The Things I Want Most (22 page)

He lay there for a moment before starting to make hurt sounds. “Oh, oh, oh, oh.”

I got him up on his feet, and he wasn't injured. He had, after all, landed on the floor still wrapped in his quilt. But I was deeply ashamed of myself. Angry, too. How could he do that?
Why
did he do that?

That afternoon he slammed into the house after school.

“Mike, you have to lower your voice. Sue's mother is trying to get some rest.”

“When is she leaving?” he yelled back.

Finally, Sue decided she would take over getting Mike up in the morning. “I'm going to have to make the time. You're far too abrupt,” she said to me that night. “With my mother here, he's getting pushed out of the way a little bit, and you treat him like he's in the Marine Corps.”

But when she went up in the morning, Mike smashed the window next to his bed. His fist went through the inside pane and then the storm window.

Sue just stood there for a few moments, the wind swirling through the window, and watched the snow dust his little figure. Then she reached under the quilt, grabbed his pajamas, and hoisted him bodily half upside down over the broken glass.

“March,” she hissed.

“No.”

“March.”

As January snowed and snowed on, the morning confrontations escalated. Each night we'd put him to bed, read to him, tuck him in, and give him a hug, he'd tell us what a great room he had and how happy he was, and then, in the morning, there'd be open warfare.

An endless series of discussions went like this:

“Mike, it's terribly inappropriate to hit people or break windows.”

“I don't care.”

“Mike, why are you so angry?”

“Everybody really pisses me off.”

“You're frightening the dogs. They don't want to come in the room with you anymore.”

“I don't care”

“You're forfeiting your allowance to pay for this glass.”

“Whatever.”

“Can you tell us what's bothering you?”

“You.
You
bother me.”

“How?”

“You really piss me off.”

“Mike, how do we make you angry?”

“Everybody really pisses me off.”

Sue was inwardly cringing, not only because we were down to two guests and they were getting ready to move, what with Mike's yelling or breaking things in the morning, but also because her mother was in the house.

One morning, while slowly sipping a cup of coffee in front of the fire, Lee rolled her eyes at the loud scene unfolding upstairs yet again and then looked shrewdly sideways at me. “Sometimes I feel like hobbling up those stairs with my walker in one hand and a belt in the other.”

I laughed ruefully. “That's not part of his treatment plan, Lee.”

Then she lit one of her unfiltered cigarettes with a wooden
match, took a sip of the coffee, exhaled, flicked the match into the fireplace, and said, “Have you considered getting him out of that room?”

“He loves that room, Lee.”

That crafty sideways look again. “
Really
, now.”

January ended, and Sue finally did have to give up almost all involvement with Mike as tax season opened and the long parade of clients began trooping in. Lee gradually seemed to improve, and her appetite quickened. We started making her some decent meals—London broil with new potatoes, baked chicken, good strong soups with dark bread and butter. She had the strength now to get up and watch TV for a couple of hours and, finally, to come downstairs for coffee in the morning, where she'd chat with the guests about her home in the Adirondacks.

But Mike wasn't any better. With the unending sequence of storms blasting through, school was closed as often as open, and on many mornings we'd defer the morning fight until after the guests had left. There always was a fight. And there always was breakage: lamps, his alarm clock again, the desk, his toys, and more and more windows.

After school and on weekends we could avoid further conflict by letting him park himself in front of the TV. But TV was a baleful influence. More so than anyone else we ever saw, TV drew Mike in.

So, thinking it must have something to do with his morning behavior, early in February we terminated his TV. The first day this happened, out of boredom Mike spent the afternoon at the winter barbecue in the St. Charles Church Hall. He went down early and helped set up (for which Deacon Carroll slipped him a twenty-dollar bill), and then he cooked hot dogs all afternoon.

“Okay,” Sue said, “he's accepting it.”

But he was actually striking back. A few days after TV
termination, things started to arrive in the mail that he had ordered over the phone.

“Mike,” I said, holding a hefty package of custom-printed stationery in my hand, “you can't do this.”

“I didn't order anything,” he said with his big blue eyes wide.

I opened the covering letter and started to read, “Dear Michael, thank you for your telephone call …”

Then the range of conflict narrowed, as if Mike had decided that random surgical strikes were more effective than this “fight 'em every step of the way” morning routine. We didn't understand what was happening, at first—only that the mornings got suddenly better.

When they did, we foolishly felt a little guilty over some of our reactions to his behavior over the past few weeks, and we surprised him with boots, cross-country skis, and poles.

They seemed to be a big hit. Mike was outside all day long that first day. He even went out at sunset and tried to ski down the lane to the orchards, but as soon as he started into the dark under the trees an owl hooted in a branch just over his head and he set a land speed record coming back.

Then he put on a charming little pretense at indignation over Teddy, who was with him and had ignored the owl.

“You can't trust Teddy,” Mike said, laughing.

“Well,” I said in a happy, bantering tone, glad to see him in such a good mood, “you can't expect a dog to climb a tree in the dark and chase an owl. Besides, owls are good luck.”

“Yep,” he said, laughing again, and then he walked into the kitchen to get a snack.

“Whose dinner is this on the table?” I heard him shout in to me.

“It's Sue's Mom's,” I shouted back. “Be careful. I'm just waiting for her to get out of the bath before I bring it up to her.”

Smash!

I walked into the kitchen, and the tray and the dishes I had left on the table were broken on the kitchen floor.

“Mike, what happened?”

Those big blue eyes again. “I don't know. It just fell off.”

