The boy did not want to see him. The boy had his hood up. Jeremy sat in a chair and pressed his fingers together. He had been asking the same questions for many sessions, but now, he watched Tyrell pull on the ties at the neck side to side as though milking a cow. In Jeremy’s professional paradigm, the question was what was really going back and forth? Perhaps this was the moment he’d finally tip, stop weighing pros and cons, speak openly.
“Simple as it’s a scam.”
“What if it’s not a scam? What if it’s that they think you’re very clever?”
“Nah.”
“You don’t think you’re clever, Tyrell?”
“Putting words in my mouth, Mr. Jordan.”
“Why don’t you sort me out then?”
“‘Sort me out then,’” Tyrell repeated.
Flat affect. Steady eye. His hands were folded.
“And how did this idea come to you?”
“Because it’s not literal. There’s one way and the other way. And they know it’ll seem like it’s the other way when I know, you know, they know: not even close.”
One day Han would be a teenager. Jeremy imagined dinners in restaurants, the three of them. He imagined going to museums. They would come home after a movie, and he would ask Han whether it was tired, the plot. If it was too neat. And he would want Han to think the neatness was how life worked. He would want him to say, it’s real, Baba.
“You don’t think they mean what they say.”
“That’s it.” Tyrell nodded his head and leaned over to rest his arms on his knees. “That’s it.”
“So if I have it correct,” Jeremy said.
Tyrell sighed. “They say college so it looks like they’re in it.”
“In what?” Jeremy said.
“It, man. Come on. Don’t play ESL with me.”
He liked Tyrell immensely, and he tried to be patient, tried to see ahead in the conversation, carve it. Jeremy hoped that if something were ever to happen to him, whoever was left to console his son would have something wiser to say than he did now. “There are many its, Tyrell.”
“I’m saying the image.”
“Which?” Jeremy said.
“They can’t wait to get rid of us but talk college so they look like people who care.”
Jeremy wrote a note in his pad. “Or maybe they just want to see you succeed.”
Tyrell laughed. He had a giggle still. His voice hadn’t changed, and it was still the laugh of a child. He put his hands on his knees and took big breaths. He looked at Jeremy square, suddenly, serious. “Then how come they pass people that can’t succeed a long division test into the eighth grade?”
“Sometimes we need to believe in honest mistakes,” Jeremy said. “Sometimes we need to trust the adults in our life.” Jeremy drank from a glass of water. He replaced it on a small table in the corner by his chair. Consistency of space. Consistency of objects. This is the environmental condition for safe sharing. “Do you think this might have anything to do with your father?”
“No.”
“Sometimes our brain connects things without us even knowing, Tyrell. Maybe we feel out of control. Maybe we can’t make our sick parent better. And maybe it makes us think something about whether we can rely on grown-ups.”
Tyrell pushed his lower lip forward, turned his head. His arms were crossed. Self-comfort. The comfort given when it was not anticipated it would be received.
Or else he was protecting himself.
“What would you lose if you trusted that people mean what they say?”
The boy picked a thread hanging off his pants. His nail scratched back and forth on the fabric. “Okay, Mr. Jordan,” Tyrell said. He looked up. “And how I’m supposed to trust adults when you don’t even listen?”
“You don’t think I listen?”
“Not even here.”
“Tyrell.”
“In your own world, Mr. Jordan,” Tyrell said. “No sight of what’s in front of you.”