Come Back (28 page)

“You don’t think we should at least consider it?”

“Come on, Paul. It’s the same manipulation and control we saw before.”

Mia’s doing well, but in terms of certain behaviors, there’s more work to be done. The reasons she gives for not needing to graduate—I’m different, I’m special, I don’t need to do what everyone else has to do to succeed—are the same reasons she gave for doing what she did last year.

“That’s the way the world works, Paul, you have to jump through hoops to accomplish something—getting a degree, a promotion, getting anything. She’ll sabotage herself with this same attitude when she comes home and justify it every step of the way down.”

“I’m just afraid she’s going to get discouraged, it’s been such a long time. Don’t you remember being sixteen, Claire?”

“If it’s such hell, then why doesn’t she do what she needs to do to come home? All twelfth-graders are sick of school, but they finish that last semester, they do whatever’s necessary to graduate—why should she be different? I’m not taking the bait this time. I’m not sending the message that all she has to do is dig her heels in and we cave. I also think she’s had enough failure; it’s about time she create some success. She needs to have a sense of solid accomplishment.”

“Mia’s right,” Cameron tells us on a phone call. “She has gotten all the tools she can get from us. She’s just not using them. She’s afraid to shine, she’s a leader who won’t lead. She calls it ‘show-up games’—a lot of it is, so is life, that’s the point! What she doesn’t see is that she’s playing her own show-up game—how to show up empty-handed. It’s never about
the levels, it’s about growth. This ‘waste of time,’ as she calls it, is her biggest mirror, it’s her biggest opportunity to grow.”

“So, what do we do now? She’s not budging, and she knows we aren’t either.”

“I think Mia’s lost her desire because she doesn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Not because it’s too long, she could be out of here in two months tops, but because she’s filled the path with obstacles. I want to give her a jump start, something to motivate her.”

“You don’t know what it’s like. I haven’t seen Paul in over a year!” Mia complains on our phone call.

We can hear Kim in the background telling Mia to wrap up.

“Don’t worry, Mia, you’ll be seeing us before you know it,” I assure her.

Like in two minutes. We’re on the phone in the visitor’s trailer at Spring Creek, where we’ve come for a surprise visit. Cameron felt
we
were the motivation she needed. We hurry outside into the snow and run to the building where Kim told us to wait.

The door opens and I clutch Paul’s arm. Mia’s looking down as she and Kim walk outside toward us. Kim grins at us. Mia finally looks up and freezes.

“Mommmm!!! Paaaaull!” She runs at us full speed, flies into my arms, and sends me flat on my back, then she jumps up and leaps up into Paul’s arms the way she did when she was little.

“My little monkey!” Paul says as he spins her around in the air.

It’s all Paul and I can do to muffle smiles as we watch Mia with the menu. We’ve taken her to a restaurant overlooking the Clark Fork River and her eyes are practically bugging out of her head as she agonizes over what kind of steak to order.

“What?” she says, noticing us. “I haven’t had good food or been out in the real world in ages!”

She eats enough for two, with the same relish she did in Prague. The meal, the scenery, catching up on everything back home, is all so enjoyable we don’t want to spoil it by broaching the subject of her being stuck.

Kids are forbidden to speak of the seminars in front of anyone who
hasn’t done them, so as soon as Paul gets up to use the men’s room, we talk about Focus.

“I noticed a huge difference in the way you relate to me since you’ve taken it, Mom.”

“I agree, monkey. There’s a difference in the way I relate to everyone.”

“See, better living through delinquency,” she quips. “Was getting cradled the most amazing thing? That was such a high for me.”

“I know! When Dolly Parton sang the ‘sparrow when she’s broken’ part, I couldn’t stop cry—”

Mia’s fork stops in midair. “That was my song, too!”

“You’re kidding! How funny they saw us the same way, Mia.”

“No it’s not, Mom. Mike’s been saying we’re just alike since the first time he got off the phone with you!”

I get to stay with my parents at their hotel, which means a hot bath! I still have no idea why they’ve come, I’m not at a level it’s allowed, but they’re avoiding the subject, so I figure I better wait for them to say something first. I slip into the new PJs they brought me and go outside to where Paul’s stargazing. He turns when he sees me.

“You’re lucky to look up to this every night.”

“You’re lucky you don’t have to!” We laugh and a he gives me a hug.

“Dad,” I suddenly ask, I can’t help it, “are you guys taking me home?”

He looks at me carefully for a minute.

