by Torey Hayden
After the meal, Mrs MacFarlane marshaled the ‘boys’ out to the kitchen to do the dishes, amidst appropriate groans, while Dr MacFarlane showed me the remainder of the house. He took me on a tour of the residents’ rooms and the game room and the little upstairs kitchen where the residents could make tea or soup unsupervised, if they wanted. He also showed me the empty room that would be Kevin’s, if Kevin came.
Just as Jules predicted, I liked the atmosphere of the place very much. The couple were caring and dedicated without being condescending. All emphasis was on learning to cope. Did I realize, Dr MacFarlane said, that their own son had managed to make the transition and was now living in his own apartment a few blocks away and holding down an eight-hour job? But for all the emphasis on learning, there was nothing institutional about the setting. It was a home.
My only real qualm was the undeniable fact that all the other residents were obviously quite retarded. Kevin, despite his earlier reports, was not. Would this cause problems? I asked.
No, Dr MacFarlane replied, not from what he had heard about Kevin. If Kevin had been institutionalized that long, he would effectively behave as a retarded individual in many areas, and this would be a sheltered, yet open, place to learn. Dr MacFarlane took me into the living room. Amidst the large photos of the current residents on the piano, he located an album and began showing me pictures. See? This is Benny and now he’s living down in Mississippi, working on a truck farm. And there’s Norma; she works in a child-care center. And Candy. And Bob. One picture after another of those whose umbilical cords had been cut. Had there been any failures? I asked. With a smile he shook his head. No. If they couldn’t make it on their own, they came back. But that was hardly a failure, was it?
I sat down in a chair in the living room, and one of the residents brought me a cup of coffee. Did he realize, I asked Dr MacFarlane, that Kevin had emotional problems and, while they were much improved, he was not by any means problem free? Did he know that undoubtedly the time would come occasionally when the ghosts of Kevin’s past would loom up and haunt him again?
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Don’t they for all of us?’
Bill Smith was wary when I first suggested the MacFarlanes’ as an alternative placement for Kevin. He had the same volley of questions I had had. Kevin was even more cautious. ‘Who are they?’ he asked. ‘What kind of place is it?’
I explained.
‘I don’t want to go,’ he said flatly.
‘Why not? They’re very nice. I went over myself and had a look. I think it’s great.’
‘I don’t want to go,’ he reaffirmed. ‘I like it here just fine.’
On his next green pass, I took Kevin into the city to get a hamburger. We could have gotten a hamburger much closer and needn’t have driven forty miles for the privilege, but I had other thoughts.
‘You want to drive by the MacFarlanes’?’ I asked as we sat in the McDonald’s parking lot and ate our food.
He shrugged.
‘Come on, I’ll take you. We’ll just go by the front before we head back to Seven Oaks.’
As we went by, Kevin put his head out the open car window. ‘It’s big, isn’t it? Stop a little bit, so I can see it better.’
I drove around the block again and stopped on the opposite side of the street. Kevin stared out the window. ‘It’s real big. How many people live there? It could be a hundred by the looks of it.’
‘No, just eight. Just eight people about your age and the MacFarlanes and a couple of people helping them. There’s maybe ten or twelve altogether.’
‘Well,’ he said with a derisive tone, ‘that isn’t a real home, anyway. It’s a group home, like at Bellefountaine.’
‘Not exactly. It hasn’t got any houseparents. Just the MacFarlanes. And the residents all have their own rooms and stuff. It’s more like a family than Bellefountaine. And besides, it’s not a kids’ place. It’s for adults. Like you are.’
This thought clearly had never occurred to Kevin before. He sat, digesting it. ‘Yes, I guess I am, aren’t I? Hmm.’ He fell silent as he studied the house. I started up the engine. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s not such a bad-looking place. I might consider it.’
When the MacFarlanes came out to Seven Oaks, Kevin did decide he would go down and see them. It was a much different interview than with the Burchells. Clearly Kevin was determined not to get burned twice. He was polite and shy but he had questions and none of them were about whether or not he could call them Mom and Dad.
Then came the first visit, a weekend away. Bill Smith and I did not even dare voice our worries to each other. It was already the middle of October and Kevin’s six-month tenancy at Seven Oaks was very near its end. This had to work out. Seven Oaks just was not an appropriate placement for Kevin.
But where else would he go? Neither of us dared think about the weekend. When I got home that Friday night, I took my phone off the hook. I didn’t even want to know if anything went wrong. But when Hugh took me out for a meal on Saturday night, I made him drive me across town and by the MacFarlanes’. Not for any reason. Just so I could look.
I think Kevin and I both knew the end was approaching for us. It wasn’t something either of us said to the other but, when he came home from the first weekend and plans for the next weekend were being discussed, I knew it was almost over.
I came in late one evening to find Kevin sitting in his room, doing his schoolwork. He turned as I entered.
‘You’re late,’ he said. ‘You’re awfully late. It’s almost suppertime.’
‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t get away earlier.’
‘How come?’
‘A kid at work. I have a little boy in therapy. I think he’s schizophrenic but I don’t know. They want to send him up to Medicine Rock, and so it took a while to untangle.’
