It was, in fact, his obsession with details that made Max incapable of seeing things in their entirety. Why see that lawn when you could see the pattern left by the mower? Who cares about cars whizzing by when you can focus on the double yellow line in the middle of the road? It was a wonder Max hadn’t been mowed down on his epic little walk. He loved parallel lines almost as much as he loved circles. If you gave him crayons he’d fill sheet after sheet of paper with parallel lines in red, tan, and brown, in that order, sequences of exactly the same number of lines in each color.
Todd tried to concentrate on the yellow lines to the exclusion of everything else. They seemed static. Uninteresting. Maybe that was the point. They would never move or change in any way. They were completely predictable and they rendered traffic patterns predictable, forming a boundary between cars going one direction or another. But this was probably taking things too far, into the realm of function. They were just lines and they were yellow.
Todd crossed two busy streets and made three left turns and a right. He tried to think of them spatially, ignoring landmarks altogether, as though tracing a pattern on a map. Max loved maps. They reduced the world to a configuration of lines and colors, the very picture of the world he lived in. Todd saw the bakery sign in the distance. It featured a muffin and a cup of coffee, a brown square with a dome and a white semicircle attached to a thin white crescent. The sign itself was hexagonal. It hovered in a sea of blue, which Max may or may not have recognized as sky.
It was still early, too early for the bank across the street or the grocery store on the corner to be open, none of which Max would have noticed. The bakery had been open for business since dawn. Todd could smell it all the way from the parking lot, something Max would have done. Scents meant far more to him than sights and sounds. He often closed his eyes to fend off overstimulation. He plugged his ears, but never his nose. Rose read this as a sign that there was hope for the rest of his senses, that with practice he would learn to cope with a broader range of stimuli. The assumption was that he wanted to learn these things, that somewhere deep down he wanted to be more human, less isolated, best friends with Matt the baker.
Matt was busy behind the counter, setting out freshly baked pastries and muffins for the morning rush. An early bird mother, obviously in a hurry, wanted a loaf of rye bread. Todd let her go first. Then he ordered a bear claw and a cup of coffee. He paid and put the change in a tip jar.
“Thanks,” Matt said.
“I should thank you for rescuing my son yesterday,” Todd said.
“Max?”
“Max.”
“I didn’t really rescue him. It’s not like he was lost or anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“He seemed perfectly happy, sitting out there all by his lonesome. It took a bunch of cookies to finally convince him to move.”
“Sitting out where?”
“In the parking lot.”
“He never came inside?”
“Nope.”
“Where did you find him?”
“Like I told you. In the parking lot.”
“Where exactly? Could you show me?”
“Sure.”
Matt untied his apron and left it draped over the cash register. Todd left his muffin and coffee on the counter. They walked out the front entrance and past a couple of picnic tables to where the patio gave way to the parking lot.
“Here,” Matt said.
“On this little curb?” Todd asked.
“Just past it. Right here.” Matt leaned over and pointed at a patch of pavement.
A series of diagonal lines indicated a no-parking zone. Next to them, precisely where Matt was pointing, was an accessible parking space. A blue square surrounded the usual stylized chair with its enormous wheel. Max probably hadn’t noticed the chair.
“Was he sitting or standing?”
“Sitting cross-legged. Like I said, it took several cookies just to get him to stand up.”
“Was he doing anything?”
“Not really. Just sitting minding his own business. With a big grin on his face.”
Todd didn’t owe Rose an apology after all. There was no guarantee she would change her mind, even after he told her about the parking lot. But the evidence was conclusive. Max had negotiated two busy streets and made three left turns and a right not to find Matt but to make a pilgrimage to a big white circle in a blue square. The apotheosis of shape, if not color. The blue background shone in the morning sun. The white was blindingly bright, which may have accounted for why Max had chosen that particular afternoon for his visitation. He had apparently been unable to resist its freshly painted splendor.
“I’d better get back inside,” Matt said.
“Thanks again.”
“All in the line of duty.”
Todd watched until Matt disappeared back inside the bakery. He didn’t want to be seen staring at the pavement the way his son must have stared at it. When he was sure no one was watching, he sat down. He crossed his legs. The more he looked at the circle surrounding him, the more meaningful it seemed. He resisted the impulse to interpret it symbolically. Max wouldn’t have. Abstractions mesmerized him. Numbers. Patterns. Shapes. But they were things in and of themselves. They didn’t represent anything. Circles were circles, not symbols of eternity or the cycle of life, much less a sign of disability. A child irresistibly attracted to an accessible parking space may have been rife with interpretive potential for someone like Todd. But to Max, the circle was attractive precisely because it didn’t mean anything at all.
Max’s circumscribed world seemed nihilistic. Solipsistic. But sometimes, when Todd watched his son blissfully engaged in whatever it was that engaged him, it didn’t seem pathological at all. Just different. What was wrong, really, with privileging shapes and patterns over meaning and people? Nothing whatsoever, if circles made you happy. It meant living in complete isolation. But Max actually seemed to prefer it that way. Ultimately, Todd had more of a problem than Max did. It meant a father in search of a son might never find him.
