“It’s not a good idea to coddle children when they injure themselves, you know,” Wendy says.
“Excuse me?” Mrs. Dougherty says sharply.
“It’s called negative reinforcement. Read Skinner. It’s a form of operant conditioning. If you give kids attention when they become sick, they relate the injury to attention and manifest illness with more frequency. Surely you learned a bit of childhood psych development when you got your nursing degree? I mean you do work as a school nurse!” Wendy’s voice rings out in the room.
I think Mrs. Dougherty’s head might pop off she gets so angry-red in her face.
“Mrs. Finn, I do know quite a bit about children, their behavior, and their needs. Your job as a parent is to make sure her needs are met. Bringing her to the doctor to be checked out isn’t spoiling her, it’s protecting her. Your daughter needs your attention right now.”
“I’m not sure,” Wendy says. “I read Erikson, and I think he’s been interpreted in too linear a fashion. The stages of development aren’t necessarily sequential. There’ve been studies that show abandoned children manage to raise themselves in the wild. It follows that children, given food and shelter and surrounded with many more tools for survival, can raise themselves without the interference of adults who think they know what they’re doing.”
I have no idea what Wendy is talking about, but it sort of seems like she’s winning. I figure the psychology stuff she’s studying at Northeastern must be good.
Mrs. Dougherty says, “Children that have been cross-fostered by wild animals, like wolves, sometimes manage to survive in the wild. However, they fail to develop key human components like language or social skills, regardless of how long they’re schooled following their abandonment. Surely your daughter deserves a better chance at survival than the Wild Boy of Aveyron, Mrs. Finn?”
Wendy quiets down. I don’t know who the Wild Boy is, but I know I don’t want to end up like him even if Wendy thinks it might be a better way to raise kids. But she agrees to come and shows up in the Country Squire a few minutes later. She beeps her horn so long and loud I hear it inside the nurse’s office. I jump out of the cot and onto my feet quickly and I make myself dizzy. I have to sit down again.
“Let’s go slow, Julianne,” Mrs. Daugherty says.
She puts her arm around my shoulders, helps me up, and walks me outside to Wendy’s car. On the way out to the car she says, “If you ever want to come down to my office and talk, I won’t mind. You can talk about anything you like and we can keep it private, okay?”
She means well, but I’ve decided adults aren’t to be trusted about anything they say. She and Mr. Bellami are likely in cahoots to get us taken away from Wendy and have her put in jail. Wendy told us what would happen if she went to jail.
Orphanages.
She told us she came from an orphanage before she was adopted and about how awful and mean the people were. I figure she’s telling the truth about that one since she’s mean and they must have made her that way. She never talks about it, either, and we’re not supposed to ask my grandparents about it. It must have been horrible.
“Your mother should take you to the doctor and have him check you. If she decides not to, shut the curtains to keep it dark and lie down in your bed, but don’t fall asleep. I’ll tell her this when we talk,” Mrs. Dougherty says.
She walks me over to the car and stands with me on the sidewalk, waiting for Wendy to get out. Instead, Wendy waves at her and reaches over to unlock my door from the driver’s side. Mrs. Dougherty helps me slide in, and without saying a word Wendy drives off before I even have time to say good-bye and close my door. I hang on to the dashboard as Wendy swerves out and in again with the car to swing the door closed.
I turn and catch Mrs. Dougherty’s face as we pull away from the school. She looks like Edvard Munch’s Scream.
I know it’s useless for me to ask, but I want an explanation. “Why didn’t you come?”
“I have friends visiting, and I couldn’t leave them.”
“But I have a concussion. Do you know how mortifying it is to wait for you? I think the nurse might call the police on you.”
I know I’ve gone too far. Wendy laughs. I can tell she’s high because she’s weaving the car all over the road. I’m glad we only have a few blocks to go.
“Are you going to take me to the doctor? Mrs. Dougherty says I should go to see a doctor.”
“No. I don’t think you need to see a doctor.”
