I was tired when we went to bed, but now I’m wide awake. Tilly’s voice is getting sleepier and sleepier, and there are longer and longer pauses between sentences, but she never really stops talking. The last thing she says before she falls asleep is, “And you don’t need a silver bullet to kill it. That’s an urban legend.” And then she’s finally quiet.
I can hear my parents in the living room; I can’t hear everything they’re saying, but the walls are thin enough that I get most of it. First, they’re talking about some of the other parents—my dad really doesn’t like Ryan’s dad, and he’s making my mom laugh by telling a story about a conversation they had. Then my dad asks, “Hey, do we have any cranberry juice left?”
“No,” my mom says. “Just OJ.”
“Can I interest you in a nightcap?”
“What kind of nightcap? The Evian bottles are empty.”
“I’ve got a couple of tricks up my sleeve,” my dad says. “Airplane bottles. At the bottom of my shaving kit.”
“Ooh, tricky.”
I sit up in bed. They’re talking about alcohol, I think, which is definitely not allowed here. It’s sort of exciting to find out that they’re not following all of the rules exactly. Because they’re grown-ups, and why should Scott get to be in charge of them? I don’t really understand what Scott is to them here. I don’t think he’s their boss, even though he tells them what to do. I don’t think anyone gets paid, but then again, we never have to buy anything, so I guess it works out.
I get out of bed really quietly and sneak out to the hallway. My dad’s gone to the kitchen, and after a minute, he comes back with tall glasses of orange juice (and, I guess, alcohol) for them both. They clink glasses and take a sip, and then without looking at me or anything, my mom says, “Are you just going to sit there in the dark, Iris?”
I start laughing. “How did you know?” I ask.
She turns and smiles at me. “Moms have secret powers. Do you want to come sit with us for a few minutes?”
“Yeah.” I get up and walk to the couch. They were sitting close together, but now they move apart to make room for me in the middle. I get in between them and put my head on my mom’s shoulder. She strokes my hair.
“Couldn’t sleep?” asks my dad.
“Nope.” I point at the glass he’s holding; there’s ice clinking in it, and it’s already got beads of water rolling down the sides because the room is warm. “Can I have some juice, too?” I ask.
“Sure,” says my dad.
The couch bounces as he gets up. As he’s walking to the kitchen, I call after him, “No alcohol in mine.”
They both look surprised for a minute, and maybe a little bit guilty. And then my mom hugs me closer, and we’re laughing together, all three of us.
chapter 23
Alexandra
March 2011: Washington, DC
One Saturday in March, you take the girls to the toy store, so they can pick out a birthday present for their cousin. On the way there, everyone seems to be in a good mood, talking about possible purchases, both realistic and fanciful.
“Maybe we could get her a machine that sings songs to you when you’re sad,” says Tilly. “It knows when you’re sad, because it has eye-recognition technology, and it can see when there’s a tear.” In the front seat, you shake your head. It’s amazing, the way this child’s creativity has come to be an ordinary part of your life. You should write this down, though you know that by the time you have a chance to, you’ll probably have forgotten the peculiar Tilly-phrasing that makes it so good.
“Maybe,” says Iris, doubtfully. “Or we could get her a toy pony. She really likes ponies.”
Once inside the store, you let the kids wander a little bit, and you give yourself the luxury of browsing. You love this place; it’s a neighborhood business, and it’s been here a million years. Higher prices than, say, Target, but more interesting toys. You like to support them when you can.
Things have been going better lately, at least a little. The licking hasn’t disappeared, but it’s calmed down, and the new tics she’s developed aren’t quite as disruptive. She’s back at school again most days, which is good for both of you.
You’ve been listening to Scott Bean’s CDs and reading his newsletters, and you believe firmly that it’s made a difference. The advice he gives, the techniques he suggests, are sensible and easy to implement, and they make you feel less helpless. You’ve got a set of tools, even if you’re not always sure which ones to try.
He emails you, too, periodically. His notes are brief, but personal; not a form letter, but a real note from the real guy, using your kids’ names and asking how they’re doing. “Just checking in,” he always says. You see it for what it is—a clever piece of marketing, keeping his name on your radar—but even so, the notes touch you. You appreciate the effort, however small it might be.
You’ve stayed in touch with Janelle, the mom from Philadelphia who you met at Scott Bean’s workshop, and that’s been helpful, too. You email each other during the day with updates and grim jokes; a couple of times a week, you talk on the phone after the kids are asleep. It’s not that you don’t have other friends. But you don’t have many other friends you can talk to about this.
You don’t want to jinx anything, but you feel like maybe, maybe, this most recent crisis has passed. And if it hasn’t, you’ve got a secret weapon in reserve, in case you need it: at the bottom of Scott’s messages, right below his name, there’s always an automated signature line, listing some of the services that Harmonious Parenting offers. And the first entry, three words, is like a candy that you’ve hidden away where no one else will find it: Private consultation available.
You walk through the toy store, making mental notes to save for future birthdays and Christmases. You’re thinking that you’ll give the girls a little time to browse and pick out their gift recommendations. But it’s only a minute or two before you hear Tilly begin to scream.
