Everything to Lose. Andrew Gross

its tail.

      There was a time a few years back when I was really worried about him. Who he was inside. Who he would grow up to be. I’d read about these children with what they called C-U tendencies. Callous and unemotional. Kids who seem to carry the gene or the early dispositions that turn them into psychopaths. At times Brandon showed some of the signs. I read about things like the Child Psychopathy Scale and the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits and the Antisocial Process Screening Device. In a particularly defiant stage, I even had him tested. But when everything was in, Brandon tested within only one standard deviation from the norm. Nothing to worry about, I was told.

      Sweet Brandon won out.

      “Tie, tie, tie, tie, tie …,” he droned to himself. I leaned down and stroked his hair.

      Then all of a sudden: “Where were you?”

      At times his questions seemed to come from out of nowhere.

      “I was just out, hon. On some business.” No chance in the world I would tell him that I was with his dad. “What’d you do tonight?”

      He didn’t answer, just kept swirling his finger around on the screen, making his squiggly designs. “I heard you tried to teach Elena how to play.”

      No response. Only a shrug.

      “How did that go?”

      He just kept swirling. “She doesn’t even know what an app is, Mom.”

      “You remember, I didn’t either not too long ago. Any homework?”

      “Some math. And I had to do some sentences. They were boring.”

      “Well, one day you’ll realize that what seems boring now is when you actually learn something …” He didn’t look up and this time I couldn’t even blame him. I couldn’t believe I’d actually said something that trite and parental. I laughed at myself inside.

      Once I came home and found him playing happily in the tub. These clumpy brown objects, floating amid the suds. At first I thought they were just some plastic toys he’d brought in. Until I realized in horror what it was. Feces. Brandon’s own. He was smeared in it, having the time of his life. He could also beat his head against the wall if he didn’t get his way. And bite his nails down until they bled. Luckily, a lot of this was in the past.

      Before Milton Farms.

      Now most of the antisocial behavior seemed to be under control.

      “C’mon, let’s climb into bed,” I said, taking the iPad away, praying that he wouldn’t grab for it back and act up. I couldn’t handle that tonight.

      But tonight he was Sweet Brandon.

      He said, “I did a drawing. Wanna see?”

      “How about I look at breakfast tomorrow? Right now it’s late.”

      “I want to show it to you.” He jumped out from under the covers, went over to his desk, and brought back his sketchbook. He could draw anything. He had a gift. He just saw things that way. The sketchbook was basically filled with the same kinds of drawings. Monsters and underworld creatures that looked as if they had crawled out of someone’s ghoulish imagination. Mean Brandon, maybe. At first I was concerned. With how he acted sometimes and what was clearly going on in his imagination. It was all pretty dark. And always the same things: these creatures. But the doctors all said it was just a sign of a fertile imagination and not to worry. This one had a horse’s snout, the extended ears of an elf, two legs, scaly skin, and malevolent devilish eyes.

      “Jeez, Brand, where do you come up with these things …?”

      “He’s called Polydragon. Someone at school said my brain is in another dimension.”

      “You’re not in another dimension, Brand …” I took the sketchbook and laid it on the table, wrapped the covers back around him, and cuddled closely. “You’re here. With me. I know that I’m not in another dimension. So you can’t be either. Sorry, dude. Maybe once you could draw a picture of the house. Or me.”

      “I guess I could,” he said. “But that would be boring.”

      I snuggled close to him. “Not to me.”

      He smelled so sweet, the purity of everything that I imagined was good in his soul, that would one day come out. For years he barely uttered a word. He’d ask for things by pointing; he wouldn’t let go of crayons or Magic Markers. He’d simply grunt, cry, or babble gibberish. We didn’t know what was going through his head. Then one day Jim and I had the TV on, and I said, “I wonder what’s on next.” And from out of nowhere Brandon blurted, “CSI: Miami, Mommy.” We turned, flabbergasted, sure that this would open up a new chapter in our lives.

      It was six months before he spoke another word.

      Now look at him, drawing, holding a conversation. How could I possibly tell him he might lose it all: his school, his tutors? The only home he’d known.

      “Do you ever think of going away?” I asked him, squeezing my arm around him over the sheets.

      He shrugged. “I like it here.”

      “I know you do. I like it here too. I just meant, if you could go somewhere else, somewhere new. Different. Where do you think it would be? The beach? Like in California. Or the mountains? You remember we went skiing once.”

      He paused a while and closed his eyes, and I thought he had drifted off. Then he opened them again. “The North Pole.”

      “The North Pole? Wow. That’s interesting. Why there?”

      “That’s where the Polydragons live. Underneath the ice.”

      “Oh, I see …”

      He nodded into my chest, his voice growing sleepy. “But I don’t want to go away, Mommy …”

      “We won’t,” I said softly. “It was a silly thing to even ask. I like it just fine here too. With you.”

      “Me too,” he said, closing his eyes.

      He yawned and I felt him snuggle his face in my chest. “Nighty-night, Brandon.”

      He didn’t speak for a while, and I stroked his hair, a tear rolling down my cheek. This is what I had, I realized. All I had. This is what God gave me to protect, to keep safe. To help grow into a whole person so he could one day go out into the world and prosper, which I was sure he would. This wasn’t his fault. He didn’t choose how he was. Life did. And I wasn’t going to let life set us back. With whatever options I still had.

      Brandon’s voice trailed off one last time. “I love you, Mommy …”

      I drew him close, knowing what I had to do. “I love you too, honey.”

      Sweet Brandon.

       CHAPTER FIVE

      Charles Mirho nursed a bourbon at the end of the bar in Stamford, Connecticut, waiting for the call that never came.

      He was supposed to have heard back by nine. That would have given the old man time to get back home and do what he had to do.

      But now it was ten fifteen and the phone still hadn’t rung; the two calls he had placed back to him from his throwaway phone had gone unanswered. He was starting to feel pretty certain something had gone wrong.

      That or he was being set up—and not even a fool would do that.

      Even an old fool.

      The local news was on the TV. Something about a four-year-old who had fallen out of an apartment building in Stamford.

      It left two options, and either one meant he was going to have to earn the money he was being paid. Mirho had spent