She worries that everyone she knows will judge her either way. She shakes her head and closes her eyes, trying to ignore all arguments about what she should do, what everyone else thinks, even her kids, to clear it all away and focus inward, to discover what is real and true for her in her own once-glowing heart. It’s a simple question really.
Does she love Jimmy enough to take him back?
She opens her eyes. The bride and groom have made their grand entrance at the reception and are now dancing their first dance as husband and wife. The groom’s face is tight and concentrated, and their movement together across the floor is hardly fluid, the obvious product of not quite enough dance lessons, but the effort, despite its being awkward, is sweet. Beth and Jimmy didn’t even try to learn actual steps for their wedding. They just sort of waddled back and forth like teenagers at a school dance.
The bride is relaxed and beaming. Her clumsy groom probably took dance lessons with her, probably one night a week, and he probably loathed every second of it, but he did it. He did it because he loves her. He’s willing to dance like a fool in front of a hundred people for his darling’s happiness. Fast-forward ten years, and she’ll be lucky if he’s willing to replace the toilet paper or use a plate.
“I love a man who can dance,” says Georgia.
“He’s not exactly Gene Kelly.”
“He’s trying. I love it.”
The first dance is then followed by the other traditional dances—the bride with her father (he can’t dance either), the groom with his mother, and then the groom with his grandmother, which generates even more adoration from Georgia. If he hadn’t just got hitched, she’d be all over him. The dance floor is now open to everyone. The five-piece brass band is festive and loud. Unable to hear each other without yelling, Beth and Georgia have stopped chatting. Georgia checks her watch. She snatches a glass from a tray of champagne flutes.
“Here, stay and have some champagne! I have to take care of one quick thing, and then we can go!”
“Okay!”
Beth leans against the wall, sips her champagne, and people-watches, self-conscious now that she’s alone, keenly aware that she’s wearing jeans and attending a wedding reception she wasn’t invited to. She avoids eye contact with every stranger who walks past her on the way to the restrooms, hoping no one talks to her or asks her how she knows the bride and groom or, God forbid, asks her to dance.
She becomes interested in watching a young boy sitting alone at one of the front tables. He’s blocking his ears and rocking in his seat. Autism. She knows enough about autism now, from both the books she’s read and the book she’s writing, to recognize it anywhere. And like an obscure vocabulary word she’d never heard of, once learned, she sees it everywhere.
But her writing has done more than simply allow her to recognize it. When she notices a child with autism now, like this cute little boy sitting at the table, she feels a compassionate connection, a softness in her heart, like they’re friends who share an intimate secret. Before she began writing her book, she would’ve looked at this boy and thought, He seems odd. Something’s wrong with that boy. And then she would’ve intentionally looked away. Now she smiles as she watches him and thinks, I know, it’s way too loud in here. I want to get out of here, too.
The boy’s parents keep checking on him, but he’s not paying them any attention. Good boy. He’s smart. If he acknowledges their presence, if he listens to what they’re saying, if he cracks open the door to receiving input from outside himself, it might swing wide-open, and then the trumpet and the trombone and the singing and a thousand other aggressive sounds would stampede into him along with the voices of his parents. And that would be disastrous.
He’s rocking faster now. His eyes, although still mostly unfocused, have started glancing around. His defense mechanisms aren’t doing the job. He’s starting to come undone. She can feel it.
Just as she guessed he would, he hops off his chair and bolts. He runs right out from under the tent and onto the lawn, into the night. Beth scans the dance floor and finds his parents in each other’s arms, slow-dancing, oblivious.
Without thinking, Beth loses her champagne flute and runs after him. He’s fast, scrambling down the stone path, back toward the beach where the wedding ceremony had been. She loses sight of him as she slows down on the stone steps, careful not to fall, but reassures herself as she keeps going that he’ll be at the beach when she gets there and not gone. If he’s not on the beach, he could be anywhere.
