“Why?”
Mitchell shrugged. “You tell me. Unhappy at school. Unhappy at home. Kids who feel they’ve got no control in their lives often find that limiting what goes in their mouths gives them some semblance of power.” He pulled a business card from his scrubs breast pocket. “Melanie Fisher’s the best when it comes to these things,” he said, handing over the card. “Bring the kid in next week and we’ll do the regular work-up just to be on the safe side.”
Richard fingered the card.
“Thanks, Ted.”
He watched Mitchell head for the nurse’s station, where he grabbed the chart for yet another patient.
Steeling his courage, Richard turned and went back down the hall, where he entered the exam room. Fully clothed, Jeff sat on the exam table. Head hanging, eyes focused on the floor, the kid sat hunched over the edge, hands tucked under his thighs, feet swinging.
Richard stopped a couple of feet in front of the boy, but Jeff didn’t look up.
“Dr. Mitchell wants to run some more tests on you.”
No reaction.
“He says you’re not eating enough. How come?”
Jeff shrugged, but didn’t look up.
“What do you know about anorexia?”
“Karen Carpenter, the singer, died of it.”
The flatness in Jeff’s tone sent a chill through Richard. He swallowed. “Seems like we have a lot to talk about.”
The legs continued to swing.
“Jeff?”
The kid finally looked up, his muddy brown eyes smoldering with anger. “I got nothin’ to say to you.” He slid from the table and headed out the room.
#
The ride home was tense—silent.
Richard stopped the car in front of the back entrance and Jeff jumped out, slamming the door, hurrying into the house.
Richard put the car in park, cut the engine and doused the headlights. Fluffy snowflakes drifted onto the windshield. He should have dropped the kid off and headed straight back to the hospital. But for once, his guilt outweighed his sense of responsibility for his work. Only he didn’t know what to do next.
He was twenty-seven years old with little to no parenting skills and responsible for another human being.
Hell, if he was honest with himself, he found it easier to relate to sick strangers than this person who lived under the same roof and shared half his DNA. And not for the first time, Richard let his anger swell at his mother—a woman he barely knew—for saddling him with the troubled boy.
Richard jerked the key from the ignition and exited the Porsche.
The wind whipped around him and he pulled up his collar as he trudged toward the house.
The aroma of roast pork and steaming vegetables assailed him as he entered the kitchen.
Doris, the new cook, stood over the stove, stirring a pot. Thin and angular, the gray-haired woman reminded Richard of a blue heron.
Curtis was on his feet, looking down the hall.
Richard noted the table was set for one. Jeff preferred to eat dinner with Curtis in the kitchen and only suffered through a meal in the dining room with the elder Alperts when Richard was home—which was seldom.
Richard shrugged out of his coat, settling it on the back of one of the maple chairs.
“Where is he?”
“Upstairs.”
Curtis’s eyes conveyed his worry. “He’s in trouble?”
Richard sighed.
“No. He’s ... not well.”
Curtis turned back to look down the darkened hallway.
“Oh, Lord, I had a feeling.”
“What’s been going on around here at mealtimes, Curtis?”
The old man’s body went rigid. Doris turned her back to Richard.
“I been eating most of my meals alone lately, sir.”
“And why’s that?”
Curtis’s gaze traveled back to Doris.
“There be new rules about coming to the table on time, sir. Them’s that don’t show gets their dinner throwed down the garbage disposal.”
Richard’s anger swelled as his gaze swung back to the cook.
“Is that true, Doris?”
The woman set her wooden spoon onto the ceramic rest and slowly faced him.
“I’ve been told how this kitchen is to be run, Dr. Alpert. My husband’s been on disability for five years now. I do what I’m told to keep this job.”
No need for her to say who gave her those orders.
“When was the last time Jeff actually got to eat dinner?”
Neither answered him.
Richard’s heart sank. “I wish you’d said something before now, Curtis.”
“Sir, you don’t spend a lot of time here.
You comes and goes so fast, ain’t nobody able to catch you to say a word, least of all the boy.”
Richard exhaled.
“Point taken.” And how. He turned for Doris. “As of this minute, there are new rules in this kitchen. My brother is a member of this household and withholding food as a punishment will no longer be tolerated. I fired the last cook. I’ll do it again if I have to. Do you understand?”
Doris’s cheeks flushed bright red, and her voice was shaky when she murmured, “Yes, sir.”
Richard brushed past Curtis. “Now to see if I can undo the damage.”
Richard knocked on Jeff’s door, but there was no answer. He turned the handle. The room was dark, but the light spilling in from the hall revealed a huddled shape lying on the bed.
“Jeff?
We need to talk.”
No answer.
“Curtis told me what’s been going on at dinnertime. I’ve spoken to Doris. Everything’s going to be okay now.” Yeah, let’s just pretend the last ten weeks never happened and everything will be peachy keen.
The kid didn’t move.
From somewhere in the dark drifted the tinny sound of a small radio. It was one of the few items Jeff had retrieved from the apartment he’d shared with their mother before her death the year before.
Richard tried again.
“You’re either going to have to talk to me, or a counselor. One way or another, we have to solve this.”
Still no answer.
“Look, why don’t the two of us go out and get something to eat.”
“Shouldn’t you be at the hospital by now?”
“I told them I’d be late. Right now I think it’s important that we—”
Jeff swung his legs over the side of the single bed, sitting up, but still didn’t face Richard.
“Just go away. Now.”
“I can’t.
