The Stardust Lounge_ Stories From a Boy's Adolescence - Deborah Digges [54]
Stephen loves his body, loves working out alone— though not at a gym. Rather, he does pull-ups on the thick branch of the white pine out back. He has set a ladder against that tree and lashed it so that it will not give way. He climbs up high, then slips his legs through the rungs, and from a hanging position pulls himself up, his arms across his chest, his ponytail flying while below him the dogs circle, barking, and the cats perch on various rungs or on a tree limb, as if to lend him support.
He loves being clean and carries out lengthy rituals of skin and hair care, uses specified deodorants and colognes the rest of the household is not to touch. And by eighteen he has come to love to clean his room, loves to dust and vacuum and scrub. There is a sign on his door that insists that anyone entering must remove shoes. It is not a joke.
Stephen loves his camera, an old Pentax that his brother gave him. Using black-and-white film, he sets up for himself different projects, carries them out and develops the film in his darkroom. At a garage sale he found an enlarger, and the necessary pans, bins, and chemicals. He is unequivocal about not being disturbed, disappearing for hours to reappear with photos of the sky and clouds, train tracks, abandoned barns and warehouses, or various and prolific studies of weeds in winter. He says his subject is “light.”
A year older than Trevor, Stephen acts as big brother, often explaining to me his analyses of Trevor's behaviors.
“Trev's a man of few words,” Stephen says when I express worry over Trevor's silences. “He's not mad. He's just thinking. If you try to make him talk, he freezes. It's like when his therapist comes over. The living room,” he laughs, “is completely silent! Or you hear the guy mumbling on—you hear the sound of questions—'blah, blah, blah, blah? Silence! That's Trevor, Mom. That's his way.”
That's his way… that's her way … Stephen has introduced this phrase to the rest of us. It means there are certain things that can't be changed about a person, and if this is so, then one must accept it, work around it, and/or ignore it. It's a phrase that preserves one's dignity, or the dignity of another, in the face of criticism.
While Stephen walked the dogs one afternoon, a school official who lives down the street confronted him.
“I need for you to know,” she said, “that I have called the Department of Youth Services to say that yours is an unfit house for a foster child.”
Stephen was distracted by trying to keep the dogs from peeing or pooping in her yard, a travesty she recently complained to the boys about. And he was struggling with tact, with maintaining a decorum. Not too long ago he might have told the woman to go fuck herself. These days he works at being what he calls a citizen, not necessarily because it's the right thing to do, but because, as Ed has suggested to him, “you have less to carry around.”
“How do you know it's their poop?” he had asked, a question she considered insolent.
“I've studied the configurations,” she answered. “I know your dogs’ feces from all others …”
Stephen put the dogs on leashes as she continued.
“Trevor was one of my advisees before he was sent away. Long before you knew him. He needs discipline, structure. And if your mother won't tell you, I will. You two can't be out in the yard shouting and wrestling with these dogs at midnight. Nor should Trevor be shooting baskets when he's supposed to be in school.”
“He doesn't like school much,” Stephen offered, trying to restrain the dogs, unused to leashes in the first place.
“Doesn't like school?” She shook her head. “Your mother should be attending the parent-training lectures at the high school.”
“Mom talks to Ed,” Stephen answered.
The woman clicked her tongue.
“Tell your mother that I will be looking for her on Monday evening. We have a guest speaker from the organization Tough Love.”
“I'll give her the message.” Stephen released the dogs