*
I have never played by the rules. Being born a Branch, I wasn’t directly taught a sense of entitlement; I learned it from watching my parents–how they treated others and how others treated them. They were above everyone else: majestic, noble, rarely indulging in a smile; no, that would make them appear submissive. They never doubted their place in the world and never felt guilty for having such wealth.
I recall the first time I learned about Darwin and natural selection. If it was about survival of the fittest, then we were the fittest because we’d earned our place. It was obvious to me that our Branch breeding and intelligence were responsible for our role in human society. There was no need to pity others. They needed us.
I remember one time a boy taunted me for being brought up with the silver spoon. He said that I never had to work for anything, that I inherited everything. Well, I don’t believe that one has to make his own wealth for it to mean something, to prove he is superior. Generations of my ancestors, going back to feudal Britain, toiled and slaved. Then the first Branch came to the United States before the Revolutionary War, selected his wife, and had his offspring—John Alistair Branch, who would become a hero for the Yankees during the Civil War. He ended up in the favor of the politicians and industrialists of the new age and founded a trading firm that flourished, survived the Great Depression, and was still operating after two hundred years. No, my wealth was earned by the blood, sweat, and tears of the previous John Branches who played the game of natural selection and came out on top. I was the product of their fitness and was worthy of nothing less than a silver spoon.
I knew the little punk wanted to punch me. A lot of boys did, but they would never dare touch me because I was John Branch. That only served to prove my theory: that I was in, let’s say, the alpha tier of the human pack.
My mother was the center of my world, only because my father was never there. I was always told he had to stay away because of business, but I knew there was more to my parents’ quiet separation than that. It was as if they had agreed on a permanent ceasefire, a demilitarized zone that I, alone, stood in the middle of. When my father did appear for his brief one- or two-night visits, the two of them never yelled at each other, but I saw their bodies tense up whenever they were in the same room together. They spoke to each other with cool politeness, but I deciphered the underlying communication between them. Their bodies signaled to each other, “Keep your distance. I can only tolerate you for a few moments longer.” And then they would disappear into their own sides of the giant house. Sometimes I wished they’d just scream and shout and have it out, but they never did.
Whenever they were in this standoff, I was completely ignored. It was as if I might distract them from their performances, and that if I were to engage them in a conversation, it would shatter their carefully maintained composure. When I was alone with either of them, they weren’t much better. My mother spoke to me as if I was an adult and understood how much of a nuisance I was making of myself. My father seemed to barely tolerate the sight of me and avoided being left alone with me at all costs.
I told myself that it must be part of evolution. I was a privileged and gifted child and didn’t need as much coddling as other children. But one day I was waiting outside the dean’s office for breaking one of the rules again. I’d told my biology teacher she was a witless old hag. We were studying biological classification, and she kept referring to each “specie” in the taxonomy, as if “specie” was the singular of “species.” Let me quickly say that people like these are teaching future generations of America. No wonder our “specie” is so hopeless. Anyway, as I waited calmly with my hands in my lap, I saw Nico Parisi being ushered into the nurse’s office. News had spread earlier that day that he had vomited during social studies class. Now he was barely able to stand, and I fancied that I saw a green pallor to his usually tanned face.
Within a few minutes, a young couple—a large man in jeans and boots with a scruffy chin and a slim woman in tight mustard corduroys with long, flowing hair of the same color—rushed into the office. They demanded the secretary tell them where their son was. The secretary glanced at the door to the nurse’s office. Without waiting for an audible answer, the couple swooped to the door and walked in without knocking. I saw them on either side of Nico, embracing him and smoothing his hair from his clammy face. They fired away a barrage of questions at both Nico and the nurse. “What happened to him?” “What did you eat, Nico?” “Did you check his temperature?” “Do you feel any pain anywhere, sweetheart?” “How come you didn’t call us sooner?” “You threw up? Does your tummy hurt? Poor baby!” Then they hugged and squeezed him, and despite his illness he smiled as they kissed his cheeks. He noticed me observing him, and I felt that maybe he was gloating over all the attention.
