Читать книгу A Safe Place for Joey - Mary MacCracken, Mary MacCracken - Страница 9

“Zap! Wham! Zappo!” A water pistol pointed at me through the branches of a rhododendron bush. “That did it. I gotcha now.” A thatch of red hair and a small freckled face emerged momentarily between the leaves.

“Joey,” a voice called. “Stop that! Come out. Come say hello to Mrs. MacCracken.”

A dark-haired, pink-cheeked woman emerged from the bushes. “You are Mrs. MacCracken, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“I’m Mrs. Stone, and I’m sorry,” she said, shaking my hand and then pointing toward the rhododendron bush. “He’s not always this bad. I just can’t get him out of those bushes.”

I smiled. “I know what you mean. New experiences can be very exciting.”

“Thank you for understanding and for seeing Joey,” Mrs. Stone said. “We’re at our wits’ end. It’s like somebody wound him up too tight before he was born. I’ve been waiting seven years for him to run down but …”

Mrs. Stone screamed as Joey sped down the driveway toward the street. “Stop! You know you’re not allowed!”

The small boy paused in the breakneck run, swerved gracefully toward the azaleas, performed a perfect pratfall on the lawn, picked himself up, and dashed down the driveway again.

“I’ll get him,” I said. Words obviously meant little to Joey.

A delivery truck lumbered down the street, and Joey braked at the end of the driveway to watch it pass. I took advantage of this brief pause in activity and crouched beside him, capturing his small dirty hand in mine. “Hi, Joey,” I said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Startled, he turned to face me, his blue eyes wide, head tipped to one side, sunlight ricocheting off his bright red hair, highlighting the freckles on the bridge of his nose and cheeks.

“Here we go,” I announced, still holding his hand. I ran toward the azaleas, swerved back onto the driveway, up onto the low stone wall that ran beside it, lifting Joey with me. He laughed out loud as we made one fast turn through the parking lot, down the slate path along the other side of the building, running at top speed, Joey right beside me, back to the front door of the office building. Joey was smiling but was breathing hard, and I waved to Mrs. Stone with my free hand. “See you in about an hour,” I called. Not stopping, I propelled Joey through the door and up the stairs to my office, hoping I’d used up some of his excess energy.

We watched from the window as his mother backed the station wagon out the driveway and onto the street.

“She’ll be back,” I promised. “Come see the rest.”

Joey was immediately involved. He no longer raced madly, purposelessly; now he explored the shelves of books, the children’s drawings that covered the walls. The same electricity that drove him to random motor movements could be used to divert him. Joey wandered from the bookshelves to the table of games. “Can we play one of these?”

It was the first time that I had heard him speak a full sentence, and I was pleased that his speech was clear and well-articulated. “Sure. But first come over here and let me show you the stopwatch.”

I settled Joey behind the big desk, handed him the stopwatch, and sat down beside him to show him how it worked.

He was obviously surprised and pleased to be holding the heavy silver watch by himself. “Is it s’pensive?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “See, you push this to make it start, this to make it stop, this to take it back to the beginning. Let it run for one minute, and then open this drawer and put it in the box. I need to ask you some questions.”

Joey sat perfectly still for a minute, immersed in the stopwatch. Then he carefully put it in the box, but he couldn’t resist picking up a Magic Marker from the drawer. “Later,” I said, putting the marker back and closing the drawer, and making a mental note that Joey had continually used his left hand so far. “Now,” I said, “see if you can tell me your name, address, and telephone number.”

Joey was getting happier all the time, and so was I. What did the school find so terrible about this little boy? There was energy and a contagious exuberance about him. He could speak; he could follow directions.

Joey had been referred to me by Dr. Grayson, his pediatrician, who disagreed with the Child Study Team at Joey’s school, which felt he belonged in a special class. Dr. Grayson recommended that Joey be seen by a pediatric neurologist, who reported “a mild ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) not severe enough to require medication at this time.” Dr. Grayson then recommended that the Stones contact me for a diagnostic educational evaluation. I had been somewhat reluctant, feeling that Joey had already been tested by qualified people. But Dr. Grayson was eager for a second opinion, and because he was an old, respected friend, I agreed to see Joey at least once. Now I forgot my earlier reluctance to evaluate Joey – I wanted to know everything I could.

I spent the next hour concentrating hard on Joey, noting all the things that were right with him. First of all, he was an appealing boy – his thick shock of red hair plus freckles and a wide mouth and slightly asymmetrical face made him look like the kid on the cornflakes box. His movements were quick and graceful, and I liked the way he got interested and involved when I showed him how things worked. I liked his laugh. I liked the information he had stored up. He knew that his dad worked in a bank and that his dad’s name was Al. His mother’s name was Gail, and she ran computers. He knew his two older brothers’ names and ages and that the reason he didn’t have any pets was because his mother said he was “lergic.”

I liked the way he understood about the chips, which I used as a reward system, immediately comprehending which colour was worth how much. I liked the independence with which he took over. “No. Don’t tell me which colours I earned,” Joey said halfway through our first session. “Just how much. I can figure it out.”

Joey pulled the old cigar box that held the chips close to him and studied the list on the back cover of the box. “Oranges are five, blues ten,” he said out loud, “reds are twenty, greens are twenty-five, yellows are fifty, and these silver ones are worth a hundred each, right?”

“Right.”

“Are the silvers real?”

“Yes, they’re fifty-cent pieces. My dad collected them. I put them in with the other chips to make it more interesting. All this testing can get to be pretty dull stuff, so at the end of our time you count up the chips I’ve paid you and then decide if you want to spend for something little or save for something bigger. You buy stuff from the basket – stickers, balls, pens – things like that. I’ll show you when we’re through.”

I didn’t say it out loud, but chips can also help keep a child from getting too discouraged. Most tests have “ceilings,” and when a child misses three or four questions in a row, the test ends. So in the course of an hour’s evaluation, a child may “fail” a dozen times or more – and most of the children I see are smart enough to know when they’re wrong. Shoulders slump. Heads droop. But if I pay at the end of each test, counting up the answers by fives or tens, adding a fifty or so, and say something like “Pay yourself one hundred eighty-five,” shoulders straighten and heads perk up like flowers after a summer rain. As the child’s pile of chips grows, his confidence grows along with it. I may be skewing a few statistics, but I’m seeing the child at his optimum, and that’s what’s important to me.

Every once in a while I’d ask Joey a bonus question like “Why do you think you’re here, Joey? I ask all the kids that.”

“’Cause I’ve got a lot of problems.” Joey’s voice was barely audible.

“What kind of problems?”

Joey shrugged. “I don’t know. I think maybe there’s something wrong with my head.”

And Joey was right, in a way. There was something wrong with his head. The federal government has defined “learning disabilities” in Public Law 94–142 (the Education of All Handicapped Act) as follows:

Specific learning disability means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations. The term includes such conditions as perceptual handicaps, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. The term does not include children who have learning problems which are primarily the result of visual, hearing or motor handicaps, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage.

The Association for Children and Adults with Learning Disabilities states, “Each child with a learning disability is unique; each shows a different combination and severity of problems – each has one or more significant deficits in the essential learning processes and is considered to have near average or above average intelligence.”

Most of the children I work with have a learning disability that is known as a specific language disability – dyslexia. The Orton Dyslexia Society, which promotes the understanding, treatment, and prevention of the problems of dyslexia, suggests that while some people have a natural talent for learning their native language and learn to read and write and express their thoughts clearly in the early years of school or even before, most of us must work much harder and need more teaching.

Some (the Orton Society says as many as 10 percent of us) find this learning exceptionally difficult – so difficult that it can get in the way of progress in personal growth.