She reaches the sand, and there he is. He’s up to his knees in the water. He dips his hands beneath the surface and then raises them overhead, creating a splash. He smiles and squeals, flapping his wet hands, spraying water from his fingertips. He throws his hands back into the glassy, calm water, creating an even bigger splash. He squeals and laughs. He repeats the process.
Beth stands with her hands on her hips, catching her breath, relieved the chase is over and the boy is safe, asking herself what the plan is now. She wishes she’d alerted his parents before she took off, but by now they’ve probably noticed he’s missing. She’ll simply stay with him until they come.
The boy is walking parallel to the shore and doesn’t seem to want to go any farther out, any deeper than his knees. Good. Beth has no desire to plunge into the freezing ocean to save a drowning boy. He’s unbothered by Beth, who is now standing quite close to him, still delighting in his splashing hands, when Beth hears someone coming down the path. She turns around, expecting to see the boy’s parents, but instead it’s a woman. Beth knows her, but maybe because she was expecting someone else, she can’t at first place who it is. Then she notices the serious camera in the woman’s hand, and it registers. It’s Olivia, her photographer.
Olivia runs straight to the water, her face pale with dread. But the boy is squealing and laughing. He’s totally fine. Olivia stops at the water’s edge and breathes hard with her hands on her hips, smiling as tears stream down her cheeks.
“Olivia.”
Olivia startles, placing her hand on her heart. “My God, Beth, I didn’t see you,” she says, wiping her eyes and face. “Do you know his parents?”
“I know who they are, but I don’t know them.”
“Same. Will you go find them while I wait here with him?” asks Olivia.
Beth agrees, but just as she turns around, his parents appear at the edge of the stone steps.
His mother, already barefoot, runs straight into the cold water, soaking the bottom of her black dress. “Owen! You gotta stop taking off! We don’t want to lose you!” She picks Owen up by his armpits and spins him, dragging his feet across the surface of the water, drawing circles around them. His face is pure joy.
Happiness.
Olivia aims her camera. Click. Click. Click.
“Thanks for looking after him,” says his father to Olivia and Beth. “I thought for sure he’d be in the parking lot.”
“No problem,” says Beth.
The boy’s father, Beth, and Olivia stand next to each other for the next many minutes in silent relief, watching the boy and his mother splash and spin and laugh together in the bright moonlight. Glowing.
Loved.
Click. Click. Click.
“There you are!”
Beth looks over her shoulder and sees Georgia waving and teetering in her heels on the last step of the stone stairs. Georgia slips out of her shoes and walks over to this small, unlikely gathering, visibly unable to piece together why they’re all here. “Is everyone okay?”
“Yup,” says the father, removing his shoes and rolling up his pants. “We’re all good now.”
Safe.
“Great,” says Georgia.
Probably dizzy, the mother has stopped spinning her boy and now hangs behind him as he splashes. The father joins them and holds his wife’s hand.
Wanted.
Click. Click. Click.
Happiness. Loved. Safe. Wanted. Beth can identify these qualities, these necessary ing
redients for a relationship that works, so readily among this family in front of her. She sees each one in this little boy with autism as easily as she sees the bright moon in the night sky, yet she still can’t form a specific image of what these elements look like in her.
“I thought you ditched me,” says Georgia.
“Never. You ready to go?” asks Beth.
“Yeah, let’s.”
Before Beth ascends the stone path, she looks back toward the harbor to say good-bye to Olivia, but she’s squatting at the edge of the water, photographing the boy and his parents, and Beth doesn’t want to interrupt her. Beth smiles, imagining how beautiful those pictures will be. She can’t wait to see her own portraits. They should be ready soon. She meant to ask about them.
As they walk up the steps, Beth wonders what motivated Olivia to chase after the little boy. It was probably the concern any adult would have who notices a young child who takes off alone toward open water. But as she walks with Georgia across the lawn of the Blue Oyster, she remembers Olivia’s panic-stricken eyes and the tears on her blanched face and wonders if it was something more.
She’ll have to ask her when she sees her again.
