The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery)

by Jessie Bishop Powell

  We didn’t even know Natalie in June, and she had never met Trudy in the debacle following William’s kidnapping. Drew’s people had been the ones warning parents of a child predator, not Trudy and Darnell. Natalie only knew the agent in the context of her semi-undercover job, which included posing as a university student who interned at the sanctuary.

  “But . . . what’s her name, Trudy? She needs an education, too. I can see how frustrated she gets dealing with them, and there’s simply no point. She’s got to come along too, whenever her school schedule will allow. She doesn’t seem experienced with kids.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, she knows she can’t give a chimpanzee a time-out, right?”

  “I know.”

  “So why does she think she can clicker-train a child into obedience?”

  “I had a conversation with her about that.” Trudy had muttered swear words when I told her to stop reinforcing the children’s behaviors with the noisy little tool we used with our apes. She couldn’t understand why I found it offensive. In any case, Sara loved the clicker game, but William glowered and sat with crossed arms and legs when she pulled the device out.

  For my part, I was beginning to see why even Drew had been so willing to let pass Merry’s obviously inappropriate comparison between the twins and monkeys. It seemed to be a prevailing attitude among even some who worked closely with them that kids with autism were, at some level, lesser, not full, humans. These children were hard to understand. Even though we, too, struggled to communicate with them, especially William, Lance and I instinctively knew better, reinforcing my belief that we were their parents. But in the weeks since they had come to live with us forever, we had learned we didn’t know much else.

  The worst part wasn’t merely the unpleasant surprises, though there were many. Like William’s sudden incontinence when faced with long-term stress. And Sara’s stubborn unwillingness to eat anything but processed macaroni and cheese and greasy tater tots. And their twin insistence upon sleeping curled up together in William’s bed, rather than in their own rooms.

  It wasn’t only the horrific number of things we suddenly owned, though there were many. I honestly don’t remember what I had expected. I’d heard foster kids rarely had much of their own. Perhaps I had imagined the twins would arrive with a lone suitcase stretched between their tiny hands. If so, the sight of the children spilling out of Merry’s car with Ann and a trail of objects behind them set me quickly straight. Not only did these children come with those high-backed boosters, they also each had an armada of toys and clothes. Natalie had spent a year ensuring they did have personal possessions. They had overstuffed suitcases and a shared gaming system that had travelled with them from home to home since their mother gave it to them, along with hundreds of CD-based games. Lance spent two hours attempting to hook the system up to our older television before he gave up and called Adam for instructions.

  It wasn’t our complete ignorance about the education system. The twins brought school bags lovingly packed by Natalie, who correctly assumed Lance and I had no idea what to send with first graders. She included highlighted copies of the Individual Education Programs detailing what services each child could receive because of their autism diagnoses. She called these forms by their initials, instructing us, “Start with the IEP whenever you’re unsure if the kids are being treated inappropriately.” She also included a calendar from each child’s school. And no, they didn’t attend the same one as I had expected. Sara was, to use Natalie’s word, “stuck” in East Ironweed Public, while William had won the magnet program’s lottery and been placed in the charter school for gifted children across town.

  The worst thing wasn’t even the lack of sleep, though we stayed awake almost nonstop for the first fourteen days and slept in shifts after. Between Sara’s combination of insomnia and night terrors, William’s overnight incontinence, and our own brooding insecurities, we became heavily dependent on coffee early in our tenure as parents. The worst part wasn’t even all of these things together.

  Lance put it best when he told Natalie, “They want to go back with you, and at the exact same time, they don’t ever want to leave Natasha. We don’t figure anywhere into their plan.”

  “Not yet,” Natalie told him. “You will. I’ve had kids with attachment disorders who couldn’t bond with caregivers. That’s not these two. Change comes hard for them, and they’ve faced too much of it.”

  Now, she was extending an extraordinary gift that might help us support the twins through that change and convince them we were their parents. I had no idea why the state had ever allowed the twins to be moved into our care from hers. Surely if she had spoken one word against us, the twins would still live in her home.