The dyslexic child can’t learn and remember whole words, so he doesn’t learn to read when he is taught by a whole-word or “see and say” approach. He often cannot even remember letters themselves and twists b and d around. He has difficulty retrieving the words he needs in order to say what he wants to say: “Can I borrow the … you know, the thing you cut with?” Or words come out wrong sometimes: “bermembered” for “remembered” or “basgetti” for “spaghetti.” He may read “united” as “untied” and “nuclear” as “unclear.”

Math difficulties, the Orton Society says, are now included as another part of dyslexia; math is another language that needs remembering and managing. A child with dyslexia has difficulty with overall organization – he loses his sneakers, his homework, and his sense of direction. Other members of the dyslexic’s family through the generations probably had similar difficulties.

Dyslexia is not a disease but a kind of mind, often a very gifted mind. There have been many famous dyslexics – Thomas Edison, Woodrow Wilson, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Nelson Rockefeller, Cher, and Bruce Jenner among them. A child, or even an adult, with a dyslexic mind can learn. He or she (though four times more often he) just needs more help and must be taught in a systematic, sequential way, using strengths, minimizing weaknesses, and helping him or her achieve success. Experts agree this child can learn to read, to write legibly, to spell passably well, and to put his or her thoughts into clear, understandable spoken or written words.

Children with learning disabilities, or dyslexia, or learning differences, as some of my colleagues put it, have very real and important problems that deserve study, effort, and understanding. The labels don’t really matter; the children do. We can help them – and we know how. These are children who can succeed if they are given the chance.

By the time I had finished my four diagnostic sessions I had found a lot more things to like about Joey. He had even more going for him than I had suspected. He was far, far brighter than the average seven-year-old. Mrs. Stone had given me a copy of the Child Study Team report, and there the school psychologist had written that Joey’s “Full-Scale Intelligence Quotient on the Wechsler was in the average range.” This was true; the full-scale score was average, but it didn’t begin to tell the whole story. There were enormous differences in Joey’s subtest scores, ranging from a high 98th percentile in Vocabulary to a low 2nd percentile in Block Design. When there are tremendous peaks and valleys of this kind, the child is almost always much brighter than his full-scale score shows. To average out subtest scores is like averaging the temperatures at Death Valley to seventy degrees when in actuality it’s sometimes one hundred forty degrees during the day and zero degrees at night.

Unlike many learning disabled children, Joey’s receptive and expressive word knowledge was large and rich. When asked what a nail was, he replied, “It’s a construction material – you hammer it in like this.” On another test Joey described elbows and knees as “joints,” whereas most children his age answer, “Things that bend.”

In contrast to his good vocabulary, verbal abilities, reasoning, practical judgment, and common sense, his abilities to understand spatial relationships, to put things in proper sequence, and to repeat from memory a series of digits or words were very poor.

In the Block Design subtest of the Wechsler Intelligence Test, he pushed the blocks across the desk in frustration and banged his head with his hand, shouting, “Stupid kid!”

When he couldn’t remember more than two numbers and none at all backward on the Digit Span subtest, he began bouncing up and down and finally out of his chair.

During the third testing session, Joey told me that he thought maybe he “saw things funny.” He was right, or at least when he tried to reproduce what he saw with paper and pencil they came out “funny” and bore little resemblance to the original. Joey continued to use his left hand consistently, and some designs were drawn sideways, some upside down; angles looked like double dog ears.

Joey had other troubles. He read 41 as 14; the letters he meant to be d’s turned out as b’s. He had memorized twenty sight words, but when he came to a word he wasn’t sure of, somehow the letters twisted around and he read “cliff” as “calf” and “felt” as “fleet.” When he read out loud he skipped lines and made up words, but if I read to him, he could answer every comprehension question in detail.

Joey was not only smart, he was aware and sensitive. As we started a spelling test he said, “Okay. I’ll do it, but could you please not put that big circle on the front that tells how many I got wrong, like they do in school.” Joey demonstrated:

It wasn’t only letters and numbers that Joey mixed up. He jumbled his own thoughts as well. I asked him to write a few sentences about whatever interested him. He thought hard and then took a long time to write. “I’m going to make this neat,” he told me as he worked.

When I asked him to read out loud what he had written, he read, “I like to go fishing because we always win.”

“Wait a minute here,” he interrupted himself. “That’s not right. See, I began about fishing, but then somewhere, about here” – Joey put a line after fishing, which was written “fsihign” – “I must’ve begun thinking about soccer.”

I didn’t have a test to measure the restlessness inside Joey. But observation made it clear that he was much more active, tense, and distractible than the usual seven-year-old. I even wondered if the neurologist’s decision against medication was correct.

I had worked with other children who were labeled hyperactive or as having a “hyperkinetic syndrome” – and I had seen medication such as Ritalin work for some, although not for all. Originally, the thought of medication of any kind repelled me, but I learned that it did work for some children as long as it was carefully monitored by a pediatric neurologist or experienced pediatrician. Often hyperactivity and learning disabilities are considered one and the same, but they are actually two separate conditions. When they occur together I think of it as “dyslexia plus,” the plus being hyperactivity. Both teaching and rearing these children takes a great deal of energy and love. Just to get them to tune in so that they can hear what you are saying is a big job in itself – to sustain their attention minute after minute so that they can learn is a tremendously difficult task. These are vulnerable children – their sensations heightened, their motors always running a little too fast, never quite in time with the rest of the world. They are exhausting children. They need more supervision than most. They need more loving. They also give it back in quantum measure.

The Stones arrived at the same time but in different cars, coming straight from work to my office. Mr. Stone was well over six feet tall, lean, with hair just slightly darker than Joey’s.

“Did you get a sitter?” Mr. Stone asked his wife.

She shrugged, a small frown crinkling her forehead. “I tried three, but no luck. I think they were making excuses.” She turned to me. “Ours isn’t the easiest house to baby-sit. When I went back to work last year I tried to make arrangements to have someone there when the boys got home from school. Nobody lasted longer than a week. They all said they couldn’t take Joey. They never knew where he was or what he was up to – and if he was there, he was into something he shouldn’t have been into. So now the boys look after themselves. Joey, and Bill, he’s our eleven-year-old, fight constantly, but Richard, the oldest, is thirteen and responsible, and he can handle Joey better than most. My parents live across town, so Rich can call them if anything serious comes up. My mother is ill, but my father can drive over.”

“Which usually makes things worse rather than better,” Mr. Stone added.

Mrs. Stone turned her head toward her husband. “Don’t start,” she warned.

“Shall we begin, then?” I asked, wanting to interrupt the tension that was building between them. “I’ve read everything you sent,” I continued. “The Child Study Team reports, the teacher’s comments, the neurologist’s report, the background information form that I asked you to fill out. I’ve scored the dozen tests that I gave Joey, and I’ve reviewed them with Dr. Golden, the psychologist and learning disabilities professor I mentioned.

“Now, I’d like to go over it all with you and see if we can pull it together and come up with a plan of action. Let’s begin at the beginning.”

I began to summarize. “Joey was a full-term baby, born October twenty-ninth with a birth weight of six pounds, ten ounces. The pregnancy was a difficult one in contrast to earlier pregnancies with Joey’s brothers. Toward the end of the third month staining was severe enough for the doctor to advise complete bed rest for several weeks …”

For the next hour we went over each of the tests. I read them Joey’s intelligent, sophisticated answers, and they were surprised and pleased at how much he had learned about his world in spite of all his troubles. One by one I showed them the intelligence tests, academic tests, visual and auditory processing tests, puzzles, drawings, and Dr. Golden’s comments.

