Chapter 19
In one moment—that moment when Benjamin wouldn’t catch a yawn—Hernández had seen something that trusted friends, including Robert, refused to see.
Do you feel that way sometimes, Benjamin? Like you can’t read people? Or you can, but you don’t want to? Stuff just rolls off your back? Other people’s needs don’t concern you?
Something was different. Something was off. It wasn’t that I refused to see. If anything, I looked too hard, with the outline of Ewan’s face forever in the back of my mind.
And then again, Ewan had been so extreme, so recalcitrant, so determined to seek out trouble, that anyone else seemed comparatively stable and empathetic. Knowing Ewan helped me see. Knowing Ewan made it impossible to see.
Teachers, doctors, and friends knew that Benjamin provoked other children into fights.
They agreed he was mouthy or glib. But no one was ready to give it a label, not even the child-development specialist I brought him to when he was eleven.
I’d told Curtis that Dr. Adelman wasn’t a “good fit” for us.
He never asked what she said or refused to say about my son’s personality and behavior.
Her name was Raveena Adelman, a sixty-something woman with a bright silver bob and reassuringly refined clothes, and she had just signed on as my undergraduate thesis advisor.
After reading a journal article she’d written about conduct disorder, I asked if she’d be willing to meet Benjamin, and she agreed.
I remembered sitting in the campus café because her office had no reception area, opening the detailed form she asked me to fill out, while she met privately with Benjamin.
Grandiosity, Lying, Manipulation, Remorselessness, Unemotionality, Impulsiveness, Irresponsibility, Thrill Seeking.
It was hard to be honest, but I chose to be.
Not many parents are, I learned later, as a graduate school student.
Given this sort of checklist, many parents just leave a psychologist’s office and never come back.
But I stayed. I checked the boxes and in longhand, I wrote out my concerns, even going so far as to mention the fact that my own brother was serving time in prison and had been aggressive, charming, and manipulative from a very early age—a real terror, not just a “handful” or a “growing problem,” as teachers often called my son.
After Dr. Adelman had spent an hour with Benjamin, she’d sent him to the waiting room, took a long moment to resettle her jewel-tone pashmina scarf around her broad shoulders, then asked me to stay behind to discuss certain behavioral episodes.
I treated her questions like the most important exam I’d ever take.
“Does he mistreat animals?”
“We don’t have pets. But that’s because we’ve always lived in apartments that don’t allow them.”
“Is he aggressive with siblings?”
“He’s an only child.”
“Does he wet the bed?”
“No. But isn’t bed-wetting involuntary? Do researchers still think that matters?”
I wasn’t pushing back. I honestly didn’t know.
“Not much, but we still ask.”
“Has he ever stolen?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Does he light fires?”
I’d played with matches and lit fires as a kid, just as I’d shoplifted, but I’d spent a lot of time alone, especially after my mother died.
From that day on, I knew what it was like to feel uncared for, and I did everything I could to spare Benjamin that feeling.
I rarely left him alone for long. He spent nearly all his time either in school or day care, or with me.
There were exceptions of course—the day of the sledding accident, when his friend broke his arm, came to mind—but not many.
Raveena steepled her hands below her strong jaw and gave me the sort of smile you give a mother who worries too much.
“I understand your concerns. But in Benjamin’s case, certain personality attributes haven’t developed into alarming behavioral problems.”
“Except at school.”
“Yes. But that’s not uncommon. Didn’t you say you’re rarely in an apartment for longer than a year or two, and that he’s had to change schools several times? That upheaval alone can explain conflict with other children and difficulties fitting in.”
“But you do see it,” I’d insisted, not wanting a damning answer but needing something—truth, advice, confirmation.
“I see something. But I wouldn’t want to say anything prematurely. Psychologists and pediatricians aren’t miracle workers. Not only are we unable to fix everything, but we use inadequate labels more often than you’d assume. I’m sure you’ve heard the term FLK?”
That meant “funny-looking kid,” a cryptic, impolitic term doctors sometimes wrote into juvenile patient records when something seemed off—more often physical, but not always—and they couldn’t pinpoint the problem.
Dr. Adelman said, “I wouldn’t apply the conduct disorder label to Benjamin.
