Silent Boy (16 page)

After the period was up, I went up to the staff room to chart. I needed to put something decisive in Kevin’s records. Sitting down at the cluttered table, I opened the chart and began to write.
I am concerned about Kevin
, I wrote,
I think he’s …
What? Dangerous? The kid makes knives out of parts of old beds? The kid draws pictures of intended murder victims? The kid cuddles hate the way the rest of us cuddle kittens? Could I say that? And then what? What would they do if they read that? Kevin already was in an institution. Where did you go from there? Garson Gayer was clean and bright and warm but hardly a model of freedom with its locked doors and padded cells. Would Kevin be sent from here? And where? The state hospital? A security unit? Would they think him crazy? Or just violent? Or both? And was he?

I didn’t know. I crossed out what I had written and tried again. Again I crossed it out. The page couldn’t be thrown away because other people had charted on it, so I just kept trying and crossing out and writing ‘error.’ I sat, staring at the paper. And in the end I put:
Tendencies toward violent behavior exhibited in therapy sessions. Monitor carefully on the ward
. The safety of jargon.

Mozart’s flute music drifted through the clinic corridors. It was past 5:30 in the evening and all the offices were closed and darkened. Only the security lights remained on in the halls.

Dr Rosenthal was hunched over paperwork at his desk, and although he sat with his tie still in place and his suit jacket on, he had allowed himself the luxury of a cassette player in front of him as he worked. The music rippled out.

I knocked tentatively, and he did not turn immediately.

‘Just a moment,’ he said at last, still not looking up from what he was writing. With the other hand he gestured for me to sit. Putting my jacket down onto the arm of the huge, overstuffed chair beside his desk, I sat.

Dr Rosenthal was the director of the clinic. He was one of those big, grizzly sorts of men, all gray and frizzy around the temples, the type Hollywood always casts as older lovers. He wasn’t especially handsome but he had an aura about him, the sort of virile attractiveness intellectual men have. He was a very tall man, well over six and a half feet, and very formal, always wearing a suit and a tie and calling us Hayden and Tomlinson, if we were younger, or simply doctor, if we merited that. Dr Rosenthal and I were very different sorts of people. Our perceptions on psychiatry and psychology were at almost opposite ends of the spectrum – the theist and the atheist. He was fanatically Freudian. I was fanatically uncommited. His concepts were based on theory. My concepts were based on my own experience in the outer world. He explained. I accepted that there weren’t necessarily any explanations, or at least we didn’t necessarily know them. Yet for all that separated us, I think I held few other persons in higher esteem. He had a mind as wickedly sharp as splintered glass, and I never saw his equal when it came to laying open the heart of a matter.

So I sat in the big leather chair and listened to Mozart while he finished what he was writing. Beside me was a bookshelf, crammed to overflowing with psychiatry texts. Dr Rosenthal’s specialty was infant psychiatry, a branch I had not known existed prior to my arrival at the clinic. But Dr Rosenthal had written two books on the subject himself, and I saw in his bookcase many other volumes as well. It still amused me a little to think on it. He was such a terribly big man, so gruff and professional, so careful with appearances and proprieties and formalities, that I could hardly picture him with babies at all. But he was magic with them.

At last he turned around in his desk chair. I had come to him about Kevin. Dr Rosenthal had been closely following my work at Garson Gayer for some time, and I came now because I had nowhere else to go. I needed help.

To the strains of Mozart we carefully went over eveything, over Kevin’s previous life as I knew it, over his traumatic fears, over his abrupt changes, over his failure to speak and his sudden revival. Just talking about it soothed me. I had begun to have very fatalistic thoughts because I knew if I gave up, no one else was likely to come in and take my place. But at the same time Kevin had grown so disconcerting that I was scared of continuing too, in case he might do something to me or himself or someone else.

