“I don’t want him coddled.”
In Jeanne’s experience all parents wanted their children coddled, fussed over, and given special privileges; but she smiled at Simon Weed and pretended she believed him. “Here at Hilltop, Dr. Tate and I believe no good comes of hiding the truth from children, no matter how unpleasant or challenging that truth happens to be.” Weed looked agreeable to this so she went on. Words came easily, always. In graduate school when she was writing Teddy’s papers for him, she had to stop herself from writing too much.
She said, “In Adam’s case, he will have to acknowledge the fact of his brain damage for the rest of his life and age eight isn’t too young to start. We won’t make excuses for him but we also won’t punish him for what is certainly not his fault. We will teach him to make good use of the talents and abilities he has.”
“Mrs. Tate, I love my son. But he’s . . . sensitive. And losing his mother like he did last year, well, he’s pulled back from me. I can’t tell what he’s thinking anymore. And he spends too much time alone. He has a way of... disappearing, sometimes for hours at a time. What I’m trying to say is, he needs a lot of attention.” Simon Weed took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “He’s never been a gregarious child, but he was close to his mother. She taught him to ride. He wasn’t very good at it, but it gave him pleasure. Then he had to be the one to find her . . .”
“Perhaps you should tell me what happened.” Jeanne resisted a strong temptation to reach across the desk and touch his hand.
Simon Weed looked startled by her request and she thought for a moment that he would refuse. “He went down to saddle his mare.” He spoke so softly Jeanne could barely hear him. “She was right there in the barn, hanging from a crossbeam.”
Jeanne imagined a horse hanging from the barn roof and scolded herself for being perverse.
“Afterwards, I tried to get him to talk about it, but he clammed up. Sometimes I wonder if he’s forgotten it completely.”
Jeanne looked at the picture of Adam Weed on her computer screen. A boy with a pinched face and dull eyes separated by two deep vertical creases. She sensed the effort it took for him to look out at the world and not inward to his pain, to keep from imploding, from shrinking to a dot no larger than a period on a page. “Children forget in order to protect themselves. It’s actually very healthy.”
“But he’s got to remember sooner or later, doesn’t he? I don’t want him to grow up twisted, Mrs. Tate. When I die, he’ll be a rich man no matter how well he does in school. But I want him to have a life . . .”
“And there’s no reason he can’t have a good one. None at all.”
Simon Weed shifted in his chair. “How does a father know he’s doing the right thing? I told him we were coming here and he cried. He begged to stay with me.” He shifted again, his discomfort so intense Jeanne felt it come across the desk at her like a blast of heat. “I think he might need . . .” Weed struggled with the word, “psychiatric help.”
Jeanne didn’t approve of psychiatrists, particularly not for children, although she knew this was an old-fashioned attitude, one she had inherited from her father along with the rest of the Hilltop Method. She remembered him saying once that no child had problems so severe they couldn’t be cured with fairness and discipline. Over the years, a handful of troubled boys had tested Jeanne, but never enough to tempt her away from her father’s opinion.
“Give Adam a little time and he’ll find his place at Hilltop. He’ll be in the junior dorm, sharing a room with one other boy. His housemother is Mrs. White. Sooner or later, he’ll open his heart to her. All the boys confide their problems to Edith. I’m tempted to do it myself.” Jeanne laughed to dispel any suggestion that she might actually have problems. “We also have a brother system at Hilltop. Every boy in primary has a big brother assigned to him. This is someone he can go to when he needs help with his homework or if he thinks another boy’s bullying him or if he’s just lonesome for home. I’ve chosen Robby McFadden to be Adam’s big brother. This afternoon Robby will introduce your son around, give him a tour of the campus, find him a gym locker—”
“I’d feel better if you—”
“Tomorrow I’ll get acquainted with Adam myself. I promise.” Jeanne stood up and held out her hand. “Trust me, Mr. Weed, your son will do well at Hilltop. This is a very special place.”
He placed his chair back against the wall with an orderliness that delighted Jeanne’s heart.
“I’ll be flying between San Francisco and Tokyo from now until Christmas.” He handed Jeanne his business card. “You can always reach me at that number. If I’m not available, my secretary can find me. I’ll tell her to put through any calls from you right away.”
He stopped and pointed out the window at three boys lugging buckets across the front lawn for the school. “What are they doing?”
Jeanne walked around her desk and stood beside him. “We’ve been in a drought for the last three years, and we’ve learned to save water any way we can. Last year we issued a bucket for every shower stall and the boys fill them with the warm-up water. Rather than waste that water letting it run down the drain, the boys are assigned particular plants around the school to water. Thanks to them, the basic shrubbery and the rose cloister that was here when my parents bought the school have never looked better.”
She saw that Simon Weed approved of this.
“It’s another example of the Hilltop Method, Mr. Weed. Facing facts and making the best of reality whether it’s pleasant or not.”
Simon Weed looked at her with admiration.
Jeanne felt herself blush and became suddenly shy. “Credit my father and husband. Most of the good ideas come from them.”
“I was hoping I could meet Dr. Tate.”
“He’ll be sorry to have missed you.”
Simon Weed pointed to the framed diploma on the wall between the window and the office door. “You went to graduate school at Columbia, I see.”
“In the dark ages, yes.”
“My wife was there too.”
A frisson of anxiety tightened Jeanne’s back.
“Journalism.”
“It’s a wonderful department,” she said, moving toward the door.
“I knew your husband had a Ph.D. but I didn’t know you did. Was that mentioned in the brochure?”
“No,” Jeanne said. She put her hand on his shoulder, eased him out of the office. “A printer’s error. We didn’t catch it in time.”
In the hall Simon Weed said, “I’ll miss him.”
Jeanne saw that he meant it, and knew that despite his disadvantages, Adam Weed was a fortunate child. So many of the parents who brought their boys to Hilltop couldn’t wait to be rid of them and back to their own lives. Jeanne watched these parents as they left her office. She watched them through the window, climbing into their illegally parked BMWs and Land Rovers, speaking into cell phones, poking at their small computers.
“I’ll call you,” she said. “Try not to worry.”
She watched him walk away and returned to her office. She saw he had left his driving gloves on her desk. Absently, she slipped the gloves on and held her hands before her, turning them slowly palm to back to palm again. She held them to her face and inhaled the smell of leather and worn-in dirt and Simon Weed. She imagined they were still warm from his hands.
In the bottom drawer of her bedside table, Jeanne kept another pair of gloves wrapped in tissue paper and tied