Fathermucker

by Greg Olear

  “Oh, totally,” says Gloria, with a sanctimonious nod of her head.

  “I’m going to check on the kids.” I mosey down the hall, peek into the spare bedroom—Maude and Emma are playing with dolls, while Haven is jumping up and down on the bed, a dangerous and reckless act whose discovery would give Gloria a conniption—and then head to the bathroom.

  What gets me about the Cynthia Pardo business is that I like Cynthia Pardo. Not in a sexual way—that urge in the dance club proved fleeting—but as a friend. I haven’t hung out with her as much, but I enjoy her company more than Jess’s or Gloria’s. I like her . . . but I don’t understand her. There are better ways to extricate yourself from a dead marriage, ways that don’t involve crimes and misdemeanors, ways that aren’t as humiliating for her husband, the poor sap, who, whatever his flaws may be, doesn’t deserve to be treated like this.

  As I shake off the last of my coffee-fueled piss—one of the greatest challenges of stay-at-home fatherhood, for me, is coordinating my bathroom breaks; I have the bladder of a nine-months-pregnant woman—I happen to glance out the window just in time to see a shiny black BMW X-5 pull into the shiny black driveway. In West Hollywood, where my wife is now holed up, every third car is a BMW; not so in New Paltz, where Subarus, Honda CR-Vs, or pick-up trucks dominate the roads. A BMW here is like a Bentley in L.A. Who belongs to the Beamer? Ruth isn’t coming, and Meg drives a beat-up Jetta.

  I wash my hands for longer than necessary, holding them under the hot water as long as I can stand it, letting the heat radiate through my body. The face in the mirror—Jess was right—looks tired. The gray at the temples has begun to migrate in all directions, like the mint plants in our backyard. Gentrification of gray. Conquest of age. Bags under my eyes, hidden by the rim of my glasses, but Jeff Van Gundyan in their depth and darkness. The only hint of youth in the entire expanse of weary visage, the last vestige of my teenage self, is the dime-sized zit forming painfully above my left eyebrow.

  I’m mildly and not unpleasantly surprised to find Sharon Rothman in the great room when I return, an oversized water bottle in one hand, her daughter’s hand in the other. The playdate roster, like a basketball team, has nine members, five of whom (Jess, Gloria, Meg, Ruth Terry, and me) are starters, with the other four substituting every so often (and some of the fringe players, it must be said, are not crazy about a father encroaching on their mommy time; the inverse of pro athletes made uneasy by female reporters in the locker room). But Sharon is not one of the regulars; this is the first time she’s come to one of these things, or the first time I’ve seen her at a playdate, anyway. In my limited dealings with her—at a birthday party at Meg’s, at Hasbrouck Park, at the healthfood store—she strikes me as more East Village than New Paltz, and although she’s quiet, she’s fun to talk to, if only because I’m not yet bored of her. She’s intriguing, her sad eyes bespeaking unknowable depth. And I have this strange feeling that I already know her, although I can’t for the life of me figure out how.

  “Oh, hey, Sharon. I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “Good morning, Josh.”

  We don’t know each other that well, so we do an awkward dance, neither of us sure if we should shake hands, embrace, kiss the other’s cheek, or all three, and we wind up going full-on awkward and kissing half on the lips. And me with my coffee breath. Should have brought the Altoids from the minivan.

  “What are you drinking? Margarita?”

  “I wish. It’s a protein shake.”

  “She’s doing Isagenix, too,” Gloria informs me.

  “Too bad,” I tell her. “The cookies are really good.”

  “These shakes, I gotta say, they’re not that bad,” Gloria says.

  “I wish I could have cookies,” Sharon says. “Sugar gives me a migraine. It’s a curse.”

