by Tim LaHaye
Viv wiped her face and appeared to regain control. “Listen, you’ve made your point, and I will work hard on helping maintain your appropriate place in Nicky’s life. And I will urge Mrs. Szabo to consult you first on all matters relating to him. But in this case I do not want to make the mistake of trying to speak for his teacher. She deserves the right to be heard without any shading from my viewpoint.”
“My goodness, Viv. How bad is this?”
“It’s not horrible. It’s just a concern.”
“We’re clear then that I will pick him up this afternoon so I can talk with her?”
Viv nodded. “I could ride along. Keep him occupied while you’re meeting.”
That made sense. It wouldn’t do to have another teacher watch him, and the other students weren’t likely to stay long after school. She agreed.
And as Marilena feared, she was unable to concentrate on anything else for the rest of the day.
In basketball as a senior Ray Steele had redeemed himself by winning the starting position as weakside forward and wound up leading the team in scoring. Belvidere finished third in their conference, however, and again Ray was overlooked by college recruiters.
His play did make him the most popular guy at the school. Suddenly Ray was anything but short of dates. And despite the fun, that left him frustrated. The girls who showed the most interest were the ones he had pined after for years, but he had been invisible when he was suffering from acne. He now enjoyed the attention, sure, but it all seemed so shallow. He was the same person he had always been; he merely looked different. Maybe he exuded more confidence and his athletic prowess had matured, but if that and his looks were all the girls were interested in, what did that say about them?
Ray found himself more friendly and cordial, but inside he had learned not to trust people. Everyone was so surfacy. Was he too? He hoped not. He obsessed about the phoniness of his new relationships to the point that he couldn’t maintain a relationship—let alone develop a long-term girlfriend—for more than a few weeks.
Being popular was better than the alternative, but Ray’s distrust of everyone and their motives gained a toehold in his mind. His one solace was flying. Flying solo thousands of feet in the air on his way to getting his private license, he felt a freedom and power he couldn’t put into words. No one would understand why it gave him such a sense of satisfaction. There was sure nothing phony about it. Flying was the perfect picture of cause and effect. It was his job to check every function of the aircraft, and once satisfied, he knew it would do what he instructed it to do with all the various maneuvers he had been taught. If he flipped the right switches and pushed and pulled the control yoke with the right pressure, the plane responded—and it didn’t care about Ray’s looks, athletic ability, grades, or popularity.
His dad wasn’t going to want to hear it, but flying was going to be Ray’s life.
Marilena and Viv conversed as they had in years past on the way to Nicky’s school that afternoon. It was actually pleasant, Marilena thought, and she chastised herself for becoming possessive and defensive and jealous. She had been drawn to Viv from the beginning because the woman seemed to care so much for others. That hadn’t changed.
Viv wasn’t perfect, but who was? Marilena should have expected some disappointments, living in the same house with someone all this time. She herself had been no prize; why should she expect otherwise from Viv? Well, because Viv was basically a better person, Marilena decided. More social, more people-oriented. Nicer, that was all.
Despite the sisterly fun and laughter they enjoyed on the way, it was not lost on Marilena that neither even mentioned Nicky. She knew Viv didn’t want her to push, to pry, to try to get out of her what Mrs. Szabo’s problem was. And when they arrived it quickly became obvious that the teacher had told Nicky she would be talking with his mother while his aunt watched him, for he came racing out of the school ready to play. As Viv opened the door, he leaped into her arms. In spite of herself, Marilena felt a fresh, sharp pang of jealousy. The boy did not even acknowledge his mother’s presence.
It didn’t help that Mrs. Szabo arranged their meeting so that Marilena sat facing the windows in full view of Viv’s cavorting with Nicky. They played catch, played tag, pushed each other in the swings, climbed after each other on the monkey bars. Marilena could have done that—would do it—if just given the chance.
“Nicolae is the brightest nine-year-old I have ever taught,” the teacher began.
That was clearly intended as an icebreaker, but Marilena couldn’t even force a smile. She had not been invited here to be complimented. “Um-hm.”
“Surely you must have heard that before.”
“From every teacher. Yes, I’m very proud of him.”
“Even though this is a school for advanced children, he is unique. There are days when I wonder where I will find more to challenge him, days when I feel like his student rather than his teacher.”
“Welcome to my world,” Marilena said.
“I am concerned about his behavior, however.”
“He doesn’t obey you?”
“Generally he does. But I am in a unique position to observe how he interacts with the other children. Let me not beat around the bush. He is what I would call pathologically manipulative.”
This was not news to Marilena, of course. She had seen it at home. But part of her had hoped it wasn’t obvious at school. “How does it manifest itself?” she said.
“He’s everyone’s friend,” Mrs. Szabo said. “And yet it’s clear he plays the children off each other. They all seem to like him and appear oblivious to what he’s up to, but everybody always does what he wants. He wins all the games, his team always wins, everything revolves around him.”
“He’s selfish then?”