* * *
Every Wednesday morning from ten to eleven, Rose had a conference call with various soul mates scattered across the country. She couldn’t imagine how she’d survived before discovering the Source. Every major decision she made was thoroughly vetted by her soul mates. No problem was too big or too small. Aging parents. Unruly pets. Getting your needs met. They walked Tracy through what might have been an ugly divorce, were it not for the group. They helped Pam visualize her way out of debt. Rose talked a lot about Max. Nobody ever tried to console her. There was a reason for everything. They all agreed that Max’s condition was a remarkable opportunity for growth. It wasn’t really even an illness. Pathology was more a mindset than an actual affliction, a manifestation of blocked energy. Opening yourself up to abundance could cure virtually anything.
For the past few weeks, Jody’s lumbago had been dominating their conversations. No one minded, of course. Everything was as it should be, even when the rest of the group couldn’t get a word in edgewise. They contented themselves with offering advice gleaned from their own experience. Not that anyone else had ever suffered from lumbago. The great thing about New Age cures was that they were, by definition, universal. No matter what ailed you, the Source provided the path back to health and happiness. The first step was to realize that nobody suffered alone. Ultimately, once the journey was well under way, soul searchers realized no one suffered at all.
“It started in my coccyx,” Jody said.
“Must be a resentment.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Lower back pain is a sure sign of unresolved anger.”
“Or a slipped disc.”
“Same diff. Resentment wreaks havoc on discs.”
“Have you tried acupuncture?” Debbie asked. She was new to the group and had yet to learn that virtually everybody had tried acupuncture for virtually everything. Tracy had even convinced her husband Bob to tr
y acupuncture. The only reason it hadn’t saved their marriage was that Bob had an affair with the acupuncturist’s nurse practitioner.
“Of course I have. Twice a week for the last six months. I feel like a pincushion.”
“Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?” Tracy asked. A kinder-garten teacher, she couldn’t resist monitoring their conversations. Anything short of Romper Room enthusiasm was considered unnecessarily negative. “With an attitude like that, no wonder your back hurts.”
“You should try Randy,” Jill said.
“Who’s Randy?”
“My acupuncturist.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred dollars an hour.”
“Out of my price range.”
“Maybe he offers a sliding scale.”
“What’s that?” Jill asked. Her husband traveled a lot on business, leaving her free to spend most of her time spa hopping. This particular Wednesday, she had called in from Sonoma. Her wealth might have been an inspiration, living proof of cosmic abundance, if she’d been less oblivious to the exigencies of scarcity.
“Never mind.”
“Acupuncture only offers temporary relief anyway,” Pam said. “You’ve got to get to the root of the problem.”
Nobody deigned to acknowledge Pam’s suggestion. A transplant from New York City, she was the only member of the group still in therapy. Psychoanalysis was anathema to practitioners of the Source, a throwback to the days when the pathology model dominated therapeutic discourse. Jody in particular was sick and tired of Pam’s persistent belief that things like chronic pain and emotional distress meant that something was actually wrong with her.
“Have you tried Reiki?” Debbie asked.
“I’ve tried everything,” Jody said. “Chakra meditation. Thai herbal balls. Hot stone massage. TCM.”
“What’s TCM?”
“Traditional Chinese medicine.”
“Does it work for carpal tunnel syndrome?”
“It works for everything.”
“Except lumbago,” Jody said.
“You’ve got to be in the proper frame of mind,” Tracy said.
“Thanks for sharing.”
The line went quiet. Nobody except Tracy ever used this particular twelve-step expression unless they were really pissed off. Needless to say, outright hostility was unthinkable. It caused cancer, for one thing. Spicy language was completely unnecessary anyway, given the eloquence of saccharine sweetness. Thanks for sharing was the New Age equivalent of go fuck yourself. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“Let’s take a minute to meditate on Jody’s lumbago,” Tracy said.
Even Debbie knew this was Tracy’s way of telling Jody to shut up. Dominating session after session with something as minor as back pain was one thing, questioning the efficacy of TCM quite another. Nothing was more revered in Source circles than Chinese medicine. Tashi herself purportedly took chuan xiong for migraines. Out of habit, the group pressed their cell phones closer to their mouths, breathing in unison to focus the force of their meditation. But Jody was the only one who really spent the intervening minute contemplating her lumbago. The others concentrated on teaching her a lesson, with the notable exception of Rose.
Sometimes their conference calls made Rose feel at a disadvantage. Everyone else seemed to have an army of gurus at their disposal. Given the exorbitant cost of Max’s therapy, she doubted whether she could afford even the most precipitous sliding scale. Tashi had assured her that all she needed was the Source. But Max seemed to need more. He wasn’t progressing as quickly as she had hoped he might. She banished the thought, focusing on the miracle rather than the malady. Even so, she couldn’t escape the nagging suspicion that there was so much more she could do for him, if only she had more money. Haunted by the specter of scarcity, Rose meditated on relevant slogans.
