The Things I Want Most (32 page)

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.

About ten in the evening Sue and I were having a pot of tea, Sue still crying every so often over Jerome and I was more upset than I would have thought possible. Sue looked up and sniffled. “Where's Mike? I didn't see him or put him to bed.”

“Dunno,” I said and I trotted upstairs, then came right back down. “He's not in his room.”

“What?”

But just then the storm door opened and the inner door after that. Mike walked into the barroom without his shirt and streaming with perspiration. Right behind him Richard stumbled in, looking even more whipped than Mike.

“Richard, what are you doing?”

He waved his mother off until he had caught his breath, then gasped out, “I promised Mike I would take him for a run.”

“Richard, this kid has a bedtime, and he shouldn't be running along the road after dark.”