“It’s getting too hot. Lemme stick it in the water and cool it off.” There were ding-ding-ing sounds then a hiss. I smelled hot metal.
I could tell from the furtive quality of their voices they were doing something they didn’t want me to know about. I waited until I heard the whirring noise again then slipped down the stairs so I could see them. Their backs were turned. Max was holding something against the base of the drill press. Seth was holding a plastic glass full of water. Max raised the lever on the drill press and flipped the switch to off. He was holding his cannon.
“Hey, guys.” They both jumped. Seth dropped the glass, splattering both of them with water. The glass bounced and rolled under the pool table.
Max clutched his cannon. “I was just trying to make it work.”
“I can see that. Let me have it. I’ll need yours too, Seth.”
“Why mine? I won’t drill it.”
“I know. But Max will take yours and drill a shaft in that.”
Seth stamped his feet up the stairs muttering. “Why can’t I have my own stuff? Max takes everything. He doesn’t care who it belongs to.”
I sympathized with him. I had considered putting a lock box in their room so Seth could keep his treasures separate but I knew this was futile. Max would just figure out a way to pick the lock. He didn’t acknowledge the idea that Seth and Linda had the right to their own possessions. This made both of them crazy. Linda screamed and ranted when he rifled through her belongings. Seth just found hiding places for his. He was creative. It wasn’t unusual to find his stuff in odd places like the inside of the piano no one played anymore. But no matter where he had them hidden, Max usually found them.
Seth did have one advantage. He wasn’t afraid of spiders. Max shuddered at anything creepy-crawly so Seth stashed some of his things in a metal pretzel tin under the spider infested back porch. This worked until the open area under the steps was snowed in.
I hid both cannons. Max worked hard to find them, going through my belongings regularly. I knew he wouldn’t give up. I also knew he had no idea how my mind worked. This was one of the few times I saw this as an asset. Pete insisted I should just pitch both cannons in the trash, but I couldn’t do that. They were beautifully made and they were a present from my sister and her husband. At some point both boys would treasure them.
We had a neighbor whose name was Dan. We called him the Pied Piper of Wilmette. He had a beautiful wife with a dry sense of humor and a charming little boy but he hated what he did for a living. Unfortunately, he was exceptionally good at it and made a lot of money. He dreamed of being a cowboy but ended up as the best house painter in Wilmette so he entertained himself by describing his wild youth to adoring boys. Every boy within walking distance wanted to hang out with him.
He made stealing dynamite from work sites and blowing it up down at the beach in the off season sound like the ultimate adventure, something every red-blooded boy should be doing in his spare time. He told the boys harrowing stories about almost getting caught by the police. In his world no one ever blew off parts of his fingers, lost an eye or got more than a stern lecture from a stodgy father if someone turned him in and the police came calling. He didn’t seem to be aware that stealing dynamite was now a Federal offense. A felony; not a boyish prank. He and Max talked guns and explosives for hours.
I have often wondered if our life would have been easier if Dan had been interested in playing a musical instrument or collecting stamps. Probably not. Some behavior is clearly inbred. Max seemed programmed to love anything with the potential to explode or shoot projectiles.
Chapter 32
Our good friends Wing and Pearl had moved to Chicago around the time Andrea was born. They were part of the California contingent working for the agency in Philadelphia and had been our friends and neighbors in Levittown. Wing had frequently stayed at our house in downtown Philadelphia when he and Pete worked late.
Wing’s and Pearl’s parents and siblings lived in California; mine were spread all over the country. Our four children and their three children had a natural affinity for each other. We formed a chosen extended family and celebrated all holidays and birthdays with them. Dedicated to good food, we had cook-outs, explored exotic recipes and went on picnics. Max felt at home with them and they were so familiar with him, they were never surprised by his unique point of view or his outlandish behavior.
