The earliest available appointment was the following Tuesday. Rose couldn’t imagine negotiating the weekend without guidance. She tried not to anticipate another scintillating conversation with Todd, which might actually manifest one. Not that he wouldn’t pick a fight anyway, just for the hell of it. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. When they ran out of things to fight about, they had fights about fighting. They even had an argument about tofu. Whether it really qualified as a source of protein. How much tofu it was humanly possible to eat before losing the will to live. That kind of thing. Rose really needed to recharge her battery before Major Doom and Gloom got home from work. The website seemed to read her mind. She clicked on an icon picturing a flame and the pop-up caption “burning desire.” Tashi’s voice filled the room.
If you have a burning question and need to speak with me now, call 1-877-778-7788.
The flame subsided, and a placidly flowing river appeared on the screen. The phone number drifted with the current, from right to left, followed by a parenthetical “Standard Rates Apply.”
Rose fetched her cell phone and a headset. This time she’d be prepared, both hands free to jot down words of wisdom so she wouldn’t forget them the minute she hung up the phone. She dialed the number and started pacing from one end of the study to the other. She was always nervous when she called Tashi. It felt like dialing direct to God himself, the ultimate long distance call. An automated voice answered on the second ring.
Please state your name after the beep.
“Rose Barron.”
Her name sounded foreign, somehow, disembodied by the beep. Panpipes started playing over the phone. Rose tried to calm herself, focusing on the pipes’ hollow resonance. She remembered Tashi saying something about how we are all empty vessels through which the breath of God flows, speaking universal truth. Then the voice itself emerged from the music.
“Rose,” Tashi said. “It’s so wonderful to hear from you.”
Rose’s voice caught in her throat. She had meant to be trusting and receptive, to ask heart-centered questions with her chakras wide open. She started crying instead, almost ashamed that her feelings did not reflect her intention.
“Rose, are you there?” Tashi asked.
“I’m here,” Rose sputtered.
“I’m here, too,” Tashi said. “Breathe with me.”
Usually this did the trick, grounding Rose in the Now. She concentrated on the simultaneity of breath flowing in and out of their bodies, the synchronicity of being. But she felt bereft rather than complete, a hollow, utterly empty vessel. She realized she wanted to be asked what was wrong, knowing full well Tashi would never ask such a question. Nothing could possibly be wrong.
“Feeling better?”
“Yes.” To say otherwise would be to attract negative energy. To say that her little boy was suffering would be to invite more suffering into his life. To say that her husband was becoming more distant every day would push him away. The awesome perfection of the universe rendered her speechless.
“Is there something you’d like to meditate on with me?”
“Max.”
“How is our little prophet coming along?”
“He’s a wonder. That’s what I can’t work out.”
“There’s no need to work anything out. Your job is to figure out what you want. Let the universe figure out how to manifest it.”
“That’s just it. I don’t know what I want anymore.”
“A very enlightened observation, Rose. It’s not easy, really knowing what we want. Let alone wanting what’s best for us.”
“I thought I wanted Max to be cured. Isn’t that why he’s in therapy?”
“Therapy is a practice, not a cure.”
Rose grabbed a pen and paper. She would have preferred using her laptop, but Tashi might hear the keyboard clicking. The waiver she signed prohibiting recording devices also discouraged note-taking, yet another future-oriented distraction. But what good was the Now if it kept slipping through your fingers? What good was it if your husband asked questions you couldn’t remember how to answer? If Max was complete and perfect, why did they need to spend hundreds of dollars a week on therapy? Therapy is a practice, not a cure. Rose underlined her transcription in an effort to capture the timbre of Tashi’s voice, which made everything sound simultaneously simple and profound, the way panpipes made even unremarkable melodies sound transcendental. She added an exclamation point for good measure.
“People are always searching for cures,” Tashi continued. “The search itself generates disease. Focus on health instead. The truth is they’re actually one and the same anyway. Everything is one.”
“That’s why I called,” Rose said. “I remembered what you said about truth being a paradox. But I can’t remember why. Or what it means.”
“All great spiritual truths are paradoxes. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Surrender is a sign of strength, not weakness. To truly live, we must die, like the phoenix rising from its ashes. Paradox itself is an illusion. Everything is one.”
Something clicked. Autism was a spectrum disorder because disease and health were part of the same spiritual continuum. Had Tashi said this, or was Rose starting to tap into the Source herself, as the website promised she would learn to do? The universe seemed to come into alignment, galaxy upon galaxy, innumerable solar systems spinning a design too grand to be flawed. Too big to fail. Viewed through this vast prism, everything made sense. But did this cosmic vision really change anything in the infinitesimal orbit of her own family? Max might be perfectly healthy, but he was still locked in an alternate universe. No matter how abundant, it was isolated. Inaccessible. Her momentary enlightenment gave way to yet another dark night of the soul.
“If autism isn’t a disease, what is it?”
