Harmony

by Carolyn Parkhurst

  You have an answer immediately, as easy as “Mr. Bryan Adams,” but this one is yours alone. “What’s life without risk?” you ask. It’s the first part of a call-and-response that dates back to your college days.

  He’s ready with the next part: “How bad could it be?”

  And you bring it home: “You’ve gotta do something.”

  This is the man you married: for the first two months that Tilly was at her new school, Josh worked every night to create a “mystery dessert” to put in her lunch. Tilly would give him vague yet terribly specific instructions—“something with green apple frosting” was one—and he’d figure the rest out from there. At least two or three times a week, he’d end up going out to the supermarket at ten o’clock at night, hunting down specialized ingredients. For the green apple frosting, he ended up buying flavored syrup from the cocktail mixers aisle. But he was fully prepared to melt down Jolly Ranchers, if necessary.

  By the time the waitress returns to take your order, the two of you are chatting easily. Nothing has changed, nothing’s been settled, but you know now that the rest of the night will be okay. You’ll drink your beers and eat some greasy bar food, and you’ll talk about Bananarama. (“Did you know that one of them is married to Andrew Ridgeley from Wham!?”) When you’ve had enough, and you’re sure the kids will be asleep, you’ll go back home and pay the sitter and sit together for a while on the couch. Sex is a possibility, though not a certainty. Eventually, you’ll lie down together in a bed that keeps you both safe from allergens, and you’ll rest your aging bodies together.

  chapter 14

  Iris

  June 8, 2012: New Hampshire

  I’m sitting at a table in the empty dining hall with Janelle, who’s helping me sketch out the new Camp Harmony logo for the sign. It’s Friday morning, two days before the first group of Guest Campers (also known as GCs) arrive; they’ll be getting here around lunchtime on Sunday.

  The logo is really good, if I do say so myself, since I’m the one who designed it. Well, mostly. I mean, Janelle was technically in charge of the project, because she knows about graphic design, but she pretty much left it up to me.

  So here’s what it looks like: it’s a pine tree, surrounded by a circle of stars, and there are thirteen stars total, to represent the thirteen members of our Core Family. I don’t know, it probably sounds cheesy when I try to describe it, but I think it’s going to look awesome when we’re done. And Scott said it was exactly what he wanted.

  “So, okay,” says Janelle. “Let’s talk about colors. We’re thinking about white lettering, and sort of a medium blue for the background, right?”

  “Yeah, I want it to look like it’s nighttime. But Scott doesn’t want it to be too dark, or it’ll be less visible to people driving by.”

  “Right. Same thing goes for the green, I think—we want to make it brighter than the color of a real pine tree.”

  “That sounds good,” I say. Janelle has a good eye for colors. I’ve noticed that her clothes are brighter than any of the other adults’ at camp. Today, she’s wearing a halter top with a red and pink pattern; I wouldn’t expect those shades to go well together, but they do.

  “Okay, cool,” she says, making a note on a piece of paper. “And yellow for the stars. Scott’s going to go to the paint store after lunch, so let’s plan to get started later this afternoon.”

  “Can I go with him?” That would be really fun, I think, getting to pick out the colors myself.

  She shakes her head. “Sorry, baby. The rule is that kids stay at camp, at least for the time being. Adults, too, as much as possible.”

  I stare at her. I’ve never heard that rule before. “You mean we’re not allowed to leave?”

  She laughs. “Well, don’t say it like that. Nobody’s keeping you prisoner. It’s just . . . well, okay. You know, the reason we’re all here is because we want to create a different kind of environment for you guys, right? So we figure it’s best if we give you time to get used to it.”

  “Like for . . . therapeutic reasons?” I ask. My mom and dad and Scott are always throwing around phrases like that when they talk to each other. But I never know: are they talking about me, too? What about the kids who don’t need therapeutic reasons for stuff?

