Silent Boy

by Torey Hayden

  I was ignored. I was ignored so thoroughly for a while that I got a little out of joint over it. And when I wasn’t being ignored, they ganged up on me. They played ‘get Torey.’ It was make Torey the butt of the moron jokes, beat Torey at this game and not just by a little – cream her. Kevin wanted to really do me in in the games, push me into crushing bankruptcy at Monopoly or cow me with five kings at checkers. I think I understood what was going on. In a deep, subconscious way what he was doing was understandable and I realized it had to happen, but on the surface, I had to admit it hurt and the games ceased to be much fun for me. I had a very difficult time not becoming hyper-competitive myself and trying to cream him back.

  During this period I had several opportunities just to sit back and watch the action because he and Jeff would get caught up together in one of their activities. When I did that, Kevin amazed me. He was such a complex character. He had altered completely over the five months we had been together, but they weren’t the subtle chameleonic changes that I was used to seeing in kids. He could, instead, alter his personality entirely. For him it was more like the turning faces of one of those mirrored globes, reflecting first one image then another. I did not believe Kevin had multiple personalities. In my gut I felt he had to be very close to being able to control these changes, that he did them with, if not malice aforethought, then at least thought aforethought. And in my deep heart of hearts I could not shake the belief that Kevin had always been one jump ahead of us. From the very beginning, he had. Even while rocking under the table he had managed to count the number of openings and closings of the observation room door. For all that I did not know about him, one thing I did know for certain: We had all vastly underestimated his intelligence and even more so, his canniness.

  Watching Kevin during these weeks, I grew increasingly uneasy. When we were back in the office alone, I tried to tell Jeff that something felt wrong to me about Kevin but my words never came out right. What exactly? Jeff would ask. Give specifics. But I couldn’t. It was just in my gut. Jeff listened to me but eventually he would just sit at his desk and shake his head when I brought the topic up. I was just jealous. Kevin was going through a very trying stage of therapy and working out some strong feelings about me and probably about his mother, he said. That was why he so persistently attacked me in the games and verbally. That was why he sided with Jeff on everything. It was understandable, Jeff said, that it would all get under my skin after a while but it was critical that Kevin have the opportunity to work these feelings through. No, I said, there was something else. But I couldn’t tell him what. The words just never formed in my head. It’s in my gut, I would keep saying to him, and he’d tell me to forget it. I made more decisions with my gut than any other part of me, he complained. I was the only person he knew who did all of her thinking with her stomach. Give it a rest.

  I remained disquieted for a while longer but then other thoughts began to take over. Jeff was right about one thing. I was jealous. Kevin seemed to grow so close to him so quickly. After all the work I had put into this kid, I hadn’t brought Jeff in to take it over from me entirely. It hurt. Rapidly he and Kevin had jokes between them and special references of which I had no part. So I had to agree; Jeff was probably right in his assessment.

  Kevin made marvelous progress at last. Maybe knowing a spirited, caring, interested man who could model appropriate male responses to things was what had been missing all along and something I clearly could not give him. My gut shifted about a little longer, but by the time the first winds of March came, I too had closed my mind to the other Kevins I had known. It was too hard to resist him and Jeff and their antics. After a while I felt only guilty for my feelings and for being such a wet blanket, so soon I joined them and then I couldn’t remember anymore what my worries had been about.

  Kevin sailed. Like a long-captive bird, he struggled to move his wings and then was airborne. Suddenly the world came alive for him. He wanted to know everything at once. What was beyond the walls of the Garson Gayer estate? What were the streets like leading up to it? How did snow form? What made a girl like you? Why does your stomach feel so funny when you’re scared? Where is India? Had I ever been there? Were there elephants there? What is it like in a rain forest? Did I think Linda, the new aide, was pretty?

