The battery charged on vacation never lasted long. The laptop was still booting up and Steffen Finch hadn’t yet swallowed the first sip of coffee when his boss, Ronnie Danvers, put her head in his office.
“Need you,” she said.
“I missed you, too.”
“I’m sorry, welcome back. You look well-rested, well-fed and well-laid.”
Stef laughed. “You don’t get laid at an ashram.”
“Sorry, I meant well-prayed, not laid.”
“I did pray a lot, yes.”
“I’m glad you’re back. And we need you.”
Stef made a futile gesture to his laptop with one hand, a more urgent gesture to his foil-wrapped breakfast sandwich with the other. “It’ll get cold.”
“I’ll buy you another.”
Stef slapped both palms on his desk and got up. “I take it back. I didn’t miss you.”
He followed Ronnie out of his office and down the open stairwell. The Coalition for Creative Therapy occupied one half of a sprawling brick building on Eleventh Avenue. Once, during the gritty, dirty and bloody reign of Manhattan’s meatpacking industry, this was the slaughterhouse and packing plant of Kraus & Brothers. Family-owned for three generations, Kraus eventually migrated from Chelsea to the new Hunt’s Point Market in the Bronx, leaving a void in New York’s west side that 1960s gay culture rushed to fill. The plant became a club called Manhunt, packing a different kind of meat in an era that was a different kind of gritty, dirty and bloody.
Manhunt was forcibly shut down in the 1980s at the height of the AIDS scare. For two decades it crouched like a haunted misfit at the river’s edge, occasionally rising up in the hands of new renters with new ventures and new money, only to be abandoned again.
Optimism moved out and the wretches of Manhattan’s underworld moved back in. When the Whitney Museum of Art began scoping Chelsea for a new location, it seemed the slaughterhouse’s sordid days were numbered.
Salvation came in the form of a Hollywood actor, a native New Yorker who went public with a shocking story of how he was raped by his agent. Crediting art therapy as being key to his recovery, he bought the Kraus plant with the intention of creating a residential and therapeutic facility for male survivors like himself.
The residential side of the building was called the Exodus Project. It provided housing and inpatient mental health services for up to thirty men. The Coalition for Creative Therapy provided outpatient rehab for sexual assault survivors of all ages and genders.
“Max Springer,” Ronnie said, reading from a file. “Six years old. Born Upper East Side. Biological father died when he was three, his mother remarried a year later. She’s active army, deployed to Iraq seven months ago. As far as we can tell, the abuse started shortly thereafter.”
“The stepfather?”
Ronnie nodded. “Max’s teacher noticed behavioral issues. Coupled with stomach pains and bathroom troubles. He fainted after passing blood in his stool and enough of the story came out that the school called CPS. Temporary foster care until grandparents could get here from Florida and the mother could get discharged. He’s living with her now.”
“Jesus.”
“He was treated at Mount Sinai. Your esteemed mentor Franklin Stein referred Max here, just after you left for vacation. He made a point of putting your name in the write-up.”
“Dr. Frankenstein likes to overestimate me.”
“Well, his estimate of Max was spot-on. Nobody can do a thing with this child.”
“No?”
“The mother, God bless her, has brought him here every day. First few sessions, he screamed and wouldn’t leave her side. Next few he cried and wouldn’t leave her side.”
“Skip ahead a little.”
“Two accomplishments. He let his mother out of his sight for an hour. And he’s stopped screaming.”
“Good. Is he verbal?”
“He talks mostly to himself,” Ronnie said. “Bare minimum to the staff. Hello. Goodbye.”
“Does he say no?”
She shook her head. “He hasn’t gotten his no back.”
Sexual assault robbed a child of the power of no, a power they were only just beginning to understand. Getting their no back was one of the first milestones of recovery.
“Who’s been working with him?” Stef asked.
“Being that he was abused by the stepfather, we started with the obvious and had both Aedith and Katie try.”
Stef nodded. It was logical to have the juvenile victim of a male abuser work with a female therapist. But this kind of trauma had no logic. It never liked to do what you expected. “No go?”
“Wanted nothing to do with either of them. So we tried Beau, but one look and Max was out the door. Nothing wrong with his motor skills, I’ll tell you. We found him under a bed over on the residential side.”
Stef found himself smiling. Good for you, kid. You couldn’t escape before, so run like hell now.