“No, sweetie, we’re not. I won’t lie, I’ve wanted to, but we agree that it’ll be good for you to have a sense of accomplishment. And to know there are some situations you can’t manipulate out of.”

Paul calling me on manipulating is unexpected. His calling me on
anything
is.

“I know it’s hard, Mia.”

“You have no idea,” I sigh.

“What’s the worst part?”

“Missing out on real life. It’s not what we do in here that makes it hard, it’s what we don’t do. Hilary just wrote me saying what she and my old friends have been up to lately. They’re all doing such fun things, traveling to Europe, touring colleges, I feel like I’m wasting my life in here.”

We’re quiet for a minute. When I look up Paul has tears in his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Paul! I didn’t mean anything…”

“No, no,” he says, “it’s good, Mia. It’s good to hear you have aspirations now besides drinking and speedballing with creeps. Just hearing you talk like this makes me glad that we’re doing what we’re doing.”

I should have kept my mouth shut! I’m glad he’s happy about what I said, but, shit, I want to go home!

We’re spending part of the day on the facility and everywhere we walk we draw looks that are curious, excited, and wistful. I’ve watched other girls flaunt their parents around the facility and now it’s my turn.

Our first stop is the Morava boys’ cabin. My mom wants to see the boys she looked after and deliver some gifts she brought for them.

“They’re going to be so excited to see you, Mom. What’d you get them?” she asks.

“Just some bath stuff they raved to me about when I was in Morava.”

The boys are tickled to see me, hugging me and sharing their progress or disappointments. Little Charles hangs on to me, rattling on. David is taller and quieter. A few of them monopolize Paul for man talk.

“I brought you some presents! I remembered how much you guys loved the scented lotions your moms sent you in Morava.”

Mia’s eyes grow wide as I start pulling out an assortment of body lotions in different scents, cucumber, marine, peach. The boys are fighting over them already.

“I got some for you, too, Mia, don’t worry.”

This doesn’t change her expression.

How do I break this to her?

“Mom, come here,” I hiss, trying to get her off to the side.

“One second, honey. Oh, here, Elliot, I remember how much you liked Pearberry.”

By now my face is crimson, but she’s in her own world, having a ball feeling like the Jewish Santa.

“Mom, do you have any idea what you just did?” I whisper the minute we’re out the door.

She looks at me, puzzled.

“You just lubricated half the boy’s facility.”

“I what?”

“Why do think they’re so excited? Cameron banned lotion from the boy’s facility months ago because the staff was getting sick of finding cum rags.”

“Finding WHAT?” She stops in her tracks.

“The socks that they you-know-what into. They like those lotions because they smell like a girl, so when they…you know…it reminds them.”

I omit the incident that broke the camel’s back, a boy throwing a “used” sock in the face of another. And it’s not just the boys. We had one girl confront another because her bottom bunk would shake so much she couldn’t get to sleep.

She stares at me a minute, her mouth agape.

“Boys wanting a girl’s beauty item didn’t seem weird?” I ask.

She starts laughing so hard she actually plunks down in the snow. For being so smart, some of the things she does amaze me.

Paul and I hike with Mia on the cliffs overlooking the Clark Fork River. Copper deposits make the wide river a surprising jade color. Mia climbs up the rocky trail ahead of us chattering about the girls in her cabin.

Paul catches up to her and they look out over miles of river and mountains, pointing things out to each other. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine they’re not biologically related. She’s got a gentle, more observant side like his. I watch her lean her head against him and say a little thank you prayer for Paul. There has never been anything “step” about his fathering.

Later on, Mia and Paul toss a football while Chaffin shows me around the school. He and Cameron look like twin surfers, but their personalities differ. Cameron’s sensitive, easier on the kids, “a real pushover,” Chaffin says affectionately.

“They go to Cameron when they want to be ‘special cased.’ I’m the rule enforcer.”

“I figured as much. Otherwise, Mia wouldn’t butt heads with you so much.”

He walks me down the main road past the staff trailer to a path leading into the woods. The path drops down toward a huge barn-type building.

“Mia makes things a lot harder than she needs to. She does the same thing with people. She’s mistrusting, so she makes people into rocks she has to push up a hill. And I’m the rock she can’t push. It’s one of the biggest differences I see between you two. If you each had to get a piano in a
building, you’d sit down and plan, figure out a way to do it without damaging it. She’d ignore your advice and smash it into pieces to get it in there as quickly as possible.”

“Yeah, but one of us would have music and the other would have firewood.”

“Mia would make it look like that’s what she wanted, or she’d say her way was more exciting. She’ll bang her head against a wall before she’ll listen to anyone tell her where the door is.”

