Monarch Manor

by Maureen Leurck

  I filled Will’s sippy cup with water and placed it next to Charlotte’s glass and he stopped screaming. Both kids silent, I absentmindedly twirled Charlotte’s braids around my finger, my mental to-do list growing exponentially longer. Besides all of the preparation for the afternoons I would be gone as I helped my mother in Powers Lake, I still had several hours of research into therapies ahead of me after the twins went to bed. Kindergarten in our district was only a half-day program, with the two and a half hours eaten up by a variety of basic needs and tasks, so anything extra, especially anything that required concentration or silence, had to be done at night.

  “Mommy, stop. That’s irritating,” Charlotte said, and swatted my hand away.

  I released her hair and smiled, wondering where she picked up that word. It seemed like every day she learned something new—a new name, a new word, a new fact about the world. It all came so easily to her, and all we had to do was try to keep up.

  “So, how was the house?” Luke leaned against the kitchen counter and poured himself a beer.

  “Stuffed to the gills, as expected,” I said as I blotted my pizza slice with a napkin. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Will examine each piece of food, expecting him to find a flaw and refuse to eat—again—as Charlotte began to sing a song about the black spots on ladybugs.

  “At least it’s quiet.” He put an arm around my shoulders and squeezed as his eyes flickered to the twins.

  I laughed and leaned against his chest, enjoying a brief moment of safe respite. “There’s that, at least.”

  “Think you’ll find anything valuable hidden away in some closet?” he said as he released me and I relaxed back on the countertop.

  “Like earplugs?” I smiled as Charlotte’s song grew louder before Will screeched at her in annoyance and she stopped.

  “Exactly. Hopefully a pair for me, too,” he said. “Seriously, though, I’m glad you’re getting a break. When’s the last time you had some time to yourself?” he said.

  I glanced at the twins, Charlotte separating her pizza into piles of dough and cheese, and Will flapping his hands, and smiled. “Five years, I’d guess.” Although it was likely longer than that. My pregnancy with the twins was difficult, dotted with bed rest and three solid months of contractions before I finally had them. Then, there was the difficult task of caring for two newborns who never slept at the same time. And finally, chasing after two toddlers who always seemed to run in opposite directions.

  And all of that was before we found out about Will.

  Done flapping, he picked up his plate and smashed it on the floor.

  It was just another plate, another material thing we could easily replace, but as I swept up the jagged pieces and cut my finger, it seemed to hurt everywhere.

  * * *

  Luke was already in bed when I walked into the bedroom. He had on his dark-brown-rimmed glasses that reminded me of Clark Kent. He didn’t look up from his phone as I collapsed next to him. His thick black hair had fallen across his forehead as he peered down at the screen. “Think you’ll sleep at all tonight?” he asked.

  I laughed as I surveyed the clean laundry still haphazardly thrown on the bed in crumpled piles. “Not likely.”

  He took off his glasses and stared at the rumpled clothing. “Look, my mom can help with all that. And I’ll say it again: You should just stay up there in Wisconsin. Find a hotel. Have a real break.”

  I gave him a small smile and shook my head. “You know I won’t do that.”

  Luke crossed his arms over his ratty college T-shirt with Crowd Control on the front—a leftover from his bouncer days in college. He was over a foot taller than me and broad chested, so the shirt had been a perfect fit when I was pregnant with the twins. I don’t think he ever forgave me for accidentally washing it with a pair of pink socks, though, as the shirt now had a faint rose color. “Rosé all day,” I had laughed the week before as he rolled his eyes.

  “Someone else can take care of the twins for a few days. Really,” he said.

  I picked up an old hoodie, a leftover from my bachelorette party ten years ago with Mrs. Marinelli bedazzled on the back. The previous week, Charlotte had found it buried in a drawer and worn it around the house like a cape. I shoved the hoodie and the rest of the laundry off the bed. “Nope. I can’t leave Will for that long.”

