the worthlessness she felt. Listening silently, I realized that perhaps this was the source of Tom’s powerful hold over her. Her beauty hadn’t blinded him. He was only too willing to confirm her own opinion of herself.

I could appreciate Ladbrooke’s need to recount all of this and found it interesting that, once we got onto the subject, she was anything but inarticulate. Alone with me in the privacy of the classroom, she could reconstruct all those terrible little moments with wrenching eloquence. However, after the first few days of listening to her, I wanted to make sure something constructive came out of it. All this insight wasn’t worth much if it didn’t change things for the better.

My two main concerns were closely related. The first was to develop some way to help her cope with her anxiety attacks and eventually curb them, as they were considerably more debilitating than her unexpected moments of speechlessness. The second was to get Lad to realize that the methods she’d already come up with to cover the panic and avoid unnecessary interactions were almost as unpleasant to others as her anxiety was to her.

We talked then about relaxation techniques and other methods commonly used with phobics. I reminded her of some of the things I did with Dirkie, who was also prone to panic attacks. But beyond these, I admitted that mostly it was going to be a matter of getting back into social situations and just plowing on through. An inelegant solution, I’d called it, a term used on me years earlier when I’d confronted a phobia myself. I told her about that too. And inelegant as it was, the method worked. If you plowed through long enough, you got over the disabling anxiety.

I also brought up the other matter: the impression she gave people when she tried to save herself from panicky situations. Interestingly, for all her perspicacity regarding her own situation, Ladbrooke had surprisingly little insight into how her behavior affected others. I had noticed this shortcoming on other occasions, particularly in regard to her relationship with Tom, but it was more marked here. On one level she did appear to realize that she projected a cold, thoroughly hostile image. But on another level, she seemed genuinely amazed that people had believed that was how she was. I’m not
really
that way, she’d replied, miffed. Why did everyone insist on taking things so literally? I explained that that was just the way people were, that in general, all of us tend to accept what we see as what’s true. But Ladbrooke, still too desperate for understanding herself, had none to squander on other people. So I let the matter drop for the time being.

Toward the middle of March, Tom was taking Leslie and his other two children upstate to visit his mother. They were planning to be gone five days, and Leslie was due to be out of school from Wednesday to Friday of that week. Ladbrooke was staying home, openly grateful to have her work in the classroom as an acceptable excuse. Knowing that Ladbrooke had no commitments over the period, I thought I’d ask her if she wanted to join Carolyn and me for one of our evening swims at the spa. It seemed like a good idea at the time, a friendly gesture. I knew Ladbrooke had been slightly envious of Carolyn’s and my frequent evenings together and the silly things we got up to. This seemed a good opportunity to include her. Moreover, I thought we could kill two birds with one stone and provide Lad with a chance to cope in a slightly broader social situation. The relaxed, distracting atmosphere of the swimming pool would be, I hoped, less threatening than that of the teachers’ lounge.

After discussing it with Carolyn, I did ask Ladbrooke, who accepted the invitation readily, a surprised smile on her face. I apologized ahead of time for the facilities, which really weren’t very spectacular even by my rather undiscriminating standards. And I explained that our routine was pretty much a do-it-yourself affair. I tried to get a mile’s worth of laps in before we degenerated into just lounging around the whirlpool and chatting. Carolyn, however, usually felt less energetic and spent most of her time treading water.

I hadn’t anticipated any problems when I’d first thought of asking Ladbrooke. The invitation had been extended purely in the spirit of friendship, and I’d counted on Lad’s feeling more at ease than in previous social situations and not letting the side down. However, by the time Friday rolled around, I found myself overwhelmed with misgivings. I’d tended to forget how truly unpleasant everyone else found Lad because we didn’t interact much with anyone else at school and it had been so long since I’d felt that way about her myself. Now, suddenly, the memories were very vivid. What if Ladbrooke didn’t cooperate? What if she kept her old, bristly, hostile guard and made Carolyn thoroughly unhappy I’d invited her? This thought for my own possible discomfort concerned me much more than the possibility that Lad might grow uneasy herself or panic. Agonizingly tense by the time we arrived at the spa, I found myself wondering how the heck I got myself into things like this when it would have been a lot less trouble to stay home and watch TV.

I can only assume that my anxiety accounted for assorted other silly behaviors on my part that evening. For instance, after years of feeling fairly satisfied with my body, I found myself unexpectedly self-conscious beside Lad. Covertly, I watched Ladbrooke as we changed, and all the while I compared bits and pieces.

Ladbrooke further aggravated things by being in better shape than either Carolyn or I. She went off the diving board into the water and swam away like a fish, while Carolyn and I just stood there, trying to look skinny. This was no small disillusionment to me. Here I was, straight as an arrow, while she abused her body mercilessly—and this was the reward I got?

She then quickly snatched from me the one small gem in my crown. Swimming had been a hard-won skill for me, something I’d learned in later years and had never found particularly natural. Yet, I’d persevered, and the fact that I was one of the better swimmers among the regulars at the spa had always pleased me tremendously. But Ladbrooke was very obviously superior. Joining me for the laps, she effortlessly passed me and was sitting with Carolyn on the edge of the pool when I finally dragged myself out. Generally disgruntled, I returned to the water and kept swimming until at last I was too tired to care about anything.

