Harmony Page 6

  Tonight’s dinner is a cookout: something special to celebrate our first night all together. When my dad and I walk to the dining hall, I see that the grills are set up outside, in a big grassy space without trees. My mom is one of the ones doing the grilling. She’s wearing her black bathing suit, with a pair of shorts over it. She always wears one-piece bathing suits—I think she thinks she’s too fat for a bikini—but she looks pretty in this one. It kind of shows off her boobs, but not in a gross way. Her boobs are on the big side, and I always wonder if mine will be, too. Tilly’s are getting big, I guess, but they always look kind of floppy because she doesn’t like wearing a bra.

  When my mom sees me, she smiles and raises a big two-pronged fork like she’s making a toast. Tilly’s going back and forth between the dining hall and the food table, carrying out trays and bowls. It’s weird: it feels like a long time since I’ve seen my mom and Tilly, like it’s been long enough for me to miss them, even though I actually just saw them around lunchtime. I wonder if time is ever going to feel regular here, or if it just seems weird because it’s still the first day.

  There are a bunch of little tables set up with folding chairs, and after a minute I notice that there are name cards on them, telling people where they should sit. I can tell right away that Scott’s playing some get-to-know-each-other game with the tables. Families don’t get to sit together; everyone’s all split up and mingled. I’m sitting with Diane (who I’ve started thinking of as Candy’s mom, even though she’s also the mom of both Ryan and Charlotte), and Hayden, the little boy who doesn’t talk. I feel annoyed; I just want to sit with my mom and dad and Tilly and act like things are normal for five minutes.

  Scott’s all over the place, getting everything ready. He’s wearing a chef’s hat, which somehow doesn’t look dorky on him; he just looks like a guy in a barbecue sauce commercial. He walks over to the serving table and sets down a big bowl of fruit salad, then pauses, peering around with his forehead wrinkled, doing a head count or something. Then he whistles through his teeth, loud and shrill, to get our attention. Hayden starts crying.

  “Good evening, troops,” Scott says in his talking-to-a-crowd voice, louder than usual to cover the noise of Hayden shrieking. (Hayden’s mom, Janelle, is bent down next to him now, trying to shush him, but it isn’t working.) “Grub’s almost ready, but before we start, why don’t you all take a minute to look around and see where you’re sitting. Big kids help the little ones.”

  When the food’s ready, we all take plates—real ones, not paper ones like at most cookouts—and walk past the food table. There are hamburgers and hot dogs, but I can tell the hot dogs are the weird ones with no nitrites or nitrates or whatever, no preservatives or artificial colors. Veggie burgers and fake hot dogs, too, and skewers of grilled vegetables. No chips or anything like that. Big pitchers of water. Nothing else to drink.

  I let my mom put a hamburger on my plate, from a big platter she’s carried over from the grill. “It’s regular meat, right?” I ask.

  She smiles. “What—you don’t like kangaroo burgers?”

  “Mom, come on.” I sound whiny, but it’s been a long day.

  “It’s fine, honey. Regular beef. You’ll like it.”

  I go sit down at my table and start eating, even though no one else is sitting there yet. A couple of minutes later, Hayden and his mom, Janelle, come over. Janelle’s short and skinny, with black hair cut close to her head. She smiles at me and says hi, puts a hand on my shoulder like she knows me already. But she’s looking at the cards, and when she sees how things are set up, she makes a little noise under her breath. She helps Hayden settle down into the chair next to mine and gives him a plate of food, then she calls Scott to come over.

  “Hey, Janelle,” he says cheerfully. “What’s up?”

  “I’m sorry, but one of us has to sit with Hayden, either me or Tom. He’d rather have me, though.”

  Scott nods and listens to her with a serious expression on his face. “I understand what you’re saying, Janelle,” he says. “There have already been a lot of changes for one day. But you know that we have to begin the way we plan to continue. And there are a whole lot of people besides you and Tom that Hayden’s going to have to learn to trust.”

