Mike listened in silence, picked up his bag and walked home to Maplewood Drive. Marge met him at the door and he crumpled in her arms. For a quarter-hour they stood together, hugging each other and sobbing.
Death changes things. It changes how we think about people; it changes the living and it changes the dead. That evening as Mike lay on his bed staring at the ceiling, he felt he was finally beginning to understand the relationship that had existed between him and Charlotte. The way Mike saw it now, he had never had any doubts about committing himself, about putting himself at her mercy; he had never hesitated at all. They were lovers and would have been lovers for life. He had placed his fate in her hands and she had accepted his love forever.
In this new version of events there could be no regrets about how he had behaved. In Mike’s mind now he and Charlotte had been practically engaged. It was a comforting thought, a relationship that could be viewed in complete serenity – he would never have to fear the rejection of a dead sweetheart, and the aspic-fixed emotions of the past were far safer territory than the anxieties of the present. But when the school held a remembrance ceremony for Charlotte a week later, Mike was shocked to hear that Greg Tucker would be singing a lament in her memory. He knew Charlotte had once been sweet on Greg, but he had always believed their relationship was over when he first met her at Mrs Finucane’s auditions. Now he realized with a jolt that it was Greg, not he, who was being enthroned as Charlotte’s boyfriend.
FOURTEEN
1968–9
‘Don’t you tell me what to do . . . and don’t tell me how to feel!’
Marge looked on as the flaming row between Mike and Doc approached its final, fiery stages. It was the latest in a series of furious arguments Mike had provoked in the weeks since Charlotte died, and Marge could see by the bafflement and fury in Doc’s face that he was thinking the same thing she was. Whatever happened to our perfect boy? Who is this moody, quarrelsome stranger?
Marge couldn’t even remember how this fight had started. Mike seemed to be living on an emotional knife-edge, and could lash out at the slightest thing. Mary had gone to hide in her room – even she had felt Mike’s anger in recent days, and as soon as he showed signs of flaring up she would slip away, bewildered and hurt, keen to be out of his range. The deaths of Loras and Charlotte had taken their toll on Mike: he felt abandoned, responsible, and picked fights to deflect the pain. Years of stifled resentment and frustration, all the years of striving constantly to be ‘good’, were being released in concentrated, furious bursts.
‘Go to your room, young man!’ roared Doc, hurling open the door and pointing up the stairs.
‘That’s right – get rid of the problem. Send the little Irish boy out of sight so you don’t have to look at him! I’ve had enough of living by your rules and regulations. Go to hell!’ Mike screamed. He swept out of the room and slammed the door. Marge and Doc looked at each other, exhausted.
‘Oh Doc,’ Marge whispered. ‘Where did we go wrong?’
‘That boy,’ Doc sniffed, still reeling with anger and indignation,
‘that boy needs discipline, Marge. Discipline. He will not act like that in my house!’
The older children kept out of it. James, whose relationship with Doc had always been difficult, tried to offer Mike support, but he and Thomas were no longer living at home and didn’t see the full extent of it. Stevie, who saw everything, seemed unmoved.
Mary was saddened by her brother’s pain and unsettled by his fury, but when she tried to talk to him he waved her away. His behaviour was so aberrant, so out of character, that Mary too was thrown off balance. Her quarrelsome demeanour, the shows of defiance, the troublemaker’s temper that had characterized her previous conduct disappeared overnight. Suddenly she was quiet, docile, obedient, as if she were withdrawing before Mike’s crisis, giving him room to articulate the emotions he had long repressed. Marge found Mary’s behaviour almost as disconcerting as Michael’s.
The stand-off continued through the winter. Marge fretted, Doc fumed and Mary watched anxiously as Mike dragged himself wearily to school. Stevie got lucky in the lottery and avoided the draft; Thomas, who was also spared, began studying to be a dentist; James, newly commissioned as a lieutenant in the US Army and now stationed in Panama, wrote home announcing his intention to marry Shirley, his old girlfriend from Rockford. Doc read the letter with trembling hands and furious disapproval. It was never clear what he didn’t like about Shirley, but he was unshakeably categorical: Shirley was not a suitable wife for his son. His reply to James was terse: he did not approve, refused to consent to any such match and had no intention of offering the least financial support should Jim pursue the idea. He hoped he had made himself clear.