  Sharon taught at the Montessori school until the big scandal—a sex offender was discovered to be living in a house adjacent to the school grounds; it subsequently came out that the school not only knew about this and didn’t disclose it, but said sex offender was one of the school’s initial investors—when all of the teachers quit en masse. I’m not sure what she’s up to these days—last I heard she was training to be a yoga instructor . . . or was it an astrologer? Maybe both. “I’m still finding myself,” she told Stacy one time. From the looks of the BMW, it doesn’t appear she’s in a hurry to locate her self, or a gainful job.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  The kids run in from the other room to greet Sharon’s dumpling-shaped daughter, Iris. They don’t say hello, as such, just jump around happily as the dynamics shift. Gloria takes a seat on the ottoman near the fireplace. “Look what I found,” she says. “Bubbles!”

  Maude, Emma, Haven, and Iris jump up and down even more furiously, bouncing to the fireplace and the bubbles like so many hopped-up kangaroos.

  I find my Mickey Mouse mug and notice, to my dismay, that it’s empty.

  “I’m going to get a refill. Anybody want some coffee?”

  “I’ll go with you,” Sharon says.

  “Help yourself,” says Jess. “There’s light cream in the fridge.”

  “How decadent.”

  “I know how to live.”

  Sharon and I move through the archway into the kitchen.

  “Are the shakes really tasty, or is Gloria just saying that?”

  “They’re supposed to be chocolate flavored,” Sharon says, “but they actually taste like carob. I really hate carob.”

  “The cubic zirconium of dessert flavors,” I say, and she laughs, although it’s not a particularly good joke. “So how are you doing? How’s David?”

  “He’s fine. He’s been really busy at work.”

  “Yeah, Stacy has, too.”

  “Is she having fun in L.A.?”

  I’m a bit surprised that she knows my wife’s whereabouts, but then, it’s not exactly a state secret, as it’s been all over Facebook.

  “I think she’s too busy to have much fun. She said she’d rather have gone to Dallas. The conference rooms are the same everywhere, but Dallas at least is a much shorter flight.”

  “Where’d she fly out of? Albany?”

  “Newark.”

  “That’s far.”

  “Yeah.”

  Sharon pours coffee into the same oversized Disney mug that I have, only with Minnie Mouse instead of Mickey. “I went to town this morning. I swear. Have you used the muni lot since they put in the meter machine?”

  “No.”

  “It used to be so easy to park,” she says. “Now, it’s this big hassle. The lot used to be full, and now it’s practically empty. People are afraid of the meter machine. They’d rather not use it.”

  “Yeah, it’s been a great way to increase revenue. Another genius decision by the mayor.”

  “I know, right?”

  “Woodstock has a free muni lot. Rhinebeck has a free muni lot. Poughkeepsie has free muni lots. And New Paltz doesn’t? What sense does that make? They basically removed an entire parking lot. How does that not hurt local businesses?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What’d you do in town?”

  “Yoga.”

  “How’s that going? You’re training to be an instructor, right?”

  “I was. I quit. It wasn’t right for me. I don’t know.”

  Sharon sips her coffee and moves aside—our forearms glance as we switch positions—and I begin to refill my cup. The clock on the coffee pot, I notice, reads 10:39. Not even eleven yet. A whole lot of day left. Miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I—

  “I don’t know how to tell you this,” Sharon says, her eyes wide with concern, “so I’m just going to tell you.”

  Part II

  where the wild things are

  given services

  to prepare

  them

  for

  kindergarten

  Asperger’s: A Chronology

  ROLAND WON’T SLEEP WITH US. H
E’S BEEN CRYING FOR A SOLID hour, lolling his tongue over Stacy’s breast, not hungry, just upset. We bring him to the bed, a double because anything bigger won’t fit in our miniscule apartment, not particularly roomy but more than adequate for man, woman, and child. We lay him down between us. We pat his head, his back. We sing him lullabies. We sing “Silent Night” and “Little Drummer Boy” and “Greensleeves,” because he was born on Christmas.

  He flails around. He punches. He kicks. He cries. He won’t sleep with us. We want him to share the bed, want this glorious product of our love between us. But he’ll only sleep in the crib, by himself.

  He’s four months old.

  Martin Luther, the famed theologian, encounters a twelve-year-old boy who cannot speak, shuns contact with other people, and is chronically stricken with odd compulsions to twitch his body this way and that. The great Christian leader determines that the afflicted child is a victim of demonic possession and recommends immediate suffocation.