Nico was famous in the school for a few days after that. Rumor had it that he’d felt the vomit coming up and went to ask his teacher to go to the bathroom, but there was no time and he threw up right on her shoes. I wondered when he was coming back to school. I imagined him at home, covered in blankets and watching cartoons while his mother brought him ginger ale and cookies. She would be smoothing his hair back and telling him how worried she had been and that she loved him and that if anything ever happened to him, she wouldn’t know what to do.
In my imagination, that scene became something of an obsession. I was strangely excited by it. I wondered if all other children lived that way. I tried to imagine how I’d feel if my parents rushed into my room, like Nico’s did, with kisses and questions and tears of concern. I felt a strange emotion when I conjured this scene, somewhere between joy and bitterness. I would love for my parents to drop everything and run to me, to soothe me and protect me. And at the same time, I resented them for never doing that. Did I have to be sick, like Nico, to get love from them?
My mother came to meet the principal that day. Being bad had been my best method of getting attention from her thus far. She stormed into the room with a stiff face, her lips set in that hateful grimace that set into her pasty skin like a mold in her older years. She was angry and rude to the secretary. She berated the principal into submission, and then on the way home in the back of the Lincoln Town Car, she turned on me.
“What is wrong with you, John Branch? You’re absolutely impossible.” She swatted me on the hand so quickly I was startled before I felt the sting. I wouldn’t give her the gratification of saying ouch. I smiled and narrowed my eyes defiantly, but I was disappointed to find she wasn’t looking at me.
She signaled the driver to stop the car. “I don’t have time for this. I have to speak at the Ladies Club.” She grabbed her oversized handbag and opened the door. “You’re going to be a huge disappointment to this family, just like your father,” she said before sliding out of her seat. She stepped out in front of the country club and then slammed the door without so much as looking back or saying good-bye.
She never explained to me what the “Ladies Club” was, but it occupied most of her afternoons and evenings. The driver continued on the way to our house. I watched the leaves flutter in the sunshine from the quiet darkness of the backseat, and I decided it was time to develop a slight cough.
*
And so started my never-ending repertoire of maladies—colds, viruses, stomach flus. One time I stood in a pile of ants until my body was swollen from stings, but no matter how dire I made my situation out to be, my parents never reacted the way I hoped.
My father didn’t experience my illnesses much at all. He was like a ghost who would come into town late at night. I’d see a large shadow silently approach the bed. I would be frightened at first, but when he put his warm palm on my head, I knew it was him. If I woke up, he left straight away. I pretended to be asleep so he would stay, and I’d listen to him sigh deeply. Sometimes his breath would catch. I thought he might speak, laugh, or cry, but then he’d walk out, closing the door behind him. When I awoke in the morning, he was gone from the estate.
; I convinced myself I understood. He was the man, right? Taking care of sick children was the business of mothers and nannies, but my mother had to attend to me, if only because it was her duty. She showed no genuine concern, just exasperation when I coughed, cried, or vomited. But I did get her attention, cold as it was, and her coldness made me ever the more spiteful. I made myself sick just to force her to waste her time on me. She would have to call the school, make sure I was fed (of course I couldn’t keep anything down) and take me to the doctor.
I realized that at the doctor I was treated like a prince. No doubt it was because I was a Branch, but also because I was a rather charming and attractive boy—pretty, I remember people saying. I didn’t look anything like my mother, whose blond and banal flat-faced looks were no more interesting than a plastered wall. I didn’t inherit my father’s stiff, hawkish bone structure either. I had a roundness, a softness to my face. My large, dark, blue-green eyes were thick with lashes, and my small, mischievous mouth was rosy and mobile.
