by Jay Sherfey
“If I refuse, cause like you say, I don’t need ’em anymore?” Jason stood to face her.
“Let’s put it this way, make it hard for us,” she nodded at the shed, “we can put the lock back on the shed door. We’ll just ask the shrink to make a house call…which he won’t. He’ll just give us what we want anyway. Remember,” she smiled. “Everyone believes you are out of your mind and that we are your one best hope of comin’ around.”
“Fine,” Jason said. He could not tolerate imprisonment in the shed anymore. “I’ll fake it.”
“Good. We have an understanding.” She picked up her coffee cup and finished it. “You’re a smart kid when you’re not rattling the walls screaming.” She started to turn away but came back. “By the way, watch your back with that Suzy. She damned near ripped a girl’s hair out and left her bleeding in a couple of places.” Lydia shook her head, chuckled, then left. A week later Jason sat for tests to find out what he could do.
Now, he sat before Dr. Lipton. It was time to make good on the deal with Lydia.
“Do you think about your parents?” Dr. Lipton was very friendly. With glasses low on his nose he looked at Jason over the tops. His hair was white, short, and thinning in front. He wore a dark blue suit with a bright, red-striped tie. Jason liked him. He felt comfortable with what he sensed of the doctor’s thoughts and regretted that he had to trick him. In the waiting room, Frank flipped magazine pages. He was worried about getting to work late.
The doctor’s question caught Jason off guard. He stopped twitching; he thought it made him look crazier. Would saying he thought about his parents everyday or lying, help the deal with Lydia?
“No. I don’t.” He lied.
“Do you remember what they look like?” The doctor scribbled on his pad. “Do you have any pictures?” He glanced up.
“No. I …I can’t remember them at all.” Jason knew he had parents like everyone else. Why couldn’t he remember their faces?
“Let’s try a different direction, shall we?” Lipton placed his pad and pen on his desk. He picked up his pipe. Tapping down the tobacco, he took out a lighter and lit it. “What have you determined about you?” He drew the flame into the bowl. Fragrant smoke filled the room.
“I know my name if that’s what you mean.” Jason grasped the edge of his seat on either side. He lifted himself slightly, uncomfortable.
“No, no.” The doctor laughed. “I hope you know your own name. I mean things like, when is your birthday? Have you attended any other schools before? Do you like to read or play a sport? That kind of thing.”
Jason felt suddenly very sad and stared at the floor. Relief from the screams and cries in his waking hours devoured his attention. The items the doctor listed never entered his thoughts.
“I…I don’t know any of those things. I just wanted the voices to go away. I can’t remember a time when I could care about anything else.”
“Well,” Doctor Lipton pointed at him with his pipe, “you seem stable right now. We will have to work on this together. You can’t go through life not knowing these simple things. For now, we will keep your medication at the current level to help with the symptoms and allow us to open your memory. I will try to track down some information on you and your family. We will meet next week and for the next number of weeks. What do you think?”
“That would be great.” Frank and Lydia will be happy with no change to the meds, he thought, and he would have someone to talk to with a calm mind. The possibility of finding family excited him. Maybe he had found the right person in the right place to open doors.
* * *
On Friday before Russ’s game, Frank dropped Jason at Russ’s house for dinner. Lydia insisted he go and attend the game with Suzy and Rachel the next day. Jason couldn’t figure her angle but he didn’t argue.
On the threshold of Russ’s house Jason found it impossible to waste anytime thinking about his foster mother. Seeing Peg Wyatt again was his priority. He stood at the opened door stunned by the glorious chaos in the Wyatt house. A wall of sound struck him first. The loud voices, the laughter, and the music shocked him, none of it the mental noise he had come to expect. This was very different compared to the museum quiet punctuated by the occasional scream at the Dubois house. Russ pulled him into the house.
“C’mon into the kitchen and say hello to my mom; then I’ll show you my room and we can kill some time before dinner.”
Jason followed Russ to the back of the house; they passed the living room on the right and the stairway upstairs on the left. Mrs. Wyatt bounced around her kitchen like a ball in a pinball machine; she sought key ingredients over the oven, pots and pans in the island drawers across from the sink, or the state of the meat roasting in the oven.