  Soon after, Johannes Mathesius, Luther’s biographer, will publish the account in his Table Talk of Martin Luther—the first recorded course of treatment for an autistic child. It is 1540.

  Roland is in the driveway. His fat-diapered bottom is perched on a railroad tie, legs extended into the bed of mauve-toned rocks some artless landscaper has dumped on the side of the house. He leans over, picks up a rock. He flicks the edge with his thumb. He holds it up to me.

  “Is rock?”

  I’m sitting Indian-style on the asphalt, zoned out, enjoying the warm sun on my face and arms, the soft breeze blowing through the leafy trees all around us. We’ve just moved here; country living is still a novelty. I don’t say anything. He repeats himself, with more urgency. “Is rock?”

  “Yes,” I tell him, for at least the ninetieth time. “That’s a rock.”

  He flings the rock across the driveway, almost to the tire of the newly leased Honda Odyssey. There are many rocks scattered about the driveway. More rocks on the driveway than in the bed of rocks, where the black plastic liner is visible beneath the dirt. Later I will rake up the rocks and replace them. Again.

  He leans back into the bed, picks up a new rock, holds it up to me. “Is rock?”

  “Yes, that’s a rock.”

  He flings it toward the minivan.

  He is sixteen months old.

  In a village in the Scottish Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, Hugh Blair, scion of a well-to-do family, is sued by his younger brother John, on the grounds that he, Hugh, is unfit for marriage and land ownership.

  As the testimony plays out, Blair’s eccentricities come to light:

  He does not answer questions, instead looking away to avoid eye contact. On those occasions when he does reply, he repeats the question rather than supplying an answer.

  He is religiously religious, sporting a perfect attendance record at church. He always sits in the same pew—he cannot abide someone else taking his seat—and recites the entire Mass verbatim, from memory, but without inflection.

  He is closer to animals than people.

  He enjoys futile activities such as gathering stones in a pile, moving the pile, and then returning the stones to the river bed, or watching water drip from his wet wig.

  Hugh Blair is stripped of his wife and his inheritance when his eccentric patterns of behavior are found by a magistrate to be evidence of insanity.

  It is 1797.

  A hippie friend of Stacy’s who lives in a yurt outside of Arcata, California—a crunchy town similar to New Paltz, albeit with the advantage of medicinal marijuana—gifts Roland a book called Zen ABC. Written and illustrated by a mother-daughter team who live not far from here, the book, as the title suggests, pairs letters of the alphabet with matching Buddhist words. A is for Awareness, B is for Buddha, C is for Cadence, and so forth.

  Zen ABC is one of Roland’s favorite books. He knows all the letters, and he knows the matching Buddhist words. Point to “O” and he will say, in his high-pitched, cherubic voice, “One Mind.” This delights my mother, who announces that he is a genius.

  He is eighteen months old.

  In 1797, a feral boy emerges from the woods outside of Saint-Sernin-sur-Rance, in the Aveyron département of southern France.

  Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron—as he is called in the press—has lived for ten of his twelve years in the woods. Although he is not mute as such, he does not speak, and is more comfortable among animals than people.

  A medical student named Jean Marc Gaspard Itard adopts Victor, working with him as a deaf-mute. During the Age of Enlightenment, Victor is hailed as a “noble savage,” and is known the world over.

  He likes to spin things. Bottle caps, Tupperware containers, lids, Frisbees, quarters. Anything that can be spun. A flick of the wrist and he whirls them around like tops. He hovers over his spinning objects like Samantha Ronson at the DJ booth.

  I’ve tried to duplicate the feat. I can’t. It’s much more difficult than it looks.

  He can even make square objects spin. I didn’t think that was possible in the realm of physics, but Roland can do it.

  He sits on the ceramic tiles in the kitchen, presiding over his round plastic lids, while his newborn sister sleeps in her detachable carseat. We don’t find anything unusual with his uncanny knack for spinning. We’re proud that he’s so good at it.

