Talker's Graduation (9 page)

thread macaroni on a string. He loved it. He loved listening to them

chatter, and he loved the outrageous things that would come out of

their mouths, and he loved the fact that all he had to do to be loved

by them was to show up once (and then twice and then three times)

a week and be kind.

JoEllen was right, too—he was not the only volunteer, and

soon he was on a first name basis with an assortment of women,

mothers or grandmothers or graduates of the foster care system

themselves, who gathered just to sit down and play with children

and make them feel important.

It made Tate feel like king of the entire freakin" world, and it

made Brian incredibly proud of him. Talker knew because Brian told

him so nearly every day.

Of course, even the best teachers have favorites, and Talker"s

favorite was Shelley. Shelley had been there almost from the

beginning—she"d been six at the time, and had just been put into

the system—and when Tate had met her, she was trying very hard

to draw with a cast on her arm.

“Hey,” Tate said, sitting down by her. Very deliberately he took

off the half glove that he wore over his crippled hand and picked up

a crayon.

“Hey. What"s that thing on your face?”

Tate was used to that by now and he had no problem

answering, which was funny, because when so-called adults had

asked the same question when he was in college, he"d always

cringed.

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“It"s a tattoo,” he"d said casually. He"d pushed up the sleeve of

his sweatshirt and said, “It"s not just on my face, either. It"s on my

arm and my neck and my shoulder.” The tattoo on his arm was

much brighter than the one on his face. He and Brian had been

surfing by this time, and the more his skin tanned, the less the tatt

stood out. He"d thought about paying to have the whole thing re-

inked, and then decided against it. He was almost not that boy

anymore.

The girl looked at him very carefully, and then at the earrings

that went up that same ear, hiding the deformed shape. “Why do

you have all that stuff?” she asked, and he drew a heart with

flowers all around it. He wasn"t an artist, not like Brian, but by this

time he"d been volunteering at the art center for foster children for

around four months, and he was killer with hearts, flowers,

unicorns, trucks, tigers, and Spiderman.

“Because I got burned when I was your age, and I didn"t want

anyone looking at the scars,” he told her. Her mouth made a round

little “O”.

“Can I touch?” she asked quietly, and he nodded his head and

put his hand down. He"d been molding clay like Brian, and it had

helped him too. Not as much as it had helped Brian, but some

nights, when they were sitting down to watch television, Brian

would get out the clay and they would simply mold it, taking turns

making shapes and then squashing them and showing each other.

Sometimes the shapes were abstract, sometimes profane (because

really, a penis was the easiest thing to make with modeling clay,)

but mostly, it was a simple way for the two of them to communicate

when they didn"t feel like words. So his fingers were improving,

even beyond where he had willed them to be, and he could use his

gross motor function better than the doctors had ever predicted.

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56

But they were still deformed and still scarred, and Shelley ran

the fingers poking out of the hand of the cast gently over them.

“I"ll have a scar,” she said quietly.

“Yeah?” He"d figured. The cast was big and cumbersome, and

they didn"t usually saddle little kids with something that big unless

there had been extensive damage.

“My bone poked through. It was gross.”

Tate grimaced. “Ewww. Did you scream?”

The girl shook her head. “No. That would have made him

more mad.”

Tate nodded. “Yeah. You don"t want to make them more mad.

You were probably very brave.”

The girl nodded and kept stroking the rough skin of Tate"s

fingers. “I"ll never get a Prince Charming,” she said, her voice

unbearably sad.

“Because you have scars?”

She looked up, ink-dark eyes big in her peaked face, her

white-blonde hair floating like a cloud. “Yeah.”

“Naw—I got a Prince Charming, and I have scars.”

She giggled. “You can"t have a Prince Charming!” she gasped,

scandalized. “Boys aren"t supposed to have Prince Charmings!”

Tate nodded and started another picture. This one was a

kitten, because those were easy too. “Yeah,” he said quietly, “but

people aren"t supposed to give us scars. I figure if people can hurt

me when they"re not supposed to, I can have a Prince Charming

even though I"m not supposed to, what do you think?”

The girl shrugged, apparently bored. “I like the kitty. Can I

have it?”

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“Yeah. As long as you find your own Prince Charming, you

can have the kitty.”

The girl thought about it. “Okay. Would you help me look?”

“Yeah.”

“I want to dance with him, like Cinderella.”

“Yeah? Do you have a song you want to dance to?”

The little girl shook her head. “No, I just want to dance.”

Talker thought about it and pulled out his iPod. “Here,” he

said, putting the earbuds in the impossibly little ears. “This is the

best Prince Charming song I know.” And he set the music to

“Kingdom Come” by Coldplay.

