The Illumination (15 page)

Apparently, Mr. Brady didn’t know that he should punish Todd. He didn’t seem to understand how the check system worked.

Carefully, Chuck repaired the book, ignoring the whispers he heard. He slid the loose pages into place, squaring their edges. He fastened them together with long strips of invisible tape. He made sure all the broken words lined up correctly. When he was finished, he let the book fall shut.

It
wasn’t
as good as new—it was nowhere close. It shone like a man whose bones had been broken.

The rest of the afternoon passed slowly for Chuck, hazily. At recess, he spotted Todd Rosenthal climbing the wooden tower. It was freezing cold, and everyone had a sore throat. A few kids were playing soccer in the parking lot. A pale light flickered over their tongues as they shouted. Chuck saw the light but did not hear the words. He approached the tower and went up the ladder. It seemed that he was riding the glass elevator again. He felt tall and powerful and nothing whatsoever like himself. He rose quietly into the clear blue sky like Superman. Far below him, the kids turned into little moving dots.

He found Todd Rosenthal standing at the platform’s open edge. He was dangling a cord of spit from his mouth. Chuck shoved him and watched his body hit the ground.

In seconds, everything was over, and the teachers came running. The fall had wrenched Todd’s shoulder out of its socket. His arm had snapped with a sound like breaking chalk. His teeth had pierced the flesh of his lower lip. Blood, thick and shining, was already spilling from the wound.

The teachers bent down over him, trying to soothe him.

“Don’t worry,” they said, and, “Cry it all out, honey.”

“Mr. Kaczmarek is calling the doctor for you right now.”

“Your mom and dad will meet you at the hospital.”

Todd rolled onto his back and twisted his eyes shut. He moaned, “Why does this shit always happen to me?” No one said anything to him about the curse word.

The teachers were trying hard not to look at Chuck. They seemed embarrassed by him—even the substitute, Mr. Brady. He marched Chuck inside, leaving him in the secretary’s office. Chuck sat on the couch listening to the clock tick. After a while, the principal summoned him to her desk. He could see the ambulance pulling away through the window. Its flashing red lights dipped like fish across the wall. The principal kept snapping her fingers and saying, “Pay attention.” And, “I must say your behavior surprises me, Mr. Carter.” And, “You realize this will go on your permanent record.” Her lipstick had leaked into the cracks between her teeth. Finally, she shook her head and turned away from him. She picked up the phone to call his pretend dad. And then it was Chuck’s turn to be in trouble.

The school punished him with two full weeks of suspension.
His parents punished him by taking away his stuffed animals. “Plus no Cokes, TV, or comic books,” his mom said. His pretend dad even got her permission to spank him. He gave Chuck ten whacks with a wooden cutting board. Afterward, Chuck noticed him smothering the expression on his face. He looked like he did after he mowed the lawn. He was satisfied with the hard work he had done.

“This was for your own good now,” he told Chuck. “It’s a lesson I can just about guarantee you’ll remember.”

“This family doesn’t even believe in spanking,” his mom added. “You have no idea how disappointed I am in you. I always said I would never hit my child:
ever
. But this—oh, Chuckie, you broke that poor boy’s arm.”

She was standing at the kitchen counter tapping her feet. The heels of her shoes stabbed the floor like knives.

The days of Chuck’s suspension passed like a long dream. Because both his parents had jobs, he stayed home alone. He imagined he was an orphan without the sad parts. Over and over again, he walked through the empty house. He made little teepees—dominoes—out of his playing cards. He spent a while tossing beanbags at his tic-tac-toe game. (The spotted beanbags were his, the solid ones Todd Rosenthal’s.) He stood at the window looking out over the yard. Cars and trucks and bicycles drifted slowly down the street. Squirrels crossed the grass, their tails jerking on invisible wires. He could see the yellow bricks that lined the porch. As usual, they looked like something he would enjoy tasting. If he was a retard, then he was a retard. He had become too old to do anything about it.

Chuck began visiting Dr. Finkelstein on both Mondays and Thursdays. His mom said she was having concerns about his psychology. (That was a big word for his personality: his psychology.)
The doctor kept rubbing his forehead, his three red sunspots. He wondered what Todd Rosenthal could have done to Chuck. Why had Chuck gotten angry enough to break his leg?