When Jim wrote back immediately, declaring that he would marry her anyway and didn’t care what anybody thought, Doc hit the roof.
‘Goddam that boy!’ he declared, screwing up James’s letter and throwing it in the trash. ‘Can’t he ever do what his father tells him!’
Marge remembered the way her own parents had tried to stop her marrying Doc – how they’d had to elope, and the bad blood the affair had caused for so many years afterwards. She thought how short Doc’s memory must be.
‘Oh Doc, come on. It isn’t so bad,’ she soothed. ‘If he really loves her—’
‘Marge, all the things we’ve done for that boy over the years – the money we spent on him, the presents, the holidays, the treats – the letter I wrote to the Department of Defense! And now he . . . he shames me – shames the whole family by going against my will . . . Well, I won’t hear of it, Marge! I will not hear of it!’
Doc strode the room, incoherent with rage that yet another son, his eldest son, would dare challenge his authority.
‘But Doc,’ pleaded Marge, ‘he’s a grown man now and if he wants to—’
‘Grown man?’ He turned on her. ‘Grown man? Is he still my son, Marge? Did I not raise him? Do I not have a right, as his father, to—’
Mike, who had been glowering in the corner, suddenly stood up.
‘Stop shouting at her and leave Jimmy alone!’ he yelled, hating the self-righteous obstinate tyrant who stood before him more than he ever had before.
‘How dare you raise your voice at me!’ countered Doc, and before he could stop himself he had raised his right hand and slapped him.
Marge gasped – ‘Doc!’ – and Mary, who was trembling on the sofa, burst into tears. Mike was still for a moment, then, to the astonishment of everyone in the room, he pounced. The blow caught Doc on the temple, and he reeled against the open door, banging it into the wall with a resounding crack. Marge let out a scream and Mary leapt up like a frightened cat, darting past Doc, who was clutching his head, and through the doorway into the hall. As she hurled the front door open, the hated photograph caught on her sleeve and she shrieked with frustration and despair, dashing it to the ground, where it smashed to pieces. An hour later she returned with her face covered in blood and her nose broken in three places.
The shock of Mary’s injuries brought a temporary truce. Marge carried her through to the family room, laid her on the sofa and Mike swabbed her face with damp cloths until the bleeding stopped.
‘Jesus, Mary, ’ he whispered, ‘what have you done?’
Doc knelt on the floor and examined her nose.
‘Can you breathe OK?’ he asked, his face pale with concern.
‘Not through my nose,’ came the muffled reply, ‘but I can through my mouth.’
Doc poked a little at where a large blue swelling was beginning to rise – he was concerned about the possibility of a septal haematoma – but eventually concluded the damage was confined to the bone, which was badly smashed.
‘And just how did this happen?’ he demanded, once he was certain it was nothing more serious than it appeared.
‘I went out to play basketball,’ Mary sniffed, ‘and some kids were playing rough . . . My nose got smashed by the ball.’
Doc gr
unted; Mary avoided his eye.
‘That doesn’t look like a basketball injury to me,’ he said, leaning in close and raising his eyebrows.
‘I said my nose got smashed by the ball!’ she shouted, bursting into fresh tears so violent that her nose began bleeding again.
Doc’s resolve faltered. ‘Well,’ he said, getting to his feet, ‘it’s broken, there’s no denying it. And it doesn’t look too good. So I guess we better get it fixed.’
That night in bed her nose hurt and her head pounded, but Mary managed a little smile – the drama and the pain had been intense and it had taken some courage on her part, but she had made it work and got what she wanted. In the morning Dr Habbakuk carried out a closed reduction of the nasal fracture followed by a rather neat septorhinoplasty that would leave the patient with a short, straight nose ending in an attractive rounded tip.
