The Things I Want Most (10 page)

I was just home from work and walking along the stone path from the parking lot when I saw them together. They were far down the hill on the edge of the still brilliantly green back lawn practicing karate.

Mike's thin figure was padded up in a red protective helmet,
body guard, and gloves. Liam was hitting him, driving him, and Mike was ranting back in his overloud voice: “You can't hit hard! You hit like a girl!”

“Mike,” snapped Liam, “I keep telling you, you don't know enough, and you're not strong enough to take a good hit. And there's plenty of female black belts.”

“I know all about karate. I took karate before. You hit like a girl—girl, girl, girl.”

Bam! Over Mike went, cartwheeling with his arms and legs flopping.

I walked in the kitchen. It was steamy and good-smelling inside, with pots simmering on the stove, but Sue seemed to be boiling over. She had a harassed look on her face and was banging things around. When I asked what was wrong she said, “He's had his hooks into me all day long. Now he's started to find fault, he's started to get nasty, and he keeps telling me we're lying to him about everything.”

“How do you mean?”

“I'll talk to you later,” she said, distracted now, sniffing around at the sea of scattered pots and pans.

“What are you making?” I asked, starting to snoop under lids.

“Pasta, meatballs, salad, garlic bread, apple pie, and brownies. Deacon Carroll, Alice, and Garrett are coming over for dinner.”

I walked into the barroom and saw the china out on the table. I had forgotten about company.

“Rich, set out the glasses.”

“Okay.” I walked over to the bar and made sure I had a good bottle of scotch tucked away for Deacon Carroll, who was on medication and usually didn't drink. But I remembered him saying he wouldn't take his pills that morning so that he could have one with us and also, with a broad, wistful hint, that he was partial to scotch.

Rummaging through the bottles and glassware, I had a good
view back outside. Mike had gotten up and was warily circling Liam. I could hear their voices.

“I tripped.”

“No, I hit you. I told you you couldn't take a hit.”

“I tripped.”

Sue walked in carrying salad. “Okay. Can you go out and tell those guys to get cleaned up and changed? They're eating with us.”

When I yelled down the hill, Liam nodded okay and Mike didn't. Instead, he shouted back, “Fuck you. I don't have to get cleaned up. We're not having company. I'm staying outside.” But Liam shoved him ahead, and the two boys stumbled up the sloping grass and then inside.

I just stood there, stunned, for a moment.

As I came back through the kitchen door, Mike was yelling at Sue, “No, we're not having company You're lying.”

Composing herself, she replied reasonably, “Sure we are, Mike. Now get upstairs and wash.”

“No, I don't have to.”

Liam's arm snaked back down the stairs and grabbed Mike's shoulder.

When the door slammed upstairs, I whistled and asked Sue, “Okay, what happened to him?”

But Sue ignored me and stuck her head in the refrigerator. She mumbled something about not having enough grated cheese.

“Ah, here it is.”

“Sue!”

“All right! Ever since he got up this morning, he's been on my case nonstop. When I told him it was eight o'clock, he said it was seven fifty-nine. When I told him to get Teddy outside, he said no, the dog's real name was Teddy Bear. When I told him his white pullover matches his black pants, he said no, his red shirt matches. I noticed a mark on his arm, said it was an insect
bite, and told him to go put peroxide on it, and he said no, it was poison ivy. On and on it went all day long, and half of his language has been filthy. He's even been following me from room to room to tell me what's wrong with the things I'm doing and why he knows I'm not telling the truth about anything.”

“Well,” I said slowly, “that could be dangerous. What would he do if you told him to get out of the way of an oncoming car?”

Sue started stirring things on the stove. “I know exactly what he'd say. Before I started dinner I took him to the supermarket, and he dashed across the parking lot.”

“And?”

