The Home Front

by Margaret Vandenburg

  Once upon a time their son had been perfectly normal. He used to play with his trucks instead of obsessing over them. He used to let his father tuck him in. What if his regression was reversible? There was mounting clinical evidence that what was done could be undone. What if he was still in there somewhere, hiding? Come out, come out, wherever you are.

  * * *

  Somebody comes into the room. They’re too big and too loud. The light goes on. He closes his eyes and it goes off. If he doesn’t move no one can see him. He can still hear something but it isn’t really there as long as he isn’t. After a while the door shuts and he can’t even hear what isn’t there.

  ~ II ~

  Rose could hear them all the way from the kitchen. Every once in a while Max made a noise, usually a whimper. The occasional piercing cry. But mostly she heard Sasha walking him through ABA exercises, using the singsong voice people reserved for toddlers. Children like Max supposedly thrived on consistency. It made them feel safe. Sasha repeated the same phrases in the same lilting cadence session after session. Week after week. Month after month. Todd called it ABBT. Applied Behavior Baby Talk. It drove him crazy. They had both refused to talk down to Maureen, using their regular adult voices even when she was an infant. Then Max came along and all bets were off. If squeaking like Mickey Mouse was the only way to attract his attention, so be it.

  “Make a match, Max,” Sasha said.

  Max let out a scream.

  “Make a match, Max.”

  Something crashed to the floor. Hopefully it was a chair, not a person, something that wouldn’t need to be rushed to the emergency room. The den had been transformed into what Sasha called a playroom, as though behavioral therapy were a kind of game that could be fun. It was more like a war zone. Rose swore she’d never turn into one of those helicopter mothers with nothing better to do than fret over their children. Grunting and a series of thumps weakened her resolve. Either Max was hitting Sasha or kicking the legs of his chair. It sounded more like flesh than wood on impact. Sasha’s voice never skipped a beat, even under siege.

  “Make a match, Max.”

  Rose opened the door. Sasha turned to smile at her, fending off Max’s fists without otherwise acknowledging the attack. He continued pummeling her, oblivious to his mother’s appearance at the door. He didn’t even seem consciously aware of Sasha’s presence in the room. His eyes were glazed over, staring at the window. His arms moved robotically, as though remotely controlled, if any measure of control could be assigned to such disembodied violence.

  “Make a match, Max.”

  Sasha grabbed Max’s left hand and guided it over to one of two apples on the play station, a table designed specifically for behavioral exercises. A lone orange, pocked with teeth marks, rolled onto the floor. The props were round, in deference to Max’s obsession with circles and spheres, but brightly colored. Sasha was trying to expand his palette of acceptable colors.

  Max refused to pick up the apple. Rose wondered whether it even registered in his consciousness. Sasha never bothered with such fine distinctions. What mattered was the task at hand. She continued grasping Max’s hand while she picked up one apple and placed it next to the other.

  “Good boy, Max. You matched the apples!”

  Rose admired Sasha’s tenacity. She was one tough cookie. At the same time, she could be fun loving and warm. In bygone days, she would have been everybody’s favorite Girl Scout leader. Even Max had taken to her almost instantaneously, in spite of the fact that she was an unrelenting task-master. Once in a while he actually wandered into the playroom when he heard her car in the driveway. When he wasn’t pulverizing her, he could be remarkably cooperative. Not that he had a choice. Max had learned that he could never escape completing an exercise. If he refused to make a match several times in a row, Sasha would grab his hand and guide him through the motions. She preferred to call this modeling rather than forcing him to comply. One way or another, if they were engaged in a battle of wills, he had met his match.

  “You’re such a good boy, you get to play with your toys.”

  At first Rose thought Max actually understood Sasha. For a moment he looked like any other kid, liberated from homework, rushing across the room to play with his favorite toys. He ran right past them and plopped down at the far edge of the Oriental rug, where the fringe was frayed from overuse. He pinched one string after another between his tiny fingers, twisting them tight and then laying them straight and flat against the wood floor. Such precision and delicacy seemed impossible in a little boy.

  Sasha was unimpressed. She lifted him up and walked him over to where Captain America reclined next to a stack of Legos.

  “With your toys, Max,” Sasha said. “Play with your toys.”

  Max raised a fist. Sasha ducked in time and Legos went flying across the room. He might have been expressing anger or excitement. It was hard to tell. His expression remained as blank as before except that now he was staring at the rug instead of the window. By the time Sasha and Rose gathered up the Legos, he was back at the fringe, pinching and twisting.

  Rose would have conceded the point. She had grown accustomed to Max’s more innocuous stimming rituals. She vaguely remembered that even Maureen had fiddled with the carpet at that age. Distinguishing the line between normal and compulsive behavior was becoming increasingly difficult.

  “Good boys play with their toys,” Sasha said.

  She hauled him across the room three times before he gave up on the rug and started playing with Captain America. In a manner of speaking. He held the action figure immobile on his lap, tracing the outline of the lone star emblazoned on its chest, over and over and over. Apparently this was good enough for Sasha, who drew a liberal line between stimming and playing as long as toys were involved. She checked her watch. They’d take a five-minute recess and then get back to work at the play station.