Afterward, we all sank gratefully into the whirlpool. I leaned back against the jets and let them massage hard-worked muscles. Ladbrooke lowered herself into the deeper part, her long hair spreading out around her in the water, making her look like one of the girls in the Maxfield Parrish paintings. Only Carolyn seemed full of chat. She launched into a hilarious account of her tortuous efforts to get one of the children in her class toilet trained. Always a first-rate storyteller, she proved very funny that evening. The rather poopy humor of the tale left all of us giggling like schoolgirls.

Then Ladbrooke came up on the bench beside me. Leaning her head back against the edge of the whirlpool, she closed her eyes. We all drifted into companionable silence for a few minutes.

Carolyn looked over. “So, Lad,” she asked, “what do you think of us? Do you like our kind of work?”

Ladbrooke opened her eyes. She glanced briefly in my direction before looking past me to Carolyn. She nodded.

Carolyn didn’t say anything further.

“Yes, I like it,” Lad said. “I’ve learned a lot.”

“Would you want to go into it?” Carolyn asked.

“I don’t know.”

Carolyn smiled amiably. “Well, at least that’s honest.”

“I kind of like being in there with all that goes on,” Ladbrooke replied quietly. “If you know what I mean. It all sounds odd, when you’re on the outside, but when you’re actually in there, in with the action, it’s a lot more exciting than I thought it’d be. It’s more … more … It’s more …” She paused.

“More honest,” Carolyn supplied. “More real. More alive.”

Ladbrooke nodded. “Yes, that’s what I meant, I think. Alive.”

Carolyn grinned. “Yeah, Lad, that’s what hooks you. It’s like dope. Once you get a snort, nothing else is quite the same.”

Afterward in the dressing room, Carolyn apologized for having to hurry. We’d stayed longer than we ordinarily did, and it was Friday night. She had a date at 8:30. Ladbrooke was still drying her hair, so I sat on the long bench between the lockers and waited for her. Coming back over from the dryers, she stood over me and combed her hair, pulling it way out to the side with a wide-toothed comb to reach the ends. Then it would fall, swinging past my face, one section after another.

“What are you doing now?” she asked, as she worked on it.

“Now?”

“Tonight, I mean. Anything? You want to come over chez Taylor and have something to eat?”

“All right,” I said.

“I’m no great shakes as a cook. I’ll tell you that now. But I can manage something if you don’t mind that it’s not fancy.” She paused to pull hairs out of her comb.

“Okay.”

I sat alone in the Considynes’ cavernous living room. It was the first time I had ever been inside the house. Ladbrooke had disappeared into the kitchen, and I could hear her banging pots and pans around. So I’d been left to my own devices. Leaning my head back, I stared at the vaulted ceiling.

There was nothing chez about this place; it was definitely château. I’d never really seen anything like it up close. It felt like a church to me, with its massive, hewn beams and pitched roof. The peak of the ceiling must have been twenty feet above me. And way up there along the beams ran little tracks of spotlights that provided a soft, very diffuse form of illumination. It was attractive, but I wasn’t sure I’d have cared to carry on my normal life under it.

The fireplace was gargantuan, like the rest of the room. Dividing the living room from the dining room, it had a magnificent stone hearth that ran half the length of the room. Studying it, I was overcome with an unexpected moment’s homesickness. My tiny cottage back in Wales had an equally mammoth fireplace, born not of opulence but of the mistaken belief in days gone by that bigger meant warmer. It didn’t, of course, because all the heat went up the chimney. I expected all the heat went up this chimney too, although here probably no one noticed. Once the cottage was on my mind, however, I was unable to shake the homesick feelings. So, to keep the evening from being spoiled, I got up and went into the kitchen to see what Ladbrooke was doing.

She wasn’t kidding about her cooking ability. I found her scraping a concoction of ground beef and canned spaghetti onto two plates. The incongruity of such food in these luxurious surroundings struck me as amusing, and I smiled.

Lad smiled back. “You like this?” she asked, her voice hopeful.

I nodded.

Opening the refrigerator, she stared into it. “What do you want to drink?”

“I don’t care.”

“Six months ago, I would have suggested we wash all this down with a bottle of plonk.” Her voice was wistful. “That’s the kind of drinking I really miss.” She looked at me over top of the refrigerator door. “Do
you
want wine? There’s some in here.” She lifted up a large, half-empty jug of California white. “I don’t mind, Torey. Tom drinks it all the time. I don’t care if you drink in front of me.”

I shook my head.

“I’ve got that much self-control. It won’t make me feel bad or anything. Really.”

“No, that’s okay. Have you got milk?”

She looked back into the refrigerator. “Milk? What kind of drink’s that? I’d feel silly giving you milk.”

“Milk’s fine, Lad. It’s what I drink at home.”

We sat down at the table. Very aware of the huge house echoing around us, I was uncomfortable. I would have hated it here on my own. Even with the two of us, we created such a negligible bit of life in the silence that I’d have been happier with more light or some music or something to fend it off.

Ladbrooke, however, seemed unbothered. In fact, she was more relaxed than I customarily saw her. Taking up her fork, she tucked into the spaghetti mixture with undisguised enjoyment.

Then, unexpectedly, she giggled. “This is great. It’s just like having my teacher home to dinner.”

“I’m not your teacher, Lad.”

“You
are
,” she said with feeling. She was still smiling, clearly relishing the idea.