The months turned. Winter had given way completely to spring. Easter came and went. The buds on the lilacs were starting to swell.
So much had changed since early winter when Jeff had joined Kevin and me. There were still the occasional moments when Kevin balked at something or gave evidence of his few remaining fears, but in general, he was so vastly improved as to not be recognizable as the same boy who hid under tables all those months before.
We went out of the Garson Gayer grounds regularly now. Jeff and I would even occasionally take him out on a weekend to go to the places he especially enjoyed. The zoo was popular because Kevin loved the seals. He saved his meager pocket money to buy packet after packet of fish to feed them. But his favorite destination of all was the amusement park. This puzzled me somewhat because Kevin remained too fearful of most of the rides to go on them, and the cost of the entrance ticket always seemed an extravagance to me because the park was one of those where, after you paid the cover charge, the first ten rides were free. Kevin never did anything there except walk around. He almost never had extra money to buy cotton candy or caramel apples unless Jeff or I gave it to him. And there weren’t many other things to do except the rides. But the park remained his favorite place to go. The only explanation I could settle on was that both Jeff and I liked many of the rides, and Kevin would carefully dole out to us his own tickets to go on the rides he thought we liked best. Perhaps that was it, the only time Kevin could genuinely do something for us.
The time was coming when Kevin would have to be moved from Garson Gayer. He would be seventeen in September, two years older than the home’s legal age limit. There really was no way that Dana could put off transferring him soon.
The prospects, however, looked far different than they had in September. The state hospital was seldom ever mentioned anymore. Free of most of his fears, talking, relating well, Kevin stood a much better chance of living in a less restrictive environment. Even his appearance had improved remarkably. With treatment, his acne had gotten better. The new haircut, the up-to-date clothes and a new pair of glasses gave him the casual appearance of most teenage boys. He wouldn’t stand out now, not much.
Dana searched vigorously for a foster home for Kevin, or failing that, a group home where he could be exposed to other, more nearly normal boys his own age.
Kevin was well aware of this new step. He cherished it like a gem in a treasure chest and much of his time was spent speculating about his future.
Therefore, when the call came in mid-May none of us was too surprised. Dana met Jeff and me at the door on Friday morning as we arrived. Her face was alight. Dana really was a beautiful woman when she smiled like that, and she infected both Jeff and me with her pleasure before we knew the reason for it.
A group home in Bellefountaine, an outlying community, had accepted Kevin for placement. It was a home for seven boys that had an excellent reputation for work with difficult kids. Kevin would go there at the end of the month.
It was a placement I had not dared hope would come true. The home was a small working farm on the outskirts of Bellefountaine. They had sixty acres of market gardens as well as cows and sheep and horses and pigs. After seven years of incarceration, Kevin would at last be free.
Kevin, of course, was delirious with joy. He leapt up on the table and danced for joy when we went into the small white room. ‘I’m free,’ he shouted at the top of his lungs, ‘I’ve got a home; I’m free.’
There would be a lot of changes in his life. Both Jeff and I had been exploring this fact with Kevin in preparation for whatever might take place. The end was coming for us, for our sessions. Now that he was going as far away as Bellefountaine there would be no way either Jeff or I could continue to see him after he left Garson Gayer. Whatever his future needs, he wouldn’t be with one of us.
As we talked about it, I could see the time really had come for Kevin. He expressed regret that we were breaking up; he worried that we might forget to write. But they were only fleeting concerns. His heart and soul were in the future. Jeff and I belonged to the past.
On the very last session on the Twenty–seventh of May, Jeff, Kevin and I had a bit of a private party in the small white room. Jeff brought his cassette player and some tapes and his guitar. I brought some goodies to eat and we celebrated together.
Toward the very end of the hour, Kevin was lying on the floor putting cake into his mouth crumb by crumb. Jeff sat on the table, his legs swinging. We were kids, really, all three of us. That thought struck me abruptly as I sat on the floor beside Jeff’s swinging legs. In a way I think that was what had brought us together and kept us together long after Kevin ceased needing a fully-trained psychiatrist and a psychologist. Jeff and I were only kids ourselves, a couple of whiz kids in a grownups’ world. But Kevin had given us an excuse to play again ourselves, while teaching him to play. It had felt good.
Then as we were sitting there, enjoying the last bits of the party food, a waltz started to play on one of Jeff’s rather uniquely created cassettes. Tales from the Vienna Woods.
Jeff hopped to his feet. Stretching a hand out to me, he bowed. ‘May I have this dance, madam?’
I giggled from embarrassment. ‘I can’t dance.’
‘Yes, you can. With me you can. Come on, the music doth pass us by.’
‘Honest, Jeff. I’m terrible.’ But I got dragged to my feet anyway.
Jeff put his arms around me and waltzed me off around the room to the strains of Strauss. His steps were sure, his movements decisive. Mesmerized out of a cramped, bare room in an institution, I saw the white latex melt away as I watched Jeff’s face. He was smiling, his eyes laughing. I was in the Stardust Ballroom. I was in the cool, verdant woods of Vienna.
‘Look behind you,’ Jeff whispered and turned us so I could see.
Kevin had risen too. His arms outstretched to hold an invisible partner, he had closed his eyes. Head back, he twirled around and around and around the small room. In a strange way he was very graceful. It was an eerie grace.
When the music stopped and Jeff and I had finished, Kevin kept on for a few bars more, waltzing around the room to his memory. Even when he slowed and stopped, his body swayed. He came up to us.
‘Teach me how to do that, Jeff. Put it on again and teach me, okay? So I can do it right?’
Jeff ran the recorder back.
‘Here, it’s easy. Just like this.’ He put his arms around Kevin and showed him the steps before waltzing him off around the room.
They were an unlikely couple, the brilliant young doctor and the animal boy. Kevin was almost as tall as Jeff but was so much thinner and more slightly built. Jeff was very gentle with him, pushing him in the way he should go in such a way that his mistakes did not show. On Kevin’s face there was a profound and enigmatic expression.
I found myself on the edge of tears as I watched them. There was something beautiful about them and the music and the springtime brilliance streaming through the window. It was a terrible beauty that woke something deep and unspoken inside me. I think it was touching all of us, this uncanny thing.
When the music stopped, Kevin turned to me. ‘Will you dance with me now, Teacher?’ he asked.
I regarded him.
He smiled.
‘I’m not as good as Jeff,’ I said.
The waltz started again and I felt Kevin’s arms around me. The dance was instinctive in him as it had never been in me. He took me confidently and danced with me. Perhaps it was not the waltz. I suspect it wasn’t. Kevin made his own dance. The dance of the phoenix.