by Delaney, JP
Later, the guide who showed you around explained how the palace was actually built as a funeral monument for the shah’s favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal.
“If I die before you, I’ll expect at least a palace,” you informed Tim mock-seriously.
“I won’t let you die before me.” Even in the upload, you can hear the absolute conviction in his voice.
* * *
—
On the fourth day, some paints arrive.
“I hope these are all right,” he says as he unpacks them. “You were very particular about which brands you used.”
Were you? You don’t remember that, either. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”
But what to paint? You feel no desire to create anything. It so clearly matters to Tim, though, that you force yourself to try.
The oranges, you decide eventually. A still life. You take the bowl upstairs and set it in your art room.
Four hours later, you’re almost done. You go to show Tim.
“That’s incredible,” he says encouragingly. “See? You’ve kept all your talent.”
You look at the canvas doubtfully. It seems to you that what you’ve retained is technique, not talent. Your painting is as accurate, and as devoid of personality, as a photograph.
But Tim is delighted. He gets you to sign it. Abbie Cullen-Scott. The swooping, confident signature looks like yours. But it’s a forgery, whatever anyone says. A digitally generated facsimile. Just like the rest of you.
* * *
—
Next he orders a selection of gym equipment. Not to burn calories—your weight will be forever fixed at 160 pounds—but to make your movements more natural. There’s even a Wii. It’s difficult at first, and more than once you crash to the floor playing Dance Party on the lowest setting. But with every session you become a little less awkward.
You braid your hair the way it was in the self-portrait upstairs. You even experiment with makeup. You barely used it before, but this new face requires a more hands-on approach. It’s a good thing you’re an artist, you think: Gradually, you work out how to soften these blank, rubbery features with highlights and shadows, until they could almost pass for the real thing.
At Tim’s suggestion, you try yoga. You’re surprised to find you can do all the poses, even the most advanced—the King Pigeon, the Peacock, the Tittibhasana. He watches with quiet pride. Your body is as perfectly engineered as a racing car, you realize. You just have to learn how to drive it.
His third gift is an Olympic-sized trampoline. Watching the deliverymen assemble it on the lawn, you have a sudden memory of one of the first dates he ever took you on, to House of Air, the indoor trampoline park near Golden Gate Bridge. That was when you’d realized that, as well as being ferociously driven, Tim could also be fun.
Afterward, you’d walked the Bay Trail together to Fort Point, where you sat looking out over the ocean, holding hands.
“We should go to Fort Point again,” you say now, suddenly nostalgic for that time. “I loved that date.”
Tim hesitates. “That’s a good idea. But not just yet.”
“Why not?”
“Going outside might be difficult right now.”
You look at him, puzzled. “You mean I can’t leave the house?”
“Soon, yes,” he says quickly. “We just need to…prepare you, that’s all.”
When the deliverymen are done, he kicks off his shoes and climbs aboard the trampoline. “Ready?” he says, holding out his hands.
Gingerly, you get on. It’s hard to balance at first, and he keeps a tight hold of you, bouncing you gently to build up momentum.
“That’s it,” he says encouragingly. “You’re getting it.” He does an impression of a NASA countdown, timing it to his bounces. “T minus twelve and counting…eight, seven, six, five…Main engine start. Liftoff!”
As he says Liftoff he gives one last, harder push. You feel your knees bend, one-two-three, and then suddenly everything falls into place and you’re airborne. He lets go of your hands and you’re soaring, higher and higher with every bounce, your braids flying, legs scissoring, the two of you laughing and shouting as you leap together, pulling absurd shapes in the air.
And for the first time since he brought you home, you feel it—the joy that’s indistinguishable from love; the happiness that only comes from being happy with one particular person, the person you trust to protect your happiness with his life. I love you, you think ecstatically. Tim, I love you. And though what comes from your mouth as you tumble through the air is just a wild shriek of exultation and delight, you can tell from his huge grin he understands.
8
On Saturday, Danny has time off from his therapy. You find him sitting on the side of his bed, aimlessly bouncing himself up and down. It gives you an idea.
“Shall we play on the trampoline, Danny?”
He groans. It’s often hard to interpret Danny’s noises. Tim says most are probably just vocal “stims,” self-stimulations. No one knows why people with autism do this, but there’s a theory that it gives them a sense of control in an overwhelming world. The bed bouncing, which Danny can do for hours, is another example. When he gets stressed he creates bigger sensory inputs, for example by biting the backs of his hands.
“Danny?” you repeat. “Would you like to come outside and play?”
After a moment he shakes his head. “Nuh!”
Encouraged by the fact he answered at all, you hold out your hand. “Come on, Danny! It’ll be fun!”
“Whoa!” Sian’s voice says behind you. “What are you doing?”
You turn around. The therapist is standing there, watching disapprovingly.
