His long, thin light brown hair fell loosely over his forehead and temples. Some attempt had been made to brush it back into shape, but it was apparent that he didn’t care much about how it looked. They had him dressed in a light blue polo shirt and jeans with sweat socks and sneakers. Although he had the same scrubbed and dressed look that the others had had when she had first seen them, Sharon thought this child looked more out of place. There was something wilder about him, about the way he held his hands clenched like claws against the sides of his legs, about the way he kept his neck stiff and his head still. Although he made no sound, she had the feeling he would suddenly shriek like a vulture and scratch his way out of the room.
“Donald doesn’t talk very much,” Mrs. Hoffman said, “but maybe he’ll make an exception and say hello to everyone here. Donald?”
He looked at them more intently, but he did not speak. Instead, he looked down again.
“That’s all right,” Alex said quickly, “Donald doesn’t have to talk now if he doesn’t want to. They’ll be plenty of time for him to talk. I’m sure he’ll want to talk to his new brothers and sister. This is Richard,” Alex continued, as though he had dealt with seriously disturbed children all his life. “He’s the oldest. Then comes Elizabeth and then comes Carl.”
“Hi,” Richard said. He smiled and nodded. The others did the same. Somehow Sharon wasn’t surprised that Alex had introduced the children before he had introduced her.
“And this is Sharon,” he said, “my wife.”
She smiled at him and saw that his face reflected more fear when he had to look directly at her. It gave her the chills. She wondered if all of his problems didn’t have something to do with his mother or with the foster mothers he had had. Alex paused, but Donald didn’t make any attempt to respond.
“We’re eager to have you come join us,” Alex said. “You’ll go to school with the kids; you’ll have your own room, and there’ll be plenty for you to do.”
“We have a lake and rowboats,” Carl said. Donald’s eyes widened.
“And an exercise room,” Richard added. “We’re gonna build you up.”
“We help each other with our schoolwork,” Elizabeth said. “You’ll do well in school now.”
“Doesn’t this sound great?” Mrs. Hoffman asked. “Can’t you just say hello to these fine people? They all care about you and want to help you.”
There was a short silence and then Alex slapped his hands together. He did it so abruptly and so sharply that both Mrs. Hoffman and Sharon flinched. The kids behaved as though they expected it, as though it had all been planned.
“I know,” he said, “let’s talk without words. Let’s just sit here and listen to Donald’s thoughts and let Donald listen to ours. If we all concentrate, we can do it,” he added. Mrs. Hoffman’s smile widened. The children, along with Alex, wore curious expressions on their faces and stared at Donald. All of a sudden, he laughed. Then Alex laughed and the children joined him. “Now we’re not going to tell you the joke, Mrs. Hoffman. That’s between Donald and us,” Alex said. Donald looked to Mrs. Hoffman to see what her reaction would be. Her smile evaporated and then quickly returned.
“That’s all right; that’s quite all right. I understand,” she said. “Donald, you want to go with Mr. Gold and his family?” The little boy looked at Alex and the kids and then nodded emphatically. “Fine. We’ll get everything together and deliver him in the morning, Mr. Gold.”
Sharon sat in amazement. Alex stood up and walked to Donald. He extended his hand slowly, and the birdlike child lifted his into it. For a moment Alex simply held his hand and then he shook it, staring down at him all the while. Sharon had to wonder if Alex could read the boy’s thoughts and transmit his own to the boy. There seemed to be an immediate affinity between them.
“I’ll be waiting for you, Donald,” he said. “And so will the children. OK?”
“OK,” Donald said, and the sound of his voice seemed majestic. Even Mrs. Hoffman’s smile widened and her eyes teared. The moment was miraculous. Alex had done in minutes what others couldn’t do in months.
“That’s very nice, Donald,” Mrs. Hoffman said. “Go back to Mrs. Cohen now and she’ll help you get yourself organized.”
Sharon noticed that Donald did not turn away immediately to do what Mrs. Hoffman had told him to do. He looked up at Alex first as though waiting for Alex to confirm the order. Then he turned away and walked out of the room, closing the door gently behind him.
“A piece of work,” Mrs. Hoffman said standing. It was obvious she couldn’t contain herself. “A piece of work. Mrs Gold, you have a remarkable man here. Are you sure you don’t want to come work for me?”
“But I do in a sense, don’t I, Mrs. Hoffman?” Alex said. Sharon recognized the look he gave her. He was charming her, using those eyes, turning on that smile. The thin woman blushed and immediately became self-conscious.
“So you do, Mr. Gold. So you do. Well then, it all looks good. Mr. Kaplan will be at your place by ten, if that’s convenient,” she said, looking to Sharon this time.
“It’s fine,” Sharon said.
“We’ve been through this enough so I don’t have to go through anything more.” She looked at the children. “You’re all special,” she said, “but I’m sure you saw how special Donald is. He’s going to need your help if he’s going to make it anywhere. Can I count on you?”
“Of course,” Richard said. Sharon saw Alex’s arrogance in him and Alex’s restraint. It was obvious to her that he wanted to say more, just as Alex would want to say more.