  Sasha retrieved her logbook and started recording the results of the match game. Ten tries, six of them successful without assistance. Rose sat next to her on a beanbag chair. Periodically, she checked in on Max’s progress. ABA guidelines counseled against it, but Sasha had an open door policy. She wanted parents to be as involved as possible in the therapeutic process.

  Applied Behavior Analysis was like the Bible. Its teachings sparked controversy, but it was inescapably canonical. Even Floortime was developed in the spirit of the Protestant Reformation, innovative only insofar as it rejected ABA’s fundamentally Pavlovian approach. Sasha was trained in both programs. Though each had its virtues, utilizing both simultaneously would just confuse Max. So Rose employed the more imaginative techniques of Floortime, while Sasha stuck with ABA’s more mechanical methodology. Few parents had the stomach to conduct behavioral therapy sessions. They required a velvet fist better suited to therapists than family members.

  “He’s less agitated than yesterday,” Rose said.

  “But less focused,” Sasha said. “He seems tired.”

  “We were up half the night.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Not that I can think of. Everything was fine when Todd tucked him in.”

  “Any variation in their routine?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Are you sure? This could be important.”

  Rose found it virtually impossible to focus on flaws in their regimen. Even if she managed to pinpoint the causes of Max’s tantrums, dwelling on them seemed to invite negative energy, which she couldn’t afford to do. Todd accused her of being Pollyanna. But in reality she was prone to depression, a fact she did everything in her power to disguise even from herself. Had her father not been an alcoholic, she might have self-medicated with booze. Instead, she kept the abyss at bay with almost manic optimism. She had inherited this technique from her mother, a chronic Midwesterner with superhuman powers of repression and denial. It had never let her down before, and she wasn’t about to let a little thing like autism rain on her parade. She reviewed Max’s bedtime routine
and chose the most upbeat explanation for his agitation.

  “I had to wash his sheets. But that hasn’t set him off for months now.”

  “When was the last time you washed them?”

  “Day before yesterday.”

  “Why so often?”

  “He had an accident during nap time.”

  “An accident or an incident?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He may have done it on purpose.” Sasha recorded the incident in her notebook as she spoke. “Kids can get pretty attached to their own smells. Like animals marking their territory. It probably makes them feel safe.”

  “An accident,” Rose said, unconsciously gravitating toward the more positive alternative.

  “Try using unscented detergent. Less of a shock to his system.”

  “That should do the trick.”

  “It might.”

  “It will,” Rose said, somewhat more adamantly than she had intended.

  Sasha looked up from her notebook. “It’s certainly worth a try, one way or the other. But don’t get your hopes up too high.”

  Part of Sasha’s job was managing parental expectations, boosting morale without making false promises. She struggled with this balance herself, especially in a profession that focused on pathology rather than wellness. Sasha was on the verge of completing her MA in developmental psychology. Her recent decision to postpone getting her doctorate meant she could work with Max on a more regular basis. The chair of her department at the University of Nevada was disappointed. They lamented the fact that graduate funding had dried up. He blamed the economic downturn. She blamed the Republicans and told him she’d continue when she saved enough money to cover the cost of another degree.

  What she didn’t tell her professors was that Max taught her more than they did. She didn’t need a PhD to know that the theoretical foundations of psychology were way too drug-oriented, not to mention diagnostically slaphappy. No wonder everybody was allegedly so sick these days. In practice, they were pretty much the same as they’d always been, anxious or depressed one minute, happy enough the next. It’s just that the spectrum of acceptable emotions was shrinking in direct proportion to the number of prescriptions being filled at Walmart. The fact that pharmacies were located in supermarkets was symptomatic of the real problem. Pills were like food now.

  Judging from the expression on Rose’s face, Sasha needed to tread lightly. She had that wounded mother look. Sometimes fathers wore this expression, but more often mothers, who seemed to take autism personally. Even if parents didn’t blame themselves for their child’s condition in the first place, they felt responsible for anything less than a full recovery. Out of guilt, they often pressured their kids too much. Like stage mothers. Or like fathers coaching their sons’ football teams as though recovery were a touchdown and normalcy the two-point conversion.

  “Don’t be silly,” Rose said. “Hopes can never be too high.”

  “I guess it depends on the context. In this case, expecting too much is unfair.”

  “Expecting too little is even more unfair.”

  “I’ve seen it work both ways.”

  Sasha appreciated the value of wishful thinking as a coping mechanism. It certainly beat wallowing in despair. But Rose’s blind optimism seemed selfish, if not outright intolerant, a refusal to accept Max’s fundamental right to be Max. He was a person, after all, not just a set of symptoms. Autonomous as well as autistic. Sasha wanted to say that sometimes kids just need to be loved for who they are, regardless of who we want them to be. No doubt it would have sounded like an insult.

  “It’s Max’s recovery, not ours.” Sasha checked her watch. Recess was over. “We’ve got to let him set the pace. Two steps forward and one step back.”

