The Things I Want Most

by Richard Miniter

  During coffee and after Mike walked outside to play, David sat back and looked at me. “What a difference,” he said, chuckling. “I remember last fall. Trying to eat with Mike was like eating with a cave ape who was seeing fire for the first time. He’d never shut up or stop snatching at things.”

  I laughed at that, but then sat up straight. David was right. The emotional churning, the words, the fights, and Mike’s relentless window demolition had obscured some substantial social progress. Tonight was his umpteenth family dinner, and somewhere on the time line of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and a hundred other sit-downs, he’d acquired some social skill. Tonight he was composed and gracious—“Please pass the salad … yes, no … thank you”—ate very well, took modest portions, had seconds, handled his knife and fork with aplomb, helped clean up after dessert, thanked Susanne, and listened to the adult conversation. In fact, he joined in the conversation. A vast difference.

  David stood up. “Want to take the coffee outside?”

  Out on the porch it was dusk, orange, hazy, and hot. The traffic on the state route gone for the moment, the only noise the distant slam of a screen door down the street.

  Then Mike joined us. “What’s that sound?”

  There was a faint chime of musical notes, and David listened for a moment, then said mischievously, “Ice cream truck!”

  “What’s an ice cream truck?”

  “Aha.”

  We all piled into my pickup and tried to find it in the spread-out network of roads. Finally we did track it down, and Mike bought Susanne a bubblegum-flavored ice cream bar.

  Susanne said, trying to force a smile—she doesn’t eat ice cream and hates the taste of bubblegum, “Why, thank you, Mike.”

  Later Mike was asleep on Susanne’s couch, Brendan and Frank had taken off, Sue and Susanne were still chatting in the kitchen, and David and I returned to the porch.

  “Mike is really starting to fit in,” David said.

  I looked through the doorway to where he was sleeping now in a quiet pool of light, a comic book open on his chest and Susanne’s cat curled up under one arm.

  David smiled again. “You don’t have second thoughts?”

  “Yes,” I said helplessly.

  “How so?”

  “Well,” I explained, “we’re not changing our minds, of course, but we’re beginning to wonder if our life will ever settle down with him in it. There was another scene this morning. We haven’t had one for weeks, but there it was the moment we asked him to get moving. Sue squashed him like a bug, which is something new, and Mike was instantly contrite, but the fact remains that living with Mike is like having yourself permanently wired to a black box that zaps you with a zillion volts of electricity from time to time.”

  Seeing the puzzled look on his face, I tried to explain myself. “Dave, these scenes were the only device available to Mike when he wanted to get something or resist whatever it was he feared. There were no adults in his world who could be depended on to protect him. Now he’s here with us, and on balance there’s less in his life to be afraid of than there was before, so there are fewer scenes. But there still are scenes, so there’s some one more thing that he feels compelled to push away at. And David, I don’t think it’s something we’re ever going to be able to fix.”

  “What is it?”

  “Something we just couldn’t avoid. And we is not just Mom and me. It is us two, but it’s also the boys, it’s the social workers who took a chance on him, it’s The Harbour Program, it’s Susanne, and maybe, in a unique and special way, it’s you.”

  “Me?”

  “Look, Dave, Mike has been structured by the system for almost his entire life. He’s never had to worry about the future. It was just presented to him, and he either fought it or went along. But now we expect him to think through the major elements of any task and then go out and put them together for himself. And it’s not just major life decisions. It’s the simple matter of getting ready for church in the morning or putting aside some time to do his room.”

  David shrugged. “He seems happy.”

  “David, most of the time Mike is very happy. He has his animals, his bike, his fishing pole. He has us leaving him alone, he has his room, the rest of the family—you, in particular—and he’s come to love all of that. But he’s been trained to be a spectator, and whenever we insist he get out of the bleachers and onto the field to do something for himself, he blows up. He zaps us with that zillion volts.”

  David flinched a little bit. “That sounds pretty childish.”

  Sue had walked out onto the darkened porch. “Dave, Mike might be twelve, but believe me, in a lot of ways he’s twelve going on five.”