“The children will get along,” Alex said.
“I don’t doubt it a moment. Well then…” Everybody stood up, Sharon the last. “I’ll be in close contact. Once again, thank you.”
“Thank you,” Alex said. There was a smile on his face, but when he turned to leave, that smile turned to a sculpture in ice. Sharon saw his eyes were fixed on her, but she turned away.
No one spoke again until they all got into the car.
“Why do you think he doesn’t like to talk?” Elizabeth asked.
“He’s been abused so much he doesn’t want to reveal what he really thinks and feels. He’s afraid, terribly afraid.”
“It’s a rotten thing what was done to him,” Richard said.
“Damn rotten,” Carl said.
Sharon said nothing. She felt something special about the moment. It was as though she had wandered into one of Alex and the children’s special sessions and been permitted to remain. There was a different tone in the air; it wasn’t like sitting around the dinner table and talking.
She had become terribly curious about their conversations. Something special had to be going on. Alex was doing something unusual, something magical. Perhaps if she kept quiet now, she thought, and they forgot she was here, she would understand; she would see just what it was that went on between them.
“They treated him that way because he was one of us,” Elizabeth said. The silence that followed confirmed that the others thought so, too.
“Another leper,” Richard muttered.
“Will he become…will he get better?” Carl asked. “I mean, what if he never says anything to anybody? I don’t think I could take it.”
“That’s not a good way to think, Carl,” Alex said. “You’re not the one who would be suffering. The silence is more painful to Donald than to those around him.”
“It is?”
“Sure. He’s the one who has to keep everything bottled up inside. Don’t you remember when you were like that?”
“Yes.”
“And don’t you remember how unhappy you were?”
“Me too,” Richard said.
“Believe it or not, I was like that sometimes,” Elizabeth said. She smiled, but there was no laughter. There was a long pause, and then Richard leaned forward.
“They did it to him,” he whispered, “just like they did it to us.”
Alex started to nod, but Sharon coul
dn’t contain herself any longer. Her curiosity was whetted.
“Who?” she asked. She turned, and Richard sat back quickly. “Who’s the they you’re talking about?” He didn’t reply, nor did the other two say anything. She looked at Alex, but he kept his face forward, concentrating on the road ahead. “Alex?”
He didn’t answer, and the deadly silence that followed made her feel as though she were riding in a car with four zombies. From that moment until they drove up to the Echo Lake Manor, no one said a word. As soon as the car came to a halt, the children opened their doors and rushed out of the car.
“Alex,” she said as he started to get out. The children were already at the door. He slammed the door, leaving her in the car.
Afterward at dinner, Sharon sensed that the silent treatment was still in effect. The children spoke to each other and to Alex, but the conversation was subdued. Actually, she thought they were all sullen. Twice she tried to say something about the new boy who was to come, but no one, not even Alex, picked up on it. She was happy when the meal was over and even wanted to get the children out of the kitchen as fast as she could. But they wouldn’t hear of it. Their chores were their chores.
“Just this once you can go right to your homework,” she said.
“Alex says if you give in once, you’ll give in twice,” Elizabeth replied.
“We do what we have to do,” Richard said. “It makes us stronger.”
“It’s no big deal,” Carl said.
She had to retreat and wait for them to finish. After they were gone, she sat down at the table and stared at the empty kitchen. She thought about the ride back from the government center and how she had been treated in the car and at dinner, and she felt herself grow angry. It wasn’t in her nature to be aggressive; she had learned to tolerate her life and actually cherish a good deal of it.
As a child she had been a loner just like Alex. She’d been bashful, hating to be in crowds or the center of attention. She had always admired Alex for the way he managed to maintain his solitude. They had their music and their books and their beautiful home and grounds. Sometimes she felt like a princess in a castle. Alex made the walls secure and kept the moat filled with crocodiles. He gave her whatever material thing she wanted, and often, before the children had come, they would have long, serious discussions about books, about the old times, and sometimes, even about their own fears.
She didn’t like to talk about his father, but references to him slipped in and out of their conversations like some persistent insect invading good crops. Even the slightest hint of anything critical about his father got him angry, but sometimes she couldn’t help expressing herself.
“I used to get the chills from the way he could just sit and stare out of the window. He made me feel as though he could see things I couldn’t.”
“Maybe he could.”
“I don’t want to believe that those things existed.”
“Maybe they do.”
“Don’t talk like that, Alex. You know how that frightens me.”
“You brought it up, I didn’t.”
“I don’t understand how your mother put up with it all those years.”
“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.”
“Well, I felt sorry for her. Everyone did. I know you did, too, Alex, even though you won’t admit it.”
He said nothing, but she saw the conflict in his face and she felt bad about pushing it.
“Why did he want a child?” she asked him. “From what you told me, it seemed he wanted you only to preach to.”
“That’s not true. Children have a special place,” he told her. “Pa believed that.”
Pa believed that, she thought. She looked around the kitchen and thought about Alex’s mother. Not as meek and as introverted as I am, she thought, but nevertheless, subdued, weighed down by the heaviness of an arranged marriage, childless until Alex was adopted.
