Sociopath?
Vicki Williams
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Smashwords Edition
Copyright, 2012, Vicki Williams
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CHAPTER 1
He laid claim to her from the day she came home from the hospital. Everyone thought it was cute that he took such a proprietary interest in his infant sister when he was only going on three himself. And they did make a precious picture. He with his hair as straight and black as pitch, eyes dark as midnight and skin as brown as a gypsy’s and she with her rosy round cheeks, big sea blue eyes and wispy white-blonde hair. There were nine of them so, honestly, no one paid too much attention to yet another baby. If anything, everyone was glad he seemed willing to be her caretaker, albeit, a very young one.
The Vincennes family was extremely wealthy and devoutly Catholic with the children ranging in age from 20 down to these last two, Rafael Alain and Elena Justine, although everyone called them Rafe and Lane until eventually, it almost began to seem like one name, RafeandLane. They were all busy with their own affairs so Rafe and Lane were mostly left to their own devices. They were the last two to still be sleeping in the nursery, the rest of them having grown old enough to move into their own rooms. There had always been a nurse when the first seven of the brood were younger but when the last one was let go after Annecy started school, no one remembered they might need to hire another for Rafe and Lane, stuck down there at the tail end of the family.
Renny Vincennes, the father, was tall, dark and handsome. A former Air Force pilot (Vietnam) and now financier extraordinaire (being always near the top of Forbest Richest Americans list), spent most of his time planning how to make the family even richer. Magdelene, the mother, (her coming-out year’s most desirable debutante) was still tiny, blonde and beautiful. She spent most of her time involved in planning charity events, a job which required many long lunches with her women friends. Renny and Magdelene were passionate lovers even after all their years of marriage. Would they have produced nine children if that had not been so? It wasn’t that Renny and Magdelene didn’t love their kids, because they did, but that they adored each other more. They simply weren’t the kind of parents who took an active and personal interest in their children’s day to day lives and that quality became more pronounced with each additional child so, by the time they got to numbers eight and nine…..
Those children included Morgan, a sophomore at Princeton, where Vincennes sons had gone since there was a Princeton. Morgan, a tall, rangy young man with dark mahogany hair and hazel eyes, was an athletic superstar, excelling at every sport he played. Next was Wyatt, as tall as Morgan but slender with black hair, brown eyes and a winning smile. At 18, he was a senior at Benedict High School and would be entering West Point next year, an exception to the Princeton rule. All Wyatt had ever wanted to be was a soldier. Then came Mariel, 16, cool and elegant and ash blonde. No one who knew her could imagine that she wouldn’t be the head cheerleader, the homecoming queen and the valedictorian of her class. She was so self-assured about being entitled to these honors that it was taken as a given that she would receive them. Denis at 14 was slight and dark and artistic, as well as outwardly and so unashamedly gay that everyone accepted him as he was. (Of course, being a member of Benedict’s first family didn’t hurt either). Next was Jocelyn, 12, petite and platinum and delicate as a butterfly, unless you had to deal with her slashing serves on the tennis court. Gabe, 10, sturdily built with coal black hair, was a musical virtuoso. His piano teacher gushed over his abilities and thought he had the potential to be a great pianist although for now at least, he was more interested in Eric Clapton and Eddie Van Halen and other rock and roll guitar greats. Then, Annecy, the animal lover at 8, with her green eyes and golden skin and palomino hair. And, finally after a baby every two years, when Magdelene finally thought she’d completed her duty to the church, six years later, here came Rafe, followed almost three years after that by Lane, conforming to the Vincennes pattern of intense dark boys and bright blonde girls.
After Lane, Magdelene’s doctor insisted she have her tubes tied for health reasons. Both she and Renny were ecstatic that they could finally engage in the enthusiastic sex they both so enjoyed without the depressing prospect hanging over their heads that they might be creating yet another baby.
The Vincennes lived in a 32 room chateau on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, called Heron Point, copied from, though somewhat smaller in scale, than the grand family home in the Loire Valley in their native France, Chateau Abricot, named after its sandstone-hued walls. A long lane of locust trees led to the impressive gardens and circle drive in front of the imposing golden stone house with the twin towers anchoring each front corner and the steeply pitched roof with tall decoratively capped chimneys, the multiple dormers and balustraded terrace.
To the back were piers and decks and sailboats and paddle boats and speedboats and jet skis.To the side were garages, kennels, tennis courts, basketball courts and even a regulation baseball field, as well as an Olympic-sized swimming pool and an impressive stable of the same style as the house itself. Renny spared no expense to indulge his children’s amusements.
Farther back on the 1000-plus green acres that made up the estate, were pastures and creeks and one large hill, unusual in this terrain, joking referred to as Mount Vincennes. There was a rustic small log cabin on top of the Mount, just a living room/kitchen combination and one bedroom with a bath, treasured for the view, because from one of the several rocking chairs on the porch out front you could see far across the countryside and then, to the Bay. In earlier years, Renny and Magdelene slipped away there to escape, alone, from their children. Now it was mostly used by the Vincennes kids themselves when they needed privacy. Renny knew about the use the cabin was put to but, having been quite a Lothario himself before he met Magdelene and settled down, he understood about hormones and sex drives and figured kids would be kids and the cabin was a better and safer option than parking in a lover’s lane somewhere. Those kids themselves, of course, had no clue that their old man knew what they were up to.
