Page 85 of What Boys Learn

I didn’t want to know about all that “variety”—didn’t want pictures forming in my head that might never go away. I only wanted to understand about Christopher Weber and how his and Curtis’s paths had first crossed.

I said, “I didn’t know you work with incarcerated psychopaths.”

“Worked, for the most part. Past tense. I planned to mention the institute today, when we go over Benjamin’s test results. But he’s not a good candidate for the youth treatment center. He wouldn’t be admitted, because he isn’t already in juvenile detention. The institute only has room for a few dozen—”

“Benjamin?”

Curtis tapped a finger against the MRI envelope. “Abby.”

I’d been holding a nearly empty paper coffee cup between both hands, squeezing so hard I dented it.

“Talking with parents is the hardest part,” he said. “But the pain is usually short-lived, and it’s followed by relief, because the good parents—the ones who show up for appointments at all—already know. They may not know the correct terms to use. But they know.”

“Aren’t parent interviews essential to the diagnosis?”

“Benjamin supplied more than enough information. He was willing to be frank about school fights, in particular, as well as the impulses he has felt but not acted upon.” He paused, letting me absorb.

“Impulses,” I said.

“Now, Abby. We all have impulses.”

I sat back, directing myself to say less, to listen and be patient.

“I needed to earn Benjamin’s trust and get to the point where he could report with some degree of honesty. And I needed to build up the timeline. I knew you’d feel better if I relied on more than just the PCL: YV.”

I knew the sequence of steps, all of the boxes that needed to be ticked. It wasn’t enough for a child to exhibit grandiosity, pathological lying, failure to accept responsibility. It wasn’t enough to know a child took excessive risks or constantly required stimulation.

“But he isn’t on probation or parole,” I pointed out. “He hasn’t had multiple brushes with the law. That’s practically a requirement of the diagnosis you’re suggesting.”

“Not multiple brushes,” Curtis agreed. “Notyet.”

I thought back to Ralph King’s certainty that I should get Benjamin into therapy, his confidence that we needed to “shape the narrative.” But Curtis seemed to be heading toward a narrative—a specific diagnosis—that would look very, very bad, if a prosecutor ever discovered it.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Curtis said. “You want to know the truth about your son, so you can guide his development. But you don’t want him to be stigmatized.”

“Stigmatized is the least of it.”

“But we both know that because of his age, we can only say so much. That’s a good thing.”

My distress must have shown on my face, because he tried again to reassure me. “You were frustrated with the session you had with Dr. Adelman because she didn’t give you hard answers. I’m guessing she would have mentioned conduct disorder.”

“She wasn’t ready to use that label.”

“Or the one that sometimes follows, yes, if the behaviors persist?” Antisocial personality disorder, he meant. “Don’t worry. I’m not ready to use that label, either. Certainly not on any forms of documentation that could surface easily in the event of a negative future event.”

Negative future event.

I nodded, if only to urge him to go on. I needed to know everything. Once I knew, I could help.Wecould help. If I didn’t believe that, I’d chosen the wrong profession.

“Let’s continue,” Curtis said. “We’re not talking fate here. But we are talking about a poorly stacked deck.” He opened the flap of the MRI envelope. Inside were the images of Benjamin’s seven-year-old brain, the one I’d thought was perfect, aside from a soccer concussion. “Early onset is a key element of accurate diagnosis, and we do see signs in Benjamin’s scans, unfortunately.”

He pulled out one of the images and began pointing to various features. I’d never studied this area of neuroscience. They didn’t have MRI scanners in the high schools where I’d always planned to work.

“We can see reduced volume in the amygdala, just to start.” He paused to see if I was still following. “You’re quite lucky to have these scans as a baseline.”

Lucky? I felt sick.

He said, “I thought you’d feel better seeing the biological origin. It can make a parent feel less directly responsible.”