3. An Apple, a Cow, a Sheep and a Tree
I am told April had a hard time giving birth to me. It took her more than two days. I cannot remember, of course, although it seems plausible given how little I wanted to be there. I have no memories of a particular event from these years, only a strong feeling of resistance and unhappiness.
I liked April’s scent and her warmth when she was around. It was so irregular and unpredictable, though, that I came to rely on Louise. When the gossip started something might be wrong with me, she kept her trust in me and treated me with love and respect. In return, I acted like what my family chose to call a normal child with her.
When I was eighteen months old, the Warner mansion began to worry because I refused to speak and I showed no inclination of getting up and walk. I crawled. With patience and constant improvement, I had reached the aptitude and efficiency I deemed necessary for my purposes.
Where April and George were worried, Robert was annoyed. Barely 21 years old, he was still a child himself and resented me for monopolizing the attention. Had I wanted to talk to him, I would have told him he could have it. I wanted to be left alone, crawl around, and explore the squares on the carpet in the study or the floral designs in my wallpaper.
Frustrated Robert went back to the penthouse in Manhattan and finished his degree in business administration. There were rumors he failed his last two courses on purpose to be able to stay another term. I’m not sure anyone missed him in Newport. When it could not be put off any longer, he returned with renewed hope for a prominent place in the Warner household. George did not provide anything of the sort but forced him into a low-level management position in the local water company. He wanted to see how Robert fared without being the boss’s son-in-law. Secretly, he wanted to see if he was able to fix what Louise couldn’t.
Robert hated work in general and was disappointed he was put to work at all. He had imagined himself having lunches with powerful men in country clubs, fixing a business deal over a game of golf and attending parties with movie stars in the evenings. Not with George.
George had him put in charge of coordinating damage repair and laying new pipes. A daily influx of damage reports and customer requests kept Robert busy and left him no room for the idle lifestyle he had anticipated when he agreed to marry April. He hadto go to work, otherwise residents would go without water or have broken waste water pipes flooding their basements. George had also made sure Robert had no one to delegate his workload. To keep him motivated, George teased Robert with a monthly allowance and promised him a good position in the Warner Empire once he had earned a promotion on his own merits.
April didn’t waste much thought on Robert. Motherhood consumed all her time and she blamed herself for my pain and discomfort. The more obvious my resistance to being in this household became, the more she dedicated herself to improve my well-being. She jumped up when I started crying, she experimented with food and drink to find the one thing that was bugging me. When she failed, she took me to every doctor and child psychologist in the country only to hear nothing was physically wrong with me.
Louise kept her cool. She pushed me in my buggy along the cliffs and held me in her rocking chair. She had a hunch that my distress was a visceral protest against my dysfunctional family and provided me with a calm and nourishing environment where I could breathe and calm down.
In the quietude of her cottage, I finally recognized the inefficiency of crawling and took a shot at walking. The fuss they made when I started walking around the mansion convinced me to keep my talking a secret. I only spoke to Louise and made it clear I didn’t want her to share the information with anyone in the household.
In my limited perspective as a toddler, I didn’t comprehend the consequences of my actions for Louise. She knew that I was not retarded but couldn’t tell anyone without giving away my secret. When I created grammatically correct sentences in both English and German at the age of two, Louise was sure I was a rather bright child. However, because she couldn’t tell anyone, gossip spread from the mansion into town that there was something wrong with the Warner heir. Louise was often tempted to tell George but an inner warning always stopped her.
To their surprise, they got along well. When he was in town, Louise and George had a drink in his study after dinner. George usually requested my presence and although I was not sure about my feelings for him, I liked it there because of the thick carpet with the pattern of repeated squares. Its fluffiness made me feel comfortable and the squares were rich food for my ever-hungry mind. I ignored the toys Louise had brought and studied the squares. By the time I was three years old I knew everything about them. I was able to calculate their area, circumference or sides when I knew one quantity.
George watched me closely. He had heard of children like me. When the staff or guests in the house started calling me retarded behind the family’s back, he ignored it. He knew I could be the exact opposite and looked for signs that I was. Although I never answered him, he asked me many questions with the obvious intention to find out how smart I was.
When I still wouldn’t speak to him at the age of three, he organized a combined business and a let’s-see-how-retarded-the-kid-really-is-trip to see a specialist in California. I remember a sunny room overlooking the Pacific. The doctor, a heavily tanned man with a fake smile showed me pictograms. The first was an apple, the second a mean looking cow, the third one a sheep and the last one a tree. After each card, he looked at me and asked eagerly:
“What is it? What is it, Nick?”