  She seemed to read my mind. “They belong here,” she reassured me. “It’s hard to explain, Noel. But there’s a click, a moment of certainty, of ‘this one is mine.’ You felt it with the twins. I can see it. We’ve clicked with a couple of our kids, but mostly, the kids who come to us belong to other people. And that’s better for them. To go home.

  “Adam says it’s complete nonsense, that I make my mind up for things to go a certain way and then exert my will on the world to shape events to my liking. But I think I’m pretty good at picking out families for my kids. What did you feel when you found William under the Marine’s Dumpster?”

  “Relieved, obviously. But until I saw him, I was worried in a more distant way. Then when he was under there, where he shouldn’t have been able to fit, I suddenly felt like a weight was lifted, one I hadn’t known was all on me. Then . . .” How to explain that emptiness, that sense of loss when he got in the ambulance. I didn’t have the words. “It was all action, reaction, and reaction again.”

  “Do you remember how hysterical I was?”

  “Who wouldn’t have been?”

  “You. You weren’t. You, Lance, and Natasha. You were calm in that maelstrom. Me? I was making it worse for poor Will, but I couldn’t get my own emotions under control. I thought they were going to have to sedate me; I did. I remember how much worry I saw in you. You were every bit as distressed as I was. But you were calm. I remember thinking, ‘She might be his mother.’ I may have said it out loud. I don’t know. If I did, I’m probably the one who accidentally set Merry on you. What about Sara? What was your first knee-jerk impression of her?”

  “I knew who she was right away, even though she and William don’t look all that much alike. And I knew she was alone.”

  “Yeah, but what did you feel?”

  “I felt like crying. I . . . Lance was the one who always said he didn’t want kids. I went along with him, and I only minded every once in a while. But when I saw her on our porch, I felt like the Gulf of Mexico was stretched between Lance and me, because . . . because I knew she was mine, and I was so sure he wouldn’t feel the same.”

  “Exactly,” said Natalie. “That’s what I’ve seen in both of you all along. That protective energy they need so much. Don’t worry. These kids belong to you. Did you make the decision to adopt them too quickly? Without question, yes. You didn’t take the time to learn about autism or young children at all. But your speed isn’t the same as I’ve seen in some others. I’ve seen couples so desperate to have a child, any child, they scoop up the first one available without pausing to find that connection. They hope love can cause bonding. And it can. Sometimes. But sometimes even love isn’t enough.

  “You and Lance were excited, and Merry pushed to go too fast, but you weren’t child hungry. You don’t want a child or any children. You want these children. And really, you had a narrow window of opportunity before Merry spirited them off in her hurry to find them placement.”

  “Why was she in such a hurry? Wouldn’t it be worse to have an interrupted adoption than to take her time and be sure?”

  “I don’t know,” said Natalie. “But she was pushing hard. And they are yours, Noel. Now, you have to learn to all live together.”

  “And you think
you can teach us that?”

  “Of course I can. Now let’s tackle this mess while the guys have a captive audience downstairs.”

  She could teach us. And I fervently hoped we could learn. We restored some order to our kitchen before lunch, and the Forresters taught us a couple of tricks to curb the rather immediate problem of our children refusing to do anything we said.

  After lunch, I asked Sara, “Do you want to take your plate to the sink for me?”

  “No.” The child didn’t sound defiant, but it was clear she didn’t intend to follow my instruction.

  Immediately, Natalie said, “Sara, please take your plate to the sink.”

  “Okay,” Sara chirped, and she took not only the plate, but her cup and silverware as well.

  I turned to Natalie. “Why did that work for you when it had just totally failed for me? Is it because she knows you better?”

  “Maybe a little. But mostly it’s because you asked her and I told her. You asked if she wanted to take her plate to the sink. Of course she doesn’t! I mean, do you want to take your plate to the sink? No! But you know why it needs to be done. She doesn’t. You can bore her with the reason—only some of which will stick, and that’s true of any kid—or you can assert your authority. Gently.

