Malcolm sat opposite her. "They're so similar, Anna. They have the same mannerisms, the same expressions - the same thing hanging over them. It might be some kind of abuse."
Anna flashed him a quick glance, but he felt as if she were looking right through him.
"There are cuts on Cole's arms," Malcolm continued. "Fingernail marks, I think. They look like defensive cuts - possibly a teacher, a neighbor. I don't think it's the mother. That's just a gut thing - the way she deals with him, it doesn't fit." He shrugged. "It's hard to say this early. Could just be a kid climbing a lot of trees."
The waiter breezed by, placing a check on the table. Malcolm reached for it, but Anna snatched it away before he could touch it. She signed it right away and pushed back her chair.
"I know I've been kind of distracted, and I know it makes you mad," Malcolm said, "but I'm getting a second chance. I can't let it slip away."
Anna waited until he was finished before standing up. "Happy anniversary," she said bitterly, walking away.
Malcolm remained at the table, his head in his hands, as her footsteps receded into the distance.
"I walk this way to school with Tommy Tammisimo," Cole explained the next day, heading left out of his house.
Malcolm nodded, falling in stride with him on the brick sidewalk. "Is he your best friend?"
"He hates me."
"Do you hate him?"
Cole shook his head.
"Your mom set that up?"
A soccer team passed in front of them, boys not much older than Cole, boisterous and carefree and happy. The way Cole ought to be.
No one said hi.
Cole nodded silently in answer to Malcolm's question.
"Did you ever tell her about how it is with Tommy?" Malcolm asked.
"I don't tell her things," Cole replied.
"Why?"
"Because she doesn't look at me the way everybody else does, and I don't want her to. I don't want her to know."
"Know what?"
"That I'm a freak."
That name. That awful, demeaning name.
"Listen to me," Malcolm said firmly. "You are not a freak. Don't believe anybody that tells you that." Malcolm used a curse, telling Cole he didn't have to grow up believing he was a freak. Cole was surprised and impressed - not by the advice, but by the curse.
At the four-way stop sign, they turned right.
Cole showed Malcolm the school and the playground. Afterward they walked around the neighborhood and Cole pointed out highlights. Then they swung by the "nice" neighborhood, where the houses were bigger and fancier. Cole pointed out Tommy's home.
They didn't accomplish much that afternoon, but Malcolm hadn't expected to. After the stiff formality of the first meeting, he needed to gain the boy's trust, to put him at ease. When Cole relaxed a bit, he was kind and well-mannered, observant and thoughtful. And, clearly gifted. He had a bright future in store - if he could make it through the present.
That night Malcolm fell asleep in his office, his head buried in a book called The Tormented Child.
The next day, Lynn Sear had the morning shift off. This meant she could see Cole off to school, clean the house, and do the laundry before she had to leave. She slipped on the earphones of her Walkman, turned up the volume, and went about her chores.
The house was cold again. Unusually cold. She turned up the thermostat as she swept through the rooms, collecting dirty clothes in her laundry basket. A pair of socks and a T-shirt lay on the floor beneath the "Hall of Fame," Cole's nickname for the wall that was decorated floor to ceiling with family photos. She stooped to pick up the clothes, lingering for a moment to recapture the fading memories that beamed out from the wall. Just about every picture had Cole at the center, as it should. She especially loved an image of Cole as a three-year-old, smiling almost defiantly, as if nothing could ever make him sad. He left his clothes around the house back then, too.
Her eye focused on a slight flare to the left of Cole's face, a semicircle of light against a vertical tangent. It seemed to be moving, as if the camera had caught a tiny floating Tinkerbell off guard.
A reflection of the sun against the lens, she guessed.
But as she looked from photo to photo - Cole at his two-year birthday party, Cole under the Christmas tree at age five, Cole and Lynn at Hersheypark, at the neighborhood barbecue, in the swimming pool - she saw the glare in each one. Both indoor and outdoor shots. And it was always in the same place, just beside Cole's face.
Odd. She'd have to get the camera checked.