I summed up Joey’s strengths: his intelligence; his excellent verbal skills, including both word knowledge and speech; his love of people and ability to make friends; his excellent physical coordination; and his intelligent, supportive family.

I also went over Joey’s weaknesses: the large gap between his intelligence and his achievement in academic areas; his difficulty in “sitting still”; the sleep disturbances that Mrs. Stone mentioned; his difficulties with spatial relationships; his reversals in both reading and writing; his left-right confusion; his inability to sequence digits, letters, days of the week, months of the year; his difficulty with all forms of writing; his lack of understanding of decoding skills, which resulted in wild guessing; his pattern of disorganization; his lack of confidence in his ability to learn; and an overriding factor of distractibility and frustration.

“Joey has various learning disabilities and also a certain amount of hyperactivity,” I said. “It’s possible to have either of these conditions without the other, but in Joey’s case both are present, each compounding the other.

“From reading his report it seems there may have been some tiny damage to neurological pathways before Joey was born,” I continued.

Mr. Stone looked at his watch and cleared his throat. “All right, I can accept that. The neurologist said the same thing, and also my brother claims he has dyslexia himself – but the main thing is, what are we going to do about it?” He looked directly at me.

“Tell me the two things about Joey that are causing the most trouble,” I said.

They both spoke at once. Mrs. Stone said, “I don’t want him to go to a special school. Everyone will think he’s retarded.”

“I don’t care what other people think,” Mr. Stone said. “But Joey is sure to get even more down on himself than he already is if he isn’t allowed to go to the school where his brothers went.”

“How about his teacher? What do you think she finds most difficult about Joey?” I asked.

“He disrupts the class. She also said he acts like he’s not aware of what’s going on,” Mrs. Stone replied. “I think what started the talk about a special class is that he falls out of his chair all the time now. She thinks maybe he’s having fits.”

“He’s not having fits,” I said. “You’ve already had him examined by a neurologist who found no sign of convulsive activity. I’d be willing to bet that Joey is falling out of his chair because he’s not successful when he’s in it.

“What he needs to know,” I continued, “is that he’s smart and can learn and doesn’t have to act like a fool. I think Joey would rather have the kids in his class think he’s a clown than think he’s dumb. Joey himself is pretty sure he actually is stupid, but at the same time he’s smart enough not to want anyone else to think so.”

“How can Joey ever feel good about himself when he has so many problems?” Mrs. Stone asked. “His teacher says he can’t read or write like the others – now a special class …”

“I’ll tell you honestly that I don’t think that Joey belongs in special education,” I said. “I taught in special ed for many years, and it’s the right answer for some children. But I don’t think Joey’s problems are that severe, and his intelligence and social abilities outside of school say to me that he belongs in a regular classroom. I think he’s smart enough to learn to use his strengths to bring his academic skills up to grade level. You’ve had top medical advice that his hyperactivity is not severe enough to warrant medication at this time, and I think maybe Joey can learn to control his impulsive behavior if it doesn’t pay off. We just have to try to convince the school to let him have a little more time, in a regular class.”

“That will be a miracle in itself,” Mrs. Stone said. “I think they’ve already made up their minds.”

“There’s one thing I want to get straight before we go any further,” Mr. Stone said. “Are you going to help? Are you going to work with Joey? Or are you just telling us this so we’ll tell somebody else?”

It was a fair question, and I knew what my answer should be. There were so many children now who needed help that I often didn’t finish in my office until seven thirty or eight o’clock; understandably, Cal would not be eager for me to take on another child. Still, there was something about Joey …

I returned Mr. Stone’s steady gaze and then turned to Mrs. Stone as well. “Yes. I want to help. I’d like to work with Joey, but I can’t do it alone. I’ll need a lot of help from both of you and from Joey and his school. I’d like to talk with his teacher every week or so. It’s important to know how he’s doing in the classroom, because no matter how well he does here with me, if there isn’t carryover into his classroom it isn’t going to help Joey stay in a regular class.

“I have two things I’d like you to do. I’d like you to have a pediatric audiologist check Joey – just to cover all bases and make sure there is no physical cause for the low scores in auditory processing. Second, I’d like you to try to see that he eats well, with an emphasis on fruits and vegetables rather than sweets and junk food. I don’t think there’s a diet in the world that will teach him to read, but it may cut down the hyperactivity.

“The main thing will be to get Joey to believe in himself and take responsibility for his learning and behavior.

“I tell you what. Let me try over the summer – and also talk to the Child Study Team and see if they will agree to take another look at Joey at the end of August. If there’s been enough improvement, maybe they’ll let him start in second grade.”

We went over schedules – Joey’s and mine. School closed for summer vacation the following week, so Joey and I would both have more time. Somehow we’d have to work it out in the fall, but for now I’d see him from a quarter past nine to ten o’clock on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

Joey arrived Tuesday morning still steeped in sleep. Hair uncombed, eyes half shut, shirttail out, shoes untied. He plopped himself onto the chair behind the desk.

“Well,” he began, laying his head on the desk, “the good news is that school’s over. The bad news is that I had to get up to come here.”

“Would you rather come in the afternoon?”

“No. I got to swim in the afternoon. That’s how come we’re not going up to the lake till August. I got to be in about a hundred dozen swim meets.” Joey had opened the middle desk drawer and was fiddling around inside.

“Close the drawer, please, Joey.” He had already explored it several times on other visits. I wanted his complete attention now.

Some part of Joey was always in motion, touching this and opening that. He did it unconsciously, not really aware of what he was doing. He had no real concept of what belonged to him and what didn’t. Whatever was in reach was fair game. Before he could change, he would have to become aware of what he was doing.

Joey replaced the box of rubber bands he’d been playing with, and I said, “Good. Pay yourself twenty, that’s two blues or one red chip, for following directions so quickly.

“Now let me show you what we’re going to do today. This is your notebook; this is your bin. This is where we’ll keep the things you’re working on. Would you please write your name on the notebook?”

“Can I use the Magic Marker you got in the drawer?”

I laughed. This was the child that was reported to be unaware of his surroundings? “Sure,” I said. “It doesn’t erase, though.”

Joey got out the pen and then looked through the black and white marbleized notebook, blank except for the first page, where I’d made out our schedule for the day. He turned back to the cover.

“Maybe I’ll just do it in pencil first. In case. You know?”

“Good thinking, Joey – pay another twenty.”

Joey’s turn to laugh. “Twenty for just thinking? Thinking’s easy.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but it’s the most important part. You’re lucky you’re good at it.”

“Yeah,” Joey answered, writing his J backward with his left hand and then scrubbing it out with his eraser and making it correctly. The o came out fine, but somehow when he made the e it overlapped the o. Joey attacked it with the eraser again.

As he rubbed away, Joey looked over at me, grinned, and said, “This old eraser sure does have a hard life, doesn’t it?”

How could I have missed having Joey in my life?

After Joey had written his name in pencil and gone over it with the black marker, I took his folder from his bin and showed him how he’d done on each test.

Joey was only mildly interested, and I decided to be clearer. “The main thing is,” I said, “I want you to know you’re smart, so you don’t have to go around shouting ’bout how dumb you are and falling out of your chair.”

“I can’t help that.”

“Maybe.”

“And I am dumb. I’m the only one in my reading group. There’s the Eagles and the Robins and the Bluebirds. And then there’s me, all by myself. I don’t even got the name of any old kind of a bird.”

“I didn’t say you could read well. I said you were smart. There’s a difference.”

“What?”

“If you’re smart, you can learn to read better – if I can teach you the right way and if you work hard enough.”