  “Okay, fine.” Luke closed his eyes, while I grabbed my laptop and propped myself up in bed, notebook full of therapy and treatment notes at my elbow. I sighed and began to click through the layers of Web sites I had bookmarked the night before. Every night, after the twins were finally asleep, I stayed up late to research different therapies and interventions for Will, sorting through all the information in the hope of finding some breakthrough that would propel his life into a new, easier chapter. One where he could finally tell us what he wanted, without the frustration of signs and gestures. One where the world wasn’t so terrifying and painful for him.

  One where he could play, make friends. Sleep through the night. Stop wearing a diaper.

  Find peace.

  This routine had gone on for three years. When the twins were two, we had a gnawing suspicion that Will wasn’t developing like his sister. Charlotte wasn’t just precocious or an early talker, as we first reasoned. No, she was typical . . . and it became clearer with each passing milestone that Charlotte reached and Will missed that something was wrong.

  When he was two and a half years old, we took him to a local developmental pediatrician, Dr. Dorner, a kindly old man who reminded me of my next-door neighbor growing up. He looked at us—I’ll never forget the look in his eyes: a mixture of resignation and defeat—and said the word we were so afraid to hear: autism.

  It was just a word, and not even a four-letter one. Yet it went off like a bomb that scattered dust into every corner of our lives, forever separating our family into Before and After.

  At first, I thought of the quirky kids who go on to work for NASA or who find some new mathematical theory. Yet it was imminently clear that wasn’t Will’s variety of autism. Severe, is what the official diagnosis report from Dr. Dorner said, impacting all skills and quality of life. He will need intensive therapy and intervention.

  So each night I devoted hours that should have been spent sleeping to finding ways to help him. And it was not a fruitless task. Each night, I found another story of a child who had this therapy or that intervention, one the parents might never have thought to try if it weren’t for Internet research, and now their child was indistinguishable from their peers. There was hope; there had to be—others had climbed the autism Mount Everest and come down on the other side.

  This will be us, I always thought as I read of a formerly nonverbal child giving a speech to their class or of a kid moving from a self-contained special education classroom to mainstream, without an aide. I even read about children who lost their autism diagnosis completely due to early intervention. There was a holy grail out there, as so many other parents said, and I just needed to find it. I will find it. I will find a way to help him, I so often told myself, as I pictured finally hearing his voice or watching him put on his shoes.

  Hours later, after I read about a few more therapies (hip-potherapy, tae kwon do) and sometime long after Luke started snoring, I turned off the light and fell asleep.

  I dreamed of my grandmother’s house. It was a memory more than a dream, from when I was around eight years old. I had asked her why she kept so many things in her house. She had smiled and placed her hands over mine, her fingernails painted her signature coral, and said, “Because it might be junk to someone else, but I love every piece, no matter how strange, and that’s what makes it important. What matters to you, what you care about, what you surround yourself with, is beautiful, even if no one else sees it. That’s what makes a house you. That’s what makes it your home.”

  CHAPTER 3

  AMELIA

  “Wake up, wake up, my sweet boy.” Amelia bent down and kissed her son John’s
flushed face as he slept in his bed. His long, dark eyelashes brushed against his cheeks as he stayed asleep, his lips parting in a contented sigh. In his hand he clutched his worn wooden toy horse, an ever-present nighttime companion.

  She smoothed his hair off his forehead, and he turned over in protest. He was only five years old, yet already knew exactly what he did or didn’t want. And sleeping through the morning was one thing he always wanted.

  She laughed and moved across his expansive room, making her way over the carpeting that her mother had purchased in London during one of her many shopping trips abroad, and threw open the heavy curtains that hung on the enormous window that overlooked Geneva Lake. Light flooded into the room, beams illuminating the rocking horse in the corner that he still loved to sit on, and the trucks scattered everywhere that the maids hadn’t picked up after she had waved them away the night before. They had looked at her in surprise, and even more so when she said she would be staying in John’s room with him, instead of at the other end of the house away from the children’s quarters.

