The Home Front (10 page)

“Everyone will try to cure him,” Tashi continued. “You must fight with all your strength as a mother to make sure he is never cured of his visions. Facilitate rather than censor them. Learn to speak his language so he feels free to speak ours. Unless someone else intuits the message, it will be lost. And so will he.”

“How can I help him?”

“It’s the other way around, Rose. Max can help you.”

“Not if I can’t hear what he’s saying.”

“Listen again. What do you hear?”

“Another ambulance. There’s too much going on. I can’t hear a thing.”

“You’re hearing what he’s channeling. The message itself.”

“What does it mean?”

“You said it yourself, Rose. There’s way too much going on way too fast. Too much noise. Too many toxins. Too many screens bombarding us with too many images. X-rays, radio waves, microwaves. Waves of anxiety masked with too many pills and potions. Max is manifesting how we all feel deep down, alternately overstimulated and numb in self-defense.”

“I thought you said he wasn’t sick.”

“He isn’t. Illness is an illusion.”

“Then why is he in so much distress?”

“Because he feels like no one is listening to him.”

“It’s not fair. He’s just a little boy.”

“The universe never gives us more than we can handle, Rose. The fact that Max was chosen to carry the message led you to the Source, didn’t it? This is the first step of a journey that will teach you both to live without being distracted by all that white noise. Max is your guide. Once his message has been fully integrated into your spiritual practice, his mission will be complete. He will be free to live a normal life.”

A bell started tolling in the distance. At first Rose thought the sound came from the Catholic church down the block. Then she realized the bell was signaling the end of their consultation. Five minutes had utterly changed the way she experienced the world. Imagine what ten minutes could accomplish! She cradled her cell phone in both hands, trying to hold on to their connection as the chimes receded into cyberspace, carrying Tashi’s voice along with them. Even before they signed off, Rose felt abandoned. Bereft. Tashi must have sensed her distress.

“Don’t worry, Rose. I’m not going anywhere. The Source is always with you. Just listen.”

In the abstract, Rose felt certain this was true. But she couldn’t wait to call again, to hear Tashi talking directly to her. There was something clarifying about the voice itself. Like chanting, the medium was the message, a soothing, healing wedding of mind and spirit. Rose had already exhausted the perks of her introductory package. Additional calls would cost $75, a paltry sum in comparison with the wealth of knowledge Tashi had to offer. If Todd noticed the charges on their credit card, she’d just tell him the truth. The Source was an integral part of Max’s treatment, quite possibly the key to his recovery.

* * *

The living room works best. But it’s out there. His bedroom is smaller. In here nobody interrupts him. Nobody tells him to stop or he’ll hurt himself. It hurts when they stop him.

He never hurts himself. Even when he falls and hits his head. He’s too dizzy to feel anything. In his bedroom he can’t get dizzy enough. He can’t go fast enough long enough. It’s too small. He keeps smashing into things.

He waits until Daddy goes to work. The living room works best when Mommy is on her cell phone. Nobody interrupts him. He spins, his arms spread wide, his head thrown back, until everything goes blank. Blankness blankets him.

* * *

Every Monday morning, what Sasha called the principal players met to discuss Max’s progress. She used this term to reinforce the idea that Rose and Todd were equal partners in managing his treatment. For the first few months, Sasha did most of the talking. Even though she was considerably younger, they deferred to her professional authority. She tried to assure them that Max would respond as well, if not better, to their therapeutic interventions. Autism didn’t alter the fact that he was their son. Todd in particular was skeptical. Max seemed to shrink from his parents most of all, as though family members were more menacing than any other human threat, an intimate invasion of the territory he defended with the ferocity of a wounded animal.

Maureen usually sat in on the first few minutes of their weekly meetings. She alone seemed oblivious to the tragedy that had befallen the family. The fact that she accepted Max’s behavior at face value was instructive. Parents tended to blame themselves for things kids took for granted. As far as Maureen was concerned, Max was first and foremost an annoying little brother. Guilt never compelled her to overdetermine the cause or effects of his condition, which she routinely used to advantage. The fact that Max demanded so much attention left Maureen free to do her own thing. When she wanted to pull focus, she just flaunted her normalcy. No matter what she did, she was, by default, the good child. In classic firstborn fashion, she was fond of her brother to the extent that he confirmed her position at the top of the pecking order.

