• • •
Introducing Scott to Josh is weird; you can’t shake the feeling that you’re introducing your husband to the man you’re having an affair with. Which is not an image you want to dwell on; there’s nothing even vaguely sexual in the vibe you get from Scott, or the interactions you’ve had with him. But there’s something illicit about the way you’ve slid him into your lives, sideways: dressing up a little bit to go to his evening seminars, while Josh takes over homework and bedtime duties; engaging in a private email correspondence with him; inviting him over to the house when the children are at school.
Probably, Josh would be less threatened by the guy if you were sleeping with him. He’s suspicious of Scott’s motives, dismissive of his credentials, and resentful about the four hundred dollars per session you’re paying him for his time. He’s also twenty minutes late getting home from work on the night of the meeting, which is fine, because you suspected that something like this might happen, and you told him the wrong time deliberately. You’ve picked up a few tricks over the years.
Truthfully, though, this isn’t much of a battle. He knows as well as you that you both need help. He knows that the older Tilly gets, the less time you have before she’s expected to manage on her own.
The two of you disagreed about how to present Scott to the kids, and you’ve settled on introducing him as “a teacher who likes talking to kids.” Which you think actually sounds creepier than just calling him “a friend of Mommy and Daddy’s,” but whatever.
The kids don’t really care what you call him, though. Tilly, in particular, is excited to meet him, excited that you’re bringing someone new into her life. This is one of Tilly’s many wonderful traits: the enthusiasm with which she greets every new endeavor. Wonderful, but sometimes heartbreaking, because you can never be sure how she’ll be received in return.
“Hi, Scott,” says Tilly, before he’s even got his coat off. “Do you know what the tallest statue in the world is?”
This is her thing, lately, her “special interest”: that seems to be the polite term that everyone’s agreed on. “All-consuming obsession” would be closer to the truth. She’s pretty much always had one. Before big statues, it was Greek mythology, and before that, dolphins.
In fact, you’re pretty sure that Scott does know what the tallest statue is, since he’s been briefed on Tilly’s interests, but he doesn’t give it away. “Huh,” he says. “Good question. I’m afraid I don’t know.”
He’s barely finished speaking before Tilly’s filling him in. “It’s the Spring Temple Buddha, in the Zhaocun township of Lushan County, Henan, China. They started building it in 1997, and it wasn’t finished until 2008. It’s 420 feet tall, but if you count the base, which I don’t, it’s 502 feet. The next tallest one is the Motherland Calls, in Volgograd, Russia, which is 279 feet, but that includes the sword she’s holding over her head. The statue itself, from head to toe, is 171 feet.”
“Wow,” says Scott. You put a hand on Tilly’s arm to remind her to give him a chance to talk. “That’s really interesting. I think the tallest statue I’ve ever seen in person is the Statue of Liberty. How tall is that one?”
“Well, actually, most people consider the Statue of Liberty the second tallest statue in the world, but that’s only if you count from the bottom of the pedestal to the top of her torch, which is 305 feet. But if you just count how tall the statue would be if she climbed down from the base and went walking down the street or something, she’d only be 151 feet tall.”
You watch her chatter away, pacing around the living room as she talks. You think, She is my life, and it is of course both true and not. The day after she was born, it occurred to you that all of the categories had changed now. When you filled out medical paperwork related to the baby, everyone had slid forward a peg: “parents” meant you, “grandparents” meant your own parents and Josh’s. For a brief, dark time—approximately the first week of her life—you couldn’t escape the feeling that you were one step nearer to death. And all because of this tiny, eight-pound creature.
The plan tonight is that Scott will spend about an hour observing the kids, and then he’ll spend some time talking to Josh alone. Later in the week, he’ll write up a report and then meet with the two of you to discuss it.