  Janelle tilts her head and sits back a little. For a minute, she just looks at me, thinking. “You know, sweetie,” she says finally, “your parents didn’t come here just because they thought it would be good for Tilly. You know that, right?”

  I just shrug and look down at the piece of plywood we’ve been sketching on. Because actually, no. No one’s ever said that to me. I thought that Tilly was the whole reason we were here.

  “Iris?” says Janelle. She reaches out and gently pushes my chin upward so she can see my face. “You must feel pretty left out, huh?”

  I sort of shake my head, because that’s not exactly . . . well, I don’t know. Maybe it is. Up until we came here, it was always Tilly who seemed to get left out of stuff. She was the one who had to go to a weird school and had to go home and lose all her privileges if she acted up somewhere. But here, I’m realizing, everything’s a little bit upside down.

  “Listen, sweetie,” Janelle says. “It’s true that the reason this particular group of people got together is that we’ve all got kids who have issues. But every single plan we’ve made, every single conversation we’ve had, has been about what’s going to work out best for all our kids. So this is not just, Iris can’t go to the paint store because we don’t want the kids with issues to feel left out. You know? This is all of us saying, for right now, the kids stay at camp, because that’s what we think is best.”

  I nod. I have a lump in my throat, just out of nowhere.

  “Good. But listen, I’ll tell you what. The store’s not that far; I bet Scott would be willing to make two trips. How about I ask him to go and get some color swatches and bring them back here, so you can pick?”

  “Yes! Thank you. That’d be great.” I’m almost laughing, I feel so much better.

  “Okay, then,” she says. She’s smiling. “See? Every problem has a solution.”

  While we’re putting away our supplies, my mom comes in with Hayden. Different grown-ups have been taking care of him for a little while each day, so that he gets more comfortable being away from his parents.

  “Hey, sweetness,” says Janelle. She kneels down on the floor, so that she’s on Hayden’s level. He makes a big squawking noise when he sees her and runs over. He doesn’t hug, I’ve noticed, not with his arms. But when he gets to Janelle, he rests his forehead on her cheek, which is really kind of sweet.

  “He do okay?” she asks my mom.

  “Oh, yeah—we had a good time. I let him organize all my pens by size and color.”

  Janelle laughs. “Now that is a party. I bet he loved that.”

  “Oh, he was thrilled.” Mom puts her hand on my shoulder. “So how are the sketches going?”

  “Really good!” I say. I hold up the plywood so she can see it better.

  “Oh, wow,” she says. She squints and leans a little closer, taking a good look. “That’s amazing.”

  Hayden wanders over to me. “Da,” he says, pointing at the picture. “Da.” I have no idea if he’s trying to say something specific, or if he’s just making any sound he can.

  “Da,” I say back, because I’ve noticed that his parents do that and Scott, too: repeat back whatever he says. He smiles a big smile and reaches out to grab my arm, which is a little gross because his fingers are wet from being in his mouth. But I let him do it.

  “I may be crazy,” says Janelle, “but I swear he’s been vocalizing more since we got here.”

  “You know, I was thinking that, too,” says my mom.

  “Is that good?” I ask.

  “I think so,” says Janelle. “I mean, it must be, right? But really, who knows? A hop
eful mom can talk herself into anything.”

  • • •

  After dinner, Scott gets up to make announcements, like he always does. “Great work today, everybody,” he says. “Our salad tonight was made from the very first lettuce we harvested from our garden.”

  The grown-ups all clap and make little cheering noises. Ryan calls out, “When we got married, you promised me my harvesting days were over.” Everyone ignores him. Is that a Simpsons quote? I don’t even know.

  Scott continues. “We also made good progress today on the camp sign—which is turning out great, by the way, thanks to Iris and Janelle . . .”

  I smile and duck my head down, hoping I look humble, while the adults clap again.

  “. . . and thanks to Rick, for taking care of the plumbing problem in Guest Cabin B.”

