Page 144 of What Boys Learn
“Oh my god,” he said, frustrated. Then he tried to explain why he did what he did. How he felt when he first knew Lenora was coming onto the boat. How angry he felt with her—the same way he was angry with Izzy, at times.
“Because you knew Izzy was putting herself in danger. So you cared for them both, in your own way. That’s empathy, Benjamin.”
“No! It’s not! Why do we all have to use the same words—empathy, love, guilt—when we don’t feel those things the same way. You can’t get in my head. You can’t get into anyone’s head—”
“Well, a person can. That’s what empathyis.”
“So maybe I don’t feel empathy! Who cares!” He closed his eyes, breathed in and out, the way he’d seen me practicing for years. “I did what was right. WhatIthought was right. And now yet another rich pushy asshole wants to fuck it up with external validation. I don’t need that. Nobody needs that.”
“I get it,” I said. “I think.”
For the rest of the summer, Benjamin read every book he could find at the library about psychopaths. Most of them were bullshit, he informed me, but not all of them.
“Don’t tell me we may someday have another psychologist in the family?” I asked him one morning after he’d monologued about his latest deep dive via Google Scholar.
“Notanotherpsychologist. You’re only a counselor, without a PhD.”
“You can be a psychologist with a PsyD.”
“But you don’t have that degree, either.”
“Thanks for being a snob. I don’t know what I think about your latest career plan,” I said, reaching to pull him in for a hug. He ducked away just in time.
EPILOGUE
SIX MONTHS LATER
We still have a long road ahead. A new evaluation with someone who believes in the spectrum of antisocial personality disorder, who won’t just put a sticker on Benjamin’s head and say he’s a psychopath or close to it. I’m tired of labels, frankly. For him and for myself and maybe even for Ewan. The science is new and unproven. If Benjamin ever has his own kids someday, they’ll have a whole newDSMby then. New words, new rules, new treatments.
Shortly after Curtis’s arrest, we told police about Benjamin’s involvement in giving Izzy the pills that led to her death. Ralph King was at his side. The facts would emerge at Curtis’s trial, anyway. Then we waited. Nothing. That doesn’t mean charges won’t be pressed or an investigation can’t be reopened later, even years later. But for now, Izzy’s family and the justice system seem much more interested in Curtis and Christopher Weber.
I once asked Benjamin if being unpunished for a publicly acknowledged crime felt like having a genetic predisposition to a disease—like some biological time bomb was ticking away, ready to go off anytime or never at all.
“No, it’s more like waiting for a tax audit.”
I worried he was misunderstanding the severity of his situation or forgetting his promise to at least try to feel remorse, even if it was a thought exercise more than an intuitive feeling. But he set me straight.
“No one’s to blame for an inherited disease, Mom. But youareto blame for cheating on your taxes.”
I exhaled. “Right—”
“But on top of that, you also know the IRS is pretty fucked so you’ll probably get away with it.”
He was right, but I had to press the point. “You don’t think you deserve to get away with it.”
“Of course not,” he scoffed. “But do I want to go to juvie or prison? Does anyone? Not my fault the government is so hobbled it can’t prosecute everything it should. I mean, we could talk about the benefits of our current administration—”
“Let’s not.”
Benjamin has a year and a half left at his new public high school. He’s not a fan. But with every passing month he’s seeing farther into the future, learning even more about himself. In addition to reading lots of psychology, he still loves sports, like swimming and cross-country. He doesn’t have lots of close friends, but he has teammates. He’s never been a social kid, and nothing’s going to change that, except for the right partner someday, maybe. I can hope.
Robert feels an even tighter bond with Benjamin after what we all went through, and I don’t get in the way. We aren’t dating, but we do see each other about twice a week. When he asks me why we don’t call it dating, I shrug. Maybe itisdating, or maybe it will be, once Benjamin is off to college or whatever he chooses to do after high school.
I didn’t get the fall job at Grove. The Sisters will never forgive me for being quoted in the exposé that ran in theChicago Tribuneabout Curtis. What with various pretrial motions to dismiss and a long discovery process, he still hasn’t gone to trial for multiple pending murder charges, but we expect it to happen in the next year.
I didn’t get another job at Summit, either. I got a job working, instead, for a lawyer. Ralph King, in fact. Counseling families with kids inside the juvenile detention system. We moved from Pleasant Park back to Waukegan—not my favorite place, but it’s the hub for Lake County. Court system, good tacos, cheaper rent. The downtown’s trying hard and those old houses on Sheridan Road are beautiful, if not quite within our reach.
When we made the move, I pulled the shoebox out from the high shelf in my closet. I took it into the bathroom and I locked the door. Then I looked at each item inside. One satiny pair of underwear. Another, older pair—and no wonder I overreacted so strongly when I saw the underwear in Benjamin’s drawer, because this other memento had bothered me for so long. And the third item, the one that gave the whole box its inescapable smell—the empty dish detergent bottle.