  “As far as she’s concerned, you asked for her opinion. Any time you need the twins to do something, you can’t ask it. It’s fine to ask about the optionals, but when you do, be prepared to accept ‘no,’ especially from Sara.”

  She also steered us away from some behavior methods frequently used with autistic kids, many of which we’d never heard of. “Do not under any circumstances tell William to have ‘quiet hands.’ ”

  “Quiet hands?”

  “It’s a way to remind him not to flap and touch everything in sight. I guess that works for some people. But his uncle took it as license to strap down his arms. He will bite you if you tell him to keep them quiet. Personally, Adam and I let him flap and touch as long as he isn’t hurting anything, and if he is, we redirect him to do it elsewhere.”

  “Tie them down?”

  “That’s what Will told me, and I don’t have any reason to disbelieve him.”

  “How could you understand what he said? He hardly talks, and everything he says sounds like a question. I can engage in back and forth with Sara, but Will . . . he hardly seems to hear me.” Circular, unusual, often unintentionally hilarious back and forth, but at least my new daughter was having conversations.

  “He clams up in new places. Be patient. Plus, nobody had worked with him much before he came to us. With the receptive language delay, you have to help him to understand new words and ideas using words and concepts he’s already got. He’s obsessed with categories. If you can categorize something, you can help him understand it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Okay. To teach him about garden squash, I had to start with generic categories, ‘yellow foods’ and ‘curved foods,’ and narrow from there. Lemons are yellow. Butter is yellow. Squash is yellow. I can eat lemons. I can eat butter. I can eat squash. Bananas are curved. I can eat bananas. Squash is curved. I can eat squash. He eventually caught on, but he called it ‘lemon-banana.’ ”

  “He’s been telling me ‘William has a lemon-nanner’ all week!”

  “There you go. Get him some squash. And when you do, keep substituting the correct name. Eventually, it will stick.”

  Actually, I liked “lemon-nanner,” now that I knew what it was. I thought squash in our house might have a permanent new identity. “But how does it help me understand what he’s already saying? How can I get him to work it backward for me?”

  “You can’t. But I know most of them. Give me a for-instance.”

  “Cheese-light. Is it a kind of cheese? A refrigerator?” He spent a good portion yesterday night begging us, “William, do you want a cheese-light?” Of course, none of our offers of food had been sufficient.

  Natalie laughed. “It’s a camera. He’s a little ham.”

  “I get it. You say ‘cheese’ and a light flashes.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What about circle-dot cars?”

  “That one’s recent. It showed up after he vanished. I think it’s rescue vehicles, but I’m not sure. When Detective Carmichael comes out to change the battery in his wristband, he’s fine. He’s excited to see that cruiser, but it’s the only one. He covers his ears and makes siren noises when he hears an ambulance or fire truck now, when he never used to do that. It may have to do with context, or it may be something else entirely. Be patient. You’ll learn how to listen to him.”

  She hugged us as she left, and I snagged the convertible keys to go get Natasha. I didn’t care if it was November and I had to drive with the top up. The car was sexy, and I’d never felt less like an antique frump. “I guess I’ll get some of this laundry started,” said Lance. But his eyes followed me out the door. Tasha was right. I needed to hide myself a set of those keys before Lance thought to lay claim to them.

  CHAPTER 16

  Dear Nora:

  My teen has more drama than a soap opera! Every time I turn around, she’s having the end of the world again. Help or send thread.

  Seeking Peace

  Dear Seeking:

  Take her to see Hamlet or Macbeth. Not Romeo and Juliet. Something good and gory to remind her she doesn’t have it half so bad as anybody in a Shakespearean tragedy. Keep her away from long swords for a week or so after, just to be on the safe side.

  Nora

  P.S. I’m sending thread and a nice cross-stitch pattern I found online. It will cheer you up even if it doesn’t do her any good.

