Best Boy (24 page)

“And I guess I forgot about that condo,” Beth said.

Nate looked up suddenly over his glass but didn't say anything.

“I mean, I was there once or twice, but I forgot you ever owned it and sold it.”

There was a silence.

“You did sell it, didn't you?” she said to Nate.

“Yes.”

“How'd you make out?”

“Fine.”

There was a silence.

“Am I sensing some reluctance to talk about it?” Beth asked.

“I don't know. Are you?”

“You sold it and you set up a trust of some kind, a special needs trust or something?”

“Something, yes.”

Beth stared at him. “Something?”

“I invested the money,” he said.

“In . . .”

“How about we postpone the third-degree?”

“So you
don't
want to talk about it.”

Nate shut his eyes for a long moment while he frowned. Then he opened them.

“Is anyone hurting in this room?” he asked.

“What?” Beth looked surprised.

“I mean, does anyone in this room not have their monthly expenses met? Or suffer from lack of care?”

“You're being a wee bit defensive here,” said Beth. “I simply asked—”

But then she stopped and looked at Nate. “Oh, wait a minute. On no, wait just a minute. This isn't about the new car, is it?”

My brother ignored Beth and turned to me. “Would you like some lunch?” he asked.

“Yes!” I said.

“Please tell me,” said Beth, “this is not about the car I couldn't understand how we could afford.”

“How about a sandwich?” my brother asked.

“I'd
love
a sandwich,” I said.

“Omigod,” said Beth, looking steadily at Nate, “it
is
about the car, isn't it?”

“I'll make you one right now,” said Nate.

“Wow,” Beth said, shaking her head slowly, “I mean, really? To your own brother?”

Nate put his drink down and looked at her.

“What do you think we live on, exactly?” he said quietly.

But Beth was continuing to shake her head like she hadn't heard him.

“The man is helpless,” she said.

“You're living in a dream world,” said Nate.

“Helpless,” she said again, and then more loudly, “utterly defenseless!”

She turned to me. “No,” she said, “
I'll
make you a sandwich. And by the way, it will be one of the purest, greatest, most expensive sandwiches ever made.”

“Okay!” I said.

“But how about we do something nice first and clear the air on this special day that's about you, not us? How about we take a quick look at those photos?”

“Um,” I said. But Beth was already opening the other envelope and tilting it so that a dozen or so photos spilled out in front of us. They were mostly black-and-white squares and some of them had the month and year stamped in gray on the edges. We looked for a few seconds, saying nothing. Gradually I realized that all of them were of Momma and me. I had seen very few photographs of Momma after I left home and almost none of us together. But I always remembered as a boy hearing her say to Daddy, “Okay, here, snap one now!” Usually this happened inside the house. Daddy often took photos of Nate and Momma on trips but mostly swung the face of the camera away from me when it was my turn. But now there was a shot of Momma walking hand in hand with me across the living room when I was a tiny baby. And of her holding me in her lap and kissing me. And of her staring at me across the kitchen table with a huge smile on her face. In another one she was feeding me an ice-cream cone and in another we were eating pizza together with me seated on her lap and a big slice in my mouth.

I was laughing. In every single shot I was laughing or smiling. She had touched these photos with her hands to put them in this envelope and there wasn't one shot in which I wasn't a happy boy.

“It's me and Momma!” I said.

“Yes,” said Nate, “it most definitely is. It's you and her and there's no mistake about that.”

“No mistake!” I said and began to rock back and forth, swinging my head in the air and feeling the wind moving. Momma
was in me now from the crawl space and in my ears from the letter and also now coming into me steadily through my eyes and the rocking was deepening with happiness.

“What a little doll you were,” Beth said, smiling.

“With the exception of insects,” said Nate, “nearly all infants are cute.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Beth asked. Then she turned to me and said, “I always liked your Mom, but I'm blown away by those photos and letter, whether she put them down there herself for you or someone else did after she passed. It's something maybe only a mother could understand, but I think I'm going to cry again, forgive me, Todd.”