  Kevin was forever on his feet in the small white room, running back and forth between Jeff and me, a book in his hands as he read some amazing fact. Look at this! Listen here! Listen to what I’ve found! Or he’d plaster himself to the window, nose against the glass. See that? See that part of the building? Do you know that kid out there? Do you know what her name is? That’s Kelly. She lives in 4D.

  His improvements quickly spilled over into other areas outside the small white room. For the first time his schoolwork progressed. He took a desperate interest in books. He wanted to learn games that the other kids played: table tennis, volleyball, wrestling. And he wanted to play with the other kids. For the very first time he actually wanted to socialize with the other children. Dana and the staff were delirious with this change.

  Jeff kept pumping Kevin full of wonderful stories about the outside world in hopes of finally breaking through that barrier, one of the last of Kevin’s great fears. The way Jeff talked, he made everywhere he’d ever been sound wonderful. Where would you like to go most? he’d ask Kevin and then tell about the zoo or the science museum or our office or the theater or the amusement park. Later, back in the office, Jeff would still be dreaming. We’d give the world to Kevin, if only he’d let us.

  There certainly was a lot to accomplish, however. Kevin was not lacking for things to work on. The one other immovable fear, besides that of going outside, was Kevin’s continuing terror of water. He absolutely refused to be submerged in even the tiniest amount. He couldn’t even be persuaded to soak his foot when he had an ingrown toenail. Consequently, he had gone God knows how long without bathing or even really washing.

  Jeff took over this segment of Kevin’s therapy and in the end he hauled Kevin under the shower, clothes and all, and stripped him there. That worked reasonably well. Kevin survived the shower. If the water didn’t run too fast and there was plenty of room to back out of it, if he wanted, and the drain worked well so that no water collected, he could tolerate it. Just barely, but he could.

  This left us with the next problem: clothes. Now that there was a way to get Kevin reasonably clean, he had nothing to wear that matched his new state of hygiene. He owned a total of three shirts and two pairs of pants, all of which had been donations to the home. So we rooted about in the Garson Gayer books until we unearthed his clothing allowance and then Jeff and I went out to the shopping center one evening, armed with Kevin’s measurements.

  What a hoot. We were hopeless together. All we did was argue. If I wanted one color, Jeff wanted another. If I thought this size was right, Jeff was convinced it wouldn’t fit. If I wanted to get it because I liked the style, Jeff groaned and said boys hadn’t been wearing that since 1934. Or it looked like a preppy golf bag with buttons. I said I thought I knew what teenagers were wearing. Women paid more attention to things like that than men did. Jeff said I was sexist. Besides, he had been a teenage boy, hadn’t he, and he should know no self-respecting guy would get caught dead in something like that. The saleslady thought we were married and shopping for our son. With all the arguing we were doing, that didn’t say much for her ideas of marriage. Worse, it meant she couldn’t tell that both of us were under thirty and would have been about eleven at his birth. But she did end up selling us three wrong-sized pairs of jeans because Jeff insisted that I had measured Kevin’s inseam wrong. We also got a range of colorful, easy-care T-shirts and Jeff found a white muslin shirt he insisted we get, which ended up making Kevin look like Mahatma Gandhi.

  But while the clothes and the showers made a tremendous change in Kevin’s appearance, the best improvement occurred when Jeff was able to get his own barber to come out to Garson Gayer. Kev got the whole works – a wash,
a cut, a style and blow-dry. Jeff and I had to pay for it out of our own pockets but it was worth it. It didn’t exactly transform him into Robert Redford, but Kevin was so proud of it. When the session was over, Jeff and I stood in the doorway of the small white room and watched Kevin go back to the ward with the aide. He strutted like a rooster, his scrawny chest thrown out, his too-long jeans rolled up, the smell of Old Spice trailing after him.

  ‘He’s still kind of ugly,’ Jeff whispered to me.

  ‘I dunno. I was sort of thinking he was kind of okay looking.’

  Jeff paused. A smile touched the corners of his lips. ‘Yeah, I guess he sort of is, isn’t he?’