I’m not surprised by this. We have to be practically dying or dripping blood for Wendy to take us to our pediatrician. So I figure I should do what Mrs. Dougherty told me, to be safe.
“Mrs. Dougherty told me to lie down when I go back to the house, with the blinds closed, but not to fall asleep.”
Wendy doesn’t say anything.
“Just so you know, I don’t want to end up like the Wild Boy.”
Wendy laughs and reaches over to feel my head. I flinch because I think she might hit me. Sometimes she gives me a slap when I speak sarcastically. Sometimes she ignores it.
“I wanna feel your bump.”
I direct her hand to the back of my head.
“Wow, big bump. Okay, lie down in your room if you want to. I’ve got friends over, though.”
That’s Wendy’s hint to stay out of her way and outside, if at all possible.
My brothers and I make this possible for her since we don’t like her friends. When she invites friends over, they don’t do drugs—none that we’re aware of, anyway. It’s like a concession to a code of ethics related to her parental status. So far, anyway.
Eight
Jules, 8 years | April 15th, 1970
CODE CHANGE
WE PULL INTO our driveway. Music blares out onto Alethea Road from inside.
On almost every inch of our driveway and our now tire-marked front lawn: motorcycles.
I stagger out of the car, still dizzy, and start exploring the motorcycles. They say “Hells Angels.” They have wild-painted designs in bright colors.
“What does ‘Hells Angels’ mean?” I ask Wendy.
Wendy says, “It’s a club for motorcycle riders.”
Then she walks inside and joins the party.
The smell of something moldy-sweet hits me as soon as I walk up the porch stairs. It’s the same smell I remember from Wendy’s visits to her old friend Natasha.
Inside, tons of people sit around the kidney-bean glass coffee table in our living room. They pass a cigarette with the weird, moldy smell back and forth to each other. I know its marijuana. I’ve smelled Jack smoking it when he thinks we’re outside and I find tiny ends of them around all the time. As soon as I step into the living room, people scoop things up off the coffee table and stuff them in their pockets. They’re hiding some kind of small tools from me, but I don’t have a chance to see what they are. Everybody stops talking when I walk in the room. They stare at Wendy until Jill speaks. Jill is Wendy’s newest, best friend.
“Jules, this is my boyfriend Billy, and these guys are friends of his and their chicks,” Jill says, gesturing around.
“Hello,” I say. “Are you all in the Hells Angels club?”
They all laugh hard. I can’t understand why it seems like a funny question, but I figure Wendy lied about it’s being a club or something. “Yeah, we’re all part of the club,” Jill says. I can tell she’s trying to be nice, but it still seems like a joke on me.
Everybody seems sheepish. Probably something to do with the drugs they were doing and the fact a kid is there watching them. I scan the room. “Where’s Jack?”
“He’s taking a ride on a bike he’s thinking about buying,” Wendy says.
Jack’s probably going to be joining the club, too, I’m thinking. Judging by the people in the living room, he’ll fit right in.
Since Florida, Wendy’s been wearing clothes that belong on the Sonny & Cher Show. When Jack got back from sailing, he was wearing the same style of clothes. Hardly any
body in Withensea, except maybe the teenagers, dresses like the two of them. Everybody in this room dresses like the hippies on TV. Only with more leather.
They fit right into Wendy’s interior redecoration.
After the divorce from my father, Wendy went psychedelic with the decor. A bright magenta shag carpet now covers most of the floors. The kitchen has been covered in a vinyl pattern of large fire-hydrant orange, lemon-yellow, and lipstick-red daisies.
In the center of the living room is our same couch, reupholstered in a bright, rose-floral print. Next to it sits the formerly black, S-shaped chaise, now reupholstered in fluffy white sheepskin. On one side table by the couch is a lamp with a crushed velvet, scarlet-colored shade and tacky, dangling, scarlet-colored plastic jewels. On the other side sits a lamp with a round chrome base and a shiny, black-vinyl shade. Both lamps have blacklight bulbs.
