Life, Animated

by Ron Suskind

  Then there’s a break—she knows when he needs one, and when to call him back—and then they do computer training for a half hour, specifically focusing on how to define and paste text. Cornelia has been teaching him rudimentary computer skills, including how to use spell-check, which is a godsend for him.

  Next stop, math. Every day Cornelia starts with Owen’s strong suit: pattern recognition, traditionally a sweet spot for autistic kids. Today, it’s a work sheet with, 8, 16, ___ , 32, ___ , ___. He handles it, writing in 24, 40, 48, then writes the rule: Increase by Eight. He does a few more of these, but mastering this is not all it seems. It’s called the “Swiss cheese effect,” how strengths and weaknesses can sit side by side. With most kids, it’s a solid block of cheddar; with spectrum kids, they’re grasping the material, and then you fall into a hole. Ask him to do basic subtraction—such as how much change is he owed from a dollar—and he can’t do it.

  It’s the same brand of conceptual thinking that makes word problems a nightmare. There’s no pattern to recognize, just words, each decoded, pronounced, and understood, but, for Owen, coyly concealing the threads of connection that allow for a speaker’s intent to be turned into an equation.

  So, Cornelia gives him an equation: 3 + 6 = 9. Okay, he knows that pattern, and can count the digits in his head. Now, Owen, she says, write it up as a word problem.

  He sits for a moment.

  “I can’t. Mom, can you help me?”

  She shakes her head. “You can do this, Owie. Give yourself a minute.”

  A minute passes, then another. His eyes are wandering, as if a bird flew through the room. He’s trying to put something together.

  He writes, Lucky Jack had three sticks of dynamite. He found six more at an old house. How many sticks of dynamite did he have altogether?

  Great praise flows forth—yes; it’s a mother’s praise and a teacher’s praise. Plus, this teacher is allowed to hug him.

  Okay now. Let’s keep it going.

  Cornelia writes the equation: $19 + $10 = $29.

  Owen smiles.

  Now he’s quick, like he’s been noodling this already: Iago has $19 he finds in a treasure box. With $10, how much money does he have now?

  This is fifth-grade work. He’s fourteen. But it’s progress.

  He laughs and waves his arms.

  “What’s so funny?” his mom asks.

  “Nothing,” he giggles. “It’s just funny.”

  Cornelia doesn’t know what just happened, not really. No one does. But back at home late that Monday afternoon, Owen slips into the basement, which is still his refuge.

  In a flash, he’s on the Internet, on Google. He types with one finger—ALADDIN SCRIPT—and after a few clicks he hits a bootleg script site. Enthusiasts watch the movie, over and over, and produce a script. It’s not the actual shooting script, but it is identical in every way except that the notes on scene setting and character cues are not up to the real script’s precision. Owen uses the very computer skills he worked on that day to scroll the script’s length defining it all, hits CONTROL C to copy, and then—creating a Word file—pastes it. He’s captured the script for Aladdin and taken ownership. For Owen, this is like absconding with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

  He scrolls through this with confidence, steady and sure, just like a practiced reader skims familiar text. All these words are already in his head.

  When Owen first decided a year before to put Iago on his locker, Cornelia and I both asked him about it. Iago, as the signature character for his school locker? Owen explained that Iago was different from all the other villain sidekicks. “He’s the first villain sidekick in Disney who provides ‘comic relief.’ And anyone with a sense of humor has to have some good in him.” In the ensuing year, he’s said this over and over. Almost word for word.

  Now, he’s doing something about it. He arrives at an early section of the script—where Aladdin, imprisoned in a dungeon, meets a fellow prisoner; in fact, it’s Jafar in the disguise of an old, enfeebled man. The movie’s plot first unfolds, as the old man tells Aladdin about the legendary Cave of Wonders and how he needs someone with “strong legs and a strong back” to enter the cave and retrieve the Genie’s lamp. Aladdin agrees and then the old man opens the dungeon’s trapdoor and leads them out on their mission.