Joey was going to be a difficult child to help, because testing had not shown either his visual or his auditory processing to be an area of strength. I had a suspicion that Joey’s auditory skills were better than the tests had shown and that the low scores in this area were more than likely due to lack of attending. His spoken language was so clear and he had picked up so much information that I felt his auditory reception couldn’t be that bad, even if he couldn’t repeat a string of numbers. Anxiety could also have interfered; it’s hard to remember anything when you’re scared. Later, the audiologist confirmed that there was no physical impairment in his auditory channels.

I decided to use a combination of methods to teach Joey to read until I discovered which one worked best. The biggest thing Joey had going for him was his intelligence. If he could see that reading was like a code, the letters standing for certain sounds depending on their position, then he could learn to crack the code.

It was important for Joey to understand that 85 percent of reading is made up of decodable words; the other 15 percent would be designated red words. I would print these red words on index cards in red ink and ask Joey to memorize them. But that was the only memorization I would ask for; the rest of the words he could figure out by using the rules. The books that I gave Joey to read would have a carefully controlled vocabulary, using words that followed the rules he had already learned. I was counting on the fact that someone as independent as Joey would love being able to figure it all out himself.

The spelling and writing would go hand in hand with the reading. Once a child has learned to read “hat,” he can also learn to write it, if he is taught how to match graphemes (letters) to phonemes (sounds). We would incorporate Orton-Gillingham methods, and I would have Joey visualize the word – saying it out loud, writing it on the desk, sand tray, or paper.

I would be careful not to ask him to spell words that were not phonetically regular, and I would also be careful not to present too much new information at one time. I felt that much of Joey’s trouble was that when he was given too much at one time he became overwhelmed. I suspected that this was when he fell out of his chair.

That first morning I simply told Joey the sound of each letter and showed him how to write both the lowercase and capitals. “See it, hear it, say it, write it, Joey. Take your time.” This wasn’t easy for Joey. He confused the sounds for b and p and, of course, reversed many letters. Still, his writing improved enormously in that one short session as he learned how to form each letter correctly and to say its sound as he wrote it.

I knew I was beginning at the beginning and that I was running the risk of boring him since all this had been presented in first grade and probably earlier, but I also knew the risk was slight.

Few learning disabled children are bored. They may pretend they are or their parents may like to think they are, but most are scared instead. Neither they nor their parents can understand how they can know something one day and not the next. Usually this is because they haven’t learned the beginning steps of a task thoroughly enough to use them spontaneously and “on demand,” and particularly when they’re under pressure to perform.

In any event, we both got so involved with what we were doing that we ran five minutes into the next child’s session. Still, we took the time to count up Joey’s chips and to enter the total, 840, in his notebook and then subtract 600 for the sugarless, all-natural-ingredient lollipop that he bought from the “goody basket.” I kept a small supply of treats in a wicker basket on top of the file cabinet, and at the end of each session the children had one minute to decide if they wanted to spend their chips or save them up.

Twice a week through June and July, Joey and I read and wrote and spelled together. We added and subtracted.

We also talked and played a few games. There were no miracles. I just taught and retaught and let Joey practice and end with success each time. His ability to decode and his sight vocabulary both improved; his writing became more legible and computation more accurate. I assigned small amounts of homework, which Joey did on his own and, even more important, remembered to bring back.

He still twisted in his chair and fiddled with paper clips, but he learned how to breathe to consciously relax his body and to live with the three breaks I allowed him each session.

By the end of July we had both learned a number of things. Joey had learned to read, although he was still below grade level, and I had learned that Joey’s disorganizational problems were not his alone. They seemed to be part of the family lifestyle. My phone messages rarely got delivered, and Joey often arrived on the wrong day or ten minutes early or not at all.

Still, we all felt encouraged. It had been a month and a half since Joey had fallen out of his chair or said he was dumb. But then again, it was summer and Joey always did well in the summer.

I sent him off on his August vacation with two books to read and a workbook I knew he could handle. We’d just have to see what happened in the fall.

The Stones came back from their vacation a week early to give Joey a chance to review with me before he was retested by the school. The Child Study Team tested him the day after Labor Day and said that while he was still “deficient,” there had been “significant improvement,” and they agreed to let Joey go on to second grade in his own school.

None of us anticipated that Joey would end up in Mrs. Madden’s class. It was nobody’s fault. The second-grade teacher Joey was slated to have became pregnant over the summer and on the first day of school decided she didn’t feel well enough to handle both her first pregnancy and a second-grade class. She opted for a year’s leave of absence. The principal, Mr. Templar, thought the new teacher he hired was too inexperienced to handle Joey, so he transferred Joey to Mrs. Madden’s class.

Mrs. Madden was certainly experienced. Thirty years of experience – most of it in the same school system. When I called her during the first week of school to tell her about Joey’s evaluation and what we had done over the summer, and to ask if I could check in with her every week or so, Mrs. Madden made it clear that conferences or phone calls with me were not necessary. She said she had discussed Joseph’s case with the Child Study Team. She understood they were giving him a trial in second grade. She assured me that she had known plenty of other children with problems and that Joseph would not cause any trouble in her class. She also said she thought she should be honest with me and tell me that in her opinion tutors were a waste of time – worse than a waste if they let the child become dependent on them. Of course, if the Stones wanted to throw their money away it was up to them.

When I called the Child Study Team to say that it appeared that I was going to have some difficulty communicating with Mrs. Madden, they said they understood, they had difficulty themselves, but that in many ways she was a very good teacher.

Joey dragged himself up to my office at a quarter to six the Tuesday after school started. He stood in the middle of the floor and raised his arms and then let them drop. “The bad news is, I got Madden. The next bad news is, I’m still not in a group – there’s the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Orioles, and me. The next bad news is, she made me miss gym and stay after school, too! I’m never going to make it through second, Mary!”

“Sit down, Joey. I’m glad to see you. Pay yourself forty. That’s a lot of bad news.”

I’d been thinking about Mrs. Madden ever since our phone call. I had silently hoped against hope that somehow she and Joey would communicate even though she and I hadn’t been able to. Evidently that hadn’t happened.

I looked at Joey. “Okay. I hear you. So you got a tough teacher. You’re a tough kid. You can figure out how to get through second grade.”

Joey rolled slowly to one side and then silently toppled from his chair to the floor. He sprawled across the grey carpet – eyes closed, body limp as a rag doll. I sat watching. After a full minute had passed, Joey opened one eye and squinted up at me. I looked benignly back, waiting for the full show. There was no question that Joey knew how to put on a wonderful act.

Sure now that I was watching, Joey rolled his eyes up into his head so that white, pupil-less eyes stared out at me, and his legs and arms flailed up and down. The kids in school must have loved it.

“Okay now, Joey. That’s enough.” I reached down and hoisted him back up beside me. “We’ve only got forty-five minutes. We don’t have time for any of that stuff. Besides, I don’t like it. The next time you hit the floor it costs you one hundred.”

“One hundred!” Joey howled. “Cripes! You wouldn’t do that!” He put his hand protectively over the red plastic dish that held his chips.

“You know I would. But I’ll tell you what. This first month of school, every day of September that you make it through with Mrs. Madden I’ll pay you a hundred.”

“What do you mean, like … like if I don’t have to stay after school?”

“Right. And don’t get sent to the principal or have to miss gym. Things like that. You’re going to have to be so good, Joe. Not just a little good, but one hundred percent good every day. Never mind about the Red Sox – I know you can read and you’ll learn to read better. But you have to hand in whatever work Mrs. Madden gives you. Always remember your homework, keep your desk clean, keep yourself in your seat, raise your hand before you say anything, stay in line and a whole lot more.”