All the walls are painted a pale shade of lavender. The antique framed pictures of my grandfather’s parents still hang on the walls, but now they’re joined with framed blacklight posters, most of them Peter Max creations.
The curtain rods are draped with moss-green, slubbed polyester fabric.
Scattered everywhere are random sculptures—donated by artist friends or created by Jack—and yard sale stuff that Wendy collects. The fact these things remain in place despite all the visitors who could have taken things without notice is more a statement about their “junkiness” and less about the honesty level of Wendy’s friends.
In the den, the old black-and-white TV and phonograph are still there, but the TV and phonograph have become property of “the kids.” Wendy uses a much more sophisticated stereo system, complete with a Pioneer “tape deck” set up next to a large color television she keeps in her bedroom. The bar, which used to hold my father’s alcohol, has become a candle-making workshop. The top of the bar is littered with candle molds, spools of candlewick, boxes of dye, and bottles of scent. The planter, which before held his record albums, now displays the candles. Most were molded with the sand we’ve carted in pails from the beach. Wendy sells them at one of the town’s arts and crafts stores with Jack’s stained glass creations.
The exceptions to Wendy’s redecorating are the bedrooms belonging to my brothers and me, and the dining room.
We rarely use the dining room since the divorce.
The money used to fund the entire redecorating job came from my father. Not that he volunteered it or anything: A week after the divorce was final, Wendy went to Sloane Sales, a big department store in Boston’s South Shore, and used the Master Charge card he didn’t know she kept in his name to buy over seven thousand dollars’ worth of stuff.
Wendy charged furniture, carpet, appliances, bedding, drapery, clothing, a slew of art supplies for me, a bike for David, and a unicycle for Moses. She also bought new fishing rods and a small dinghy for Moses and me so we could go fishing in the bay, which was calmer than the ocean side of Withensea. She figured he owed it to her to make up for the money he’d gambled, the money he didn’t share from the land he sold, and all the money he’d spent during the marriage.
My father got furious about the Sloane Sales spending spree, but Wendy got away with it somehow.
I hate the mess, the music, and the all noise from the people hanging around. Wendy and the hippie crowd don’t even notice when I walk upstairs to the visual quiet and peace of my bedroom. The light there bothers my eyes, so I close the blinds, huddle under the covers, and, even though I try to follow Mrs. Dougherty’s instructions, quickly fall asleep.
I wake up to the sound of my brother Moses shouting from downstairs. “She’s dead, she’s dead!”
Moses runs upstairs as he screams and bursts into my room. “Mummy is dead. She’s dead.” Somehow, oddly, I think he might add “Ding-dong.”
“What are you talking about?” In two split seconds I’ve gone from sound asleep to high alert. “What happened? Stop shouting and tell me what happened.”
Moses, breathing hard, sobs out his words.
“I saw her; she’s on the ground at the corner. There’s a motorcycle and another guy. She’s not breathing and there’s lots of blood.”
Jack shouts from downstairs for Moses.
I answer, “We’re up here.”
Jack runs up the stairs and down the hallway to my room.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Your mother’s been in a motorcycle accident. She went for a spin around the block with one of the guys, and I guess a car cut them off. Didn’t see ’em. They skidded off the road and the guy who’s driving got bad scrapes and maybe broke his leg, but your mother went flying.”
“Is she all right?” I ask.
“She’s in rough shape, but she’s alive. She hit her head.” He stops, then goes on. “She’s on the way to the hospital now. Why don’t you stay here with your brothers and I’ll call you from the hospital and let you know how it’s going?”
“Aye-aye,” I say.
He turns, about to leave, then turns back to me. “Hey, what’s going on here? Why are you in bed? Are you sick?”
“I got hit on the head at school today and got a concussion. The school nurse said to do this.”
“Oh man, Moses, you’ll have to take care of your sister for a bit until we get back.”
“I’m fine,” I protest.
“No arguments, man, you dig?” Jack says, and he leaves.
“See silly, she’s alive,” I tell Moses.
I sit up in bed and pull the covers back for him to join me. He crawls in. His body shakes.
