The Things I Want Most

by Richard Miniter

  “Now, in your head, Mike, what’s ten percent of four hundred thirty-seven?”

  “Forty-three point seven.”

  “What’s ten percent of eight hundred?”

  “Eighty.”

  “What’s five percent of two hundred?”

  “Ten.”

  I walked back down to the barroom, where Brendan was reading Shelby Foote’s Civil War trilogy in a quiet pool of light.

  In this, his last summer before college, Brendan seemed to be here more often than not at night. Recently he had become intensely interested in American history, particularly the Civil War period. He seemed to be able to unwind by reading it, and so more and more often in those dwindling summer evenings, I found him downstairs.

  Yet he was ever willing to put his head up, smile, and talk with me.

  Later, long after he had left for Virginia, I found myself unconsciously drifting down to the barroom in the evening hours and was always foolishly disappointed at finding his place at the long wooden table empty and dark.

  I would miss him dreadfully then.

  For now, though, he was still here.

  “He’s not retarded,” I said, gesturing upstairs.

  “What about the hose?”

  “He talked about the hose.” I shrugged. “It was the first time in his life he was allowed to turn one on. He had seen them before but never, ever was allowed to touch one.”

  Brendan considered that, and his features softened. “Well, he’s still awfully screwed up, Dad.”

  “True,” I said over the top of my glasses. “Now what are you on?”

  Brendan thumped the open book. “The battle of Manassas.”

  “First or second?”

  “Second.”

  “Ah,” I grinned, “Stonewall Jackson and the Carnival and Iron Brigade and Ewell loses his leg. Lee triumphs when Long-street goes in, Pope comes to grief and the South goes wild.”

  Brendan’s eyes lit up. “I’m going to school a few miles from there.”

  I was out of contact with Mike for the rest of that first week. We were painting, digging, and then painting again. I also had some travel to do for work, but Sue stayed close to Mike all day every day. Late summer was, for her business, a quiet time. The two of them played board games, Mike helped her in the kitchen, and at night she read to him. I didn’t have time to sit down with him at any more meals or try any further experiments. His attention was totally focused on Sue anyway, and when the week ended I realized it only by the sudden lack of an overloud voice in the background.

  Then the wedding avalanched in on us. Henry showed up from Vermont, Richard flew east with his girlfriend, Frank came down from the Adirondacks, my sisters and my brother-in-law arrived, my brother and his wife, my nieces, my mother.

  And Sue didn’t mention Mike once.

  It was a picture-book wedding, the weather glorious, Susanne beautiful. We managed to get all six children in a row for photographs before church: Richard handsome and accomplished, then Susanne, Henry and Frank in their Norwich blue dress uniforms, Brendan and Liam looking relaxed but formal. A few minutes later Susanne held my hand with a dazzling smile all the way to the church.

  Sue was determined to sing at her daughter’s wedding. She stood up front in a stunning white and gold dress singing “Amazing Grace” as Susanne paused at the head of the aisle, holding my arm.

  Then she cried.

  Later, at the reception, her brothers stood up in a tall row, men now, serious, hushing the crowd. One by one they passed the microphone and talked about their sister, told everyone there how much they loved her. Then I cried, too.

  It was outside after midnight, sitting in the ghostly moonlit debris of the wedding reception, that Sue mentioned Mike for the first time in more than a week. “Do you think we can somehow make that kid a part of this?”

  I was smoking a cigar with a glass of wine in my hand. My tie was awry, feet up on another chair.

  “Dunno. I still have the awful sinking feeling that we haven’t the foggiest idea of what we’re getting into. What do you think will happen when he has to get into a routine, get up and go to school, do chores, and not be the center of undivided attention?”

  I saw her eyes in the moonlight. “Rich, you really don’t want to do this, do you?”

  Whether I wanted to or not, wheels had been turning in the background. Joanne had completed a written report on the week’s visit, passed it on to Dutchess County Social Services, which reviewed the intended placement with staff, and in approving it, passed it on to family court and the law guardian, an attorney that, at least in New York State, every foster child has appointed to represent his or her interests. Then, everybody in the loop having concurred, Harbour was given a green light, and Joanne called us with one last note of caution. “Remember, Mike wants this placement very, very badly. But it’s almost wholly a peer pressure issue with him. He sees families on TV, and the other children he’s in the system with glorify their own families. But he’s never had one of his own. Push comes to shove, a child like this hasn’t the faintest idea of how to respond over the long haul.”

  Two days later Sue drove up and got him.

  One of the words used to describe to us the withdrawal of a child controlled by the system from a placement was extraction.

  Extraction sounds overly dramatic, much as if a submarine was going to surface offshore in the predawn darkness and launch a black rubber raft. Unfortunately for the children involved, the reality isn’t all that far from the mark.

  Regardless of whether a child has spent one night in a placement, or a year or ten years or his entire life; regardless of whether a placement is “home” to the child, the withdrawal is never a “leaving” as families would think of the term, because the child is never, ever coming back. If there are good-byes and moist-eyed grandmothers or anxious parents in attendance, they gather in shared despair, in promises to write, in hurried last-minute hugs or precautions or tears. And often there is not even that, just the “child-care system” cranking the right piece of paperwork onto the right desk, followed by a quick swoop.

