Just Another Kid: Each was a child no one could reach – until one amazing teacher embraced them all

“Other times I just drank,” she said. “That was the other way to get through those parties. To get too drunk to care. I could take them then, mostly because I never remembered what happened.”

Silence.

“Have you had a drinking problem for long?”

She shrugged.

“Have you gotten help specifically for it at any time?”

“No.”

I regarded her. She looked over then, and our eyes met briefly.

“I’m not really into that sort of thing, into those kinds of programs like AA. I went once to an AA meeting and I had to have a drink afterwards to get over it.”

There was something about the way she said that which made me think she was pulling my leg a bit, so I smiled.

“It isn’t funny. They aren’t for me, those kinds of things. I think I’d rather be an alcoholic.”

“There are a lot of alternatives,” I said.

“I can stop if I want to.”

“I see.”

“I can. I mean, sure, I get drunk occasionally, but when I’ve done it, I’ve meant to. It didn’t happen because I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t really out of control.”

“Oh.”

“Everybody gets drunk sometimes.”

I looked at her.

She looked down at her hands in her lap. The tears reappeared.

I realized I needed to back off. She wasn’t kidding anybody and she knew it. But I could tell that if I pressed the issue, she’d only grow more defensive and most likely simply get up and leave.

“Do you have any family out here? Any of your own family?”

“I’ve only got one brother. But he lives back in Pennsylvania.”

Our conversation continued in much the same way, and it was bloody hard work the whole time. Dr. Taylor wasn’t exaggerating her difficulty in making conversation. Even when she relaxed, it didn’t come any easier for her. Indeed, she was one of the most inarticulate adults I had ever encountered. If I asked a question and it could be answered with a gesture, it was. If that wouldn’t work and a single-word response would suffice, she opted for that. Had I not known ahead of time that she had had an education, nothing in her conversational abilities would have clued me in. I never in a million years would have guessed she had a doctorate in anything.

However, our conversation did progress. With excruciating slowness, I was given bleak insight into the workings of the Considyne household. Gilded by the ostentatious trappings of wealth, the whole family sounded emotionally bankrupt. They lived like a group of threatened hermit crabs, each person entrenched, isolated, untrusting of the others. Interestingly, the only one apparently to prosper in this setup was Leslie.

I was getting an extremely different picture of Leslie than I’d had initially. At the beginning of the year, I’d perceived her as the stereotype of a neglected child. She was so sweet and docile, so withdrawn, that I had endeavored to give her every spare moment of warmth and attention I could afford, occasionally even at the expense of the other children, in an effort to bring her back to life, as if she were some emotional Sleeping Beauty. However, during the conference with her father, I’d had my first inklings that things were different than they seemed. Now, talking with her mother, I realized Leslie was not suffering from lack of attention. Far from it!

Indeed, Leslie was the hub of the Considyne household. It ran to her specifications and hers alone. She ate when and where she pleased; she slept when and where she pleased; she even eliminated when and where she pleased. She indulged in her “self-expression,” as Tom Considyne put it, getting into everything at any hour of the day or night and leaving behind her messes that could take literally days to clear up. No one endeavored to stop Leslie in any of these activities. When required to conform to more conventional behavior, Leslie sharply reprimanded those around her by withdrawing and giving nothing.

The clock on the wall worked its way around past six, then 6:30 and finally seven. My stomach was growling, and I had to lean against the edge of the table to make it unaudible, but the conversation was winding down too, more from fatigue than anything else. About 7:20, a weary silence came at last and lay down between us. I didn’t have the energy to shoo it away.

Dr. Taylor looked over at me. Her anxiety had gone completely over the course of the two hours, and she now regarded me in that peculiarly thorough way she had. It was a very searching look, as if she expected to locate something and absorb it from me. To be examined like that was disconcerting.

Dr. Taylor finally looked away. She had a tissue in her lap and she fiddled with it. “You know what I want?” she asked quietly.

“What’s that?”

“I want to be a better mother. I don’t want Leslie to wind me up like she does.” She paused and glanced over. “I want to be like you are with her.”

I smiled slightly.

“I watch you on the playground. You’re happy with her. Can you teach me to be like that?”

“Well, I expect it’s a little easier for me. She isn’t mine.”

She ducked her head, looking down into her lap for a few moments, then a quick glance across to me again. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’ve had an idea in my head,” she said softly. Her voice grew cautious sounding. “But I didn’t know how to ask you about it.”

“What is it?”

“Well …” she hesitated, head down.

“Can you tell me?”

“You’re going to think I’m being silly.”

“I can’t really tell, until I hear. What have you got in mind?”