by Edan Lepucki
S drooped a shoulder and unhooked the backpack.
“Did you notice the construction?” I asked. “Not that you would, since it seems like one in every three houses is being renovated up here.”
She smiled politely. She hadn’t been listening.
“I hope you don’t mind me asking,” she said after a moment, “but I wondered how they—Seth and Devin—communicate.”
I waited for her to blush, but she didn’t.
“I don’t mind,” I said, which is what I always said, because people asked that all the time. “They sign some. Not much. Little kids are enormously adaptable. Devin just talks to his big brother, and doesn’t really expect an answer.”
S nodded thoughtfully.
“Seth may not be able to talk, but he’s capable of so much. If he wanted to take care of Devin all the time, I’d let him. But Seth has school. He’s at SMC. He wants to transfer to UCLA.”
“I guess it’s good for both of you that I’m here.” She looked as grave as a priest arriving just in time for last rites.
I led her outside and showed her the side gate, where she could come and go as she pleased. “Within reason,” I said. “The latch wakes Devin, so if you’re really into clubbing, we’ll have to figure out an alternate plan.”
I’d expected her to make a joke of some kind, how she was queen of the discotheque, but all she said was, “Don’t worry, I prefer to stay in most nights.”
Was this the same woman I’d interviewed the other day? Her face was still plain, and her dress was as unfortunate as the last one, its wide horizontal stripes like an exterminator’s tent. It looked like she’d used a plastic newspaper string to tie up her hair; she smelled of sweat and Lubriderm lotion. But there was a new hesitance to her, as if the professional S were trying to conquer the other, unkempt one.
As I helped her unpack her car, she explained that she’d brought a bunch of old textbooks with her in case I wanted to see the studies on play she’d mentioned. “And I have a copy of my senior project if you’re in the mood for typos.” Her modesty sounded rehearsed, and I pictured only one tiny error in her paper, a homonym problem, or an unnecessary space between two words. And yet, there was also a hint of shame on her face: this typo needled her, haunted her.
I must have been silent for a beat too long because S asked, “What? What’s wrong?”
I answered, without thinking. “You seem different.” We were standing on opposite sides of the car, and a crate of books S had rested on the roof blocked my face. Maybe that’s why I’d said it.
“I do?”
The intense heat wave had passed, but it was still very warm, and the car’s roof glowed in the glare of the sun.
I didn’t think I’d actually speak, and now I didn’t know how to respond. What could I say, that she’d been less uptight last time around?
I was about to laugh it off when she said, “Karl called me.”
“He did?” After our dinner, I had forwarded S’s résumé to Karl. I’d assured him that we’d set up a time for them to meet. I hadn’t expected him to call her, though I should have.
“He went ahead and enrolled me in a CPR class,” she said. “It shouldn’t be a scheduling conflict.” She pushed the crate away so that I could see her face, and she, mine. “Sorry, I didn’t know you’d—”
“No need to apologize. I’m the one who lied about it. Did he call your references?”
She nodded. “But he thinks you did as well.”
“Thanks for covering for me,” I said. “Why didn’t I call your references?” I crossed my eyes and shrugged; this was exactly what Seth had done when Devin and I caught him smoking a cigarette last year.
S laughed. “I’m very trustworthy,” she said. Then: “It’s cool you’re writing a book.”
“So he told you that too.” So much for my ruse; now S would have to keep me in line.
“Is it a secret?” she asked.
“It is until I actually start writing. I’m blocked. I’m worse than blocked, I’m constipated. No, I’m paralyzed.”
“My mom read the article you wrote.”
“Wow, you know about that? You and Karl really covered it all.”
“Usually my mom doesn’t remember anything.” S blushed, I wasn’t sure why.
“It was the magazine’s most popular piece for a while,” I said. “It got tons of letters and there were all these intense posts on the mommy blogs.” I realized I was bragging, and stopped talking.
“I love mommy blogs.”
“You do?”