“That would be understating it. The world belongs to him. He gets himself elected team leader for every project. When we had a mock election for president of the class, I felt it was someone else’s turn to enjoy the spotlight, so I arbitrarily nominated another boy and a girl to run against each other. They were to campaign, give speeches, choose teams to help them win, display posters, everything. Nicolae volunteered to be Victoria’s campaign manager, and she quickly became the favorite. Now get this. Not only did she win, but she won unanimously. Even her opponent voted for her.”
“Nicky threatened him?”
“No! I believe Nicky promised him something.”
“What?”
“The vice presidency.”
“But, how—?”
“When Victoria won, she announced that as president, she could choose the vice president.”
“And she chose the loser?”
“No, she chose Nicolae. Then she resigned as president, saying she realized she would be better as a helper than a leader. Nicolae became president, and he chose the loser as his VP. All this at nine years old.”
“I don’t know what to say. What did Victoria get out of it?”
“She gets to be his girlfriend. They hang around together.”
“Girlfriend!”
The teacher nodded. “You know, he tries the same techniques with me. He tells me everything that goes on, anything bad he can think of about the other children. And when he senses I have heard enough, he assures me he can handle it and not to worry about it. A couple of days later he’ll tell me he has fixed whatever was wrong. I have actually been tempted to enlist him to help me control the class. But I have resisted, because I think he controls the others enough.”
“What can I do about this?”
“Teach him, Mrs. Carpathia. He has astounding gifts, but they must be channeled. He’s a diplomat, a politician, a genius, a social gadfly, a divider, a uniter. He must learn humility. He must learn the consequences of power. He could sell a legless man a pair of shoes.”
If that was intended to be funny, it didn’t hit Marilena that way. This was worse than she feared. “I’ll try,” she said. “Thank you for letting me know.”
> “There’s more. We had a competition between the boys and the girls for a homework project. The respective sides were to assign different students to memorize the functions and positions in the national government, who held each one, that sort of thing. As you know, Romania has a complicated form of rule, two houses of parliament, all that. Nicolae memorized everything, his assignment and everyone else’s, but I didn’t want his team to win only because of that. I insisted that each team member recite a different set of facts. The boys won hands down, and I found out that Nicolae had taught them how to remember their individual parts through mnemonics. He used acrostics and acronyms so that if they learned a simple word, the letters represented the first letter of what they had to remember.”
“Ingenious. Surely you couldn’t have had a problem with that.”
“Except that it was almost maniacal. Nicolae was so obsessed with winning that it became no fun for his team. He encouraged and cajoled, but he also badgered and belittled. These boys had no choice but to learn this stuff and win, because of the sheer force of his personality.”
“A gift that could be good or bad,” Marilena said.
“Certainly. His strengths are his weaknesses, as is true with so many of us. Help me teach him team play, to value others and their feelings. It’s as if there’s a disconnect in his mind, as if he really believes that this world and everyone in it are here for his benefit.”
“I’ll try,” Marilena managed.
“I will keep you informed,” Mrs. Szabo said.
I’m sure you will.
Ray Steele lay in his bedroom, unable to concentrate on his homework. Nothing held his interest—not TV or music or magazines or the Internet—after the way the conversation had gone at dinner.
Ray had no idea how strongly his father felt about his future. He should have known, of course. His dad had never made a secret of it. Ray just thought the old man would have to be impressed that he had gotten his private license at eighteen and the fact that he had a concrete plan. Ray knew what he was doing, what he wanted, and how to achieve it.
“I’ve been signed up for Reserve Officer Training Corps since late last year, and Coach Bellman says getting my license before I’m even out of high school assures me of enough other scholarships to pay my way through college.”
“Well, that’s fine,” his father said, “but what does Fuzzy know about it?”
“He knows I’m not going to get any help going to school as an athlete. Unless I want some small college.”
“But why? You were the best—”
“Dad, come on. Times have changed. Even ten years ago I might have gotten a deal somewhere, but no more. You have to be the best in your sport in the whole conference now to get any kind of ride.”
“Baseball’s still your best chance.”
“And it’s my favorite, Dad, but it’s not going to happen.”
“How can you say that?”
“I can’t throw ninety anymore, and I’ll be surprised if I hit over .400. The last guy from our conference who got a full ride to a D-1 school hit nearly .600 with lots of bombs.”
“That’s not out of the realm of possibility for you.”
“You’re a little biased, Dad, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what I’m talking about? You don’t think I know the game?”
“ ’Course you do, and you taught me everything I know. But you also taught me to be realistic about my ability. I’d have given anything to stay healthy and be able to throw hard enough to attract the scouts. But that’s over, Dad. I’m going to have to pitch anyway, because too many other guys aren’t playing this year. There’s something about cars and girlfriends and how few people come to baseball games that makes guys want to quit unless they’re superstars. If I didn’t love it so much, I’d think about that too.”
“So you’re going to have a lousy team?”
“Likely. A lot of young guys, and nobody to draw the scouts unless we put together some kind of a win streak. I don’t see it.”