  Janelle laughs softly and shakes her head. “Yeah, that all sounds great. But I’m not talking about preferences here: ‘Oh, gosh, Hayden would really prefer to sit with his parents.’ I’m saying, no way is he going to sit here and eat with a bunch of people he doesn’t know, unless you’re planning to tie him to the chair.”

  Scott turns to watch Hayden, who’s holding a chunk of watermelon to his mouth, sucking out the juice; it’s already white around the edges. “He looks like he’s doing all right.”

  “That’s because I’m standing right here. I walk away, he’s going to be following right behind me. You try to stop him, he’s going to melt down completely, and I don’t see how that’s going to be constructive for anyone.”

  “Janelle, Hayden was in day care back in Philadelphia, right?”

  “Until they couldn’t handle him anymore.”

  “And did you drop him off and leave every morning, or did you stay all day, so he wouldn’t get upset?”

  Janelle rolls her eyes. “No. That is not what’s going on here. I’m not being overprotective, I’m not saying I can’t let Hayden ever get upset. He gets upset about twenty times a day, as I think you’ve seen. I’m just trying to figure out a way that we can all take part in your nice little get-to-know-you barbecue, without me having to carry out a screaming child.”

  Scott says, “Let’s just give it a try, okay? Not for the whole meal, even, but for a few minutes. Leap of faith.”

  Janelle’s quiet for a minute. She looks doubtful, but she says, “Yeah, okay.”

  She crouches down to talk to Hayden. “Listen, buddy, Mommy’s going to be right nearby. You just sit here and eat your dinner with”—she glances around at our place cards—“Diane and Iris, and afterward, we’ll go for a swim, and you and Daddy can play Speedboat, okay?”

  Hayden just stares at her. He’s really kind of cute; he’s got these gigantic brown eyes, and he’s wearing a plaid shirt that looks like someone took a grown-up shirt and shrunk it down. I can’t tell if he understands what his mom just told him, but as soon as she starts walking away, he makes a noise that sounds like “mm mm mm” and tries to get up from his seat. He can’t, though, because Scott’s got his hands on his shoulders, keeping him in place.

  Hayden starts to howl. He starts hitting his own head with his hands, and his face is all crumpled up, like he’s terrified or completely miserable. I get this feeling that I have with Tilly: half sympathetic because he’s so upset, and half annoyed because, honestly, his mom’s only five feet from him, and it shouldn’t be this big a deal. But he’s just a little kid, and Tilly is older than I am, so with him, I’m leaning more toward the sympathy side.

  Janelle’s standing with her back to us. She’s got a hand covering her face, and I can tell she really wants to just come back and fix the problem. Scott’s talking to Hayden in a low voice, trying to calm him down, but it’s not working, and then I have an idea. I reach in my pocket and pull out my key ring. I’ve had it in my pocket since we left DC; all the keys are for our old house, so they’re not much use anymore, but I like feeling them there, this reminder of our old life (which wasn’t our “old life” until yesterday). Anyway, there’s a little flashlight on the key chain that turns on when you squeeze it, and I hold it up in front of Hayden and make it blink a few times.

  He doesn’t stop crying completely, but I can tell he’s interested. He stops hitting himself and reaches out toward the key chain. I let him grab it from me, but of course the light turns off, because he hasn’t figured out the squeezing part yet.

  “You have to do this,” I say. I put my fingers gently on his and show him, and when I take my hand away,
he’s doing it by himself. He’s not yelling anymore, though his breath is still catching sometimes that way it does when you’ve been crying. “Yeah,” I say. “Good job.”

  Scott slowly takes his hands away, and Hayden stays put. “Nice work, Iris,” Scott whispers to me, and I take a bite of my hamburger, feeling kind of proud and embarrassed at the same time.

  • • •

  After dinner (which is pretty good, except for the burger buns, which are gluten-free and fall apart almost immediately), Scott gets our attention by raising his water glass over his head and clinking it with a spoon. He waits for everyone to quiet down, and then he stays quiet for a minute longer, turning to look at each person individually. He’s smiling like he’s going to burst with happiness.

