I don’t respond. He nods his head and continues making his way towards the center of campus.
It’s an uneventful evening in the dorm. The boys stay up until close to midnight, watching a movie and harassing one another. Nick, I notice, who is usually at the center of at least some of the action, has skulked quietly away and fallen asleep atop his bed with all of his clothes on. The rest of the boys leave him alone.
I do something tonight I’ve never done since I’ve been an employee at the Hundred Acre School. I check on the boys while they’re sleeping. Slipping in and out of the four bedrooms, I find them to all be out cold. Deep breathing and snoring and crickets just beyond the thin walls all swell up into a steady rhythm, infusing a strange and even peaceful air about the Homer House.
Then there are the dorm reports. Then a little late night TV and some reading. It’s just after 2:00 a.m. when I finally drift off to sleep. That’s when the knock comes, fast and forceful. I can tell it’s not my front door, but the one that opens into the dorm. It’s close to 3:00 a.m., though it seems like my head touched the pillow just moments ago. I stagger to the door, feeling the fickle weight of exhaustion propel me towards what must be another trivial late night drama; I’m even half-planning a mini-lecture about coping skills and conflict resolution. J.J. is standing there, wide-eyed, bare-chested, his wild red hair looking like a paint can explosion on top of his head.
“So I get up to take a piss,” he begins, his craggy voice narrating as though we’ve always been mid-conversation, “and notice the room’s quieter than usual. Nick’s always making a ton of noise in his sleep. He’s got that smoker’s cough. Plus, he’s always twisting and turning.”
He veers off course, digressing on Nick’s bad habits and how he’s the poster-boy for undesirable roommates: the fingernail clippings; the dried up, days-old food festering on his bureau; the uncompromising allegiance to what J.J. calls the lamest music ever, stuff dads listen to. Moving him towards the point of his story with the ugliness of my yawn, he clears his throat, snarls a little bit, and comes out with it:
“He’s gone, plain and simple,” he says, looking somewhat pleased over the potential chaos his discovery might instigate.
I don’t bother with the inquisition. Or even a search of the dorm. I just thank him and reach for the phone behind me. J.J. leans against the archway and watches me as I fumble through the campus directory. After a minute, I find the number I’m looking for. As I wait for the other line to pick up, J.J. and I make eye contact. He no longer looks pleased; his eyes have softened into a watery pool of white, and he now appears vulnerable and boyish. This makes me feel guilty, and I try not to convey, through my voice or mannerisms, that I’m actually relieved that I will not have to sleep under the same roof as Nick Russo, who, by daylight, will surely emerge as a murder suspect.
Chapter 10
Entire days went by where Laura and I didn’t speak to one another. During that time, our house was not filled with hardened stares or that type of palpable tension that makes everything smell like a relentless, driving rain. It was simply silent. Yet this silence was a bear that had our whole lives wrapped up in its enormous arms.
Mornings were especially a shame. Some recent traditions - helping Laura stretch for fifteen minutes; making breakfast as she read the paper aloud before I listened while pretending to mock the writing of some of my colleagues - were all but abandoned. They were replaced by segregation. Shower routines and eating and tidying up: These were all done with the detachment of two people who were new to the world and hadn’t yet figured out its function.
One evening I fell asleep at my office. By the time I awoke, it was past 2:00 a.m. Forgoing a call to Laura, I crashed on a leather sofa in one of the break-rooms. When I returned home the following night, a silver coupe was parked in my spot on the driveway. Entering the house, I was met with distant chatter that seemed secretive and anxious. There were several voices, all intertwined and bleating hard-nosed theories about this or that. I followed them through the kitchen and towards the deck in the rear of the house. Laura and her parents were sitting around the patio table, drinking, arguing, and picking at what looked like California rolls and Szechuan chicken. Citronella candles were lit and placed at both ends of the deck as well as on the table. It was dusky out, but the August heat smeared the early evening air with its heavy breath.
I slid open the screen door and stepped outside. Luke, Laura’s father, was in mid-sentence - a bona fide history buff, he was making some reference to McCarthyism - when he was nudged by his wife, who was the first to see me. They all stared at me for a moment. Laura, whose expression was barely concealed by the mostly sheer citronella smoke, seemed relieved. Looking mostly at her, I asked if I was McCarthy or Murrow in Luke’s analogy. She smiled a little and said they were all worried about me. I told them I had fallen asleep while working late and that I was fine. Luke sighed a little and swigged at one of my cheap bottled beers he had been holding. Abby, Laura’s mother, stood up and told her husband they needed to be going.
I walked them to the driveway and thanked them for keeping Laura company. Luke said someone had to keep her company, that it was a needy time for her right now and she needed to be surrounded by people who were reliable. Abby, her expression drawn and embarrassed, hurried him towards their vehicle. I commented that I liked what must have been a new car. Abby, delighted over the change in subject, pounced on this; she expounded on the various models they were looking at and the shady salesman and the headaches involved in making the purchase. I told them it was nice to see them and to have a pleasant night. Luke began backing out of the driveway when he suddenly stopped the vehicle, which emitted a short, halting screech. Leaning out the window, he called for me to come to him. Then he turned to his wife, who I could hear was telling him to mind his own business, and silenced her.