You need to realize, Abby, there are children who get into much more trouble than your son has.
Vandalism, substance abuse, extreme aggression.
Granted, lack of parental supervision and other aspects of the environment, even poor nutrition, can exacerbate problem behaviors, whereas a positive environment can both mitigate and obscure. ”
Not prevent, only mitigate. Not eliminate, but only obscure. She seemed to be saying I was hiding Benjamin’s true character by being a half-decent mother. But she wasn’t promising that my adequate parenting would be enough.
Dr. Adelman added, “Later childhood and adolescence is when you may know better, unfortunately.”
“You’re saying I have to wait until he’s a real problem before I know he has a real problem?”
She smiled again, pushing her scarf back over her shoulder. I was beginning to dislike that needy, slippery scarf, and the bob so razor-sharp perfect she must need to trim it monthly. “And even then, you might be frustrated, because it’s only in adulthood that certain labels can be applied.”
“So what do I do now?”
She sighed. “Focus on stability?”
Of course I tried to give my son stability. “That’s it?”
“And beware of self-fulfilling prophecies.”
I ended up switching thesis advisors a week after that meeting, frustrated that the woman who wrote persuasively in a scientific journal gave me nothing but wishy-washy advice in person.
It was my first indication that studying psychology wouldn’t necessarily help me, especially when problems were close to home.
If anything, the field would taunt me with the false expectation of definite answers.
Now, finally, Benjamin was a teenager. Now, finally, he was in trouble.
But as people like Robert tried to remind me, using the least jargon possible, all adolescents are temporarily crazy.
My first year at Summit confirmed that. The same kid who seemed stable one moment could do something unpredictable or unkind the next.
Izzy’s promiscuity and manipulation. Sidney’s poor judgment, allowing a stranger into her house—unless, of course, he wasn’t a stranger, but I wanted to believe he was.
They were the “normal” kids, and they tested boundaries and made poor decisions all the time.
And the boys? They were less caring, less reflective, more risk-taking.
Benjamin wasn’t entirely different from his male peers.
If I went back to Dr. Adelman now, she’d tell me to wait another ten years, until Benjamin’s prefrontal cortex had finally matured.
But she didn’t have my memories or my deep foreboding.
And one last thing—she didn’t have children.
When I discovered, just after graduating, that our college’s so-called childhood expert had never parented anything more than a cat, I deleted her phone number from my contacts.
I barely slept that night, but when I nodded off on the couch, from six in the morning to about seven twenty, I had nightmares. I woke with a stiff neck and bleary eyes, imagining how much worse it must have been for my son, cold and alone in a jail cell.
The legal aid number I’d called the night before got back to me with a low-cost lawyer named King who agreed to meet me at the station.
I called Curtis and left him a voicemail, asking if he’d decided whether to take on Benjamin, and I told him why it mattered now, more than ever.
Then I drove back to the police station, ready this time with a change of clothes for Benjamin, and deodorant and body spray under the assumption they wouldn’t let him shower and it would make him feel better.
With snacks, including three cold toaster waffles.
Also with a paperback—first I picked Stephen King, then worried that looked incriminating, so I swapped it out for a YA novel by John Green.
I had no idea if they allowed juveniles in custody to have some way to pass the hours.
Upon arrival, I was made to wait ten minutes before being shown into the interview room.
Benjamin was seated at the farthest chair, shoulders slumped, hair uncombed, staring at the opposite wall.
He didn’t make eye contact with me. Hernández was there, as was another tall white detective named Timothy Price and a Black man in a baggy suit who reached forward to shake my hand.
“Ralph King from Lincoln State Legal. I’ve already had the pleasure of meeting your son, Ms. Rosso. How are you doing?” Before I could answer he said, “Let’s get started, shall we?”
Detective Hernández told Benjamin they needed to go over his statement one more time, especially about the last day of Izzy’s life. The detective read the statement and began to ask his first question, about why Benjamin had stopped at home just prior to going to Izzy’s house.
I fully expected Benjamin to say something ill-advised when King interrupted.
“My client won’t be answering any more questions.”
Hernández tried again, followed by Price, but the answer was the same.
“My client won’t be answering any more questions. I think we’re done here?”