One of our joint activities in warmer months was fossil hunting. The remains of numerous coal mining operations formed distinctive hills on the flat prairies south of Chicago. These weren’t hard to find if you knew where to look. Years of rain had washed dirt off the heaped mine tailings, exposing smooth oval stones. When they were split open the stones revealed fossil impressions of ferns and leaves that looked like stippled pen and ink drawings. Most of the fossils we found were just fragments suggesting the original form but a rare few revealed a complete image. These were treasured and kept us fossil hunting.
Because the soil had been dug from far below the surface, it had virtually no nutrients in it. Grasses and other prairie plants grew only in small fissures where bits of vegetation had lodged and rotted. With virtually no ground cover to hold the soil in place and soak up moisture, even the smallest amount of rain turned the mine tailings into thick muck that made scaling the hills difficult and digging impossible.
Fossil hunting was a project for clear July and August days. Hot ones. Wing and Pearl always brought a cold watermelon in a large cooler. Born and raised in California, they both knew how to pick out perfect melons. We loved eating the sweet, icy fruit and spitting seeds at each other. There’s something about having permission to spit watermelon seeds at anyone within range that wipes out normal boundaries.
Linda and Seth tried to find good fossils but Max was only minimally interested. Andrea was carried around until she was old enough to stop eating stones. One day, after the picnic part of the outing, Max gave a whoop of delight and started picking up what we assumed were stones and stuffing them into his backpack. He walked back and forth with his eyes on the ground with an occasional abrupt stop to swoop and grab. I was pleased to see him so involved in what the rest of us were doing. I kept an eye on him. The terrain was open so I could see him clearly. He was only looking at the ground immediately in front of his gaze. There was a possibility he would blindly stumble on the remains of a mine opening or a sink hole.
I yelled at him to stay on the path but he was too engrossed in finding stones to pay attention to what I said. I was watching him and mentally marking his position, afraid a sink-hole would suddenly suck him into the ground and rescue time would be crucial.
Pete and Wing were cracking open stones. They had an unusually large stone propped against a heavy mica-studded boulder and were trying to decide where Pete should place the pointed edge of the cold chisel so Wing could tap it with the hammer. You only got one chance. With stones like the one the two men were studying, tapping the right white line on the end might reveal a perfect Gingko or fern leaf. Tapping the equally attractive line a fraction of an inch away might reveal a portion of a non-descript piece of bark. They finally decided to go with the larger white line.
I was momentarily distracted. When I glanced back at Max, he was in the process of latching his backpack closed so he didn’t lose his stones. He turned, ran across to the hill we were on and grabbed the edge of Wing’s shorts a second after Wing tapped the cold chisel revealing a clump of bark pieces. Wing shrugged and looked at Max.
Max was so excited, it took a second to figure out what he was saying. “Wing! Wing! Look what I found.” Face flushed, he dumped out the contents of his backpack: empty shotgun shells.
Wing stifled his shock and said, “Amazing, Max! Where did you find so many?” Then he bent down, picked up a few shells and looked at them closely. “These are different sizes. Do you think they came from different shotguns?”
Thrilled with Wing’s interest, Max rattled off a scary stream of facts about shotguns
. He sounded as though he were quoting from a fire arms manual.
Chapter 33
Max was in fifth grade when Cub Scouts ended and he decided he wanted to be a Boy Scout. There was an active troop in Wilmette but the current scout master was about to retire and move to Arizona. Notices had been sent to all scout parents asking for a volunteer.
Pete had left the Philadelphia-based agency six months earlier. Two years after we joined him in the midwest, he was bored with the account that had triggered his imperative need to move to the Chicago office. He tried working as an account executive for the agency on a different account but that turned into a disaster so he quit and freelanced for six months. He had started talking about California. I was expecting him to announce another move but he was offered a job with a large Chicago agency and had the sense to take it.