  Sometimes the children are taken, have to be taken, in the middle of the night. At other times, circumstances might demand that they be yanked away during school or meals.

  I have tried to imagine what the experience is like. Who can grow up knowing that the world might turn inside out at any moment and frequently does? Who can live knowing that any little treasured possession—a teddy bear, a game, a set of blocks— might never be seen again unless it is kept within immediate reach?

  Mike had been extracted twelve times before Sue parked next to the front door of the children’s home on August 27.

  Desperately wanting this extraction to be a lot different from the others, she had one last thing to say to me before she left home.

  “I have this image of what’s going to happen today, and I want to talk to you about it,” she said quietly. “Remember the story of the cat who lived in a mans house in Vermont that had thirteen doors opening on the outside?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “vaguely Robert Heinlein, I think.”

  “Yes,” Sue said. “During the winter the cat would go to a door and meow to be let out. The man would open it, and the cat, seeing the cold and snow outside, would walk to another door.”

  “Right, I remember now. The cat was always looking for the door into summer.”

  “Do you remember what happened?”

  “Yes,” I said, forcing my memory, “stupid blind persistence won out. The cat kept it up long enough that eventually a door opened and it was summertime outside.”

  “Right,” Sue said. “I think these children are the same way. Some children are born into the right season. But others aren’t, so they have to keep stubbornly going from door to door until they find the door into summer, into the place they really want to be.”

  “So?”

  “So,” she said, “when this particular door opens for him, I want it to b
e really sunny outside.”

  “Whew,” I said, “am I that bad?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Stacked up under the vaulted portico was a sad, tiny pile of boxes and bags. Inside, Mike was patiently sitting on a chair in the reception area, already being ignored by the odd staff member bustling through. After Sue took Mike’s hand and told the receptionist who she was, Kathy came down briefly to say a few polite words, Mike scrawled his name into the log at the reception desk, and then the front door of the children’s home banged shut behind them.

  Done!

  Later, Sue said she stood there a long time staring at Mike’s pathetic collection before she could actually bring herself to put hands on it. She remembered what Joanne had said, that these children rarely had more than what could be quickly bundled into the backseat of a compact car, but she hadn’t really believed it.

  We used to think that our five sons and one daughter hadn’t had much in the way of personal gear. But Mike had only the sneakers he was wearing, a photo album with a couple dozen pictures in it, artwork from school, one stuffed animal, and some clothes.

  “Mike, pick this up and lets get the hell out of here.”

  Forty-five minutes later I raised my head from a book. There was a noise in the house, a loud voice rocketing from room to room. “I remember this,” Mike was shouting. “I remember this, too”

  When he slammed into the living room, I stood up to say hello with a smile on my face. I remembered Sue’s little story and had even prepared a welcoming speech.

  But before I could get a single word out, Mike whirled around me like a ball swung on a cord and disappeared into the next room.

  So I closed my mouth.

  Sue breezed in, looking harried.

  “Did you say hello to Mike?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Well, give me a hand carrying his things in.”

  Liam had the old library for his bedroom then, a very large, light, and airy room with tall windows overlooking the hay meadow in back. It was adjacent to our bedroom, inside our apartment area on the second floor, and since we wanted to keep Mike on the same level with us, Sue and I asked Liam if he could share. “For a little while,” he said.

  Sue had gotten Mike a dresser and a bed, hung a bulletin board up, and bought matching Jurassic Park sheets, quilt, and pillowcases. There was even a big Jurassic Park poster on the wall by his bed and a plastic model of Tyrannosaurus rex sitting on his nightstand.

  “I can’t believe I have Jurassic Park sheets,” he was saying when I walked in with his bags. Then he pointedly stopped talking and turned his back. Sue’s expression said, “Relax. He has to get used to you.” But I was miffed anyway and trudged downstairs to the barroom, where I poured myself a cup of coffee.

  It was just the four of us around the big table in the barroom that first evening—Liam, Sue, Mike, and I.

  Remembering what had happened with food during his visit, Sue carefully portioned his dinner onto a plate and handed it to the boy. Then, once we all settled ourselves, she started to say grace.

  But before she managed two words, Mike abruptly faced her and started to talk in his jangling, overloud voice. And talk.

  The three of us sat there embarrassed for a few minutes before we realized it wasn’t going to stop. Mike’s facial tic was working overtime, and he stayed facing Sue and only Sue. When he did manage to get some food up to his mouth, he chewed with exaggerated lip-smacking movements. Several times he rubbed his hand over his forehead without first wiping his fingers on the napkin, so by the time we were halfway through, his face and hair were streaked with barbecue sauce.

