James sat in the southeast corner of the living room, and his parents arranged it so that a special light shone down upon him that gave his prominent forehead the sheen of a waxed apple. While in the company of others he never stood up from his chair, either to go to the bathroom or to greet visitors who entered the room. Only his parents witnessed his comings and goings, if you could call a nightly trip to his bedroom a coming or going. He always wore a suit and neatly pressed shirt and tie and to listen to the way in which his mother and father spoke to him, he must have been highly educated. Yet, he never uttered a word. He only offered a knowing smile to some things his father would say, and to all things his mother said.

The most noticeable physical characteristic of this now 35-year old man, was his enormous head, years ago called a magnum caput by his intellectual classmates. After too much intolerant cruelty, he was taken out of school and educated at home. His mother, Faith, was a teacher, principal, and educator so James did not suffer much from the move. Whether his head was filled with fluid pressing down upon his brain or the head’s exaggerated size was the result of some other childhood deformity, you just could not tell from Faith’s response to her son. She ignored the disfigurement completely and at all times deferred to his intelligence. If a complex question were asked in his presence, either Faith or James’s father, Frank, would say: “James thinks this or James thinks that.”

They must have had their own secret language, using subtle hand codes or some other form of communication not immediately obvious to outsiders. Whenever his parents answered for him, James would never disagree but always smiled and nodded as if to say: “Yes, that is correct. I most certainly agree.”

Faith carefully screened each visitor, of which there were very few. No one could ever get too close to James. The sofa, arm chairs and endtables were arranged in such a way that it was impossible to get to that corner of the room without making it obvious you were about to break some unwritten rule of the house. Faith had a way of slipping in and out of James’s private little corner to deliver mail, tea, or sandwiches to him but no one else got very close. Only on rare occasions did Frank bother to venture into that fortified section of the room.