  He is twenty months old.

  The term autism, a derivation of the Greek autos, or self, first appears in a paper on the symptoms of mental illness by a Swiss psychiatrist named Eugen Bleuler. It is 1910. The term is used to describe the lack of empathy in certain of his patients—an “autistic withdrawal of the patient to his fantasies, against which any influence from outside becomes an intolerable disturbance.”

  Autistic is adopted as a synonym of schizophrenic.

  Roland started preschool. He’s the youngest child there. When they go outside to the playground, the other kids run around, play tag, climb on the playground equipment. He sits in a corner, picking up stray woodchips and rubbing them on his cheek.

  “He groks that,” Stacy jokes.

  We still joke. We still see nothing unusual, only the seeds of genius, just like my mother said.

  He groks that. Stranger in a strange land.

  He just turned two.

  A research paper called “The Schizoid Personality of Childhood” presents a study of six boys with eccentric patterns of behavior and unusual and rigid habits. It is 1926. Because this paper is written in Russian, and is published in the Soviet Union at the time of Stalin’s ascendancy—and by a woman, no less; a neurologist’s assistant named Eva Sucharewa—its findings, which comprise the first record of patients with what will be called Asperger’s syndrome, are ignored.

  Jess Holby brings her daughter Maddie, whom Roland has known most of his life, to our house for a playdate. Usually they get along swimmingly, but not this time. Roland is mean to her. When Maddie tries to play with one of his Thomas trains, he attacks her. He hits her. He pulls her hair. He tries to bite her, but Stacy separates them in time.

  Subsequent playdates are even worse.

  We stop organizing them.

  “All kids go through that phase,” friends of ours, parents of older children, assure us. “All kids hit and bite. Don’t worry; he’ll outgrow it.”

  But other kids don’t hit, other kids don’t bite. Not like that.

  We don’t see Jess or Maddie for months.

  He is twenty-eight months old.

  At preschool, he misbehaves. He’s difficult, the teachers tell us. Prone to tantrums. Prone to hitting. He likes to knock over towers that other kids have made of blocks. He’ll race across a crowded room just to knock over a big stack of blocks some other kid has spent fifteen minutes carefully constructing. He circles the room like an eagle, looking for towers to knock over. He taps other kids on the head. He makes other kids cry. He doesn’t get upset when they cry. He just retreats to a corner and spins things.

  All kids go through that
phase. Don’t worry; he’ll grow out of it. We cling to this like a nun to her rosary beads, repeat it as a novena. But we don’t believe it anymore.

  Despite his shortcomings, the other kids seem to like him. Or so we’re told. He wants to play with the other children, but he doesn’t know how. The teachers seem to like him. He has a pleasant personality. He’s such a nice boy. They try and feed his brain. We have to get puzzles from the Blue Room. He can already do all the puzzles here.

  “You should really get him evaluated,” his primary teacher, Gina, tells us. “He might have to go to a special school. He might need services.”

  The thinking is that he might have a sensory integration issue, but nobody really knows for sure.

  Hans Asperger of the Vienna University Hospital borrows Bleuler’s autistic coinage to describe a specific neurological disorder that would eventually bear his name. It is 1938. Autistic psychopathics, he writes, demonstrate a pattern of bizarre behavior, including “a lack of empathy, little ability to form friendships, one-sided conversations, intense absorption in a special interest, and clumsy movements.”

  He calls these children “little professors.”

  During the summer, we visit friends and family. Short day trips. Fun car rides, is how we bill them, to sell Roland on the concept, although he’s always enjoyed the Sunday drive. We hit the neighboring states: Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. When we arrive at my brother-in-law’s house, my mother’s house, Laura’s house, Roland follows the same routine. First, he walks the perimeter of the building, hand-in-hand with me or Stacy, taking careful note of window placement. Then he tours the inside of the house, matching the windows on the inside with the corresponding windows on the outside. Then he circles the house again from the outside, and has us tell him which rooms the windows belong to.

  “That’s the kitchen,” I’ll tell him. “And that’s the dining room. And that little window is the bathroom.”