“I don’t know. It sounds like a pretty terrible life.”

“Well, Joey, consider the alternatives.”

“What’s alternatives?”

“Other choices. Like failing second and having to stay back and have Mrs. Madden all over again.”

“Oh, boy.”

During the fourth week of school I decided to drop in on Mrs. Madden. If my phone calls didn’t work, I had to find some other way to discover what was going on in school.

At ten after three I walked down the hall to second grade, nodding to the janitor. I’d been in the school many times to talk to other children’s teachers, but I’d never encountered Mrs. Madden before.

She was seated at her desk going over papers when I tapped on the window. Her grey hair was neatly and tightly curled against her head. The bow of her blouse hung in two perfect loops between the lapels of a maroon suit. Mrs. Madden got up and walked slowly across the room.

She opened the door and stood without smiling.

“Mrs. Madden? I’m Mary MacCracken,” I said.

“Yes. I thought as much.” She made no move to invite me inside.

“May I talk to you for ten minutes?” I knew all teachers were expected to stay until three thirty.

She looked at the clock over the door. “Three twelve. All right. Come in.”

I followed her to the front of the room, and she motioned me to a chair beside her desk. I sat facing Mrs. Madden, aware that the room was much more pleasant than I had expected. The large, sunny windows to my left were filled with leafy green plants of all sizes. A fish tank hummed on the window sill. The blackboard had the day’s homework assignment printed neatly in the left-hand corner, and five short sentences about a trip to the police station were lettered in the middle. Had Mrs. Madden actually taken her class to the police station?

I held two of Joey’s folders on my lap. One contained the written report of the testing I had done (I had asked the Stones’ permission to bring it), the other some of his recent work. But I didn’t open either. I was there to try to find out how Mrs. Madden and Joey were getting on. Did she realize the potential he had? Was he working? Was he learning?

“May I ask how Joey is doing?”

Mrs. Madden reached for her grade book. “You have the parents’ permission, I assume.” I nodded, and she read from the book: “Arithmetic: 68, 75, 90, incomplete, incomplete, 80. Reading workbook: 55, 72, incomplete, incomplete, incomplete, 84, incomplete, incomplete. Spelling: 45, 25, 60, 50. There are no incompletes in spelling because everyone takes the test on Friday, ready or not. Phonics: 60, 50, incomplete, incomplete, incomplete, incomplete, 60.”

Mrs. Madden snapped her grade book shut. “You will have to consult with the specials about gym, art, library, and remedial.”

“Thank you,” I said, putting my notebook back in my purse. “There seem to be a lot of incompletes.”

“Yes. Joseph often doesn’t complete his work. This is partly due to his not paying attention, so he doesn’t understand what to do. He always wants me to go over it again with him. I do not believe in this. He must learn to listen.

“The other reason he gets behind is that he’s out of the room so much,” Mrs. Madden continued. “Out with the reading teacher, out for some program or other. Out for this. Out for that. No wonder he gets behind in his class work.”

I got the strong impression that Mrs. Madden didn’t believe in remedial help any more than she did in tutors. Well, at least she didn’t seem overly anxious to get Joey out of her room, and that was a positive sign.

The clock ticked its way toward three twenty-five, and I stood up, to reassure Mrs. Madden that I would not linger.

“One last question. Would it be possible to borrow an extra copy of any of Joey’s books? Spelling, arithmetic, phonics?”

Mrs. Madden shrugged, stood up, smoothed out her unwrinkled maroon skirt. “Call Mr. Templar, our principal. That’s up to him.”

“Thank you,” I said as I walked toward the door. “I appreciate your time and your interest in Joe.”

Mrs. Madden accepted my appreciation with a nod as she eased me out the door. “I will tell you one thing,” Mrs. Madden said magnanimously. “It doesn’t show in the grade book, but that boy is a lot smarter than those Child Study Team tests show. A lot smarter!”

I stared at Mrs. Madden, restraining a nearly overwhelming impulse to hug her. “I agree,” I almost shouted. “But how did you find out? Did you give Joey some tests of your own?”

Mrs. Madden turned back to her classroom. Like a queen in her kingdom she pronounced, “After thirty years, I don’t need tests.”

Joey dragged the heavy plastic bag across my office floor. “Mr. Templar said to bring you these.” He dumped the contents onto the carpet beside the desk and moaned out loud as his reading, math, spelling, and phonics books fell out. “Oh, no. It’s horrible to have to do them in school. It’ll be even horribler to have to do them all over again here.”

We didn’t, of course, “do” the books, but Joey could show me where he was and what he didn’t understand. It was much easier for him than trying to explain it. Also, since Mrs. Madden proceeded page by page, chapter by chapter, I could look ahead and see what was coming up next, and let Joey become a little familiar with it before Mrs. Madden introduced it in class.

Mrs. Madden was still curt, but she was doing her part. She now answered my phone calls if I timed them right and sent Joey’s test papers in a sealed envelope on Fridays. She hadn’t complained or called the Stones in, except for the scheduled fall conference. All she told them then was that Joey still needed a lot of work, but that he was making progress. The main thing was what she didn’t say. There had been no mention of a special class.

My phone rang around noon one day in February. It was snowing hard and I had gone down to pick up the mail, so it took me five or six rings to get back to the phone.

“Mrs. MacCracken? This is Mrs. Madden. I almost hung up. I thought you must be out.” Disapproval edged her voice.

“Sorry.” I was so glad she’d initiated the call that it was worth sounding penitent.

“Yes. Well. Joseph is getting further and further behind in his B book. Phonics book, that is. He always has to go out when it’s time for phonics. Now he’s twenty pages behind – hasn’t even touched the magic e rule. I’d like him to do pages ninety-eight, one hundred one, one hundred five, and one hundred seven with you. That will give him an idea of what the others have covered. Don’t do the work for him. I want to see his own work. Send it in so I can check it. I’d have the specials do it with him, but they say they have too much work of their own.”

“All right,” I said, writing on the telephone book. “Page ninety-eight … could you give me those other pages again?”

I knew how the specials felt. This would take time that I would much rather spend on other things, but what mattered was that Mrs. Madden was becoming a member of our team. And that was a top priority.

There was no doubt about it. In spite of missed pages in the B book, Joey was flourishing. He added, he subtracted, he even multiplied a little. His facts still weren’t totally automatic and he sometimes got mixed up during subtraction and regrouping (another word for borrowing and carrying), but he understood what he was doing and he was one of the best in the class at problem solving.

With our combined efforts on phonics, word attack skills, and sight vocabulary, Joey’s reading was improving steadily. One of the things that helped most was that the Stones took turns reading to Joey every night. After Joey was washed and brushed and in bed, either Mr. or Mrs. Stone read to him for a half hour. To their joy, not only was he enjoying reading more, he was also sleeping better.

But only one thing was important to Joey. “Do you think she’ll let me be a Red Sox now?”

Not a Red Sox and not till April.

“Da-de-ah-da-dah!” Joey blew an imaginary trumpet in the doorway of my office. “The good news is, I’m a goddamn Oriole!”

“Joe – cool it. No swearing.”

“Well, I am. I got moved up yesterday. I’m in a group!”

A cause for celebration. Joey was no longer alone, isolated, different. Now he, like the others in his class, belonged.

In June Joey graduated from second grade and was promoted to third. On my testing he had moved up to the 54th percentile in silent reading vocabulary and to the 69th percentile in comprehension. His math was on grade level, spelling slightly below.