‘Was he upset?’ Kevin asked.
‘Yes, you bet. He’s scared. He’s in a foster home now and he’s scared of being sent away from it.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Ten. He’s got some real problems. But anyway, enough of that. I’m sorry I couldn’t get here.’
‘You weren’t here yesterday either,’ Kevin said.
‘They told you, didn’t they? I phoned and asked them to tell you.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘they told me.’
‘Listen, Kevin, I’m sorry. I really am, but if you could just see this kid –’
He was smiling at me. It was a soft, enigmatic sort of smile and it caught me off guard. When I stopped talking, he continued to watch me for a moment longer without speaking.
‘You did that for me, didn’t you?’ he said.
‘Did what?’
‘Well, when I had problems, you used to take time away from other people, didn’t you? Just like now. When that other boy needs you more than I do.’
I nodded.
‘I’m better, aren’t I?’
‘Yes. A lot.’
He looked down at his homework and then again at me. ‘I decided I’m going to go, Torey. Over to the MacFarlanes’.’
‘You did?’
He nodded. ‘I asked Dr MacFarlane if I came, if I could go to high school. And you know what he said to me?’
‘What was that?’
‘He said, “Yes, son. I think that’s a good idea.”’
Chapter Thirty–eight
The move to the MacFarlanes’ took place smoothly. While Kevin settled in over the next weekend, I spent my time with Dr MacFarlane, trying to find a high school in the district willing to take a chance on a kid like Kevin.
In the beginning, the idea still sounded harebrained to me, fraught as it was with so many built-in chances for disaster. However, Dr MacFarlane seemed to find it much more reasonable, and Kevin nursed it like a babe. So I did my best to put what expertise I had had in education into finding a suitable placement and helping devise a viable school program. Soon I found myself haunting old territories, meeting child-study teams again, chatting up principals, v
isiting special-education classrooms and guidance counselors, all in an effort to construct an educational plan for a boy who had been out of public schools for ten years.
God bless them, there was a school willing to try. Two weeks later Kevin was registered as a sophomore. He was to take four classes, English, math, social studies and art, plus a study hall. The rest of the time he would spend in the special-education resource room where the teacher would make sure he was keeping up on his work and coping with things.
On the very first morning, one of those dark misty November days, I came to pick him up and drive him to school. He was outside already, waiting for me. He had a cowboy shirt and new jeans on. His hair was a little longer around his ears, and I wondered where along the way he had become handsome to me, because he was. He reeked of Brut as he climbed into the car.
‘Here, look at my notebook, Torey,’ he said. ‘Mrs Mac took me to the store last night to get it. Look at it. And look here. I got pencils. And three pens. I wanted a cartridge pen. That’s what Dale, this other guy there, has. But she said, later on. See, Tor? Look at all I got.’
He was spilling the guts of the notebook over the front seat as I drove. His voice was rapid and cracked with excitement. And then he stopped. The car fairly exploded with silence after all the chatter.
‘What if they don’t like me? I might get lost. It’s pretty big. What if I get lost?’
I smiled over at him.
‘I must say, I am a little scared.’ Then he smiled back.
‘But I am going, aren’t I? I really am going to high school.’
Kevin’s new life fit him. For all the other times that even small changes devastated him, this major alteration in the pattern of his life came naturally.
Being the only nonretardate in the MacFarlane household was a kind of blessing to him. For the first time in his life he was the best at almost everything he tried. The other residents respected him and openly admired his prowess. Their esteem mattered greatly to Kevin. Quickly he learned to do accounts. His math had never been strong, but in comparison to the others, he could learn even that rapidly and soon he had gained the necessary skills to acquire a checkbook and a small savings account. He mastered cooking much more easily and invited me over for a Saturday-night meal, which he had planned and cooked himself with help from the other male residents. It was spaghetti, and I wondered if he remembered, as he served it, what meaning spaghetti had first had for us. He asked and received permission to paint his room a new color. He chose a ghastly shade of lavender and was delighted with it.
Dr MacFarlane soon became ‘Pop’ and Mrs MacFarlane remained ‘Mac’ forever and they did treat him with the tenderness given a natural son.
His greatest pride, however, was his job. Because Kevin went to school and all the other residents had some sort of work during the day, Kevin quickly found himself considerably short of cash in comparison. This caused problems, especially on weekends when the other residents wanted to go to movies or bowling or engage in other activities Kevin couldn’t always afford and had to ask the MacFarlanes for. However, Dr MacFarlane found a solution. Kevin had learned the basic survival skills so easily and well that Dr MacFarlane began to pay him a small sum to be a ‘teacher.’ Each evening for an hour Kevin would sit down with another of the residents and teach and practice basic math and reading skills. Kevin loved it. What it did for his self-image was far more than it ever did for his pocket.
But perhaps the thing that pleased me most was not Kevin at all but another resident named Sally. She thought Kevin was handsome. Pretty soon, Kevin wasn’t thinking Sally was too bad either, and under the watchful eye of the MacFarlanes, Kevin suffered the joys and sorrows of his first romance.