The fireworks came when Mr. Steele tried to outline a scenario for Ray’s future that still included the tool and die. He talked about college and ROTC and military duty, at least minoring in business or manufacturing, and then coming back to take over the business.
Ray had hoped that by outlining his own plans—and pointedly not including the tool and die—his father would finally resign himself to reality. Ray sat silent.
“Huh? What do you think, Ray? Good education. More hours in the planes. A little military training. Job waiting for you. Future secure, huh?”
Ray glanced at his mother, who forced a smile. She was a lot of things but dense wasn’t one of them. She had that dreading-this-moment look, obviously knowing her husband wasn’t going to hear what he wanted.
“I’m not coming back to the tool and die, Dad.”
“What, you know that already? You hate me and my business so much that—”
“C’mon, Dad! You know that’s not true. I admire what you’ve done with it, but you can’t force me to—”
“If I was paying for your education I could, couldn’t I? But you made sure you didn’t need that.”
“You told me you couldn’t put me through college! That’s why I’ve tried all these different ways to get help!”
“Yeah, but since I’m not financin’ the deal, you feel free to—”
“I just want you to know now so you can make other arrangements. Groom someone else.”
“My people are too old. And none of them has what it takes.”
“So hire an heir apparent.”
“You’re the heir, Ray! You! It’s been my dream all my life.”
“But not mine, Dad. You wouldn’t want me in the saddle if I didn’t want it, would you? What kind of a job would I do then?”
His dad stood, face red. “I can’t eat anymore.”
“Please, honey,” his wife said.
“I just don’t see how you can decide now how you’re going to feel in four to six years. That’s a long time. Time to get your mind right. At least keep your options open and plan a little for this possibility.”
“No! Then we’ll have this discussion again, Dad, and you’ll have wasted all that time without finding someone else. I’m going to be a pilot and that’s that. I—”
“What if it doesn’t work out?”
“Why wouldn’t it? I’m made for it. I’m a pilot now. I’ll start working my way up to the heavy jets, and—”
“And you’ll come back to the tool and die only if all your dreams are shattered somehow.”
“I wouldn’t come back anyway, Dad. If for some reason I couldn’t fly, I’d want to teach aviation. Or coach. Or both.”
His dad left the room, throwing over his shoulder, “You do hate me.”
SIXTEEN
MARILENA CARPATHIA had never felt further out of her element. In nine years as a mother she had somehow adapted, learned, gone on instinct. But this was new territory. How would she broach such a touchy subject with her brilliant son? This would have to be an adult conversation, and while he had many of the worst characteristics of an adult—and some of the best—Marilena was ever conscious that he was emotionally still a child.
On the drive back from Blaj, she urged him to read while she chatted softly with Viv in Hungarian. “What will we do?” she began.
Viv smiled and patted her hand. “We? Now it’s we? Now it’s not so bad someone else has been drawn into this crisis?”
Marilena took it well. That was funny. Yes, her jealousy seemed misplaced now. She didn’t want to be alone in this. “I know I must bear the brunt of it,” she said, “but believe me, I am receptive to any advice. In my heart of hearts I long for, ah—” she struggled to find the right foreign word for her son without mentioning his name—“my progeny to use his incredibly gifted mind for the betterment of mankind.”
“He will, Marilena. He will.”
Suddenly Nicky draped his arms over the back of the
front seat and perched his head atop them, putting himself between the women. Marilena felt him there and saw him in her peripheral vision. She kept her eyes on the road, peeking at him in the rearview mirror. He appeared amused.
“You should be buckled in, young man,” she said, back to Romanian now.
“I am all right,” he said in Hungarian, astounding her. “My prince would not let anything happen.”
Marilena shuddered. He understood Hungarian, had heard their conversation. Was nothing hidden from him? Her fear turned to anger in an instant. She resolved not to lose control of this boy, wondering to her core whether she ever had any control over him. “Sit back and get your belt on!” she said. “Now!”
Marilena saw Viv jerk, apparently in surprise at her tone.
Nicky was silent, but in the mirror he showed no emotion. He wasn’t surprised or cowed. Neither was he obeying.
“Don’t make me pull over, young man,” she said.
“Do what you want,” he said flatly. “You do not dare hurt me. And you do not want to talk to me like that again either.”
Marilena swerved the SUV off the pavement and slid to a stop. She turned in her seat to face Nicky, her face inches from his. “Sit down and buckle up!” she shouted. He didn’t move. She lifted her elbow and pressed it to his face, pushing with all her might.
“Marilena!” Viv screamed.
Marilena dug in her heels and straightened her legs, putting all her weight into trying to drive Nicky back. But he held fiercely to the back of the seat, and it was as if she were pressing against granite. Seething now, Marilena released her seat belt and wrenched herself completely around until she was on her knees facing him. She grabbed his shoulders and shook him, trying to drive him back.
Viv grabbed Marilena’s arm and tried to pull her away.
“Viv! Don’t fight me! Help me!”
“We’re not going to fight!” Viv said. “Stop!”
“Yes!” Nicky yelled. “Stop!”
“I’m not driving this car until he’s buckled in.”
