Red Clover

by Florence Osmund

  “In Nelson’s room.”

  “Don’t lie to me. He would never have such a thing in his room.”

  “Okay. Don’t believe me. I don’t care. It wasn’t what I was looking for in the first place. I just ran across it in a drawer. It was just there, so I looked at it. I think I must have fallen asleep ‘cause when I woke up, I saw all the police cars out front.”

  “But we searched that room.”

  “There’s a space in the closet, behind the brown dresser, by the window. I was back there.”

  “Good heavens. Do you have any idea how we worried when we couldn’t find you?”

  “No.”

  “We didn’t know if you had run off, were kidnapped, or what.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  His mother heaved a sigh and turned toward the door. “Someone will be in to check on you a little later. Try to get some rest.”

  “Mother?”

  “What is it?”

  “Who’s turn was it to watch me today?”

  “Apparently there was a scheduling misunderstanding with Kate.”

  “Is she here now?”

  “Kate is no longer with us. Your father took care of that.”

  Lee waited for the maid to check in on him before climbing out of bed and tiptoeing down the stairs to the second-floor landing. He positioned himself behind the tall potted plant where he knew he could hear what was going on in the front foyer without being seen. His parents’ voices were low but audible.

  “...and I’ll say it again,” his father was saying. “There’s something wrong with that boy, and the sooner you take care of it, the better off we’ll all be.”

  “And I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again,” his mother responded. “It’s not that easy. He hasn’t been seeing Dr. Jerry for that long, and I think he’s making headway. I just wish you'd be more—”

  “The boy doesn’t need some fancy shrink to see what’s wrong with him. Send him off to Hampshire like I suggested a year ago. They specialize in kids like him. It’s not that far from the New York apartment. You could stay there and be near him.”

  “First of all, it’s more than two hundred miles from our apartment, and secondly, I am not sending him off to some boarding school. That’s not the answer.”

  “Well, he doesn’t fit in here, and if you’d like me to go into the reasons why, just let me know. And this last incident is just—”

  “This may come as a shock to you, but that Playboy magazine came out of Nelson’s room.”

  “I suppose he told you that. And, of course, you believed him.”

  “I believe him.”

  “Don’t be so naive. He’s lying, and that makes the whole situation worse. Now we can’t trust him. Look, you’re ultimately responsible for half of Evanston’s police force on our doorstep looking for that kid. It’s a good thing they don’t charge for their services. Would you like me to calculate just how much that would cost?”

  “You’re all about money.”

  “You bet I am. And you can also bet our two sons will take after me.”

  Lee heard footsteps and got ready to flee.

  “Do what you want. I don’t care,” his father said.

  A door slammed.

  Lee huddled behind the planter, ready to run to his room if he heard his mother coming up the stairs. Instead, he heard her crying.

  He couldn’t bear to hear her sobs and wanted to run to her and tell her everything would be all right. He forced back his own tears. He needed to be strong.

  On the way back to his bedroom, Lee went to Nelson’s room and slipped the Swiss Army knife into his brother’s desk drawer. Back in his own bed, he replayed his parents’ conversation in his head.

  So many of the things his father had said disturbed him, but none had hurt as deeply as, “Do what you want. I don’t care.”

  2 | Best in Class

  Eventually, the drama resulting from the Playboy magazine incident waned, and things in the Winekoop residence returned to normal. Lee steered clear of his father, which wasn’t hard to do, and refrained from asking his mother any more discomposed questions about his existence. Instead, he kept them safely bottled up inside and hoped when he got older he would understand why he was so different from his brothers, why his father seemed to hate him so...and what those naked girls in the magazine were doing.

  In spite of what his mother kept telling him, by the time he turned ten, Lee had eavesdropped on his parents enough times to know his father really did expect him to be like his brothers, and if he could be more like them, maybe his father would like him better. But he hardly knew his brothers. Bennett was a junior in high school, and Nelson was in his first year at Harvard. Bennett was okay...sometimes. But Lee still didn’t feel that comfortable talking to him. Nelson was so much older, he seemed more like an uncle than a brother, a distant uncle at that.

  Due to their age differences, they had no common interests and usually came together only at the dinner table. Lee remembered that when he was younger, Bennett had played with him a few times but never for very long, usually getting pulled away to do something else. After Bennett left, Lee would go on playing as though he was still there, pretending Bennett liked him and wanted to be his older brother. Even at ten, Lee knew that wasn’t right.

  Visits with Dr. Jerry often focused on Lee’s “self-esteem,” but Lee didn’t understand how he could possibly feel good about himself when he was such a disappointment to his parents. In Lee’s mind, there was his family...and then there was him. He felt like he didn’t have anyone, except for his mother, who would stick up for him when he needed it. And he almost always needed it when his father got involved, like on Lee’s first day of school.

  “The boy is not normal,” Lee had overheard his father tell his mother on that day.

  “That’s not true, Henry. All his tests come back in the normal range,” she responded.

  “So much for the tests.”