  A week later Jeff and I decided to split the workload. It was mid-March and almost two months had passed since Jeff had joined us. The strain of coming every day was beginning to tell on both of us. So we reduced our visits to three times a week. On Mondays Jeff came, on Wednesdays I did and on Fridays we came together.

  Kevin was surprisingly unperturbed by this change. We explained it to him and he nodded. That sounded okay to him. For the first time I realized that he actually had grown in therapy and was perhaps already beginning to outgrow us. A few months more perhaps, and Kevin would not need us.

  ‘Kev?’

  It was evening. I’d come in my free time because I had promised to help Kevin with a school project. We were making a papier-mâché map of the U.S. for the school-district science fair. I had told Kevin about the fair and the map was his idea. Garson Gayer students did not normally participate in such events, but Kevin thought it might be exciting to do so, to be the first kid to try. He’d gotten the map idea out of a book his teacher had, and I’d offered to come in my free time and give him a hand, since I’d used papier-mâché with my kids in the classroom.

  So there we were, both on the floor of the small white room, our sleeves rolled up, a bucket of soaking newspapers between us. I was mangling the Rockies of Colorado. Kevin was intent on straightening out the Great Plains.

  I said his name. He answered with a grunt. Most of his attention was on Kansas.

  ‘You know what sounds good to me?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hot chocolate.’

  ‘Mmm, yeah,’ he agreed without taking his eyes off Kansas.

  ‘Let’s go get some.’

  Kevin looked up. There was a blob of the Northern Rockies on his nose where he had been leaning too close to his work. ‘What do you mean? The cook won’t let you in the kitchen. It’s not a mealtime. That’s a rule.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of the dining room. Every day when I come here, I go past a Frosty-Freez. It’s just down the road. On the corner of Hill Street and 23rd. I thought we could go there.’

  Kevin straightened up. His eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, let’s go down there to the Frosty-Freez and get some hot chocolate.’

  His eyes remained intent. Then he shook his head. ‘I can’t. I’m not on a green pass. You have to be on a green pass to go off the grounds.’

  You’re not on any kind of pass, Kevin. But it wouldn’t matter anyway. You’d be with me. They’d let you come, if I took you.’

  I could see the fear bright in his eyes, but he was not for telling me about it. His fears had begun to embarrass him of late. I think it was probably Jeff whom he wanted to hide them from. Kevin and I were old buddies but Jeff he still wanted to impress. In a way that was why I wanted to take him out myself, alone.

  ‘It’s too cold out,’ Kevin said and leaned back over the map.

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s a beautiful night. I was just out in it when I came over.’

  ‘It’s too far to go.’

  ‘It’s only a block and a half. Maybe two blocks.’ I put my putty knife down. ‘Come on. This’ll wait for us.’

  ‘It’s too dark out there.’

  ‘There’s streetlights.’

  ‘But it’s probably slippery.’

  ‘Yes, probably. But we’ll make it all right.’

  Nervously, he glanced up. ‘I don’t have a coat. I don’t have any boots.’

  ‘I’m sure the staff will find you something.’ I was on my feet.

  Kevin just sat. His shoulders started to sag dismally. I knew he was running short of excuses. ‘You know what?’ he said softly and stared at his hands.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I haven’t been going out a whole lot lately.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘I know that too.’

  ‘Then let’s not, okay, Tor?’

  I shook my head. Kevin’s eyes wandered over our work on the floor. Absently, he scraped a bit of dried papier-mâché away from the edge of the board. ‘I …’ he started but never finished. A deep breath followed.

  I knelt down across the map from him. ‘Just trust me, Kev, all right? Gimme a chance, okay?’

  Then there was silence. It dropped on us as if someone had been standing over us, as if we were on a marionette stage and the puppeteer let drop a down comforter over us. It came down suddenly but softly, smothering us sweetly.

  I could not break out of it. Whether he could or not, I didn’t know.