  “Natasha, stop crying and tell me what’s wrong.” Tasha was slumped over her lap sobbing in the respite home’s white lobby, her face streaked purple with mascara.

  “It was supposed to be a big . . . big family reunion,” she wailed. “Because they’re both out of the hospital and over here, and Granddad can visit Gram’s room if she had a good day. I snuck in cookies and everything.” Tasha collapsed in tears again, and I tried to ignore the nurses sending me dirty glowers. In addition to leaving a minor alone on the premises, I was now letting her continue to make entirely too much noise upon my return. And I couldn’t touch her to offer comfort without being instantly shaken off.

  “What happened?” I prompted her.

  “I’m afraid we gave her some rather bad news and didn’t do a good job cushioning the blow.” I hadn’t heard Stan enter, as he arrived on smooth wheels, one leg still braced straight out in front of him.

  “Noel!” Natasha, who had shoved my arm off her for the third time only moments before, suddenly clamped onto my hand. “Gran isn’t ever . . . she isn’t . . . she won’t be home again!”

  “Yes, she will!” Stan explained. He appealed to me, “What am I going to do with these women?” as if I didn’t share Natasha and Gert’s gender.

  I was the only one standing, hunched at an awkward angle because Natasha was dragging on my arm. Clearly, we wouldn’t be leaving right away. I eased in a hard wooden chair. This was no state-run facility of the variety where we had visited my paternal grandfather in his final years. This was a swanky private home where Gert and Stan’s rooms, though in separate wings, were more like hotel suites than nursing home beds. We had been lucky enough to get Nana placed here in one of the two Medicare beds when she broke her hip last year.

  Natasha accepted a handkerchief from Stan. Though legally her father, he was not her biological grandfather, and her round face had never looked more different than his narrow oval one than it did right now. Nonetheless, they shared a closeness I couldn’t achieve. He stretched a hand out and stroked the weeping girl’s hair. She didn’t shove him away. “It’s going to be fine, darling,” he assured her.

  “How can you say that?” Natasha scrubbed her face. “She has multiple sclerosis, Noel. She’s going to deteriorate and deteriorate and die. And there’s nothing you can buy that will change her back to how she
was before Aunt Gretchen poisoned her.”

  Stan ignored the jibe about money. “Natasha, it’s a regressing and remitting variety. She should stabilize. Honey, she was hiding things from both of us long before. She told me she’d fallen a couple of times getting out of the tub when she hadn’t slipped. Lucky she never broke anything. She was having muscle spasms. Gretchen merely put her in a position where she couldn’t deny it any longer.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You can’t buy her better.”

  “No,” Stan said. “I can’t. I can throw money into research. I can give her access to cutting-edge medications. I know the research won’t likely pay off in her lifetime, and even the best meds on the market won’t cure her.

  “But I can bring her home, Natasha. Your grandmother’s problem is as much depression as it is anything else. She always knew Gretchen and Gary were a little cold-hearted. But she never knew what they had done to Linda. What they were doing to you. It doesn’t matter how your mother died right now, all Gert can think about is how she lived.

  “We had to shut your mother out a long time before she died, honey, even though it meant separating ourselves from you as well. And now Gert’s blaming herself for things completely out of her control. We’ve all been doing that lately.”

  “Wait.” Natasha’s hysteria was gone. Although she was still swiping off her ruined makeup with the handkerchief, the girl looking up at Stan was totally focused. “I thought you separated from me because I busted Layla’s teeth in.”

  Stan’s face registered shock. “You were a kid in a horrible situation. Why would we have cut off a child? Your mother blocked us. The first thing we had to do after she died was prove that Terry creature couldn’t possibly be your father.”

  “How did you know he wasn’t?”

  “She didn’t even meet him until you were two, dear. We didn’t know she was passing him off as your actual father until after her death. We were lucky enough to have your real birth certificate, or his forgery might have passed muster, and then it would have been hard to get you when she died.”