The medical staff felt the natural pity for me that my parents seemed unable to generate. “Johnny, would you like a lollipop? Choose a lolli,” the nurse would say as she fanned out an array of colorful candies before my eyes. I loved the nurses’ smiles, their pastel-colored scrubs, and their soft, warm touches. Funny how strangers feel comfortable touching children in such a familiar way. Imagine if adults took such liberties: a ruffle of the hair, a squeeze of the hand, teasing and flirtatious glances, a smoothing of the forehead, the occasional tickle. I thrived on it.
And the doctor, so handsome and proficient in his gleaming white coat. I would see my reflection in his glasses as he shined the light down my throat.
“Say ‘ah’.”
“Aaaahhh!”
“Good boy.”
There was the simple praise I craved so deeply.
The worse off I was, the more often I would visit and the longer I’d be able to stay for tests and examinations of all sorts. My body was my instrument. At first I would simply fake it. I would force myself to cough so much that I truly did become hoarse. I would hold the thermometer to my bedside lamp and employ all the usual malingering tricks. If I saw a sick kid in school, I’d be sure to sit next to him and touch all his things when he wasn’t looking, rubbing my nose, eyes, and mouth afterward. It came to the point that whenever I felt a slight fever come on and knew I was expecting a flu, I would be filled with anticipation and joy. Yes, I’m getting sick! Catching the chicken pox was one of my greatest victories. I did what I could to speed up the illness or make it more severe. I’d sleep with the windows open and the covers off. I’d keep myself awake instead of getting the rest I needed. I wouldn’t eat properly or bathe.
This was a lot of work and difficult to pull off no matter how skilled I was in my theatrics. Once I got to the doctor’s office and they analyzed my vitals and declared the results more or less normal, the doctor, who would never admit that he didn’t have a clue, would often say I just perhaps needed some rest.
My mother became more and more impatient with me.
“They say they can’t find anything wrong with you.”
“But, I don’t feel good.”
“Well, John. You don’t feel well. Speak properly.”
“I don’t feel well, Mother.”
She rashly felt my forehead for temperature. “You don’t seem to have a fever.”
I coughed and heaved a few times. “I think I need a new doctor.”
“Nonsense.”
Mother gradually relieved herself of me. I had become sick so often, she no longer could be inconvenienced by it. Years passed, and the doctor couldn’t understand why I was constantly ill. My blood was tested for all sorts of disorders that would affect my immune system. By the time I approached puberty, I had become the medical enigma of the community.
I was homeschooled periodically to avoid the germs from public school, but instead of being the one to take care of me, Mother turned all these duties of caring for her sick child over to Greta, who at that time had just arrived from São Paulo. She was in her forties, with a plump and generous body and a lovely, throaty voice accented with Portuguese. Back then, her dyed blonde hair and black penciled-in eyebrows made her look like an exotic concubine. Her beauty bewildered me, and I fantasized that she would become my new mother. She was attentive, pleasant, but she showed no tremendous emotion for me. She did not indulge in my whining, and I soon was bored with her. I just wanted someone to genuinely worry about me, and I hoped to invent some reason to get Greta dismissed so I could experiment with a new nurse.
Since leukemia had been mentioned by one of my specialists, I expanded on that, mastered it. I read all the symptoms in a medical journal in the waiting room at the pediatrician’s office: paleness, weakness, shortness of breath, feeling cold all the time. Those symptoms weren’t difficult to fake, and I performed them so well and so regularly that I even began to believe that leukemia was taking over my body. There was only one symptom I was missing: bruising easily.
At times, my normal youthful instincts would make me restless, and I would decide to have a “good day” where I put on a show, the sick boy nobly trying to enjoy himself in some way. I might go outside and walk my mother’s dog, an inbred Bichon Frise named Carnegie. The bitch had a crooked jaw that made her always appear to be looking at people with disdain.
I hated that dog; everyone did. She was an extension of my mother, both with their disregard and repugnance for all those around them. My mother loved Carnegie because she was the last of a pedigree of dogs that her family had kept for generations. That dog was the one who received all the kisses and caresses, not me.
