The Things I Want Most

by Richard Miniter

  “Rich, you’re making it sound all wrong, and I’m not overreacting. This man knows these children, and we should at least understand how to deal with him physically if something happens. God knows what I’ve been doing isn’t working—he’s not settling down. Maybe he is sick.”

  I was incredulous. “You’re actually worried? Frightened?”

  Sue looked at me and smiled. “No, I’m not frightened, but I didn’t tell you everything. For instance, after they restrained him, all he would do was scream, ‘Let me fucking go,’ at the top of his lungs, and he did that for over an hour.”

  “I don’t care. I still don’t agree with it.”

  In fact, that was the first real testimony to Mike’s normalcy that I had heard. If somebody tied me to a chair, I’d be whooping and hollering, too.

  “Well, I do,” Sue persisted. “By the way, I’m keeping him home tomorrow. I decided I want to take him with me when I visit my mother. I want to see what she thinks. Besides, I can’t leave him here with you—it just wouldn’t work.”

  Sue was going up to spend a long weekend with her mother in Old Forge, New York, in the Adirondacks.

  Sarcastically I said, “Oh, I see, despite what you learned today, you’re going to be alone in a car with him for four long hours without your child-restraint training.”

  Sue gave me the gimlet eye. “Okay, you’re right, I don’t agree with everything that teacher said about his being a danger to us. When I’m not worn out from having to listen to him, I still have the feeling that Mike is basically a very kind, generous person. But still, that man’s the professional, he has all the experience. There’s got to be something to what he says.”

  “Don’t be too sure.”

  “Shut up.”

  Later on that evening, I heard Mike ask Sue if he could telephone the Johnsons and speak to “Mom” and “Dad” and “Grandma.”

  Sue said okay, and he dialed from the living room phone. I was listening from the next room.

  “Hello,” he said into the phone, “Grandma, this is Mike.”

  There was a pause while he was listening, and then he repeated, “Mike.”

  Then again, “Mike, this is Mike. Do you remember me?”

  “Mike.”

  “Mike,” he finally said in a low voice, but I knew the phone was dead.

  He walked past in the hallway and went into the office where Sue was. I heard him telling Sue in his loudspeaker voice all about a long conversation with “Grandma” Johnson, how she was going to buy him a present for Christmas.

  I felt like banging my head into the wall.

  I caught him in the hallway just before bed. He had the dogs with him and, true to form, tried to duck around me with his eyes averted.

  Moved by something, I said, “Hold on,” and grabbed his thin arm.

  “Look at me, Mike.”

  Those wide, blue blank eyes slowly came up. “Mike, if anyone ever ties you to a chair again, I don’t want you to tell Sue. Tell me, instead. Get to a phone and call me at work.”

  No response.

  “Mike, do you understand? Do you?” I shook him.

  “Let me go, that hurts. Why should I call you, anyway?”

  “Because I’m going to tie them to a goddamn chair, and believe me, I make better knots.”

  The eyes looked away again.

  After he went on about his business, I questioned myself. Was it the right thing to say? Was I just screwing things up by being a bull about this?

  That night he said good night to me for the first time.

  Sue and the Noise left for Old Forge while I was at work on Friday morning. Sunday afternoon they were back, with Sue looking relaxed and happy, and Mike oddly quiet.

  “What happened? Did you have his voice box surgically removed?”

  “We had a good time. My mother enjoyed having him. We took a canoe trip, we went to the Enchanted Forest, but it was closed, so we shopped, saw my sister, ate out, had a busy weekend.”

  “But Mike?”

  “Different.”

  “How?”

  “Quiet, just like you see him now. Well, semiquiet, and he did some listening for a change”

  “Okay, come across,”

  Sue grinned. “I finally decided who the adult was in this relationship. I told him to shut up. We were an hour up the road when I realized that I wasn’t going to make it with him shouting in my ear the whole time. So I lost my temper and screamed at him.”

  “Lost your temper?”

  “More like turned into a screaming, cursing, snarling maniac. I mean, I really lost it.”

  “And he shut up?”

  She grinned again, but sadly this time. “More or less. I scared the hell out of him. Anyway, he settled down and began to talk to me like a reasonable little person. I could actually have a conversation.”

  “And?” I prompted her with my hand.

  “Big gaps. He’s been talking so much and saying so much of absolutely nothing about himself over the past few weeks that I didn’t realize what he doesn’t understand. In a strange way he’s incredibly naive. I think that’s a big part of his problem.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” said Sue, “after I yelled at him I told him he could sleep in the car, meaning that it was a long trip and he could nap on the way up. But about a half hour later he asked me where I was going to sleep over the weekend and I said, in my mother’s house, of course.”

  “Okay …” I shrugged.

  “Rich, he then asked how far the car was going to be from the house.”

  “So what?”

  Sue leaned forward. “Don’t you see what I mean? He thought I was telling him that I’d be in the house over the weekend, but that he’d be sleeping outside in the car.”

  “That’s silly.”