We talked on and on. Dr Rosenthal asked me about my research, about other elective mutes I had worked with and how they compared with Kevin. He asked me small, nitty-gritty details of my work. He asked about my conceptualizations of the syndrome and of how I perceived Kevin’s problems on a large scale, across the length of his life.

Then our conversation wandered away. Dr Rosenthal paused, opened the cassette deck and flipped over the tape. Did I like classical music, he asked? Yes, I replied.

What kind? he inquired. Then he reached for his pipe. Did I mind if he smoked? He was trying to stop. He had two young children at home and he knew it wasn’t good for them. He didn’t smoke at home at all anymore. And he’d tried to stop during the day, here at the office. But did I mind if he did right now? No. And how about a cup of tea? he suggested. A cup of tea would be nice, wouldn’t it? Pulling open a lower desk drawer, he produced a pot, tea bags and an immersion heater. I went to fetch my mug. The air around us swelled with music that made me think of green pastures in summer.

Then as he puffed on his pipe and leaned back in his desk chair, Dr Rosenthal studied me. Why was I in the business? he asked me. What need did it fulfill in me? Had I ever asked myself that question?

Yes, lots of times, I replied. And I couldn’t give an answer honestly, I said, because it was such a complex question. Then silence came between us. He continued to puff and to regard me thoughtfully. I just stared into space, lost in my own thoughts. The tea was warm and strong and tasted lovely. Then I looked back to him. It was the challenge, I said, that put me in the business mostly. I had always been an undistinguished scholar throughout my long career as a student. I had found learning easy and then grown restless and impatient with the schooling process. It wasn’t until late in my college career that I chanced upon work with emotionally disturbed children in a volunteer job and it captivated me. It was the ultimate challenge. Here was the brave new frontier. No matter how clever or educated or creative a person might be, he would never be able to conquer it all. There was always more to learn, more to guess at, more to think about. You could think forever, to the width and breadth and depth of your capacity and there would still be more. I loved that, I said. Like Columbus’s New World, it was a tangible dream.

Dr Rosenthal just smiled.

And then we went back to Kevin. He was a little more tangible than I wished he was. But by now, Dr Rosenthal had an idea. What about Tomlinson? he asked. Would I feel better if Tomlinson joined me in the sessions for a while? He could provide some insight and if the worst happened, well, he said, Tomlinson’s a good size. He ought to be able to handle the boy, if need be.

It seemed a viable solution. Jeff had been my primary confidant throughout the case with Kevin and so he was well informed. Moreover, Jeff and I complemented one another in our methods. By virtue of his training, Jeff was much more firmly grounded in the traditional, theoretical aspects of therapy whereas I tended to have a more practical, reality-based approach. We had worked together on other cases and found that rather than these differences causing us trouble, we were usually able to integrate them. So, yes, I said, I thought that was an excellent idea and I welcomed it.

Jeff was pleased. Kevin was such a different kid that I knew he would be a challenge for Jeff too. Jeff had expressed curiosity on other occasions about what could be done with him. And I immediately saw the other advantages. After the initial adjustments, we could split the load, and I would no longer be tied down to five hours a week at Garson Gayer. In this unusual setup using two therapists to remedy a problem Jeff and I had the premise for further professional research. And perhaps most of all, here was the opportunity to introduce Kevin to a warm, mature male model, someone who would not beat or torture him, someone who knew the greatest strength came from gentleness.

Unfortunately, Kevin did not think it was a good idea at all. He was outraged.

‘You’re going to bring someone else in? What do you mean you’re going to bring someone in? What for? How come?’

‘Jeff works with me, Kev. We do the same sorts of things. I just thought it would be nice for a change to have someone else with us.’

Kevin paced the length of the room. He stopped on the far side and turned to face me. ‘Did you ask me? Did you ask to find out if I thought it would be nice?’ With one hand he ruffled through his hair. ‘No. No, you didn’t. You didn’t even stop to think how I might feel. Nobody asks me. Nobody ever asks me anything.’