“Mike, you had to have moved it. I left it in the center of the table.”

“Whatever.”

“Sue, he smashed that dinner tray on purpose.”

It was late at night, Sue had finished with her last client, and we were having a quiet drink downstairs.

“Why?”

“Why?” I said. “I don't know. But he did it.”

Sue just looked at me, exhausted, trying to force herself to think. “But why?”

Then he flashed again two days later on the next Cub Scout meeting night. Mike was picked up by the scoutmaster and his son, and then, at about eight, Henry and I went over to get him in Henry's truck.

When he ran out the door, Mike seemed very happy. He had made place mats for the blue-and-gold dinner and was chattering on about the upcoming event.

But thirty seconds after he got into the narrow cab of the truck, crowded in the middle over the gearshift, he started to call Henry names, then filthy names.

Then filthier names.

Every time I told him to stop this bizarre behavior he'd say, “Whatever,” or “You're not my boss” or “You piss me off.”

I was dumbfounded, but Henry stayed silent until we pulled into the parking lot and then said to me quietly, “I'll take care of this, Dad.”

Mike was walking toward the house when Henry attacked him from behind. He picked him up and threw him into a snowbank, let him struggle up, then chased him. Mike started screaming, “Help, help, help me, Rich,” but Henry shouted back
the same snide little phrases Mike had used on me in the truck: “You're not my boss.” “Whatever.” “You piss me off.” Then he caught him again and threw him into another snowbank.

I walked into the house, and Sue stormed into the living room from her office and shouted, “What's Henry doing to Mike outside?”

I shrugged.

Lee was sitting by the fire, quietly reading with a pot of fresh coffee next to her. She looked up and out the front window as a screaming Mike was making another circuit of the snowdrifts. “Sit down, Sue,” she said pleasantly. “Have a cup of hot coffee and relax for a couple of minutes. Mike must have started it.”

“No,” Sue said, “the point is that you don't let him provoke you.”

A few minutes later Mike came in red-faced, tears streaming down his face, soaking wet and shivering, but with an enormously satisfied smile on his face.

“What's this all about, Mike?” I asked.

He wouldn't answer. Instead he ran upstairs, changed into nightclothes, and then for the first time ever, came back down and said that even if it wasn't his bedtime, he was tired and wanted to go to sleep.

“What?”

“I have to,” Mike said, grinning. “Henry said he's going to come upstairs and watch me.”

“Huh?”

But he scampered off without answering.

“Okay,” Sue said, flustered. “Okay. I give up.”

The next week was the Cub Scout blue-and-gold dinner. I was tired and didn't want to go. But Mike was baking brownies, we had promised, and, of course, Sue wasn't available.

I washed and ironed his uniform—shirt, pants, neckerchief—
and he looked very sharp at first. Unfortunately, he then put something in his trouser pockets that spread out in a red stain.

It was like a barely controlled riot—seventy-five scouts, a hundred or so parents, and a million younger children. When the gym doors opened, the sound hit you like a sonic wave from a squadron of jets. I stood there, appalled, but Mike happily ran in with his brownies.

Somehow, the scoutmasters got it organized, all the tables were set with tablecloths, place mats, and a blue-and-gold bouquet of flowers, and the food was actually very good. There was an enormous buffet—meatballs, lasagna, baked ziti, beans, salad, chicken, rice, etc. Mike ate three hot dogs at home before the dinner under the theory that “you never know if there's going to be enough food.” But on the serving line he loaded down anyway, a heaping plate of meatballs, chicken, and sausage. Then, when they set the dessert line, he came back with four or five types of dessert, grumbling that his brownies were all gone before he got there.

He now weighed one hundred seven. Maybe we should start cutting back.

The awards. Mike was the first up. He was getting his bobcat badge and his “mother” pin. I was nervous because I had to go up with him and put my arm on his shoulder while he recited the Cub Scout promise in front of the whole crowd. When he hesitated, I thought,
Oh, no, he's going to be embarrassed. Why didn't somebody warn me? I could have practiced with him!

But he recited it flawlessly.

Then, after we came home, and almost as an afterthought, Mike ran back downstairs and started a fire in the kitchen.

The Harbour Program does not place or continue to place children with a history of fire-starting.

Joanne was the first to speak. “I'm going to lay it out to him:
he starts fires, he has to leave. And it won't be back to the children's home. He's almost too old now.”

Sue nodded tiredly. She seemed suddenly beaten, unable to cope with Mike, with her mother, with tax season. It was all piling up too high. “I can barely go to sleep in this house, worrying about him finding some matches or going back down to the stove in the middle of the night.”

Joanne looked at her. “Are you asking for a withdrawal?”

A long, long moment passed while Sue looked around as if she wanted to get up and run off somewhere. Then she said in a low voice: “Let's have him in here.”

After Joanne said her piece and Sue and I followed up a concurrence, Mike gave us an appraising, deep look and then slowly nodded. “I'll never, ever do that again.”

Sue was crying behind her eyes. “Okay.” Joanne reached over and touched her hand. “You do realize, Sue, that it's not entirely your decision or Harbour's decision? We are going to have to report this to Social Services.”

Sue sat up straight, finally summoning some sort of energy. “Perhaps he's been alone with us too much—all this snow and these school cancellations. Maybe …”

Mike had another friend over for the day, a joey from down the road, also a foster child. Sue knows the family and arranged it. We gave special dispensation, and they played sega genesis all afternoon. Mike made joey lunch—hot dogs, of course.