Silent Boy (41 page)

However, it had not been their personal problems that had gotten in the way that Labor Day weekend but simply their lack of understanding of what a boy like Kevin could cope with. The Burchells were well meaning but inexperienced and had drastically overplanned the visit. Kevin, unused to crowds of strangers and the rowdiness of a regular family at holidays, had panicked at all the events and the relatives and the prying questions. This caused the Burchells in turn to panic, and with their own assortment of problems, this spelled disaster. Yet in the end it was probably better. Kevin certainly did not need to get into an unstable foster home.

With this knowledge behind us, Bill and I set off to our separate networks to search for another alternative. It was a bleak job. Who would have the experience and security necessary to want an eighteen-year-old boy with ten years’ history of institutionalization behind him? Those types were not too thick on the ground.

Actually, it was Jules who came through in the end. What about a sheltered group home? he suggested to me one afternoon in the office. When he mentioned it, I thought he was crazy. Those types of group homes were specifically designed to cater to retarded individuals who had reached the age of majority. What would Kevin do in a place like that? He wasn’t retarded. And I’d had it with group homes anyway.

But Jules was persistent. While Kevin obviously wasn’t retarded, he was in no way equal to his peers in the outer world, if not by intellectual difference then by experience. And yet he was no child. He was a man. He had had his eighteenth birthday the week following Labor Day. He was almost six feet two now. And incidents like what had happened in the art closet, Jules pointed out, were there to remind me he functioned as a man, as well. Who would want him in the role of a child? And was that the best role for him anyhow? Kevin could not go back and recapture a lost childhood. Wouldn’t it be better just to launch him into a decent adulthood?

All of Jules’s arguments were not without a reason. He had in mind a sheltered group home he had worked with before he joined our staff. The place was run by an old friend of his, a retired medical doctor, and his wife. They were both in their fifties and had designed the center several years earlier to meet the needs of their own retarded son.

The place was intended to cater for eight mentally handicapped individuals who were advanced enough to want to live on their own and hold down a small job but were not quite capable of total independence. The home was a huge old Victorian structure, and each of the eight people had a room of his own, which he ‘rented’ for a nominal sum. They all shared a family dining room, did chores around the place and went out together for entertainment. All the current residents were between twenty and thirty and all had jobs, either in the sheltered workshops or doing menial labor. Evenings at the home were spent learning basic survival skills, such as counting money and doing laundry, with some time off for just plain fun. Besides the doctor and his wife, there were four other paid staff who helped with the residents, including a teacher who came in the evenings to help bolster reading skills and a young man who came on the weekends to teach handyman’s skills. The obvious goal of the home was to eventually launch the residents out into a fully independent life, but they were liberal in that regard and, while many of their people had left, a couple clearly were going to be there permanently.

The more I thought about it and the more Jules talked, the more I began to think perhaps this was a viable idea.

Kevin was incredibly naïve, and even I had to face that fact. There was just too much for any one person to teach him in his given situation. And yet he was really an adult. Perhaps this
would
be a better solution.

Before bringing the suggestion seriously to Bill, I took an evening off to go see the place myself.

The couple running it were George and Nancy MacFarlane. They were a young-looking pair and very energetic. I arrived at dinnertime, and Mrs MacFarlane had me through the kitchen and into the dining room and down to the laundry room and up to the bedrooms and back to the kitchen before the potatoes were mashed. It was the ‘girls’ turn to make the meal, and the kitchen was alive with the chatter of the four residents and the staff person. One girl was disagreeing violently about how to peel carrots, and the staff person patiently explained again and again. Nancy MacFarlane leaned over the girl’s shoulder, asked what the problem was. The girl wanted to do it this way, not that way. This way, one could cut oneself, Mrs MacFarlane explained, so we all did it that other way for safety’s sake. She demonstrated and handed the carrot and knife back to the girl. Show our visitor how it’s done, she said, and pushed me up against the sink with the carrots. The girl painstakingly held the knife correctly and peeled. ‘Now why’s it done that way, Clare, can you tell the visitor?’ Nancy MacFarlane asked. Because the other way one could cut oneself, Clare replied.