Chuck took out a note card and wrote his answer down.
Who told you I broke his leg, because I didn’t
.

“But why did you push the boy off the tower?”

He did something bad
, Chuck began, then crossed it out.
He tore something of mine apart and hurt its feelings
.

“But only people have feelings,” Dr. Finkelstein said, “not objects.”

This was the most ridiculous thing Chuck had ever heard. Objects were quieter than people, maybe, but no less sensitive. The one big difference was that objects could not move. They weren’t able to fake their feelings or hide them. It was people who could lie, people who could pretend. People could laugh like friends and then beat you up. People could say they were your dad and hit you. Sometimes the faces of people seemed unreal to Chuck, inhuman. They were like masks they wore over their real faces. Masks to show how old or how young they were. Masks to show how healthy or how sick they were. People could cry out of sadness or happiness or anger. But then they could smile for the exact same reasons. The strangeness of people went on and on and on. Objects, on the other hand, were mostly simple and good. Chuck was always kind to them—it was a rule. They needed his help to make it in the world. They had no one else to look out for them. That was why he was so upset about the book. He had tried fixing it and had let it down. It gave off more light now than it had before. Why, then, had he taken it at all, he wondered? He was no more than a thief and a kidnapper. The book would be better off with anyone but him. He might as well give it away to a stranger.

A week into his suspension, someone knocked on the door. Chuck was not supposed to answer it, but he did. A tall man in church clothes stood on the porch. He stooped over the way that grown-ups without kids do. “Why, hello there,” he said, his hands on his knees. “Can you tell me if your parents are at home?”

Chuck shook his head no and began shutting the door.

“Wait,” the man said, and reached into his leather satchel. “Will you give them this flyer when you see them?” He passed Chuck a slip of paper, yellow like butter. The paper read, “For the Lord God will illumine them.” Beneath that was the name and address of a church. And beneath that was a cross surrounded by tiny lines. And beneath that were Chuck’s fingers reaching from his hand. And beneath that was his hand sticking from his sleeve. He was reading the flyer when he had an idea. He held up his palms to say,
Wait right here
. Then he went to his bedroom and got the diary. He came running back across the living room with it. He turned it over to the man in the suit.

Aloud, the man wondered, “What’s this you have for me?” He looked slightly confused, but fanned through the book’s pages. He tried to return it, smiling encouragingly, his hand outstretched. Chuck backed away, and the man’s smile tightened in confusion. He was about to speak when Chuck shut the door.

The man wasted a few minutes knocking and shouting hello. The doorbell rang nine times, though Chuck imagined a tenth. Finally the noise fell away, and he looked outside again. There was only the empty porch and a fraying spiderweb. The man must have moved on to the next house. Chuck had been worried he would leave the book behind. But, his worries aside, it was no longer there. It wasn’t on the doormat, wasn’t poking from the
mailbox. It wasn’t leaning against the stairs or the brick wall. Obviously, he had given up and taken it with him. Chuck hoped that he would give it a loving home.

It was a Thursday, which meant one thing: Dr. Finkelstein. Chuck’s appointment was supposed to last from four to five. His pretend dad had to drive him to the office. “I’m missing two hours’ pay for this crap,” he complained. “That’s two hours of food coming straight from our refrigerator. Two hours of working lights, two hours of running water. Two hours of goddamned gasoline for the goddamned Plymouth Reliant.” He kept honking the horn and shouting “Jerk!” at people.

The doctor was still in another session when they arrived. They lived in the waiting room for a few minutes. Both of them sat down, Chuck and his pretend dad. Chuck skimmed a news magazine he found on the table. Someone, a Chinese soldier, had been shot in the head. Light was gushing from his temple in a sideways fountain. Some children were starving, their stomachs glimmering like crystal balls. Their pain had made them simple, honest, candid, like objects. Chuck had seen it happen many times in his life.

A patient came out, and Dr. Finkelstein called Chuck’s name. He asked Chuck to join him in his office, please. A surprise was waiting on top of the doctor’s desk. He had gotten one of those clacking metal desk toys. It looked exactly like the one Ms. Derryberry had owned.

