The Things I Want Most (17 page)

Sure.

The boys seemed to find the whole episode amusing, and a couple of them walked over to the bar, looked at Mike's plate, and laughed. Mike jumped down off the barstool and ran across the barroom and upstairs.

Sue came back in and wordlessly took the plate off the bar.

One of the boys said, “Mom, what do you expect?”

Sue seemed to turn to stone for an instant. Then she slammed Mike's plate down on the table. “What do I expect? What do I
expect?
I expect you all to act with a little charity. That kid has been working all week in the kitchen and trying to make friends with you, and you've been treating him like a leper. He's half your size, for God's sake.”

Embarrassed, Matt looked down at his lap, but our sons
glared back, and Frank said, “Mom, he doesn't even know how to eat Thanksgiving dinner.”

She picked up the plate and slammed it down again. “You didn't know how either until we wheeled you over to your first Thanksgiving dinner in a high chair to find out. Then, in the following years, we sat you on a telephone book to be with the family at the table to keep learning, and twenty years later you still hold your fork like a shovel. Mike has never ever eaten Thanksgiving dinner with a family He's only had it served to him in an orphanage or a hospital. He doesn't know. Can't you understand that?” Then she started to cry again.

Major silence and much shuffling of feet under the table from everybody else. I don't think the boys had ever seen their mother so upset or suddenly vulnerable. Susanne was glaring at them now, too, ready to say something they didn't want to hear, and I could sense that they were beginning to realize that this thing had been pushed a shade too far.

Sue got herself under control, walking back and forth to the kitchen and dabbing at her eyes, maybe even angry at herself for losing it. Then we managed to coax Mike back downstairs, David carved the turkey, and we said grace and ate. But it was a very awkward dinner.

After the table was cleared and before dessert, Sue went back upstairs for a moment to use the bathroom and freshen up.

David tried to talk to Mike, but then the boys called him into a corner of the room. I heard a snatch of the conversation as one of them said, “No, bad idea,” and another said, “Don't worry, he's really fascinated with animals.”

What was that about?
I asked myself, but Susanne and Kathryn were talking to me and I was distracted.

David left the group and walked outside.

A minute later I heard Brendan say to Mike, “Mike, there's a deer outside in the back. Would you like to see it?”

All my instincts should have been alive, but instead I thought stupidly,
Well, finally, something kind out of one of them
.

Idly I heard one of the boys coaxing Mike through the kitchen doorway into the dark. I knew he was terrified of the black out there, but I also knew how desperately he was attracted to any sort of animal.
Good
, I thought even more stupidly Maybe one way to lose a fear of the night is to watch a deer in the moonlight.

Then I heard the worst and most terrified scream of my life.

Mike flashed by up the stairway, still screaming, and his face was entirely white.

David had taken a deer head, put it in front of his own face, and then, dressed in dark clothing and growling, had run out of the blackness of the back lawn toward Mike, who was leaning nervously through the doorway.

I was absolutely stunned by how vicious the whole thing was. I didn't even have the power of speech. It was unbelievably cruel. All I could say as the other boys chuckled was, “David, how could you, above all people, do something like that to him?”

Henry waved it off. “Dad, it was a joke. We thought it would break the ice.”

“It's your ice, goddammit. You broke his heart.”

“I wasn't afraid.”

I turned and looked. Mike was standing at the bottom of the stairs. He was pallid and perspiring, but there was a smile on his face. “I wasn't afraid,” he repeated.

“Yes, you were,” and Brendan pushed him into a seat over at the table.

A few minutes later Sue came downstairs with a puzzled look on her face at the sight of Mike laughing and joking with the boys.

“I'll serve the pie,” she said slowly, still watching, looking a question at me.

“Can I help?” Mike jumped up.

Sue patted him on the shoulder, still looking at me, but in amazement now. “Sure, Mike. You made the pumpkin pies— you can serve them.”

