What No One Else Can Hear (28 page)

I was about ready to steal Stevie’s crutches. Not only was he as mobile with them as he had been without them, he had actually developed a sort of gallop that allowed him to far outdistance me when he wanted to. He thought it was funny. Fortunately he never really used it to get away from me when he was having a crisis. He liked playing a game.

But, it was the other game he had developed with them that was more worrisome. He had seen a movie that involved sword fighting, and he decided it would be wonderful if he and Ryan could use the crutches to mimic the moves he had seen on the movie. So far I owed the center two cookie jars and a television set—casualties of war. The cast-removal day couldn’t come soon enough for me.

Stevie was also more determined than ever to get the noises under control. He worked on building his walls by himself until he could build one quickly and efficiently in most situations. Not that he didn’t still have crises—he did, but he was getting better by leaps and bounds at building his shields.

One evening he did something different.

Ryan was visiting his parents, so there was no one to sword fight with. Stevie went to his room and got his backpack with his sketchbook and pencils. Nothing unusual about that. He’d started taking the backpack everywhere since it was the only way he could carry things while on crutches. But then he went to a toy box on one side of the living room on Hall 3-B that held nothing but blocks.
Well,
I thought,
with Ryan gone there’s no competition for the blocks.
But they weren’t the ones he usually used. They were the really big ones, about the size of actual house bricks. He sat down in the nearby corner with his broken leg as much to the side as possible, then put his sketchbook and pencils on the floor in front of him. He opened the lid of the toy box and proceeded to build a real wall between him and the rest of the room.

“What’s Stevie up to?” Drew asked as he sat down beside me on the sofa.

“I’m not sure yet,” I answered but otherwise remained quiet, waiting Stevie out. He seemed to have a goal in mind, and I was curious to know what it was.

He built a block wall in front of him, high enough to almost obstruct his view. He had to stretch up to see over it. He looked around the room, where four other children played and two more staff watched over them. He locked eyes with me and smiled but then turned to Drew and got a solemn look on his face.

I looked at Drew too. He didn’t know what to make of Stevie’s expression, but he didn’t smile or attempt a joke. He just sat there, looking at him, with a calm, loving face, letting Stevie know he realized something serious was going on, even if he didn’t understand what. Stevie nodded and ducked behind the wall.

Then we saw one block move ever so slowly toward us, until it fell out of the wall completely. I saw Stevie’s eye at the hole it left. Then he sat back, and we didn’t see any more activity at the wall. Drew looked at me questioningly, almost as if he was afraid to speak. I shrugged, and the moment was gone. Lydia, one of the children playing on the other side of the room, was screaming and lashing out at Evan and the staff member nearest her. Drew jumped up to go help Mark corral the other three students away from the commotion while Karen dealt with Lydia. I walked over to Stevie as calmly as I could and peeked over the wall to make sure he wasn’t reacting badly to the turmoil.

I couldn’t believe what I saw.

Stevie had been toying with drawing people shapes since I had come to the center, but none of them were ever recognizable as specific people, and none ever contained facial details. But, on the floor in front of him, was a beautiful picture of Drew. Stevie looked up to acknowledge me but went right back to his drawing. It was almost as if he didn’t even notice the commotion going on in the room. Of course, if his mental wall was anything like the colossus he had built in the physical world, nothing was going to get through.

Karen had taken Lydia to her room and, while she was still screaming from time to time, it was obvious she was starting to get herself under control. Karen was with her to help as long as Lydia needed her. Mark was still in the living room with two of the kids, but Drew and Evan were missing.

I looked a question over to Mark.

“Evan had an accident,” he answered my expression. “Drew’s cleaning him up.”

I heard a clatter from the corner and jerked around to make sure Stevie was okay. He got to his feet and put his backpack on, then grabbed his crutches and headed down the hall. He acknowledged me with a look as he passed, but he didn’t stop. He was a man on a mission. He passed the bathroom and even his own room and went into Evan’s room, three doors down.

