A Good and Happy Child (17 page)

“Who did?”

I stared at the floor again.

“Go on,” said Tom Harris. “I think I understand.”

“He took me to Daddy. And it was Daddy . . .” My lips grew dry. I had trouble continuing.

“Ye-es?”

“Daddy told me you
wanted
him dead,” I blurted. “And that you want to marry my mom.”

“Your father told you,” Tom Harris repeated evenly.

“In a dream. Or whatever it was. He was angry that he couldn’t do anything about it.
Frustrated,
” I recalled, “and incredibly sad.” I paused, then spat out the melancholy kernel of this outburst: “Like he needed me to help him.”

“Your father does need you,” Tom Harris replied, in a softer voice.

“He needs your prayers and your good memories.” His voice hardened again. “But that was not your father.”

“I know,” I said. “The doctors said it was a command auditory hallucination.” I had heard the term a dozen times in the past few days.

“I’m aware of what the psychiatrists said,” he said.

“Mom told you?”

“She told me they are putting you in a home. She told me they think your father was mentally ill.” He scowled. “The rest I can guess.”

I stared at my shoes, face burning. “You know people who have the same thing I do?” I asked.

“You could say that,” he said. “The fact is, I’ve had misgivings since I saw you scrambling in the dirt out there in the woods,” he said.

“My misgivings changed to concern, and now my concerns are outright fears.”

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“Don’t worry,” I assured him bitterly. “I’ll be in Lynchburg. I won’t be able to hurt anybody.”

“That’s not what I mean,”
he cried out, then winced—the effort had caused a twinge somewhere down in the construction zone of his thigh. He took several deep breaths, waved me off when I asked if he was all right. I noticed beads of sweat on his brow. “I want to help you,” he pronounced at last. “It’s what your father would have wanted. But you will have to trust me. And I will have to trust you. We have not exactly been pals these past few months, have we?”

I shook my head.

“Your mother, I should add, will not approve. It must be a secret from her. Do you understand?”

I had any dozen secrets from my mother, mostly minor infractions I had blamed on cleaning ladies—secret stores of cookies, a broken Chinese figurine. This would be my first secret with a grown-up. I nodded even before asking, “What secret?”

“For now, you must leave that to me. And Clarissa. And Freddie. Your father would have wanted us all to do what we could.”

“But,” I stammered helplessly. “Help me with what?”

“
It,
George,” he said, fatigue creeping into his voice, and with it, exasperation. “That thing you saw. That you see.”

“The command auditory hallucination?” I asked.

“Hallucination,” he repeated coldly. “What you see is no mirage. And you do not belong in a home. You’re no crazier than I am—and neither was your father. For what that’s worth,” he added. Tom Harris sank into the pillows, the flesh in his cheeks growing pale again, his old liveliness dimming. I watched him rest. Hair greasier than usual. Face saggy and sallow. My new and unexpected ally looked terrible, and it was my fault. My mind swam. Could Tom Harris be serious? I did not harbor much hope that even Tom Harris—a Harvardtrained, well-known professor and author—could sway the judgment of the UVa doctors. Yet he made it sound as if he could cure me, and yet more thrilling, as if he did not believe I was sick at all.
128

J u s t i n E v a n s

The last few days had been grim, the worst since my father’s funeral. Overmedicated in the children’s ward. Two days of inpatient

“school”: kids who could barely read, picking fights out of boredom. Surly nurses; hospital food; steel plates on locked doors. And worst of all, my new and emerging view of myself.
Insane. Dangerous.
They were putting me away indefinitely.
I’m people garbage.
And I had inherited this from my father. Now Tom Harris wanted to help me. He believed we were sane, my father and I both.

My stomach fluttered with excitement. I
knew
the things I’d experienced with my Friend were real. I had seen them, hadn’t I? The doctors
thought
they were unreal—they merely diagnosed me—but I
knew.
I wanted to shake Tom Harris awake, quiz him on the spot. What did he know about my father? And why did he refer to my Friend as
it?

Voices made him stir again.

“Hello?” called my mother, peering around the door. “Look who I found.”