A couple of minutes later Henry held up his plate with a half-eaten slice of pumpkin pie
on
it. “Good pie, Mike.”

“Thank
you
.” Then everybody started chatting and laughing.

Sue and I shooed Mike into bed about eleven, leaving the boys and girls talking quietly around the barroom table.

“Okay, what happened when I was upstairs? I heard a scream.”

I waved the question off. “Some sort of initiation or something. You don't want to know.”

“I'm still angry at them,” she said.

I just sighed.

Then Sue dropped down on our bed and kicked her shoes off. “Well, it's a start. Mike did get some chores done over the last couple of weeks, and he seems to have earned a little bit of a place for himself after all.”

I put my hands up, surrendering to the memory of that scream. “Believe me, he earned more than a little bit of a place tonight.”

“I hope his attitude is better after they leave.”

“Maybe it will be.”

She yawned, rolled over on her side, and said sleepily, “Somehow, this month didn't go precisely the way I thought it should.”

I pulled the quilt over her. “Good enough. It went good enough.”

On the Monday after Thanksgiving my eyes opened to the dark at 5:00
A.M.
and I took inventory of myself. I was magically
free of the flu. Then I thought of coffee—cups and cups of hot, fresh coffee—so I slipped out of bed, quickly dressed, and trucked off in the direction of downstairs.

But then, with one hand on the barroom door, some impulse made me turn back and walk in on Mike.

In the tiny glow from the night-light the boy was a jumble of stark white arms and legs tangled up in the shadows of his sheets. I padded over closer and peered down at him, snoring on. He looked like he had just finished fighting his way down into his bedcovers.

What time had he gone to sleep?
I asked myself.

A few minutes later I was trying to hurry the coffeemaker along in the barroom when Sue's head peeked around the corner of the stairs.

“Feeling better?” she smiled sleepily.

“Yeah, much better.”

We sat together at the big table and Sue, stretching, said, “I love our kids, but once they're gone, I love the peace and quiet, too.”

“True.”

Then she grinned wryly to herself. “But in less than four weeks they'll be back again.”

“True, too.”

“Rich,” Sue said with her eyes rolling toward Mike's room upstairs, “I want that kid's first Christmas in a family to be a special one. He has that childlike attitude toward Santa Claus, and I don't want him disappointed.”

“I peeked in on the way down,” I said. “He looks like he's tied up in knots.”

“He went into his room okay last night.” Sue shrugged. “He's just tired.”

“Hmmm.”

“Rich, don't worry,” Sue said, stretching again. “You relax. I'll
get him up. He's had a hard time for the last week or so. I'll try to give him a little extra attention this morning—make him some Belgian waffles, let him watch his cartoons for a while before the bus comes.”

“Good.” Then I saw the coffee was ready, got up, and poured.

We chatted for a few minutes. Sue finished her coffee and went upstairs. I poured myself another cup and then quietly settled down to watch C-SPAN.

And a half hour later the screaming started.

When Sue went in to Mike he had insisted on staying in his wet sheets, started yelling filthy curses at her, and then, when she again asked him to get up, he started throwing things.

By the time I got involved he was hitting his head against the wall.

Finally, both of us had to put hands on him, and it was all we could do in an hour to get him showered, dressed, bundled up against the cold, and then outside in time for the bus.

Even then he balked about walking over to the little van, and when he did it was to pause half in and half out before running back to where the two of us were watching from the porch.

Still shocked at the horrible morning and much more than half angry ourselves, Sue was huddled down into a thick blue wool sweater, crying behind her eyes, and I was moodily sipping at another cup of coffee. We thought he was running back to say good-bye.

“How nice,” Sue said sarcastically. “That's the boy we want to see.”

But when he stopped below the porch, knit hat pulled low, white half moons under his eyes, his facial tic flickered back for an instant and what popped out of his mouth sounded something like an accusation: “Karate starts up again this week.”

I blinked, “I know how much you like karate, Mike,” I said as patiently as I could. “We'll get you there.”