“What’s he doing in there?” Mark asked.

The only child Stevie really reached out to was Ryan. He had never gone into any other child’s room before.

“I don’t know.” I went down the hall, hoping to find out.

Drew had finished changing Evan, and the boy was sitting cross-legged on his bed, looking at Stevie, who was digging in his backpack. Stevie tore off the picture he had drawn and handed it to Drew.

“You feel good in my brain,” he told Drew and turned on his heel—as much as anyone could with crutches—and left the room.

Drew stood in the middle of Evan’s room, dumbfounded, holding Stevie’s first-ever portrait of anyone other than me.

S
TEVIE
AND
Fireman Mike had become best buds in the weeks since Mike had been released from the hospital. They had spent several hours drawing various things that first visit and since then, Mike had started teaching Stevie to paint. Stevie loved it. He had usually restricted himself to pencils, pastels, or crayons. Mike introduced him to the wonderful world of oil paints, and even bought him a starter set of his very own paints and brushes.

Unfortunately, oil paints are
really
hard to paint over when applied to the walls of a residential facility. We entirely repainted one wall in the living room section of the hall one day, only to notice the
next
day that the back of Stevie’s bedroom door was adorned with a beautiful forest scene—
our
forest. Our special tree in the center of the forest where we always met was now immortalized there. Before we could repaint that as well, Sara, the administrator of the center, saw it and gave Stevie permission to keep it, but asked him to please secure permission
before
painting any more center-owned surfaces. To soften the blow, she bought him a dozen canvases and a top-of-the-line easel to practice on instead.

By the time Stevie’s cast was ready to come off, most of the walls on the hall were once again decorated with beautiful Stevie Liston originals, but this time on canvases. Stevie had painted various scenes of hall life and even the flora and fauna around the center. Several staff members, 3-B staff and others, had brought in canvases and asked for specific pictures.

Drew’s portrait seemed to open the floodgates. Stevie drew several other people now, but usually from pictures. He could draw people in the room, but he seemed to pick and choose who he would draw and when. He drew Ryan when he came back from a fun day with his parents, but wouldn’t draw him on the day his parents weren’t able to come at the last minute. No matter how much we told him it might cheer Ryan up, he wouldn’t do it. He’d draw most of the staff when things on the hall had been going well for a long while, but not shortly after a commotion. He wouldn’t draw Karen at all. I couldn’t figure that out. He liked Karen well enough. She was sweet to him. It wasn’t like with Chuck or anything. I’m sure he wouldn’t have drawn Chuck. I couldn’t figure it out.

“I have a theory,” Drew said when we were talking about it one evening cuddled up on my couch.

“What’s that?” I had to chuckle. Drew always had a theory about everything.

“I think the drawings connect him empathically to the people he’s drawing.”

“Drew,” I chided. “He drew Dolly Parton the other day. I doubt very seriously he connected empathically with her.”

He hit me. “People in the room whom he’s trying to draw from real life, not from a picture.”

“That’s a leap, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t.” He was serious. “And frankly I’m not sure why you didn’t make the connection. Remember the first portrait of me?” There had been many others in the last several weeks. “He poked the block out of his wall first.”

I stopped to think. He might actually have something here. “To let in only your emotions? Because he did that whole looking at you really seriously thing first too.”

“Yeah, then when he gave it to me, he said I felt good in his brain. What was that about if he wasn’t empathically linked with me?”

“He’s said that about you before.”

“I know, but when connected with giving me a portrait of myself… that has to mean something, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, that was a big deal.” I admitted. I was secretly really pleased that Stevie’s first person to draw besides me had been Drew. “Why didn’t he get upset with the commotion, though, if he was linked with you? I thought it was because he’d built a strong wall and shut everyone out.”

“I wasn’t upset, so if he was linked with me, he wouldn’t have been upset either.”

He had a point. Had Stevie found a way to actually use his empathy? To zero in on a particular person? I was thrilled. This was what I had wanted for him all along.