“I hope you like roast beef?” She asked when she looked up and found Russ and Jason watching her.
“I love it.” Jason was not quite sure what that was but it smelled wonderful. Lydia and Frank did not serve anything like this. Jason suddenly turned his head and looked down on Russ’s sister, sitting on the floor. “Sorry, what’d you say?”
Patti played on the floor near the island. She dressed her dolls in different hats and little dresses. She looked up at her mother.
“I think Patti wants to ask a question,” said Jason. He looked at Peg Wyatt.
It suddenly became very quiet. Russ’s mom stopped. Her expression saddened. Jason looked to Russ and back to his mother. He wondered what had happened.
“I’m sorry, Jason,” said Mrs. Wyatt. “Patti does not… can’t talk. You caught me off guard.” Jason sensed that she believed it was her fault.
“I’m sorry. I just saw her looking up at you. I thought she was about to say something.” Jason glanced at Russ for help to fix this.
“It’s OK, Jason. You didn’t know.” Mrs. Wyatt wiped her hands on a red and white checked terrycloth kitchen towel, went over to Patti, and smiled down at her. “Now my little munchkin, I bet you wanted to know about the mashed potatoes.” The awkward moment passed in an instant. She looked up over her shoulder and said to Jason, “She loves her mashed potatoes and gravy.” She cradled her daughter’s cheek in her hand, stood up, and got back to work.
“Mom, Jason and me are going upstairs.” Russ tugged Jason’s shirt.
“OK. Dinner will be ready in about thirty minutes.” She pulled a ricer down from the top shelf over the oven and checked the huge pot of potatoes boiling on the stove.
The boys retraced their steps back to the stairway and reached Russ’s room at the top of the stairs.
“I got lucky,” said Russ. “With two older and one younger sister, I get a room to myself.” Jason was amazed. The walls and the blanket on his bed were an ocean blue. Dark blue curtains hung from rods over the windows. Model airplanes twisted slowly on their wires from the ceiling. One partially completed model laid on the desk which sat before one of the two windows in the room.
“Did you do those?” Jason pointed up at the model bombers from World War II.
“Nah. Those have been hanging there since I was five. My dad did those. He actually flew a B-25 and later a B-17 in the war.” Russ looked at the planes proud of his dad.
“War?” Jason knew nothing of the war.
“Man! I keep forgetting you’re from another planet.” Russ shook his head. “World War II? Adolf Hitler? The atom bomb? Pearl Harbor?” Jason shook his head. “Let’s just forget it. But if my dad starts talking about the war act like you know. OK?”
“Yeah.” Jason walked around the room. He examined and touched everything. At the desk with the unfinished model of a P-51 Mustang fighter plane, he stopped. “Russ? I have to tell you something.” He ran his finger over the plastic wing of the plane.
“What? I shoulda warned you about Patti?” Russ sounded defensive.
“No. I just wanted you to know that your mother is…Well… kinda like me.” Jason turned and looked at his friend. Russ just stared back at him.
“You have got to be k
idding.”
“Nope.” Jason turned to face his friend. “She is not as…loud or powerful, I guess, as I am but it’s there.” He grinned, amused by Russ’s reaction. “How often does she do things for you without asking and get them right. Does she know when you’re telling a lie?”
“Damn. She always knows. I can’t get away with anything.” Russ sat on his bed shocked and dismayed.
“Your sister is better at it.” Jason watched Russ’s reaction and would have laughed if the issue were not so serious. “Downstairs in the kitchen, Patti clearly asked about the mashed potatoes but not with words. I heard her clearly and your mother picked up on it. Patti knows she is different but your mom doesn’t know that she has this ability.”
“You’re telling me that my sister and my mother can read minds? More to the point, my mind?” Russ put his head in his hands thoroughly amazed and distressed by the possibilities.
“Yes. But like I said, your mother is not that strong and doesn’t know she can do it. Patti knows.” Jason walked over and sat on the bed with his friend.