Compare and despair.
All paths lead to the Source.
By the time they finished their meditation, it was 10:58. Last call. The end of each session was reserved for burning desires to share whatever was weighing most heavily on their minds. Ostensibly, the entire hour was devoted to this very exercise. But the last few minutes tended to elicit particularly juicy tidbits of information, things no one would ever dream of actually discussing. Dropping a confidential bomb at 10:58 ensured a kind of confessional anonymity. By the time they reconvened the following week, the dust had settled sufficiently to ameliorate the embarrassment of exposure. An unwritten rule guaranteed that these particular confidences were never mentioned again.
Rose never had occasion to unload anything even remotely revealing. If anything, she had a burning desire to express how wonderful she felt, which would have been inappropriate, if not insensitive. After all, Tracy needed to vent about how all the men she dated just wanted to get into her pants, which really only meant she missed her husband. And Pam needed to confess that she had indulged in one last shopping spree before declaring bankruptcy. The guiding principle behind these confessions was a slogan Rose scarcely understood. You’re only as sick as your secrets. She attributed her perennial sense of well-being to the fact that nothing deep and dark troubled the still waters of her serenity. So she took everyone by surprise, including herself, when she spoke up.
“I think my husband is thwarting Max’s progress.”
It came out of nowhere. No one said a word. It would disappear back into the Ethernet unless Rose chose to bring it up again. Truth be told, she hadn’t chosen to bring it up in the first place. She kept talking not so much to get it off her chest as to discover what she meant by this extraordinary confession.
“His negative energy is infectious. Like a virus. The whole family is at risk.”
Complaining about Todd’s bad attitude was itself a kind of bad attitude, proof positive that what she said was true. She felt guilty, but she couldn’t stop herself. Fortunately, eleven o’clock came to the rescue, breaking the vicious cycle of negativity. The familiar voice of an automated operator intervened, informing them that their time was up. She was always happy to inform them that another hour could be charged to their joint account, an offer they had accepted only once, the week Jill’s shih tzu died. Otherwise their hour together had always sufficed to transform virtually all of their problems into cosmic insights.
“Talk to you soon.”
“Have a good week.”
“Take care.”
“May the Source be with you.”
Everyone signed off with characteristic exuberance, emphatically oblivious to Rose’s bombshell. Their offhand manner implied that her secret was safe with them. But it made her feel terribly alone. The minute Rose hung up the phone, she logged onto the Source website to make an appointment with Tashi. The fact that her faith had never faltered before was a testament to the precariousness rather than sureness of her spiritual footing. One little slip, and the yawning abyss threatened to swallow her up.
* * *
To the untrained eye, Max’s second art therapy session was a fiasco. Sasha drew a family portrait again, one glorified stick figure at a time. The figure representing the little boy was poised, paintbrush in hand, at an easel. The other three, two tall and one almost as small as the boy, focused their attention on his empty canvas. Instead of filling it in with circles, as she had done the first time, she left the canvas blank for a while. Max was completely oblivious one way or the other. He alternated between being agitated and comatose, switching back and forth for no apparent reason. Sasha narrated almost exactly the same script as before, giving voice to the stick figures, all of whom were encouraging Max to paint his own picture. Every time she tried to wrap his limp fingers around the paintbrush, he threw it across the room. The fifth time she picked it up, Sasha implemented Plan B. First she made a show of shaping the bristles, running them through her fingertips until they made a sharp point. Then she dipped his brush into the red pot and started painting shapes on her forearms, circles on one, lines on the other.
“Look, Max. Your
paintbrush is drawing circles.”
Max started pounding the table with his fists. The paint pots jumped up and down, but nothing spilled. They were childproof, provided the child wasn’t prone to violent outbursts. Sasha just kept drawing until she was finished.
“Look, Max. Four lines on one arm. Four circles on the other.”
He pounded even harder than before.
“Which do you like better?”
He jumped up and started running around the table. Sasha turned her attention back to the family portrait. She loaded Max’s brush again and started painting red circles on the little boy’s blank canvas.
“The little boy is drawing shapes,” she said. “One two three four circles. In rows that look like lines. See?”
Max collapsed onto the floor and started rocking back and forth, holding his head in his hands.
“Which does he like better? Lines or circles?”
Max kept rocking until Sasha filled the blank canvas with two rows of four circles. When she was finished, she opened her work bag and retrieved the family portrait she had painted last time. They looked exactly the same, lying side by side on the table, except that the first one had three rows of four circles. There was also a crease down the middle where it had been folded to fit into her bag, which she hoped wouldn’t skew the results of the experiment. She sat there for almost half an hour, monitoring Max’s response. He just kept rocking. She had never waited so long for what appeared to be so little.
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