“So, when he’s drawing the person, he’s channeling their emotions?”

Drew shrugged. “That’s my theory.”

“That would make sense. He’ll draw people when they seem to be happy but not when they’re upset or sad or even just weary. Why not Karen at all though? She’s sweet.”

“Watch it, lover boy,” Drew scowled, “I might get jealous.”

I grinned and played. “Not as sweet as you of course.”

He chuckled, but then got back to the subject. “Her mom just died a week before the fire, remember? Her emotions are bound to be a pretty jumbled-up place to visit right now.”

I had forgotten. That would explain it.

“So that’s why he was drawing me.” I thought I had found a better theory than me being an empath too. “He channeled my emotions, so he was drawing me.”

“Uh-uh,” Drew said simply. “Doesn’t get you out of being an empath. How did he know what you looked like to draw you? And how did he channel you from clear across the country if there wasn’t a bigger connection. Nope. You’re still an empath too.”

“Come on, Drew.” We’d had this conversation many times before. “There’s nothing special about me.”

“There are so many things wrong with that statement, I don’t have time to address them all, but it fits all the facts, Jess.”

“I know you like logical explanations for everything but—”

He smiled back. “Well I’m definitely in the wrong family, then. There are very few logical explanations for half the things you and Stevie do. But I happen to be right about this ‘logical explanation.’”

I loved that he thought of us as family. I felt the same way about him.

I decided to lighten the mood a little. “Well, at least Dottie is pretty normal.”

He chuckled. “I’m going to tell her you said that, and I bet she doesn’t take it as a compliment.”

She wouldn’t either. She prided herself on being eccentric, even though she wasn’t really, in my opinion.

“No,” I mock pleaded, “don’t tell her. Don’t tell her.”

He tickled me until I fell off the couch.

F
INALLY
THE
day to get Stevie’s cast off arrived. Drew had suggested we make a celebration of it and eat at a small mom-and-pop restaurant that was one of Stevie’s favorites, maybe invite Fireman Mike and his wife. As it turned out, Mike had gotten the wires removed from his jaw just the day before and said he would
love
to go out to eat a solid lunch with us. He said he was quite sick of soup and liquid food of any variety, and while he wasn’t sure he was quite up to a cheeseburger just yet,
anything
that could be eaten without a straw would be a welcome change. So we all planned to meet at the little restaurant at the edge of Dottie’s neighborhood. It was in a small section with a few businesses right around the corner from the residential section and was within walking distance of Dottie’s house.

Stevie had liked to walk to it before the crutches, but we had been taking the car recently. He said he might like going there even
more
since the fire, though, despite the fact that he missed out on his walk, because he got a bigger portion of ice cream for dessert now that he was on crutches. Never let it be said Stevie didn’t know how to work a crowd. As with all the staff at the center, all the waitresses at Cal’s Diner had pretty much adopted Stevie as their little darling.

Once everyone arrived, Stevie claimed ownership of the conversation right away anyway, telling Mike all about the doctor’s visit and getting the cast off, about the pictures he had painted, and about all the people he had drawn who felt good in his brain.

“I want to draw you sometime, but I’m too hungry to do it right now.”

Finally Stevie ran out of things to talk about and busied himself with the ritual of eating french fries. He dipped each fry in his chocolate milk shake, then into the ketchup. He would take
just
enough of a bite to get rid of the ketchup—because ketchup in his milk shake “would just be gross, Bear”—and then start the whole thing over again. Each fry made at least five trips to the milk shake and ketchup, and Stevie filled a portion of his plate with ketchup four times before he finished all the fries. I’ve learned to allow plenty of time for Stevie to eat and to make sure a full bottle of ketchup was always handy. I swear that boy used about half a bottle for each meal.

Suddenly, though, he grabbed his ears and screamed. He slithered out of his chair onto the floor, then rocked and slapped the floor. We hadn’t seen this kind of reaction lately. He’d been doing so well. I hadn’t a clue what was causing it.