She told me this as she pruned white orchids in the living room. They were expensive; she argued sometimes with my father about them, and the arguments always ended the way they began: he said they were frivolous, she said they were the only thing she indulged herself in.
“It’s my one extravagance,” she said. “It costs a lot less than your beer.”
“Beer rehydrates me.”
“So does not beer.”
He never stopped her from buying the orchids. I liked watching her trim them.
“You’re just like an orchid,” she told me. “Unique and beautiful.”
“I’m not like an orchid,” I said.
“In some ways, you are,” she disagreed. “I love you both. You’re both growing and changing into beautiful new things.”
“I don’t have petals.”
“No,” she agreed, “but you have the same goodness in you that an orchid has in it. You both light up my soul.”
“I’m good like an orchid?”
“You are good simply because you try to be good, Freddy.”
My mother always believed that I could be something, be someone, reach any level. But she was convinced that it was more important that I be good.
Other people were not so unconditionally committed to me. Even my father, who certainly loved me, and raised me to the best of his abilities, even he was not as committed, for he was often angry. Being so, his judgment was suspect. The things my father wished me to become were suspect as a result.
But the things my mother wanted me to be were not suspect, because she was not suspect. My mother fit the criteria of a good person. It stood to reason, therefore, that the things she wanted me to become were good things.
—
Here is what happened the day I went to Excalibur House, after my mother left.
On that day, my father came to get me, and I said goodbye to Saskia Stiles for the last time.
We drove home in silence, and I was happy. I liked to count buses as they went by, and bin them into blue buses, which are powered by natural gas, white buses, which are powered by diesel, and grey buses, also powered by diesel, but much older.
My father liked to talk on drives, but I liked to be silent and watch the roads for buses. As we drove, I stayed as still as I could in the back seat, hoping that my father would forget I was there and wouldn’t try to talk.
There was no dinner that night. I went straight to my room and stood in the centre, not moving, waiting for my father to call me down to the kitchen. The call never came. I was surprised; usually, he made me sit at the kitchen table and work on my printing for ten minutes, then draw pictures for ten minutes, then colour within the lines for ten minutes. After that, dinner would be served, after which I would have a bath. I would change into my pyjamas and brush my teeth. Then I could go to my room and be by myself, which is what I wanted most of all. But that day, I got to be by myself immediately.
I waited for fifteen more minutes, but he didn’t call me down to the kitchen, so I took off my clothes and got dressed in my pyjamas. Then I sat on my bed and flipped through my book.
The minutes passed. The hours passed. I flipped the pages quickly, first forward, then backward. The words and pictures washed over me like a warm current. I didn’t read. I absorbed.
When I looked up, it was 10:30. Downstairs, I heard my father shuffling in the kitchen, and the clink of glass.
I closed my book, crawled under the covers, turned off the light, and went to sleep.
—
The next morning, my routine was fully broken. I sat in bed, hungry, my bladder full to bursting, and I waited for my mother to come in, turn on the light, pull back the covers, kiss me on the forehead, and tell me to get up.
She didn’t come. The light remained off.
I waited.
Soon, I became uncomfortable, with a swollen bladder, but I still didn’t get out of bed.
I waited.
A few minutes later, I couldn’t hold it. I relieved myself in my pyjamas. At first, the urine was warm, and I was comfortable, so I waited some more. But, after the pee cooled down, and my thighs became itchy, I climbed out of bed and dressed myself.
When I walked into the kitchen, my father was standing at the sink, staring out the window.
“I’m hungry,” I said, and he didn’t reply.
I went to stand beside him. “I’m hungry,” I repeated. “I want Froot Loops.”
“We’re out of Froot Loops,” he said, still staring out the window. He was fully dressed, but his clothes were unkempt. His shirt was untucked. I could smell stale cigarette smoke. “Have Sugar Crisp instead,” he told me.
“But I want Froot Loops,” I said. “I don’t want Sugar Crisp. I want Froot Loops.”
“Too bad,” he said and pulled a cigarette from his front shirt pocket.
“Listen. I want—”
“Dammit Freddy!” my father yelled at me. “There are no bloody Froot Loops. Get that through your head!”
I turned away from him and went to the cereal cupboard. There was only Sugar Crisp.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked.
“She’s not here.”
“Where’s Mom?” I asked again.
“If she was up your ass, you’d feel it.”
“Where’s Mom?”
He hung his head. “I don’t know, Freddy,” he said. “I don’t know.”
—
One week after that, the wind was blowing through the trees as I walked home from the school bus. There was a car in the driveway, and my mother was waiting for me on the front steps, two suitcases at her feet. She hugged me and kissed me.
At first, I didn’t recognize her. She had cut her hair short, and she wore sunglasses. I thought she looked older. But I was happy to see her.
“Where were you?” I asked.