The principal players convened around the kitchen table. Informality helped foster the idea that there was nothing extraordinary about discussing the frequency of Max’s violent outbursts, or the duration of his catatonic regressions. It was just another Monday morning in the Barron household. Max was still in bed, avoiding the rigors of therapy for as long as possible. On weekends, when Sasha wasn’t around, he was the first one up. He liked to watch the early morning sunlight advance across the living room floor, a drama that engaged his attention for hours. But he knew that Sasha was more likely to find him there. Gone were the days when he used to wander into the playroom on his own. The minute her car drove up, he disappeared down the rabbit hole in his bedroom. It took them up to an hour to coax him out.

Todd and Maureen ate breakfast while they talked. The school bus stopped on the corner at 8:10, and Todd had to be on the road by 8:20 to get to work on time. Sasha always asked how the family had fared in her absence over the weekend. As time went on, their responses differed drastically, revealing more about themselves than Max. Strictly speaking, Sasha was a behavioral therapist, not a family counselor. But her training had included several classes on domestic dynamics, which could jeopardize Max’s recovery. Children on the spectrum elicited a spectrum of reactions from parents working through their own psychological baggage. If she could discover the cause of their tangled web of emotions, she might begin to unravel it.

“Pass the milk,” Maureen said.

“Please,” Rose said.

“I’m talking to Daddy.”

“Do what you’re told.”

“Please.”

Todd grabbed the milk carton. When he handed it to Maureen, he didn’t let go right away. They played a little game of tug-of-war, Todd with a straight face and Maureen giggling until Rose broke it up.

“You’re worse than the kids,” Rose said, mostly for Sasha’s benefit. She actually liked it when Todd horsed around with Maureen. It verified her conviction that they were one big happy family.

Sasha checked her watch. Todd would be leaving shortly, and he had volunteered next to nothing to the discussion. Even Rose seemed less forthcoming than usual, as though she might be hiding something. Sasha’s only recourse was to question Maureen, the loose cannon of the family. Secrets didn’t stand a chance when she was around.

“Did you play that game we talked about?” Sasha asked.

“What game?”

“Copycat.”

“Max was too busy.”

“Doing what?’

“Spinning around the living room.”

Rose’s chair almost tipped over backward as she jumped to her feet. “Get a move on, young lady. You’ll miss your bus.”

“I haven’t finished my cereal.”

“Then you’d better start getting up earlier so you’ll have more time to eat.”

Sasha glanced at her watch again. 8:01. Maureen obviously had time to finish breakfast, but something in Rose’s tone of voice convinced everyone at the table to pretend she was late.

“Go get your pack,” Rose said. “I’ll give you a granola bar for the road.”

When Maureen was safely dispatched, Rose sat down again. Todd had spent the intervening time avoiding eye contact. Sasha understood that it was inappropriate to press the point while Maureen was still within earshot. Once the adults were left alone, there was no reason they couldn’t discuss her revelation like adults.

“Max is spinning again?” Sasha asked.

Rose wiped crumbs off of her placemat. Todd nodded.

“How much?”

“Once or twice,” Rose said.

“A lot,” Todd said.

Rose gave him a sharp look. Todd countered with the blandest of bland expressions, which clearly pissed her off. They were one of those couples who didn’t need language to communicate. It wasn’t just a question of having been married long enough to read each other’s minds. Words paled in comparison with their vivid private vocabulary. There was something energetic, even volatile, about their relationship, which seemed to evoke a fabulous sex life. Sasha didn’t speculate about such things out of prurience. She was simply gauging the strength of their marriage, to determine whether it could withstand the strain of autism.

“When did it start?” Sasha asked.

“A couple of weeks ago.”

“Can you think of any triggers?”