The days that followed brought an interlude of peace. As Mary convalesced from the surgery, Mike seemed to regain some of his composure. He fussed over his sister, brought her soft drinks and snacks and recommended books for her to read while she waited for the swelling to go down. The arguments with Doc became less frequent and Mike seemed to be returning to something like his former self. But Marge’s anxiety would not go away. She was worried about Michael – she sensed his unhappiness had been suppressed, not vanquished; that it could resurface at any time – and she told Doc that Mike needed help just as much as Mary did. Couldn’t Doc, with all his expertise and countless contacts who no doubt had the utmost respect for him, recommend someone to whom Mike would be able to open his heart?
FIFTEEN
My fellow Americans. We have found ourselves rich in goods, but ragged in spirit; reaching with magnificent precision for the moon, but falling into raucous discord on earth. We are caught in war, wanting peace. We are torn by division, wanting unity. We see around us empty lives, wanting fulfilment . . . To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit. To find that answer, we must look within ourselves. When we listen to ‘the better angels of our nature’, we find that they celebrate the simple things, the basic things – such as goodness, decency, love, kindness.
First Inaugural Address of Richard Milhous Nixon,
20 January 1969
New Year 1969 had brought blizzards to the Midwest and a new man to the White House. Doc had gathered the family round the TV set to watch Richard Nixon’s inaugural and accompanied the broadcast with his own commentary. He applauded as Justice Warren administered the oath of office and yelled,‘You can say that again!’ when Nixon spoke of the spiritual crisis America was living through.
‘Thank God those goddam Democrats are finally out on their asses and we’ve got a real man running the country! You know, boy’ – he turned to Mike with a serious expression – ‘you should pay attention to what this fellow says. This man knows what America’s about all right. Yep, he sure does.’
Doc leaned back in his chair with a smile of satisfaction and Mike nodded dubiously. He had a tough time agreeing with Doc’s political views – if pressed he would classify himself as a liberal on most issues – but he liked the message of tolerance and inclusion Nixon seemed to be offering: ‘We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another, until we speak quietly enough that our words can be heard as well as our voices. We will strive to listen in new ways – to the voices of quiet anguish, the voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart – to the injured voices, the anxious voices, the voices that have despaired of being heard . . .’
‘Politics is a real important thing to learn about, son,’ Doc said, leaning forward in his chair again and looking Mike in the eye with a serious, interested expression.
‘Sure, Pop, I know that.’ Mike felt the familiar yearning to create a rapport with his father. ‘I’ve followed the election and I don’t agree with everything Nixon says, but I think he has . . . some good views on equality.’ He hesitated before playing an inspired ace. ‘Anyway,’ he shrugged significantly, ‘I’ve been thinking about studying politics and government at college.’
The following day Doc approached Mike with what he saw as a more than generous proposal. He had set the wheels in motion to arrange an internship for him with Everett Dirksen, who had been Illinois’ senior senator in Washington for nigh on twenty years. Dirksen was a former patient of his and Doc was sure he could make it happen. Mike, though, was unsure about the whole thing – Dirksen was a Republican and he didn’t like the man’s conservative views. He didn’t like Doc running his life either, and he told himself he should really stand up for what he wanted. But Doc was enthusing about the idea, saying what an unbeatable introduction it would be to the world of big politics and talking like it was a done deal. Mike thought for a moment, decided if he was going to object and was surprised to hear himself say, ‘Thanks, Doc. That would be great . . .’
His Washington trip was scheduled for the summer of that year.
Gustav Heinlein was a busy man, but he was prepared to squeeze a colleague’s son into his schedule. Mike had been deeply unconvinced about the idea of seeing a shrink – Do they think I’m actually crazy? he’d wondered, half amused, half uneasy – and he had gone to the first session reluctantly. It had, inevitably, turned out to be awkward – Mike was diffident at the best of times and he didn’t like the fact that Heinlein was a friend of his father – but little by little he had opened up to the solemn-faced doctor in the grey suit.
