A Safe Place for Joey (19 page)

I lifted Alice’s feet out of my lap and got up and walked around the office in pure frustration. Dr. Volpe had made it very clear to me that he was referring Alice to me for “tutoring in arithmetic, not therapy” and that he would take care of whatever counseling was needed.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Dr. Volpe had said when we had first spoken, his slight accent rolling across the
r
, “but I must remind you that learning disability specialists are just that – specialists in learning, not in therapy. Sometimes there is a tendency to forget.”

I had not forgotten. How could I? But what did it matter how well Alice understood math if she was totally miserable both in and out of school?

I sat back down again. “Alice, it doesn’t make any sense for you to be so unhappy
and constantly fighting with both your mom and your teacher. What does Dr. Volpe say about all this?”

Alice shrugged. “I haven’t really seen him for a while. Mom goes there during the day when Billy and I are in school.”

Wonderful. Family therapy seemed to have shrunk. Shrunk by a shrink. I debated sharing this with Alice – she could have passed it on to Sigmund. I stopped just in
time, reminding myself of my own belief in the importance of working as a team.

Instead I called Dr. Volpe after Alice had left, and he confirmed what she had said. Family therapy had evolved into individual therapy for Mrs. Martin.

“The father is virtually unavailable to either therapy or his family,” Dr. Volpe said. “He is away both physically and emotionally most of the time. Alice
is getting a great deal of support from you. Billy is doing well by himself. Mrs. Martin is the one who feels deserted and bereft. Alone in a new town with limited support from her husband, constantly facing criticism about the way she rears her children, particularly Alice. She lets Billy dress pretty much as he wants. And, of course, he’s not on any medication and doesn’t have Alice’s learning
problems.

“But Mrs. Martin is much more emotionally involved with Alice, which, as you know, is not rare between the mother and the so-called wounded child. In fact, there’s a touch of symbiosis on her part, and the fact that Alice is adopted and that Mrs. Martin was the one who pushed for the adoption seems to heighten her guilt and her involvement. She is also a very tense, anxious person
herself, and of course her anxiety feeds Alice’s and vice versa. In any event, I continue to see Mrs. Martin because she’s the one who’s available, and I believe I can help the whole family best by helping her learn to handle her own needs.”

“But what about Alice?” I couldn’t help asking. “Somebody’s got to do something about Alice. It’s my turn to apologize to you if I sound rude, Dr. Volpe,
but the school psychologist did refer Alice to you for help.”

There was a moment’s silence on the other end of the line. Then Dr. Volpe replied in a voice even more distant than usual, “Indeed. Indeed. An excellent point. I think you should be more in touch with the school. Certainly that’s where learning takes place. Or is supposed to. And as I pointed out earlier, you are the learning
specialist, Mrs. MacCracken. I, of course, will be reviewing Alice’s emotional state periodically and am in constant communication with her through her mother. Thank you for calling.”

I replaced the phone somewhat more loudly than necessary.

I had worked with dozens of clinical psychologists and psychiatrists and was constantly impressed by their knowledge and sensitivity, but I certainly
wasn’t impressed with Dr. Volpe at the moment. “In constant communication through her mother.” Some wonderful communication that was.

By the next morning my blood was a little cooler and my mind a little clearer. The next step was obviously a conference with Mrs. Martin and then with Alice’s teacher and the school psychologist.

Mrs. Martin sat in the same place on the couch as Alice
had, but her feet were close together on the floor, her slightly heavy body upright and her brown hair pinned into a tight bun across the back of her head. But leaning forward, her face flushed, she was almost pretty in her eagerness. “Dr. Volpe is helping us – well, me – see how to meet Alice’s needs. But she is so difficult; she resists everything I try to do for her, even to taking important
medication.”

I nodded. “I heard about the sandwich.”

“Alice means so much to me,” Mrs. Martin went on. “She’s our oldest, you know, and a girl, and, well, it isn’t generally known but Alice is adopted. Mr. Martin was against it, but I wanted a baby so much and I couldn’t seem to get pregnant, so he finally agreed. In fact, he fell in love with her, too. He couldn’t help it – she was
such a beautiful baby. But then before Alice was a year old I discovered I was pregnant with Billy, and with Alice awake and crying two or three times a night, neither of us got much sleep. But I can’t complain. Both our families lived nearby. You see, both Mr. Martin and I went to the same grammar school out in Kenoba, Kansas, and our families had been friends for ages, so I had lots of company
and hands to help with all that needed doing.”

Words continued to pour out of Mrs. Martin. “Besides, Billy was easy. It was only Alice that needed extra care. And I suppose I felt responsible for her because, as I said before, I’d been the one to insist on adopting her. And then, you probably can’t see it now, but I always thought we looked a lot alike.”

Mrs. Martin leaned further
forward, inviting me to inspect her face.

“Yes,” I said. “There is a resemblance – the same high cheekbones, the same colour hair. Although your eyes are blue and Alice’s are brown.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Martin said, “and I suppose the likeness is harder to see now because I’ve put on weight since I’ve been here.

“Now that the house is decorated and the children in school all day, there’s
not that much that needs doing. And, I have to admit, I miss home. Although this is supposed to be home. Still, it doesn’t feel that way. We were all so close, both families … and it’s different here in the East. I mean back home there were neighborhoods. Nobody would think of letting someone move in without taking them some homemade bread or something or other.”

