The Things I Want Most (23 page)

No fights that day or the next, but the day after, he smashed the glass in the french doors. Sue's mother watched him do it. In fact, it looked as if mike had waited for her to come inside.

“Get him out of that room, sue.”

“No, mom, that has nothing to do with it. He loves that room upstairs. It's something else.”

But the confirmation of lee's deduction began to come our way several days later, when liam told us that mike got up at about four in the morning to go to the bathroom and then wouldn't because he couldn't get teddy bear to go out into the dark of the upstairs foyer with him. Liam had awakened when he heard mike cajoling the dog, but was groggy and went back to sleep.

How many other times had that happened up there? I asked myself.

The next night I set my alarm for 4:00 a.m. And went upstairs.
when I opened mike's door, he was sitting half asleep in his desk chair, holding teddy around the neck.

“Mike, what are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Mike, are you waiting for it to get light outside?”

Silence.

“Where else would we put him?” sue asked.

“Sue,” I said, “i don't think he's slept at all in that room. He's absolutely terrified of the dark. The dark outside the windows, the dark in that foyer.”

“Let's test it out,” sue said. “call him in here.”

When mike walked in, sue had him sit down. “mike, we're going to offer you a choice. You can sleep in your room or take a sleeping bag and sleep downstairs outside our bedroom door on the floor. Which would you like to do?”

Shuffling feet, then he said, “i don't mind sleeping in a sleeping bag.”

“Thanks, mike. Now let us alone to talk for a little while.”

When the door closed, sue shrugged. “well, you're right, but what do we do, and why didn't the room downstairs bother him like this?”

“It's a change,” I opined, answering the second part of her question first. “he shared the room down here with liam for a few months, so he was used to feeling safe in it. He could always hear some activity going on, and there usually was a light on in the living room or out in the downstairs foyer. Besides, we were just a door away. Up there he's isolated in the corner of the house in a strange room, nobody next to him, no sounds, no light coming in under the door. Everything you or I would view as a benefit is to him a danger.”

Sue shook her head. “my mother is talking about going to
eileen's for the last two weeks of her radiation. She's much stronger now and would like to get away from the long car ride. But that's a couple of days or so away and the basic fact about that big old room remains. There's just too much noise coming through. With my mother here we've been staying out of the living room, but when she leaves we'll go back to normal.”

I made a proposal. “we could rebuild, remove the french doors, put a hallway down one side, then build two smaller bedrooms—one for brendan, who's now sharing a room with frank and hating it, and another small room for mike, with just one window and a glass door facing a permanent night-light mounted out in the new hallway. That way he'll have quiet, a light outside, and still be close to us.”

“Rich, are you nuts?”

“No.”

Then she laughed. “so you've thought all this out?”

“Yeah.” I got up and opened my dresser. “here,” I said, taking out a roll of paper. “here's a floor plan I drew up.”

“And for the next couple of weeks, until you get all this done?”

“Put the roll-away bed we have upstairs in the downstairs foyer, and when your mom moves out, roll it into the construction site.”

The first night on the roll-away bed mike slept like a dead man. When we woke him, he got up without a word, walked the few steps to the bathroom, and started his shower.

Sue's mother did move out the next week, and we started rebuilding in earnest—two small bedrooms opening on a new, short hallway, which then opened on the downstairs foyer. There was one window in mike's room and a fixed night-light on the wall outside his room, shining through a glass-paned door.

Mike helped at every step of the way, loading in the material from where the flatbed truck stacked it in the snow, cutting the framing, studding it up, hanging the doors, sheetrocking and painting.

Two weeks of peace in the morning. I asked sue if the banging was disturbing her clients.

“No,” she said, “those are happy noises.”

Once the rooms were finished and mike moved in, sue took a walk through, sniffing the fresh white paint. “you know,” she said, “he would never have told us he was frightened or upset. He would have kept up his act and his behavior until, in desperation, we moved him out of his home here and back into the system.”

I sighed. “we've seen that phenomenon before, sue. He believes he just has to deal with things as they happen to him. He reacts to circumstances, but he just won't ever act to change them. His mind-set says he can't.”

She grimaced. Then she looked again at the freshly painted new walls. “I wonder if he understands how much we care about him.”

For days mike just slept and slept when he wasn't in school. We tried to be as understanding as we could to compensate for the very bad time he had had upstairs. We tiptoed around him, gave him lots of hugs, told him how great he was.

But then, once he was rested, and despite how understanding we were trying to be, the east wind blew again. It almost seemed we were back in mid-january. If it wasn't for how terrified we finally realized he was up in that room, we would have regretted going to the effort and expense of the construction downstairs.

It began again innocently enough, mindlessly enough. Sue complimented mike on the dessert he had made for dinner, and he started rumbling and grumbling, got louder, louder yet, and then went into his tantrum act. “this family sucks. I want to go back to the children's home.” and so on.

Suddenly blindingly angry, sue called his bluff. She put the phone in his hand and told him to call. Then, when he hesitated, she got him the phone number and demanded he call. But he wouldn't do it. Sue then said she never wanted to hear that out of his mouth again.

Head down, mike just looked up at sue, sour and glowering.

“Well, mike?” she asked. “well?”

He screamed back at her, “i won't do that fucking homework.”

“What?” sue said, puzzled and taken aback. “what does homework have to do with anything?” then she walked over and tried to give him a hug. “mike, we don't want anything but good for you. Either Rich or I will help you with the homework.”

On her weekly visit joanne and I shared a pot of tea in the barroom.

“It's mid-february already,” she said brightly “you're making it through winter.”

“Maybe.”

“Rich,” she said, sipping at her tea and not liking the look on my face, “the room issue has been resolved, hasn't it?”