In the first month they had discussed his reaction to the deaths of Loras and Charlotte and his strained relationship with his father, and then – at Heinlein’s cautious suggestion – they moved on to a new topic. ‘Now Mike, I’d like you to tell me how it makes you feel when you think about your real mother, the mother who gave birth to you.’
Mike stared at his feet, crossed neatly at the end of the couch, and closed his eyes.
‘Oh, sometimes I miss her . . . and sometimes I hate her,’ he heard himself say. ‘But I know – that is, I feel – that she can’t have been a bad person. Sometimes I think I remember her . . . and I remember her being good. But that means . . .’ He trailed off, frowning.
‘What do you think that means, Mike?’
‘Well, I think it means . . . I must be bad. She must have hated me for something . . . something I did or . . . the person I was. Otherwise, why did she give me away?’
Two tears made their way slowly down Mike’s face.
‘OK,’ said Heinlein softly. ‘Let’s think about this. You say your mother hated you, but I wonder why you think that. There’s no way you can know the reasons for what your mother did, now is there? So what are you basing these fears on, Mike? Did someone say something to you?’
‘My mom – I mean, Marge – she told my brother Stevie how it all happened, and he told me. How my real mother hated me and didn’t want to look after me.’ He began to sob. ‘It hurts, Dr Heinlein; it hurts to know you’re no good . . .’
Heinlein shook his head sadly.
‘So you believed what your brother Stevie told you?’ he asked, his voice so gentle it was almost a whisper. ‘Did you never consider the possibility he was lying to hurt you?’
Mike thought for a moment.
‘Yeah, sure I did. Maybe I even knew he was lying. Maybe I know everything’s much more complicated. But the thing is, I can’t stop hating myself. My mother abandoned me and never tried to find me. If she didn’t love me, it means no one can, and I certainly can’t love myself.’
‘But Mike,’ Heinlein said, ‘have you never thought that maybe your mother left you with the nuns because she was just a girl herself, that she couldn’t give you the care you needed even though she loved you as much as any mother loves her child?’
Mike frowned and thought for a moment.
‘If I had a child,’ he concluded, choosing his words with great deliberation, ‘I would love that child more than anything. Even if I had no money and no home and no clothes, nothing would come between us. Mom �
� Marge – once told me there was nothing she wouldn’t do to make me happy. So I can’t believe my real mother would have given me up forever without a second thought just because she was too young, or too poor, to bring me up right. She should have known I’d have been just as happy with nothing, so long as I had her.’
It was a perfect warm early-spring evening and Doc was sitting opposite Gus Heinlein in a coffee shop around the corner from Heinlein’s office.
‘Now Gus,’ he began, getting down to business immediately, ‘I know all about this doctor–patient confidentiality business – I’m a doctor myself, for God’s sake – but this is my son we’re talking about, and whatever’s going on in that head of his, I need to know about it because it affects all of us living under one roof.’
Gus nodded. ‘Sure. I understand that, Doc. But I gotta say, whatever it is you’re hoping to hear from me, it isn’t all good news. You maybe don’t realize that orphans make up just 2 to 3 per cent of the general population – but they make up 30 to 40 per cent of the inmates at residential treatment centres, juvenile detention facilities and special schools . . .’
Doc grunted and sipped his coffee, feeling – not for the first time – that those children of Marge’s were more trouble than they were worth.
‘. . . and they also present a high incidence of delinquency, sexual promiscuity and alcohol abuse. Now, I’m not saying your boy is going to be in any or all of those categories,’ Heinlein went on, ‘but you should know the facts. These people are addictive personalities. They’re always trying to make up for something that’s missing in their life or for something they think they’ve done wrong.’
Gus paused and munched on a cookie, studying Doc’s reaction.
‘Mike’s a smart boy, ’ Doc said after a moment. ‘He gets real good grades and he thinks a lot, maybe too much. The strange thing is, when we first got them it was the girl who gave us all the problems. Mike was quiet, did what he was told and never kicked up a fuss. It’s only recent that he’s become such a crazy schmuck, always arguing and fighting and punching people . . .’
The Lost Child of Philomena Lee (Original Edition) Page 15