The Things I Want Most Read Online Free PDF Page A

summer afternoon, he doggedly kept his headup, answered each and every question, then braced himself for the next.
    Sue finally sat back. “Is there anything you would like to ask us, Mike?”
    At first he shook his head no, but then he changed his mind. There was something—something he was afraid of. He took a big breath, blinked, and for the first time stuttered. “Are you picking Petey?” he asked in a rush.
    Sue looked puzzled, and Kevin spoke up. “Peter is another child in his unit.”
    Sue shook her head at Mike. “No, honey, we’re not.”
    â€œPetey said you were looking at him, too. That he already knew you.”
    â€œNo, honey. I’m sure Petey is a very nice boy. But we read about you. We wanted to come meet you, only you, and see if you’d like to visit us.”
    Mike stiffly pushed his chair back, stood up, and then walked out the door. A moment later the door slammed back open and Mike said, “Good-bye.” Then the door closed again.
    Sue slumped back in her chair. “Whew. I feel like I’ve run twenty miles. Now, what was that last bit about?”
    Kevin shrugged. “There’s a lot of status on the floor if you have a family outside “he said, his voice choked up, “someone who visits you. Mike is very vulnerable in that way; he gets almost no visitors. Some of the other kids tease him and play jokes on him about it.”
    â€œWhat about the Johnsons?” Sue asked, referring to the couple who had adopted Mike’s older brother and sister. “I thought they visited him.”
    Kevin shrugged again, this time with his hands making a hapless gesture. “Not very often—maybe every three or four months—and the other kids know they’re not his real family.”
    Sue puffed out her cheeks and thought about that for a longmoment. The fingers of her right hand were drumming on the tabletop.
    A full minute later Joanne quietly asked, “Does this mean you want to take the next step?”
    Sue answered without looking up or thinking. “I invited him to lunch.”
    Then Joanne looked over at me with her dark eyes questioning. “Rich?”
    I looked back over at Sue, who was tense now, her back arching. To a great extent I had been swept along in her wake. But many of my doubts had collapsed in the face of the boy’s performance. In fact, toward the end of the interview I was squirming in my seat, angry at the brutal choreographic, at the image of four adults examining a frightened, anxious child in a closed room. We had just put too much pressure for far too long on this boy and I was repulsed at being a party to it. It might be necessary, but it wasn’t fair. Not fair by a wide margin, particularly since Mike didn’t seem anything at all like the sullen psychotic presence he could have been from that awful file. Instead he was skinny, almost emaciated, nervous, wanting to please, awfully alone, and somewhere in there you could see the kid who wanted a fishing pole. He was also a fighter; I was still feeling the force of him in the room.
    But what about that file? All those reports? On the other hand, what about Sue? None of this had gone the way I envisioned, not with the boy, not with her. Particularly not with her. Sues image of Mike as a sad, wan waif had not crumpled and she hadn’t been repelled or put off. In fact, the meeting seemed to reinforce her notions about him.
    I had to give up. “Okay, lunch,” I said tersely.
    Sue relaxed back into her chair, pleased but also wryly amused. “Don’t be so kind and expansive; it’s not like you.”

    I came home from work early on a hot, humid July afternoon to attend the lunch for Mike, backed into a parking slot, and paused for a long moment behind the wheel looking out. The place should make a wonderful impression on the boy. I had just cut the large sloping rear lawn in back and the side lawn by the parking