On the school tests, Joey was on grade level in all areas, and Mrs. Madden wrote on his report card, “Marked improvement in behavior and academic skills.” High praise indeed from Mrs. Madden.

One unexpected piece of news was that Mrs. Madden was retiring. I couldn’t imagine her classroom without her – or the other way around. She had believed in Joey and given him a safe, structured place where he could learn. Mr. Templar assured me that it was her choice. She’d always wanted to travel and was looking forward to retirement. Maybe. But it would take an awful lot of lakes and mountains to make up for Joey.

If it was sad to hear that Mrs. Madden was retiring, it was good to hear that Mrs. Stone had decided to freelance and use her computer skills at home rather than in an office.

“It’s funny,” she told me on the phone. “I actually like being home now; I don’t know whether it’s because Joey’s better or because I don’t feel so guilty anymore. Even though I never even realized that I felt guilty. All I know is that now I want to be around the kids as much as I can. I never would’ve believed I’d ever say that. I’m taking the summer off and then come fall I’m going to start working at home.

“Al feels the same. He hardly ever works weekends anymore. In fact, he’s the one who bought me the home computer.”

I was happy for them and for Joey. But I was also glad that Joey remained himself. I loved the slightly lopsided, ebullient, dramatic part of him as much as or more than the part that had made it into the Orioles.

He came for one last visit before summer vacation and we picked out some books and workbooks that would review the skills he’d learned in second grade. He promised to keep the study sheet I gave him that would show how he spent his twenty minutes of work each day while he was at the lake.

“How does it feel, Joey?” I asked. “Do you feel good about this year?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. I guess so. I mean, I know I’m pretty good at reading now, and I can add and even subtract pretty good. I don’t fall out of my chair or get in as much trouble. But multiplication’s hard and you got to be able to do two digits in third. I’ll never get that.”

He shook his head and stood up. “See, Mary. It’s like this with me. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

I laughed. “You’ll get it in the fall, Joey,” I said.

Joey’s taxi was late, but Joey was my last appointment for the day and I was glad to have a few extra minutes with him before he left for vacation. We munched on nuts and raisins and the popcorn I always kept in the office as we chatted and waited for the taxi.

A horn beeped and Joey picked up his books, workbooks, and papers. He grabbed an extra handful of popcorn and ran through the door and down the steps.

Halfway to the cab he turned back to wave, and as he did, his feet somehow slid out from under him and he fell flat, face down in the driveway, surrounded by books, papers, and popcorn.

“Oh, Joey …” I started toward him, but before I was down the steps, Joey was back on his feet, shrugging his shoulders in my direction, grinning, waving one last time.

By the next day the squirrels had eaten the popcorn, and I’ll never be quite sure whether Joey’s fall was an accident or his idea of a perfect exit.

Second grade had gone so well that Joey and I both took the whole summer off. Joey was at his cottage at Lake Champlain; I was at our summer house in Connecticut. We were also both late getting back in gear, so Joey had been in school for over a week before I saw him for the first time.

Obviously, something had happened since I’d last seen Joey, and whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Joey was a wreck. He sat behind my office desk opening drawers, shuffling papers, bending paper clips. His nails were bitten down to the quick. His old-time nervous restlessness was running high, but there was also a new listless quality that bothered me even more.

“What’s wrong, Joey?”

He hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“Do you like your teacher?”

“Not much. She’s new.”

“It’s okay to be new. Everybody’s new sometime. What don’t you like?”

“I don’t know. I can’t explain it. She gets me all mixed up.”

I didn’t press further. If Joey was forced to continue to struggle, trying to put emotions he didn’t understand into words, it would only make him more anxious.

I switched to something more concrete. “Did you bring your notebook?”

Joey dragged his book bag onto the desk. One look confirmed that things were not going well. Already, covers were coming off books and scraps of papers and pencils mingled with gum wrappers and an odd sock in the bottom of the bag.

I lifted out the notebook. There was no assignment pad in the front; in fact, there was nothing at all in the notebook except blank paper.

“Do you have homework for tomorrow?” I asked.

Again Joey shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Joe …” I began.

But Joey interrupted. “I mean it,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on. She reads out the homework so fast I can’t even hear it, and I sure can’t write it down. She never puts it on the board. It doesn’t matter anyway, because even if I do it she never collects it.

“Then like in spelling, she hands out these purple dittos with the spelling words all scrambled up. She says it’s a game to help us learn our spelling words, but I never even know what the spelling words are ’cause I can’t get them unscrambled. Everything’s like that – English, math, social studies – everything’s all mixed up.”

Poor Joey. The last thing he needed was a disorganized classroom and an inexperienced teacher. He had to work hard enough to keep things straight inside his own head without having outside confusion heaped on top of it. What was Mr. Templar thinking of? He knew the kind of classroom Joey needed. But the way it was now, Joey was going to have to muster up his own skills in order to survive.

“Listen, Joey. I hear you, but I don’t want to see all you’ve learned go down the tube just because you have a new teacher. You have to get your assignments down – and you have to clean up your act. If you don’t hear what your teacher says, then you have to go up after school and ask her again.”

“Sure. And by the time I get out all the other guys will be gone.”

“Then go in early and get it before school starts. I’ll talk to her, Joe, but you’ve got to do your part.”

We talked about this and Joey softened a little. “Yeah – okay. Anyway, what’s expanded notation? See, I did write my math homework here on my book cover, but I don’t get it.”

We discussed expanded notation for the rest of his time, and Joey was doing it easily by the end of the hour. But somehow this didn’t make me feel much better, and I watched uneasily from my office window as Joey unlocked his bike from a tree. Before he got on he took a pair of headphones from the pocket of his jacket and clamped them on his head, as if to seal off the rest of the world.

I called Joey’s mother at home the next day. No answer. On impulse, I called her old office number; she picked up on the first ring. “I know you can’t talk now,” I said, “but I was wondering if we could get together sometime. Your husband, too. I’m worried about Joey.”

“I was going to call you,” Mrs. Stone replied. “He’s been terrible at home. One thing Joey always had was a sense of humor. Not anymore. Everything anybody does is wrong. Listen, I know Al wants to talk to you too – but he got this new promotion and he’s working late every night. Actually, I’m back at work too, as you can see,” she giggled nervously. “Or hear.” There was a slight pause. “I guess we both changed our minds. Anyway, I hate to ask it, but do you think you could come over on Saturday afternoon? Rich has early football practice, and Joey and Bill always go and hang around to watch him, so we’ll be able to talk.”

I hesitated. I tried to save the weekends for my own family. But I was worried about Joey. I had the feeling that he was getting in deeper every day.

“How’s two o’clock?” I asked. “I’ll check in with his teacher before Saturday. Ms. Ansara, is it?”

“I guess so,” Mrs. Stone said. “At least that’s what it sounds like. Back-to-school night isn’t until October. Uh-oh. I gotta go. See you Saturday.”

I stopped by Mr. Templar’s office the next day to return Joey’s second-grade books and to try to get the ones for third grade. I also needed to find out about Joey’s teacher. Mr. Templar was a good principal – fair and caring, about both the children and his staff – and putting Joey in with an inexperienced teacher wasn’t consistent with what I knew about him.

“Ms. Answera, you mean. Third grade. Yes, she’s new, but she got good grades at college.” Mr. Templar made a wry face. “Whatever that’s worth. How they expect us to teach children when they don’t teach the teachers is beyond me.

“Look, I know it must be hard for Joey, but it’s equally hard for Ms. Answera. And me. Do you know how many of my teachers left this year? Over a third of my staff, including both third-grade teachers, are new. Do you have any idea how many parents are calling me? Well, I do the best I can. What more can I say? I can’t even blame the teachers. They can get a lot more money as well as more respect someplace else. Anyway, come on, I’ll take you down and introduce you.”