“Okay,” I said.

She looked at Nate then and said to me, “Too bad not everything she set up for you worked out as planned.”

Nate made his eyes small. “Why are you hitting this so hard?” he asked.

“Because it's sickening,” Beth said.

“How about you stop biting the hand that feeds you and feed us lunch instead? How about that?”

“You're unbelievable.”

Beth went into the kitchen muttering to herself and began making sandwiches.

“I'm really disturbed by this!” she yelled from the kitchen.

“Take it up with Dr. Klosterman!” Nate yelled back.

“Actually”—Beth came back around to the edge of the door, holding a knife in one hand—“I already have.”

“Well, that's the problem right there,” Nate said. “I went once and never again. Klosterman looks at you like you're something in his nose he wants to blow into a handkerchief and study.”

“You're just scared of what he sees. And you should be.”

“Oh, please.”

In one of the photos, I noticed that Momma was wearing her red hat that was called a tam-o'-shanter. I remembered that hat. I thought maybe that I'd seen that hat in the basement under a blanket of dust and this thought made me excited. I began to rock again.

“Actually, I think I will tell you what he sees because this conversation is seriously pissing me off,” Beth said. “He thinks you're locked into an infantile search for the love that was denied you in childhood and that this has filled you with all sorts of nasty aggression that you can't acknowledge. This stunt of yours with the trust money would tend to kind of prove his point, don't you think?”

Nate drained the rest of his drink and put it down on the island with a crack.

“God, but you and Klosterman deserve each other.”

“Well, we've got each other,” said Beth.

“You sound like you're having an affair,” Nate said.

Beth said nothing for a few seconds and then she said slowly, “Are you sure you wanna go there?”

Nate's face became dark as the muscles moved around it. He got to his feet.

“What is that supposed to mean?” he said in a very quiet voice.

Beth said nothing and instead began humming as she turned back to the kitchen. It was a happy little song. It went on for a few seconds coming from the kitchen before it was interrupted by Nate who made a strange groaning sound that was close to crying as he stood up and swept his hand fast across the table.
His glass shattered against the wall and the photos flew up and filled the air over our head for a moment, hanging there and showing all the different versions of Momma and me smiling into the future before they began to fall and kept falling through the quiet air of the room.

PART
SIX

THIRTY-TWO

R
AYKENE SAYS
I
'M THE LUCKIEST PERSON IN THE
whole world. She says it's because of how many people there are around me who love me. She says that love and work are the “pillars of life” and that whenever I have doubts about how much I'm loved, all I have to do is open my eyes. She got special permission from Administration to place the happy photos of Momma and me from the crawl space directly on my wall and to put the purse on a little shelf below it. She and a new program associate named Marie did the project, using a special glue that wouldn't hurt the old photographs. So now whenever I want I can lie in bed and turn the lights on and look at the pictures and purse and feel the special feelings. Raykene calls it my Love Wall. She says it's my “very own stairway to Heaven.” She thinks it's one of the nicest things she's ever done at Payton and she sometimes asks me if Ambassadors can bring new villagers to see it. I always say yes.

The really good news is that not long after I returned from
visiting my family they moved Tommy Doon out of my cottage and somewhere else on campus where I rarely see him anymore. Raykene said, “Sometimes the chemistry just isn't right, but I think we've got a good match for you this time.” My new roommate is named Alex Farmer. He's a Developmental, like me, and quiet and friendly. I'm teaching him to clean the house and also how to use the library, though he really doesn't like to read.

But the very first thing that happened when I returned was that Sherrod Twist finally drew my blood and discovered that I wasn't taking my Risperdal and got “extremely concerned.” She asked me what I'd been doing with the pills and I told her I'd been flushing them down the toilet and she called Mr. Rawson and she also said to me, “There will be consequences.”