The doctor set it in motion, and Chuck immediately relaxed. The V-shaped threads rocked back and forth, back and forth. Again and again the silver balls fell tapping into place. The sound filled Chuck with a gentle, swaying, hammocky feeling. “A neat
little gadget, this, isn’t it?” Dr. Finkelstein said. He cracked his knuckles and continued. “So let’s get started. On Monday we were talking about your chores at home. Will you write down your least favorite chore for me?”

The only one I really hate is cleaning the tub
.

“The tub!” Dr. Finkelstein said, rolling his eyes in exasperation. “Yes, there’s nothing worse than having to clean the tub. Is there anything else you dislike about living at home?”

When my pretend dad yells at me or my mom
.

The doctor’s face became animated as he read the note. He was interested, but he tried to pretend he wasn’t. Unless he was only pretending to be pretending he wasn’t. Sometimes people played elaborate games to hide their true feelings. The doctor jotted something down on his pad of paper. “Your pretend dad?” he prompted, reaching for the desk toy. He pinched hold of one of the hanging metal balls. When he let it go, the toy rediscovered its rhythm.

Chuck explained the difference between real dads and pretend dads. He wrote down some of the clues he had uncovered. How real dads never filled the house with their shouting. How they didn’t twist the hair on their sons’ necks. How they ate dinner without flicking their food at anyone. How they didn’t secretly wish that their sons were dead. Or not dead, exactly, but that they’d never been born. Chuck filled card after card explaining things to Dr. Finkelstein. Most dads were real dads, but Chuck’s dad was pretend. The clues, though small, all came together to prove it. The doctor kept reaching for the toy and restarting it. Before Chuck knew it, he’d used up the whole hour.

“We’ll have to stop now, I’m afraid,” Dr. Finkelstein said. “Can you send your mom in alone for a minute? I need to discuss something with her, something having to—”

Chuck finished his note while the doctor was still speaking.
My mom couldn’t take time off from work this afternoon
.

“Oh, then your dad—your pretend dad—then he’s here? That’s fine, just fine,” the doctor said, twisting his shoulders. There was a popping noise and a button of light. The light flashed open where his spine joined his neck. “Ask him to step inside for a second, would you?”

Chuck left the office and sat down on the couch. He waited while his pretend dad talked to Dr. Finkelstein. The door, a bulky oak, let hardly any sound through. Chuck heard his pretend dad shouting two words: “completely ridiculous.”

He came out brushing the doctor’s hand from his arm. His teeth were set so firmly his jaw was shaking. “Move,” he said, stomping past, and Chuck followed him outside.

They sped home in a thick smell of burning gasoline. His pretend dad left the car slanting across the driveway. The engine continued to run after he removed the key. It rattled and coughed and then sputtered to a halt. He said, “So I understand I’m not your real dad. Imagine my surprise,” and he pulled the car’s emergency brake. “I guess that means you’re not my real son, either.”

He yanked Chuck across the bench seat by his elbow. With long, angry strides, he hauled him toward the house. He was as indignant as Chuck had ever seen him. Chuck tried to keep up, but it was too hard. His shoes kept leaving scars of dirt in the grass. The scars didn’t glow, which meant the grass wasn’t hurt. A root made Chuck stumble, and he tripped and fell. He became a plant, dirt, a fish in a puddle. There were bits of leaves stuck to his blue jeans. He had grass in his hair and between his lips. His pretend dad lifted him to his feet, armpits first. Chuck was sure—pretty sure—he intended to kill him. He realized it was
something he had always seen coming. He wanted to have one last Coke, one last cookie. He wanted to hug his elephant and all his bears. He wanted to say good-bye to everything that loved him.

His pretend dad opened the door and shoved him inside. There was his mom, standing wide-eyed and gaping at them. She was opening the mail with a miniature wooden sword. Someone must have given her a ride home from work. “What’s all the ruckus, you guys?” she said to them. “Good lord, Chuck, you’re covered head to toe in dirt! That’s it, into the tub with you right now—chop-chop!”

Reluctantly, his pretend dad’s fingers loosened their grip on him. Chuck had little doubt his mom had saved his life. He felt like he was waking from a bad dream. Miles of jagged rocks had been rushing up at him. The wind was beating like a flag in his ears. The ground was going to separate him from his skeleton. Then he was lying in bed, eyes open, wide awake.