“I’m trying to get Danny on the trampoline,” you explain, although surely it was perfectly obvious what you were doing.
“Well, you’re doing it wrong. You need to break it down into a series of clear instructions. Say, Danny, stand up. Then Danny, hold my hand. Then Danny, walk downstairs with me, and so on. Each time he complies, you say Good job and give the next instruction.”
“I’m his mother. I was trying to sound friendly.”
Sian gives you a strange look, and for a moment you think she’s going to call you on that word mother. But all she says is, “Maybe, but what you did was confusing to him. You asked if he wanted to go outside, and he answered accurately by telling you that no, he didn’t. You should have praised him for identifying his response and then articulating it. Instead the consequence of him answering correctly was that he got asked the same question all over again.” She shrugs. “When you said, Would you like to…, what you actually meant was I would like you to. Sure, it sounded nice, and most kids soon pick up on what we really mean, but it’s unfair on those like Danny who find language difficult.”
You feel criticized, but it also strikes you that in some ways Danny and you are in the same boat, both struggling to make sense of a world you don’t really fit into.
“Could you teach me? The way you work with him, I mean? I want to learn to do it properly.”
For a moment she hesitates. Then she says, “Sure, why not?” in a less-than-enthusiastic tone.
* * *
—
“Danny, touch your nose.”
You count to three, then prompt him, taking his hand and guiding it so he touches his nose. “Good touching!” you say, just as enthusiastically as if he’d done it all by himself. “Here’s Thomas!”
You hand him the train and make an entry on the data sheet. He gets thirty seconds with Thomas as a reward, then you take the train away and do it all again. He needs a fraction less prompting this time. That, too, is recorded.
“Danny, look at me.”
He swings his eyes in your direction. They don’t lock on to yours—there isn’t that spark you normally get when two people make eye co
ntact. But it’s an attempt, and that’s what matters. “Good looking!” you say encouragingly. “Here’s Thomas!”
“Not bad,” Sian says reluctantly. “You’re getting the hang of it.”
Danny’s program consists of hundreds of these exercises—trials or drills in the therapists’ jargon. Each is one tiny step along a giant path, with raisins or a short burst of playing with his trains as rewards. Once he’s discovered he’ll get a treat for doing something, he’ll need less prompting next time.
That’s the theory, anyway. The data sheets show he’s done some of these drills over a thousand times. But Sian stays relentlessly positive.
“Good trying, Danny! Good job!”
You have a sudden memory of Danny before his regression, playing hide-and-seek. How he used to hide himself and then, unable to contain his excitement, call out, “Where could he be? Is he under the table? Noooo! Is he under the bed? Noooo! Is he in the shower? Noooo!” It was so sweet, you always went along with it, looking in all the places he named one by one. Later, a psychiatrist speculated that maybe, even then, Danny didn’t have something called theory of mind, the ability to put himself in another person’s shoes.
“Did I do the ABA program with Danny before?” you ask Sian.
“You did, yes.”
“Was I good at it?”
She pauses before replying. “When you wanted to be.”
“What does that mean?”
“ABA can be hard for parents. Sometimes they’re too emotionally involved. Sometimes Abbie would say, ‘Why can’t we just let him be himself?’ But these procedures are evidence-based. And it’s unfair to kids like Danny not to help them reach their full potential.”
You notice she tends to say Abbie, not you. But at least she’s moved on from it.
* * *
—
Every day you fall in love, and every day your heart is broken.
The mother of a child with autism knows her feelings for him will never be reciprocated. Her child will never say I love you, never draw a Mother’s Day card, never proudly bring home a school project or a girlfriend or a fiancée or a grandchild. He will never tell you about his day, or confide his deepest fears to you.
Yet he will always need you, more than any other child could need you, precisely because he can’t fight his battles on his own. He needs you to stop the world from crushing him. He needs you to be his translator, protector, bodyguard, advocate. He needs you to think twice before turning on the vacuum cleaner or the microwave or the hair dryer or whatever else might cause him agony. To do battle with doctors, waiters, teachers, fire alarms, the marketing idiots who changed the color of a Cheerios box on a whim without realizing it would make him inconsolable for days.
He may never be able to accept a hug from you, let alone to hug you back. But instead you can stand before the world with your body braced and your arms outstretched, deflecting the blows that would otherwise rain down on him.
He will need you to teach him, slowly and painfully, the basics of everyday life: how to imitate, how to ask for food, how to choose clothes. How to recognize the difference between a smile and a frown, and what those strange contortions of a human face might actually mean.
And because of that, your love for him has a quality no other love can have. It burns with a fierce, undimmable energy. It’s the love of a warrior who would die defending her position sooner than step aside.
* * *
—
One evening you’re getting Danny ready for bed when you remember you left a pot boiling downstairs. When you get back, you discover he’s taken his toothbrush and, very carefully, squeezed a tube of your new acrylic paint over it. And not just over the bristles: He closed his little fist tightly around the tube as he walked around. A long sine wave of Indian Red now adorns the white carpet on the landing.