Predictably, Todd sat back and waited for Rose to fill in the blanks. Having provided his customary reality check, he felt his job was finished. Sasha kept looking at Todd even though he, in turn, was looking expectantly at his wife. She was trying to employ body language to encourage him to fill in his own damned blanks. Rose was becoming an increasingly unreliable witness. Her face had resumed the sunny expression she used to mask her fear that Max might not get better. Todd’s candor didn’t necessarily mean he was less afraid. He was just playing bad cop to his wife’s good cop. Somebody had to do it. Couples often vacillated between the two roles, but not the Barrons. Rose was constitutionally incapable of anything short of unequivocal optimism.

“Any change in his routine?” Sasha asked.

Todd helped himself to a hard-boiled egg. Rose watched him peel it. He salted and peppered it. An uncomfortable silence descended on the table, punctuated by the sound of chewing.

“He’s been more agitated the last week or two,” Sasha said. She flipped through the pages of her logbook. “I noticed a distinct difference ten days ago, to be exact. Any idea why?”

“Beats me,” Todd said.

“Rose?”

“Nothing comes to mind.”

“He’s probably just exhausted,” Todd said. “God knows I am. I get crabby and Max spins. Not very scientific, but there you have it.”

“More exhausted than usual?”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it? That crescent moon thing seems counterproductive. It takes him even longer to fall asleep.”

Rose had discovered the crescent moon position online. The idea was to offset Max’s tendency to arch his back when he slept, a position that reinforced the disorganization of his nervous system. Todd thought it was so much hocus-pocus. Sasha was far less skeptical. Spooning with Max—squeezing and pressing him into a C-shape—might help him figure out where he was situated in space, diminishing his anxiety in the crucial minutes before sleep. There wasn’t any clinical evidence of the efficacy of this technique. But this was typical of treatments for autism, a fairly recent epidemic with more anecdotal than scientific information at hand.

“That’s one way to look at it, Mr. Doom and Gloom.” Todd’s skepticism finally compelled Rose to chime in. “But he slept through the night several times last week. I’d say the crescent moon is a great success, among other things.”

“Can you be more specific?” Sasha asked. She picked up her pen to take notes.

“He’s starting to dress himself on a regular basis. He’s eating with a fork and drinking out of a regular glass, not a sippy cup.”

“Significant mechanical improvements,” Sasha said. “Any developmental milestones?”

“He’s learning to listen better. Sometimes it looks like he’s mouthing words, copycatting what I’m saying. Like the game, only much more sophisticated.”

“I’ve noticed that, too.”

“Then why are you two focusing so much on a couple of isolated spinning episodes?” It was more an accusation than a question. “Everybody slips into old patterns once in a while. Overall, Max is making incredible progress.”

A red flag went up. Rose’s tendency to lump Todd and Sasha together usually signaled an unprecedented level of denial on her part. Sasha wondered if Todd noticed it, too. He pushed his plate back and rested his elbows on the table. He wasn’t so much looking at Rose as watching her. Sasha always found his expression difficult to read, the carefully controlled face of an air force officer trained not to betray his emotions. Rose, on the other hand, didn’t even need to look at him to know what he thought of her progress report.

“Good point,” Sasha said. “It’s important not to underestimate Max’s progress. At the same time, we need to be realistic.”

“See what I mean by doom and gloom? You make reality sound like a limitation.”

“Reality is reality,” Todd said evenly. “Wishful thinking doesn’t change a thing.”

He tried not to sound derisive. In turn, Rose tried to ignore how stupid her husband sounded, even more short-sighted, if possible, than Sasha. The Source enabled Rose to transform their myopic perspective into an opportunity for growth. Thoughts were the ultimate reality, far more real than numbers recorded in logbooks.

“There’s nothing wrong with visualizing the best possible outcome,” Rose said. “It’s better than wallowing in negativity.”

“Nobody’s wallowing in anything.”

“What best possible outcome did you have in mind?” Sasha asked.

The question caught Rose off guard. She had obviously overestimated Sasha’s capacity to conceptualize Max’s complete recovery, let alone manifest it. No doubt her training was to blame, the deficiencies of pure science. Sasha was a behavioral therapist through and through, devoted to positive reinforcement rather than positive thinking.

“Max is a very special child,” Rose said. “Quite possibly a prodigy.”