She"d listened intently while she colored, her head rocking

gently to the music. When she was done, she gave him back the

iPod politely.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Now I know there will be a

prince, because you gave me a song.”

And that had been Shelley.

The first thing she had drawn was a picture of Tate—the long

hair on one side and the shaved scalp on the other were easy to

recognize. Tate had brought it home and shown it to Brian, and

Brian had bought a magnetic frame and put it on the refrigerator,

and Tate had loved him all over again, because he would know

how much it meant.

So for two years he"d known Shelley. Brian had given the kids

a display in his last two art shows, and Tate had loved him more for

it, if that was even possible. They had another display this time as

well, and Shelley had made a piece that looked like one of Talker"s

half-gloves, because they fascinated her, and she spent time

designing something that would go over the lump of scar tissue on

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her thin upper arm, so she could wear a dress that would make

Prince Charming happy.

Talker told her that a real Prince Charming wouldn"t care

about the scars.

Shelley told him that she"d try to hide them anyway.

TATE tried not to let it hurt too bad. JoEllen was right—he’d known

the system, had lived the system, and knew that sometimes the

best people were not always in charge of a child’s welfare. Shelley

was with her parents now, and when she was with them, they

pulled her away from the foster care system entirely, like they could

somehow remove the fact that they’d screwed up and make it

disappear. He told himself he should be happy for her, because

most of the kids there dreamed that Mom and Dad would come

back and make it all up to them, but his eyes were blurry as he put

on his wetsuit and surf shoes and grabbed his board, and he barely

noticed the shock of the ocean as he ran in.

He swam out past the fury of the breakers and into the calm

and sat for a while, pinching his eyes closed and trying to get it the

hell together. His feet were starting to chill through the suit and the

shoes, and the motion of the board was starting to lull him

practically to sleep again when he saw Brian through his misery,

and his eyes cleared.

When he wasn’t working on clay, Brian still held his shoulder

like it might hurt a little. In the evenings, Tate would hear the tell-

tale clatter of the pills in the ibuprofen bottle and know that it had to

be aching pretty bad, but Brian never complained. He’d filled out

since Talker had first seen him, a beautiful, square-jawed, blue-

eyed piece of dreamboy, sitting alone on a track meet bus. His

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chest was broader, and his hips had stayed narrow because they

still ran and surfed nearly every day, but Tate could tell that when

he got older, Brian would have to work hard at not being stocky.

Tate sort of looked forward to that. Brian was always so solid; it

would be wonderful if he looked as solid in the flesh as he felt to

Tate in his heart.

But his hair was still a little long because he cut it short and

then let it grow until he couldn’t stand it anymore, and his eyes

were still that guileless cornflower blue, and he still looked at Talker

like he was the best and only boy Brian had ever seen. As far as

Talker knew, Brian would grow old and die and never really see

another boy, and that was just fine with Talker. Talker was pretty

sure he’d never see another man ever in the same way he saw

Brian.

A larger swell than usual buoyed Tate up and then dropped

him in the trough, and Tate thought that maybe he should ride the

next one in. Surfing hadn’t come easy to either of them, but being

out in the cold sea, riding it home—that had felt so powerful. Maybe

it was because they were used to being knocked over by waves,

and it had happened so many times to the both of them, but finally

being able to ride a wave in, to stay on top of things, and know that

they could get up even if they got knocked down—that meant a hell

of a lot to the two of them.

Tate wiped his eyes one more time, and looked out for the

next good wave. Shelley was still on his mind, but he would live

with the worry. She was tough. She might get knocked down, but

she could pick herself up again. And if she couldn’t, she’d have

Tate and JoEllen and maybe someday a Prince Charming to help

her do just that.

Tate had faith now—he had to. He and Brian, yeah, they’d

been knocked down, and yeah, there had been a couple of times

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that Tate wouldn’t have been able to pull himself up without Brian’s

help. But there had been a couple of times that Brian had needed

Talker’s hand up too. He had to believe that it hadn’t been just luck,

or chance, or whatever. He had to believe that if there was a Brian

for Tate Walker that the other Talkers and Shelleys out there would

have their own hand out to help them, because that’s what made

the world bearable. The thought that there wouldn’t be a hand out

there for those as lost as he had been made the world seem so

unutterably lonely. Tate had to have faith.

Brian looked up and shaded his eyes against the sun, then

waved. Talker waved back at his reason to have faith, and then

saw the perfect wave (for the Nor Cal coast, anyway—the waves

were pretty small here, he had to admit). He smiled at Brian and

pulled himself up on the board and stood just as the wave passed

under the board. Then he found his balance and the wind in his

face and the joy of the ride and followed the ocean home.