“Another girl in the Psych Department was writing her senior project on them, about how they simultaneously inspire and create anxiety for other mothers. I kind of got sucked in. What a bunch of freaks, right? Wait—you don’t have a blog, do you?”
“No, but my agent wishes I did.” I lifted the crate from the car’s roof. It was heavier than I imagined.
“I’ll get that one,” she said, coming around the car.
“So your mother reads Real Simple, huh? Does she have a good system for organizing Tupperware too, because I could use some guidance.” I imagined the woman who had raised S. She attended past-life regression therapy workshops in saffron-colored tunics. Or she played tennis and stocked the fridge with dozens of plastic water bottles.
S shook her head. “She doesn’t have a subscription.”
“Why bother, right? If you get it delivered, you’re always the last to receive it. First, it’s on the Internet, then it’s on the newsstand, and then, finally, it’s at your door.” I was mimicking Karl, who had made this very speech a few months before about The New Yorker.
“My mother shoplifts magazines from drugstores,” S said.
“Ha—uh, that’s not what I was expecting.”
“I wish I were kidding. She thinks it’s funny.”
S was already lifting the crate of books; she was quite toned, actually, beneath that droopy dress of hers. She began to carry the books toward the house, the graveled asphalt crunching under her thin-soled sandals, and I could tell by her efficient movements that she’d told me the truth, and maybe wished she hadn’t.
“My mom once seduced my high school principal,” I called out.
S turned around and grinned. “I need to hear the rest of that story.”
I remembered what I’d told Karl the other night—This isn’t a story.
“No, you don’t,” I said.
I’d been fifteen, and it was right after the fainting had begun, when I was going to the nurse’s office once or twice a week to lie on a firm cot in a small back room. Sometimes the nurse would come in and give me a Ritz cracker, put her papery, cool hands across my forehead and cheek. She was married to the principal.
“We should set our mothers up. They can play tennis together. Steal stuff.” S had lifted a bent leg to balance the crate on her thigh. She looked like a demented flamingo.
I was about to tell her that I didn’t know where my mother lived when Seth and Devin came up the hill. Crested, really—Devin was on Seth’s shoulders, and Seth was running. Devin drummed on his brother’s head, calling out, “Moo! Moo!”
“The two-headed cow has arrived,” I said, and I watched as Seth slowed down, walking as if stepping through syrup. Devin giggled.
Seth was wearing his TALK WITH THE HAND shirt, which his deaf friend Mitch had given him before leaving for boarding school, subsequently rejecting anyone who could hear. The shirt was getting small, and as Seth reached up to steady Devin, it lifted to expose his stomach. He was hairy for a young man, hairier even than Marco; from here I could see the dark fur spreading across his stomach. It made me think of his days as a newborn, when he was covered like a leaf in tiny fine hairs, and I’d wondered if I’d given birth to a marmoset.
Seth was so skinny that his jeans hung loose off his hip bones, revealing the waistband of his underwear. Although I was too far away to make out the words across the elastic, I knew they read HANES HANES HANES. Karl had tried to
convince him to switch to Calvin Klein because the fabric was softer, but Seth remained a staunch defender of cheap clothing. He’d purchased his jeans for a dollar at the Salvation Army, and now their chewed-up hems dragged along the concrete. Once again, he’d gone walking barefoot. I imagined the bottoms of his feet: black with dirt. Maybe they sparkled like the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard.
I turned to S. I wanted to watch her watching my boys. She must have noted Seth’s disgusting feet, compared his orphan getup to Devin’s striped romper, which Kit had purchased in Paris not too long ago. “For your dauphin,” she’d said as she handed it to me.
Did S see the joy between Seth and Devin, or was she merely seeking out their differences? People were always comparing one to the other. Seth was thin and dark, while Devin was chubby and blond as a Barbie doll. Seth didn’t speak, and Devin was a chatterbox. People assumed I was grateful that my second son could speak. Ostensibly, he was the improved upon model: son 2.0. But that wasn’t the case; one wasn’t any better than the other. “And that’s an essential truth!” Joyce had cried, triumphant, during our work together. I didn’t tell her that sometimes I wanted to shove all of Devin’s language back inside of him, just as I’d wanted to unbirth Seth so many years ago.