  While he’s talking, I gather up my utensils and place them carefully across my plate, so I’ll be ready to get up and clear my dishes when he’s finished. Free time after dinner is my favorite part of the day, so I want to be ready to go.

  “Now I’ll let you all go in a minute,” Scott says, and I look up quickly, wondering if he saw me neatening up my stuff. “But there is one more thing I want to talk to you guys about first. The adults know about this already. It’s about the topic of consequences and discipline.”

  The kids all start groaning and complaining, and Ryan wails, “Oh, why do my actions have consequences?” I join in with everybody, even though I’m not the kind of kid who gets a lot of consequences for my behavior.

  “Yeah, I know,” says Scott. “Nobody’s favorite topic. Not even parents and caregivers, despite what you may think. And up till now, we’ve been doing fine just handling problems as they come up—which, by the way, has not been often. But we wanted to get something official in place before the first group of GCs gets here. So starting tomorrow, we’ll be instituting something called After Dinner Block, or AD Block for short.”

  “Let me guess,” says Tilly. “You’re going to make us eat dinner again, but this time it’ll be poisoned.”

  Most of the grown-ups laugh, including Scott. The thing is, she’s not really being sarcastic. Some part of her is actually worried that this is what they’re going to do.

  “That would be a little extreme, don’t you think?” asks Scott.

  “I guess so,” says Tilly, even though it was probably a rhetorical question. Also, she doesn’t sound convinced.

  “All it will be is a little extra work—cleaning up the dining hall and whatever small tasks need to be done—plus a chance to talk about whatever happened to get you there.”

  “What does get you there?” asks Candy.

  “Good question. And I’m sure you’ll all be happy to know that I’ve made a lame little acronym to help you remember what rules you’re supposed to follow.”

  He drags over the easel with the big pad of paper on it and turns to a new sheet. Then he writes the word “SPARK” in big letters, going down the page.

  “Spark!” says Charlotte. She always gets all excited when she can read a word.

  “Yep,” says Scott. “SPARK. I can tell you all that I spent the better part of last night trying out combinations, and I’m sorry to say that this is the best I could come up with. I tried for ‘camp,’ I tried for ‘harmony,’ but these things are harder than they look. So here’s what we’ve got.”

  He goes down the list, pointing at each letter as it comes.

  S is for safety, which always comes first.

  P is for participating and following directions.

  A is for acting and speaking appropriately.

  R is for responsibility, as in taking responsibility for your actions. And

  K is for kindness and respect.

  I lean over to Tilly. “I think he means ‘kindness and kespect,” I whisper. She giggles, and my mom looks over at us and puts a finger to her lips. Scott looks around the group. “Any questions? Pretty basic stuff, right? It’s really just about making good decisions.”

  I can feel Tilly straightening up next to me, her body getting tense. By the time she raises her hand, she’s already in mid-sentence.

  “If you hit somebody, does that count as not being safe or not being respectful? Or maybe it’s not acting appropriately.”

  I feel like rolling my eyes (but I don’t, because I know what it means to be respectful). Tilly’s always weird about rules. She immediately starts looking for loopholes and asking what happens if you take everything to the most insane extreme. It’s like how she asked if they were going to punish us by making us eat poisoned food; she wants to figure out if there’s some type of circumstance where the consequences would be to kill her or to put her in prison forever or something.

  She starts to say, “Or maybe it’s not following directions, because—” but Scott cuts her off.

  “Tilly, it doesn’t matter what category it falls under. You know it’s wrong, right?”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  Scott puts up his hand like he’s saying “halt” and he raises his voice to talk over her. “So don’t do it. That’s what I mean about making good decisions.”

  “But what if there’s something that doesn’t fit into any of the categories, like . . .” She stops talking while she tries to think of an example.

  Scott takes the opportunity to try to get things back on track. “Tilly, if there’s anyone who can find a way to work around the rules, it’s you. But we’ve just got to work together on this and trust each other to be fair, okay? These SPARK things are just guidelines.”