“That’s my grandkid,” he said, pointing towards the house. “He’s got - or she’s got - an automatic family here: grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Do you see what I’m saying?”
His voice was even and under control, but it used a tone I had never heard from him before. It sounded like a newsman reporting on a recent tragedy.
I told him I understood. Which I did. There was never a moment when I felt on the verge of asserting myself. I respected Laura’s parents too much to subject them to my self-righteous ramblings.
“That’s all,” he said. “That’s all I have to say.”
Nodding my head, I thought about extending my hand for him to shake, but he had rolled the window up and was tearing out of the driveway before I had the chance. Laura was still outside, sipping seltzer from a straw and sitting with her legs pulled up onto her chair. I sat across from her and waited for her to say something. As I waited, I realized that the night before was the first time we had slept apart since we were married. I wondered if she knew this, too, and would capitalize on it. Throwing my head back against the chair, I asked how she was feeling.
“Fine. Tired, but okay.”
“This is a hell of a thing.”
“It is.”
“I don’t know,” I said, “part of me wants to divide myself up, so I can make every possible decision available; this way I could examine the different outcomes. And part of me wants to stay whole and just make the one decision I’ve been obsessing over.”
Laura put her feet to the ground and leaned forward. She reached towards me and took hold of my hands. She started to say something before her voice trailed off like it had forgotten to preserve itself. The smell of citronella was suddenly getting to me.
“Let’s not deal with this tonight,” she said. “Let’s just be ourselves. Remember what that’s like? Let’s just be ourselves and eat in bed and make fun of bad TV.”
Sitting up, I remarked
that I was surprised by this. Not talk about it? Especially after all the silence, as well as my disappearing act the previous night. Laura said it was good that I was surprised, that if we still had the power to surprise one another, well, then we were in a good place.
We ate in bed that evening. We made fun of bad TV. And we made love. And I was closer to my unborn child than I had been since that day Dr. Rose called with her news. So close that I swear I felt the warmth of its blood and fluids, and the easy, miraculous throbs of its tiny heartbeat. So close that the shame and disgust I felt were as looming as the black August sky.
I gave Laura that one night - and I’m glad I did; it was for both of us, really, but I recognized that it was just about all I could afford to give to her.
. . .
There was hardly a shortage of books on what we were going through. I went online and found at least a dozen. Maybe this should’ve given me comfort. How remarkable, I should’ve thought, that so many others before us have endured similar trials and were able to chronicle them for our benefit. But I wasn’t comforted. The truth is that I couldn’t have possibly felt more indifferent about anyone else’s story. This might be an enormous character flaw on my part. Or it might mean that I was standing at the shore of the rest of my life, gazing out beyond the new ripples and chrome-colored horizon, and I was truly alone in every breath I took over this thing.
Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic. Count Us In: Growing Up with Down Syndrome. Life As We Know It: A Father, a Family, and an Exceptional Child. Even the titles were off-putting to me. I could imagine the formula for each story: initial shock; aggressive denial; vehement anger; gradual acceptance; unparalleled enlightenment and reward and love. I wasn’t in the market for hope over God’s grand plan. I was looking for the book about the miserable hardships the child and family would endure; the fractured and forever unrealized expectations for a normal family; the chronic burdens; the constant heartaches; the discrimination; the angelic, selfless wife who was oblivious to it all.
Hope in the face of some imminent spasm of nightmarish turmoil is merely false advertising when you’re dealing with intelligent human beings. It’s a hand-grenade handled by an idiot. Sooner or later… No, I wanted a book on fear. Unadulterated and unfiltered fear. I wanted exposure and insight into enough fear to fill a fucking stadium. That seemed to be the right amount to alter Laura’s DNA. But I knew no such book existed. It was up to me.
Life with Laura had resumed. Yet our time together was still strained. Things were cordial enough, but the tension between us was unbearable; we were as careful with it as though we were handling something that might wither at any moment. I had yet to sit her down and explain myself. I felt sick over the thought of having to do this. I couldn’t fathom having to say the things I felt. I wanted her to know them. How could she not know them? How could she force me to articulate what I was ashamed over feeling? Didn’t she inherently know her husband? Weren’t we the same person with the same pure and true visions of family and future? Yes, she mostly knew where I stood on the matter, but there was an incendiary passion, a wild-eyed certainty that knew no absolution, no relenting, and it was these things - if I were to be completely fair - that she couldn’t have possibly known.
“Their side isn’t as complex,” Ben assured me during one of our luncheons. “Trust me. It’s not. In fact, it’s very simple: All she’ll hear is you asking for her to hand over her most valuable possession. And it’s not going to happen that easily.”
“That’s a ridiculous analogy,” I told him. “We’re talking about a human being, not a fucking Rolex.”
He laughed into his lemonade and told me I had a point. He said he was therefore at a loss and that it looked like I was on my own.
