Twilight Children (29 page)

Renewed tears.

I maneuvered the blue brochure more directly in front of her. A moment or two passed. I waited patiently.

Still she cried. We’d gone through all the tissues in the pack and were now onto Starbucks napkins. I was past being uncomfortable, past worrying what others in the small café might think I was doing to her, but I wasn’t past being horribly aware of our drawing attention to ourselves. If Lucia had wanted this venue because it was more private than at home, she wasn’t really making it easy to keep our privacy. I hunched forward, trying to physically enclose us at the small table, but I knew people were staring—quite blatantly in a few instances—and I worried that she was too recognizable in this small city, that too many people would want to eavesdrop just because it was a Sloane talking.

So, once again, I broached the matter with her, hoping to urge the process forward. “I appreciate it’s very difficult to talk about these things. And that’s okay. I came out here, understanding that. I’ve had many other parents in situations like yours, so I do understand how hard it is to talk about. I have plenty of time. So don’t feel rushed. Don’t feel pressured. We’ll get it sorted out.”

Renewed tears.

I nudged the blue brochure yet closer to her. “Is this what we’re talking about?” I asked very gently.

“Noooo,” she replied and it came out almost a howl.

“Abuse?”

“Noooo.”

I sat back.

She snorted into a napkin, wiped her reddened face. Mascara left a sooty trail in the corner of one eye.

“How so ‘no’?” I asked. “Are we talking … about Drake? You?”

“Noooo. No, not that. None of that.” She pushed the brochure away as if it were a dirty thing.

“Not … abuse?”

“Noooo.” She lost her composure again.

I didn’t really know how to interpret what she was saying. Did she literally mean no, that I was on the wrong track altogether? Or was she saying no defensively, because she wanted to put me off the topic? Or did she mean a specific kind of no, such as, no, it wasn’t the kind of abuse you went to the police about, but another kind might still be happening?

I sat, silently watching her cry.

“It isn’t that,” she said at last. “It isn’t anything like that. It’s me.”

“Can you tell me more?”

“It’s
me
.”

Puzzled, I regarded her.

“I made it up.”

“Made what up?” I asked.

“He
can’t
talk.” This made her cry harder. Burying her face in a napkin, Lucia bent forward until her head was almost on the table. I sat quietly, feeling the eyes of other Starbucks customers drilling into my back.

When she came up for air, I asked, “Is this Drake we’re talking about? Can you tell me more about what you just said?”

“Drake
can’t
talk.”

“How do you mean? Can’t talk?”

“He
can’t
talk. I made it up.”

“I’m a little confused,” I said. “Made what up? In relation to what? When you say Drake can’t talk, how do you mean this?”

“That he can’t talk,” she wailed. “I
made
it up.”

“You made up about him talking? How did you do that? I’m still confused, Lucia. Are you meaning he can’t talk to anyone else except you? Or do you mean he actually can’t say much? Like, for example, when I listened to the tape you made, you were only doing nursery rhymes. Are you trying to say he can’t talk beyond that kind of thing?”

“That’s not Drake,” she wailed. “It’s my nephew.”

“Where? How do you mean?” I asked, bewildered.

“On the tape. When I was sitting him for my sisterin-law. I made the tape with him. It isn’t Drake.”

I stared in disbelief.

“Drake has something wrong in his genes. His voice box is not proper.” She was sobbing again as she said this, her own voice too agonized to be soft. Everyone else in Starbucks was getting embarrassed by this time, so we were perhaps the most alone we’d thus far been.

“So let me see if I understand this,” I said. “You are saying Drake has a genetic problem that has physically affected his ability to speak? That that wasn’t him on the tape? That he literally can
not
speak?”

She nodded.

“But …” I said, “that report from the Mayo Clinic? It said there was nothing physically wrong with Drake.”

“I rewrote it.”

“
What?
”

“When it came, I rewrote it. I photocopied the pages and then wrote new things and pasted them over and photocopied it again, so that it had the letterhead on it. So everyone thought that’s what it said when it came. But really it didn’t. It said about the genes. About his cords being deformed. And he has other problems. It affects his legs as well.”

“Who all knows about this?”

“No one,” she said in a tiny, tiny voice.

“What about Drake’s father?”

“No. I could not tell him. He has so many worries that
he
is not perfect for his father. How could I tell him I have given him a deformed son? The burden would be too great for him.” Then she collapsed into tears yet again.

I got up to get us more napkins, to get myself more coffee, and, for just that moment, to get some breathing space.

When I returned, Lucia was more composed. Head still down, she had her shoulders drawn up around her ears almost as if she expected me to strike her.

“That must have been very hard to tell me,” I said, as I sat down. “I appreciate that you did. For Drake’s sake, we need to know the truth on this matter.”

“It is so important to Father Sloane that everything is perfect,” she murmured. “He is so hard on Skip. Skip has nerves because of it. He takes pills every morning. To keep from—He cannot face his father. He cannot even stand in the same room.” And she broke down again.

“So all this … ‘disguising the truth’ … has happened because of Mr. Sloane? Old Mr. Sloane? You’ve done this because of … what? Pressure? Pressure to …”

“How could I say my son was deformed? To
him
? Say I have these bad genes in me to make a defective child? I cannot sleep at night, knowing I have made a son like this, because Father Sloane will be so angry when he finds out. He will disown Drake. He will insist Skip divorces me.”

“Surely not,” I said. “Those are ideas from another era. Having met Mr. Sloane, I can well imagine how angry he might be, but he wouldn’t be able to actually make you and Skip get a divorce, if you didn’t want to. Men don’t have that kind of power in this country.”