S’s expression was neutral. I couldn’t discern what she was thinking, and that was a relief.
As soon as Seth saw us standing there, he stopped to pull Devin off his shoulders. Devin signed, Up! but Seth couldn’t see him.
“Mommy!” Devin cried, his eyes meeting mine. Then he made a hissing sound and I realized he was saying S’s name.
Seth laughed. Though he can’t speak, Seth can laugh, and it has a sound, unexpectedly deep and husky.
S had already put down the crate to talk to Devin, who was telling her all about the excavator he and Seth had seen.
“You and me go drive it someday!” he yelled, directly into her ear.
“Sounds fun,” she said, but she was already looking up.
“Seth, this is S,” I said. “S, Seth.”
Seth nodded curtly, and I wondered whether he was still upset about our argument. Now he was looking behind and above S, at the roof. It was as if he’d laid out some tarot cards there, and was trying to read them.
Here we go again, I thought. The spectrum.
Over the years, I had discussed and debated with doctors an autism diagnosis for Seth. Like many autistic children, he didn’t speak. But unlike them, he didn’t suffer from sensory overload or daven madly when uneasy. He didn’t exactly like to snuggle, but he didn’t flinch when touched; he could express and accept affection. He was typical except for his silence.
But my son could be on the spectrum, couldn’t he? Seth was nonverbal, and it wasn’t because he had social anxiety. If I wasn’t vigilant he’d get obsessive, listening to the same song for three hours straight, or finish an entire book of crosswords in one day. And although he was funny and charming with people he knew well, when he met someone for the first time he was someone else entirely: distant, awkward, almost dismissive.
Still, I’d rejected the diagnosis, which not a single doctor had been confident about anyway. The word “spectrum” is useful until you realize that said spectrum can stretch on and on, and in both directions.
“Seth,” I said now. I turned to S. “He’s a little shy.” I knew what she was thinking: Hello, Asperger’s!
Seth rolled his eyes at me in his big, dramatic silent-movie-actor way. He signed, Looking for the soccer ball, and nodded at the roof.
I felt his words like a migraine. His behavior wasn’t proof there was something wrong; once again I had presumed impairment where there wasn’t one. And even if he had avoided eye contact with S, that was just Seth being Seth, as Karl might say. Joyce claimed that the central theme of my memoir was acceptance, but if that were the case, I shouldn’t be the one writing it.
I was so deep in thought that I almost missed what happened next. Seth was signing, I’m good, thanks for asking, but not to me. To S. She was poking her head forward like a turtle, struggling to understand. Seth has always been a flamboyant and colorful user of ASL, and he moves his hands quickly.
“You sign?” I asked her.
Her neck turned pink. “I took one semester at Cal, but it wrecked my GPA.”
Cool, Seth signed, and by S’s smile I knew she understood him.
“Well,” I said. “If you want to tutor S, you can. She now lives in your backyard.”
“You make it sound like I’ll be sleeping in the bushes,” S said, laughing a little.
Devin was pawing at her thighs. “I want some uppy,” he said. “Just a little uppy.”
She looked to me like he’d asked for a sip of wine.
“You can pick him up,” I said.
I’m too busy with school, Seth signed. By the way he shaped the words, I knew he was being apologetic. He was flattered that she’d tried to sign with him. Hardly anyone knew how, and the deaf friends he’d made as a child had since distanced themselves from him. Being deaf was a thing, a scene. If the rejection hurt Seth, he never showed it.
“He’s got school,” I translated.
She hitched Devin onto her hip. “I’m pretty sure I’m a lost cause anyway.”
Seth pulled his iPhone out of his pocket and was about to type something. Before he could, Devin grabbed it from his hands.
“No, Devin,” I said.
“Are you screen-free?” S slipped the phone from Devin’s chubby little hands and passed it back to Seth.
“Screen-what?” I said. Then I shook my head. “Devin watches TV.”