I looked at Mrs. Martin’s
polished navy blue shoes and thought of Alice. I certainly couldn’t hold Mrs. Martin’s feet in my lap; in fact, it was hard even to imagine her barefoot. But how was I ever going to get through to her? She had been in my office for twenty minutes, and we had yet to get to Alice. Somehow her loneliness had a kind of desperate quality, and I understood Dr. Volpe’s view a little better. It must be
very hard for Mrs. Martin in a strange town, away from her family and friends. It certainly wouldn’t help for me to rush into criticisms of her handling of Alice’s clothes and medication.

“How does Mr. Martin like his new job?” I asked, trying to move the conversation along.

Mrs. Martin’s face closed, and she leaned back away from me. “He likes it fine,” she said. “Too much, if anything,
if you ask me.

“Now what about Alice?” Mrs. Martin asked on her own. “I know you’ve only seen her a few times, but do you think she’ll ever understand math? She seems to have it all backward.”

“I’m sure she will. Once she’s shown in a way she understands. But right now, she’s so caught up in trying to fit in at a new school that she isn’t focusing on arithmetic that much. Now, the
most important thing in the world to Alice is not to seem different. She just wants to be like everybody else.”

Mrs. Martin leaned forward again. “But that’s just it – she is different. She’s not like everybody else. I mean I know she’s overly sensitive and she does need medicine to calm her down, but so do I. But what I mean about Alice’s being different is that she’s special. I mean you
should see the books she reads, and the poetry she writes, and the way she talks. She even named our rabbit after Sigmund Freud, so she’d have someone in the house who would understand her. Now, have you ever heard of an eleven-year-old doing that?”

“No, I haven’t. And I agree with you that Alice is intelligent and sensitive. But it’s because of those very attributes that she needs to fit
in at least on the outside, so the others won’t make fun of her.”

“Make fun of her?”

“Her clothes seem strange to the other fifth graders, and also they think she must be sick if she has to take medicine,” I said as gently as I could.

Not gently enough. Mrs. Martin stood up. “It is not my fault or Alice’s if those children don’t understand quality. Alice is quality, and so are
her clothes – the finest materials made by the best dressmakers. As for her medicine, that’s none of the other children’s business, now, is it?” Her voice was abrupt, and she moved toward the door.

I put out my hand, and only as I said good-bye could I see the tears standing in Mrs. Martin’s blue eyes. I covered her hand with my free hand. “Moves are always hard for everyone,” I said. “But
Alice is smart and you are, too, and we’ll get it worked out. Do you think we could have lunch sometime?”

Mrs. Martin patted the tears on her cheeks. “I’d like that very much,” she said. “Thank you.”

Alice slid out of her shoes and tucked her feet underneath her on the couch. “Thanks for talking to Mommy; it really helped.”

“It did?” I asked in genuine surprise. “I thought maybe
I’d made things worse.”

“Nope. Mom actually told me she’d been here and that you were going to have lunch together sometime. Usually she never tells me anything except what to do and how to live my life. Anyway, it was kind of nice just talking to her. You know what I mean, just talking about something, not arguing. So I discussed it with Sigmund. You remember Sigmund?”

“How could
I forget?”

“Well, anyway, I discussed things with Sigmund. He communicates now, and he suggested that I make my own sandwich, put the pill in a corner, and punch that corner with a fork. That way, I can bite off the corner, be prepared for the pill, and get it over with and then be able to relax and enjoy the sandwich, and the other kids wouldn’t even notice. And it works. Mom even likes
me making the sandwich.”

“That’s terrific, Alice,” I said, meaning it. “In fact, it’s so terrific we’re actually going to spend the rest of our time talking about math.”

Alice groaned.

“It’s not so bad. Actually, it’s a lot easier than it seems. Most of elementary school math – kindergarten through fifth grade – is made up of four things. They call them operations because they’re
something you do to numbers, just like doctors do to people. And I imagine you already know these four operations, or their names, anyway – addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Adding just means putting things together, subtracting is separating them, multiplying is putting them together in equal groups, and dividing is sharing.

“Later on, in fifth, there’s maybe a little
fractions or decimals, but I can show you those.”

Alice said, “It doesn’t sound hard the way you describe it, but when they put those papers in front of me I can’t remember anything. It all just looks like some sort of stuff from outer space.”

“All right. Let’s start with the first operation – addition. Here, take this paper and give me something to add.”

Alice hesitated but
then wrote:

“Okay,” I said, “That plus sign tells me that I’ve got to put those
three numbers together. I start at the top and I run my pencil through the numbers, so if the columns are long I can write it out on the side. Like I’d go three and two are five and write five somewhere out on the side – and five and four are nine. I put that in one place. Do you know about places or place value?”

Alice shook her head.

“All right. We’ll talk about that in a minute.
Then I go back up to the top of the next column, and one of the things that always used to get me mixed up is that you work right to left in addition – just the opposite of reading. But anyway, add straight down – two and four are six plus five is eleven.”

“But suppose I don’t know that,” Alice said, “that six plus five is eleven, or what thirteen minus eight is, or seven times six. Suppose
I don’t know any of that?”

“Well, that’s my job,” I said. “To show you how you can learn them. And you can. But for now write down six (two plus four is six), so you don’t forget that, and ask yourself: what’s six plus five?”

“I don’t know,” Alice answered.

“Ask yourself what’s five plus five?”

“Ten. Oh, I get it. Six is one more than five, so six plus five is eleven.”

“Exactly. Now eventually you’ll know it automatically, just like you know your telephone number. But until you do, I’ll show you ways to figure it out.

“Now, I’m going to write down a harder one, because I want to explain about places.”