“Autism is a sixth sense.”
“At the expense of the other five? Max acts deaf half the time. And blind. He looks right through us. Like we’re not there.”
Rose was progressively distraught. The voice never wavered. It was impervious to anxiety on the other end of the line, no matter how monstrous the cause. Infidelity, disease, and even death were all as one, blessings in disguise. Opportunities for growth.
“He’s processing sensory information on a higher plane,” Tashi said.
“Then why drag him down?”
“An excellent question, Rose. Try, instead, to ascend to his level.”
“How?”
“By speaking his language.”
Rose remembered, vaguely, similar advice during one of their previous sessions. This time she wrote it down. Try to speak his language.
“I will,” Rose said. “I do.”
“Being gifted can be lonely. Only you can relieve his isolation.”
It made perfect sense at the time. But she couldn’t help traveling into the future, imagining what Todd would say. Autism is a sixth sense. Rose underlined it twice, as if to ward off his sneering cynicism, which affected her far more than she was willing to admit. His voice vied with Tashi’s, engaging in an ongoing heated debate, the real source of her burning desire.
“I realize now why I called,” Rose said. “The problem isn’t Max.”
“Of course not.”
“It’s my husband.”
“Listen to yourself, Rose.”
“I’m trying.”
“You’re inviting problems by trying to solve them.”
“I can’t help it. Todd gets angry if I don’t.”
“If you don’t what?”
“Acknowledge the problem.”
“Live in the solution. Let Todd have his problems, if he’s invested in them. Everyone is entitled to their own way. You can choose to live in the solution, no matter what he chooses to do.”
“It’s like we’re living in different worlds.”
“You’ve got to find common ground.”
“I have no idea what that might be anymore.”
“Little wonder,” Tashi sai
d.
It sounded more like criticism than commiseration. The possibility that Tashi might be getting impatient with her was inconceivable. The only plausible explanation was that she was administering some of the tough love reserved for her inner circle, something Rose’s soul mates discussed wistfully during conference calls.
“If you have no idea what you want, how can you manifest it?” Tashi said. “You are learning to desire no less than perfect health, happiness, and prosperity. Offer this gift to your husband, who is no less deserving. What does Todd want?”
“He wants us to be like we used to be.”
“Translate that into the Now.”
“I don’t know how.”
“What was the happiest moment in your marriage?”
The question caught Rose off guard. It was the first time they had ever broached the subject of the past. In spite of the fact that Tashi knew virtually nothing about their marriage, Rose was convinced that she alone could help them save it.
“Speeding across the desert in our Jaguar.”
“Find your way back to that desert, Rose. It’s still here. Right here. Right now.”
“We had to sell it to pay for Max’s therapy.”
“Your happiness?”
“The Jaguar.”
“One less distraction. The less you desire, the happier you’ll be.”
Rose could just imagine what Todd would say to that. She doubted whether his conception of happiness would ever coincide with her own, the way it did when they were first married. She knew better than to raise these reservations with Tashi, who would dismiss them as incidental, mere window dressing in the larger scheme of things. Even she had always thought the Jaguar was about desire. All those afternoons and evenings making love. She saw now that it had been about the journey, not the destination, the eternal vanishing point, not the motels dotting the side of the road. It is better to travel than to arrive. They were still on that never-ending highway, stalled and bickering over who was at fault, now that the proverbial feeling was gone. All that wasted energy, embracing loss instead of each other.
“I’m going to leave you with one last paradox, Rose.” As the voice faded out, meditation music began to fade in. “You know you’ve come a long way when you’re back where you started. Full circle.”
“Is that why Max loves circles so much?”
“Didn’t I tell you he’s a prophet?”
* * *
The old fart with the autistic kid had apparently made the first cut. Todd and an undisclosed number of other officers were summoned to Glendale, Arizona, for the first of three training exercises. Officially, they were there for routine requalification and medical exams. Even drone pilots had to prove their eyesight was still good enough to read an altimeter or spot an al Qaeda operative with his pants down, as the saying went. But everyone knew it was more like an audition for redeployment. A squadron of lucky contestants would win a trip to Afghanistan.
Todd clocked out at 1900 on the nose on Friday, leaving the trailer park in the capable hands of Captain Frick. A flight out of Creech early Saturday morning would get him to Luke Air Force Base just in time for roll call. He would have gone straight to the base, to catch some shut-eye in the barracks, if he hadn’t promised Rose he would put Max to bed. After making auspicious progress with Sasha, Max was apparently shutting down again. He was stimming almost nonstop. He hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in weeks. Todd still didn’t buy the idea that Max had miraculously rendered a minimalist portrait of his father. But even if the circles and lines he had drawn were just circles and lines, they were better than nothing at all. The most alarming measure of his regression was his refusal to eat anything but round tan foods again. Things were going from bad to worse, back even further than square one.
