Toad’s face lit up in recognition. “Cool! Where’s it gonna go?”
“To that pool yonder,” Hap said, grinning, propping the ladder in place against the platform. Hap was having more fun than Mick. He was pumped.
Ben and Toad still didn’t quite see the whole picture until Mick fed the end of the cable through a piece of water hose and started clamping it around the tree above the platform. Their eyes traced an imaginary line from the tree, down across an expanse of grass, over the deck and down the length of the pool to the diving board.
“We’re gonna unbolt the diving board and take it off. That’s where the other end goes,” Hap explained.
They saw it then. Their eyes went wide and both of them slid down the fireman’s pole to go put on their bathing suits.
Mick fed the cable through Hap’s heavy-duty homemade trolley, then took the other end to the pedestal, tightened it up with a come-along, and clamped it off. They had the job done by lunchtime.
Toad went first, wide-eyed and screaming all the way down, skidding feet first into the deep end, like a duck coming in for a landing. Hap almost broke through the deck falling on his backside laughing at her. It zipped a litle faster than Mick expected, but other than that it worked perfectly. Toad came up whooping and shaking a fist in the air.
Ben was leery of it at first. He overanalyzed everything, and he was fairly sure there was a long list of things that could go wrong and kill him.
Hap looked at Ben, and pointed over his shoulder at Toad, who was already running, barefoot and dripping wet, through the backyard to climb up and go around again.
“Boy, you gonna let a girl show you up?” he asked.
That was all it took. Ben took off after her, yelling that it was his turn next.
Dylan watched them with uncommon interest, though he didn’t say anything and didn’t volunteer to try it out. Mick didn’t push him. He and Dylan stayed in the pool while Ben and Toad swooped over their heads screaming like hawks. Hap fixed a tag line of quarter-inch rope onto the trolley so they could walk it back up to the tree house, and the loose rope flipped and danced like a snake when they zipped down the cable. Mick learned to duck after the first time the tail whipped across his open eye while he was standing in the shallow end. Hap tied a knot in the end of the tag line to make it easier to hold on to with wet hands when they pulled the trolley back up. That knot nearly destroyed Mick’s marriage.
They worked out a kind of synchronized plan. To keep things moving, Mick stayed in the pool, grabbed the pull rope and towed the trolley back up to the shallow end where he would hand the rope off to Hap, who would walk out to the end of the deck and sling the trolley the rest of the way up to the tree house. By the time one of the kids climbed out and ran the full length of the pool, down the steps beside the deck, across the backyard, and climbed up onto the platform, the other one had already zipped screaming into the pool and the trolley was on its way back. Mick and Hap stayed busy all afternoon crewing for Ben and Toad. Dylan hung out in the deep end and watched. He was very quiet.
It got late. Mick hadn’t been paying attention to the time. The afternoon slipped away while Ben and Toad rode the zip line, and they were having so much fun he forgot the time. He didn’t hear Layne’s Explorer pull into the garage. He didn’t even know she was home until he heard Dylan yell, “MOM! WATCH ME!”
There was Layne, standing at the sliding glass door in her suit, all wide-eyed and open-mouthed, taking in the scene. And there was Dylan, standing up there shivering on the high platform, holding onto the trolley with his skinny little hands. Mick hadn’t seen him get out of the pool, cross the yard, or climb up there, and until he spotted his mother Dylan hadn’t said a word. There was terror in his eyes, and even from the pool Mick could see his little chin quiver, but he could also see something else in Dylan’s face.
Determination.
Dylan had learned a thing or two about facing his fears, and he had decided all on his own to face this one. He shouted for his mother to watch, but his eyes were on his dad when he launched himself off that platform.
He looked so tiny, like a toy, like a doll flouncing off a platform fifteen feet up on the side of a tree, dancing high above the backyard, flashing toward the pool.
Naturally, that was when the tag line chose to groove itself in between two boards on the edge of the tree house. Mick wasn’t sure whether Layne started screaming before or after the knot in the rope snagged between the boards.