  David shook his head and looked back and forth between the two of us. “Lots of kids can’t come up with any goals.”

  I huffed and scratched my back up against the doorpost.

  “And that’s the other tail on this issue. Mike’s got his feet in two camps. He’s here with us, but he’s also controlled by the system, and he knows it. He knows that if he does overcome his fears and invest in any plan, it could all vanish in an instant.”

  David put his hands up. “What do you do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  David thought for a long moment, smiled again, and then, ever the optimist about people, said, “Hey, look at it this way: a child so difficult now may just turn out to be a very, very special guy later on in life.”

  I sat back and sighed. “David, after raising six children, let me tell you the one bitter lesson we’ve learned. If a child’s a pain in the ass when it’s young, it’s even more of a trial when it grows up.”

  David laughed then and wagged his finger at me. “Don’t you dare compare Mike to Richard.”

  The next morning before he got on the school bus, Mike decided to release the bullfrog into the swamp. He stood there for a long time explaining to it why it couldn’t stay in his room.

  Sue took Mike to the orthodontist and the diagnosis was major work—there were baby teeth fused to his jaw and other problems. There would have to be something like nine removals. Sue carefully explained all this to Mike. But he wanted it done, and Sue said she’d handle her end if he could keep his up—after all, there would be a lot of discomfort and pain. We thought the state of his teeth was really a big thing with him, but he didn’t want to admit it. Also, he saw Liam in the last stages of braces, went with me to pick him up from the orthodontist several times, and therefore, to some degree, viewed it as a rite of passage. “I can do it.”

  Mike wound up in a summer program—fortunately, with the same Mrs. Vandenburg. Today, though, he was off from school, and we went garage sale shopping—Sue, Mike, and I—in the pickup truck. A beautiful sunny, breezy day. Bought an antique (circa 1840) brass bed, lamps, rugs, etc. Then we all went home, ate a late lunch, and took a nap, even Mike.

  The next day Sue and I went to see a therapist under contract to Harbour. We were after some strategies that would enable us to handle any future violent situations. Direct, no-nonsense guy, seemed to have a good command of his craft, quite well-spoken. This first session was spent, for the most part, in establishing the basis of our relationship with Mike and trying to ferret out what it would take to keep him in our home over the long haul.

  Right away we came to understand that, while the therapist didn’t think there was any silver bullet, he could provide us with a wider perspective and, without naming names, discuss a range of similar client behaviors and outcomes that we could learn from. That sounded a bit vague at first. Did he even know what we were dealing with? But then he changed our minds (and got us laughing) by using his experience to act out some chillingly accurate portrayals of Mike’s behavior.

  The idea of goals and direction for Mike was a nonstarter, however. “Keep on coming on and give yourself a break from time to time” was the bottom line. Something, someone might trigger him.

  Since we were in Kingston, Mike was picked up from school by a
friend who also has a child named Mike in the same school building. When we got to her house, Mike had just finished an hour or so of bike riding with her son. He was muddy, perspiring, and happy, and he kept the good mood through dinner.

  The woman: “What a well-mannered boy. I wish my Mike was like yours.”

  Sue replied, “Hello?”

  How many portentous conversations have begun with my walking into Sue’s office—a hundred? A thousand?

  “Sue, can I talk to you for a moment?”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “I just talked to Richard on the other line. He’s leaving the West Coast in a few weeks, driving cross-country. He wants to stay here for a couple of months while he sets himself up again in D.C.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  I sat down with a thump.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Something happened, he thinks he can do better back in D.C, he’s had a falling-out with somebody or a lot of people, a major change in his goals—I just don’t know.”

  As solid, straightforward, and down-to-earth as our other sons are, Richard is emotional, sensitive, passionate, arrogant, and charming. They measure words as a miser counts ledger entries, while he is a raconteur, a wordsrmth. And their lifestyles are far different. The boys are all jocks and essentially non-or light drinkers, while Richard inches up into a new suit size every year, smokes cigars, and drinks a lot of expensive whiskey. They—well, the contrasts go on and on. They’re different people.