Rose blamed too many disruptions in their routine. Todd in particular was dropping the ball, working late a lot and skipping bedtime rituals even when he was home. The truth was he had ceased to believe in the efficacy of some of the more far-out aspects of Max’s regime. It seemed to him that Rose’s New Age mumbo jumbo had seeped into what had originally been a more pragmatic, behavioral approach to his recovery. If Rose believed that ushering in the Age of Aquarius could heal Max, she was on her own. At the same time, Todd was perfectly capable of keeping his skepticism under wraps when it served his purposes. Sometimes it was easier to just go with the flow.
The minute he got home, Todd climbed into bed and held Max in the crescent moon position. If he wanted to get any sleep at all before flying out, he couldn’t afford to waste time fighting with his wife. Thankfully, the process took less time than usual. Max only wrestled with him for a few minutes before relaxing into the embryonic shape that allegedly helped his brain to develop more normally. Then he lay very still and they breathed together until it sounded like he was asleep. When Todd extricated himself from the warm bed, Max either didn’t wake up or failed to notice altogether, depending on whether the session had achieved the desired outcome or pushed Max further into the nether regions he frequented to escape human contact.
Todd grabbed his duffel bag out of the coat closet and headed back upstairs. Rose was already in bed, her laptop propped on her knees. She had that beatific look on her face, the smirky little all-knowing smile. No doubt she was chatting with her soul mates. Or with her Facebook friends. It was entirely possible that she was multitasking, communing with both groups in adjacent windows. Todd didn’t want to know, and she knew better than to tell him. One thing was certain. Way too much visualization was going on.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Not too bad.”
“He’s going to miss you this weekend.”
Todd resisted the impulse to question her statement. If she wanted to believe that Max was capable of missing his father, why not allow her that comfort, even if it was an illusion? Sometimes he wished he could believe it, too, instead of clinging so doggedly to so-called objective reality. As though such a thing existed in the world of children with autism, where the subjective reigned supreme.
Todd brushed off the top of his duffel bag. It had been ages since the last time he used it. When he unzipped the top flap, a few grains of sand sprinkled onto the carpet. They were more crystalline than the local desert soil. He took a whiff of the open compartment, to see if any vestiges of Iraq might still be lingering there. But it smelled like the coat closet, stale and musty, without a trace of the high desert wind he missed so much.
He always packed in chronological order, beginning with what he needed first thing in the morning to avoid forgetting anything. He went into the bathroom and started lining up his toiletries. Without thinking he put his shaving cream can on the left and a little bottle of Tylenol all the way to the right so that the line graduated from large to small in an orderly fashion. He ticked off the items on a mental checklist and then put them in the side pocket of his duffel bag.
“I’m going to miss you, too,” Rose said.
It sounded like an accusation. Either that or Todd was always on the defensive these days, unable to embrace love because he could no longer negotiate his family’s emotional matrix. One way or the other, it had all become too complicated. He longed for the simplicity of living in the combat zone, utterly intent on winning the contest between life and death. With the stakes so high, nothing else mattered. He thought of Max, who shrank from human contact for his own nameless reasons. Sometimes he felt responsible for his son’s willed isolation, as though they shared some genetic predisposition to retreat.
“Me too, honey,” Todd said, hauling his duffel bag back into the bedroom.
Rose looked up expectantly, her hands still poised over the keyboard. Todd pecked her on the cheek by way of eluding detection. Getting away with going through the motions of marriage used to be impossible in the Barron household. Rose’s bullshit radar was capable of registering infinitesimal levels of insincerity. But that was the old Rose. The new Rose was too busy friending people. Or liking their
smiley-face postings. Whatever. She abandoned the keyboard long enough to cup his face in her hands. Mission accomplished. They had avoided another emotional booby trap.
Todd rolled up three pairs of boxers and lined them up next to three undershirts and three pairs of regulation socks. They made a little bed on the bottom of his duffel. Then he folded two flight suits flat, one after the other. He laid his service hat on top and zipped up the bag. His backpack was already loaded and ready for action by the front door, next to his boots. His dress uniform, which he intended to wear on the plane, was downstairs in the coat closet. That way he could get ready in the morning without waking Rose. He picked up the duffel and started carrying it downstairs. It was pathetically light, a measure of how lightweight this training exercise was compared to the real deal. With any luck, he’d be toting a fully outfitted duffel on the next flight out.
“I’m going to have to hit the hay soon,” Todd said as he left the room.
When he returned, Rose was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. He was surprised to see that her laptop was turned off. When he went to bed early, she usually moved downstairs to continue chatting online until midnight or so, her usual bedtime. The bathroom door popped open. There she stood, stark naked, with a teddy in each hand.
“This one or this one?” she asked, holding out one and then the other.
Todd was torn, not so much between the red one and the purple one but between wanting to make love to his wife and wanting to go right to sleep. Even sex was too complicated these days.
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