  Yet she couldn’t be away from him, not today. Especially not today. There were too many dangers, too many people watching.

  Her pulse quickened as she looked out the window, across the lawn, and down to the lake, where the outside was already abuzz with activity, like the monarch butterflies who quickly moved from flower to flower in the Hoppes’ expansive garden. White tables were set up on the grass, workers in pristine blue uniforms were carrying stacks of chairs back and forth, and the gardeners were busy stringing twinkle lights across all the surrounding bushes.

  Her sister Jane and her mother, Mary, were in the middle of the chaos, barking orders at the workers and throwing up their hands. Even from a distance, she could see that Jane was already crying, and she made a mental note to congratulate Alfred, the cook. She had said that Jane would hold out until at least lunchtime to get hysterical, but apparently he knew better. From the moment that Jane was engaged, she had decided that the wedding—of course—would be at their summer home, Monarch Manor. It was the best way to show off to society and to pretend to be the wealthiest of her friends.

  Amelia forced herself to look at the steam yacht docked at the end of the piers. The deckhands scrubbed it with long brooms and soapy water that ran into the lake. The Monarch Princesses, named after her and her sisters, proudly bore flags bearing the monogram of Jane and Edward as the bar on deck was being stocked with the best champagne for the guests to sip as they arrived at the wedding after disembarking the train from Chicago.

  From her vantage point, the yacht was proud, sturdy, unyielding. Yet she knew how unpredictable it could be. Servants were unloading the stack of presents, sent from all corners of the globe, from another steam yacht. Certainly, among those were gifts from Adare Village in Ireland, from Amelia’s mother’s relatives. Likely, their gifts would be the most humble. Her mother’s relatives didn’t have means, but they weren’t poor, either.

  Amelia’s throat tightened as she thought of the green hills of Adare Village, a place she had visited before she was married. Her mother’s relatives were so welcoming, so warm, with lined faces and cozy homes. They hugged her without hesitation, without any worry about social propriety. They were so different from what she had expected, from how she had been raised.

  Her thoughts were interrupted as she heard John rustle in bed and turned. He sat up, rubbing his eyes and squinting at the sunlight.

  He lazily signed, “Mother.”

  She walked over and held her arms out and let him collapse into her ugly white nightgown. She had accidentally packed it, and it had horrified the maids when they opened her chest. She kissed the top of his head and pulled him closer to her, enjoying the last few moments before they were sucked into the whirling dervish of the wedding day. Soon the overnight guests would arrive at the Hoppe estate—her other sister, Eleanor, and her family, cousins, aunt, uncles. And, of course, Amelia’s late husband’s family, the Cartwrights. They wouldn’t miss a party even if they were in the sanitarium. All that food, champagne, and gossip . . . free.

  She lifted John’s chin toward her and signed, “Are you hungry?” She looked in his eyes, which were a deep blue, like the darkest part of the lake.

  He stared at her with his thoughtful gaze, and at first she was worried she had signed the wrong question. Her sign language skills were good, although she often wished they could be perfect. She would give anything for her and John to communicate easily, rather than in clumsy hand gestures and makeshift phrases.

  She wished that it could be easier for them. For him.

  She signed, “Breakfast?” and his eyes lit up and he nodded, scampering off the bed and running toward the door in his blue-and-white-striped pajamas that made him look like a serious old man, a fact that always made Amelia laugh. Her husband, Henry, had a pair that he wore almost every night before he died the year before, and dressing John in a replica made her strangely feel like he was close to them, at least at night. That maybe he was watching over them while they slept.

  Amelia missed him more each day, his absence growing larger instead of smaller.

  Oh, Henry. If only you were here. If only everything was different.

  If only you could save us.