He looks at you and smiles. That’s when you discover he also cleaned his teeth with it. He looks like a cheerful little vampire.
“Well done, Danny,” you say, amazed. “Good copying.” Because, while there’s no point in telling him off for something he didn’t know was wrong, the fact that he tried to imitate something he’d seen you do is a breakthrough.
“Well, fizzle my fenders,” Danny says dreamily, parroting one of his favorite expressions from Thomas the Tank Engine.
9
The three weeks are nowhere near up when Tim gets a call.
“He’s done what?” he says incredulously. Then, “No, I’ll do it. I don’t trust that idiot to fix this.”
He puts the phone down. “That was Mike. Some stupid screwup at the office. I’m going to have to go in.” He grimaces. “If that’s all right. I don’t like leaving you.”
In truth, you’d known three whole weeks was going to be a stretch. Your honeymoon was only ten days, and even then Tim sneaked into the bathroom every morning to answer emails.
“I’ll be fine. And besides, I want to finish going through my books.” You’ve devoured everything in the bookcases downstairs, but the big double-height bookshelves on the landing remain untouched.
“Well, if you need anything, just call.” He takes something from his pocket. “Here. It’s time you had this again.”
This is a beaten-up old smartphone, scratched and battered, the screen a little chipped at the corners. It’s encased in a papier-mâché shell made from layers of vintage wallpaper.
“You made that case yourself,” he adds. “You were so good at things like that.”
Before he leaves he kisses you on the forehead. “Love you, Abs. See you later.”
“Love you, too,” you echo.
* * *
—
As soon as he’s gone, you turn on the phone. Tim still won’t talk about what happened to you, but perhaps there’s something here that will satisfy your curiosity.
You go into the texts. The most recent one was five years ago, sent to someone called Jacinta G. Sure! Count me in for Pinot and character assassination! Abs xx
You’ve no idea who Jacinta is. But here you were, planning a girls’ night. And then you died. Out of the blue, never expecting that text to be your last.
You keep scrolling. Most of the names mean nothing, lost in the fog. Then, suddenly, one pops out.
Lisa.
Your sister. Your finger hovers over the CALL button. But then you wonder how much Tim has told her. She may know nothing about this. About you. You can’t just phone her out of the blue without some sort of warning. Reluctantly, you move on.
You see Tim’s name. Your last text to him simply read:
Things going well here. OK if I stay another day? xx
His reply came just a few minutes later:
Of course. As long as you like. x
You scroll up further, stopping at random.
Still up for date night? Reservation’s @7 Axx
Tim’s answer was badly typed—under the table of a meeting, perhaps:
Sadly mty date toniht will b w Ted’s bozo coders. Going tp pull a late one.
No worries. Takeout? Xx
I’ll piuck up grocries. Steak? candles? wine? choc dess?
You had me at choc dess. Xx
It was a happy marriage, you think. Despite Danny, despite Tim’s type-A personality, the two of you made it work.
You scroll on, stopping occasionally, until you reach a whole decade ago.
Thank you for a beautiful evening. And an even more beautiful night. Tim x
The pleasure was all mine, believe me! Axx
You feel a sudden pang of emotion. Eventually you and Tim may be able to go on date nights together. You can dance, hold hands, even kiss. But the special physical connection of lovemaking is another matter.
Unbidden, the exact word for what you feel about that lands in your thoughts, ready-made.
&nb
sp; Your emotion about those texts is envy.
* * *
—
You’re about to put the phone down when you spot the Safari icon on the menu bar. You tap it and a search engine appears, the box blank and inviting.
At last. Quickly you type in Abbie Cullen-Scott San Francisco death accident? How?
An agonizing moment while it searches. And then—
Page Blocked.
You look at it, wondering. Blocked by who?
Then you realize. Tim must have set up some kind of filter. Like one of those parental-control apps, with the details of your own death as the blacklisted content.
It’s because he loves you, you tell yourself. He guessed the temptation would be too great. It’s a sign of how well he knows you. How much he cares about protecting you from pain.
You wonder if he’ll get sent some kind of alert now. You hope not. It would be nice to keep your weakness to yourself.
And nicer still if my husband had trusted me in the first place, you can’t help thinking. Even as you ruefully acknowledge that he was right not to.
You wonder what else he’s screened from you. Picking up the phone again, you try Facebook, then Twitter, then Instagram. Only Instagram loads, and even then, links to certain accounts seem to be blocked.
Are there horrors here he has chosen to shield you from? What insinuations does he not want the roiling, restless multitudes of the Web to whisper in your ears?
Then you remember the disgust in the eyes of the Prius driver who brought you home. Imagine that, being flung at you online!
Tim’s right, you decide. Too much reality right now might not be a good thing.