Over to the window he went. He leaned forward until his face was against the pane. Sun through the cottonwood threw a mottled pattern over his skin.

‘This is
my
place,’ he said softly to the window and his breath clouded the glass. ‘This was my very own place.’ Then he turned to me. ‘And now you wrecked it.’

‘It’ll still be your place. Jeff won’t change that.’

‘Yes, he will. I won’t be able to talk to you anymore. I won’t be able to talk to you like I did because
he’ll
be here and
he’ll
listen. And I don’t want him to.’

‘He won’t change things. Jeff’s just like me, Kev. He’s real easy to talk to. You’ll see.’

With a weary sigh, Kevin pushed himself off the window-sill. He paced again around the perimeter of the room but more slowly this time. Finally he dropped down onto the floor near where I was sitting. He said nothing. He began picking little threads from the cuff of one shirt sleeve.

I watched him and did not know what to do. Suddenly I felt terribly bad. His life was so tragic. I forgot that sometimes in the noise of day-to-day happenings. But here he was, his whole universe held up behind locked doors, his world confined to a small bare white room with yucky-colored carpet. I had to be careful to remember regardless of what I thought, that I never could conceive of a life like that. It was his; he knew it. I did not.

Stretching his arm out, Kevin lay down on the floor. He was at an angle to me, so I could not see his face. He fingered the rough surface of the carpet.

Kevin moved his head to look at me. ‘Torey?’

‘Yes?’

‘How come he’s going to come?’

‘I wanted some help, Kev. I wanted to make sure I was doing everything I could to make things better for you so that someday maybe you can get out of here. But I wasn’t sure I was doing it good enough on my own.’

‘Did I do something wrong?’

‘No, not really. No one did anything wrong.’

Silence. Kevin still lay on the rug, his eyes focused on some invisible point.

‘Tor, can I ask you something else?’

‘Yes, sure.’

‘Do you like me?’

‘Of course I do, Kevin.’

‘I was just wondering. You know, sometimes I close my eyes so I can’t see anything, can’t see where I am. And I pretend. I pretend I’m a person. A real person. You know. I just wondered if you did that too sometimes, if that was how come you could like me?’

‘I like you just for you, Kevin. And you are a real person.’

‘No. I’m not. I mean, a real live person. Someone real. Not this. Not me. Not here.’

T
he first few sessions with Jeff were hell for all of us.

Kevin was angry and uncooperative, refusing to talk to Jeff, refusing even to look at him. But he was much more seriously angry with me. Throughout our entire time together, Kevin and I had had an unusual relationship. Rather than my drawing him out into my world, he had absorbed me into his. It was he who had decided he would talk to me and he who did it and he who chose when to share his private world. Kevin had treated me more as just a part of himself, trusting me not to do anything he would not do. It had been an odd relationship, more one-sided in that way than others I had had with kids, but now it shattered. I had betrayed him. I had brought Jeff. Now Kevin was forced to see us for what we were, therapists, outsiders. Both Jeff and me. And the small inner world Kevin and I had built within the walls of the little white room crumbled.

Kevin had come too far to be able to retreat back into his fears and his old ways under the table. This left him temporarily naked and he cast about for several days for a way to deal with Jeff and me. When it became apparent that he was not going to adjust easily, we finally moved out of the small white room with its associations and down into the mirrored therapy room. That certainly didn’t fool Kevin. He knew Jeff was there behind the mirror watching. And in a way it made him angrier, because he knew I hadn’t liked that room either, just as he hadn’t, and now I was using it the way the staff did. Just another sign I had turned against him. However, down there I could momentarily distract him because Jeff wasn’t physically present, and it would be like old times for a few minutes before Kevin’s restlessness and anger with me resurfaced.

Jeff, for his part, wasn’t a whole lot better.

‘God,’ he said after the first session. ‘He’s the ugliest kid I’ve ever seen. Jesus, he looks like something a sheep threw up.’

‘Oh, don’t make a case of it. He’s not
that
bad.’