Anatomy of a meltdown: it can happen anytime; it can take you completely by surprise. You know to watch for certain triggers—hunger, fatigue, impending illness. But there are also times when it seems to arise out of nothing. Times when you never do figure out a cause, not even afterward, when you and Josh and Tilly’s therapist sit down and do the Miss Marple thing, breaking down every external factor and personal interaction, every food eaten and cartoon watched in the hours leading up to it.
You know this much: it happens when she doesn’t get what she wants. But not in a selfish way, not like a toddler who doesn’t understand why she can’t have every toy. It’s more that if she doesn’t get what she wants, she gets scared. She feels trapped. In an instant, she’s lost. She can’t see her way out. Everything seems bigger than it is. If she’s been told that she can’t use the computer, it means that maybe she’ll never be allowed to again. For all she knows, you or Josh might unplug the computer, pick it up, and carry it out to the trash. If she’s not the one in control, then who knows what might happen? The world is an unpredictable place.
You’re always trying to stay on alert, three steps ahead of her, but it’s not really possible, because her brain is such a fine and complicated machine. Say she wants to play a game with her sister. Great, right? This is what you want. Reaching out, moving out of the sphere of her own mind a little bit. But before they even begin, she’s got it all planned out. They’re not going to be just any aliens; they’re aliens from the planet Hammondia. She’s already expecting it to go a certain way, and there’s not a lot of room for compromise. If she thinks that the aliens have names like Zogox and Glaptu, then it’s a disaster for her sister to want to be called Lauren.
The way it manifests today is that one minute you’re browsing wrapping paper, and the next you can hear Tilly, half a store away, yelling at the top of her lungs. No words, just a high-pitched shriek, piercing the hushed air.
You drop the gi
ft bag you’re holding and run toward the scream. You find them in the doll section, and you round the corner just in time to see Tilly raise her hand and take a swipe at Iris.
“Stop,” you maybe-say and maybe-yell. “Tilly. Stop. Now.”
You get to her before she can hit again, and you grab her hands in yours. She’s found her words now, and she chokes them out between sobs. “I hate her! She’s a bitch! Fuck her!” In the corner of your vision, you see Iris slip out of the place where she’s been standing, pressed against a shelf of doll beds, and run toward the end of the aisle.
The problem with Scott Bean’s bag of tricks is that they only work if you’re able to stay calm. And right now, you’re not calm at all.
You squeeze Tilly’s wrists, hard. “What’s going on?” you whisper, furious.
“Stop it,” she says, her voice twisting. “You’re hurting me. Do you hate me?”
And maybe in the washed-out heat of this moment, you do. Your children have told you many times that there’s no difference between being angry with somebody and hating them for just a little while. And right now, you’re angrier than you’ve been in a long, long time.
When the four of you are together, it’s usually Josh who gets this job, talking Tilly down while you do damage control with Iris. But Josh isn’t here, and you need to be the fucking adult.
You bite your lip and loosen your grip on Tilly. Breathe and breathe and breathe. You cross your arms over your chest, grab hold of your forearms, hidden beneath your coat sleeves. Dig your fingernails into your flesh, someplace where your clothes will hide it. It’s a kind of currency exchange: the physical pain creates a tangible jolt that disrupts the circuit, turning fury into sadness. It focuses you, giving you a place to pin your attention. By the time your throat swells and your eyes begin to ache, you’re finally ready to speak.
“No,” you say, your voice breaking. You can feel the tears on your cheeks now. “I don’t hate you. I love you so much.”
You put your hands on her arms. Her body is practically vibrating; she’s still fuming, though about what you may never know. What you’d like is to get her out of here, take her outside to scream in the open air, where there aren’t a dozen happy people trying to buy toys. But you know you won’t be able to get her out, because to her, that will sound like a threat, and it will make things worse. You’d have to bodily drag her through the store, and that’s not a good idea. Once you get started on any kind of physical struggle, it’s going to trigger a whole other set of bad events.
So you hold her in place and keep your talking to a minimum, get her to count and breathe and all those other things that are written in her “angry notebook” from school. When you’re sure that she’s a little calmer, you leave her where she is and go looking for Iris.
You find her in the art section, hiding. You crouch down next to her and hug her tight. “It’s one thing when she does this at home,” she whispers.
God. God. “I know,” you say. “I know.” Sometimes you don’t know how you’re going to stand this.
After a moment, Tilly wanders over. “I’m sorry, Mommy,” she says. “Sorry, Iris.” She’s on a fairly even keel now, and she wants to put it behind her. But you . . . you just can’t. When you don’t immediately say, “It’s okay,” her face rumples, just a little. “Are you mad?” she asks, her voice quavering.
You keep your words steady. Firm, but not angry—this is key. “I’m a little bit mad,” you say. You’ve still got your arms around Iris, keeping her at a safe distance. You look up at Tilly, who’s standing above you both. “This was hard for me, Tilly. You need to learn to control yourself. This was very embarrassing and upsetting for both me and Iris.”