I’d squeeze Carnegie and throw her across the room if she ever trod by. Sometimes I’d give her a sharp kick and delight in her yelp of pain. But on that morning, to invoke some sympathy, I thought I’d be a good boy with Mother’s precious little dog and walk it around the estate.
Old Pete was just Mr. Peter back then. He was not sixty yet. His hair was graying on the sides, and his face was showing traces of the deep grooves he was to get later in life, but he was a strong, top-heavy man with sturdy arms and hands so large they frightened me. He would tromp around the property in his boots and look down on me with a Clint Eastwood squint. I don’t think I ever saw him smile, but he was a simpleton. It’s not just the dementia you see him suffering from now. I’d wager his IQ strained to pass fifty. Even if he wasn’t an idiot, he was beneath me, and I never showed any sign that he was anything but my servant.
Carnegie knew I hated her, and she did not trust me when I came at her with the leash. I managed to wrangle her and drag her outside, but she wriggled from her collar and bolted toward the tree line. She disappeared into the woodland in the back of the property. Of course, I called weakly after her. I chased her with my sickly, wheezing run, enacting a brave pursuit despite my condition, and ending it with a final, dramatic collapse. I lay there on the ground wondering when someone would notice.
The sun fought to break through the cracks in my eyes, and I almost fell asleep while listening to the breeze through the sycamore leaves.
“Mr. Branch.” Pete’s voice cut through my sleep, and I almost flinched, but I remembered just in time that I was supposed to be unconscious, and although I was fully awake and alert, excited to see what reaction my performance would receive, I lay there not even allowing my eyes to move beneath their lids.
“Mr. Branch? Johnny?” Pete lightly tapped my face with his massive palm and shook my shoulders. I could feel the potential power of his grip. I kept my face slack and my body loose as he tried to rouse me. I fought a smile as I felt Mr. Peter’s strong, stony arms lift me effortlessly from the ground. The thump of his boots pounded through his body as he stomped to the house. I badly wanted to peek, but I envisioned where we were on our path back to the big house through my mind’s eye.
Pete climbed up the wide, flat stairs of the front entrance and pushed me against the door as he strugg
led to press the latch with his hand, which was hooked beneath the crook of my knees. He kicked the door with his boot, and it swung wide. Sadly enough, it was the safest I’d ever felt with a man. I fancied a dumb, heroic giant was bringing me home.
He called Greta, his voice booming through the great hall. I prayed my mother would hear, but only Greta came, whom I heard fussing in Portuguese. Her slippered feet made a shushing sound against the marble floor as she rushed to meet us.
“Follow me,” Greta said.
“My shoes,” Mr. Peter said. I felt the bass rumble in his large chest.
“Don’t worry, Petey. I will clean up the dirt,” she said. “Bring him to the kitchen.”
Pete followed Greta, he stomping, she shushing. They attempted to sit me up in a chair. I kept myself limp, and slumped from one side to another as they tried to balance me in the center. I laughed inside. Greta began slapping my cheeks and yelling in my ear. I wondered how long I should stay under. It was becoming more and more difficult to keep a straight face during the comical smacking and yelling. The thought that kept me serious was the disappointment that my mother was missing my performance. She must have just gone out while I was behind the house, but at least she would hear about what happened from a frantic Greta.
“Do we call the ambulance?” Mr. Peter asked.
“Let me try one more thing,” Greta said. I heard the clang of a pot in the sink and the rush of the faucet. Before I could figure out what was going to happen, I was drenched with ice-cold water. My breath sucked in sharply, and my eyes stretched open in shock. I heaved angrily. How dare they? But then I saw the relief on their faces.
Greta pressed my head against her bosom, soaking her blouse with my wet hair. Peter stood up slowly and wiped sweat from his forehead. Greta mumbled praises to Deus. I wasn’t sure if they cared for me or were frightened at the thought of facing my parents if something happened to me. Peter looked at me with bemused eyes.
SICKER: Psychological Thriller Series Novella 2 Page 2