The first few weeks of school were traumatic, to say the least. It was the schedule that nearly killed him. He had had no idea what he was getting into, being at school all day, and he came home exhausted enough to sleep for the first few afternoons. The classes, too, were much harder than he had expected, even the art class. He didn’t understand many of the things presented, simply because he lacked the basic background. He was crushed at the first midterm to discover that he was not getting the best of grades. But he wasn’t failing either, we pointed out, and that was all that mattered. There were some other rocky moments. He was the only resident saddled with homework, and this meant that he missed out on a lot of the home entertainment and even some outings. And of course some of the kids at school did tease him.
But in the end, it worked. Mrs MacFarlane sat down with him every night until the routine was established and Kevin could carry on on his own. He was bolstered at school by an excellent special-ed teacher. And he did his own part. Never once did he fail to answer a question in class when asked. Never once did he lose his temper or rage or act strange. In fact, the kids teased him over adolescent things, over his age, over his shyness with girls. They didn’t appear to suspect that there was anything else very unusual about this boy, other than that he was new and he was a little slow on the uptake. For all intents and purposes, Kevin was like everyone else. And finally, I too had to agree that Kevin’s idea to go to high school was a good one. Because of the nature of the MacFarlane home, this was his main opportunity to associate with his peer group, with youngsters who were normal. Like he was.
I never failed to be awed at this final transition from Seven Oaks to the MacFarlanes’. It had proved to be so flawless.
Unlike when I was a teacher, there was no clear demarcation of the end. No June arrived that forced stock taking of one’s successes and failures and then a final parting. It was kinder here in the clinic, where one went timeless after a while and worked without worry about the start or finish of a thing. I seldom regretted the ends here the way I had in teaching because here they usually came when both the child and I were ready. It was a natural parting, slower and less hurtful.
The end for Kevin and me was almost here. He had found friends at school and he was busy at home. By mid-January our sessions were tapering off. For quite some time we had only seen one another once a week anyhow, and he had been coming to the clinic. I hadn’t been out to see him at the home for four or five weeks, except once at Christmas to take him a gift. But now we were even missing our weekly sessions occasionally. We both knew the end was nearly with us.
We were in my office. Usually we used the therapy room down the hall where there was more space, but Jules had a client interview there, so Kevin and I came instead to the office. Kevin sat in Jules’s chair and spun it around.
‘You know,’ I said, ‘I think it’s maybe time for you and me to finish.’
‘What do you mean? It’s only 4:15. I’m here until ten to five.’
‘No, that’s not what I meant.’
He was not happy when he understood what I was talking about. Indeed, he was angry with me, rising from the chair, pacing back and forth before sitting down again.
‘You see?’ he said. ‘It’s just the way I always said it was. You never really cared. You came to see me just because they pay you to. And now you’re going to stop.’
I tried to explain, to defend myself at first, but then I stopped. It wasn’t like that and I knew Kevin knew it wasn’t too.
He fell silent, an angry silence wherein he frowned and grimaced, turning his head away from me. I couldn’t get him off the subject for the rest of the time, nor could I diminish his anger. In the end we had to leave it over until the next week so he could simmer down.
But Kevin knew, as I did, that the time had come. He paused at the doorway as he was leaving. ‘I guess this means I’m well now,’ he said without smiling. ‘I guess that isn’t always good.’
Our last day was a cold, snowy Thursday in February. Kevin came in breathless and red cheeked from the sub-zero temperatures outside. He sat down in Jules’s chair in the office without taking off his coat or boots. Only his ski cap had been jerked off, leaving his hair standing up in rumpled confusion. During the week he had gotten contac
t lenses and, although I had known it was coming, it was somewhat of a shock to see him without his thick glasses. Against the rosy redness of his cheeks, his gray eyes were shimmery like quicksilver.
We chatted about his plans, about things at home, about the future. I couldn’t tell what Kevin was thinking beneath his cheery exterior. We had decided this would be our last day some weeks earlier, so we had both known it was coming.
When an unexpected pause wandered into the conversation, tears gathered abruptly in Kevin’s eyes. He leaped to his feet. ‘I got to be going. It’s pretty late and me and Denny Crenshaw are going swimming at the Y tonight.’
I nodded.
Backing away from me, he watched me. I could still see the tears, still see him ducking his head to keep them from showing. All the seconds and minutes and hours of the last two and a half years folded in upon themselves accordion-style, and the distance between us filled with unsaid things. I looked down at my fingers and listened to the silence.
‘Torey? Can I ask you one thing?’
‘Sure.’
‘But don’t answer, okay. Just let me ask it.’
‘All right.’
‘Here it is. Well, I want to know if you would, I mean, if I ever got in trouble again … I mean, if I really got in trouble again, would you come? Would you be there?’ Then as I leaned forward, he threw up a hand. ‘But don’t answer that. Okay? Don’t tell me your answer.’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘Because, you see,’ he said, paused, then smiled at me. ‘You see, I want to go away from here always thinking that you would. I don’t want to know if you would or not. I just want to know I asked you and you didn’t say no.’
I nodded.
‘I won’t forget you,’ he said.