CHAPTER 27
Beth’s been champing at the bit all morning, dying to get to the library, but she had too many household chores that couldn’t be ignored, and now she’s at Jessica’s soccer game. Jimmy is there, too. Alone. They’re both watching Jessica run up and down the field, standing separately but next to each other on the sideline in awkward silence.
“So how’s your book coming?” asks Jimmy finally, still staring at the field.
“Good. It’s coming along,” says Beth, similarly not averting her eyes from the game, but not because she’s worried about missing a play.
“That’s great. It’s really great that you’re writing again. I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks,” she says, unexpectedly flattered.
She turns to look at him. He’s watching her now and not the game, smiling.
“I’d love to read it.”
Her face flushes hot, and she diverts her eyes down to her black shoes. She’s been pouring her heart and soul into her writing, weaving everything she feels and knows and believes into this story. Jimmy’s sudden and unsolicited interest in her book, in her, makes her happy. But the thought of Jimmy reading her heart and soul, of revealing herself so intimately and completely to him now, pokes at something inside her not yet ready to be touched. Trust.
She lifts her eyes to meet his and flashes a timid smile before forcing herself to focus on the girls on the field.
When the game ends, Jessica goes off with Jimmy, and Beth drives straight to the library. She walks up to the second floor and peeks through the doorway. Eddy Antico and Pamela Vincent are gone. No one is reading Moby-Dick, and no one is in her seat. She smiles and gets settled.
She dreamed about her book last night and woke with the next chapter fully formed, vividly detailed, waiting for her, like a gift. She was thrilled but then increasingly anxious every second that it lived only as knowledge likely to vaporize at any moment in her head and not as letters written down in ink, safe on a page. She opens her notebook, uncaps her pen, and writes as fast as she can to release the words before they vanish.
My one name is Anthony. When I was a smaller boy, I used to think I had two names: Anthony and YOU.
My mother and father would say things like:
Anthony, come here.
Do YOU want to go outside?
Do YOU want some juice?
Anthony, here’s your juice.
Can YOU say TRUCK?
Anthony, say TRUCK.
Anthony, put your shoes on.
Go ahead, YOU do it.
YOU can do it.
Anthony, do it.
So it’s easy to see the cause of my earlier confusion. These nickname words—YOU, I, ME, WE, HE, SHE—they can still confuse me, but I’m mostly okay with them now even though I don’t like them. Nickname words depend on the situation, and I’ve never liked things that depend on the situation.
This is why I like numbers. 6 + 3 = 9. Always. 6 + 3 Pringles or 6 + 3 doughnuts or 6 + 3 rocks in a line or 6 + 3 silver minivans in the parking lot. The answer is 9. Always.
But YOU can mean Anthony or my mother or my father or Danyel or a total stranger in the parking lot.
How are YOU?
YOU is my mother if my father is talking and my mother is there, but YOU is Danyel if my mother is talking and Danyel is there, but if both Danyel AND my father are there, then YOU could be my father or Danyel or BOTH of them. So the owner of YOU depends on who is talking and who is there to be spoken to. Like I said, YOU depends on the situation. YOU follows a Depends Rule, and this is not the kind of rule I like. I like Always Rules, rules that always stay the rule no matter where you are or who is talking.
Always Rules are perfect because they always follow something called cause and effect, and this makes me calm and happy. I used to think light switches were an Always Rule. If I flipped the switch up, the light turned on. If I flipped the switch down, the light turned off. Over and over and over. Always.
Until light switches turned into a Depends Rule. Last winter a big storm came, and the power went out, and I flipped all the light switches in the whole house up and down and up and down and nothing happened. The lights stayed off.
So light switches turn out not to be an Always Rule, the kind I like, but a Depends Rule. Flipping the switch up will turn the light on as long as the power hasn’t been stolen by a big storm. Light switches depend on the weather. I stopped loving light switches after that big storm last winter.
