A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans Read Free Book Online

this. “Um,” he said, “describe the emotions you had, when Dean told you he hated you.”
    “I felt bad.”
    “Okay.”
    “I felt . . . I don’t know. Sad.” Bad, sad. My quavering disappeared. This was turning into an unexpected exercise in vocabulary. I didn’t know what he wanted.
    “Let’s try a little role-playing,” Richard suggested, sensing my struggle.
    For the next half hour, Richard acted the part of Dean, Toby, and eventually, my mother. I played the part of me. It was a funny feeling. I was Hansel and Gretel, following a trail of my own conflicts and encounters, and picking up the crumbs I had left behind.
    “This is really interesting,” I said at last.
    Richard cocked his head.
    “Why interesting?”
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    “It’s like . . . artificial life.”
    Richard threw back his head and laughed. I laughed, too, but I wasn’t sure why.
    “I probably shouldn’t say this,” said Richard, “but you’re a very unusual boy. You perceive and express things many adults would not be able to.”
    I glowed.
    “We only have a few more minutes,” he said, in a softening voice—
    I soon learned Richard’s voice always went quiet when he approached a serious subject. “But I’d like to discuss your father a little bit. When did he die?”
    “Um . . .” I stirred in my seat. “Over the summer.”
    “How did you find out?”
    “My mother.”
    I had been in my room, playing a game of chess with myself, and cheating, when I heard a howl from my mother’s bedroom. I did not even connect the sound with the phone ringing, which I had tuned out in the throes of my game. I froze, on my knees next to the bed, holding a black rook suspended over the board, listening. Richard nodded sympathetically. “Was your father in an accident?”
    “He was sick.”
    Richard waited.
    “He had been in Honduras.”
    Surprise. “Ah.” Then: “Your mother didn’t mention that.”
    “He was a volunteer worker,” I informed him, “at a refugee camp.”
    Hesitation. Richard must have been trying to figure out how the hell a man who lived in Preston, Virginia, with a wife and child would find himself trotting around Honduran refugee camps. “I see. Did he get sick down there?’
    I nodded. “He was sick, and . . .” It was strange. I had almost forgotten. The details of his death were so much less important than the allabsorbing fact of his death. Then the phrase returned to me: “He didn’t recover.” He’s not going to recover. Those were the first words from the doctor’s mouth, outside the hospital room, as my mother and I waited. 36
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    “That must have been very difficult.”
    I said nothing.
    “Do you think about your father?”
    I shrugged again.
    Richard held his gaze on me a few moments. “Maybe we should discuss this more,” he said, “next time. I think there’s more here for us to talk about.”
    “Okay,” I agreed.
    “Well, then, until next time.” He smiled.
    I stared at him.
    “Oh,” I said, finally understanding. “Do I go home now?”
    “Yes, George.”
    Outside, it was a chilly autumn evening. My mother’s car idled at the end of the walk. The headlights were on, exhaust curling from the muffler. The cold grabbed my neck, an icy hand. I shivered. I had the feeling that, just behind me, something had slipped out the clinic door, like the wild stray dogs that followed people down at Slopers Creek sometimes, hoping for scraps. Practically breathing on me now. I ran to the car.
    That night I collapsed into bed and wrapped myself in blankets. Richard Manning’s probing had exhausted me. It also filled me with an unexpected sense of safety: I felt that, in the care of those sympathetic, sad eyes, there were certain things I could let go of, stop fretting over: if Richard handled the artificial life, I could get on with the real one. I drifted into a deep and grateful sleep.
    When I awoke, it was the middle of the night, and I felt