  A gifted writer, Richard is most interested in hawking several proposals he’s developed for television and radio, and spends eighty percent of his time and a hundred twenty percent of his money in logging thousands and thousands of travel miles each year. He’s extremely bright, even brilliant, and we love him dearly, but from my perspective or Sue’s or his brothers’, Richard’s center of gravity is anything but concentric to our spin.

  To have him descend on us for a lengthy period of time meant major change around here. Major change. Richard is just raw force.

  We didn’t think Mike was ready for this guy He was still paying for the theft of that knife. Frank was not often home, but on the few nights he was, Mike was in tears and we were letting the process proceed.

  Later on that evening, Sue and Mike were cooking together in the kitchen. These are the happiest moments of his life with us. The boy loves to cook, follow recipes, and then serve what he makes with a flourish. Sue, so often prickly in other settings, thoroughly enjoys working with someone in the kitchen and relaxes and smiles and jokes a lot, so the kitchen is a demilitarized zone. I’ve never heard a harsh word or a confrontation begin there.

  Mike does have some really good points. With two of our boys, in particular, if we didn’t have roast beef for sandwiches in the house and purchased snacks when they had a field trip, they would make us feel like class-one socioeconomic failures. Mike, however, is more than happy with almost anything we do in the food department, and he makes do. Petty ingratitude and carping about details are not among his failings.

  Dawn, and I was up on the mountain with the dogs. Very foggy. Huge flights of Canada geese just over our heads in the mist scared the bejesus out of me. The dogs took off howling, and I joined them.

  All that morning, aside from one brief conversation, Mike was abnormally quiet and subdued. Sorting things out with deep, ragged sighs because Frank had called—he was coming home again tonight.

  So, picking up on the contrite face he had on, Sue forced a final confrontation over the stolen fishing knife.

  “Tell me what happened. I have had five boys. I will know if your story has the ring of truth. Then I’ll have Frank back off.”

  “No one can make Frank leave me alone. He’s too strong.”

  “I can. You have to trust me.”

  “I think Frank’s friend Eric might have taken it.”

  “Uh, that doesn’t have the ring of truth.”

  Mike, sort of sobbing: “I broke it, then got frightened and threw it behind the barn.”

  Sue, leaning way back and looking at him: “Ah, the ring of truth.”

  A Tuesday morning and my sister Patricia and a friend of hers named Karen were up from Florida. Three years before, in late July, Pat’s daughter Laura, my niece, had been murdered along a hiking trail in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. The perpetrator was never apprehended. On each anniversary of Laura’s death Pat spends a week or so in Honesdale, prodding the state police, meeting with the D.A., talking to newspapers, handing out fliers. She is determined by sheer force of will to keep the investigation going.

  I am very, very proud of Patricia.

  A student at Florida State, Laura was killed during her second summer at Camp Cayuga in Honesdale. The first year we had driven her over and then picked her up for the occasional visit. But that year John, Patricia’s husband, had gotten her a reliable car and she had driven herself Then, at the end of July, on her Saturday off, Laura packed a lunch, a book, and left the campgrounds to hike to Tanner Falls, a few miles away.

  The call from my older sister Harriet came midmorning on Sunday. Laura was missing in the woods at Camp Cayuga.

  I called the camp and after discussing the situation with a staff member, the camp owner came on the line. His first words to me were, “Can we agree, Mr. Miniter, that whatever has happened I will handle all relations with the press?”

  I hung up on him and told Sue, “No help there. We have to get moving.”

  “The boys are working,” Sue said. “I’m calling around. You get some things together.”

  Ten minutes later I had a pack stuffed full of gear and was walking across the porch. “Do you think any of them will come with us?” I asked.

  Just then the first vehicle skidded into the driveway.

