Still Breaking Through

[Aura]

Kavita Acardi sat in her home office with an opened notebook in her palm. This particular notebook wasn't associated with any of her regular patients. It didn't have to do with her job at all, in fact. Rather, this was a more important notebook to her, involving a more personal matter. It was immediately recognizable by its blue cover and black spine. She specifically chose such an eye-catching look so that she would never lose it.

The reason she prized this notebook so much is because it was about her son, Tony. If one were to describe things in more specific terms, he was only her foster son. But as far as she was concerned, he was just as valid as if he had been her own flesh and blood offspring. Although he wasn't sure if he saw her the same way, she still wanted to do her best to do what was best for him. And in her mind, that meant trying to understand him, and most importantly, loving him.

The notebook in her hands was a major part of trying to get through to him. Ever since they had their first breakthrough and he had started talking to them more, she had been taking notes after their conversations. She knew his memories, his interests, and his sensibilities. There was also the case of his family history. Not just regarding his birth family, but his foster families as well. A lot of the entries regarding them were very brief, simply because he couldn't think of much to say about them. The ones that did have details, on the other hand, were usually pretty unpleasant. Kavita placed special marks next to those entries in her notebook, because they provided a lot of information, for better or for worse.

The Ortolanis, Tony's birth parents, were one such family, for obvious reasons. If they hadn't been such unfit parents, then he never would have wound up in the system to begin with. She had no notes of them actually taking care of Tony, only accounts regarding them being wasted on drugs and fighting. One detail that she couldn't ignore about their story is that whenever he brought them up, not once did he refer to them as Mom or Dad, or even as his parents at all. They were just Glen and Linda. Either he didn't want to grant them the respect of the parental titles that they didn't deserve, or he didn't view them as his parents at all. Either way, Kavita couldn't blame him after the way they had raised him, if one could even use that term.

The Posts were his first foster family, and they were another one of those troubled cases. There he had been granted two older siblings and one younger sibling, and he found out firsthand the differences some families show between their biological children and foster children. He was bullied on a regular basis by his new siblings, who loved to pick on him and pick fights with him. Yet whenever the parents got involved, they took their own children's sides without fail. As Tony put it, "They couldn't think of their precious little angels starting shit, so clearly the new kid has to be the troublemaker. Bullshit.' Although she didn't approve of his frequent swearing, it sounded like an accurate statement. She had dealt with other foster kids who experienced similar treatment, and she could only imagine how much that affected their minds growing up. She could only hope that most of them had escaped like Tony did.

The Cudneys weren't brought up much, but records showed that they were one of the most toxic of the lot. Again, Tony's own words probably summed it up better than anything. "A couple of sick fucks who thought beating religion into a kid was the same thing as parenting." She figured that this was the most likely reason as to why religion was an uncomfortable subject for him. That was likely something that they would have to get past eventually. She wasn't sure what Tony's own religious views were, but she didn't concern herself greatly with that. She was Hindu, and Ricky was Agnostic, and they still managed to have a strong relationship. Religion could be a good thing, and she knew that there were people out there who took inspiration from it for good causes. But at the same time, there were still people like the Cudneys who used it like a bludgeon. It was things like that that kept her up at night, asking questions to herself.

For the most part, those were the big three problem families. She had probably reread her entries on them more than anything else in the book, and she wasn't entirely sure why. Reading about them made her angry. She had a hard time comprehending the callousness, uncaring attitude, and cruelty that it would take for someone to treat a child in the way that these three had. The existence of that kind of person was one of the things that drove her to be a child psychologist, so that she could help children recover from those sorts of people. Even if she couldn't stop them from doing damage, she could at least aid the healing process.

Kavita closed the notebook and rolled her chair to the side to look through the door of the office. Tony was in the living room, getting some mileage out of Ricky's old Super Nintendo. His temper had been much more subdued as of late, at least at home. She still received occasional calls from school, and she didn't know how much trouble he got into off-campus. She preferred to think better of him than to go around starting problems, though.

A quick glance at the clock showed her that it was later than she had thought. It was getting quite close to dinnertime, in fact. She figured that she should probably do something about that before she got too hungry, and she had just the idea for how she should go about it. She set her notebook down and walked out of her office, shutting the door behind her.

"Tony." She called his name over the sofa. "Have I shown you how to make samosas?"

He paused his game and poked his head over the top of the cushions to look at her. "No."

"Would you like to learn?"

Tony's face lit up like the sun. "Oh hell yeah!" In a fluid series of motions, he dropped from the couch, turned off the game, and started heading for the kitchen.

Kavita suppressed a laugh. Somehow, anything related to cooking always got him full of energy. It was surprising, especially since he had only been introduced to the craft a couple of months ago. She figured that he could probably become a chef one day with that kind of attitude about food.

She didn't need to think about the future right now though. She was going to enjoy the present, and spend the evening cooking with her son.