by Cara Wall
“Has Charles said anything?”
“No,” James said. But Nan knew he was shouldering the burden at church. He had preached four Sundays in a row, came home late every night, and had taken to pinching the bridge of his nose to ward off headaches.
“I’ve asked him if there’s anything I can help with,” James said, “but he just smiles this empty smile and says Not at all.” He was softening the story so Nan would not panic. The truth was that Charles was silent. His clothes seemed too big and his eyes were always red. He had begun to stoop even more. When he was in the office, he simply sat at his desk and worked in silence, came in late or left early. He had asked Betsy Bailey to head the Bible study group. He had shortened his office hours. He had stopped answering his home phone.
The congregation asked after him, constantly calling the office, leaving messages that were never returned.
“I’m not sure what to tell them,” Marcus said.
“I’m not either,” James replied. He was hurt that Charles was not confiding in him, bewildered that Charles was pushing him away, and angry that Charles was forsaking his responsibilities so blatantly. There was work to be done. The church had supported the election of the first black moderator to the General Assembly. Every bus James sent uptown—to the Central Park Be-In, to Martin Luther King at Riverside Church—had been full. He wanted to build on the momentum; instead he was doing Charles’s job: hospital visits, sympathy calls, counseling, twice the number of sermons.
“Why don’t you stick to the easy stuff for a while?” Marcus asked. “Oppose a Moses highway? Save a historic building?”
“Not religious issues,” James said. He had taken to speaking in half sentences that offered no foothold for debate. “Things people would do on their own.”
“It must be intimidating to take on the big stuff all the time. You’re a brave man.”
“I’m not brave,” James told him. “I’m frantic.”
Marcus nodded. “So what should I tell people?”
“Tell them Charles is working on a sermon series and he’ll be back soon.” It was the only excuse James could think of that would keep people from calling even more.
“Is he?” Marcus asked.
James shrugged. “I don’t know that he isn’t.”
Charles and Lily took Will to a specialist.
“I hate waiting rooms,” Lily said to Charles as they sat in one, cold and surrounded by beige.
“Reverend and Mrs. Barrett,” the doctor boomed. An hour ago, he had taken Will away, asked them to stay put. He was sixty, grey-haired, red-faced, thick-handed.
“The good news,” the doctor said, “is that it isn’t physical.” Charles nodded, but Lily tensed. Good news was never followed by no news.
“The bad news is, there’s something going on.”
“Something what?” Lily asked.
“There’s more good news there,” the doctor continued. “Ten years ago, I would have told you he had juvenile schizophrenia. Probably would have blamed you, Mom, for it.” He gave a little chuckle. Lily wanted to wring his neck.
“It would be best if you just told us,” Charles said. “We have already been dealing with this for a long time.”
The doctor nodded. “Will is not developing normally.”
“We know that,” Lily snapped. “We’ve got twins and we’re not blind.”
The doctor nodded. “You’re lucky there,” he said. “Most children are diagnosed later than Will, which makes it harder.”
“Harder to cure?” Charles asked. The doctor looked at him, his eyes compassionate and kind. Charles knew it was the way he himself looked at parishioners when they sat across from him, when there was nothing he could do to fix the problems of their lives.
“No,” the doctor said, slowly and clearly. “I’m sorry. This will be hard to hear, but Will’s symptoms are permanent impairments, and as he grows they will become more pronounced. He will be too heavy to carry, too big for you to bathe. He will not play with other children, go to school, learn to read. As an adult, he will not be able to work. He may become violent. What I’m trying to tell you is that the longer you have him with you, the harder it will become to send him away.”
The room was suddenly silent. Charles was aware of the carpet, the desk lamp, the crisp whiteness of the doctor’s coat. Lily was so still Charles wondered if she had died. Then she took a stiff, shrill breath and said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“My recommendation is that you send Will to a home.”
“He has a home,” Lily said.
“To an institutional home.” A heavy stillness fell over them. The doctor looked at Charles, who said nothing.
“We’re not going to do that,” Lily said. She looked as if every bone in her face had been sharpened by a whetstone.
“Perhaps you’d like to discuss it,” the doctor said. “You need to think about each other and about your other son.”
“I am thinking about him,” Lily said. “We will not keep one son and send his brother away.”
“Lily,” Charles said, his voice thin as water.
“What?” she asked, turning toward him like the crack of a whip. “You’re not considering it, are you? You’re not entertaining the idea, wondering if it is some sort of sacrifice God wants you to make?” Each word was a jab with the tip of a sword.
Charles did not answer. He needed a moment, just a moment, to think about things, to pray. He felt Lily grow as hard as cement.
He met the doctor’s eyes and said, “It would help if we knew what to call it. Does Will’s diagnosis have a name?”
“Not universally,” the doctor said, “but we have started to call it autism.”
Charles felt Lily relax, just a little, as he knew she would. A word was a hook to hang things on. A word was something to research, to dissect and analyze. A word was a definition; a word gave Will a place on the page.