Tilly has brought out her “statue notes” now, for Scott to look at: a spiral-bound notebook where she’s recorded all of the research she’s done on this new topic. As if the passion she feels, the giddy infatuation these structures inspire in her, can be summed up by a list of relative heights and dates of completion. Such depth of feeling. When she talks about it to you (or to anyone else), you can see how much she wants to convince you that this information is worth your time. To make you see the beauty that she sees.
And what you want, the only thing you really want—from Scott, from this consultation, from all of the therapists and special-ed teachers and therapeutic service providers who are doing their best to help you—is to preserve this child’s enthusiasm and charm, even as you teach her that she can’t always have everyone’s attention, that grabbing strangers’ arms and insisting they talk about statues isn’t exactly the right way to live among the people of the world.
Scott never did ask you to give him an answer about happiness and purpose, but you wonder if maybe the question itself was its own exercise. How is it that we ever manage to forget how brief and fragile our lives are? The time will come when your body will stop working. Your mind—now in constant movement, containing vast galaxies—will no longer think. Of course, you know this; you, as much as anyone else, are subject to those brief, terrifying moments of clarity. Bright bursts of anxiety, blooming and swelling.
But is that all you’re supposed to do with that knowledge—fear it? Or are you supposed to hold on to it, use it to figure out how you want to move through the world?
Happiness, as it exists in the wild—as opposed to those artificially constructed moments like weddings and birthday parties, where it’s gathered into careful piles—is not smooth. Happiness in the real world is mostly just resilience and a willingness to arch oneself toward optimism. To believe that people are more good than bad. To believe that the waves carrying you are neither friendly nor malicious, and to know that you’re less likely to drown if you stop struggling against them.
While Scott hangs out with the kids, you and Josh sit in the next room and look over brightly colored handouts. The one you’re holding is about the effect of pesticides and other environmental toxins.
So many things to worry about. Which ones do you decide to fight? Last summer, small yellow signs began appearing on lawns all over your neighborhood: “This yard treated by the Mosquito Experts! Keep children and pets off grass for 24 hours.” You looked it up on their website, to see exactly what they were using and how safe it was; the phrase they used was “low mammalian toxicity.” It didn’t reassure you much, but you liked the wording. Think of your children as the mammals they are: slippery seals, wide-eyed monkeys. Curious and mischievous, embodying your dearest hopes.
In the end, you hired the Mosquito Experts, too. Because you’re a good neighbor, and because a yard infested with mosquitoes carries its own hazards. And anyway, “natural” doesn’t necessarily mean harmless—what makes us imagine that it does? Arsenic and deadly nightshade, hurricanes and tsunamis and poisonous scorpions—all one hundred percent natural. Water alone can probably kill you ten different ways.
Tilly’s still talking on and on to Scott; you can almost move your lips along with her. You’ve learned more about giant statues than you ever imagined you would. You know that the Colossus of Rhodes was toppled by an earthquake. It broke first at the knees. It stood in place, whole and intact, for a mere fifty-six years, but the ruins lay where they fell for nearly a millennium. “Even lying on the ground, it is a marvel,” wrote Pliny the Elder. “Few people can make their arms meet round the thumb of the figure.”
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But “the truth” is not something that exists in a vacuum, static and unchanging. For hundreds of years, people believed that before the earthquake, the Colossus of Rhodes stood astride the entrance of a harbor, with one foot on each side of the water. The statue is depicted in this pose in artwork and illustrations; Shakespeare wrote about it this way, and so did Emma Lazarus, in the poem that would be affixed to the Statue of Liberty on a bronze plaque. But modern scholars agree that this is nonsense. It’s a mechanical and logistical impossibility. As nice a picture as it makes, no ship ever sailed between those bronze legs.
There is currently no cure for autism; there is no universally agreed-upon treatment plan. Whether we should aim to “cure” it at all is a matter of some debate. But no one can say what will be true about autism in a thousand years, or a hundred, or twenty. Anything that is built can topple. Anything written can be revised.
Josh has set the timer on his phone for an hour, and when the table you’re sitting at begins to vibrate, you get up and follow him into the other room.
