Andrew and Steven

by Kenneth Wise

  Chapter 3

  The place was everything Mr. Philips had described and more. He met with Mr. Philips and Dr. Ledderman, his Psychologist, on a regular basis. They administered all kinds of tests and had interesting and intense discussions about many different subjects and many different aspects of life. Steven was learning more about himself than the professionals who worked so hard to understand and help him could ever imagine.

  Mr. Philips was most interested in how he fit in with his family and with the other kids he went to school with at home. There was a lot of discussion about how he treated his family and how he felt they treated him.

  He tried to be honest and told the Social Worker that his siblings were all older than he was, married and moved into their own homes. “The only time they even think about me is when they want something”, he said. He felt like his parents just thought of him as a distraction from their own lives. “I rarely saw them and when I did, they usually had a laundry list of things I had done wrong or things I should have done and didn’t do at all and trying to talk to them about school or asking for help with my homework usually resulted in the revelation that I should ask my teachers,” Steven had said once during one of their meetings.

  Mr. Philips also administered different types of aptitude tests and manual dexterity tests that were meant to try and help Steven find what kind of work he would like to do and what he might be suited to.

  Sometimes it was hard to think of Mr. Philips as a Social Worker, or as someone who possessed power. But he had no illusions. Mr. Philips did wield a lot of power and owned a large portion of the authority that would determine the direction of his life.

  He was like the father of the kids that lived next door. He went to work every day but none of the kids knew exactly what he did. That was true of all the fathers, even if the kids knew where their fathers worked, they really didn’t know what they did. Just looking at him, Steven would have guessed School Teacher, Architect, or Bus Driver, in that order. He was very plain looking. He was tall, but under six feet and thin as a rail. He had red hair, but it was almost blonde when the sun hit it and the steeliest blue/gray eyes Steven had ever seen.

  During one session, Mr. Philips asked, “How do you and your cousin Thomas get along?” Steven was suddenly very leery but answered, “We get along pretty well. We have done a lot of things together but his parents keep a pretty tight rein on him.”

  Philips, “That would be your Uncle Ross and Aunt Lily?”

  “Yes,” answerer Steven, “the hierarchy of the perfect family.”

  “Have you had any trouble with them?” He wanted to know.

  “Not really,” Steven said as he found a spot on the wall to stare at.

  The Social Worker said. “Steven, I thought we had an agreement to be honest with each other. Did something happen to change that?”

  “I’ve never had a problem with them, they have always treated me kindly.” Steven answered, never moving his eyes from his favorite spot on the wall. “We used to visit them a lot and I went on vacation there a few times, like a week at a time.

  Philips, after a few seconds that seemed like an eternity, “But?”

  Steven’s face turned red and he fought to hold back the emotions that seemed to well up in him far too often and with far too much intensity since he arrived here. He did his best to compose himself and spoke, “I have always been jealous of him and his family.” As soon as he said that, he was back in control of his emotions. “Everything about them is perfect and I have always felt like the wild cousin from the wrong side of town.” He could not believe the way his nervous system settled down as soon as he confessed. It was like confessing in church and feeling the weight of one’s sin evaporate into the unknown.

  The Social Worker part of Mr. Philips took over his demeanor and he began helping Steven search for answers to questions he had never thought to ask himself. “Why was that so hard to get off your chest?”

  “It’s another weakness, another failure; that I am jealous. It’s even a sin.”

  “Steven, why do you put so much weight on the things you call “weaknesses” that you think you possess?”

  “Based on the civil and criminal laws, the church teaching, school directions, family expectations and guidelines for just about any club, team, or organizations in general, I am a waste of anyone’s time. I either measure myself or others measure me against those things and I am, in very general terms, a loser.”

  Philips decided to let it go for that session and come back to it later. These kids, he knew, were like ticking time bombs and had to be defused slowly. The young people who Philips had dealt with there had been neglected, hurt, or abused in so many different ways that establishing even the smallest bond of trust with one of them sometimes seemed like a monumental task. That bond was fragile and not something to take lightly or to abuse. Steven, like most of the kids Philips dealt with, feared that opening up about even the simplest detail of their feelings just put them in position for more hurt, more pain. The professionals at The Center considered most of the kids that had come through there to be gifted, wonderful children who could conquer the world if they chose to do so. Instead, they considered themselves “damaged goods.”

  Mr. Philips was taken by surprise during one session when he asked Steven what he thought he wanted to be when he grew up and Steven answered,” My two dream jobs would be to either live on my own in the wilderness, studying nature and the footprints that humans had made on the earth, like Thoreau: or starting my own school based on the old Greek Academy model.”

  Most people did not know the depth of knowledge Steven had acquired from the studies he had undertaken on his own. Just because he was not a good student didn’t mean he was not a good learner. His learning program just wasn’t the same as the school’s.

  Every meeting caused Mr. Philip’s respect for Steven to grow. He had also determined that he would be a “duck out of water” no matter where he was or what he did. In his official notes, Mr. Philips stated that he believed that Steven’s mind worked on a different plane than that of the “normal” population, given his background.