A Safe Place for Joey (27 page)

Spelling was Charlie’s Waterloo. The two pages in the spelling book were intended to review the long
a
sound. The problem was that in the book there were no rules to follow and no consistency. For example, four of the words were “rain, payment, tale, and neighbor.” There were twenty new words a week and a test
every Thursday. I copied the next six pages of Charlie’s spelling book on my copy machine, resolving to figure out some way to help him.

“For this week, just write them out. Learn the easy ones first, and memorize as many of the others as you can.”

Mrs. Yager and I conferred on a weekly basis. She was wonderful about adapting assignments for Charlie. She accepted shorter written reports,
corrected his spelling, allowed him to copy reports over after she’d corrected them, and, whenever possible, let him shine in class by talking about all the information he’d acquired. Charlie’s mom was good, too. She encouraged him and tried to practice “planned ignoring,” deliberately not noticing the dozens of annoying little things Charlie did – just concentrating on one or two changes at
a time. I tried to clarify and reinforce as creatively as I could the things Charlie was learning in school, and Charlie himself was trying to improve his concentration, to focus, and to sort out the important from the unimportant.

Because it was so important to Charlie not to look “dumb” in front of his classmates, we spent an inordinate amount of time on spelling. Charlie got so that he
earned “High Pass” on most tests, although that didn’t mean he would remember how to spell the same words if he had to use them in a book report a few days later.

Mrs. Yager had actually offered to let Charlie skip the spelling test or else cut down his number of words, at least during the first trimester. But Charlie wouldn’t hear of it.

“Whadda you mean, not take the test?” Charlie
was fuming. “What am I gonna do while everybody has the spelling test? Play tic-tac-toe with myself? There are only twenty words, you know. Now that I know how to study them, I’m not ever going to miss thirteen again, like that first time. I’m not that dumb, you know.”

“Okay,” I said. “I guess I didn’t remember you telling me that before.”

Charlie smiled. “All right. I get it. I did
used to think I couldn’t do it. I don’t know why. It just seems like it used to be harder, but that couldn’t be it ’cause that was third and third has got to be easier than fourth.”

“Well,” I said. “You’re older and that makes a difference.”

“And I’m not so mad,” Charlie said softly, “so I can think better.”

It was true. Charlie’s dictated stories had less violence, and he had
also learned to concentrate for longer periods of time. Charlie was doing his homework, passing his tests, increasing his academic skills, and even smiling a little more. I suppose it was because things were going relatively smoothly that I forgot about Jim Hammond. However, Jim Hammond did not forget about me.

The first day of November was grey and cold – a reminder of the long winter yet
to come. On impulse I decided to light a fire in the living room fireplace and bring my office work down there.

But the phone rang as I struck a match, and I blew it out and walked to the kitchen to pick up the phone.

“Mrs. MacCracken? This is Jim Hammond, Charlie’s father. It’s been almost a half year since you first saw Charlie for his evaluation, and I wondered if you had retested
him yet and what the results were?”

Tested Charlie? When would I have had time to test Charlie? Every minute of every session was crammed with extra explanations of things Charlie was encountering in school, plus my own steady building of his reading, writing, and math skills. But I couldn’t say that. If there was one key missing member of Charlie’s team, it was his father. Motivation mellowed
my voice.

“Mr. Hammond. Hello. I’m glad to hear from you. You’re right. Your wife and I did talk about seeing what kind of progress Charlie was making. I haven’t had a chance to formally test him again, but I am in touch with his teacher every week and she tells me that he’s holding his own. Would you like to come in and see what he’s been doing here?”

“Holding his own? What does that
mean, Mrs. MacCracken? I have Charlie’s typed educational evaluation done by you here in front of me. The report gives me specific information as to Charlie’s IQ and reading and math scores. I appreciate the specifics of that report, Mrs. MacCracken …”

There was a long pause in which neither of us spoke. Then Mr. Hammond resumed. (It was remarkably easy to start thinking of him as Mr. Hammond
again, rather than Jim.)