After the meal, Mrs MacFarlane marshaled the ‘boys’ out to the kitchen to do the dishes, amidst appropriate groans, while Dr MacFarlane showed me the remainder of the house. He took me on a tour of the residents’ rooms and the game room and the little upstairs kitchen where the residents could make tea or soup unsupervised, if they wanted. He also showed me the empty room that would be Kevin’s, if Kevin came.

Just as Jules predicted, I liked the atmosphere of the place very much. The couple were caring and dedicated without being condescending. All emphasis was on learning to cope. Did I realize, Dr MacFarlane said, that their own son had managed to make the transition and was now living in his own apartment a few blocks away and holding down an eight-hour job? But for all the emphasis on learning, there was nothing institutional about the setting. It was a home.

My only real qualm was the undeniable fact that all the other residents were obviously quite retarded. Kevin, despite his earlier reports, was not. Would this cause problems? I asked.

No, Dr MacFarlane replied, not from what he had heard about Kevin. If Kevin had been institutionalized that long, he would effectively behave as a retarded individual in many areas, and this would be a sheltered, yet open, place to learn. Dr MacFarlane took me into the living room. Amidst the large photos of the current residents on the piano, he located an album and began showing me pictures. See? This is Benny and now he’s living down in Mississippi, working on a truck farm. And there’s Norma; she works in a child-care center. And Candy. And Bob. One picture after another of those whose umbilical cords had been cut. Had there been any failures? I asked. With a smile he shook his head. No. If they couldn’t make it on their own, they came back. But that was hardly a failure, was it?

I sat down in a chair in the living room, and one of the residents brought me a cup of coffee. Did he realize, I asked Dr MacFarlane, that Kevin had emotional problems and, while they were much improved, he was not by any means problem free? Did he know that undoubtedly the time would come occasionally when the ghosts of Kevin’s past would loom up and haunt him again?

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Don’t they for all of us?’

Bill Smith was wary when I first suggested the MacFarlanes’ as an alternative placement for Kevin. He had the same volley of questions I had had. Kevin was even more cautious. ‘Who are they?’ he asked. ‘What kind of place is it?’

I explained.

‘I don’t want to go,’ he said flatly.

‘Why not? They’re very nice. I went over myself and had a look. I think it’s great.’

‘I don’t want to go,’ he reaffirmed. ‘I like it here just fine.’

On his next green pass, I took Kevin into the city to get a hamburger. We could have gotten a hamburger much closer and needn’t have driven forty miles for the privilege, but I had other thoughts.

‘You want to drive by the MacFarlanes’?’ I asked as we sat in the McDonald’s parking lot and ate our food.

He shrugged.

‘Come on, I’ll take you. We’ll just go by the front before we head back to Seven Oaks.’

As we went by, Kevin put his head out the open car window. ‘It’s big, isn’t it? Stop a little bit, so I can see it better.’

I drove around the block again and stopped on the opposite side of the street. Kevin stared out the window. ‘It’s real big. How many people live there? It could be a hundred by the looks of it.’

‘No, just eight. Just eight people about your age and the MacFarlanes and a couple of people helping them. There’s maybe ten or twelve altogether.’

‘Well,’ he said with a derisive tone, ‘that isn’t a real home, anyway. It’s a group home, like at Bellefountaine.’

‘Not exactly. It hasn’t got any houseparents. Just the MacFarlanes. And the residents all have their own rooms and stuff. It’s more like a family than Bellefountaine. And besides, it’s not a kids’ place. It’s for adults. Like you are.’

This thought clearly had never occurred to Kevin before. He sat, digesting it. ‘Yes, I guess I am, aren’t I? Hmm.’ He fell silent as he studied the house. I started up the engine. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s not such a bad-looking place. I might consider it.’