But he spit at me, “I hate this goddamn fucking family.”

Sue blew her top. “If I have to climb down off this porch, short stuff, you're going to be limping for the rest of your life.”

“Fuck you.”

Sue started to move, and after one more rushed, angry, frustrated look at both of us, Mike turned and ran back toward the bus.

“Oh, my God,” Sue croaked, “what was that about? What was this whole hideous morning about, anyway? I thought we just got past all of that.”

Then we stood together on the porch as the bus rattled on down the road, out of sight. Sue, shivering and beating her arms, slowly got herself under control. Taking several deep breaths, she shifted back to the past week. “Sometimes I'm not sure it was right to place Mike in this sort of family. It takes every ounce of energy he has to adapt, and he no sooner gets through that with us than we spring three or four more sons on him.”

Sue's lips chattered. “And he still hasn't met Richard, or many of your relatives, or really, too many of our friends and their children. In each of those cases he's going to have to assert himself over and over again with people. It might've been better for Mike to have gone to a couple without any other children.”

I shook my head, honestly puzzled. “No, I don't agree. I'm still sick over what the boys did to him on Thanksgiving, but his own attitude later on seemed much, much different. He thought he had won some stripes.”

Sue turned and poked me in the chest for emphasis, one little finger sticking out from the sleeve of her sweater. “Anybody who gets flogged has stripes. He needs rest now. He needs peace and quiet. Solitude. So I absolutely don't want him to meet any more new people for a while.”

Sue and I didn't understand what had happened the night
before between Mike and Liam, or that in two days I would wind up putting a hundred strangers in Mike's face.

Tuesday morning was a repeat of Monday. Mike wet his bed, screamed and cursed, and had to be manhandled. Then, in the evening, I dropped Liam and Mike off in Highland at the karate school at about seven and went back for them at nine.

Later Mike went upstairs to get ready for bed, and after checking on my hunting gear for the morning, I settled down to read a book. But I had barely turned one page when Liam sat down across from me and asked, “Did you know Mike and I have a karate test right after Christmas?”

“No, I didn't.”

Liam put one hand under his chin. “He's really upset about being tested.”

I sighed and sat back, thinking. “No, I think you're wrong. He loves karate, and he's always talking about how good he is. If anything, Mike's overconfident”

“No, Dad,” Liam said, “he's not. He's given up. He doesn't even want to practice.”

“Huh? You two just came back from karate practice.”

“Dad, Sunday afternoon I went down to the advanced extra session, and I brought back a flier announcing the test. When I gave it to Mike that night before bed, he read it, then started yelling at me. Yesterday afternoon I asked him to practice and he wouldn't, and tonight he went, but he barely went through the motions for half an hour before he walked out into the hallway to wait for you.”

“Liam, all this seems exactly backward. People usually start practicing, not stop, once they find out they have a test coming up.”

Liam nodded. “Yeah, well, that might be true, but this is the
way it is with him.” Then patiently, as if he were talking to a simpleminded, doddering old fool, “So you should figure out what's wrong in his head and fix it.”

When he left I tried to go back to my book, but finally put it down and walked into Mike's room.

“Hi, Mike.”

He avoided my eyes, just lay back on his bed, listening to his music.

“Mike?”

“What?”

“Do you want to finish the Hardy Boys book?”

“No.”

“Okay,” I said, not moving.

Eye contact for the first time. “Mike, do you want to talk about karate?”

“No!” he shouted.

I sat down on the edge of his bed. “Let's talk about the karate test.”

His face set itself into a frown, and his eyes quartered away from me. “No.”

“Are you still interested in karate?”

He shuffled around to get his legs away from me. “I'm good at karate.”

“I know you are, Mike. So you shouldn't be afraid of a test.”

“I'm
not
afraid.”

I should have told Sue what Liam had said, but she was busy in her office and I forgot. Instead I left her working, set the alarm for 4:00
A.M.
, and just went to bed.