  She followed John out of the room, and laughed as he scampered down the long wooden stairway with the intricately carved swirls and decorations. A maid jumped out of the way, her hand on her heart, before she frowned in his direction at the fingerprints now on the formerly pristine railing. He ran straight toward the kitchen, where Alfred waited for him, ready to cook any treat that he wanted. Alfred had prepared for John’s arrival that weekend by collecting drawings of various foods, so John could point to what he wanted. When Alfred first showed Amelia what he had done, she couldn’t stop the tears. He was the only one—hired help or family—who had thought to change anything to make it easier for them that weekend. He was one of the only people who knew just how difficult that day would be for her.

  Amelia put on a silk robe, not bothering to dress up in a formal gown, as she knew her mother and sister would still be outside. Later, all the bridal attendants would don the pale pink bridesmaid dresses her sister had chosen and each pin a fur-trimmed pink hat into her hair.

  Once again, the maid on the stairs jumped back, but this time it was from seeing a lady in her nightclothes walking around the house. She didn’t think much of those things anymore, though. Due to her financial circumstance after Henry’s death—after all the mistakes he had made right before he died—she had been forced to drastically reduce her own staff in her home in Chicago, living less like a society woman and more like a simple mother. The relief from the societal pressures was welcome, but everything else had shattered her heart until she wasn’t sure what was left anymore.

  As she walked toward the back wing of the house, she noticed the air still held a faint smell of cigar smoke. After dinner the night before, the men had retired to the billiard room as they always did, to drink, smoke cigars, and contemplate their good fortune. She walked through the porch-like passageway and finally took a long inhale of fresh air, before she pushed open the heavy dark oak door, where she found John on a large wooden chair, smiling and watching Alfred flip pancakes on the griddle.

  “There she is!” he bellowed as she took a seat next to John. She leaned over and kissed him again, but he didn’t budge, his eyes huge as he watched Alfred launch one pancake high into the air before it landed with a sizzle back on the pan. While that was cooking, he turned and pulled a carafe of pure maple syrup out of the butler’s pantry and dish of butter out of the icebox.

  The kitchen was a respite from the chaos happening in the service kitchen on the opposite side of the house, which was without a doubt bustling with platters of food and roasting meats in preparation for the reception that night. She could faintly hear the service elevator rumbling to life, carrying food supplies and crates from the docks up to the house.

  “Pancakes f
or you as well?” Alfred said to Amelia without turning around.

  “Of course,” she said automatically. She tapped John on the shoulder and made the sign for pancakes. “Pancakes,” she said out loud, and pointed to what Alfred was cooking.

  He gave her a small nod of understanding, and warmth spread through her chest. Just two years before, a doctor had told Henry and her that there was no hope for John, that he could never learn to communicate, that they should find an institution for the deaf and dumb and have more, better children. She had thrown a medical textbook at his head on her way out of his office.

  Alfred placed a pile of steaming pancakes in front of them and she dished two onto John’s plate, carefully cutting up the pieces before drowning them in maple syrup. John picked up his fork and slowly chewed before a brilliant smile spread across his face and he looked from Alfred to his mother. He put his two index fingers together, signaling “more,” and then pointed at the stack.

  Amelia leaned over and tickled him in the ribs. “Silly boy. Finish what’s on your plate first and then we’ll decide if you get more,” she signed. She watched as he slowly put another piece in his mouth, remembering when he couldn’t feed himself, even at age three, due to what the doctors called hypotonia, which meant his muscles didn’t know how to work properly on their own. But now, after all those hours spent with both of them crying, her showing him what to do with a fork and how to bring it to his mouth, he could do it.

  She now dared anyone to suggest there were limits to what he could do. Especially Margaret, her mother-in-law.

  “Not hungry this morning, madame?” Alfred said when Amelia didn’t reach for her plate. He gave her a sympathetic look before his gaze went from her to John. She saw the questions in his eyes. All of the questions about their future and what would happen to them.

  She had very few answers, and the ones she did have she could never share.

  “Oh yes. Excuse me.” She hurriedly put some pancakes on her plate, her mind snapping back to the present. “They’re wonderful, as usual,” she said in between bites.