When the MacFarlanes came out to Seven Oaks, Kevin did decide he would go down and see them. It was a much different interview than with the Burchells. Clearly Kevin was determined not to get burned twice. He was polite and shy but he had questions and none of them were about whether or not he could call them Mom and Dad.

Then came the first visit, a weekend away. Bill Smith and I did not even dare voice our worries to each other. It was already the middle of October and Kevin’s six-month tenancy at Seven Oaks was very near its end. This
had
to work out. Seven Oaks just was not an appropriate placement for Kevin.

But where else would he go? Neither of us dared think about the weekend. When I got home that Friday night, I took my phone off the hook. I didn’t even want to know if anything went wrong. But when Hugh took me out for a meal on Saturday night, I made him drive me across town and by the MacFarlanes’. Not for any reason. Just so I could look.

I think Kevin and I both knew the end was approaching for us. It wasn’t something either of us said to the other but, when he came home from the first weekend and plans for the next weekend were being discussed, I knew it was almost over.

I came in late one evening to find Kevin sitting in his room, doing his schoolwork. He turned as I entered.

‘You’re late,’ he said. ‘You’re awfully late. It’s almost suppertime.’

‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t get away earlier.’

‘How come?’

‘A kid at work. I have a little boy in therapy. I think he’s schizophrenic but I don’t know. They want to send him up to Medicine Rock, and so it took a while to untangle.’

‘Was he upset?’ Kevin asked.

‘Yes, you bet. He’s scared. He’s in a foster home now and he’s scared of being sent away from it.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Ten. He’s got some real problems. But anyway, enough of that. I’m sorry I couldn’t get here.’

‘You weren’t here yesterday either,’ Kevin said.

‘They told you, didn’t they? I phoned and asked them to tell you.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘they told me.’

‘Listen, Kevin, I’m sorry. I really am, but if you could just see this kid –’

He was smiling at me. It was a soft, enigmatic sort of smile and it caught me off guard. When I stopped talking, he continued to watch me for a moment longer without speaking.

‘You did that for me, didn’t you?’ he said.

‘Did what?’

‘Well, when I had problems, you used to take time away from other people, didn’t you? Just like now. When that other boy needs you more than I do.’

I nodded.

‘I’m better, aren’t I?’

‘Yes. A lot.’

He looked down at his homework and then again at me. ‘I decided I’m going to go, Torey. Over to the MacFarlanes’.’

‘You did?’

He nodded. ‘I asked Dr MacFarlane if I came, if I could go to high school. And you know what he said to me?’

‘What was that?’

‘He said, “Yes, son. I think that’s a good idea.”’

T
he move to the MacFarlanes’ took place smoothly. While Kevin settled in over the next weekend, I spent my time with Dr MacFarlane, trying to find a high school in the district willing to take a chance on a kid like Kevin.

In the beginning, the idea still sounded harebrained to me, fraught as it was with so many built-in chances for disaster. However, Dr MacFarlane seemed to find it much more reasonable, and Kevin nursed it like a babe. So I did my best to put what expertise I had had in education into finding a suitable placement and helping devise a viable school program. Soon I found myself haunting old territories, meeting child-study teams again, chatting up principals, visiting special-education classrooms and guidance counselors, all in an effort to construct an educational plan for a boy who had been out of public schools for ten years.

God bless them, there was a school willing to try. Two weeks later Kevin was registered as a sophomore. He was to take four classes, English, math, social studies and art, plus a study hall. The rest of the time he would spend in the special-education resource room where the teacher would make sure he was keeping up on his work and coping with things.

On the very first morning, one of those dark misty November days, I came to pick him up and drive him to school. He was outside already, waiting for me. He had a cowboy shirt and new jeans on. His hair was a little longer around his ears, and I wondered where along the way he had become handsome to me, because he was. He reeked of Brut as he climbed into the car.