Lynn tore herself away and bustled into Cole's room. It was, as always, a wreck. A shame, because although it was small, it really was the nicest room in the house. The walls were paneled with the original dark-stained wood, solid and masculine. Over the years Lynn had collected lovely antique furniture and lighting. She'd hung up all of Cole's beautiful paintings of happy families and pretty houses and arching rainbows. He loved to draw rainbows.
She had to step around Cole's makeshift tent just inside the door, a rickety thing made of old red bedsheets, propped up with bamboo sticks and held together with clothespins. A handwritten sign, do not enter, hung crookedly over the entrance flap.
She'd just as soon get rid of it, but she didn't dare. Cole cherished the space inside. It was his special private place to be by himself, where no one could bother him - and if it made him happy, so be it.
Cole's desk, however, was a public disaster, with papers strewn all over. She began tidying up with her free hand, when she noticed a page covered with dark, jagged writing.
She leaned closer to look.
The words covered the entire page. They
were in Cole's handwriting, but as if he'd written
with pen in fist, up and down and sideways,
scribbling against time, never taking his hand
from the page - angry words, foul words__
. . . Christ, break the freaking glass oh no God what the hell is going on QUIET THE DAMN BABY I'll CUT YOU I SWEAR IT someone stop the burning I'LL KILL YOU I'LL KILL ALL YOU BASTARDS. . . .
Lynn dropped the laundry basket.
Malcolm visited the house after school that afternoon. Cole avoided him, playing with his action figures behind the sofa. Malcolm asked a few leading questions, about Cole's life, his dad, the divorce, and the move to this apartment. The boy answered politely but briefly.
The violent writings would have to be eased into the conversation.
Rain pelted the living room windows, and the room felt stuffy. Malcolm struggled to be comfortable as he listened, periodically seeing the top of a blue winter hat and a little hand reaching up to commandeer a knight into battle.
"So your dad lives in Pittsburgh," Malcolm said, "with a lady who works in a toll booth."
"What if she has to pee when she's working?" Cole piped up from behind the sofa. "You think she just holds it?"
"I don't know. I was just thinking the same thing."
Cole dive-bombed some kind of action figure into something on the floor and made various exploding noises. Malcolm looked at his watch. "You're asking a lot of questions about Dad today," Cole finally remarked. "How come?"
"Sometimes, even though we don't know it, we do things to draw attention - do things so we can express how we feel about issues, divorce or whatever."
"Nyyyyeaoo ... psssssh ... aggghhh!"
Cole's voice was soft, muffled. Malcolm had no idea if he was listening. He continued, measuring his words carefully: "One might, as an example, leave something on a desk for someone to find."
The boy's head stopped moving. He fell silent.
"Cole," Malcolm said, "have you ever heard of something called free writing - or free-association writing?"
Cole's hat shook slowly from side to side.
"It's when you put a pencil in your hand and put the pencil to a paper, and you just start writing," Malcolm explained. "You don't think about what you're writing, you don't read wh
at you're writing - you just keep your hand moving. After awhile, if you keep your hand moving long enough, words and thoughts start coming out that you didn't even know you had in you. Sometimes they're things you heard from somewhere. Sometimes they're feelings deep inside."
Malcolm paused to let the words sink in. He kept a close eye on Cole's hat, protruding over the top of the sofa. It was rock-still.
"Have you ever done any free-association writing, Cole?" Malcolm asked.
Cole's hat bobbed up and down. A yes.
"What did you write?"
"Words."
"What kind of words?"
"Upset words."
"Did you ever write any upset words before your father left?"
"I don't remember."
Enough. Malcolm knew he couldn't press too hard, couldn't make himself the enemy. He would have to plant seeds, draw Cole out gradually. The most important thing you learned as a child psychologist was when to stop.
"Can you do something for me?" Malcolm asked, standing to grab his coat. "Think about what you want from our time together - what our goal should be."
He could see Cole now, crouched on the floor. The hat surrounded the boy's face, with two Velcro flaps attached under his chin. "Something I want?" he asked.