“It has been five months,” he said. “I think it’s time to re-evaluate the situation as we discussed previously and see exactly how much, if any, progress has been made.”

There was another long pause. I was holding my breath. I wanted to scream, “Damn it, Mr. Hammond. Do you have any idea how much energy, how much courage, how much effort it takes for Charlie
to do his homework every night? To go to school and keep his mind focused on what’s being taught in class? To strike out in softball every day and still play again the next day? Can’t you see with your own eyes the progress he’s making?”

I let out my breath and instead said, “I understand your concern about Charlie’s progress. It’s just that testing takes time. We only have two forty-five-minute
sessions a week. To repeat the academic tests I gave Charlie in June would take two hours, or a week and a half. I don’t think this is the right point to spend that amount of time on testing, particularly since things seem to be going along pretty well.”

“I don’t mean to sound rude, Mrs. MacCracken, but are you trying to tell me that Charlie, our son, cannot be successful in school without
your help for even a week and a half?”

“I am trying to tell you, Mr. Hammond, that at this stage of the game Charlie needs all the help he can get, and to use the time we have for testing rather than teaching would be ill-advised.”

“Then I suggest you see him two extra hours and get the academic testing done.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hammond, I don’t have any extra hours after school,
and I don’t think we should take Charlie out of his classes now.”

“May I ask, then, what you do suggest?”

I wanted to say, “I suggest you get off Charlie’s back and on his side,” but underneath my annoyance I knew from what his wife had told me that Jim Hammond was a kind, loving man who cared for his family. And Charlie needed that caring.

I studied my appointment calendar and
Charlie’s school calendar. “How about the Friday after Thanksgiving? I’ve canceled most of my appointments for that day.”

“That’s almost a month away. But if it’s the best you can do, all right. How soon can we have the results?”

Push. Push. Push. You’re driving me nuts, Mr. Hammond. Out loud I said, “Saturday. Not a written report. But I can certainly score the tests and give you
the results the next day.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that. My wife will call you to set up the times.”

When June Hammond called to arrange the appointments for the testing and follow-up conference she said, “I’m really very sorry to cut into your holiday like this. I apologize. And I hope you’ll understand, but I’m not going to come to the conference on Saturday. I know how I feel about
Charlie and I know how I feel about you, and whether he goes up or down a few points on some tests doesn’t have anything to do with it. Besides, I think you’ll be able to talk to Jim better if I’m not there. I can’t explain why I think so, but I just do. So I’ll make the appointment on Saturday for whatever time you say, but just know ahead of time that I’m not going to be there.

“My sister’s
coming down from Boston with her family, so it’ll be easy enough to have something come up.”

“I’m sorry to make you come in on a holiday, Charlie. How was your Thanksgiving?”

Charlie yawned. “Okay. My cousins came down from Boston. We’re going into the city when I finish here.”

Charlie yawned again, and I wondered how much sleep he’d gotten the previous night.

“What we
have to do today is check and see how much more you know now than you did last June. There’s an oral reading test, a silent reading test, and a short spelling and math test.”

“What’s oral?”

“Out loud.”

“Criminy! What do I have to do tests for? I have enough tests in school.”

“I know. I usually don’t give any till the end of the year, but it’s important to your dad, Charlie.”

“Oh, I get it. He wants to see if I’m still a dummy.”

“I don’t think he thinks you’re a dummy. He may think I am, but not you.”

Charlie smiled. “All right. Let’s get it over with. How long is this going to take?”

“A couple of hours.” He screwed his face into a pained expression. “I know,” I said. “I’ll pay double for unfair pain and cruelty. Start with the math. Do as many
as you can. Skip the ones you don’t know how to do, but remember they get harder as you go down the page.”

“Oh, I remember doing this. What did I get last time?”

“Well,” I said as I checked Charlie’s file, “it came out at third grade, first month.”

“How many do I need to get right to get fourth?”

I considered. Would answering be illegal? I decided that it was a fair question,
studied the teacher’s manual, and told Charlie how many he needed to get right to be scored at a fourth-grade level.