  “Here,” Brendan said, running up to me. “Here are topographic maps Tony Tantillo threw at me. He said if you need anything else to call him—more maps, compasses, whatever.” And then he turned and looked as Henry’s truck made the turn in. In a few minutes more Susanne and David, Liam, and Frank showed up. Frantic packing, searching for more overnight gear, and then we were on the road.

  I was never prouder of those guys than on that beautiful, sundrenched, bleak-hearted Sunday morning when they stormed down the interstate in a convoy of vehicles to get Laura back.

  But of course they couldn’t.

  By the time we reached the campgrounds, searchers had found her body and I identified her. I remember I could only stumble into the makeshift morgue, look down, and cry, “Oh, honey,” and I touched her hair.

  Then I called Patricia.

  I would rather my right hand had been burned off.

  Now Pat was here again, and I had to give her a hug big enough to last twelve more long months.

  Karen, the woman with her, had been Laura’s Girl Scout leader for many years. She has multiple sclerosis, and spends a good deal of time in a wheelchair, but still drives around with Pat and acts as her secretary and confidante, but mostly just keeps her going emotionally with a lot of warm support and encouragement. She is a grand lady, too, down-to-earth and determined, with two daughters of her own.

  We sat and talked for a long time.

  Mike came home from swimming in a pond and, already fed, didn’t want to sit down to a roast beef dinner with adults. But he joined us later for cake. He exhibited excellent manners with the two women trying to feed him seconds.

  “What a marvelous boy,” Karen said. “I’d steal him in a second.”

  Mike went to bed still smelling like a pond, but happy and relaxed. We were having drinks on the porch when I walked into his room to say good night and Patricia peeked in behind me while he said his prayers.

  “Good night, Mike,”

  “Good night, Aunt Pat” he said shyly.

  Mike got up by himself this morning, glad he hadn’t wet. He was well behaved in church, went to the bake sale afterward and bought himself four cupcakes. Later at home I repaired his bike outside
in the sun, then greased it, and he took off on the country lane toward the mountain, white helmet on, his cat on the handlebars, dogs running after him barking, the iron hand that can squeeze his thoughts still gone. You could almost hear Mike think, It’s Sunday afternoon. Dad is going to cut the grass and take a nap, Liam is working, Mom is in the office doing paperwork. I’m out of here.

  And then later, in the misty, quiet summer dusk, a shiny black Mazda 626 with California plates and its headlights on bounced into the drive and came to a stop.

  Richard was here.

  The next morning I struggled out of bed at six o’clock to make coffee. Richard and I had stayed up late talking, drinking, and talking. “Ugh,” I said, trying to hold my belly and my head at the same time. “I can’t do this anymore.”

  The barroom was littered with Richard’s stuff—a box of cigars, a notebook computer, a suit, newspapers, books, files. “Jesus,” I said. “He’s only been here twelve hours.”

  “You tried to stay up with him, didn’t you?” Sue was walking into the barroom.

  “We stayed up for a little while.”

  “Oh, it stinks in here from those cigars,” and she started crashing open all the windows. “Rich, this will go on every night if you let it.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m cured.”

  “You should have been cured years ago.”

  “Where’s Richard?” We both turned around and looked. Mike had come downstairs.

  “What are you doing up so early?”

  “Richard got me up last night and told me he would take me running first thing this morning before I went to school.”

  Sue shook her head sadly “Mike, you have to understand that when Richard says these things, he really means them. But there’s little chance he’ll be up before noon.”

  “Maybe I should wake him?”

  Richard got in his car and took off for someplace, and after school I took Mike to get a videotape. At about eight o’clock at night Sue and I were weeding in the garden when Sue’s cat Jerome was killed a few feet from her by a car speeding by on the road. The cat was Sue’s constant companion for years—it followed her around the day long, sat with her hour after hour on the porch. At first Sue didn’t believe it; it just happened so fast. Then she collapsed on the grass crying, and it took me ten or fifteen minutes to get her into the house. Mike watched the whole thing silently and hung back. But at dark I walked back to the spot to see if all was in order and found a flower transplanted onto Jerome’s grave in the garden. Possible suspect, Mike.