  “But, Rich,” Sue said, “that’s the point. Despite this demanding verbal smoke screen of his, what he expects to do is whatever an adult tells him to do. Literally. Live in the corner of a trailer like an animal, submit to the most degrading treatment, even sleep outside in the car in the dark in a strange place—and you know what he’s like in the dark.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah … and more. This kid believes in Santa Claus.”

  I laughed. “Sue, he’ll be twelve years old.”

  “Rich, the Enchanted Forest was closed, but we saw a big figure of Santa Claus through the gate. Mike talked about Santa Claus on and off all weekend. He believes in him—not in a half-believing, wishful sort of way, but as an article of faith.”

  “Santa Claus?”

  “And probably the Easter Bunny.”

  That was unsettling. “What else does he believe in?”

  “God knows. He’s been in that system for a long time. What else do you learn in a family that you can’t learn in an institution? Things we take for granted that our children understand. The fact that you have to go shopping every week, that people work at other jobs besides looking after you. Things you don’t even think about, like an older brother telling you Santa Claus isn’t real.”

  “Well, if you can’t itemize them, how are you going to fill in the blanks?”

  Sue shrugged. “Maybe some of them you can’t. Probably he has to do it by himself, for the most part. But he’s smart. I think the reason he runs on at the mouth is he understands he doesn’t know a lot and he’s desperate to cover that up. Remember? Joanne said something like that—it’s a defense mechanism.

  “The problem is, you can’t engage the brain while the mouth is in motion. If he’s talking, he’s not learning.”

  “So what are you going to do if he starts up again?”

  “You know we wouldn’t let one of our own children play machine-gun mouth. I’ve just been feeling too sorry for the little shit. That’s over. He starts again and I throttle him. Look at it this way: we’re bigger and stronger. If we could have forced him into a car to sleep outside in the dark, we can force him into a reality check every now and
then.”

  “That’s it?”

  “No. I have to find him something else to do besides follow me around like a two-year-old. Get him out with some normal folks.”

  “How?”

  “I have an idea.”

  From the street below we could hear the screams and the thick heavy thud of blows being landed. Looking up to the second-floor windows, we watched the silhouettes of thirty or so people fighting.

  I turned to her. “Sue, these are not normal folks.”

  It was Liam’s karate class. One of us came down here twice a week, first to drop him off and then again to pick him up.

  I continued protesting, “Do you think this is a good plan? Mike is really weak physically, and he has a big problem getting along with people and following directions. Some of these guys in here are thirty years old and weigh a couple hundred pounds.”

  “Hey, it’s a social setting, isn’t it? Good practice.”

  “Did you tell The Harbour Program about this? They’re going to find out. I think their idea of a social setting is more like a family dinner or a movie out.”

  “Look,” Sue snapped, “here comes Liam. You get him and walk back to the car. I want to talk to the instructor.”

  “No. I want an answer to one question first.”

  Sue put one hand on her hip. “What?”

  “How are you going to tell the teacher who wants you to restrain him that you’re sending him to karate lessons instead?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  i’m a baptist

  There is some witching, translucent quality to a crisp autumn that blurs the oranges and reds and collapses the distance of sound. The ring of a hammer on a neighbor’s roof from across the valley, the slam of a screen door, or the reedy call of a far-off child seems to carry forever. I hadn’t much trouble hearing the two boys argue down at the far edge of the grass. I could even hear the rustle and snap of their black uniforms. I could count the draw of their breath.

  And I could tell Liam was angry.

  For a few days now Mike had seemed both cowed by Sue’s new assertiveness and in awe of his new karate class. He was still clinging and demanding. He still wanted his spare time filled up with busy little activities organized by adults, but he was happier, even acquiescent, and he was also very, very quiet.

  In fact, this short break had given Sue and me just enough time to breathe long, ragged sighs of relief and pat each other on the back. “Hey, do we know how to handle kids, or what? After five boys, a little waif like this isn’t going to teach us anything. Now we can start to do something with this kid.”

  And in truth Mike seemed pliable and defenseless without that magazine-fed mouth of his. He even got to us in a big way with an artless, revealing little conversation, although at the time, I remember wishing I had never heard it.

  He was waiting for the school bus early in the morning, hair brushed, skin clean, dressed in freshly ironed clothes. Pathetically, he still insisted on wearing the tattered name tag from the first day of school, weeks before.

  Now he fussed with the tag, read it again, and looked up at me.

  “Do you know how I know what my name is?”

  I chuckled, “Yeah, it’s on the tag.”

  “No,” he said in his loud voice, “I know what my name is because my sister told me.”

  “Told you.”

  “Yep. I remember her shaking me and shaking me and saying, ‘Wake up, Mike; wake up, Mike.’ ”

  Not understanding, I asked, “Well, did you wake up?”

  “Later on I did. In the hospital, I think. I don’t remember that good.”

  Then the school bus beeped outside and he dashed for the door.

  As I watched the bus pull out of the drive, I got very angry. Twelve times in eleven years, a new house, new adults, a new school, new friends, a new life, and it had all started with being shaken out of unconsciousness.

  “No wonder,” Sue said when I repeated it to her, “he needs that name tag.”