Malcolm smiled. It was such a strange concept to some kids, that a therapeutic relationship should help them. "If we could change something in your life, anything at all, what would it be?"
Cole frowned, searching his mind for an answer as if this were a math test.
"You don't have to answer now," Malcolm said, turning for the door.
"Instead of something I want, can I have something I don't want?"
Malcolm turned back. Cole was standing beside the sofa now. He was dressed in his dad's jacket, which draped to the floor.
Giving the boy a nod, Malcolm waited for the answer. Cole's eyes were sunken and sad as he screwed up the courage to speak.
"I don't want to be scared anymore."
The textbook print swam before Malcolm's eyes. It was late morning - exactly how late, he was afraid to check. He'd been down in the basement for a long while now. It seemed he lived down here these days.
He rubbed his eyes and scanned the page - a diagnosis of a personality profile similar in many ways to Vincent's and Cole's.
A phrase at the bottom of the page jumped out at him. He took his pen and circled it:
. . . with the presenting symptoms in children of this type, the resulting bruises and abrasions on arms and legs may, in fact, be self-inflicted.
It made sense. Sort of. He'd thought about it many times. But somehow he couldn't believe it.
Maybe Vincent developed a self-destructive streak as he grew into adolescence. But as a child? He was like Cole, meek and small and cerebral. The writings were one thing - a healthy outlet, perhaps, for the violent thoughts. But it was a long leap from thought to action. And Malcolm just didn't buy that it had happened.
The doorbell sounded from upstairs.
Malcolm looked upward. "Are you going to get that?" he called out.
Anna's footsteps clattered across the hallway floor, just above him. Malcolm stood, stretching his legs, shaking out the mental cobwebs.
"What, you don't see enough of me at the store?" his wife's voice filtered down through the floor.
"I'm on my way out to the flea market in Amish country," a male voice answered.
Malcolm didn't recognize the voice, but he knew the type, just from the sound of it. Some brainy just-out-of-college art major willing to work at minimum wage to show off his knowledge of Louis XIV love seats to Mainline Philly bluebloods. "Thought you might want to come," the guy continued. "You could show me how to buy at these things."
"I trust you," Anna replied. "Besides, I don't know if I'm up for the Amish today. You can't curse or spit or anything around them."
Malcolm smiled. She may have been furious at him, but she hadn't lost her light touch.
"I thought you might want to get out," the man continued. "You've been kind of down."
Malcolm's smile vanished.
"That's very sweet," Anna said. "I'm okay."
"Do you think I should stop by on my way back, show you what I got? It's not a problem."
Not a problem? The woman is married, you pinhead! Malcolm wanted to shout. The nerve of this guy.
"You know, that's probably not the best idea, Sean," Anna said gently. "I'll just wait to see them in the store."
"Okay," Sean replied nervously. "Fine. Understood. ... I'm off, then."
"Don't step in the horse manure."
"Thanks!"
The front door thumped shut. Malcolm moved across the basement to look out the street-side window. A young, dark-haired man jogged from the house to an SUV parked at the curb. He couldn't be more than twenty-five, thin and skittish-looking, an artsy self-conscious type.
Sean turned suddenly from the car and lurched a step back toward the house, his face pained, as if he'd just blown an important meeting. Then, stopping himself, he spun back around, pounded the hood in frustration, and jumped in.
Malcolm shook his head. "Give it up, kid," he murmured.
Cole was bored. Mr. Cunningham had a way of doing that to a class.
On the side blackboard, Bobby O'Donnell scribbled I will not hit or kick anyone over and over. Bobby was bored, too. He was a pretty good kid, not as mean as the others - but when he was teased, he fought back, and Mr. Cunningham did not like any disruptions in class.
Mr. Cunningham wasn't an awful teacher, not old and tired and ugly like Mrs. Hoogstratten in math class. Just boring. He looked exactly the same every day - perfect and neat, kind of like a window mannequin. He was thin and he spoke slowly and carefully. That made sense, because when he was a kid, he had a speech problem. One of the old teachers, Mrs. Deems, had confided that to Cole. She wasn't around anymore, but she'd taught Mr. Cunningham when he was a third-grader at St. Anthony's. Anyway, aside from teaching social studies, Mr. Cunningham ran the drama club, so he couldn't be all that bad.