Eyes are also a Depends Rule. Eyes can be happy or angry or interested or sad, they can be awake or asleep, bright or tired, they can stare or move away. Sometimes eyes cry. Eyes are always something different depending on the situation. Some days when my mother and I go to the grocery store, her eyes are bright, but other times at the grocery store, her eyes are tired. And sometimes at church, her eyes are happy, but other times at church, her eyes cry. So even the same situation can’t tell me what eyes are going to do. This is why I don’t like eyes.
Things that are Depends Rules like YOU and light switches and eyes are bad because they can’t be trusted. I can’t know for sure what is going to happen next with YOU and light switches and eyes, which means that ANYTHING can happen next, and anything is too much. I end up wandering the halls in my brain, not knowing what room to go in, scared and confused. I usually end up hiding in the corner of the Horror Room if I’m dealing with a Depends Rule.
So I avoid Depends Rules like eyes and light switches. But there was no avoiding the nicknames like YOU. Nicknames like YOU are everywhere, so I had to learn to accept YOU.
But mostly, I only like Always Rules. I like cause and effect. Something makes something else happen, and I know what’s going to happen before it happens because it always happens. This makes me feel good.
When something is a Depends Rule, anything can happen, and this makes me scared. It makes me scream and cry.
I have a thing called AUTISM. My mother and father don’t understand the cause of my autism, and this makes them scared. It makes them scream and cry. They must like cause and effect and Always Rules like I do.
Being a boy doesn’t mean having autism because most boys don’t have autism and some girls do. Getting shots doesn’t mean having autism because lots of boys and girls get shots and they don’t have autism. So having autism must follow a Depends Rule. Autism is not like math. Autism is like YOU and depends on the situation. So I avoid thinking about autism because I don’t like Depends Rules.
All this thinking about YOU and light switches and eyes and autism has me wandering the halls. I’m going into my Counting Room now.
I’m counting the tiles on the kitchen floor. 180. There are always 180 tiles on the kitchen floor. Always.
Always makes me feel good.
Always makes me feel safe.
>
Always.
CHAPTER 28
Olivia sits in her living-room chair with one of her journals in her lap and stares out the window at the trees in her yard. She doesn’t like the trees here, the scrub pines and the scrub oaks. They’re too skinny and too short. They appear brittle and emaciated to her, as if they’re undernourished or sick. But that’s just the way they are. The trees back in her old yard in Hingham are real trees—huge, several-hundred-year-old oaks with trunks thick enough to hide behind and branches that spread across the sky. This time of year, the leaves would be red and gold and breathtaking. She sighs as she looks out the window at the rusty brown leaves on the tiny scrub oaks in her yard, daydreaming of fall in Hingham.
October 1, 2006
I think I want to stop Anthony’s ABA therapy. I know it’s helped with a lot of things. His attention span is better. They’ve used it to teach him how to stay in his seat, do puzzles, stack blocks, get dressed, brush his teeth.
I have to admit, it does work. Anthony performs a desired behavior, or in the beginning, a close approximation to what we want him to do, and he gets a positive reinforcement. Reward for good behavior. Pick up a puzzle piece, get a Pringle. Stick your head in the middle hole of your shirt. Pringle. Put your feet inside your shoes. Pringle.
I remember not liking the idea of ABA at first. Scientists use this same kind of behavioral conditioning to get pigeons to peck a button for food pellets. Anthony’s a boy in a house, not a pigeon in a cage. But it works. ABA has given Anthony so many skills I worried he’d never master.
But lately, instead of adding skills, Carlin’s been focused on eliminating undesired behaviors. The ABA language for this is “extinguishing.” I’m not at all comfortable with that word. I picture a candle burning, glowing orange in the center of Anthony, and Carlin is huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf, trying to blow it out. Trying to extinguish him.
They’ve been working on trying to get rid of Anthony’s most prominent autistic behaviors, the stimming ones that most get in the way of his functioning or appearing normal. Hand flapping is the biggest offender. HANDS DOWN. Carlin says this every time he flaps. She places his hands by his sides to prompt him, and if he keeps his hands still at his sides, even for an obvious second, Pringle.