“But I’m not going to correct your tests till this afternoon, so I can’t tell you till Monday how you did. Agreed?” We followed the same procedure on each of the following tests, and at least Charlie’s yawns disappeared.

Mr. Hammond was at my office door at exactly two
o’clock on Saturday afternoon. A mixture of rain and sleet had begun in the late morning and by early afternoon had turned into a cold, heavy, drenching rain.

Mr. Hammond shrugged off his raincoat and brushed imaginary rain from the narrow lapels of his dark pinstripe suit. I took his raincoat from him and motioned to the stairs that led to my office.

“Why don’t you go on up? I’ll
be right with you. Just let me hang this down by the furnace so it can dry out.”

He started to protest, but a small puddle was already forming by my feet. “Can I do it for you?” he asked.

“No, no. I’ll be right up.”

Mr. Hammond was still standing when I entered the room. He pointed to some charcoal drawings on the wall behind the desk. “Any of those Charlie’s?” he asked.

I silently thanked God that “The Fiery Bird” was not still on the wall but in Charlie’s file. It would have antagonized Mr. Hammond even more to see his son’s inadequacies displayed. I thought about pointing out the swag of shells and then decided against it.

“Actually, most of Charlie’s work is here in his bin,” I said, lifting out a pile of papers and the black and white notebook where
we kept track of the work we did each day.

Mr. Hammond pushed the papers aside without looking at them and sat down in front of the desk. “Mrs. Hammond regrets she is unable to be here today. Her sister is visiting from Boston and an unanticipated doctor’s appointment came up, and so June had to drive her in. If they finish early enough, she’ll come by. So we might as well get started. How
did the testing go?”

I opened Charlie’s file folder.

“Fine. Here are the tests I gave him last June. These are the ones he took yesterday. I thought you’d like to compare them. I’ve also drawn up a chart on this page to point out the differences in grade scores and percentiles.”

This time Jim Hammond pulled the papers toward him and pored over them intently. While he studied
the papers, I studied him.

Who was this small, black-haired man? How did he really feel about his son? How much did he understand? We had spent two hours together after Charlie’s evaluation and another hour before the tutoring sessions began, but his wife had done most of the talking both times.

Charlie was built on a bigger scale than his father – taller, broader shoulders – but he
had the same black hair and eyes, although Mr. Hammond’s eyebrows were heavier, almost meeting above his nose. I searched in vain for a glimpse of the man who had cared so tenderly for his other son when he was dying …

The papers rustled as Mr. Hammond flipped them back and forth. “How is this possible? To have made over a year’s improvement in reading comprehension in less than half a year?”
His tone implied that perhaps I’d altered the scores in some way.

I chose my words carefully. “I think that there are several factors involved. First, Charlie has learned a great deal about decoding unknown words. He has also increased his sight vocabulary, and he reads much more easily and quickly than before.

“Second, Charlie is much more confident. He really believes he can read
better now, and that helps. He actually reads the longer paragraphs instead of just skimming and guessing. The test you’re looking at is a silent reading comprehension test. Twenty-five minutes are allowed. See, when Charlie took the test last June – Level C, Form One (Level C is for third grade) – I wrote here in the corner that he had finished in eleven minutes, which meant he had to be either
an awfully fast reader, or a guesser. The score – second grade, eight months – says he was the latter. Yesterday he used the full twenty-five minutes to do the comprehension section on Level D (D is for fourth grade), Form One; I’ll use Form Two when I do the regular testing at the end of the year.”

I hesitated, suddenly realizing I’d implied that Charlie would still be with me. I knew I
had made a mistake. Only five minutes into the conference and already a mistake. But I couldn’t think how to correct it, so I continued. “He concentrated and was willing to invest a lot of energy into trying to figure out as many words as he could. And as you know, once Charlie can read a word he has no trouble understanding it.”

“And it is a different test? It’s not just that he’s had it
before?”

“Yes, Mr. Hammond. It is a different test.”

He nodded. “How else do you account for the difference? Not just reading comprehension, but the others, too. On the math test he scored on a fourth-grade level.”