Sue looked exasperated, “And a car was coming. He started to argue with me when I yelled at him. The car stopped, he's okay, I have to get this dinner on, I have to stay with the stove— it gives me something to do with my hands besides strangling him. So get out of my way. We'll talk later”

The deacon, Alice, and Garrett arrived a few minutes later, and magically, the simmering jumble in the kitchen materialized into a nicely kid-out meal. I poured a bottle of red table wine, drew the deacon a large whiskey, and then we adults sat.

“So,” Deacon Carroll said, his blue eyes twinkling, “we're finally going to meet Mike. How's he doing?”

Sue answered promptly, her lips set in a thin line. “We want to talk to you about setting up some religious instruction.”

The deacon took a long sip of amber liquid and chuckled. “Ah. Doing that well, is he?”

A down-to-earth guy in his seventies, the deacon had kept the parish going when we lost to retirement the priest who had been in St. Charles for nearly twenty years, then a transfer who had health problems. Now he was patiently settling in a new young pastor. Despite the now-bleak promise in his days since his wife of over forty years, Dorothy, had been killed in a car accident,
the deacon kept doggedly putting one foot in front of the other, steadying others on with his wry sense of humor.

The boys came tumbling down the stairs. Mike looked mussed but clean, with his lank hair wetly brushed.

Sue raised her eyebrows in appreciation. “Thank you, Liam.”

“No problem.” He grinned and then walked over to take the deacon's hand. Liam and Deacon Carroll had spent many a Saturday afternoon together when the deacon was Liam's altar boy instructor, and now they laughed together as if at some inside joke.

Liam sat, and Mike, his facial tic remorseless, sullenly slouched into the remaining seat.

Sue paused with her wineglass just under her lips. “Mike, this is Deacon Carroll, and this is Mr. and Mrs. Hydecker.”

“What's for dinner?”

“Mike,” said Sue, her smile strained, “introduce yourself. Say hello, please.”

Mike ignored her. “The glasses belong on the other side of the plates.”

“Little Miss Etiquette,” Liam quipped.

“You always set the table wrong.”

“Mike, introduce yourself, please.” I tried to put as much iron in my voice as I could.

Mike knocked his water glass over, and Alice stood up to avoid getting water in her lap. Sue leaned over and fussed with a napkin. “Mike, be careful!”

“What's for dinner?”

“I think we'll say grace. Deacon, will you do the honors?”

Deacon Carroll bowed his head, and Mike shouted out, “I'm a Baptist.”

Deacon Carroll's head came back up slowly, and his eyes went frosty until he looked again at the strained, thin, twitching little face. Smiling warmly, he said, “Mike, I know many Protestants—”

“I'm a
Baptist”
Mike interrupted loudly.

The deacon patiently began again. “I know many Baptists, and they are all Christian folk, not shy about offering a blessing at meals, either. So won't you join us? We're all friends here.”

Mike just looked back with a blank-eyed stare. Then he started to yell something else, but before he got one more word out his face went dead white and his eyes rolled back.

Alice was startled and put a hand on his shoulder in alarm, but the deacon just dashed a quick look at Liam and bowed his head. “Bless us, O Lord,” he began.

When grace was over Sue whispered to me, “What happened?”

“I think Liam kicked him in the shins.”

Sue's eyes opened wide, but she managed to smile winningly at Garrett and pass him the garlic bread.

Alice was still looking at Mike with concern. “Mike, I have a little boy just like you.”

“No, you don't,” he corrected her through clenched teeth.

A couple of long, argumentative, wearing days later, Joanne picked Mike up from school, took him to Burger King for a chat, and brought him home.

When we sat down for tea, Sue began with the issue of Mike's behavior. “I don't know which is worse—the first month of nonstop talking, or this new, nasty brat who picks apart or curses literally everything we say or do.”