Clarissa Bing clomped into the room in her pilgrim shoes, unwrapping herself from a crocheted scarf—a vomit-y test pattern of orange, brown, and pink—followed by Freddie Turnbull, who, in his fuzzy herringbone jacket and his crumpled wool cap, resembled a great, waddling mountain of tweed.

“You look awful,” ejaculated Uncle Freddie, before he could stop himself.

“Freddie,” scolded Clarissa.

“Well, the way he described it on the phone—
just a simple broken
bone
—I thought I’d find him dancing with his cane like Fred Astaire,”

Freddie sputtered.

“They broke his fibia with a mallet,” I said.

Everyone looked at me.

“Can we do anything for you, Tom?” asked Clarissa, as if changing the subject.

“Joan can,” spoke the voice from the pillows. “She can help George, too.” Tom Harris brought himself to his elbows, straightened a g o o d a n d h a p p y c h i l d

129

his hair—as much as he could—and suddenly spoke in an even, reasoning tone, as if he were piping up at a faculty meeting. “While there’s no evidence that George has done wrong, he’s just very graciously offered me his apologies—thank you, George. In addition, he’s offered to make amends. I’ve accepted both offers. Joan, with your permission, I’d like your boy to come out to the house—a few times a week, at most?—and help spruce things up.
Some might say
the place could use a little sprucing,” he added with a glance at Freddie.

“Far be it from me,” Freddie replied, putting his hands together in a saintly pose.

“From what I understand, they’re asking you to keep George on a tight rein these coming weeks. That right?”

My mother nodded, put her hand on my shoulder. “We need to keep an eye on him.”

“Well, with you going to Foxcoe every day, and the three of us here in Preston . . .” Tom Harris look from Freddie to Clarissa. “These two can split chauffeur duty. It’s a perfect arrangement. I’ll be happy to pay the going rate for odd jobs.”

My mother’s grip on my shoulder tightened, and I was startled to see her eyes brimming with tears. She hugged Clarissa, then Freddie, and moved to the bed and gave Tom Harris a peck on the head, thanking each of them, saying she hadn’t been sure what she was going to do, because while Kurt would help, of course, it would be different having old friends, people I knew, pitching in, being family, helping us.

“Good God, Joan, don’t
thank
us,” said Uncle Freddie. “Cleaning up that mess? You’ve sentenced him to hard labor.”

r r r

“There are two key places to get a grip on.”

“Key places?”

“Important places.”

“Why do you say ‘key’?”

Kurt made a face. “It’s a consultant thing.”

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J u s t i n E v a n s

“Okay.”

“The two
important
places,” he said, “are the wrist and the ankle.”

“Why?”

“Good leverage. I’ll show you.”

He grabbed my wrist, quick and hard.

“Ow ow ow ow ow!”

He laughed. “I didn’t do anything yet!”

“Ow ow!”

He relented. “But you see how much leverage I had there?”

“I guess so,” I said, rubbing my wrist. “That hurt,” I whimpered. Then I dove for him.

We were sitting under the gloomy lamps of the “sitting room” as my father called it (a defiant southern alternative to the crass Yankee

“TV room”), with the television jammed to a high volume on local news, which had suddenly turned to sports news, and as the voice of the hyperactive commentator rose to a “touchdown!” crescendo, Kurt grabbed me, I yelped, and we were scrapping on the sofa like a couple of barroom drunks. He took a wrist. I twisted to get it free. “You’re only hurting yourself!” cried Kurt. I grabbed his knee and tried to pry it off the sofa. “Good leverage point,” he said. “But you’re open for the noogie!” Then he rubbed a knuckle in the back of my head. It was time to play dirty. I reached for his pressed shirt, found a pinch of skin, and twisted. “You little bastard!” We hit the floor, missing the coffee table by inches, and wrestled on the dusty rug.

“
Vorsicht! Vorsicht!
” scolded my mother in German, coming in with a bowl of salad. “Do you want to eat here or in the dining room?”

“In here!” I said.

“Okay,” she said. But she just stood there.

The fact was, we had never eaten in front of the television in our lives. My father had disapproved of the television and had limited my intake of it. And my God: Wrestling in the house? I sat glowing at Mom, sweat on my back from the exertion, heat rising off my chubby body like rain off an August pavement.