Not until I have some kind of assurance that you’re going to work with me on this. We can get you help, but you’ve got to be willing to accept the fact there’s a problem.”
“I don’t have no stinkin’ anorexia.
Girls get that, not guys. I know what I’m doing.”
“No, you don’t.
You’re screwing with your health and it could have life-long consequences.”
Jeff snorted.
“You are so wrong. I have not given up eating. I’ve just stopped—”
“Ketchup and hot water is not soup.
It’s not eating.”
“Shut up!”
Jeff erupted from the bed and started pacing the confines of the small darkened room. “It’s all her fault. I’ve heard her telling people who visit, ‘He steals food!’ She told people on the phone you fired Helen, but that was me who stole from them. I did not! I never have. I don’t want
anything
of hers—of theirs!”
The impact of the words caused Richard to sag against the door frame.
He covered his eyes with his right hand. “Dear God, is that what this is all about?”
“And I don’t want anything from
you
, either!” Jeff crossed the room in three paces, yanked open a dresser drawer and grabbed something from within, tossed it at Richard, hitting him in the chest. The packet fell to the carpet.
Richard bent down to pick it up.
An envelope of cash. He thumbed through it: ten ten-dollar bills.
“What’s this, your school lunch money?”
Jeff’s defiance waned, and he was back to being a short, skinny teen-aged boy with a pallid complexion. “Go away,” he said, his voice a whisper—a plea.
“No.”
They stared at one another for long minutes. Were those tears in the kid’s eyes?
“You need to eat,” Richard said.
Jeff shook his head. “You can’t make me.”
Somehow Richard swallowed down the lump in his throat.
“No, I can’t. But I’m asking you, please, go downstairs and try to eat something.”
Jeff shook his head, his lower lip trembling.
“No.” He blinked back tears. “You don’t understand. She made me look like....”
And suddenly Richard did understand. It was pride that kept the kid from enjoying a meal, a bite, a taste.
Grandmother had humiliated him one too many times in front of servants and strangers.
“I’m sorry, kid.”
The words were inadequate to express the degree of guilt and sorrow pulling at Richard’s soul. “I’m sorry all this has happened, and I don’t know how to make it right. I really don’t know.”
Jeff said nothing.
Richard resisted the urge to reach out, to hug his younger sibling, knowing Jeff wouldn’t know how to accept such an expression of compassion—at least from him.
“Please, go away,” Jeff said, his voice cracking.
Richard struggled to swallow. He stared at the kid for a long twenty, thirty seconds, and then he turned and pulled the door shut behind him.
#
Richard found both his grandparents in the living room, sitting in their usual chairs, reading. For the first time the room’s silence struck him as unnatural. Only the sound of the mantle clock broke the quiet, and it occurred to him that he rarely heard the two engage in conversation. Maybe after so many years of marriage they didn’t need words to communicate. Or was it that they had nothing left to say to one another?
Richard cleared his throat.
His grandmother looked up from the magazine on her lap. She gazed at him over the top of her reading glasses, and a smile broke her wrinkled features. “Darling, Richard. Come and sit down.” She patted the couch cushion beside her, clearly delighted to see him.
“Hello, Grandfather.”
The old man rewarded him with a faint but genuine smile. If nothing else, Richard knew his grandparents loved and cherished him. Too bad they couldn’t extend a smidgen of those emotions to Jeff. Then again, who was he to judge them?
“I thought you’d be at work,” Grandmother said.
“I should be, but something came up.” Grandmother’s blue eyes shifted from pleasure to concern. That would change in a heartbeat.
“I’ve got some unhappy news for you.”
Grandfather folded his newspaper, his expression darkening.
“Jeff and I will be moving out as soon as I can find other accommodations.” He’d used this threat before, but this time he was deadly serious.
“
You’re
leaving?”
Typical.
Grandmother never acknowledged Jeff if she didn’t have to.
“Yes.
The principal at Jeff’s school called me in today. They seem to think he’s unhappy at home and that it’s affecting his health.”
“We can’t be held responsible for whether that boy’s happy or not,” Grandmother snapped, her back stiffening.
“That’s true. But apparently there’s a continuing problem with the kitchen staff here. It seems Doris has been denying Jeff food.”
“Then we’ll fire her right away,” Grandfather said.
The poor old man had no clue about the dynamics going on around him.
“I’m not sure that would solve the problem,” Richard said.
“Because it also seems that someone has been telling people that Jeff steals food. I don’t believe that’s true. Between this and being denied food, he’s been starving himself. I can’t leave him in a situation that threatens his health. I’m legally responsible for his wellbeing, and as his guardian I take that obligation very seriously.”
Not serious enough
, a voice inside him mocked,
or else you’d have noticed the kid was in trouble long before this
. He clamped his jaws together, as though that would help dispel the guilt.
It didn’t.
“And I have my reputation at the hospital to think about. If it gets out that I couldn’t keep my own brother from suffering malnutrition—”
Grandfather looked suitably upset.
“I don’t want you to go.” He turned his anger on his wife. “And we will do everything we can to make sure that the boy is treated fairly under this roof, won’t we Margery?”
Pink spots appeared on the old lady’s face.
“Won’t we,” the old man said again, with more force.
Richard had never seen the old man stand up to his grandmother.
Her gaze dipped to the magazine on her lap.
“That boy deserves an apology,” Grandfather said.
Grandmother’s eyes blazed, her fingers crumpling the magazine.
“I will not.”