Inside, the mansion featured elaborately carved fireplace mantels and crystal chandeliers and fine wood paneling and oriental rugs and ornate plaster pillars and a kitchen the size of a cooking school. It was filled with antiques and museum quality art. Except for an occasional foraging expedition through the kitchen for snacks, and meals in the dining room at the extra-long cherry table, hardly any of the Vincennes young even visited this floor. The basement was their bailiwick. In one large room, the wall-length flat-screen t.v. resided, along with the DVD player and the XBoxes and the latest version of Playstation (complete with their own t.v.s for playing games) and the computers (one for each young Vincennes). A second vast room contained a state-of-the-art sound system, a small dance floor and a real soda fountain along with the pool table and the card tables and the shelves of games and books and paper dolls and microscopes and (now uninhabited) ant farms and anything else that had, at least temporarily, caught the fancy of one of the siblings. A third, smaller, soundproofed room was a small recording studio and home to all the musical instruments played by the Vincennes young - with her first seven children Magdelene had insisted on music lessons. Each had to choose an instrument so there were guitars and drums and flutes and saxophones and an organ (the concert grand piano being upstairs in the drawing room, of course). Last was the exercise room with its stairmasters and stationary bikes and rowing machines and weights. And snaking through it all, a circular train track with railroad cars, some of which dated back to the turn of the century w
hen Great-grandfather Phillip Vincennes had first started the set. Of course, there was Renny’s extensive wine cellar in the basement as well but it might as well not even exist so far as hischildren were concerned since it was strictly off-limits.
So, while most of them were below ground level, Rafe and Lane were usually up on the third floor by themselves in the long nursery, a double room that would have made any day care owner green with envy. Walls were painted with colorful Bible scenes - not the more gory ones, but baby Moses in the bulrushes and Jesus in the manger and wise men and shepherds and a loving Mother Mary, comforting pictures. In the bedroom section, were wooden cradles and cribs and youth beds, all handsomely carved. There were 9 dressers lined up against the wall. An archway led to the play room which was filled with toys for younger children - story books and dolls and big metal trucks and rocking horses and doll high chairs and buggies. Like the train, some of the toys dated back to Renny’s childhood days and his father’s and grandfather’s, such as the carved wooden alphabet blocks. There were child-sized tables and chairs and rocking chairs. And, of course, the nursery had its own television set, programmed so that only the most innocuous channels could be accessed. The floors were white tile for easy clean up of spilled kool-aid or over-energetic finger painting.
* *
It’s hard to know what would have become of Lane if not for Rafe. It was he who would take her off to find a grown up when she cried for her bottle or when her diaper was wet or dirty and needed changing. Eventually, as he got a little older, he learned to keep food in the nursery in case an adult couldn’t be found, things like peanut butter and bread and cookies and crackers and little individual containers of applesauce and pudding. There was a small refrigerator in the nursery which he kept stocked with pop stolen from the big walk-in cooler in the kitchen so that when she cried, he could fill a bottle with crème soda and it would satisfy her at least for a while. He eventually learned to change her himself, not very well perhaps, but at least he’d wash her off and make her dry, powdering her liberally so that ever after, the scent of baby powder brought to mind those days of their shared early childhood. He didn’t especially enjoy doing it but after all, he had to live in the same room with her and he didn’t like the smell of stinky wet or poopy diapers.
They were always welcome downstairs at mealtimes, of course, but no one usually bothered to tell them when those were. If they slept through breakfast or didn’t realize it was past lunch that was just too bad. Lots of times, the kitchen staff didn’t even bother with a midday meal since no one was at home with Renny being at work and Magdelene with her friends and the kids all at school. The thought of Rafe and Lane never crossed their minds until he was suddenly and silently in the kitchen to remind them and they’d quick fix him a tray to take back upstairs.
When she cried at night, Rafe pulled her out of her crib and took her into bed with him, cuddling her until she fell asleep.
By the time, he was four and she was two, you never saw one without the other. People said Rafe reminded them of a black cat. Slender and graceful, he seemed to walk on silent cat’s paws. He would simply appear without anyone having heard him coming. Because, again, these two were so seldom on anyone’s mind, his hair was long, almost shoulder length, black and straight as Indian hair. His brothers nicknamed him Injun. His eyes were almost expressionless. No one would ever know what Rafe Vincennes was thinking by looking into his eyes. He could smile, but it was usually a quick white gleam in the darkness of his skin, a smile that disappeared as quickly as it came. As he got older, women it was said, would agree to almost anything just for the rare opportunity of seeing that smile.
But for now, he was only four and she was two, a small blonde shadow who toddled after him everywhere he went. He was her hero, her protector, her teacher, her best friend. If she fell and bumped her head or scraped her knee, it was Rafe she went running to for sympathy. If she couldn’t figure out a puzzle, she looked to him to help her. “How, Rafe?” He dressed her in the morning and bathed her at night, putting her into her pajamas afterwards.