There haven't been so far but she put me back on the dose I was taking before and has started doing weekly blood draws to make sure I'm staying on it. I'm tired again like I used to be but I don't mind.

Also, Martine left. She seemed to think it was very funny that she'd failed at yet another community. She said that “at least my parents are miserable about it, which is something.” She said, “You and me, we'll always have Mr. Breeze.” On her last day she gave me a long hug, which I liked very much, and then the same shiny black car came to pick her up. This time her parents weren't there but Bernie the driver remembered my name. Martine stuck her head out of the window as the car went away and yelled that she'd be in touch soon but it's now been three months and I haven't heard from her again and am trying to remember as many details as I can about her even though I'm beginning to forget.

I'm beginning to forget lots of things. They seem to be stepping away from me all the time. The oldest memories are still
safe in my head. But everything new just keeps falling off. I can't hold it in my brain. I can remember sitting at the beach as a boy while the little waves came up to me and dropped at my feet and I can remember how I was more interested in the moment when the water went away from me with a steady withdrawing sound, heading back to itself. That's the sound I hear all the time now. It's going out faster than it's coming in. Memories are leaving me constantly of trees and words, sounds and feelings, faces and facts and even the tastes of food. Whatever it is, if it happened recently I can't remember it. “I'm not sure,” I say when people ask me about something I did the week before. “I can't recall,” I say. I just shrug my shoulders.

The good part is that I think my forgetting is helping me feel calmer. I haven't bitten my hand in a long time and have been working hard at the Demont High School cafeteria. Louise found a small newspaper article about me and my “escape” and pinned it to a cabinet near the meat slicer. She teases me and calls me her “ex-con,” but I know she's only funning and I make my fake laugh at her and return to chopping onions or dishing out the Sloppy Joes for the students who are always hungry, which makes me happy.

Beth calls every weekend and she always talks about what a great trip it was and how important it was for Cam and Steve to see me and how they ask about me all the time. Also she asked for a photo of my Love Wall which Raykene sent her and she said it's very beautiful and that I made my Momma very happy. Beth said that she and Nate are living apart but that it's just an experiment and they might live together again. She always says that Nate will be calling me soon even though he calls less than ever and also that she's very proud of me and how well I'm doing. I'm an inspiration to her, she says, and next time I come
out to visit my family there's lots and lots of people she wants me to meet.

Nobody still really knows what's wrong with me although the words to describe it never stop coming. Mr. B used to have clear, specific ideas about what might be wrong but just type the word “autism” into a computer today and see what happens. But I don't spend as much time on the computer as I used to. More and more it moves too fast for me, like television. Lots of things seem to be moving fast now and the thing moving fastest is time itself. I feel the pillow under my face waking up and then I feel it again when I'm going to sleep and I ask myself: What just happened? Which direction was the day going that just took place?

Every day at least a little bit I continue to wonder where my Momma went because I still can't understand it and it feels like a cheat. But neither Mr. B nor the computer has the answer. I can't figure out where the notes went that she pressed into the air from the piano, or how her voice that is a kind of moving air went through my ears and left forever. Sometimes I think I'm forgetting about other things on purpose so I can concentrate better on the remaining memories I have of her in my head and on the atoms left in my lungs.

One other thing is that I haven't seen or heard from Mike the Apron. I'm trying not to think about him and I'm hoping that eventually I can get good enough at forgetting to forget him completely. Mostly I'm glad about what happened since he came here and I got frightened of him and walked away and tried to go home. “The strong are given more to bear than the weak and learn from the challenge,” Raykene says. Raykene says a lot of things like that. She has a round face and very white teeth and breath that smells like cinnamon. She says I've come a long
way in life. She says that I was made in God's image and that I “reflect the beauty of his creation.” She's trying to get me to go to church again and I like going but maybe because of the Risperdal I more and more just wanna stay home and listen to music when I have Free Time.