The tag line snapped tight and the trolley stopped with a jerk.
Dylan kept going.
His feet flew up and his hands tore loose from the grips. Arms and legs flailing, he did an awkward, screaming, spread-eagle full gainer high over the backyard, and sailed clear over the deck railing.
Hap, for a big man, could move quickly when he had to. He jumped into the path of the boy, and Dylan hit him feet first, square in the chest. Hap crashed backwards into a picnic table, but not before grabbing Dylan’s legs and making sure the boy landed on top of him.
“Awesome!” Ben yelled. He was jumping up and down, pumping a fist. “Did you see that, Mom?! Dylan dropkicked Hap!”
Hap gashed his arm on the corner of the table, but Dylan didn’t get a scratch. As soon as he realized he wasn’t hurt he started giggling.
Layne ran screaming onto the deck, snatched her baby up and clutched him to her chest before she collapsed to her knees, crying.
* * *
“I thought he was going to die,” she said later. “I thought I was watching my son die. That’s what it felt like.” She had put in a movie for the kids in the den, then cornered Mick in the living room and sat him down on the couch.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “The pull rope just got caught between the boards. I can fix it so that won’t happen again. All we have to do is—”
She interrupted him, leaning toward him and enunciating every syllable. “You can tear that contraption down, is what you can do.”
He had known her demand was coming. It didn’t surprise him, and yet he still thought maybe he could save the zip line if only he could make her understand why it happened.
“Layne, it was an accident. There’s really no need to get all worked up over it. It’s not gonna happen again.”
“You’re right—it’s not going to happen again,” she said, then sat back and took a couple deep breaths. Her left eye was twitching, just a little.
“You just don’t get it, Mick. You can’t tell me not to get worked up. I’m still a mother, no matter what. I am totally attuned to my children, and that doesn’t change, ever, even when I’m at work. I worry about my children constantly,” she said, averting her eyes. “And now I have to sit at my desk wondering what kind of Rube Goldberg suicide machine my husband is building today. I can’t help worrying, Mick. I’m a mother.”
“And I’m not,” he said. “I told you from the beginning I’m no housewife, and I’m never going to see things the same way a woman would see them. Maybe I haven’t done things the same way you would have, but you’ve got to admit it hasn’t been all bad, having me here. How many housewives can build new steps onto the deck, build a playhouse or a chicken coop, or lay ceramic tile?” It had been her idea to put down imported ceramic tile on the kitchen floor, and it had strained the budget.
“But, Mick, none of that makes up for nearly killing my baby with that infernal zip line. And anyway, we wouldn’t have had to replace the kitchen floor if it hadn’t been for the fire!”
He knew it was a mistake to bring up the tile. Anything you say can and will be used. “That, too, was an accident, Layne. A grease fire can happen to anybody.”
“Once, maybe, but that’s not the whole story. I can put up with the occasional kitchen fire, or having my clothes washed pink, or even the haircuts you’ve inflicted on the kids, but I don’t want my babies turned into insensitive, scratching, spitting, hard-cussing, gun-toting rednecks. At least not while they’re in grammar school.”
&
nbsp; “I still think you’re overreacting,” Mick said. “I can’t turn the kids into something I’m not, and I am not insensitive. Besides, our kids are perfectly normal. They’re not any wilder than other people’s kids.”
“Really? What about Dylan’s little peeing exhibition at the church picnic, or the ‘pretend cigars’ at the funeral home? You don’t think that was—”
“They’d just been through a two-hour car ride and they were bored. They didn’t know what those things were. And Dylan never did that again after I explained it to him.”
“Speaking of Dylan, is he ready to start school? Has he made any progress at all?”
“I don’t know,” Mick said. He put his head in his hands, rubbing his face and muttering through his fingers. “I think so. He can swim now.”
“That’s nice, but he won’t be doing a lot of swimming in the classroom,” she said.