The new agency encouraged civic spirit and made a point of sending artists and copy writers home at a decent hour. The agency’s founder was a big supporter of the Boy Scouts. So Pete volunteered to be the new scout master. He said this would be a good way to do something meaningful with Max. Pete had only vague ideas about scouting. He had never been a boy scout himself but he had always liked camping. Max was thrilled.
Being a scout master took a lot of commitment and an enormous amount of time. There was management training, an introduction to scouting traditions, camping skills to learn so they could be taught, monthly camp-outs, a once-weekly meeting at a local church and accompanying the troop during the two weeks when the bulk of the troop went to camp in Wisconsin.
Pete took the job seriously and became an expert at scouting and camping. Our vacations for the next few years were one week at what was called family camp where I had the use of a comfortable cabin on the family side of a Wisconsin lake. Pete and Max were with the troop at the large scout section on the other side of the lake. Family camp included two excellent meals cooked by someone else, a beach for swimming and a chance to do a lot of reading while the younger children played under supervision. I enjoyed these weeks and missed them when the children’s activities became so varied we couldn’t go anywhere in a clump.
Pete continued to spend virtually every weekend and all his vacations at scout functions. Max and later Seth went on all the camp-outs and had calamity stories that could have given a stand-up comedian an evening’s worth of great material. On average there were 60 boys in the troop and most went along on every camp-out, whether they were sick or well.
The initial idea that Pete and Max would bond through scouting was lost early on. Max was proud his father was the scout master but he said there was a downside. In the midst of every calamity the only name Pete could always remember with enough certainty to shout was MAX! Their relationship was as far from one on one as possible. Now Max had to share his father with 60 other boys.
Wilmette was a classic high-end suburb. A large percentage of fathers worked long hours and traveled. Pete became the father figure for quite a few of the boys in the troop. We always had scouts underfoot. They showed up as soon as school let out and always seemed surprised and a bit put out to discover Pete was still at work or out of town. This became a family joke. But Max wasn’t amused.
The psychiatrist’s belief that Max and Pete would bond if they did something meaningful together influenced them both. Max went on every camping trip full of hope that this time things would be different: his father would show him some sign of affection or notice and applaud something he had done well. Pete felt guilty because he could be patient with other boys but not with Max. They both came home from camping trips exhausted, moody and barely speaking.
Chapter 34
The summer Max was eleven and Linda was thirteen, Pete came home with two excellent books: What Every Boy Should Know About Sex and its companion book, What Every Girl Should Know About Sex. Seth was nine that summer and Andrea was two.
Linda read her book and agreed it was interesting. Max read his and Linda’s books. With the information gleaned from the two books, he wanted to check out the specifics of female anatomy. He had been bathed with Linda when they were babies and they had each made cursory checks of their physical differences then. He had seen me change Andrea’s diapers recently and often saw her running around the house unabashedly stark naked but he hadn’t really paid much attention to the close-up geography of female genitals.
When he asked Andrea if he could look at her bottom, she was happy to strip naked. Linda and Seth watched the viewing. Neither thought it unusual. Nor would I have if I had seen them. But Max was on the edge of puberty and felt sexual stirrings. He didn’t realize then that this reaction didn’t mean he was a sexual deviant and had the hots for his baby sister: unexpected erections were going to be a constant all through puberty and could be triggered by anything and everything.
Andrea liked the attention. She thought it was a new game, sort of like playing doctor with the big kids. When she asked Max if they could play the naked game again, he panicked, yelled at her and threatened bodily harm if she ever mentioned it again. He was certain he would be in trouble if Pete or I knew about it. I don’t know why. Pete had just gone to the trouble of buying him a user-friendly, explicit book about sex and I had been telling him since he was very small that his penis belonged to him and he could do whatever he wanted with it as long as he wasn’t embarrassing someone else or infringing on their rights. But sex is complex and I had no control over what other people told him. He was suddenly afraid of Andrea, blamed her for his hormonally triggered reaction, decided he hated her and wanted her out of his life.