“Poor Beau,” he said. Beau deBrueil was a gifted therapist, but some clients couldn’t get past his six-six, three-hundred-pound presence. Many who did found they never wanted to leave it.
“So as usual,” Ronnie said, pausing outside the main art room door. “You’re my only hope, Obi-Wan.”
As usual, when she said this, Stef felt a blend of pride and apprehension. While his reputation for cracking tough cases preceded him like a showy parade horse, the fear of failing was hitched behind like a rusty trailer. It dragged hard today, when half his game was still meditating in California, and the other half sulked in his rumbling stomach. He was pretty useless when he was hungry.
“Do what you can,” Ronnie said. “And welcome back. I mean it.”
Stef drew a resigned breath and went into the art room. It stretched along the building’s west side. High ceilings exposed vents and duct work. Tall windows overlooked the ongoing construction of the new elevated High Line park. A handful of men occupied the long wooden work tables. Aedith Johnson supervised a group of young girls at a round table in the corner. In one of the partitioned private spaces, Katie Bernstein worked one-on-one.
“What’s up, my man,” Beau said, striding over to give Stef a rib-crunching hug. “Glad to be back?”
“No,” Stef said to the wall of Beau’s chest.
“I missed your stupid face. How was the monastery?”
“Ashram.”
“God bless you.”
Stef managed to turn his face free. “I can’t breathe.”
Like a loving python, Beau gave a last squeeze and released his coils. “Ronnie tell you about Max?”
“Where is he?”
Beau pointed to an empty table at the room’s far end. “Under there.”
Stef regarded the boy through narrowed eyes. Someone had put a Do Not Disturb placard on the tabletop. Common practice for a new client whose primary goal was getting used to the space and the staff and feeling safe. The people who came here for therapy were not amenable to closed doors or situations where they felt penned in. By design, the art room’s partitions were only six feet high and open at the bottom. More improvised constructs of privacy—a folding screen, a wall of chairs, a Do Not Disturb sign—were held sacrosanct.
Max lay beneath his empty table. Plaid pajama pants and a baseball T-shirt. Brown hair, cut short. He curled on one side, a hand reaching toward the underside of the table.
“He talks to himself,” Beau said. “Constantly. But yesterday as he was leaving, he said goodbye. Unprompted. Today he made a little eye contact. I see him peeking out from underneath the table every now and then, looking curious. He’s definitely more here than he was two weeks ago.”
“Mm.”
“Good luck,” Beau said. “Everyone’s glad to see you back.”
“Thanks,” Stef said absently, his focus drawing in tight.
He circled the room a few times, weaving around the tables, saying hello to residents and giving a few highlights of his retreat in California. He walked by Max’s table a few times, letting the boy notice him from the knees down. He crouched in eyesight, letting the rest of him be seen as he collected some scrap paper, a book of mosaic designs and a pack of washable magic markers. He whistled as he roamed. Finally, he put another Do Not Disturb sign on the table next to Max’s. Without making eye contact, he crawled beneath, stretching out on his stomach.
Still whistling, he began to color. He resisted the urge to look Max’s way. Instead he listened.
Beneath the table, Max nattered away to himself. Total gibberish, yet the sounds had pattern and inflection. Strings of chatter rose up at the end, asking a question. He paused between babbles, as if waiting for an answer. It was definitely a conversation.
Who are you talking to, Stef jotted on a scrap of paper. Imaginary friend? Hero? Mom?
Secret language. Nobody else can know. Nobody understands.
Private universe. Private language.
Real privacy taken away. Construct it however you can.
Max lay on his back now, soles of his feet pressed to the tabletop. Over and over, he sang a two-note warning. Like “Uh-oh” but with different syllables.
From beneath his table, Stef whistled the same tones, mimicking the high-low.
Max sang again, sounding like, “Ear cook.”
Stef whistled. High-low.
“Ear cook,” Max said.
They went back and forth a few times. When it came to his turn, Stef inverted the notes, low to high.
A long pause.
Stef whistled low-high again, slower.
“Bye gee,” the boy said, copying.
Low-high whistle.
“Bye gee.”
High-low whistle.
“Ear cook.”
They went on chatting this way, each under a table, barricaded behind chair legs. Stef whistling. Max singing. He followed Stef’s tones, but never changed the words.
Ear cook? Stef wrote. Bye gee? Mean anything or nonsense?
