The Home Front

by Margaret Vandenburg

  “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.”

  Todd and Sasha exchanged glances. A New Age extravagance had crept into Rose’s voc
abulary, a new level of conviction the bad cop would eventually have to contend with. But for the moment Todd seemed content to let Sasha coax his wife down to earth.

  “Sometimes kids just need to be loved for who they are, not who we want them to be.” Sasha had been on the brink of this declaration for months. At the risk of insulting Rose, she should have said it long ago. Part of her job was managing expectations, for the sake of parents as well as their children.

  “Loving Max for who he is doesn’t preclude visualizing who he might become,” Rose said.

  “I’m wary of visualizing anything with kids on the spectrum,” Sasha said. “It’s like fanning the fire.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They visualize way too much as it is. Instead of seeing dust motes swirling in the sun, Max sees solar systems. An alternate universe light years away from ours.”

  “Isn’t there something wonderfully imaginative about that?”

  “He’s a little boy, not a science fiction writer. He needs to be grounded in the real.”

  “The real is relative.”

  “That’s a fairly accurate diagnosis of autistic cognition, you know. Believing with every fiber of your being that the real is relative.”

  “That’s obviously not what I meant. I’m just saying we shouldn’t underestimate the power of positive thinking.”

  “If anything, Max’s thoughts are too powerful. He can’t see beyond them.”

  “Not just any old thoughts. Healthy thoughts. Thoughts of abundance rather than scarcity.”

  They weren’t exactly in an argument. You can’t argue with cheery champions of the best of all possible worlds. Ordinarily Sasha would have let Rose’s blind optimism run its course. But something about her investment in perfection seemed to threaten the therapeutic process. It left very little room for Max. They all needed to be on the same page, or at least on the same planet, to facilitate his recovery.

  “Trust me,” Sasha said. “His world is already way too abundant. He can’t take it all in. We need to teach him to focus on one thing at a time.”

  “I’ll leave that to you,” Rose said. “You’re obviously very good at it.”

  Rose ostensibly meant it as a compliment, but they both detected something dismissive in her tone. Sasha expected as much. Parents could be just as resistant as their children, sometimes even more so. Rose, on the other hand, was surprised at her own audacity. She had come a long way since accepting Dr. Dillard’s diagnosis at face value. Your son may never advance beyond the mental age of five or six. She remembered Tashi warning her against treatments that might rob Max of his gifts while curing his so-called deficiencies. She was less and less certain what, if anything, was wrong with him.

  Todd felt curiously indifferent, watching them spar over Max’s prognosis. It was a familiar feeling, symptomatic of his desk job waging virtual war. Umpteen hours a day he surveilled the lives of others thousands of miles away. Feeling like a spectator in his own home was even worse. At least at work he could drag a mouse and a drone would do his bidding. He could push a button and activate a Hellfire missile. There was a two-second lag time as his directives bounced from satellite to satellite, leapfrogging across cyberspace before activating distant launchers. But the fundamental mechanism of cause and effect was still intact, the prerequisite of being the principal player in his own life. Even remote control pilots retained a modicum of control. At home, nothing he did produced the desired result. Everything was inconsequential. He loved his son, who shrank from him rather than loving him back. He loved his wife, and she retreated further and further into la-la land. His daughter’s primary emotional relationships were apparently online, given the amount of time she spent on Facebook. Everyone was missing in action, worlds away from here and now. Little wonder he was so detached.

  “Sorry to break up the party,” Todd said. “Uncle Sam is beating the war drum.”

  Every Monday Todd excused himself with a variation on the same joke. Pesky old Uncle Sam was always cutting their meetings short, summoning troops from the far corners of the Mojave Desert. Todd didn’t really sound sorry about leaving. Even indifference could be exhausting. He was tired of the prospect of treatment with no end in sight. Tired of Sasha’s relentless questions. Tired of his wife’s relentless optimism. Tired of feeling helpless. Going to work was a pain in the ass, but it provided a haven for husbands of all stripes, a refuge from all that was uncontrollable on the home front.

  * * *

  Sasha apparently decided that since Max had learned to hold a fork, he was ready to wield a paintbrush. Todd heard about their first session of art therapy after the fact. Otherwise he might have intervened. Quite frankly, Sasha’s unwonted leap of faith surprised him. Usually she was eminently pragmatic, a refuge from his wife’s delusions. It felt like his ally was betraying him, siding with Rose over how best to negotiate Max’s condition. The worst possible approach was expecting too much of him. Give the poor kid a break.