But he wasn't like Dr. Crowe. In the end, Mr. Cunningham was really no different from the other teachers. He thought Cole was a freak, too. It was easy to tell that. His eyes said it.
Today's lesson was on the front blackboard:
PHILADELPHIA--- PLACE IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
Cole rested his chin on his desk and cupped his arm around the perimeter. He blew a pencil across the surface until it reached his hand, then pushed the pencil back.
He'd read way past today's lesson in the textbook. He'd read all sorts of books on the history of Philadelphia. Seen things, too. He knew stuff about Philadelphia that Mr. Cunningham didn't know.
"Can anyone guess what city was the capital of the United States of America from 1790 to 1800?" Mr. Cunningham asked, gazing patiently around the classroom.
Not one person raised a hand.
"I'll give you a hint," the teacher went on. "It's the city you live in."
"Philadelphia!" the class sang out tepidly.
"Right," Mr. Cunningham said. "Philadelphia is one of the oldest cities in the country. A lot of generations have lived and died in this city. Almost every place you visit has a history and story behind it - even this school and the grounds they sit on. Can anyone guess what this building was used for a hundred years ago - before you went here, before I went to this school even?"
Cole raised his hand. If there was one place he knew especially well, it was this building. The rooms and hallways had secrets, bad secrets he wished he'd never learned. And not only the ones Mrs. Deems had told him.
"Yes, Cole?" Mr. Cunningham said.
"They used to hang people here," Cole replied.
Mr. Cunningham's face squinched up. "That's not correct. Where'd you hear that?"
"They'd pull the people in crying and kissing their families good-bye," Cole continued. "People watching would spit on them."
Now the kids were
looking at each other. Rolling their eyes.
Well, it was the truth. Wasn't that what you were supposed to learn in school, the truth?
"Cole, this was a legal courthouse," Mr. Cunningham explained. "Laws were passed here. Some of the first laws of this country. This building was full of lawyers ... lawmakers."
"They were the ones who hanged everybody," Cole said.
The Eye. Mr. Cunningham was giving him the Eye now. Cole hated that.
He turned away, staring at the floor.
"I don't know which one of these guys told you that," Mr. Cunningham said, gesturing around the classroom, "but they were just trying to scare you, I think."
Tommy Tammisimo started snickering. The giggles spread up and down the aisles until everybody- everybody - was laughing. They were all giving Cole the Eye. Even Bobby O'Donnell.
His skin crawled and his stomach turned and his face grew red.
The dark feeling was growing inside. The words would come next. The words and the shouting and the embarrassment and the detention and the calls home and -
"I don't like people looking at me like that!" Cole snapped.
"Like what?" Mr. Cunningham said.
He was still doing it - staring at Cole as if he were some strange life-form from another dimension. "Stop it!" Cole shouted.
Mr. Cunningham wouldn't stop. Mr. Perfect. He thought he was so perfect. A perfect haircut, perfect clothes, perfect everything. Well, he wasn't. He wasn't.
"I don't know how else to look -" Mr. Cunningham said. He was trying to sound patient. But Cole knew he was anything but.
The words exploded from Cole's mouth. "You 're a stuttering Stanley!"
Mr. Cunningham's face fell. "Excuse me?"
"YOU TALKED FUNNY WHEN YOU WENT TO SCHOOL HERE. YOU TALKED FUNNY ALL THE WAY TO HIGH SCHOOL!"
The giggling stopped. Now they were all staring, totally silent. It was worse when they were silent. It meant they thought he was a ... was a ...
Mr. Cunningham stepped closer, his face turning red. "What -?"
"You shouldn't look at people!" Cole said. "It makes them feel bad."
"How did you -?"
"Stop looking at me!" Cole couldn't take any more. He put his hands over his eyes.
The Sixth Sense Page 3