“She didn’t move, even when they put her in the ambulance car. She had puddles of blood around her head, and her mouth had dirt in it.”
“If Jack says she’s alive, she’s alive. She probably got a concussion, like me.”
“What’s a concussion?”
“Come on, let’s go downstairs and see if we can find something for dinner. I’ll tell you all about concussions.” I’m proud of my newfound head injury knowledge.
I start to push to my feet to go, but Moses grabs my hand and pulls me back down again. “I didn’t tell anyone she’s my mother—the whole time. At first she started moaning, then she didn’t make any noise anymore. I thought she might be dead. I didn’t tell anyone about her being my mother even when the ambulance car came. I didn’t tell anyone.”
I put my arm around him and pull him over to me, not knowing quite what to say. “Don’t worry. There wasn’t anything you could do anyway.”
I’m still dizzy and sort of wobble up out of bed and down to the kitchen. David comes in. He’s all sweaty from basketball practice. “What’s going on?”
“Wendy’s at the hospital. She got in a motorcycle accident and Jack’s gonna call us later and let us know how she’s doing.”
“Who’s gonna make dinner?” David says on his way into the shower.
I end up making us TV dinners.
This is the part where I take over making dinner.
Jack comes back from the hospital later that night and tells us Wendy might stay there for a while because she hurt her neck in the accident. She broke bones in her vertebrae. I study all the vertebrae information in our encyclopedias, but it doesn’t make sense she would be alive if her neck is broken. I decide he didn’t get the story straight. He tells us he’ll call my father to come and take care of us. I argue we can take care of ourselves, but Jack won’t listen, and he makes me call my Aunt Doreen. She’s back in her winter home in Rhode Island, but she knows how to contact my father.
He stopped showing up for our Sunday visits a long time ago. The last we heard, he moved to Florida. Aunt Doreen tells me she’ll call him, though. I try to assure her that we can take care of ourselves, but she has a rough idea of our situation, and she responds as I expect any responsible adult would: she tells me if he won’t come take care of us, she will. I’m thrilled at the prospect of having Aunt Doreen come back to Withensea and stay with us for a while. We haven’t seen her much since t
he divorce.
I figure my father won’t want to come. He hates Wendy’s parties, her friends, and the fact she smokes pot. He complains how “it’s not good for the kids to see.”
His absence, although I enjoy it, still seems like desertion. I think if he cared he would find a way to change the situation. Even when he was still showing up now and then for those Sunday visits, he never called to let us know either way, and Wendy refused to keep calling him to keep tabs on his plans. I know she loves the fact he’s stopped visiting. He’s rude, bossy, and occasionally even violent when he comes here.
He showed up once about a year ago, drunk in the middle of the day, waving his gun around. Jack was sleeping, as usual, when my father arrived, but he woke up quickly with all the screaming and ran downstairs. Moses and I were standing in the living room staring at Wendy and my father as they went at it.
Wendy yelled, “Shoot me, motherfucker, and you’ll never see the outside of a jail cell.”
“I’m not gonna shoot you, you lousy slut, I’m gonna shoot him.” He pointed the gun at Jack.
“You’re such an asshole. Whadya gonna shoot him for?” Wendy said.
Although Jack seemed shaken, standing there with my father pointing a gun at him, he acted equally shocked to hear Wendy in full verbal assault mode. She presents well most times and hadn’t shown him her full colors until that point. He kept glaring at her and shouting, “Wendy!” every time she swore.
“Listen man, you don’t want to shoot anyone. Your kids are here, and I know they don’t want to see either of you this way. Why don’t we all calm down?”
Wendy stormed upstairs and left Jack and us with my father. He didn’t shoot anyone. I guess her going away calmed him down. He left soon after.
Tonight, I’m praying two prayers to the wooden woman, the old ship masthead: First, that my Aunt Doreen will come take care of us. Second, that my father will stay in Florida.
Nine
Jules, 8 years | April 16th, 1970
The Belief in Angels Page 7