I put my hands out in sort of a helpless gesture. “but now that we're past that, he wants to fight about homework. He wants to fight all the time”

It was true, and as far as i could understand mike's tortured reasoning, if he didn't have homework, he'd have a chance at regaining unlimited access to the tv. Then he believed (i think, although i still can't understand it) that the way to get us to throw in the towel on homework was to fight with us over
other issues in the afternoon and evening when he should be doing the homework.

But we didn't want to fight anymore. Both sue and i were sick over the thought of more confrontation. Compounding the issue was the snow. It seemed day after day we were trapped in the house with him. The snow was so deep we weren't having the parking lot plowed any longer. Instead, we'd hired a man with a payloader and a backhoe. Even getting to the supermarket was a chore. We couldn't take a walk, send him outside, drop him off at a friend's house. It was always us and that voice, and he seemed to display an infinite degree of reserve strength. He could fight, argue, ridicule, insult nonstop from dawn to bedtime.

As sue said, “there's a downside to mike getting a good night's sleep.”

But we couldn't let the homework go. First of all, the only reason the school was assigning him any work was that we'd complained about the lack of academics and asked for homework. Second, the effect of tv was like a drug to this child. If he watched it for half an hour, there was a mild confrontation when we asked him to eat dinner or go to bed or do his chores. But if he watched it for an hour, there was a major fight. Anything over an hour meant open warfare, the worst sort of language, unimaginable tantrums.

I explained all this to my son-in-law david when he, sue, henry, and i were eating a late dinner together. Being an orphan himself, i thought he might have some insight i lacked.

But what he said was confusing.

“Look,” david said, “i think homework is a big symbol to him. It's something normal kids in normal schools do, and the fact you're insisting he do it means you care about him. The combination is deadly.”

I looked at david, feeling stupid. “that can't be right.”

David shrugged. “I think it's even worse than that. I think
you're facing this sort of issue right now because you went to all the trouble and expense of building him a new room.”

“Okay,” i said. “now i'm thoroughly confused.”

David grinned and settled down into the discussion. “mike is starting to care, and he doesn't ever want to think about that. But showing
you
really care forces him to confront the beginning of his own feelings, and that makes him very angry. What he wants to do is have you back off. Then he's relieved of any obligation to care in return.”

“Are you sure, david?”

“Well,” he said, “i can only tell you how i felt. I was so angry, so bitter over what had happened to me that when i was placed with my adoptive parents i resented every nice thing they did for me. I wanted to stay bitter and angry.”

“What happened?” i asked.

David made a dismissive gesture with his head. “I finally understood that my adoptive parents were just two people doing their best.”

“How long did that take?”

He laughed. “about ten years.”

“So then none of this is really about tv or homework?”

“Sure it is.”

“Huh?”

David tapped one finger on the table. “If he can get back to the tv, he can avoid you and mom, avoid what he's feeling, avoid this whole little world here that you're trying to move him into.”

March had arrived. We were looking forward to some blue sky, a thaw, any sort of change in the weather.

Mike got up all right on the first day of march, but then didn't do what he had to do (take his sheets down to the washer, etc.). when i asked him to put a belt on, i got the same old “i
don't have to.” when he got home this afternoon, was uncooperative, and said he wanted dinner early, we set a time and gently explained to him how important his health and regular habits were to us. Then, when we left the kitchen, he came back in and cooked himself four hot dogs. We took them away and made him wait the half hour for dinner. He ate dinner with david. Then, when david left, he refused to do his homework again and wound up sitting at the table until bedtime, when he tore up his assignment and said, “i'll just lie about it.” then he went upstairs and smashed the glass in his door. Again.

Sue and i were beyond anger.

But it got worse.

The second week of the month i walked into a strangely quiet house. Stepping through sue's empty office, i called her name—no answer.

When i walked down the hall toward our bedroom, i passed the downstairs foyer where the two doors were open leading into the hallway outside mike's room. I saw him look out, then silently withdraw his head. There were shards of glass everywhere.

I pushed the bedroom door open, and sue was lying facedown on the bed, her head in a pillow.

“Sue.” when i shook her shoulder, she rolled over and sat up, her eyes red and bleary, her face puffed. She put her head on my shoulder and started to cry. “Rich, He broke the glass in his door again, then brendan's glass, then he smashed the clock in my office and said he was going to wreck my computer.”

“Sue, let's talk.”

“No!” she screamed and pushed me away. “I don't give a damn. He has to get out of here. He has to leave.”

“What set it off?”

Sue stood up and started pacing, sobbing, wiping her face
with the arm of her sweater. “set it off? i just asked him to help me carry in the groceries, and when he did i gave him a little hug and a kiss.”

“Mom?”

I turned around. Henry was in the doorway, his eyes flicking back and forth between our bedroom and the glass in the foyer, seeing his mother cry. Then he headed in the direction of mike's room.

“Henry” i called after him, but sue grabbed my arm.

“Let him go, Rich.”

Henry didn't beat mike up, but he did scare the bejesus out of him. Then he had mike sweep up the glass, vacuum, and mop. Then henry put him to bed.

After sue's last client that night, we sat down in the barroom and shared a pot of very strong tea.

“Rich,” sue said, trembling, “there's not a nerve that hasn't been stripped right out of my body. He
will
smash my computer; he
will
set fire to the house. This place and our kids are what we've worked for all our lives. I won't give it up. I
won't
.

I was a choppy mix of emotion myself, wanting to just walk away from everything and have our life back the way it was.

And then henry came into the room, walked behind the bar, opened the refrigerator, twisted the top off a bottle of sam adams, and thirstily downed half the bottle.

“I'm beat” he said. “I was up and down bonticue crag today and then up on the cliffs on the east face—ten miles in the snow. I'm drinking this beer and then hitting the sack for about twelve hours.”