Do We Not Bleed?. Daniel Taylor
J.P. spot her. His eyes get big. A new friend, which, despite his natural reticence, he collects like baseball cards.
She takes a surreptitious glance at J.P. as she sits down in the seat next to him, but then looks straight ahead. J.P. is looking directly at her left ear, a smile on his face that would shame the Cheshire cat. He twists his head around further and looks at me.
“I’m a lucky guy!” he says loudly.
She shoots out of her seat like a pilot ejecting from a burning fighter jet and flees down the row.
“Oh well,” says J.P. with a shrug.
“Can’t win ’em all, buddy,” observes Jimmy the Man-About-Town.
I can’t tell whether the residents are understanding anything in the play or not. Judy certainly figures out Scrooge in short order.
“He . . . I should say . . . he is not a very nice man.”
And Tiny Tim presents no mystery.
“He’s like Don,” says Jimmy. Don is a kid on the boy’s floor back at New Directions who has cerebral palsy and uses crutches.
“Hello, Don!” Jimmy calls out with a wave. The other residents laugh and Jimmy beams. He’s got this trick down and repetition only burnishes it.
But they don’t seem to know what to make of the ghosts in the play.
Bonita is suspicious.
“I don’t like ghosts,” she says under her breath. “Ghosts are dead people and dead people are yuk.”
This gets nods and general agreement. I try to get everyone to keep quiet, but they are figuring this out together and ignore me.
“They are not . . . are not ghosts, Bonita Marie. They . . . they are called act . . . actors. They are just pre . . . pretending to be ghosts.”
This stumps the group.
“Like on Scooby-Doo,” suggests Jimmy.
“That, that’s right, Jimmy. Like on . . . on Scooby-Doo.”
The troops seem content with that answer and they noticeably relax.
Long before we get to Christmas Future, the residents have lost their zip. After I reject Bonita’s call for popcorn all around, she crosses her arms and sulks silently. Ralph is asleep. Jimmy is snapping his fingers and kicking the back of the seat in front of him. J.P. hasn’t moved a muscle in an hour, sitting straight, shoulders back, staring at the stage but giving no hint that he is following the action, such as it is.
At intermission we are out of there.
The residents offer their usual post-game analysis. Sometimes they are amazingly perceptive, in their Special Kind of Way. After we watched a rerun of Rocky on television one night, J.P. had said, “That was filmed in black and blue.” I couldn’t tell whether he was confused about a statement of fact or trotting out a sly word play. These guys keep you on your toes.
With A Christmas Carol, they seem content to simply catalog the good guys and the bad guys. Maintaining a clear moral order in the universe is important to them, a legacy, no doubt, of the simplified world of the nuns. I got my fill of Sister Brigit quotes when Judy lived with me on the houseboat in St. Paul. Now that I’m working with the older ones at New Directions, I get them in stereo.
As when Jimmy observes thoughtfully, “Sister Brigit would not have let us see that. Christmas is not about ghosts. Christmas is about Jesus.”
Van-wide approval. See if I take you guys to the theatre again.
four
That was last winter. We’ve been on many outings since, keeping the spending flowing and the clients occupied. Life for me is approaching that pleasantly killing state (think Roberta Flack) that some call order and some call routine and others call Rut. I’m thinking it might be more dangerous in the long run than heart disease or troubles in the head.
This morning for instance. The end of an eighteen-hour shift that began early yesterday afternoon. Paperwork followed by the return of the residents from their various deployments, followed by meal prep and consummation, followed by work on goals, followed by a group viewing of a rerun of Life Goes On (should Specials see themselves depicted?), followed by bedtime. Up at 6:30 this morning, overseeing dressing, preparing and eating breakfast, getting ready to disperse the residents to vehicles for points abroad, after which home to the boat to wait for it all to start again. Eighteen hours of my life allotment, of which eight are spent officially comatose. (I’ve been comatose much of my life, often while awake, so getting paid for it is an upgrade.)
Only this morning is different. A burp in the cosmic hum. I’m in the upstairs bathroom overseeing J.P. brushing his teeth. He is a master of up and down on the front teeth, but tends to ignore the teeth he cannot see in the mirror. (If molars lack an observer, can they be said to exist? asked Bishop Berkeley skeptically. Yes, answered Dr. Johnson, as you will see when they develop a painful cavity.)
I’m just telling J.P. to move on to the back teeth when I hear Bo Springer calling my name. I stick my head out the bathroom and see him at the bottom of the stairs. He looks severe.
“Abby Wagner is missing. Emergency meeting in thirty minutes.”
In the thirty minutes between Bo shouting up the stairwell and the beginning of the emergency meeting, the vans arrive to take the residents to their various places for the day—public work for the high flyers, sheltered workshops for the middle class, and day activity centers for the most special Specials like Billy. A place for everyone and everyone in their place.
The mood at the meeting is grim. Still, Cassandra Pettigrew looks to be embracing the moment. It’s a time to put all those degrees and certifications to work.
“Abby Wagner is missing. She spent an evening with her parents last night. They dropped her off at the main building about 10 p.m. In keeping with her long-range plan for independent living, they did not walk her to her independent living apartment. She has made that transfer on her own at night many times, as she will need to do when she is living independently in the community.”
I believe we’ve established the independent part.
“However, she was not in her apartment this morning when her supervisor checked on her. And she appears not to have slept in her bed last night. A preliminary search of the apartment building was conducted, but there was no sign of her and none of the other clients reported seeing her last night or this morning.”
She pauses, then addresses the staff like a field general before battle, laying out plans and going over strategies.
“This is officially a level three alert. We will be following contingency plan 22-C, which you will find in the handbook that you all have.”
All have? I remember getting a binder of something at that first orientation meeting, but I haven’t looked at it since and have no idea where it is, most likely in the trunk of my car or back on the boat. I’m hoping for more details about 22-C and the executive director obliges.
“In compliance with the contingency plan, we will bring all clients still on campus to the gymnasium. Ms. Francis and two staff people from the children’s dorms will supervise the clients while all remaining staff will conduct a search of the buildings and the grounds. Mr. Springer, as director of security as well as facilities, will organize the search. I will continue to be in contact with the police, who will send over additional personnel if our initial search is not successful. I have just spoken to Abby Wagner’s parents. They will be here shortly.”
Cassandra’s voice tightens a bit when she mentions Abby’s parents. This has the potential to be a worst-case scenario for New Directions and a career-ender for her. Stuart Wagner is the head of a powerful local clan. In fact he has some crooked Roman numerals behind his name, an indication that he comes in a long line of powerful (and, it goes without saying, wealthy) Stuart Wagners that stretches back into the nineteenth