Scott and the girls are sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table. They’ve all got paper and crayons; they’re drawing (they are excited to explain to you) their own giant statues. Iris has created a monument to bunnies; Scott has drawn a monument to roller coasters. And Tilly, in true Tilly fashion, has designed a monument to monuments. On a hillside, a thousand feet high, a dozen statues stacked one on top of the other. And she’s glowing like she’s never been happier.
This is, you believe, the instant when Josh decides that he approves of Scott. It’s not that Scott has done anything particularly amazing; this is an activity that any teacher might come up with, or any good babysitter. But he’s paying attention to your girls, meeting them at their level. Listening to what they have to say.
People who have parenting philosophies, Josh used to say, have too much time on their hands. He used to say, I know what works and what doesn’t. I know my kids better than anyone.
Now he sits down on the floor, between Tilly and Iris. He slides over a piece of paper and picks up a red crayon.
“My turn,” he says. “Make some space for me, too.”
chapter 30
Iris
June 29, 2012: New Hampshire
The day after the stupid Lincoln penis thing is Friday. That’s good because it means only one more day until Lincoln and his family leave and I never have to see them again, but bad because it means it’s Mother’s Day, and so I’ll have to see a lot more of his ugly face all afternoon in the woods.
I mean, I’m okay. It’s not like they raped me or sexually abused me or any of those things that older kids have special assemblies about at school. But ever since it happened, there have been times when I’ve been around some of the men at camp—really embarrassing people, like Scott or Tom or even my dad—and I think, out of nowhere, “He has a penis.” It just floats into my head by itself; I don’t even mean to be thinking about it. It’s like when I was little, and it occurred to me that everyone goes to the bathroom, even people like teachers and actors on TV. But that was kind of funny, whereas this freaks me out.
The whole Werewolf thing is messed up, too, because Candy and Tilly don’t know what happened, and they want to keep making plans for the next group of kids. But now I don’t want anything to do with it. Because whenever I think about werewolves, I get this slide show in my head of Lincoln’s ugly penis and Ryan’s stupid scared face and all the fake blood and fur scattered on the dirt. And then I just feel like puking my guts out.
I just have to get through Werewolf today; that’s the last time I’ll ever have to be in the same place as Lincoln. On the way into the woods, I stick close to Tilly and Candy. We’re walking slowly, so everyone else is passing us. When Lincoln walks by with Ryan, he calls out, “Hey, pussycats.” He emphasizes the “pussy” part.
“Shut up,” says Candy. And then, once they’re a little farther from us, she says, “Lincoln’s a dick.”
“Lincoln has a dick,” I say, and then feel embarrassed because Candy gives me a strange look, and I realize it’s kind of a weird thing to say.
But Tilly doesn’t look like she thinks it’s weird. She just throws her arm around my shoulders to pull me into a clumsy half hug and laughs like it’s the funniest thing she’s heard all day.
By the time we get out to the Harmony Circle, I’m starting to think that maybe it will be okay. Maybe I’ll just be able to avoid him completely.
But then Scott gets up in front of us and says, “Today, the Werewolf wants to do things a little bit differently.”
Doing something a little bit differently turns out to mean that we’re going to build shelters in groups of two instead of by ourselves. There are eight of us, and I’m sitting way across the circle from Lincoln, so I don’t think we’ll end up together, but then Scott makes us count off and has one go with five and two go with six, etc. And there’s Lincoln walking toward me with an ugly grin.
I don’t even talk to him. I just stand up and walk over to the Building Store and wait in line to buy supplies. I see some of the kids in front of me getting some of the good stuff—like Candy has the big double sleeping bag, and Ryan has the dog crate—but I don’t even care because I’ve got other stuff on my mind. I wait my turn, and when I get up to Scott, I say, “I have to talk to you for a minute.”