  Lee understood that his brothers were at the top of the so-called normal range. If they were any indication of normal, Lee conceded he was likely close to the bottom of the range. Had he tested high enough in their entrance exam, Lee would be attending the same elite private grammar school as his brothers. Instead, his mother had enrolled him in a less prestigious private school, and his first day had been disastrous. The other students had teased him, and his teacher had called him Leonard all day.

  “I’ve made arrangements to have him home-schooled by tutors,” his mother had told his father that evening.

  “Just because he had a bad first day doesn’t mean you yank him out of school. What a waste of your money.”

  For reasons unknown to Lee, it was clear that any money spent on him came from his mother.

  “Nelson and Bennett loved going to school at his age,” his father had said.

  “Don’t you understand, Henry? It doesn’t matter what happened to them. He’s so traumatized about this, nothing we say about Nelson and Bennett will make any difference.”

  “You deal with it then. He’s all yours.”

  Now, at ten, Lee had been exposed to fourteen tutors, some of whom had lasted just one semester. Unlike his brothers, he struggled to get passing grades. Unlike his brothers, he struggled with everything.

  “I’m not sure what to do,” Lee heard his mother say to his father one night when they thought he was asleep. “I consulted with Dr. Ballou last week when I was in New York.”

  “Who?”

  “You remember him, the one we met at the Silversteins last month, the one who was on Phil Donahue.”

  “Yes, I do remember him. Everything he said was just vague enough to hold some truth. How much is this one going to cost you?”

  “He told me he would be willing to review Lee’s case but it would be difficult for him to form any opinions without seeing him. I think I’m going to spend this summer in the New York apartment with Lee and see what Dr. Ballou can do for him.”

  “Do what you
want,” his father grumbled. “At least that damn apartment will get some use.”

  One thing Lee and his father agreed upon—seeing yet another doctor was a giant waste of time. He dreaded having to hear more of the same stuff he had been hearing from Dr. Jerry for as long as he could remember. He argued against going, but at ten, he had little influence over...just about anything.

  For the next four weeks, Lee met with Dr. Ballou for an hour and a half, twice a week. In between, Lee and his mother took long walks in Central Park, fed the pigeons, and went on extravagant shopping trips. Lee watched television whenever his mother felt the need for one of her frequent naps. Jeopardy was his favorite show, and whenever he answered a question right, he wondered if either of his older brothers would have been able to do so, or even his father. When he came across the soap opera All My Children, he got excited, thinking he might learn about how other families worked. Instead, he learned that some families were even more confusing than his own.

  At the end of their sessions, the New York doctor recommended a female therapist in Chicago, who was supposed to be able to help Lee develop “a more positive perception” of himself and “relieve some of his social anxieties.” He saw that doctor seventy-four times over eighteen months before his mother allowed him to stop.

  The Chicago doctor was no different from any of the others Lee had seen over the years—not at all friendly. This confused him—each one had indicated they wanted him to be open with them, but how could he when they appeared so distant? Lee didn’t trust most of them either, having overheard his father say once that it wasn’t in their best interest to cure him in order to keep those checks coming in from his mother. As a result, Lee revealed very little to any of them.

  When Lee turned fourteen, Bennett had just graduated first in his class at Yale and was about to enter law school. Nelson had an MBA from Harvard with two years at Barclays, well on his way to a lucrative career in investment banking. In addition to their high intellect, both brothers had matured into strong, physically fit young men. With narrow shoulders and skinny arms, Lee felt his body was yet another one of his hopeless shortcomings, at least compared to his brothers.

  Lee had little to do that summer except agonize over what his parents had in mind for him for high school. The thought of having to attend a school after all the years of being home-schooled horrified him. While he struggled with getting passing grades from his tutors, at least he didn’t have to deal with other children and teachers who weren’t handpicked by his mother. Thankful his parents were too preoccupied with other things to pay much attention to him—his father with some big real estate deal, and his mother with the annual American Red Cross fundraiser—Lee waited for a decision to be made about his schooling.

  When his mother informed him he would have to attend high school, he was devastated. He was now going to have to face what he feared most—the unknown.

  On the morning of his first day, Lee awoke in a full-blown panic attack. He huddled in the corner of his room, trembling, his fists clenched, breathing erratically, until his mother came looking for him.

  Paralyzed and barely able to speak, he managed to whisper, “Just leave me here for a while until it passes, Mother.”

  Dr. Jerry had told him to relax when he felt an attack coming on, practice the deep breathing exercises he had shown him, and imagine himself in a safe place. It helped.

  “What about school?”

  “I can’t go. What if I get a panic attack there?”

  “You’ll take the paper bag out of your briefcase and slowly breathe into it, like Dr. Jerry demonstrated for you. Then you’ll ask to be excused to go to the nurse’s office.”

  “It feels like I’m going to die when I have one of these, Mother. It feels like someone is choking me. I’m cold, and then I’m hot. It’s horrible. I don’t want to go through it again, not two days in a row.” He couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. “You have no idea how scary it is. I’m not going to school.”