“Thank you,” Charles said, and led Lily out of the room.
“I want another doctor,” Lily said as soon as the door had closed. “One who doesn’t chuckle.” She was clutching the neck of her coat.
So they went to see more doctors, any doctor anyone mentioned to them. The waiting rooms were all poorly lit, cold, manned by women in glasses who did not smile. The doctors sat behind huge desks and never came out from behind them, never shook their hands.
One sat behind his desk and said, gravely, “This could be schizophrenia.”
Lily stood and walked out.
The one after that asked her to leave the room and said to Charles, “Unfortunately, we have found that the cause in many of these cases is unfeelingness in the mother—coldness, if you will. I see from her file that her parents are deceased. Have you noticed that she harbors any animosity toward the boy?”
Charles stood and walked out.
The third said, “Not schizophrenia. But I’m not a specialist. Let me give you a name.” He wrote it out on a slip of paper, and it was the name of the chuckling doctor.
“We’re back,” Lily said, sitting down in a chair across from his desk. “And we’re not sending him away.”
Charles said, “What do we do?”
The doctor kept his face grave. “That,” he said, “is the bad news. We don’t really know.”
“There’s no treatment?” Lily asked.
He shook his head.
“What happens next?” Charles asked.
“It gets worse, I’m afraid.”
And it did, though not as terribly as they had dreamed. Bip got bigger, more outgoing, sunnier. Will stopped following him with his eyes. Stopped following all of them, assumed a downcast gaze. Bip stopped banging on tables, and Will kept rocking back and forth. Bip learned how to dance, and Will seemed entirely caught up with the strange, silent music in his head.
Nan’s calendar reminded her that the twins’ second birthday was approaching, but there was no invitation to a party, no mention of a gathering, no news at all. In fact,
it had been weeks since she had been to Lily’s house.
Lily had said, “The boys have doctor’s appointments this week. Can I call you when we’re ready for you to come back?”
Nan had not heard from her since.
Something would have to be done. These people were her friends and they were in trouble. She would not abandon Lily, even if Lily wanted to be left alone. She went to the brownstone. She took, after much thought, a box of clementines, because they were bright enough to be cheerful and practical enough to not seem as if she were trying. She arrived in the late afternoon.
It was a cold day, but Nan had not worn gloves; the doorknocker was freezing. She raised it gingerly and rapped it three times against the grey door. She heard footsteps and then the peephole cover swung up and down. There was a pause. Nan guessed Lily was sighing. The door opened. Lily stood with her hand on the edge of it, half in and half out of the entryway.
She stared at Nan and then said, “Why are you here?”
“We’re worried about you,” Nan said, her feet cold from the chill of the stoop.
Lily stared at her, as impassive as Nan had ever seen her, all of her armor back on, as if none of the past year had happened, as if Nan had never helped her, as if they had never learned how to be comfortable with one another.
“Did someone die?” Nan asked.
Lily closed her eyes for a long moment. “No,” she said, finally. “Will has autism.”
“What?” Nan said, too stunned to say anything more.
“It’s a brain disorder.” Lily’s voice was factual. Nan covered her mouth with her hand.
“Oh, all right,” Lily said. “You might as well come in. I know everybody’s beside themselves, and it will be easier for you to tell them than for me.” She stepped back and gestured Nan through the hallway into the kitchen. Nan put her gift on the plain wood table and sat down.
“Thank you for not bringing flowers,” Lily said as she filled the kettle. “Will can’t stand the smell.”
“You’re welcome,” Nan said, looking around the room, out the door to the garden. She should get a group of people together to help Lily keep the house clean, help her plant and weed.
Lily took a tin of tea from the cupboard, started spooning it into a white teapot. She put the teapot on the table in front of Nan, placed the strainer beside it. She turned to take two mugs off their hooks above the sink. She sat down.
“I’m lonely as a tied-up dog,” she said.
Nan opened her mouth.
“Don’t say how awful,” Lily said. She placed the strainer over Nan’s mug, filled it with hot tea. “Say: ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ That’s what my parents always used to say.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nan said.
“It’s not quite as desperate as it sounds,” Lily said. She took a sip of tea. “It could be so much worse—they tested him for things that were so, so much worse. But it’s hard, and it will not get easier. He will not grow out of it. He will never dress without a fight, bathe without a struggle. I will always have to force him,” she said, as if she were realizing it for the first time.
“Every day I will have to make him kick and bite and scream. No matter how clearly I know that it is best for him, it’s just awful, and every night I know it’s waiting, like a bludgeoning. The doctors say we should institutionalize him. But I won’t do that. I won’t make him an orphan.”
Nan felt as if she had come out of herself, as if she had picked herself up out of her body and was standing in the corner. As Lily spoke, Nan knew with excruciating clarity that this was what she had once hoped for—to have her revenge, for Lily to be knocked from her pedestal. Even now, she could feel a small part of herself thrilling to the information like a hummingbird. She wanted to knock herself to the ground.