I must admit I was confused and thought it must be a trick question. To be on the safe side, I didn’t answer him. George and the doctor with the fake smile looked disappointed. Later in our hotel room, Louise asked me, why I hadn’t answered the doctor.
“I didn’t want to embarrass him.”
“What? Why?”
“He’s a doctor and doesn’t know what an apple, a cow or a tree is?”
End of Chapter 3
4. THE FENCE
Two months after my fourth birthday, I had a growing inkling my silence was becoming a burden. Why couldn’t they leave me in peace and trust that I would speak if I had something to say to them? Every day, they asked me something, brought a new toy or put out little traps.
For my fourth birthday, Robert had someone decorate my room with all sorts of toy cars while I was at breakfast. When I returned, paper cars were hanging from the ceiling, matchbox cars on my desk, and on the floor was a big red bobby car. Robert was waiting by my bed.
“Look at all the cars, Nick, they’re all for you. You can play with them.”
The only thing I wanted to say was: you like cars, that’s why you bought them. Instead, I grabbed my notepad and crayons and crouched down in the alcove by the window, the only place not decorated with cars, and started drawing squares.
“Stupid little retard”, Robert muttered under his breath. I heard him, and so did Louise who had just opened the door.
“Would you leave, please”, Louise asked him quietly.
Robert shot me a glance of anger and resentment.
At this moment, it occurred to me that not speaking had the opposite effect from what I desired. It drew more attention to me instead of less.
Louise bent down and put her arms around me.
The biggest incentive to speak, however, was the prospect of school. Nobody around me went to school, but I gleaned from dinner conversations, that it was an exciting place where people taught you things and you didn’t have to figure them out by yourself.
Robert believed I was too retarded to go to a normal school and wanted to put me in an assisted learning program where subjects were taught at a slower pace.
Slower? I didn’t want slower. I wanted faster, and as many different subjects as possible. If it took me to speak, then so be it.
George came home to dinner with a new plan: He wanted to buy a pony for me. By then, they all had read books about difficult children, and pets were known to help children.
Louise asked where we would keep the pony. This started an argument between Robert and George. Robert said the old barn next to Louise’s cottage would be adequate and George insisted a pony needed fresh air and space to roam.
“This is ridiculous, George.”
“I don’t think so. Animals get sick in captivity. We should fence off some of the lawn and make it a meadow for the pony.”
“I bet you’re thinking of rare tropical timber and a carpenter with a college degree, the best money can buy.”
“And why not, Robert?”
“I’m sick of getting treated like the poor Polish cousin when everybody else gets the best money can buy.”
“When I look at your bills that I’m paying, I find it hard to believe you’re not getting the best of everything you want.”
“When do I get the position in your business that you promised?”
“Robert, not everything is about you, alright?”
George turned to Louise.
“I was thinking we could use the lawn around the big old oak tree. This way the pony has some shade in the hot summer months and grass for food.”
“Why don’t you build a castle for the pony?” Robert couldn’t help himself.
“I might, now that you mention it.”
I kept eating my piece of pie, apple pie, my favorite, preparing for the big moment.
“How much wood do we need for the fence?” George said and looked at me.
This bait was as good as any. I prepared.
“Let’s see, how much space is good for a healthy pony? 2,500 square feet?”
April and Robert stopped chewing and looked at me. Louise slowly lowered her spoon on the plate. I kept my head down until George asked:
“Which form would give us the biggest area, Nick?”
“A square, of course”, Robert snorted.
“A circle.”
There. I had spoken.
Tears sprang to April’s eyes and a contorted smile washed over Robert’s face. Louise nodded. Finally, this burden was off her shoulder.
“Alright, Nick. How much wood would we need?” George asked not letting on something out of the ordinary had happened.
I knew everything about squares. Circles were a different matter. I had tried finding out about them. They were so slippery and so perfect. Almost like beings that refused to reveal their true nature to me. Silence. I looked to Louise. A flicker of understanding appeared in her eyes.
“I think we should make it a square. It is much easier to fit a straight fence.”
I envisaged the squares on the carpet. I had to find the number, which multiplied by itself, would be 2,500.
“Let’s move on. He doesn’t know it, the little retard”, Robert said scraping a crumble from his plate. A thin blade of fear intruded into my chest. I swallowed and tried to push the blade away.
“200.” I went through my numbers again. “200 feet. Can I go to my room now?”
“Yes.”
On the way out, I turned back and said to George:
“Please, Grandpa, I don’t want a pony. I want to go to school, normal school, fast school.”
The blade couldn’t be pushed. It was not just a blade.
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The Nick Warner Chronicles, Volume One copyright by Ines Strohschein