“Go to sleep now, Laney, I’ll be right here beside you if you need anything,” patting her on her little round rump.
Renny, who admired achievement, didn’t realize that Rafe was the most accomplished of his children. He could run the fastest but he never did because he wouldn’t go off and leave Lane. And he could swim the farthest but he wouldn’t go beyond where she could go. He was the most fearless rider but he kept his pony down to a trot because Lane was always on the saddle in front of him.
* *
When Rafe was five, he had to start going to kindergarten in the mornings. He would lay out her clothes for her before he left and make sure there was food in the frig for her breakfast. He’d taught her to turn on the VCR and he’d load one of her favorite movies so all she had to do was press the “Start” button. He left her messages on a recorder on the playroom table too.
“Laney, don’t go downstairs while I’m gone and don’t ever try to go outside alone. You wait ‘til I get home. I’ll take you swimming or to ride the pony or whatever you want to do when I get back but don’t try to do any of those things by yourself. Do you hear me, Lane? I’ll be really mad if you don’t mind me.”
And, more than anything, she didn’t want Rafe to ever be mad at her so she always paid attention to exactly what he said.
She still remembered the one time she’d ignored him and went downstairs and on down to the basement and then couldn’t remember how to get back so she just had to stay down there until he got home from school. It scared him half to death to find the empty nursery. He’d gone racing through the house calling her name. What if she’d gone outside and been kicked by one of the horses or was floating drowned in the pool? When she finally heard him and called out to him, he was relieved but he was also quietly furious.
He took her right back upstairs and got a ruler and made her take down her panties and spanked her bottom hard ten times, until she was sobbing for him to stop. And then after that, it was even worse because he told her he wasn’t going to speak to her anymore that day and he didn’t, even though she told him over and over how sorry she was and promised never to disobey him again. She lay in bed and cried and cried but he acted like she wasn’t even there.
He was gone the next morning by the time she woke up and there was no message on the recorder and no clothes laid out and no movie in the VCR and nothing to eat in the frig.
The half day until he got home seemed endless and when he appeared in the doorway, she went running to him, throwing her arms around his waist. He took her hand and led her to one of the rocking chairs, sitting down and pulling her onto his lap. Then he looked into her blue eyes with his dark ones, “do you understand, Lane, that you must always do as I say?” And she said, yes, yes, she understood, just please don’t be mad anymore, Rafe.
And after that, she always followed his orders. If he told her to swim to the end of the pier and back, she did it even though she was afraid it was too far and she might drown or a shark might get her, because neither drowning nor sharks was as bad as Rafe being upset with her. And besides that he’d told her he’d save her if anything happened and she had absolute faith that he would. Because there was, after all, that time when she got attacked by the stray dog and he fought it off with only his pocketknife, stabbing it in the eyes and mouth. He had some bad bites on his hands and arms but he smiled his fleeting smile and said at least he didn’t have to be put down like the dog.
* *
When Rafe was in second grade, his teacher asked one of her colleagues if it was possible for a 7 year old to be a sociopath because she swore that’s what Rafe Vincennes was.
“I’ve never had a student who made me so nervous. I don’t see or hear him move and yet the next thing I know he’s behind my desk. You look in his eyes and you don’t sense a trace of emotion. The person in there doesn’t seem like a child at all. I think he has a photographic memory. If he se
es or reads or hears something, he never forgets it. He rarely smiles and never laughs. When he plays with the other kids, it doesn’t seem like he’s making an effort to dominate them but he just does, almost like he mesmerizes them.”
Her co-worker laughed. “Dee, I can’t believe you’d let a little kid spook you like that. You’re over-reacting big-time.”
“All I know is, I’ll be glad when this year is over and he’s out of my classroom and someone else’s problem.”
What she didn’t know was that Rafe had, in his silent way, come up behind her and overheard their conversation.
Her colleague started, “oh, Rafe, we didn’t know you were there. Did you need something?”
“See,” Miss Dee hissed when he was gone, “that’s exactly what I mean!”
*
Rafe had always been aware that he had this affect on some people but when he was seven, he wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. He knew he tended to move quietly but was he just supposed to start making sure to clomp around everywhere he went? And how did you put more emotion in your eyes? He hadn’t a clue. He guessed he could remind himself to smile more since that was something his teacher had mentioned. As for being smart and being picked to be the leader, he didn’t know how that came about either. He never insisted and he never bragged. It just happened. Miss Dee had wondered if he might be a sociopath. He looked the word up in the dictionary - “a person who is anti-social and who lacks a social conscience.” He shrugged it off. He didn’t know if he lacked a social conscience or not. He didn’t even know what having a social conscience meant.
*
He got his black German Shepherd puppy, Raven, for his 6th birthday. It was the only gift he asked for. From then on, when he was outdoors, he was trailed by two shadows instead of only one, the blonde little sister and the jet black dog. Both seemed equally as worshipful of him.
Sociopath? Page 1