The third-grade class was pouring in from gym. They’d been out in the yard in the warm, sunny September weather and now, hot and sweaty, they pushed and shoved one another through the classroom door. Ms. Answera adjusted the strap of her blue sundress as she teetered back and forth on high-heeled sandals, cautioning the class to quiet down.

I looked around for Joey. Situations like this could set him off like a Roman candle. But not this time. Joey walked by, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets, oblivious to everything that was going on; even his red hair seemed dull and lifeless. I could not believe he was allowed to wear headphones in school, but he had them on and no one seemed to notice.

“Ms. Answera,” Mr. Templar said, “I know this isn’t the best timing, but Mrs. MacCracken isn’t in our school very often, and I wanted you two to have the chance to meet. Mrs. MacCracken works with Joey Stone.”

Ms. Answera peered at me through violet-tinted glasses, big as saucers. “Pleased to meet you,” she said.

“Listen, I’ll come back tomorrow before school, if that’s all right? You don’t need interruptions on a day like this.”

“Sure thing,” Ms. Answera answered amiably. “That’d be fine.”

I waved to Joey before I left, but if he saw me he gave no sign. He slouched against the coat closet, headphones in place, eyes focused on something out of sight.

I was more concerned than ever after my visit to the school. I didn’t blame Mr. Templar or Ms. Answera, and besides, blaming the system wouldn’t help Joey. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have fought so hard to keep him in a regular class. If Joey was in special ed now, there would be fewer kids and less confusion, and probably the same teacher as the year before.

Mrs. Stone was watering the lawn when I pulled up in front of her house.

“Thank you for taking time on a Saturday,” she said, as we walked down the front walk.

She smiled, but before she could open the door, her smile disappeared. A loud, angry, male voice shouted, “Get out of here! Right now! Damn it! I told you a hundred times! No food in the den! I don’t care if that’s where the television is. This place is a mess! Now get that plate back to the kitchen, you little pig.”

“That’s Grandpa.” Gail Stone sighed. “The boys drive him crazy, especially Joey. Mom died early this summer, and with his blood pressure I didn’t dare leave him alone. So we sold their house and he moved in here. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Anyway,” she said, “let’s go out back. Al will be right down.”

There was a small terrace at the far end of the yard, and Mrs. Stone motioned me to a canvas chair and handed me a glass of iced tea.

Al Stone came out from the house and across the backyard. He looked tired, thinner than I remembered. Something in his hair glinted in the sunlight, and I stared in disbelief. The metal sidepieces of headphones identical to those Joey wore reflected the afternoon sun.

Al slipped the headphones off as he approached and shook my hand. “Good to see you. How’ve you been?”

“Fine,” I replied, still riveted to the headphones.

“Oh,” he said, following my eyes. “These? Only way to survive around here.”

“Gailllll? Where are you? Gailllll?” Grandpa stood in the back doorway, calling plaintively.

“Excuse me. I’ll just be a minute,” Gail Stone said apologetically, as she scurried across the yard.

Although the sun shone and the birds sang, I shivered in the canvas chair. It was clear that Joey’s world was coming apart, both at home and in school.

Al Stone said nothing all afternoon. It was as though he too had turned off the world. Although his headphones were off, he was still listening to something else. He was pleasant but quiet, and either resisted or ignored every attempt I made to draw him into the conversation. Mrs. Stone and I talked, but all the important things went unsaid.

Gail Stone did not mention that she was torn between her obligations to her father and the resentment of her husband. All afternoon she ran back and forth between them, trying to keep the peace, while we talked in snatches about what was happening to Joey.

Al Stone did not talk about the anger he felt at having his home invaded by a querulous, demanding old man – he just tuned out. He stayed at work as late as he could and put on his headphones when he got home. When I commented on the inappropriateness of Joey wearing headphones in school, Al Stone smiled pleasantly and said that he hadn’t realized Joey wore them in school.

But I never did point out to Al Stone that his actions spoke more strongly than his words. Joey, like his father, was shutting out the confusion of his world by putting on his headphones. In fact, Gail Stone murmured as she walked me to my car that both father and son often fell asleep with headphones in place, music blasting into their eardrums. Who knew what effect this had on Joey’s auditory processing? How was Joey ever going to make it? His world at school was a jumble of confusion; his world at home was filled with anger, resentment, guilt, and noise. I didn’t see how things could be any worse for Joey.

But I was wrong. Grandpa dropped dead from a heart attack two months later, just before Thanksgiving, and instead of improving, things got even worse. Now Joey stopped talking almost completely. He did no homework and, according to his mother, “didn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.” Gail Stone and I talked by phone once or twice a week. She was as troubled as I was and just as confused. None of us could figure it out. As far as we knew, Joey had been frightened of Grandpa, and it would certainly be expected that Joey would be relieved not to have Grandpa after him all the time.

I tried to talk to Joey, but he tuned me out as effectively as if his headphones were in place. He worked while he was in my office and most of his skills were still there, but he handed in absolutely no homework and Ms. Answera reported that he did not “contribute” in class. Mr. Templar called to say that Ms. Answera had told him she didn’t think Joey belonged in a regular class.

I strongly recommended that the Stones arrange for Joey to see a psychologist, but Al Stone wouldn’t hear of it.

“Joey’s not crazy,” he said. “Grandpa was the crazy one. Joey’ll be all right now that Grandpa’s not around. Just give him time. It’s only been a few weeks.”

I wondered if Al Stone had taken off his headphones yet. I knew that Joey hadn’t.

It was almost Christmas, a month since Grandpa had died. I put a little tree at one end of my office and decorated it with paper chains and ornaments that the children brought in. There was a small wrapped gift for each of them beneath the tree to take home after their last visit before the holidays. My other children were all thriving. Only Joey remained cold and silent, nervously chewing his fingernails.

Just before Joey arrived for his last session before the holidays, I impulsively scratched out the lesson I had planned and decided to read to Joey instead. If he couldn’t tell me what was wrong, maybe we could at least share a story. It was a gentle tale, and the boy in the story had small worries of his own. There was no fireplace or chimney in his house, and he was certain that Santa wouldn’t know how to find him. Finally his mother persuaded him to hang his stocking from a post at the foot of his bed and to go to sleep thinking loving thoughts. Santa, of course, found the stocking, and in the morning the boy woke to find it fat and overflowing with toys and candy.

In the center of one page there was a black line drawing of a narrow bed with four spool posts; a bulging striped stocking dangled from the post at the bottom of the bed.

I started to close the book, but Joey, sitting beside me, pushed it open. Silently he traced the bed with his finger. I moved my hand to cover his, but he shoved me away impatiently. Over and over he traced the drawing of the bed from head to foot.

I thought I heard him say something and I leaned closer.

“The bed,” Joey mumbled.

“What did you say, Joey?” I asked softly.

Joey didn’t hear me, or if he did he gave no indication of it. But he was surely talking, if only to himself. “On the bed. On the bed.”

“On the bed,” I repeated. “Something was on the bed.”

Now Joey responded, nodding his head. “On the bed. He was on the bed.”

I willed myself to tune to Joey, to understand what he was saying.

I repeated, “He was on the bed.” I took a chance, adding a little more. “He was lying on the bed.”

Joey continued nodding, almost frenzied now. “Lying on the bed. Lying on the bed. Grandpa.”

Grandpa?