  “I have a real family. I know all about families,” he said. “Mom Alice Johnson and Dave Johnson my dad and my brother and sister, Tommy and Jane, and my little new baby sister Connie, and Grandma. Connie is a crack baby, and we just adopted her. We have a dog named Squiggles and ten goats and ten chickens, and my room is up in the attic, but I have to share it with Tom. I’m going to live there all the time later on and I’m happy there and probably I’m going to have a horse. Grandma is buying me a present for my birthday and for Christmas. Dave Johnson, my dad, works for the post office every day, and sometimes he takes me with him except for the time I had a problem and had to go to Rockland State Psychiatric Hospital, and then they put me in Poughkeepsie, and then they put me in the children’s home, and so I didn’t get to ride with Dad, but I have a real family. I was raised on a farm in Pennsylvania, so I know all about Pennsylvania, and Grandma is going to buy me a present.”

  And on and on it went. After ten minutes my ears started to hurt. All of this had the relentless ring of permanence.

  “I can do this thing,” Sue said later when we were having a cup of tea alone in the kitchen. She had been reading the exasperated expression on my face.

  “What is it we want to do?”

  Sue didn’t answer right away. Instead, she stared down as if she were a gypsy fortune-teller reading the answer in the bottom of the cup. “Give this kid a shot at a normal life,” she finally said. “No, that’s wrong. What we want to do is get out of his way and let him work out his own shot at a normal life.”

  “Well, somehow, we’ve got to slow him up. You’ll never be able to communicate with him otherwise. At least we have to turn the volume down, or I’ll be wearing ear protection at the dinner table. Five minutes after he started I was wishing for a nice quiet chain saw or maybe a leaf blower.”

  But Sue didn’t laugh. She just stared back into her tea.

  “I can do this thing, Rich.”

  “Okay, okay”

  Looking for something intelligent to say, I asked, “What about the Johnsons? There seems to be a considerable bond there, with the grandmother, too.”

  Sue scrunched up her face. “That’s one of the real mysteries about Mike. I spoke to Mrs. Johnson, and she was very emphatic about wanting to stay in contact. But there’s something in that relationship we don’t understand, something nobody will talk about. Kathy said they wouldn’t visit unless she pushed them a bit. Even then, months and months would go by. Then Joanne said that adoption by the Johnsons wasn’t an option, that family court had said no and refused to reopen the issue. Something happened way back when.”

  “Yeah,” I cracked, “they tried to have a peaceful dinner.”

  We never did find out why family court had said that adopting Mike wasn’t an option for the Johnsons. In New York it is a criminal offense (one defined in the mental health law) to reveal the treatment or circumstances of a foster child to individuals not concerned with his or her treatment. In practice, child-care workers seemed to us to manifest this proscription as a reluctance to reveal anything except on a “need-to-know” basis. By law we were allowed only that one first look at Mike’s file, although later we were furnished with relevant extracts such as a summary of his placements, his birth record, and so forth.

  I looked up then, and Mike was standing in the archway.

  He had the two dogs with him, Pupsy and Teddy Bear, and one of them was nuzzling Mike’s hand while the other was looking up at him expectantly. A nice picture, but it was all wrong—so wrong I could almost hear the “Twilight Zone” theme music in the background.

  Our dogs don’t like strangers. No exceptions. They just are very uncomfortable around new people, although they’re both essentially good-natured and adapt very well to the coming and going of guests. Teddy Bear is a big black Lab mix who spends a lot of time sleeping in the sun on the back lawn, where he can keep half an eye on the hay meadow, hoping for a wood-chuck, and will usually just run off and bark at new people from a distance. Pupsy is smaller and also a mixed breed—looks like a blend of Doberman and something else black—and she almost never barks. Extremely shy, she’ll usually slink away and hide the first time she sees someone new. Years ago she wandered onto the property we used to own on Mountain Road in Rosendale and the boys adopted her. It looked then like she had been severely abused, and she’s
always stayed nervous.

  The one point the dogs are trained very well on is staying out of the barroom, and they never try to follow anyone downstairs.

  Asking myself the question “How did he get both of them to follow him down?”

  I said as gently as I could, “Mike, we don’t allow the dogs in the barroom.”

  Mike ignored what I said and spoke to Sue. “What do I do now, Sue?”

  Sue smiled at him. “What you do is take the dogs upstairs like you were told, Mike. Then we’ll find something to do together.”

  “What?”

  I repeated myself. “Mike, take the dogs upstairs.”

  For the first time he looked directly at me and spoke. “You’re not my boss, Rich.” His eyes were big and blue and looked completely guileless.

  I started to rumble, and Sue gave me the little going-away hand gesture that meant, “Easy, take it easy.”

  “Come on, Mike, I’ll go upstairs with you,” Sue said.

  I remembered that the home had said Mike didn’t do well with peer groups; in fact, that he did poorly in any sort of social setting. He did best with only one person at a time—the reports from the children’s home were firm on this point.

  But that didn’t explain the dogs’ behavior, which I was still thinking about when Liam came downstairs later and sat next to me. “Dad, this kid is nuts.”

  “No,” I said dryly.

  Liam shook my shoulder. “He was upstairs arranging his pillows on his bed. First he put one pillow on top of the other, and then he switched them. Then he switched them again and then again. He kept doing that for about ten minutes before he made moaning sounds and started to pull his hair.”