  When he got home from work that night, Todd could hear Max screaming even before he pulled into the driveway. It was hot and the windows were open. God knows what the neighbors thought. He followed the screams into the bathroom. Max was in the tub. The water was an alarming shade of red. Rose was trying to wash what looked like gashes on his arms. Max kept slapping back her hands, as though it hurt even more than usual to be touched.

  “What happened?” Todd asked, modulating his voice to avoid escalating the situation.

  “Nothing much,” Rose said. “How was work?”

  “What’s going on here?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Did he cut himself?”

  Rose looked over her shoulder. Her mascara was running, like she’d been crying.

  “It’s paint, not blood,” she said. “You’re projecting.”

  “Don’t start with me.”

  “Must have been a rough day at the office.”

  She was right, as usual. Her sixth sense never failed her, even though he kept his oath never to divulge the logistics, let alone the consequences, of his drone missions. Blood everywhere. One of the rookie pilots had puked all over his keyboard, which Todd took to be a good sign. Evidence that the kid didn’t think he was just playing another video game. At the same time, none of the soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan had lost their cookies. Evidence that they were trained soldiers, not wimpy nerds playing at war in Nevada.

  “Paint?”

  “Art therapy.”

  “What next?”

  “The last thing we need tonight is your negativity. It’s been a long day.”

  “Tell me about it. Do you want me to take over?”

  “I’m already all wet.” Rose wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, smearing her mascara even more. “Remind me to wear goggles when I give him a bath.”

  “Try it without the washcloth. It’s too scratchy.”

  She dropped the cloth, and it disappeared into the red depths of the tub. Max struggled just as frantically when she scrubbed him with her fingers. They assumed he was just resisting human contact, as usual. The possibility that he might be cathected to the painted patterns on his arms escaped them. He was so rarely emotionally invested in anything new. Even Sasha had underestimated the success of their first art therapy session.

  She had started by painting her own picture. ABA was big on what they called modeling. Todd called it Robotics 101. There was no denying that rewarding a child for aping mindless tasks produced tangible results. Max could now match squares with squares and stars with stars. Once in a while, he even managed to parrot a few words. Rose was ecstatic. But Todd hated the way his son’s voice droned when he repeated after Sasha.

  “Say you love Daddy,” Sasha said.

  “You love Daddy.”

  Max extended his hand and Sasha placed two M&M’s in his palm, a red one and a brown one. He ate them both and Sasha made a mental note, which she later recorded in her logbook. Max was expanding his color
palette.

  “Not me, Max. You.”

  “You.”

  Max’s hand shot back out, but Sasha ignored it. He started banging his fist on the table.

  “Say I love Daddy.”

  “I love Daddy.”

  “Good boy, Max.”

  This time Sasha gave him four M&M’s, one red, two brown, and one green. He peered at them out of the corner of one eye and threw the green one across the room before eating the other three. There was a limit to his willingness to tolerate gratuitous novelties. He drew the line at green. Todd wasn’t entirely convinced that disembodied words prompted by the promise of sugar really qualified as language. If so, the meaning was clear. What Max really loved were M&M’s.

  M&M’s were on the verge of being replaced by assorted dried fruits, sugarcoated in deference to Max’s sweet tooth. This was Rose’s innovation, the flavor of the week. She had devoured yet another pseudoscientific book, this one about pediatric nutrition. The author was making money hand over fist claiming that nutrition was the determining factor, both the cause and cure of autism. Fruit in particular could cure anything. Apples and oranges and peaches would transform Max into Rembrandt.

  Since Max’s vocabulary was primarily visual, Sasha thought painting might unlock his ability to speak spontaneously rather than by rote. Shapes were like words. For the most part, they still existed in isolation, completely autonomous, which was the primary symptom of autism. Max liked lines because they were lines. He especially loved circles because they were circles. If he could see that lines and circles could be arranged into faces with actual human features, he could say I love Daddy with more conviction. It would be a multistep process, translating shapes into things, things into people, and people into something worth caring about.

  First Sasha drew a picture of Max sitting at the table with a paintbrush in his hand. He was sitting upright in his favorite outfit—sweatpants and a tee shirt—with a big sheet of blank paper spread out in front of him. Sasha painted a big red smile on his face. She used color judiciously. Everything else was brown in deference to his comfort zone.

  The real Max had thrown his paintbrush across the room. He was sprawled over the back of his chair, gawking at something, probably the window, which was infinitely more interesting than whatever Sasha had to offer. She got up and closed the blinds. She retrieved his paintbrush and slipped it back between his limp fingers. He didn’t cry out, as he usually did, when his window disappeared. He was too far away to even register a response.