Heart of Ice

scorn?

Later that day, when the excitement of the horror of what happened to the cat had died down, Michael and Sarah played together in the corner of the TV lounge that had been set aside for reading. It wasn’t really a library, of course. Just as the place wasn’t really a home, though it had branded itself as one.

Marilyn came through on her rounds and looked over at the pair.

Michael looked up. No expression. Nothing at all. Then he returned his gaze back to the book he was reading to Sarah.

The Cat in the Hat.

Chapter Forty-two

Garden Grove

Michael Barton cried when the ultrasound technician turned to him as she moved the jellied wand over his wife’s abdomen, looked at the monitor, and said, “You’re going to have a son.”

Olivia tilted her head up from the table to get a better look herself. The image was a little grainy, but to a mother-to-be it was a portrait done by American impressionist Mary Cassatt.

A tear ran down Michael’s handsome face and stopped on his nose. He almost breathed in his tear before reaching for a medical wipe from a large cardboard box on the tray table. He stayed silent for a second, and tried to smile. He had hoped so much that the baby Olivia was carrying would be a girl. He’d read the statistics, of course, and he knew that those who are abused are likely to become abusers themselves.

“Honey, I feel the same way,” Olivia said, looking at her husband’s silent tear. “I’m so excited and scared at the same time.”

Scared? He thought. Olivia doesn’t know fear.

He did.

Michael was a facile liar by then, and he knew it. He thanked God for the practiced skill. Being able to skirt past the truth without batting a lash was an ability that had served him well. It allowed for survival.

“Having a son has been a dream of mine,” he said, his voice very soft. “I want to give him the boyhood that I never had.”

“I know. Me, too,” she said, lifting her head, this time toward her husband, so that he would kiss her. He bent down, and pressed his lips against hers.

As the technician started to mop the gooey globe that was on Olivia’s swelling abdomen, she grinned and shook her head slightly. There was so much joy in seeing people’s dreams come true. The tech pumped the foot pedal and dropped the used wipes into the stainless drum garbage can.

“You’re going to make a beautiful family,” she said exiting the examining room.

Olivia got dressed, euphoric with the news. She wanted nothing more than to get on the phone and call her mother.

“A boy!” It would be the first boy in her family in years. She gave Michael another kiss and dialed her mom with the news.

“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” he said, leaving Olivia to her call.

The bathroom was one of those family-oriented configurations, with a changing table and a toilet. Best of all, it had a lock on the door. He clicked the lock, turned on the water, and splashed it all over his face. He looked into the mirror.

What am I? A man or a monster?

Michael wasn’t sure. All he knew was that all the things that happened to him, that made him who he was —whatever it was—were seeded long ago.

It started with the idea that if he stopped drinking a glass of water before bedtime, he wouldn’t wet the bed. Soon it was if he’d stopped drinking anything after lunchtime that surely would stem the nighttime occurrence that brought him such overpowering shame. Sometimes, he woke up in the middle of the night and put his hand to his crotch hoping against hope that the wetness that he’d felt had only been the result of seminal discharge and not the flood of urine that taunted him over and over. It was like a pelvic waterboarding, hitting him over and over, telling him that he was useless, a loser, a freak. Every now and then he woke up in time to strip the bed silently and bundle the sheets into a pillow-case so he could hide them from the staff. Those were the best mornings.

Those were the mornings without the taunts from the others.

Michael the Flood! Michael the Flood! Michael forgot to row the boat ashore!

When he was fourteen, he created a contraption from a plastic Coke bottle and a pair of Ace bandages. He fashioned the bottle into a kind of homemade bedpan, which he held in place with the bandages strapped around his waist and thighs. He became adept at his stealthy subterfuge. He still didn’t drink past noon. He still hated the smell of his body, only more so because of the urine.

If he’d have believed in God or anything good, holy or kind, he would have held hope that whatever was wrong with him would pass.

That he’d never want to hurt anyone again.

But now and then, throughout his teenage years, he couldn’t stop himself from looking for ways to kill someone and not get caught. It was merely a thought, and never put into practice.

Maybe he’d found a way to cure himself?

Michael had only one piece of paper that seemed to give concrete proof that he’d ever had a life outside of foster care or a state institution. It was the small news clipping about when he and Sarah were found at Disneyland. He’d used it to call the police department to see if there was a case file, but the cop who’d been mentioned had transferred to another jurisdiction.

The idea that his mother could dump her children like garbage made the bile rise in his throat like a choking acid.

The Ogilvy Home for Children had a two-bit computer lab of obsolete PCs and printers that didn’t work. It had no Internet access, or he’d have tried to find her. He smuggled a disc from the rickety lab and occasionally kept notes, stories, and thoughts.

He wrote of a staff member who had looked at him with the “evil eye” when he was walking to the cafeteria after morning classes.

He’s a fat pig. He even has a pig nose. I’d like to take a knife, slit him up the middle and spill his smelly guts all over the chemistry lab. I’d do it slowly. I’d do it in front of everyone so that when he cried out, I’d tell everyone to shut up or I’d do it to them.

Another time, after she was gone, he wrote tenderly of his sister.

Sarah deserves better and I know she’s found it. She’s in a sunny place. She’s eating fruit that isn’t soft and mushy from a can. She doesn’t have that weird metal taste in her mouth and she shouldn’t. She didn’t deserve any of this shit that mom dumped on her.

He never included himself in those rants. He never fixated on why he wasn’t worthy of a decent home, the love of the family. He was smart enough to know why. He’d wetted the bed. He was filled with hate for just about everyone. He figured that the rest of the world didn’t care about someone like him.

Not until he did something to hurt them. Then, they’d get it. Too late. But they’d get it nevertheless.

Almost everything with a heartbeat seemed to provoke him. He tried to interest the other boys in the institution in doing what he called “frog stomping.” Whenever the sprinklers ran long into the night during the