  Rose was appalled. Without realizing it, she had a recovery timetable ticking in the back of her mind. Max would be cured in time for first grade. From her perspective, he was progressing at a spectacular rate, far in excess of ten tries, six of them successful without assistance, which sounded suspiciously like Dr. Dillard’s initial prognosis. Your son may never advance beyond the mental age of five or six. Two steps forward and one step back just wasn’t good enough.

  “I’ll be in the study if you need anything,” Rose said.

  More often than not, mothers said something to this effect when they left therapists alone with their children. Sasha understood it as a veiled assertion of control, a reminder that she was in the Barrons’ house working with their child on their dime, thank you very much. Who could blame them for being territorial in the face of such a profound invasion of privacy? It wasn’t easy, leaving your son in the hands of an almost total stranger, whose intervention often seemed to intensify rather than ameliorate his temper tantrums. Resistance was part and parcel of the therapeutic process, by patients and parents alike. Even under the circumstances, Rose sounded more like an Avon lady than an incensed mother, yet another symptom of denial. Sasha preferred Max’s more straightforward expression of displeasure, fists and all.

  * * *

  Nothing felt real anymore. Waging virtual war was taking its toll on Todd’s judgment, maybe even his integrity. Colonel Trumble summoned him to report on the civilian casualty episode. Their meeting was really just a formality, part of the protocol of due diligence designed to justify drone warfare. The fact that they called it an episode rather than a massacre did nothing to alter the outcome. Two children and one mother dead. The father, who may or may not have been an insurgent, wasn’t even at home. There were plenty of judgment calls leading up to the control glitch cited in the official report. Todd could have recommended an investigation. He didn’t.

  Colonel Trumble’s office was in the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing complex overlooking Creech’s manned aircraft runways. Todd liked spending time in this part of the base, where actual planes were flown by actual pilots. He had met with the colonel several times before to discuss the possibility of rotating drone pilots in and out of combat duty. They agreed it was a good idea, but it wasn’t cost effective. Once pilots cycled into drone squadrons for two or three years, the cost of requalifying them to fly F-15 Eagles was prohibitive. The ideological mandate for flying drones instead of manned planes was that they saved lives. The pragmatic bottom line was that they saved boatloads of money, particularly on the training end of things. The air force was on the verge of allowing enlisted recruits to train as drone operators, a policy the army and marines had long since implemented. Why train officers when you can recruit joystick jockeys for next to nothing? Even Todd had to admit they handled drones as well and sometimes better than traditional pilots. But without combat experience, they lacked the martial ethics that transform killers into warriors.

  The colonel hated serving Stateside as much as Todd did. He’d fought two tours in Iraq, two in Afghanistan, and was eager to volunteer for his fifth when his leg got blown off by an IED. He called it the dog shit incident by way of setting up his favorite punch line. “I really stepped in it that time, didn’t I?” Calling it an incident didn’t alter the fact that he’d lost his leg. But transforming misfortunes into comedy routines did wonders for his morale. He had an amazing prosthetic device and an even more amazing physical therapy regimen. He walked like any other guy on the base, only straighter, with more determination.

  Colonel Trumble always seemed glad to see Todd. He waived off his salute and motioned to a chair. Todd was wary of the informality. Underneath all his horsing around, the colonel was a shrewd officer.

  “Coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Bourbon?”

  Todd mustered up a snicker, even though it felt inappropriate under the circumstances. Everyone laughed at the colonel’s jokes. He was the highest ranking officer on the base.

  “How are things out at the trailer park?”

  “They’ve been better.”

  “So I heard. How’s Brown?”

  “A little shaky. But he’ll be fine.”

 
“Let him fly surveillance for a week or two. Till he gets his mojo back.”

  “Sounds like a good plan.”

  “He should be commended for following orders.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  In all good conscience, Todd knew he’d have to delegate this particular assignment. It was one thing to let Brown off the hook, quite another to exonerate him. Captain Frick, his immediate subordinate, would have to do the honors. Since the decision to launch drone strikes was always collaborative, nobody could be held accountable. Untold numbers of combatants and consultants had weighed in on the decision to mount the strike—the CIA, Central Command, Special Ops, a team of data processing contractors, and the lieutenant in charge of boots on the ground. Colonel Trumble was only interested in the chain of command culminating in the strike. As long as the chain was intact, the glitch was a glitch, not a systems failure. He was perfectly satisfied with the official report. It coincided with official policy.

  Todd was a military man to the core of his being. As Rose put it, not without a hint of pride, he had been born under the star of order and discipline. But following orders issued on a computer screen felt an awful lot like obeying a machine. He knew what the colonel would say.

  “This is the new air force, Major Barron. Get used to it.”

  That was precisely what he was afraid of. Getting used to it.

  He started searching for ways to bring the reality of war closer to home. To be a good fighter pilot, you had to be afraid. You had to risk your life so you wouldn’t underestimate the gravity of death. Otherwise war degenerated into cold-blooded killing. Danger was the only real way to recover the visceral threat of combat. First he tried skydiving. The pull of gravity was about as real as you could get. He postponed pulling the cord, prolonging the sensation of falling to maximize the fear factor. But skydiving in Nevada was a far cry from parachuting in Afghanistan. The absence of enemy combatants made it feel like just another day at the office.