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Mom recovered and moved our placemats to the sitting room table. We watched the rest of the news. We watched the day’s football highlights. When the sports news was over there was weather. When the weather was over, signaling the end of the news,
All in the Family
came on. My mother and I opened our mouths at the same time, both turning toward Kurt to say,
Change the channel.
But Kurt did not move. We looked at each other. We weren’t sure what to do. Jean Stapleton sang “. . . SAWNGS that made the HIT PARAAAAAADE!”; Kurt lifted a forkful of salad to his mouth. He followed the show intro mildly, peacefully, as far as I know, unaware of the fact that we were staring at him, neither of us so much as breathing for fear of disturbing the experiment.
All in the Family
used to make my father apoplectic.
Contemptible
was his word for it. He would scramble for the
TV Guide
as soon as the camera panned across the working-class row houses of Queens.

Kurt continued forking salad into his mouth. He chewed slowly. The show intro ended—“Those were the DAAAAAAAAAAAAYS!”—

and it went to commercials.

“George is a born wrestler,” Kurt said cheerfully, turning his attention back to us.

My mother smiled at me. Something had changed in our house. Mom came to tuck me in while I was rubbing my face in my soft, cool pillows, and lolling in the sheets.

“Glad to be home in your own bed?”

“Oh yes!” I said.

“I’m glad you’re here, too.” She sat down at the side of my bed and stroked my hair. “Have fun with Kurt tonight?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Would you like it if he came around more often?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. “When?” I thought she was asking whether I wanted to make some sort of playdate with Kurt.

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J u s t i n E v a n s

“Oh, whenever,” said Mom. Then she paused. “You might have mixed feelings about Kurt.”

“Why?” I asked.

She hesitated.

“I know it’s only been a few months since your father died. Maybe you feel the same way about him that you felt about Tom Harris,”

she said.

“It’s different.”

“Why?”

“It’s like I imagined what was happening with Tom Harris . . . but in the hospital I realized I was wrong. That was imaginary. This is real.” I shrugged. “It’s okay in real life.”

“You were furious at Tom Harris.”

“Not anymore,” I said. “He told me Dad and I were no crazier than he is.”

My mother snorted. “For whatever that’s worth.”

“That’s what he said, too.”

“Did he?” She smiled. “What else did he say?”

Because I understood so little myself, I wanted nothing more than to confide in my mother, have her help to decode Tom Harris’s cryptic comments, his unexpected gesture of friendship, his bizarre demand for secrecy. But something stopped me. I had injured Tom Harris, had seen firsthand the pain he suffered. If he asked me to keep a secret, didn’t I owe him that much? Even more important: if I spilled the beans to my mother—and if Tom Harris was right that she wouldn’t approve—she might stop Tom Harris from helping me. I actually opened my mouth to speak:
He said I wasn’t supposed to tell
you, but . . .

“Nothing,” I said, with perhaps too much nonchalance. I felt my mother’s eyes on me.

“George,” she said. “I want you to know I never said
anything
to the doctors to make them think your father had mental problems.”

“So what did you tell them?” I said. “You said . . . something about religion.”

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She sighed. “Your father, even though he had a temper, was a sensitive man, and religious.” She pondered for a moment. “He had some powerful experiences.”

“What kind of experiences?”

“He only told me bits and pieces.” She held her hand to my cheek.

“I wish he could tell you himself.” Then her voice hardened. “Let that be a lesson to us. Arrogant doctors. Making snap decisions that affect people’s lives.”

“Am I really going to have to go away, Mom?”

“I’m going to fight it,” she said, straightening. “But
you
need to be on your absolute best behavior. No rough stuff at school. Homework on time. I can’t argue that you don’t belong in a home if you’re out there making trouble. Understand? I want you perfect for a month.”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

“Give it your best shot,” she said drily. “Which reminds me . . .”

She held out a tiny white tablet. “Every night, remember?” she said.

“It makes me stupid.”

“Dr. Gilloon said this is the lowest dosage they give anybody.”

“So I’ll only be
mostly
retarded.”

“Better than all the way miserable. Consider this part of your new perfection.”