  “I cannot tell you,” he begins, “how good it is to see all of you here. The birth of Camp Harmony is a triumph, not just for me, but for all of us.”

  He pauses, looks down, and swallows. A couple of the parents take it as a suggestion to clap.

  “When I first met each of you, each of these beautiful families I see before me, you were people in trouble. Each of you had traveled a painful path, and each of you was struggling to find a way to make things better.”

  “No, we weren’t,” someone interrupts, and I don’t have to look around to know that it’s Tilly. She never seems to get it that when someone’s talking to a whole group of people, it’s not a personal conversation between her and them.

  I hear my dad call Tilly’s name from whatever table he’s sitting at, and I know he’s going to quiet her down, even if it means taking her somewhere else. I’m mad, suddenly. Furious. He’ll take Tilly to a different part of the woods, and she’ll be free to wander around and talk about giant statues, and she’ll have all his attention, and she’ll never even get that it’s almost like a punishment. That he’s taking her away because she can’t act like a normal human being.

  But Scott holds up a hand to stop my dad. “My turn to talk, Tilly,” he says. “Please wait till I’m done.” He takes a breath, tries to remember where he was. “I guess I’m talking to the grown-ups here, more than the kids. I’m glad, Tilly—and the rest of you kids—if it didn’t seem like your family was having a hard time. That means your parents were doing their jobs, protecting you from the bad things in the world.”

  I look over at Tilly. My dad’s crouched down next to her, whispering in her ear, probably reminding her not to talk. But he’s not letting her out of the situation, out of sitting here and listening like the rest of us are doing, and I’m glad in a way that feels a little bit mean.

  “But let me tell you something, kids: I’ve talked to your parents, at great length. I’ve talked to them for hours, and I’ve hugged them and held their hands and sat with them while they cried.”

  That sounds wrong to me, and I wonder if it’s supposed to be a joke. But when I look around at the grown-ups, they’re not laughing or objecting or acting like Scott is saying anything crazy. They’re dead serious, every last one of them, and some of them are nodding their heads. Some of them look like they might start crying right now.

  “And I can tell you two things: one, your parents love you very much, and two, they weren’t happy with the way things were going.”

  Now I almost feel like crying. I try to catch my mom’s eye, so she can send me a secret smile and let me know that he’s being kind of ridiculous. But she’s got her eyes on Scott, and I can’t get her attention.

  “Anyway,” Scott says. “I didn’t get up here to talk about the way things were. I’m here to talk about the way things are going to be. Because now, none of you are alone. As of tonight, you’re not just the Ruffin family and the Hammond family and the Gough family. From this moment on, you’re part of the Camp Harmony family, and let me tell you, that’s a pretty special place to be.”

  There’s clapping from everywhere, all of the grown-ups and some of the kids. I put my hands together once, softly, so they don’t make any sound.

  “Now, you’re all wearing your bathing suits, am I right?” Scott asks. Everyone yells “Yeah!” or something like it. I say it, too, but not very loud.

  “Okay, then. If you’re wearing anything else—shoes, socks, T-shirt—take them off now, or they’re going to get wet with the rest of you.” He pulls his own T-shirt off and waves it over his head. His chest is tan, and it’s hairier than my dad’s.

  “All right, now. I think we’re ready. Everybody join hands—grab on to whoever’s closest to you, it doesn’t matter who.”

  The only one near me is Diane; Hayden left to sit with his mom a while ago. She smiles at me, and I let her hold my hand. A minute later, Hayden’s dad, Tom, takes my other hand, and soon the whole group of us is joined together.

  “As we go down to the water,” Scott says, “we’re going to sing the Camp Harmony song. I know you all know it—your folks have told me you’ve been practicing.”

  He’s right; Mom and Dad made us sing it a bunch of times in the car on the ride up here. I guess it’s based on an old song that was used in a Coke commercial (which my dad seems to think is really funny), but Scott’s changed some of the words. As we begin to sing, Scott pulls forward from the front of the line, and we’re walking down the hill to the lake, all in a line like we’re one long creature.