Chaffin opens the door to the big building and a chorus of disapproval greets us from a darkened, stinky room.

“Sorry!” he calls inside before shutting the door. “I forgot it was Level 3 activity today. They’re watching
The Wizard of Oz
, they love that movie. It’s a perfect metaphor for what the kids go through in here.”

“Oh, hey, is this where Duane does the kids’ seminars? He said it stunk.”

“Hah! Yeah, it gets intense. We have to replace the carpet all the time. You’ve gotta come staff some kids’ seminars, gives you a whole new perspective on your kid.”

He starts us back up the trail to the cabins.

“Mia hates to admit it,” I tell him, “but she has a lot of respect for you. Not many people stand up to her.”

He laughs and shakes his head. “A lot of these kids think I’m the devil, just because I’m willing to stand up to them. For most of them, this program is the first time they’ve been held accountable for anything. So many parents today are afraid of their own kids. They don’t want to be seen as uncool, or, get this, like their own parents. But if you take a look at where kids are at today, our own parents did a much better job! Our society doesn’t even teach them that right or wrong is a black-and-white thing anymore, today everything’s ‘relative.’ We’re afraid to let kids feel pain or disappointment—they don’t even allow scorekeeping at my son’s school! But life
has
hurt, it
has
pain, there are winners and losers, rich and poor.”

An older staff member walks past us with a glowering boy toward a tiny log cabin.

“Is that the Hobbit?”

“Yeah,” he pauses. “See, what kids don’t get till they’re here for a while is that consequences are not about making them wrong or making them
suffer. I want them to learn something about themselves. When Mia got dropped the first time, I could have put her in the Hobbit—”

“Are you kidding? It would have been a reward.”

“Exactly! Being a loner is her comfort zone, she wouldn’t have learned anything. I made her look into someone’s eyes for thirty minutes every day for a week.”

“Oooh, yeah, she told me she hated that.”

“I know! Because it was about connection and love, which she avoids. But you know what? By the end of the week her whole expression changed, it was relaxed and glowing. It was more trusting. I’m sure it was a lot more like the face she had as a child.”

I picture Mia’s little four-year-old face and feel like smiling and crying at once. He stops before we get to the playing courts where Mia and Paul are chasing each other around, laughing and pitching snowballs. Chaffin points at them.

“See that? That joyful quality, that freedom? That’s what we’re all about. When kids are little, they believe in their own power so much that they get back on their feet no matter how many times they fall. They’re so sure of their own goodness that even in the face of things that are vulgar, disrespectful, or unfair, they’re pure and positive. Kids come here closed off and paralyzed with fear. But we can see through all that to that little kid, to the heart of who they are. I want them to remember what they knew about themselves when they were little.”

“Hey, how about this one?” I ask.

My parents took me shopping for some things I need and I just spotted a cute beanie.

My mom raises her eyebrows. “It looks like something you would have bought before you came here.”

“It is something I might have bought. It’s a beanie, Mom, millions of people buy them. I drank milk before the program, too; if I buy that, are you going to assume I also want to shoot heroin?”

I’m overreacting and being bitchy. But, I hate how she reads into every little thing because she’s scared I haven’t changed.

“I don’t respond well to sarcasm, Mia.”

“Well, if you weren’t so paranoid, I wouldn’t be sarcastic.”

“You’re being really disrespectful.”

“Girls,” Paul cuts in. “I’m sure you can find one you both agree on.”

“That’s not the fucking point—”

“Mia, stop swearing—”

A store clerk walks by, asking if we need help with anything. We all stop arguing long enough to smile sweetly and say no thanks. I wonder how much of this she gets, with Spring Creek families being their main livelihood.

“I haven’t seen any other kids here with beanies. Why do you always have to be different?”

“Why do you always have to see it that way?”

“Why don’t we find something we both agree on.”

“Because something we agree on means something you want.”

Paul throws up his hands and walks out.

“She always assumes it’s me trying to be different instead of maybe considering the novel idea that I just want to keep my ears warm!”

Mike leans back in his chair, amused at the three clueless people before him.

“So, what I just heard is that Mia’s concerned her mom’s never going to get over the past, Claire’s wanting Mia to be more understanding of why she’s having a hard time trusting her, and Paul just wants everyone to get along.”

Yeah, that about sums it up.

“First of all, I think we both overreacted because we’re leaving today and we’re all on edge. Second, I’m upset because of all the hats in the store, you chose one that’s the epitome of street grunge.”