I saw the change in his attitude toward her but had no clue at the time what had triggered his hostility. I’ve often wished Max had told me what had happened then instead of when he was 30. I could have reassured him his curiosity about gender specifics was normal. The incident had been so unimportant in Andrea’s mind that she quickly forgot about it and had no clue why Max was suddenly so nasty to her. His viciousness was mostly verbal threats to hurt her in terrifying ways and an occasional arm twist, never when Pete or I were around.
Andrea ended up afraid of him. I think we all were. He had always been nasty and imperious with Seth. I assumed this was an unusually strong case of sibling rivalry. But it was particularly unsettling to watch him turn on the only sibling he had seemed to like. What could a baby have done to rouse such hatred?
I was doing a lot of freelance artwork at the time. This was difficult during the summer when Max wasn’t in school. I tried to pick up and deliver work on the days Ann was there but it didn’t always work out that way. Ann worked Mondays and Wednesdays all year round. I knew Andrea was safe with her. One of my clients decided he wanted a piece of finished art on Tuesday instead of Wednesday. I couldn’t tell a client I wouldn’t be able to deliver artwork because I was having problems with child care. The only baby sitter available on Tuesday was an older woman who coped well with everyone but Max so I took him with me.
I decided he would be able to keep out of trouble if he brought a book and I gave him exact parameters. He was pleased to be alone with me. I counted on this as an incentive for him to behave. The client was anal but we had gone over the art in such minute detail during the last two visits, I assumed I could drop off the work quickly. This hope vanished before I even got in to see him. He kept me waiting for the better part of an hour, enough time for Max to discover he didn’t like the book he had brought. He would read it since he always finished any book he started, but it wasn’t going to keep him from exploring.
We were about 18 miles north-west of Wilmette in a low building set in the middle of fields of soybeans. In the distance a line of trees snaked across the horizon. This was usually an indication there was a creek meandering through a dip in the landscape. There was a slight roll to the ground, not something I would have noticed if I were in Pennsylvania or Massachusetts but after five years in Illinois I saw even the most subtle rise in the terrain. Hopefully it would seem so dull to Max, even a disappointing bo
ok would keep his attention.
When I finally got into the client’s office, he insisted we go over the artwork again in minute detail. This was nothing more than his need for absolute control. He needed the art a day early because the printer insisted this was the only way he could print and ship it in time to distribute the information at a convention in Salt Lake City. I knew there was no question of a redo. He stayed seated. I had to stand and hang over his oversized desk to see what he was talking about.
A sudden movement outside the large window behind him startled me. A head popped into view and disappeared so quickly I wondered if I had really seen it. It popped up a second time, this time far enough so I could see Max’s grin. Then again. This time, he was holding something in his hand. He was trying to show me what it was. I frowned at him and shook my head. The client looked up before I could shift my eyes back to the drawings. He swiveled around, looked out the window then turned back to me a fraction of a second before Max’s head reappeared.
I could feel sweat prickling my back.
“Is there something outside?”
“Just a bird with red on its wings. We don’t see those in Wilmette.”
He shrugged. “Red-winged blackbirds. They’re everywhere here.”
Thank God I didn’t describe some exotic bird he’d want to see for himself. I forced myself to keep my eyes on the paper. It wasn’t easy. I had good peripheral vision. I flinched when Max tried to bang the window with whatever he was holding. This time the client frowned and started to turn around. Frantic to keep him focussed on the art, I pointed to a picture I had enlarged. “This was the size you wanted. You were right. It does look better.”
By the time he accepted the work and gave me an invoice to submit, I was shaking.
“Are you cold?”
I couldn’t say yes. Sweat was dripping into my eyes. I said the first thing that came into my mind. “Yes but a few seconds ago, I was burning up. Is there some kind of virus going around your office? I felt fine until about fifteen minutes after I sat in your reception room.”
Sucking Up Yellow Jackets Page 14