“Okay, so my argument is a selfish one,” I said, thinking aloud, “but I’ll be careful how I present it. I’m not going to make it all about me. Because really, it’s not. I’ll be sure to focus on the positive, which, of course, is how we can always try again. That’s positive, isn’t it? We can always try again.”
Ben’s smile sobered a little. He put his sandwich down and wiped his hands on the napkin draped across his lap. After a moment, he responded:
“Just be careful. This thing is like one of those big hurricane vases. Be careful how you fill it up, and what you fill it up with - because if you’re careless, if you’re not looking closely enough, or if you overfill the thing, it could shatter into a million little pieces.”
He looked at me with fey concern. Then he picked up his sandwich again and told me that that analogy was in fact a pretty good one.
. . .
While I was in the throes of restraint over this matter, Laura went about quietly pursuing her own fate as though ignorant of how I felt. And she did so with an unabashed fervor that made it all seem just on the threshold of being disingenuous. As she was nearing her fifth month of pregnancy, her belly began to swell; so one day she came home with a few hundred dollars in maternity clothes and asked me to sit at the edge of our bed as she tried on each outfit - some more than once. Not necessarily interested in my feedback - I offered none - she talked about style and comfort. At random times she would tell me the baby was kicking inside of her. Then she’d stop what she was doing and clutch her stomach, always with a sense of privacy like I wasn’t in the room, and always with a faraway expression like she was straining to hear some distant, beautiful music.
She even bought a book on quilting. Her intention, she told me one evening, was to make an alphabet tapestry she saw in a baby magazine to which she was now subscribing. Bringing things to a head was her most obtrusive gesture, which involved her parents, who showed up one evening for dinner. Ushering our guests into the house, Laura greeted them, looked at me, and flashed a complicated spiral of a grin before joining them in the living room. Luke, who had recently begun to invest in wine, brought along an expensive looking Bordeaux, which he handed to me, asking that I open it and let it breathe for a while. Then he offered Laura a small wrapped package he had also been carrying. She took it with great delight and opened it carefully.
“Just a little something,” Luke said.
Laura removed the last bit of wrapping paper, revealing the gift to be a white 5x7 ceramic picture frame. Resting the frame against her stomach, she stared down at it with silent awe.
“I thought it would be perfect for the baby’s room,” he said.
After a moment, she looked up at her father and mouthed the words thank you. Then she handed the picture to her mother, who admired it for a moment, commenting that Luke had been greatly anticipating giving his daughter the simple token. The photo was set down on the coffee table and the three of them made their way into the kitchen and out onto the deck.
I stood there for a few moments, listening to distant, inaudible chatter, grinning to myself, wondering about the limits of my self-control. I looked down at the photo, which I couldn’t make out from the way it was facing. So I picked it up and laid it face down on the table. Then I poured a large glass of the Bordeaux for myself, slugged it back, poured another, and made my way outside to join my family.
The three of them, during dinner, flung a little web of conversation and hung from it for the entire meal, protected by their laughter, their egging on of one another, and the comfort of knowing how to finish each other’s stories. They talked about a semester Abby had spent in Angola as an undergrad; Luke’s 1968 Camaro that was stolen shortly after they were first married; an old boyfriend of Laura’s who had reportedly entered the monastery. These were stories I was vaguely aware of, but there was clearly no place for me in any of them. The stories themselves were not only impervious to outsiders, but so was the way in which they were told. I was the invisible audience, blacked out by the blinding spotlight which shone on Laur
a and her two closest allies. So I sat there, in my own house, at my own table, the faint trace of an absurd grin on my face, drinking Luke’s expensive wine, sneering to myself, looking at my watch, growing braver by the minute as I was now gathering the intensity needed to unleash my argument.
Every so often, in the middle of one of Luke’s feigned tirades about his daughter’s juvenile flings, or Abby’s introspective musings on African culture, Laura would flash me a look. It was a fleeting look, all but a second, but I was able to get a good sense of it. It was proud and patient and I knew its purpose. And it was not to see if I wanted a second helping on my plate. Or if I was paying attention to her parents’ cleverness. It was to let me know that she had a camp in her corner.
This reduced our dilemma to the most superficial ground. It trivialized it to an insulting degree. It assumed that I was so easily swayed, so fickle, that she simply needed to remind me about this thing called family in order for me to have a change of heart. It was true that Laura had her family; they were close-knit and available to be a part of our new life. Meanwhile, I had no one. Rollie was neatly tucked away on the east coast, brilliantly playing the surrogate father-figure to other people’s children. Nothing would ever bridge our two worlds. I knew this. I was fine with this.
By the time dessert had been served - Abby had made and brought along a vegan cheesecake - the topic of conversation had shifted to the baby.
“Give my grandkid a taste of that cake,” said Luke. “He’ll never believe his grandma managed to make it taste all right with that hippie recipe of hers.”
Abby rolled her eyes and looked at Laura. She told her that her father was convinced she was carrying a boy, so he always used the he pronoun when he spoke about the child.
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