On one of his whistled replies, Stef sent a marker rolling across the floor, aiming between chair legs and under Max’s table. He didn’t follow it with his eyes. He kept his gaze on his work and kept coloring. The small of his back was starting to howl. Drawing prone was hard on a grown man’s body. He’d have to move soon.
He allowed himself a glance. Max was still on his back, one knee crossed over the other. He was babbling again, and drawing in the air with the blue pen. Stef rolled a second marker over. Red this time. The boy picked it up and waved both above his head. Grandiose, sweeping motions, like a conductor with two batons. Then he made little scooping movements, tossing an invisible salad. One pen fought the other in sword play. He put the blue cap on the red pen and the red cap on the blue pen. He rubbed them between his palms, then switched the caps back and began to conduct again.
Without making any sudden or abrupt movements, Stef collected his supplies and crawled out from beneath his table. He sat in one of its chairs, stretched his lower back, cracked his neck, then went back to work. He waited, but expected nothing more from Max. This tiny bit of connection was a good start.
Out the corner of his eye, he saw Max peeking at him from between the legs of a chair, red and blue markers clutched in a tight fist. A dagger at the ready.
Stef kept working, whistling softly through his teeth now. Building trust was like building a fire. If you hovered over the baby flames, you’d cut off the air and kill them. It required an anxious blend of feeding and benign neglect.
Tiny bits of fuel.
Let him catch if he wants.
Max came crawling out and crouched at the back legs of Stef’s chair. Then he crawled to the other side of the table. Only his hair showed above the edge at first. Then two eyes. Then his chin. A little floating head on the tabletop.
Slowly Stef looked up.
Max ducked.
Stef made the two-tone whistle. High-low.
No answer.
Stef made it again.
“Ear cook,” Max said.
“Just checking,” Stef said.
Little by little the head reappeared, like a rising sun.
Son rise, Stef thought, a sadness stirring at the backs of his eyes.
Rise up, brave son.
He folded the feeling up and put it away for later.
Standing now, Max pushed the red magic marker across the table. Stef looked up again. The boy met his eyes for two seconds, then dropped them and pushed the marker further.
“You want me to use this?” Stef said.
A quick nod.
Stef turned the coloring book around and slid it toward Max. “Which shape?”
Max breathed through his mouth as his eyes swept the geometric design. A grubby finger pointed, reached and touched a hexagon.
Keeping the book upside-down, Stef colored it red.
Max handed him the purple marker and pointed to a triangle.
“You want to do one now?” Stef asked.
Max shook his head. He pushed a brown marker and pointed.
As Stef colored, he eased the rest of the markers toward the center of the table. He waited for directions. Max gave him a green marker. Then an orange one. He pointed. There, with this color. Here, with that one. Now do this. Now do that. Stef followed orders, capping each pen carefully when he was done and putting it back in the pile.
Max stopped then, staring at Stef’s left arm. Wrist to elbow, it was tattooed with mythical horses. Centaurs and pegasi. Stef rolled his arm back and forth so the boy could see both sides. Max picked up a black marker and handed it to Stef. Then he pointed to his own forearm.
“You want me to draw a tattoo?”
Max nodded.
“What would you like?”
The boy’s shoulders stiffened. Stef’s heart kicked up a bit. This was the real test. Did Max know what he wanted and, more importantly, could he say it?
“I’ll draw whatever you want,” Stef said, wondering when was the last time this boy was given a choice.
Max wet his lips. “Pain,” he whispered.
Stef stared. Jesus Christ, he wants me to draw pain? He turned an ear toward Max and made his voice just as soft. “Can you say it again, please?”
A big, deep inhale. “Plane.”
“Oh, a plane. Sure. Where do you want it?”
Max examined one arm, then the other, then laid his left arm on the table, hand in a fist.
“Point to where,” Stef said, uncapping the black marker. “Tell me exactly where.”
Max pointed and Stef sketched a plane. Ideally he’d put his free hand on top of Max’s arm to steady the surface, but touching without permission was against the rules. So he had to hold the marker like a brush and sort of paint the picture with the tip.
“What color do you want it?”
Max handed him a blue pen.
“You ever been in an airplane?” Stef asked.
Max shook his head.
“Where’s this plane going?”
Max’s open-mouthed, huffed breaths blew warm on Stef’s wrist. “Away.”
Stef nodded, making lines from the back of the aircraft, indicating it was taking off. “Away’s a good place,” he said. “I go there a lot.”