“I had to go away, sweetheart,” she told me. “I had to leave. But I’ve come back to get you. Okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Can I play on the Game Boy?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
I started up the stairs to the front door, but she stopped me. “We’re not going inside, Freddy.”
“Hey, Freddy,” said John Stiles, stepping out of the car.
Listen: I remembered.
It was John Stiles who came with my mother and picked me up outside our house. My mother was smiling, but he wasn’t. He got out, took her bags, and put them in the trunk of his car. As he did it, he glanced at me several times, frowning.
“Hey, sport,” he said.
I didn’t answer because he hadn’t asked me a question. It’s not necessary to answer when you are not asked a question.
My mother snapped me in my seat belt, in the back seat, behind her.
“Where’s my booster seat?” I asked my mother.
“Not now, Freddy,” she said, looking around as she clipped me in.
DAD SAYS HAVE A DRINK
I opened my eyes and rain fell hard against the kitchen window. The day was long and had wound itself out of me. I came in the front door, tired, empty, a single thread still in my mind.
Go home, Freddy, Linda Stiles had told me the night before. You need to talk to your father.
Bill sat at the table before a bottle of whisky. He looked aged. I could see the tendrils of white that had crept into his hairline. He looked tired. His sleeves were rolled up. His shirt was light blue. He had just returned from work. He had come home early.
Come home early to drink.
When I walked in, he looked up, then back down at the tumbler in his hand. It held two ounces of whisky and three ice cubes.
Leaning back, he reached to the kitchen counter for a second tumbler, put it on the table, then poured in whisky. He pushed the glass toward me.
“Join me,” he said and smiled briefly. “Time to be a man.”
I pulled a chair out and sat across the table from him.
“Drink, drink,” he motioned to the whisky. I didn’t mov
e. After a moment, he shrugged and took the tumbler back, pouring the contents into his own glass. “Suit yourself,” he said.
“John Stiles no longer lives with his wife,” I said.
My father nodded slowly, his face grim. He agreed with me.
“Mrs. Stiles said I should ask you about it,” I continued.
He nodded again. “She did, did she?”
“Yes.”
“Did she tell you anything else?”
“Yes.”
He paused and took a drink. “What else did she tell you?”
“That you’re an asshole.”
He smiled slightly, turning up one corner of his mouth. “I’ve been wondering for a while when you would figure that one for yourself.”
“I figured that for myself four months and nine days ago,” I confirmed. “It was ancillary to the previous thing I found out for myself four months and nine days ago.”
He took a drink. “And what was the previous thing you figured out?”
“That we are all assholes.”
—
Four months and nine days ago, Jack Sweat threw me out of his house. He threw me out because I offended him when I didn’t kiss him back. I didn’t kiss him back because I felt no such desire.
There was no precedent in my life for returning a kiss from a friend. Kisses were returned in films or television only if you were related or in love or French or Arabic. I was none of these.
Perhaps I should have slapped him. That’s what they do in the movies.
When I didn’t kiss Jack back, he stood motionless, his eyes still looking down, his mouth firmly closed, his cheeks reddening. But his hands remained at his side. His shoulders slumped.
He asked me to leave. He asked me to leave the room, the gym, his life.
For a long time after that, I carried a thread: Who was responsible? Why had my one and only friendship disintegrated that night?
Was Jack to blame for kissing me or was I to blame for not kissing him? Should I have slapped him?
The answer was constructed after careful thought. Neither of us were to blame. We acted as we were supposed to.
There is nothing intrinsically offensive about a kiss. A kiss is a sign of interest at worst, and a sign of love at best. There is no reason to strike someone for kissing you; that would indicate that you are threatened by their interest at best, or their love at worst.
It may be that this was a case where I should have kissed Jack back, or a case where I should have slapped him. But how does someone know which are the acceptable cases? They aren’t advertised. There is no page on Wikipedia detailing the correct way to slap someone. We can’t seem to agree on the correct circumstances. We can’t agree because we can’t find an objective framework. We can’t point to unassailable rules of right and wrong.
We can’t do any of this because none of us knows all of the rules of right and wrong. We only carry approximations, fuzzy guidelines with wiggle room. Often, we will drift off course and be wrong. But we won’t always know we were wrong until later, after much consideration.
That means that we are doomed to walk through our lives doing things we will only later realize were wrong.
Listen: I told my father that I learned every one of us is doomed to do wrong, no matter how hard we try to do otherwise. Every one of us will do things that we will long regret. Every one of us will do things that hurt others, sometimes on purpose, sometimes out of sheer ignorance. Every one of us will do some of these things and never get the chance to apologize.
Every one of us is an asshole.
I told my father why we were all assholes; I told him about Jack Sweat. He let out a long sigh and clinked the ice in his empty glass.
“I never did like that Jack kid,” he said. “Never understood why he hung around you.” He glanced up at me quickly, and an expression ran across his face. “I just meant that—” he said and stopped.