The coincidence was too obvious. Why had Alex’s mother been childless? She had never understood that and Alex had never explained it. Was his father impotent? His mother infertile? How could it be that they would have the same problem and then…
The foster children, coming suddenly, as though Alex had finally awoken to the reality that there was no one else but him and her here. He wasn’t lonely; that wasn’t Alex. Why had he become so fatherly and how had he learned to deal with children so well? Even she had sat in amazement in Mrs. Hoffman’s office.
Was he trying to do what his father had done, but in a bigger way? And what was it that his father had done? Converted him to his own private view of the world?
Alex never really seemed to believe all of it. He seemed so strong, so independent. That was what had first attracted him to her—his power to be alone, to stand by himself, and to be so sure of what he was. He must have seen the need in her; he had been so gentle in those days, so willing to make the extra effort to please her. Did he still love her? She was afraid to ask the question.
She got up and put out the light in the kitchen. What did Alex mean, she wondered, when he said that children have a special place? What special place? Was it some part of his father’s mad philosophy? Did he take it from the Bible? Was that why he was bringing them into the house now?
She found him in the living room about to turn on his recording of the Carmina Burana and sit down to read.
“Is that all you’ll ever listen to, Alex?”
“It puts me into the right mood to read and to think. You don’t have to listen to it.”
“Why wouldn’t you answer me in the car?”
“You don’t do that kind of thing, Sharon.”
“What kind of thing?” she asked, but he sat down and picked up one of those old brown books. Actually they were his father’s journals, written in a chicken scratch that she couldn’t understand. How Alex could sit there and make head or tail of it she never understood. She even suspected that he didn’t understand much of it himself, that he sat there struggling to read meaning into the writing. Maybe he had made it a lifelong project or something. “What kind of thing?” she repeated. Tonight she was determined to press on for answers, no matter how angry he might get.
“You don’t undermine my work with the children,” he said, pronouncing each word slowly and independently for emphasis. He looked at the old journal again.
“How is what I asked in any way undermining your work?”
“My God, don’t you see anything?”
“Indulge me a little bit, Alex. I’m not as smart as you are.”
“Apparently.” He lowered the book to his lap. “Before they came here, the children had no self-image, no sense of identity, no I-thou concept. They saw themselves to be whatever anyone saw them to be, whatever they were labeled. They didn’t see anything unique about themselves. Without a good self-image, you can’t achieve; you can’t make anything good of yourself. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand all that. But who is the they?”
“I don’t want them to be self-conscious about their achievements; I don’t want them to become withdrawn. You did that to Richard when you asked him who the they was. You embarrassed him, made him feel stupid for saying it.”
“I did?”
“Yes.”
“But I didn’t mean that. I only meant to understand.”
“Sharon, the ‘they’ they talk about are those people who are against them.”
“Against them?”
“Yes. Now they have a clear understanding of what they must face, of what they must defeat. In knowing your enemies, you get to know yourself. Pa said that Cain never understood what he was until he understood the evil he had to defeat from the day he murdered Abel on. In knowing his enemy, he knew himself.”
“Pa said? You’re telling them the things your father said?”
“What’s so bad about that?”
“But your father saw evil everywhere.”
Alex lifted his book again.
“It is e
verywhere,” he said. “It’s good that they know it. Look what they did when they found it in themselves. Are they so bad now?” he asked. His smile was a smile of arrogance.
“Is there evil in me too, Alex?” she asked. Once again, he tried to cloak himself in silence, but once again, she wouldn’t permit it. “Alex, answer me. Is there evil in me? Am I one of the so-called they?”
He lowered his book reluctantly and looked at her.
“Don’t worry, Sharon,” he said, “if there is, the children will tell you.”
5
Donald moved like a shadow through the house. The self-imposed restraint he had placed on his speaking applied itself to his movements, as well. Sharon would come around a corner and find him standing silently in the room, or she would be working for a while and then sense that someone was behind her. Sure enough, when she turned around, there he was, staring up at her, his eyes filled with suspicion and caution.
She spoke to him, tried to be as understanding as Alex was, but nothing she said or did seemed to work. He moved around her in the darkest corners of the house, always keeping himself distant and out of reach. At the dinner table, he chose to sit the furthest from her, placing himself between Richard and Alex. She was surprised that Richard permitted him to do it. Richard guarded his relationship with Alex with great jealousy.
But all of the children had taken the little one in gracefully. She didn’t know that much about sibling rivalries, having been an only child herself, but she had expected more competition and more resentment. After all, what they had shared among three, they now shared among four.
The feminine warmth that Sharon had hoped to share with Elizabeth, she saw Elizabeth share with Donald. She caught her mothering him, helping him tie his shoes or brush his hair. One night she even saw her kiss him goodnight. The sight shocked her. The ten-year-old wouldn’t come close enough for her to touch him, much less kiss him; and yet, wasn’t it she to whom Donald should have been looking for motherly love? What was it that these children shared that united them so quickly?
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