“Why don’t you bring Patti up here? She would love to play with her big brother. Believe me, I know.” Jason nudged Russ to get him moving to the kitchen. In short order, the three kids were on the floor with Shoots and Ladders open. They played quietly.
Mrs. Wyatt put the finishing touches on her dinner. She gathered up the last of the pots and pans and placed them in the sink full of soapy water. As she dried her hands and started to place the platter on the dining room table, she heard a child’s laughter. The platter dropped the last inch with a thud; juices splashed the table cloth. Peg had never heard it but knew that laugh instinctively. She ignored the food and slowly started upstairs to her son’s room. Outside the door on the landing she stopped and listened. She heard it, unmistakable.
“I climb the ladder,” said Patti, as if she had always spoken.
“Oh, hi mom,” said Russ. She stood on the threshold. He watched his mother put her hand to her mouth trying to choke back tears. They came regardless. She rushed into the room and picked up her daughter and held her.
“No cry mommy,” said Patti. She put her tiny hands on her mother’s cheeks.
“How…how did this happen?” Mrs. Wyatt looked down at the two boys stunned by her reaction.
“Not hear me mommy,” said the little girl into her mother’s ear. “So Jas’n said to blow my things. So I blow ’em and ev’r’body hear ’em.”
Dinner turned into an odd combination of tears and laughter, uncomfortable but not in a bad way. Harry Wyatt climbed up from his basement sanctuary where broken things returned fixed. He gently caressed his wife’s hand; she talked quietly with their miraculous daughter.
“First,” said Harry Wyatt, standing at the head of the table, “let me express my gratitude and our indebtedness to you Jason. What appeared to be such a small thing to you none of the best doctors could do. So…”
“OK, dad,” said Angie, Russ’s eldest sister. “Like, I’m really happy that Patti has found her voice and everything, but what about our bet?”
Angie was taller than Russ with long auburn hair like her mother. She possessed her mother’s green eyes and high cheekbones. Jason could not tell who was the prettier, her or her mother. Even the second sister, Jeena, would turn heads. Jeena sat quietly. She looked up often and smiled, as her mother engaged Patti in conversation.
“Well, Angelina, I don’t think this is the time…” Mr. Wyatt was annoyed by his eldest daughter’s lack of appreciation for what had happened.
“No, Harry,” said Peg Wyatt. “Patti and I are just fine. Go ahead and pay attention to the girls. I need you to stand in for me for awhile.” They shared a smile. Harry nodded and sat.
“OK. Who’s hungry?” The platters waltzed around the table, everyone took their fill. Patti got her mountain of mashed potatoes with gravy pouring over the top like lava on a volcano. Talk sprouted up randomly about anything and everything. They knew, however, not to disturb the quiet talk at the end of the table.
“So, was Kennedy the right choice?” asked Mr. Wyatt, as the food platters made the rounds.
“He looks good but I bet Nixon would’ve been better.” Russ loaded his plate, turned to Jason, and winked.
“What!” Angie almost tossed a spoonful of green beans at her brother. “You little…what do you know?” Angie put on a hang dog face and said, “’My wife wears a good wool Republican coat.’ Give me a break!”
“Better the crook ya know, sis,” followed Russ. He pointed his potato laden fork her way.
Jason sat and ate; the free for all left him dumbstruck. His eyes followed the discussion back and forth like a spectator at a tennis tournament. They had…something. None of the kids at the Dubois house shared it. He took each bite slowly and thought about it. The roast beef, however, distracted him. It felt miraculous on his tongue. The mashed potatoes were an adventure to his palate. This new world of flavors devoured his attention.
“The Beatles will be bigger than Elvis,” Angie spoke over everyone else. Jason froze with the last piece of meat; it dangled on his fork halfway to his mouth. Before another energetic give and take could start, he gobbled it.
“Bigger than Elvis, fine,” said Mr. Wyatt. He wiped his mouth with his napkin; then slapped it down next to his plate. “Bigger than Sinatra? I don’t think so.” Jason wondered who these people might be.
“Dad, you are so out of touch.” Angie argued. She rolled her eyes.