Joanne shrugged lightly. “It had to come—it always comes— and there's no way we could have prepared you for it. You have to look at the situation from his point of view. You've gone through a shakedown period, and now Mike has to begin relating to you. But he's interacted with literally hundreds of adults already—caseworkers, police, doctors, therapists, teachers, staff workers, foster mothers and fathers. Each one came into his
life, said what they believed to be true at the time, and then rotated away, never to be seen again. You and I had our parents, our brothers and sisters, and maybe a couple of friends and neighbors. A small group, maybe five to ten people, who stayed with us all through childhood. You get to know and trust people that way, develop long-term relationships. These children have never had that. All of Mike's experience says that you'll be out of his life in a couple of months no matter what he does, no matter how good he acts or how happy he is here. So you'll just have to settle for what you've got right now. I'm sure you'll work through it. Mike is smart—he'll come around.”

Sue shook her head. We had begun with no grand strategy regarding Mike, other than to treat him as our own child. But when you bring a child you have not raised into your home and transfer the very same expectations to him that you've had of the kids with whom you've had years to establish some mutual and very strong expectations about behavior, block by tiny block, you're totally bumfoozled when he calls you a “fucking bitch.” You just don't know what to do—at least, the first time around.

But Joanne put her hand up. “No, Sue, believe me. After a life like that, they have to believe you're lying to them, want to believe you're not being totally honest. The alternative is to be disappointed, dropped back off an emotional cliff again. I see this to a greater or lesser extent in all my kids.”

Sue shook her head again. “I can see what you're saying—I even agree with what you're saying—but I don't think it explains all of what's going on with him.” She paused to grope for the words. “This unwillingness to trust is too exaggerated—almost comically exaggerated in him. Maybe everything is. When he was talking at us, he didn't talk some of the time, he talked all the time. When he was quiet, he was quiet all the time. Now, when he's arguing, he isn't arguing some of the time, he's arguing all the time.”

What was the point Sue was dancing around?

Before I could finish the thought, Joanne crossed her arms, put her elbows on the table, and announced, “I have to be frank. We're very worried about what you two did by enrolling him in that martial arts program. You should have discussed it with us first. Mike's not all that strong—he's almost frail. He's emotionally disturbed, and we're not sure this instructor knows how to deal with special-needs children.”

Despite my initial misgivings, I had become a proponent of the training. At the very least, it seemed to promote discipline and respect, and Mike appeared to love it. He was certainly eager enough. Getting ready for the trip to karate school was about the only prompt he wasn't calling us on. Part of it, I was certain, was the ninjalike black uniform, but another aspect, perhaps more important, seemed to be the dynamics. It looked like Mike wanted to be part of a regular group of people. Still, I knew that if anybody from Harbour ever visited the school, they'd be appalled at the rigorous discipline, the almost servile ritual respect that had to be paid to the instructor, and the exposure to public ridicule. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

But that alone wasn't half of my discomfort because I could sense in the discussion to follow the seeds of insistence upon “resources.”

Harbours approach to adaptive and behavior-management issues within the child's new home was a formal extension of what we had done with our own children, rational and well thought out, and I particularly admired the detailed organization and follow-up involved. A series of meetings developed a written treatment plan that identified the most important areas of development for each child, and although I didn't recognize them at first, these areas were classified in a Medicaid terminology that allowed them to be billed for: Counseling Services (CS), Behavior Management Training (BMT), Health Services (HS), Daily Living Skills Training (DLST), and so on. Then the
professional parents were required to address the various areas identified in this treatment plan twice a week, recording a narrative of the sessions that always included some comment about the child's response. All this was posted on a blocked-out form in the parents' “logs,” which the family specialist collected at the end of the month.

In addition, The Harbour Program required parents to spend some minimum “positive” time with the child every day. This could be an outing, or just a few minutes working with the child in the kitchen. Parents had to record this experience in yet another form in the logs. Then parents were required to find some one thing to compliment the child on each day, such as doing his or her homework, acting responsibly, taking care of a pet, etc. This event also had to be recorded in a short narrative on the second form. Finally, the professional parents were required to assign a number from one to five, with one being the most positive and five the most negative for the day This, too, was recorded on the second form.

It was a tedious and time-consuming procedure, but had the enormous benefit of reminding one of what one should be doing anyway, following up on areas within which the child needed help, trying to get a little positive experience into each day, and then tracking the progress.