I nodded. “I understand what you meant,” I said. “Muggles rarely associate with wizards.”
He nodded and dropped his head, smiling with his mouth but not with his eyes. “Yer a wizard, Harry,” he said softly.
—
When I was young, my parents spoke to me differently. When they spoke with others, it was quicker, with shorter words and greater inflection. With others, their voices carried emotional themes, ones they rarely used with me. With me, their words were measured, careful. My father, in particular, spoke like a HAL 9000 computer.
Even at an early age, I understood that he spoke condescendingly, although I did not have a word to associate with it, or a full meaning, or even a context. I only knew that it was different, intended to convey meaning at its most basic level.
I didn’t mind being patronized.
On May 23, 2004, my mother told me that I was autistic.
“Do you know why you go to Excalibur House?” she asked me.
“No,” I said, not because I didn’t know, but because, at the time, I was still uncertain what the word “know” meant. Saying “no” was an appropriate response to most things. If I said “yes,” I would have to justify myself.
If I said “no,” my mother would explain things to me, and I wouldn’t have to talk. After she explained things, I repeated back to her what she said. I could do this—it was relatively easy. I have a good memory.
“Remember how sometimes I yell at you and tell you you’re not listening?” Dad asked me.
“Yes,” I said. I was rarely asked to explain something I had remembered.
“Do you know why I yell at you and tell you that you’re not listening?”
“Because I’m not listening,” I said. I knew the answer to this because I had been asked the same questions many times.
“Do you know why you don’t listen?” Mom asked.
“Why,” I said.
“Because you are autistic. Do you know what that means?”
“What.”
“It means that you have difficulty processing information, and difficulty communicating with others. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“What did I just say?”
“You have difficulty processing information, and difficulty communicating with others.”
My mother shook her head. “I don’t have that problem, Freddy. You have that problem.”
“Yes,” I replied.
She nodded. “Some people have red hair. Some people have blond hair.”
“I have blond hair,” I said.
She nodded again. “Some people have blue eyes.”
“I have blue eyes,” I said.
“Some people wear glasses.”
“I wear glasses.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I wear sunglasses.”
“Yes, Freddy, you do. Sometimes.”
“I don’t like to wear sunglasses.”
“That’s why you don’t wear them.”
“That’s why I don’t wear them.”
She took my hand. “Listen closely.”
I stepped toward her. Her eyes shone on me and I fell into them.
“Some people wear glasses because it helps them see. And some people can’t see.”
“They can’t see?”
“They’re blind. And some people are deaf, which means they can’t hear.”
“I can hear.”
“You’re not deaf, Freddy.”
“No.”
“Some people can talk to others easily. Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“No, Freddy, it’s not.”
“No.”
“Do you know why you have trouble talking to other people?”
“No.”
“Because you have autism.”
I looked around. I fished in my pocket. “Where is it?” I asked.
She tapped me on the top of my head. “It’s in there, Freddy,” she said. “It’s in there.”
THE LAST DAY WITH MY MOTHER
I opened my eyes. I was seven y
ears old. My mother, gone for a week, was now back, and I was in the car as we drove to the train station. John Stiles kept glancing back at me, as my mom tried to calm me down.
“Are you all right?” John Stiles asked her.
“Never better,” she said.
“Betty,” he said to her. “You never said you were bringing Freddy. They’re expecting only you.”
“He can sleep in my bed,” she said.
“It’s just—”
She put her hand on his forearm as he drove. “John,” she said, “did you think I would ever go without him?”
The sky was darkening, and it was raining hard. I wasn’t confident this would be a fun car ride.
“Where’s my booster seat?” I called out.
—
It’s necessary to ask questions about things that cause you concern. Sitting in the back seat, the thing that was of great concern was my booster seat. It came with me every time I went for a good car ride. How was it possible that I could have a good ride without the seat? It was important. It’s absence caused me concern. I asked questions about it.
The first thing I asked when I got in the car was: “Where’s my booster seat?”
“Sweetie,” my mother said, “I’ll get you a new one, I promise.”
This wasn’t working for me. “But I need my booster seat,” I repeated.
She cupped my face in her palms. “Freddy, this is really, really, really important,” she said and kissed me on the nose. “Please, we need to go.” She patted my cheek, closed my door, then got in the front seat.
“What happened to your eye?” I asked. I reached up and touched it. It was swollen, spongy to the touch, a deep shade of blue and ochre.
“I’ll tell you some other time,” she said.
—
Mom suggested, on several occasions, that arguing was one of my Favourite Things. It isn’t. In fact, it’s one of my unfavourite things. But there isn’t a word for the opposite of favourite.
Too often, however, I have to go through one of my unfavourite things to get to the Favourite Thing. It appeared that this would be one of those times.
The car pulled away from the curb.
“I want my booster seat,” I said, and Mom turned her head and looked at me sharply.
Do You Think This Is Strange? Page 20