“What do you think Jason?” asked Russ’s father. “And, here’s the bet.” Jason nodded with the forkful of mashed potatoes in his mouth. “Angie is a deal maker. When she heard Russ had a new friend coming over she had two questions. Is he cute?”
“Dad!” A bright pink blossomed on Angie’s cheeks
“Then she asked,” he continued, enjoying his daughter’s embarrassment. “Do you wanna bet he picks my music over yours?” He turned to his daughter and grinned. “Well, is he?”
“Cuter than the others.” She held her father’s eye defiantly; then looked Jason over unabashedly. Jason felt like he stood naked before a crowd. “Which do you like best?” she finally asked.
“I…a,” he gulped a mouthful of corn, “don’t really know who they are.” The table exploded. Russ shook his head and laughed. For the rest of the evening Jason was chained to the record player in the living room; he listened to the music from the forties, fifties, and 1963.
Patti sat with her mother and occasionally looked over to Jason, communicating her thoughts. Jason responded in kind intent on “Love Me Do.” He learned two things. First, he liked Sinatra best. When he said so, Mr. Wyatt did a kind of funny dance to celebrate his win over his daughter. He rocked at the waist, side-to-side, while he turned slowly in a circle.
Russ chuckled at his dad and said to Jason, “See what I mean. This is so embarrassing.”
Angie took losing the bet better when Jason stated that he thought the Beatles would be more popular than Elvis Presley. She stuck out her tongue at her father who laughed and gave her a big hug. Angie couldn’t stay mad at him very long and smiled when he held her for a dance to one of Sinatra’s slow ballads.
The second thing Jason discovered is that there were others like him. How long until they find me or I stumble onto more of them? He held this thought and watched Mr. Wyatt and his daughter dance slowly in their living room. Before too long, Jeena cut-in. Angie graciously shared their father’s attention.
It suddenly occurred to him that these people cared about each other. That was the something that he and the other inmates at the Dubois house missed.
I care about you, Jason, whispered in Jason’s mind. He smiled and looked back over his shoulder into the dining room.
Thanks, Patti. I care about you too. Jason responded.
Patti and her mother sat cheek to cheek. Patti waved at Jason. He raised his hand and prayed he would have a chance to share this kind of moment with his mom.
* *
*
At the Dubois house while Jason sorted out the music debate Frank and Lydia stood before the kitchen sink. They looked out of the window at the empty tool shed. Frank drank coffee in his tee shirt and navy blue work pants. Lydia, dressed in her usual yellow dress, arms crossed, stared at the shed door impatient that the boy was not in it, secured.
“We got lucky ya know?” Frank turned from the window and sat down at the kitchen table.
“Meaning?” Lydia hated when Frank thought luck had anything to do with living. Her left foot tapped. She did not put much stock in luck. Lydia heartily believed in making and taking advantage of opportunities. Luck was for the lazy.
“I called the drug store after I put the kids’ lunch bags together yesterday morning.” Frank stared into his cup swirling the coffee. “The pharmacist said sudden withdrawal from the stuff the kid was taking could be life threatening. At the least, a patient would shake involuntarily for days accompanied by bouts of vomiting and diarrhea. Worst case…” Frank looked up. “He stops breathing and goes into cardiac arrest. Like I said we got lucky we didn’t find him dead.”
“So, he shoulda been sicker for longer. That what you’re saying?” Lydia turned to Frank.
“Yeah, I guess…when ya think about it.” The words came out slowly. He lost his train of thought, stunned by her lack of concern. “I should still be dumping the pail.” Or burying a body. Frank sipped his coffee.
“So, we have a little mystery.” Lydia returned her attention to the shed. “He’s suddenly a fairly normal kid after months of insanity and then doesn’t die when we stop the meds all at once.” She shook her head slowly. Things not making sense disturbed her. “Let’s keep a close eye on the boy. Maybe he might get sick again. We don’t want any undo attention brought our way.”
“His unused pills ready to go with the others?” Frank stood. He needed a good book and the isolation of his reading nook in the basement.