  I’d like to build the world a camp

  And furnish it with hope

  With stars aglow and room to grow

  A perfect antidote

  The sun is setting over the water, and I feel happy and sad at the same time, the way you do sometimes when you’re singing. I’ve been keeping my voice quiet, but when we get to the next verse, with the part about harmony, I let it take me over, and I shout it as loud as anyone.

  Scott snakes the line of us down to the edge of the water, and then we step into the lake, one by one, all joined together. The water’s chillier than I’m expecting, and the bottom feels different on my feet from the sand at an ocean beach; instead of being firm, it’s kind of soft and muddy. But Scott keeps singing, as he leads us further in, as we step down a sudden drop that brings the grown-ups into the water up to their waists and the littlest kids up to their chests. He’s still singing when he stops and looks around and nods, then he gets us into a circle and jerks downward with his hands, causing a chain reaction that drags each of us under the surface of the water and then back up again. And as we all pop our heads back out, wet and sort of shocked, it’s like we all make a decision, together in a split second, to keep singing, right where we left off.

  I’m shivering a little, but I’m smiling and almost laughing, happy for no reason at all. I squeeze the hands of the two people on either side of me, and I know before it happens that they’ll continue the pattern. I know without any question that those squeezes will make their way around the circle, to my mom and my dad and Tilly and everyone else, and come right back to me.

  chapter 8

  Inside the Coal Mine

  From Scott Bean’s Parenting Blog

  October 2011

  You are cruel to your children every day, whether you mean to be or not. You are cruel by treating them better than anyone else ever will. You are cruel by giving in to their demands sometimes, but not others. You are cruel by making them the center of your lives.

  Children, especially those children who are a little bit out of step, need firm, clear boundaries. They need limits and consequences. They need to learn to meet the world on the world’s terms.

  The world around us has become toxic so gradually that we barely even notice. We think, “I watched a lot of TV as a child, and it didn’t harm me.” But children’s programming was on for a few hours in the mornings and a few hours in the afternoons; in between, you either went to play outside, or you were subjected to endless soap operas and game shows. Seeing a movie meant going to a movie theater—a specific outing, a rare treat—not buying a DVD and watching it
as many times as you liked. We all have stories of finding a Playboy, or something a bit raunchier, in our parents’ closets or in a trash pile somewhere, but it wasn’t possible for any child in any house to find a hundred varieties of pornography, just by pressing a few buttons.

  We breathe tainted air, and we eat tainted food. Is it any wonder that your children are having trouble?

  Who knows how much we’ve damaged these children already, without being aware that we’re doing anything wrong? Not so long ago, doctors used to recommend that pregnant women take up smoking to curb anxiety. Who’s to say that in thirty years, people won’t be shaking their heads over the foolishness of prenatal ultrasounds and plastic sippy cups?

  Your kids are sensitive; that’s one of the things that sets them apart. It may be that most American kids are ingesting artificial colors that are illegal in Europe, and sleeping on mattresses treated with flame retardants. And not all of them show ill effects, at least not as far as we can tell. But your kids’ systems can’t handle it, and the results are devastating.

  Difficulty regulating emotions, repetitive behaviors, tics and OCD-like symptoms, inability to process social cues: these are warnings. They are indications that something needs to change. These kids are coal-mine canaries, and we can’t even see how hard they’re struggling to stay upright on their perches.

  That’s where I come in. My question for you is: are you going to let me help?

  chapter 9

  Alexandra

  March 2008: Washington, DC

  Some days you’re an idiot, and some days you’re a fucking idiot. It’s the winter of 2008, and you’ve developed a habit of berating yourself while you drive. You wait until you’re alone in the car, the girls dropped safely at school: no one here but you and your wretched brain. It’s not hard to find material; you’ve got thirty-nine years’ worth of evidence to draw from, and it’s all up for scrutiny. You said something stupid (maybe last week, maybe in the third grade). You failed to say something smart (to your first boyfriend or to a random woman in line at Safeway). You missed an opportunity. You raised your voice. You made the wrong choice. You behaved in a way that was morally ambiguous. You were rude to a stranger. You were cruel to someone you love.