  “Lee, we’ve been over this numerous times. You have to go to school. It’s not a choice for either of us. The law requires it.”

  “I don’t see why I can’t continue to be home-schooled.”

  “We’ll discuss it further after dinner...when your father gets home.”

  When his father arrived, his parents talked behind closed doors. Thirty minutes later, they summoned him.

  “Lee, we have agreed to allow you to continue being home-schooled,” his mother said.

  His father stood across the room, staring out the window while she talked, his stony profile telling Lee he wasn’t happy with the decision.

  “But here is the arrangement. We think you need social interaction with other children, so you must spend some time with children your own age doing something outside of your regular school work.”

  “Like what?”

  His father was quick to respond. “Sports. Just pick a sport,” he said, as if it was a no-brainer.

  “You’ve got to be kidding. I throw like a girl. When I run, I usually end up twisting an ankle. I can’t stand up on ice skates, and I’m deathly afraid of water. What do you expect me to do?”

  “Anything, boy. Just pick something.” His father’s voice tightened.

  “How about karate?” Lee said without thinking. The previous month, Lee had snuck out of the house on a Sunday afternoon when his parents weren’t home and had gone to see Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee, a movie his parents would not have allowed him to see due to his age.

  His parents looked at him in disbelief.

  “What’s wrong with that?” Lee asked.

  “What’s right with it?” his father asked.

  “It’s a sport. It involves interaction with other children my own age. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “Karate is—”

  “Henry, wait a minute. He does have a point, we must admit.”

  “Not karate.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  His father’s twisted face said it all. To him, the only sports worth anything were traditional team sports, like football, basketball, baseball, and soccer. He walked away mumbling.

  Lee signed up for karate classes with nine other twelve- to fourteen-year-olds. Neither of his parents attended his first lesson, for which Lee was grateful. When he came home, they asked him how it had gone.

  “It was okay, I guess. We didn’t really do anything but listen to Sensei Kim talk. Living in harmony. Spiritual awakening. You know...all that kind of stuff.”

  “Really. And what do you think about ‘all that stuff,’ as you so eloquently put it?” his father asked without looking up from his newspaper.

  “I like it.”

  “That’s just great,” his father said.

  He went to the class three times a week and enjoyed it. During down time, the other boys talked about cutting lawns and shoveling sidewalks to earn spending money, watching television shows like Chico and the Man and Happy Days, and playing Pac-Man in the arcade at the local roller rink. Lee was curious about the cassette-tape players they all said they had in their bedrooms where they listened to popular musicians Lee had never heard of, like Bob Dylan, Queen, and Steppenwolf. The only music allowed in his home was classical, played from stereo components housed in a floor-to-ceiling entertainment center his father had custom-built in his den.

  After several weeks of classes, Lee overheard his mother talking on the phone with Sensei Kim.

  “The best in the class? Really?”

  For some reason, she never mentioned that phone call to Lee.

  3 | “Don’t Expect Him to Change”

  In June of 1977, Lee unceremoniously received his high school diploma in the mail. By that time, he had earned his brown belt in karate, something that went unrecognized by his family. He relished the sport and discovered early on that it involved much more than learning how to kick and punch for the purpose of self-defense. Mental development was also an essential aspect to it, as well as unify
ing the mind, body, and spirit—concepts that he quickly grasped but terrified him at the same time.

  One week after he received his diploma, his parents asked him to join them in the parlor. The setting made Lee nervous—they rarely asked him to join them in the parlor, and when they did, it always meant there would be a difficult conversation to come.

  His parents were sipping their usual after-dinner port. His father didn’t waste any time asking Lee what his plans were now that he had finished high school. It wasn’t as though his father hadn’t asked that question before, and Lee knew he now had to do something besides petition for more time. The painful look on his mother’s face made him even more nervous.

  “Believe it or not, I have a plan, Father.” Lee had dreaded this conversation for months and wondered if he would be able to get through it without vomiting, passing out, or going into a full-blown panic attack. “Oakton Community College offers a variety of horticulture classes, and they also have a karate team.”

  Lee avoided eye contact with either parent as he held his breath waiting for their reaction. When he did look at them, his eyes darted back and forth between his mother’s pursed lips and the enlarged vein in his father’s neck. Seconds of silence felt like hours.

  “What’s wrong with the University of Wisconsin?” his father asked. “I told you I can get you in there.” His father was a UW alumnus, member of the Bascom Hill Society, and major donor.

  “I understand why you might want to consider community college as opposed to a regular college,” his mother interjected. “Given the fact you’ve been home-schooled your entire life, attending a four-year college might be a bit overwhelming. And then of course, there are your grades. Will you consider transferring to a regular college after two years?”

  “Let me get this straight. Are you telling us—”

  “Henry, let Lee respond to my question first...please.”

  “I’m not thinking that far ahead, Mother.”

  “Figures,” his father grumbled. “I don’t understand why—”