Page 113 of What Boys Learn

“The Grove uniform,” she corrected me. “I didn’t find it online. I found the photo outside the chapel.”

41

BENJAMIN

It took two and a half days to mow Dr. C’s dad’s place and dig out a huge stand of bamboo and cut back some blackberry bushes that left scratches all over my arms. The place looks like a horror movie set, all stone and vines and with a turret on one corner. Dr. C sat on a creaky plastic lawn chair the whole time, looking at old leather-bound books while he slathered oil on his legs. I sweat. He tans.

“Getting the idea?” he says when I finished mowing the back.

“My mom always said she had to tire me out when I was a toddler so I wouldn’t get into trouble.”

I say it thinking he’ll laugh. Adults like toddler stories. But Dr. C doesn’t laugh.

“I’m not draining your energy just to make you compliant. I’m allowing you to learn discipline and practice deferred gratification. Which isn’t to say you know nothing about deferred gratification, because you’re better in that regard than many of my boys. But we need to balance out your sporadically nasty temper.”

He smiles at that last part. Whatever. At least he hands me a can of Coke. It tastes amazing. I drink half the can without taking a breath.

“Good. Let’s go inside.”

There’s a real estate sign out front. It saysSOLD, but it’s not completely sold, Dr. C told me. There’s still something called a closing going on. I keep waiting to meet Dr. C’s father. I picture an old bald man who looks like Professor Xavier from the X-Men in a really old-fashioned wheelchair with a blanket over his lap, sitting in some dark library next to stained glass windows. There are so many rooms in this house, it’s possible. Since we got here, I haven’t seen a single person, but it doesn’t mean they’re not here.

We eat lunch—cold turkey and American cheese sandwiches sitting on a back patio. One apple for each of us, which he chews extra loud, but I try not to show him it bothers me, because anything that bothers me becomes a lecture, which I can do without.

Then Dr. C points to the big toolbox we took out of the back of the Jag. He tells me to take it down to the basement and I go down there, a step at a time, ahead of him. It’s spidery and cold, and it smells like a wet cave. The only lights are bulbs with long fuzzy strings.

“Open it up. Get out your wrench set.”

I take a guess and pull out what I think are the wrenches.

“You might need a screwdriver, too.”

The box has a bunch of them.

“Are we building the shed?”

“No shed.”

He points to a thing that looks like a weight lifting machine in the corner.

“You’re taking this apart so we can move it before the new owners show up.”

There’s a light string we didn’t pull yet, close to the machine. I pull it.

“You ever seen anything like that?” he asks.

“Only in movies.” I don’t say what kind of movies. Truth is, I’ve seen something like this only once. There’s a sort-of saddle and levers and a few parts that make it clear muscle building isn’t the goal. Anyway, I know he doesn’t like porn movies so I shouldn’t have said anything about movies to begin with.

“You remember the conversation we had during our first week of sessions, in my office?”

I nod.

“Use words,” he says—like I’m a toddler and he’s my mom.

“Yes. I remember.”

“We talked about . . . ?”

“Experimentation.” I hope I’m picking the right word. “Life instead of fantasy.”