“Well, his coordination is better, whether you can see it or not,” Mick said. “I’m around him all day and I see things you don’t. He runs a little better. He can hit a nail, too. Sometimes. Anyway, he seems happier to me—he never throws fits like he used to, and he hasn’t licked anybody’s ankles lately, either.” Dylan was still fond of his fuzzy pink earmuffs, but Mick had a suspicion he just liked the way they looked.
“I guess I just don’t see it,” she said, then sat back and crossed her arms.
It was a standoff, neither of them knowing where to go from there. He could see her jaw flexing. The tense ceasefire was disturbed only by the faint galumphing of the clothes dryer out in the laundry room.
Dylan wandered through, fresh from his bath, smelling of shampoo and fabric softener, wearing clean pajamas and a towel tucked around his neck like a cape, hand-flying a plastic Batman and muttering a strange phrase over and over in a steady monotone as he passed between them.
“. . . goats-in-their-pajamas, goats-in-their-pajamas, goats-in-their-pajamas . . .”
They stared at each other, mouthing the words while Dylan went out the other end of the room and down the hall without looking up. Layne scooted forward, bracing a palm on the arm of the sofa, her mouth open.
“Did he say goats?” She was almost whispering.
He hadn’t even noticed, but he could still hear it in his head.
“Yeah, he did. He definitely said goats.” It was the first time either of them had ever heard him nail a hard G.
They both sat frozen in silence for a minute, and then Layne noticed something else. As she turned and gazed toward the laundry room the anger went out of her and a faint sad smile softened her face. The syncopated thumping of the dryer came across the silence, and finally Mick heard it, too.
The tumbling clothes repeated the same galumphing rhythm over and over again, and once he heard it Dylan’s words were unmistakable. The dryer was saying, “. . . goats-in-their-pajamas, goats-in-their-pajamas, goats-in-their-pajamas . . .”
When Layne turned back to him her eyes were a little misty, and it dawned on him that sometimes a woman could hear things a man couldn’t. Among the normal working sounds of engines and sailboats and children and other dynamic things, if a person only knew how to listen, there was always a “sweet spot,” a certain pitch that said to a practiced ear, “This is good. Keep it here.”
She sighed and said, “Everything’s going to be all right. In my calmer moments I know things happen for a reason, and in the end I have faith that everything will turn out okay.” She put her arms around his neck and said, very softly, “I love you, Mick, and I trust you. I have never believed there was any better place for my children than right here with their redneck dad. None of that stuff really matters—I just worry, that’s all. I can’t help it.”
He closed his eyes and held her, felt her hair against his face, and remembered. In that moment she was twenty again, with heavy brown hair that rippled like liquid silk in the sunlight, and deep green eyes that could still make his knees buckle.
40
* * *
Final exam.
THE JURY was still out on Dylan. Mick had to admit he had been a little slack when it came to his therapy and exercises. He tried to remember them every day but there was a lot going on. He and Dylan had all the animals to take care of, and they were always busy doing projects around the house—building things, fixing things, laying tile, planting flowers, moving shrubs. Sometimes they forgot the therapy sessions. Because Mick was there with Dylan all the time every day, he just couldn’t really say if he’d shown any serious improvement, except of course for his swimming and the sudden ability to say the word goat. Mick really wanted to know, for his own sake, whether Dylan had actually improved. He didn’t have long to wait, because they took him in for testing the next week.
His final exam.
The regular therapist wouldn’t do the testing; she sent them up to Standridge Center in Atlanta to see a Dr. Zubek, who according to the regular therapist had literally written the book on sensory integration dysfunction. Mick was expecting an old, wise, grandfatherly type, but when they finally got into the office he discovered that Dr. Zubek was a mole-faced little girl who looked fresh out of high school. She didn’t even have a white coat, just jeans and tennis shoes.