“It is not so simple,” she replied. “What laws say in a country and what laws say in a family are often different.”

Which was true. Abuse comes in many forms. And merely because it is against the law doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

I sat back. All that was in my mind was poor, poor Drake, shouldering a burden that had proved too heavy for both his parents to carry.

W
e had been in the coffee shop over two hours, and I was growing anxious about the time. I didn’t know what kinds of arrangements Lucia had made for Drake or the rest of her life during our meeting, but I was concerned she was not going to be able to stay much longer, and I feared she might suddenly bolt.

Where
from here? I looked at the police brochure on domestic violence, still on the table in front of me. That wouldn’t do much good. Indeed, none of the things I’d brought with me would be much help. Here, almost two hundred miles from my own support network and too far away to be able to see either Lucia or Drake myself on a regular basis, I was frighteningly aware of having to “think on my feet” here. I felt quite inadequate for the job.

Meanwhile, Lucia, at long last, seemed to be regaining a hold on her composure. The horrible story finally related, she looked exhausted but increasingly relaxed.

“We have a dilemma here,” I said. “Time’s getting on. I’m concerned you’ll need to get back shortly because of Drake. Or because Skip or Mr. Sloane will miss you. I’m thinking also that you’re probably feeling very tired by this point.”

She nodded in a heartfelt way.

“The dilemma is that we’re a long ways apart. If both you and I were in the city, I’d suggest we meet together a few more times so that we could explore the situation more thoroughly and come up with the best way of resolving all of this. Unfortunately, we don’t really have that option.”

“No,” she said.

“But I think we
do
need to resolve it. The way things are now, it’s very unfair to Drake. He isn’t getting the services he needs, for one thing. Worse, however, is that when he is with people like myself, we are trying to make him do something he genuinely can’t do. The whole time he was on the unit, I was working hard with him to get him to talk and my methods would have been acceptable if he were really electively mute. But because he wasn’t, I was putting pressure on him to do something he, in fact, couldn’t do. That must have made him feel terrible.”

Tears sprung to Lucia’s eyes again.

I reached across the table and touched her arm. “No, it’s okay. I’m not trying to make you feel bad saying that. I know you already feel bad; I know this has had to be so very hard on both you and your husband. People don’t do extreme things unless they feel there are no other alternatives. So I know, however badly things may have turned out, you weren’t trying to hurt Drake.”

Lower lip clenched between her teeth, she shook her head.

“But now that we know what’s going on,” I said, “the time has come to say things have gone far enough. The time has come to stop supporting the old man’s view of the world and start supporting Drake’s. We just have to figure out how to do that.”

“I don’t know how,” she said tearfully. “That’s the problem. I don’t know what to do.”

“That’s all right. That’s why we’re both here. We’ll do it together. I’m not going to say, ‘I’m off now, back to the city. You sort it out.’ I’ll help you do it. But we need to figure out how to go about it, given that I don’t live very close.” I smiled at her. “But we
will
figure it out.”

Opening another napkin, Lucia wiped her eyes. She nodded.

“What needs to be done, of course, is to tell the old man the truth,” I said. “That’s going to be the hard part. But eventually we do need to do it.”

She grimaced but nodded faintly.

“Perhaps the place to start all this would be by telling Skip. Telling him you altered the Mayo report. And made the tape with your nephew, not Drake.”

Lucia didn’t respond.

“Do you think you could do that?”

There was a long pause followed by a long sigh. She squirmed slightly. “I do not want to give him more problems. He already takes the pills. They are so he does not try to take his life.” A small pause. “Because this happened. Last year. He was in the car in the garage.”

“I see.”

“So I do not want to give him more problems.”

“Yes, I can understand,” I said. “And I can understand better why it felt right to you to keep Drake’s disability a secret, if your husband has felt under such great pressure from his family himself and has tried to take his own life. But keeping secrets from him might not be a helpful way to deal with all this. My experience is that what is kept from us is often much more destructive to us than what we know.”

Lucia nodded.

“So perhaps the place to start is for you to tell Skip. Do you think you can do that?”

Lucia drew in a breath. “I will try.”

“Good. Then phone me. When Skip knows, give me a call. We’ll make plans of where to go from there,” I said. “In the meantime, I’d like to see the original report from the Mayo Clinic. Would that be all right? Would you give me permission to write them and ask them to send me a copy?”

“Yes,” she said.

A small silence slipped in, allowing the clink of dishes and silverware, the steamy whoosh of the coffee machines, and the chatter of the other patrons in the coffee shop to loom up around us.

“And, of course, at some point,” I said softly, “there’s going to be an unpleasant confrontation. No virtue in pretending that isn’t going to happen. But it’s usually easier to tolerate such things if you have support, if you know that others will care what is happening to you and you can share it with them. It’s also usually easier if you know you are doing the right thing. So, whatever the old man says or tries to do, you don’t have to bear it alone. None of you does, not you, not Skip, not Drake. If the old Mr. Sloane can’t tolerate the fact Drake isn’t the perfect grandson he needs, then it may be time to leave him to his views and make a different kind of life for yourselves. The whole world is not here in Quentin. There are many people who will understand and accept Drake and you and Skip, just as you are. As for doing the right thing, have absolutely no doubt this
is
what you are doing in talking to me now. And know you have already done the hardest part, which is to own up to having made a mistake.”

“Okay,” Lucia said. She let out a long breath and looked at her watch. “I do need to go now. But thank you. Thank you very much.”