He puts on his “concerned grown-up” face, and leads me a little bit away from the table and the other kids. And I’m thinking that saying the word “penis” to Scott might be the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me, but if it gets Lincoln in trouble and means I don’t have to be his partner for this game, then maybe it’ll be worth it.
So I tell him what happened, and my face is hot and probably bright red, but I get it out and I wait to see what Scott’s going to do about it.
At first, he doesn’t do anything but look at me. And he doesn’t seem shocked or mad or even a little bit upset. He just stares at me, and after a minute he says, “Iris, if that’s a lie, it’s a very bad lie to tell.”
I suck in my breath, and it sounds like a gasp. I start to say something, to tell him that it’s not a lie, but he holds up a finger to stop me.
“And if it isn’t a lie,” he says, “it’s going to get all of us into a whole lot of trouble.”
My mouth is still open from before, but now I don’t have any idea what to say. I don’t . . . does he mean that I’m in trouble, too?
Just then, Ryan comes running up, yelling something about Charlotte acting like a baby, and for just a second, Scott looks absolutely furious. He reaches out and puts his hand across my mouth, warning me to stop talking. Then with his hand still pushing against my face, he says, “Ryan, you will work this out, or no Simpsons talk for two days. And I swear to God, if you don’t stop whining, I’m going to put you in that dog crate myself.”
Ryan’s eyes get all big, and I can tell he’s really scared. I almost feel bad for him, because that doesn’t seem fair, threatening that he can’t talk about The Simpsons. I’m not sure he could even stop doing it if he tried. But then I think about the way he looked yesterday when he was talking about peeking at me naked, and I feel like I wouldn’t even care if Scott taped his mouth shut and locked him in the dog crate forever.
“Go,” says Scott, and Ryan turns around and runs back to his sister. Scott waits until he’s gone before he takes his hand away from my mouth.
“So what I’m going to do,” he says to me, just like we were never interrupted, “is I’m going to pretend you didn’t tell me what you just told me. I don’t want to hear another word about it. And you’re going to play the game along with everybody else.”
Then he smiles at me really wide and shrugs his shoulders with an expression like, “There’s nothing I can do.” He says, “The Werewolf wants what the Werewolf wants.”
I can feel my face curling into som
ething ugly. I’m mad. I’m so mad, but I’m not going to cry. I just turn around and walk over to the table at the Building Store, and I grab up a whole bunch of stuff: an old blanket and a plastic laundry basket and some duct tape. As much as I can carry in my two arms.
“Hey,” Scott calls after me. “That’s not how the Werewolf does business.”
“Too bad for the Werewolf,” I yell over my shoulder. And then, still loud enough for everybody to hear: “I already gave my information. It’s not my fault if the Werewolf doesn’t want it.”
I walk over to Lincoln, who’s looking at me like maybe I’m more interesting than he thought. I don’t care, though. I don’t care what he fucking thinks.
I drop all the junk I’m carrying at his feet, and then I just look at him, wondering what comes next. I can tell it’s sneaking in, that feeling like I should be nice to him because I’m a nice girl. And if I’m not a nice girl, then who else can I be?
It’s not really a literal question, who else can I be, but for just a second I imagine that it is. I try out Tilly in my head, but she probably wouldn’t even notice there was an awkward situation going on. And then I hear Candy, talking to someone across the field, and it’s like an answer traveling through the air.
I look at Lincoln, who’s staring at me with his ugly mouth hanging open. “What’s your problem?” I ask. It sounds really rude. Good.
“Did you tell him?” he asks me.
“Did I tell who what?”
“Scott. When you were talking to him just now. Did you tell him what happened?”
I pretend I have no idea what he’s talking about. “What happened?” I say. “Oh, you mean yesterday? When you showed me your”—I take a breath and put a mean smile on my face—“tiny little dick?”
He goes all red and splotchy. “You fucking bitch.” He pushes me, hard, and I fall back onto the grass. But there’s something about his stupid blushing face and the way his voice cracks in the middle of the word “bitch,” and I just start laughing.
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