Lily took a long sip of tea and then said, “I used to think my parents died for no reason.” She ran her finger along a groove in the table. “But now I think they died so I would know that Will isn’t dead. I think they died so I would know that Will’s life is life—no matter how awful it appears.” She set her mug down. “It took a long, long time for their deaths to be useful,” she said. “I had to persevere.”
Upstairs, Bip called out, and Nan could hear both boys banging at their cribs.
“Now you’re in for the whole show,” Lily said, heading upstairs. She returned carrying Will, Bip running in front of her.
“Here we are!” she said, almost cheerful. She jogged Will up and down a bit and put her cheek to his hair.
“Would you take him?” she asked Nan. “Then I can get Bip a snack.” She maneuvered Will onto Nan’s lap. He was heavy and stiff, as angular as the room around her. He dug into her like a stick.
Lily found bread and took cheese out of the fridge.
Nan was stunned. The child on her lap was pitiful. His hair was so short Nan could see his scalp; his arms and fingers were cricked at strange angles. He seemed beyond repair.
Lily saw her looking at Will but looked away.
“Now, Bippo,” Lily said. “Two slices of cheese or one?”
“Two!” Bip yelled, and Lily smiled.
Will made his strange howl that passed for crying.
“They think he can’t hear well.” Lily did not look at Nan. Her voice was clinical. “But they don’t know. He wouldn’t respond to noises even if he could hear them, so they can’t tell.”
Nan nodded. Will struggled to get off her lap, his movements stiff and clumsy. She held on to him; he struggled harder in her lap. She couldn’t tell if his squirming was natural, or if he just didn’t like her. It was overwhelming, this stark house, this lifeless boy, this vibrant toddler, this exhausted mother. One dream given; one dream taken away. What was the point of persevering? What was the reward?
The human body is a clear and honest thing, Nan thought as she sat there encountering this boy who was the clear and honest manifestation of all the things in the world she did not want to be true.
“Here, give him back,” Lily said. She stood over Nan, stony with anger.
“No, it’s all right,” Nan answered.
“It is not. You can’t stand him. Give him back.”
Lily was correct. On that day, in that moment, that instant of Nan’s life, Nan couldn’t stand him. She depended on the world outside herself, where the sidewalks were sturdy, the walls upright, where she could tell herself, Good things happen to people, so good things will happen to me. Lily’s house, that day, was underneath a rock, the place where bad things happened and could not be fixed. It frightened Nan: What if, after all she had been through, she had a child who did not look at her, who never smiled, who shut himself away?
“I’m sorry,” Nan whispered.
Lily stared at her with a mixture of hate and resignation in her eyes. She could have said that Nan was a terrible friend, a hypocrite, a faithless Christian, and Nan would have agreed with her. Instead she said, “Please don’t come back here anymore.”
EIGHTEEN
The boys turned two. When they went to the park, Bip found other children to play with, running after them up the slide, showing them his toys and looking at theirs. Will sat under a bench, unmoving. It was hard to think that he would never be like his brother.
“Is he okay?” other mothers asked her.
“Yes,” Lily said plainly. “He’s autistic.”
“Oh,” the other mothers said, then stepped away to confer with one another.
“Is it contagious?” Lily heard them whispering. “Do you think she has him under control?” Plenty of women called their children to them, shielded them from Will with the flats of their hands.
It didn’t matter. Lily was determined that Bip have a normal childhood, that he go to the park and eat peanut butter sandwiches with the crusts cut off and swing on the swings. Since she no longer had Nan to help, Will would have to do those things as well, even though they were not the things he liked to do.
Will liked sidewalks. He liked to step
over the cracks, could walk up and down their block for hours. Every Saturday morning, when Charles was home to watch Bip, Lily took Will outside alone. One of the marvels of New York City was that it was deserted on weekend mornings, quiet and still, so she and Will could stay on their street for hours and not see a single person or car.
As they walked down the steps of the brownstone, Lily could see Will set up his perimeter, deciding how far he would go, how many squares of pavement he would traverse today. Then, head lowered, he walked his proscribed section of sidewalk again and again, stepping over each crack and laughing. It was not a laugh that brought Lily joy. It was more like the “hah” sound that Bip made when he jumped on something deliberately. Still, she could sit on the stoop and enjoy the quiet, enjoy the sight of her son engaged in activity. Will would walk as long as she would let him, actually making sound.
Lily liked these mornings, these predictable hours when she had the time and space to give Will what he wanted, to leave him alone in his self-created world. She liked when his desires intersected with what she found acceptable. She was outside with her son. He was breathing fresh air. She could sit still. It was almost normal. Of course, he would scream and kick when it was time to go inside, and she would be swift and merciless in restraining him, sweeping him indoors so as not to wake the neighbors. It always ended badly. Everything did.
Nothing ended badly with Bip. He was delighted with everyone and everything, his eyes wide, fingers pointing. “What’s that?” he asked, awestruck at a new animal, a new tree, a new car.