  Gently I touched his hand. His fingers were cold. ‘What’s it feel like, Kev?’ I asked. ‘What’s it make you feel like inside?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘How does the fear feel?’ I couldn’t imagine. I couldn’t fathom what that much fear must have been like.

  Giving a deep sigh, Kevin slipped his hand out from under mine and caught a falling tear. He was embarrassed by it. It was the first time he had cried in ages, since those first weeks. Too much had changed since then. Even with me he was embarrassed by the tears.

  Again he shrugged. ‘I dunno. I just get scared.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Well, like maybe something might happen.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  We were still struggling with the silence over us. At least I was. It was like swimming in mud.

  ‘I wonder sometimes,’ Kevin began very slowly and his eyes studied the fabric of the carpet, ‘I wonder sometimes why people hate other people. What do you do to make them hate you?’ His eyes rose to mine. ‘What do you do to make them stop?’

  The gray of his eyes had paled. They were the color of winter water before it froze.

  ‘Once,’ he said, his voice hesitant and very soft, ‘I had this book. My grandma gave it to me. About kittens. All these little kittens dressed up, doing things. I like kittens.’ He looked up. ‘Did you know that? That I like kittens? I do. And cats. Then …’ He fell silent. His eyes fixed on some unseen spot in front of him, I knew he was looking inward into some inner place I could not see. He remained silent a long, long time. And then,’ he continued very softly, ‘when I came back I couldn’t ever find the book again.’

  Something had been left out of that story: I could not follow it. But he was communicating his feelings clearly enough. So it seemed inappropriate to ask for explanations.

  He looked up at me. ‘When someone sort of hates you,’ he said, ‘they do things to you. You never know when it’s going to happen. You never know exactly what. But when someone hates you, you always know they’ll do things.’

  My God, I was thinking, I’d be scared to go out too.

  Chapter Fifteen

  We did not go to the Frosty-Freez that evening. However, the night after we did go. Still sharing with God the privilege of creating the North American continent, I had returned the following evening to help Kevin finish the project. This time Kevin knew it was coming. When I suggested I was thirsty, Kevin rose without responding and went to the door.

  Beyond the small white room, I had to tell the aides what we were up to and get permission to take him off the grounds. Then we had to locate a jacket for Kevin because he didn’t own one. Kevin went through it all mechanically and without words.

  Outside it w
as bitterly cold for so late in the season. Yet it was a clear night, lit with the shattered brilliance of a billion stars. The Milky Way stretched out across the sky, a wide white pathway through the night. I pointed it out to Kevin but he kept his eyes to the ground. He did not fear attack from the sky; it was his least vulnerable direction. So he wasn’t going to waste precious time looking there.

  Our breath came out in huge white puffs. The cold air startled up the sensitive lining in my nose, giving a tiny spark of pain with each inhalation. I loved the night; I loved the winter. This was a perfect time to be out. We were completely alone, but with so many stars, one could not get lonely in the earthbound darkness.

  ‘I’ve never been out in the night before,’ Kevin said, his voice cautious sounding. ‘At least not that I can remember.’

  ‘It’s beautiful at night. I think sometimes it’s more beautiful than in the day. I love the night.’

  ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘You can’t see what’s coming.’

  The Frosty-Freez was a little hole in the wall with a serving counter, six or seven booths with overstuffed, vinyl-covered seats and pots of faded plastic flowers. The windows were steamed up against the cold night, and the humid, greasy warmth greeted us like a fat auntie’s kiss.

  There were a few other people in the place, teenagers mostly, hanging around the jukebox. However, it wasn’t crowded by any means, and it was easy to go to the far end of the row of booths and slip into one where we weren’t much noticed. I took out a menu.

  Kevin was subdued. While there were no major manifestations of his fear outwardly, it obviously nagged at him, because he kept returning to it over and over in conversation.

  ‘I never been out. It’s been almost four years since I went outside. I never been out since the year I first came to Garson Gayer. Three years, six months, two weeks and a day. That’s how long I stayed inside.’