“Please I watch Dora?” Devin asked.
“Sorry, honey, not right now.”
Devin let out a sob and squeezed S’s arm. “Dora!” he yelled, his face crumpling at the injustice. First the phone had been taken from him, and now I wouldn’t let him watch TV. And why not? Sometimes it felt like all I did was take from my son, refuse him whatever he wanted.
I eyed S, who had furrowed her brow but said nothing. She was letting me be the parent, which I appreciated but also resented. I was paying her, after all.
“I can hang with him,” she said finally, giving him a little bounce. Devin kept crying.
“That would be great. You guys could watch Dora together.”
Devin stopped weeping as abruptly as he’d begun, and I turned to Seth, who looked like he was getting ready to type something on his phone. I waited for him to show me or S the screen, and when he didn’t, I assumed he was about to tweet, probably turning this moment to comedy gold: Do you think Dora the Explorer uses a flat iron to get those bangs? #NotThatImJealous
Sometimes I suggested tweets to Seth. He never used them.
—
Once we were back inside, and Seth had retreated to his room, my shoulders dropped. This happened sometimes, when I witnessed someone meeting him. I got tense. Now I felt Karl’s phantom fingers at my sternum.
“If it’s cool with you, I’m going to go write,” I said.
“Totally,” S said. “I hate unpacking anyway.” Devin was already leading her to the couch. He was sucking in air and laughing, which he did when he was totally pleased by life. Maybe it wasn’t Karl he missed, I thought. Maybe we just needed another grown-up to keep the scary sounds and the rats away. Maybe Devin knew I couldn’t do it alone, or at all.
After I showed S how to work the remotes, I made a big show of looking for my computer cable and my canvas tote of books. I felt no urgency to write, I never did, but as Joyce had said, I needed to make it a habit, a practice.
“If he gets hungry, you can give him raisins or an English muffin with jelly,” I told S. Clearly, I was lingering.
“Muffin buffin!” Devin cheered.
“Got it,” S said.
I shuffled toward the front door.
“Write like the wind!” she called out as I left.
—
I got down the hill faster than I would have liked, and before I kne
w it I was sitting at a wobbly round table, slurping iced caffeine, staring at my unopened laptop.
I’d left the books in my car. I was sick of memoirs and the swagger of survivors, the way they mounted the past above the mantel for all to ooh and aah over.
I opened my laptop and went straight to the Internet. Early on, Karl had suggested getting me a computer without a wireless card and I’d almost spit in his face.
Seth’s timeline hadn’t been updated since yesterday at 11:29 p.m.: Im going to get a really big purse and carry a Great Dane in it. If he had tweeted something before I left the house, maybe he’d deleted it. I’d caught him doing that once before, when he’d tweeted about his lack of speech, Just because Im not talking doesnt mean Im listening, only to delete it a few minutes later. Seth may be nonverbal, but @sethconscious wasn’t.
On the left side of the screen, a box urged me to join the site. All it asked for were my full name, my phone number or email address, and a password. What if, what if…? I’d loitered my cursor over these fields before, but this time, something felt different. This time, Karl had moved out, and at night before falling asleep I scissored my legs across his side of the bed, the sheets cold and slippery. It was and wasn’t space I’d craved when I asked him for a separation. S was currently sitting with Devin on the couch, or feeding him, or getting him to step into an unsoiled pair of underwear. I was liberated, at least for a while. Karl would no doubt be calling after work to ask why I’d been so reckless with our son; until then, I was free. This place stunk with bitter coffee, and the young baristas were slamming their espresso clubs (It’s called a portafilter, Karl said in my head) against those tiny rubbish bins (It’s the knock box), and the man at the next table over was reading a pink copy of the Financial Times, his legs crossed. An American paper would never be pink. There was probably some reason—Karl would know—but at that moment the color choice felt frivolous, and frivolity was what I craved. What if, what if…?
In the required field, I typed Pearl Financial, my pulse quick in my wrists. I used a nearly abandoned email address, my graveyard site for online shopping.