  “Okay, well, what if you do something that breaks one of the SPARK guidelines, but it’s for a reason that’s good? Like if you hit someone because their clothes are on fire and you’re putting them out?”

  Scott’s laughing and shaking his head by this point. My dad says Tilly would make a good lawyer, because she’s so good at this kind of nitpicking. I think he’s wrong, though. I think she nitpicks because she doesn’t really understand why we have rules at all. And because she doesn’t understand them, she worries she won’t be able to follow them.

  Finally, Scott puts his hand up again and says, “Tilly, if we keep going like this, we’re never going to get to the candy bars.”

  That gets Tilly’s attention, and everyone else’s.

  “Candy bars?” she asks.

  “Yeah, I said candy bars.” Scott’s grinning. “Anyone who gets to the end of the summer without ever being assigned to AD Block will receive three candy bars of their choosing. And I’m not talking about gluten-free, low-fat, no artificial flavors and colors candy bars. I will personally go out to CVS and buy you any three regular old, rot-your-teeth, bad-for-you candy bars that you want.”

  Tilly can’t even leave this alone. As we all clear our dishes and walk out of the dining hall, she’s hovering around Scott, asking, “What if we want a kind of candy that doesn’t come in a bar?” and “Isn’t giving us candy totally the opposite of what all your goals are?” He’s letting her chatter and answering her questions when there’s a pause. I walk a little faster to catch up with my parents.

  My mom takes one of my hands, and my dad takes the other. I remember when I was little, I used to have them swing me back and forth when we were walking like this. I’m way too big for it now, but back then it seemed like the most fun thing ever.

  “So have you got your candy bars picked out?” my mom asks me.

  “I’d probably get a Twix and a Reese’s, and I don’t know what the third one would be.”

  “If it were me,” Dad says, “I’d get all PayDays.”

  “You’re weird,” I say.

  Tilly comes running up and takes my dad’s other hand.

  “This is so awesome,” she says. “I can’t even decide. There are so many that I like.”

  If you can make it through the summer without AD Block, I
think but don’t say. But then she says it herself.

  “I mean, I probably won’t get the prize,” she says. “Let’s be realistic here.”

  “Hey,” I say, leaning forward so I can see her around my dad. “You can do it.”

  And who knows? Maybe I’m not even lying.

  chapter 15

  Alexandra

  November 2010: Washington, DC

  The second time you hear the name “Scott Bean,” it’s from the mom of one of Tilly’s classmates. At a parents’ potluck at the start of the fall semester, you speak to a woman whose son (Asperger’s, anxiety, various food allergies, and celiac disease) is in Tilly’s class, and she mentions a parenting newsletter she’s recently signed up for, something called “Harmonious Parenting.”

  “It’s just really commonsense and down-to-earth,” she says. “I almost always find something useful in it.” She takes out her phone and emails you a link, there and then. Which is how, two months later, you find yourself standing in a meeting room at a public library, waiting to introduce yourself to Scott Bean himself.

  It’s still a few minutes before seven, and he’s got you all engaged in some forced mingling. It’s a good-sized group, maybe a dozen people, more moms than dads. Small enough to feel relatively intimate, but big enough that you don’t have to say much if you don’t want to, though it’s already looking like Scott Bean is the kind of guy who encourages participation.

  He’s good-looking, in a character-actor-but-not-quite-leading-man way. Dark hair, sculpted into place with some type of guy-product, intense gray eyes, and a supremely sympathetic and welcoming aura. But whatever. You’re not here to find a boyfriend.

  You’ve done some Googling, naturally. He’s from Montana, originally, went to a Big Ten school. He has training in education and speech pathology. Your age, but he doesn’t seem to be married or have kids of his own. Which raises a couple of question marks for you, but you’ve met enough good childless teachers (and enough bad parents) to know that raising kids isn’t necessarily a prerequisite for understanding how they work.