Suddenly Joey turned his body so that he faced me squarely. His voice was flat and cold, but he was talking directly to me, not to himself or the book. “Grandpa was on my bed when he died. I killed him.”

“No,” I said. “No, of course not. You didn’t kill him.”

“Yes,” Joey insisted. “Yes, I did. I even listened to him die.”

My eyes stayed locked with Joey’s, and he went on talking in the same flat voice.

“See, he chased me,” Joey said. “I didn’t know he was going to. I just ran out of the TV room ’cause he got so mad when I imitated the way he yells. I ran up to my room and hid under my bed so he couldn’t get me.

“But then I heard him coming after me, running all the way up the stairs and sort of bumping along the wall. Then all of a sudden he came crashing into my room and fell down on my bed real hard and began making these choking noises.”

The way Joey told it made it so clear. Joey’s facility for imitating and dramatizing must have infuriated Grandpa. No wonder he’d charged after the boy, forgetting his own high blood pressure.

“Then after a while he stopped and it was real quiet … and that was even worse,” Joey went on, “because then it began to get dark and I knew I had to get out of there before Rich and Bill got home and found me under that bed. If they found me there, they’d know for sure I’d done it.”

There were three loud knocks on my office door. My next child had arrived. “Just a minute,” I called as softly as I could, never moving my eyes from Joey’s. “Go on, Joey. Don’t stop.”

“I got out,” he said, his voice just above a whisper, “but it was hard ’cause the bed was way on top of me ’cause Grandpa was so fat, but I squeezed out and ran downstairs and turned on all the lights. The TV was already on, and so I just stayed there in front of it, real quiet.

“When Mom found him … see, Grandpa didn’t come to supper like usual, so they started calling him and then they went looking for him, and after a while Mom found him in my room. And she began to scream and cry and yell that he was dead. That’s when I knew I’d killed him for sure. I’d been thinking he was maybe just sick. But he wasn’t, he was dead.”

The knocks sounded on the door again. “One more minute,” I called back.

“Don’t tell,” Joey said, panicking, pulling at my sleeve. “I didn’t mean to tell you.”

“Joey, listen. Grandpa was very old and very sick. He had a heart attack. Your mom told me he did. That happens to lots of old people.”

“I don’t even know when he died,” Joey said. “Maybe he was still alive when I left. Maybe if I’d called a doctor, he would’ve been all right. Besides, I wanted him to die. Sometimes I even prayed that he would. Maybe my praying made it come true.”

No wonder Joey hadn’t told anyone. He must have been terrified, lying there alone trapped underneath Grandpa while he died, later convinced that he had killed him.

Joey put his head down on the desk. I put my arms around him for a second and then I phoned his mother.

Joey stayed in my office through my next two appointments. He lay curled under a woolen afghan on the couch and either slept or pretended to, until his mother arrived.

In the waiting room, I asked Gail Stone if it was true that she had found Grandpa in Joey’s room.

She nodded. “Why?”

“Why didn’t you say something at the time?” I asked in return.

Tears gathered in Mrs. Stone’s eyes. “I don’t know. Joey was taking it so hard I thought it would just make it worse if he realized that I’d found Grandpa in his bed. Joey was downstairs watching TV the whole time it was going on. I think Dad must have been on his way to the bathroom just across the hall from Joey’s room. All I can think is that maybe he felt sick or dizzy or had a spell and thought he’d go in and lie down on Joey’s bed for a minute. Nobody will ever know for sure. What does this have to do with Joey, anyway? Why’d you call me? Is anything wrong?”

The next day Gail Stone and I met in my office during her lunch hour.

“Al and I talked for hours last night after the boys were in bed,” she said. “It really shook Al up to realize what had been going on in Joey’s head and he – Al, I mean – had never suspected it.

“Al’s a good man. He works hard, he’s smart, he loves his family. He’s been true to me through thick and thin. It was my fault – bringing Grandpa home. I know that now. I think I was still trying to please him, like I did when I was little. It never worked then either. I should have just hired somebody to stay with him, seeing that his house was so close by.

“Well, never mind,” Gail continued. “It’s over now. We’ll mend. But will Joey? That’s what we want to know. I know you probably think we should all go into therapy, but Al’s dead set against it. He says we at least ought to give ourselves a chance first. He says he’ll talk to me, he’ll talk to the boys, but he doesn’t want to have to start talking to some stranger – at least not now. I understand that. But I have to know that we won’t lose Joey again.”

“I know,” I said, struggling for words. I did believe family therapy would help, but not if it were forced. “How do you feel about it?” I asked.

“I’ve been thinking all night,” Gail replied. “I didn’t sleep much. I guess none of us did, except Joey. He slept the clock around, and this morning he seemed the best I’d seen him in months. Ate two bowls of oatmeal – told his dad all about Grandpa, when I would have thought he wouldn’t mention a word. I let him stay home from school today, and Al took the day off, too. When I left, Joey was watching TV and Al was reading the paper, peaceful as could be.

“I think we can do it. Al and I go back a long way, and we’ve seen a lot of troubles along with the good times. Besides, Al’s a determined one. Once he puts his mind to something, he sticks to it.”

I thought about Joey as she talked. He had made such progress the year before. He had turned his high level of energy toward active learning. He had stopped playing the fool, although he still liked to joke and kid around. He loved people; he was intelligent and well-coordinated; he had a good ear for music and an unusual flair for the dramatic. His strengths were all still there. They just couldn’t get through in the confusion of school and the tension at home.

“Will it be any different at your house now? Because with Ms. Answera in the classroom, I don’t think there is going to be any big change at school. And you know Joey. He thrives when things are structured and safe and organized – and he falls apart when there’s change and confusion or he’s scared.”

Gail nodded. “And so do I. I’m not very organized myself. I know that, but what I’m saying is we’re going to try. You told me once that everyone could grow – not just children. Remember?”

“I remember,” I said.

“And you still believe it’s true?” she asked.

“Yes,” I nodded. “It’s still true.”

“Well, for starters,” Gail said, “I’m giving up my job. I have that computer Al got me a year ago, and we almost made it that time.

“I guess what I’m telling you is, I’m ready to be the best wife and mother I can.”

I smiled at her and stood up. “It sounds to me as though you and Al have thought it through and that your minds are pretty well made up. You know I believe parents know their children better than anyone else. Anyway, if it feels right to you and Al, I’d talk to the boys and go ahead and give it a try.”

Who says wishes don’t come true? Ms. Answera went home to Florida for Christmas vacation and never returned. And even more wonderful for Joey, Mr. Templar was able to persuade Mrs. Madden to come back and teach Joey’s third-grade class for the remainder of the year.

“Portugal has been around for quite some time,” Mrs. Madden said when I went over to school to talk to her. “It’s likely it’ll still be there six months from now.”

Once again I had to stick my hands in my pockets to keep from hugging her. Joey would be all right now – at least for this year, with Mrs. Madden back in charge at school and Joey’s mom and dad a team again at home.

I continued seeing Joey twice a week through third and fourth grades and worked closely with his teachers. He accumulated a solid foundation of knowledge on which he could build and a growing confidence in his ability to learn. He was also the star of every class play. His tremendous natural energy projected out from the stage, and within minutes he held the audience in the palm of his hand.

We cut our sessions to once a week halfway through fifth grade and ended completely in sixth.

I was there for Joey’s graduation in an aisle seat. He shone like a burnished penny – dressed in a new blue suit, his red hair washed and neatly combed. He managed to sit still through the graduation exercises and receive his diploma without incident, but he caught my eye on the way out. The lopsided grin lit his face, and he did a perfect miniature imitation pratfall as he passed my seat.

As I said earlier, there was always something about Joey …