You’ve devastated her. You watch it happening. It turns out that it doesn’t matter how not-angry you sounded; you’ve still done damage. When you tell her, “I was embarrassed,” she hears, “You’re a fucking idiot.” You say, “You need to learn to control yourself,” and she hears, “This family would be better off without you.” You watch her face absorb the blow. She’s going to be crying in a minute, but right now she’s still in the process of letting your words hit her all over, leaving little welts. You close your eyes for a long moment.
You need to help her with this. She needs to understand the way her behavior affects other people. But it’s not worth it to crush her this way. She’s sobbing now. You did this to her. She starts to wail, and she’s hitting herself in the stomach, over and over again.
“I should die,” she says. “I should commit suicide.”
You take a breath. It’s too much, too dramatic for such a little thing, and it allows you to get a little perspective. Where have you seen this sort of thing before—this instant globalization, jumping to the worst possible conclusion? She’s her mother’s daughter all over.
You’re very, very good at beating yourself up. And you so wish that you hadn’t passed it on to your little girl. Because the traits you’ve given Tilly, the good ones and the bad, aren’t just reflected back at you; they’re magnified all out of proportion. Where you’re smart, she’s brilliant; where you scold yourself during car trips, she sobs in the aisle of a toy store, believing that she deserves to die.
You take her by the hand and pull her down onto the floor next to you. You put your arms around her. “Okay, sweetie, okay.” All you can do is comfort her. Iris stands and watches the two of you on the floor; she’s a different kind of creature entirely.
“Okay, my baby,” you whisper to Tilly. “It’s going to be okay.” And maybe, if you can create a soothing enough rhythm, maybe there’s a chance that you’ll start to believe it, too.
• • •
When your kids were little, there was a brief period when reality shows about comically strict nannies were popular: Supernanny, Nanny 911. Programs about families in chaos, needing a firm hand to guide them. They became a guilty pleasure of yours. It was partly schadenfreude—well, at least we’re not as bad off as they are—but you also hoped that you might learn something you could use. The thing that always came through, crystal clear, is that it was never the kids who were causing the problems. It was like an autopsy, a cause-and-effect diagram: these are the mistakes the parents made, and this is how they led us here. That child deliberately pouring juice on the floor? It’s more than likely that you created this situation yourself; all she did was adapt to it.
When you get home from the toy store, without a present, you sit down and open your laptop, scanning for the information about private consultations. You email Scott and ask for a quote.
chapter 24
Iris
June 20, 2012: New Hampshire
We begin Project Werewolf at lunch on Wednesday. I’m actually really excited about it; it’s like being in a play. I know it’s kind of mean, but the thing is, I don’t really care that much. These kids are just passing through. They’re not part of the CF, and after they leave on Saturday, we’ll probably never see them again. They just show up for a week and make our lives harder.
So Ryan and Candy and Tilly and I all fill up our plates at the buffet and then go sit down at the same table with Kylie and Jason. And then I just start eating my sandwich and wait for the right moment to come.
In movies and TV shows, when kids come up with a plan that the adults don’t know about, it always goes so perfectly. Like they’ve thought of every detail, and broken it down into parts, and every person knows practically how many seconds until it’s their turn. But in real life, especially when you’ve got kids like Tilly and Ryan, who you can’t really trust to behave the way a normal person would, it’s a lot less smooth. That’s why I’ve set it up with them that I’m the one who’s supposed to start, and even though they’re both giving me these looks like come on, I wait until we’re almost halfway through lunch.
Jason’s nervous, because he’s heard we’re having a campfire tonight, and he’s afraid tha
t he’s going to get burned like Scott did. So he’s asking all these questions, and instead of eating, he keeps putting little pieces of his napkin into his mouth to chew on them, before he takes them back out and leaves them on the table in a gross, soggy lump.
Candy’s telling him about the fire-starters and about how we’ll probably sing the Camp Harmony song and whatever, and then she mentions that it’ll be dark by the time it’s over, and she gives me this little look, too quick for anyone else to notice. And finally I pipe up and say, “Make sure you stay with everybody else, though, because the light of the campfire keeps away the wild . . . well, anything that’s wild in the woods.”
Tilly and Ryan make a big show of glaring at me and saying “shh,” and I think they mostly pull it off.
Kylie’s bored and not paying much attention, but Jason looks up at us so quick it’s like a cartoon. “What do you mean?” he asks. “Like mosquitoes?”
We all can’t help laughing at that, because (a) that’s so dumb and (b) we’ve all been covered in mosquito bites for weeks now, and these kids are probably used to their moms spraying them down with toxic bug repellent.
“No,” says Tilly. “Actually, the light attracts the bugs. But it keeps away . . .”
And then I hit her hard in the arm, like we planned. “Tilly,” I say, whispering, but loud enough that the other kids can hear. “We’re not supposed to mention that.”
Candy says, “She just means like rabbits and chipmunks and stuff.”
“The esquilax!” says Ryan, which was definitely not one of our planned lines and is probably a Simpsons thing that he can’t resist saying. “It’s a horse with the head of a rabbit”—and he pauses, but not really long enough for anyone to cut in—“and the body of . . . a RABBIT!”
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