  But today was different. He was much less vulnerable. I could hear it in the edge of his voice.

  I was just home from work and walking along the stone path from the parking lot when I saw them together. They were far down the hill on the edge of the still brilliantly green back lawn practicing karate.

  Mike’s thin figure was padded up in a red protective helmet, body guard, and gloves. Liam was hitting him, driving him, and Mike was ranting back in his overloud voice: “You can’t hit hard! You hit like a girl!”

  “Mike,” snapped Liam, “I keep telling you, you don’t know enough, and you’re not strong enough to take a good hit. And there’s plenty of female black belts.”

  “I know all about karate. I took karate before. You hit like a girl—girl, girl, girl.”

  Bam! Over Mike went, cartwheeling with his arms and legs flopping.

  I walked in the kitchen. It was steamy and good-smelling inside, with pots simmering on the stove, but Sue seemed to be boiling over. She had a harassed look on her face and was banging things around. When I asked what was wrong she said, “He’s had his hooks into me all day long. Now he’s started to find fault, he’s started to get nasty, and he keeps telling me we’re lying to him about everything.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I’ll talk to you later,” she said, distracted now, sniffing around at the sea of scattered pots and pans.

  “What are you making?” I asked, starting to snoop under lids.

  “Pasta, meatballs, salad, garlic bread, apple pie, and brownies. Deacon Carroll, Alice, and Garrett are coming over for dinner.”

  I walked into the barroom and saw the china out on the table. I had forgotten about company.

  “Rich, set out the glasses.”

  “Okay.” I walked over to the bar and made sure I had a good bottle of scotch tucked away for Deacon Carroll, who was on medication and usually didn’t drink. But I remembered him saying he wouldn’t take his pills that morning so that he could have one with us and also, with a broad, wistful hint, that he was partial to scotch.

  Rummaging through the bottles and glassware, I had a good view back outside. Mike had gotten up and was warily circling Liam. I could hear their voices.

  “I tripped.”

  “No, I hit you. I told you you couldn’t take a hit.”

  “I tripped.”

  Sue walked in carrying salad. “Okay. Can you go out and tell those guys to get cleaned up and changed? They’re eating with us.”

  When I yelled down the hill, Liam nodded okay and Mike didn’t. Instead, he shouted back, “Fuck you. I don’t have to get cleaned up. We’re not having company. I’m staying outside.” But Liam shoved him ahead, and the two boys stumbled up the sloping grass and then inside.

  I just stood there, stunned, for a moment.

  As I came back through the kitchen door, Mike was yelling at Sue, “No, we’re not having company You’re lying.”

  Composing herself, she replied reasonably, “Sure we are, Mike. Now get upstairs and wash.”

  “No, I don’t have to.”

  Liam’s arm snaked back down the stairs and grabbed Mike’s shoulder.

  When the door slammed upstairs, I whistled and asked Sue, “Okay, what happened to him?”

  But Sue ignored me and stuck her head in the refrigerator. She mumbled something about not having enough grated cheese.

  “Ah, here it is.”

  “Sue!”

  “All right! Ever since he got up this morning, he’s been on my case nonstop. When I told him it was eight o’clock, he said it was seven fifty-nine. When I told him to get Teddy outside, he said no, the dog’s real name was Teddy Bear. When I told him his white pullover matches his black pants, he said no, his red shirt matches. I noticed a mark on his arm, said it was an insect bite, and told him to go put peroxide on it, and he said no, it was poison ivy. On and on it went all day long, and half of his language has been filthy. He’s even been following me from room to room to tell me w
hat’s wrong with the things I’m doing and why he knows I’m not telling the truth about anything.”

  “Well,” I said slowly, “that could be dangerous. What would he do if you told him to get out of the way of an oncoming car?”

  Sue started stirring things on the stove. “I know exactly what he’d say. Before I started dinner I took him to the supermarket, and he dashed across the parking lot.”

  “And?”

  Sue looked exasperated, “And a car was coming. He started to argue with me when I yelled at him. The car stopped, he’s okay, I have to get this dinner on, I have to stay with the stove— it gives me something to do with my hands besides strangling him. So get out of my way. We’ll talk later”

  The deacon, Alice, and Garrett arrived a few minutes later, and magically, the simmering jumble in the kitchen materialized into a nicely kid-out meal. I poured a bottle of red table wine, drew the deacon a large whiskey, and then we adults sat.

  “So,” Deacon Carroll said, his blue eyes twinkling, “we’re finally going to meet Mike. How’s he doing?”

  Sue answered promptly, her lips set in a thin line. “We want to talk to you about setting up some religious instruction.”

  The deacon took a long sip of amber liquid and chuckled. “Ah. Doing that well, is he?”

  A down-to-earth guy in his seventies, the deacon had kept the parish going when we lost to retirement the priest who had been in St. Charles for nearly twenty years, then a transfer who had health problems. Now he was patiently settling in a new young pastor. Despite the now-bleak promise in his days since his wife of over forty years, Dorothy, had been killed in a car accident, the deacon kept doggedly putting one foot in front of the other, steadying others on with his wry sense of humor.