He and Layne sat across from Dr. Zubek at her desk and talked for a half hour or so while Dylan played with cars in the floor. It was a big office, but the only things that made it an office were the desk and a handful of framed diplomas on the wall. It looked more like a toy store. There were train sets and car tracks in the floor, a giant dollhouse, a Nerf basketball hoop on one wall, and action figures everywhere. There were shelves full of board games, coloring books, crayons, blocks, children’s books, dolls, trucks and cars—anything a kid could want. Looking around, Mick figured if he could pick that room up and shake it a couple times it would look just like Dylan’s bedroom.
Dr. Zubek talked mostly to Layne, even though they told her early on that Mick was the one who’d been home with him. She and Layne were both very professional, and Layne had studied. She knew what all those words meant. Mick mostly listened in; he didn’t speak the language.
The doctor made a few notes in a folder while they talked. When she was satisfied, she closed the folder, rubbed her hands together and said, “Well, I know about the parents now. It’s time to get to know the child. The two of you can remain here if you wish”—she said this in a way that somehow made it clear they were to stay out of the way—“or you may want to go back out to the waiting room where we have coffee and pastries.”
And then she got down in the floor and played. It was as if she became a little girl, the way she acted with Dylan. He was rubbing a truck on the carpet and making engine noises. When she went over and plopped down crosslegged in the floor with him he ignored her at first, so she finally stuck a hand out and said, “Hi, I’m Ruth. Wanta play?”
He looked up at her, hesitated for a second, and then shook her hand. She had him talking in no time, like they were old friends. She asked him all sorts of weird questions in a quiet, conversational tone, while Dylan’s hands and eyes were busy with toys.
“Do you want to get married one day?”
“Maybe. Sure.”
“Why? Why would a person get married?”
He walked a GI Joe in a circle before he answered. She waited patiently.
“Share the work,” he said.
“Do you ever feel happy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“When?”
“The goat puts her head right here and I rub around her horns. Sometimes I hold the chickens. And swimming!” He glanced up at Mick when he said this, and grinned.
She went and got a couple of action figures off the shelf and played with him. Mick figured there had to be a reason for what she was doing, something she was watching for or judging, but he couldn’t make sense of it. They were just playing, like kids. He kept looking over at Layne for a clue, but as far as he could tell she didn’t know what was going on, either.
&nb
sp; After maybe twenty minutes of getting to know each other Dr. Zubek said to Dylan, “You wanta see our playground? We have swings.”
He nodded, and she led them all out, down a corridor and through a pair of swinging doors into a cavernous place that looked more like a gymnasium than anything else. It was brightly lit, with walls painted in Doctor Seuss colors, and it was a wonderland. There were big tire swings hanging from the bar joists high above, thick rubber mats on the floors, monkey bars, a climbing wall, a merry-go-round, seesaws, bicycles, tricycles, and every kind of ball known to man, most of them lying loose around the gym.
There must have been eight or ten other kids in there playing already, whooping and hollering and being kids.
“There are a number of other therapists using the facility,” Dr. Zubek explained, and Mick noticed that every kid was paired with an adult. Most of the therapists were young like Dr. Zubek, and dressed the same. There was a line of chairs at one end, half of them occupied by parents.
“If you’ll just take a seat over there, Dylan and I will go play now,” she said.
So they sat and waited some more.
They watched while Dylan swung, then tumbled on the mats, showing off how he could roll. She put him on a Sit’n Spin, and he loved that. He wouldn’t have anything to do with the climbing wall or the monkey bars, but she actually had him jumping rope at one point and taking turns with the other two kids holding the rope. Layne and Mick both cringed when he tripped up several times, but he just laughed it off. Dr. Zubek got him in a game of Twister with a couple other kids, and he tied himself in knots, fell all over himself. They spent a lot of time throwing a medicine ball back and forth, he made a complete fool of himself with a Hula-Hoop, and then the therapists got all the kids together and played dodge ball.
When it became clear that they were going to spend the better part of the day in the gym, Layne and Mick finally went back out to the waiting room for coffee.
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