  At the top of this section, where Jafar first appears in the old-man disguise, Owen opens a space and begins to type:

  SMUGS: LISTEN, BOY, I’VE GOT A WAY OUT OF HERE.

  The old man is no longer Jafar in disguise. He’s a fresh character, with his own personality.

  Now, on fresh terrain, Owen begins to construct a new scene:

  IAGO DUCKS INTO THE DUNGEON TO CHECK ON ALADDIN, WHO’S SOON TO BE EXECUTED.

  SMUGS: THERE’S A TREASURE BOX HIDDEN DEEP IN THIS DUNGEON.

  IAGO: A TREASURE. OH BOY, OH BOY. THAT SOUNDS LIKE MY KIND OF THING.

  IF IAGO HELPS ALADDIN AND SMUGS ESCAPE, THE OLD MAN SAYS HE WILL SHARE THE TREASURE WITH THE PARROT.

  SMUGS: YOU ARE NOT EVIL IN YOUR HEART. YOU JUST WORK FOR AN EVIL MAN. THIS TREASURE WILL HELP GIVE YOU YOUR FREEDOM.

  IAGO: HOW DO YOU KNOW I’M NOT EVIL?

  SMUGS: BECAUSE YOU ARE FUNNY. AND ANYONE WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR HAS TO HAVE SOME GOOD IN THEM.

  ALADDIN: YOU CAN BE ONE OF MY SIDEKICKS AND MY FRIEND.

  IAGO: I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED A REAL FRIEND.

  He’s never written dialogue before, though his head is filled with it. What’s running through his noggin is now on the page, as though this was the way the movie might have been, maybe should have been.

  Even years later, when he told us about this night when he changed this Aladdin script, he explained that there was a problem to be solved. He’d long ago turned this parrot into someone he could confide in, something I’d discovered from under the bedspread that night many years before. How, though, could a villain’s sidekick be Owen’s dear friend. At some point, after umpteen viewings, this insight about good and evil, and one’s capacity to change, took shape. Did he know when? Not exactly. Did he impute it by observing real people in real situations? He can’t say. All he knows is that he secretly changed this plot, so a villain’s sidekick could switch sides, free prisoners from a dungeon, and help a hero fulfill his destiny.

  It’s not until a few weeks later that I see a pile of printed pages sitting next to the kid’s basement computer. It’s the script from the 1990 Disney movie The Rescuers Down Under. I’m surprised that he’s printed it out—he’s never done that before. But the page on top is odd, and the formatting is off.

  I see a passage of dialogue where Frank, a frill-necked lizard that Owen has placed high in his sidekick’s pantheon, is describing how well he knows the movie’s hero, a boy trying to protect a giant eagle from a poacher named McLeach.

  FRANK: I DON’T KNOW HIM DEEP DOWN—I’M NOT A SYKIATRIST, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN—BUT I KNOW HIM PLENTY WELL. AND ONE OTHER THING—I ALWAYS TELL THE TRUTH. ANYWAY, MCLEACH TOLD HIM AN EVIL FIB THAT THE GREAT BIRD WAS DEAD, THAT’D HE HEARD IT SOMEWHERE, AND THEN FOLLOWED THE BOY AS HE RAN TO FIND THE BIRD.

  The dialogue goes on for many pages. There’s actually one altered scene and two new ones that, together, solve a problem at the heart of the movie: a major central scene that doesn’t really advance the plot in which Frank—a significant character providing comic relief—appears and vanishes without any discernible purpose.

  As I flip the pages, I feel a sensation of relief and fatherly pride, and a kind of deep sadness, all knotted together. I get a glimpse of an inner world that’s richer and more complex than I could have imagined, and at the same instant see its narrowness: that he can only do this in the voices of forgettable characters from a little-known movie.

  Yet there’s joy to it, to the dialogue; that’s unmistakable. And that’s just pure, good: this clearly makes him happy.

  That night, as Cornelia and I pore over the script, we start to become more hopeful that this is a first sign of a change:
that he may be breaking free from the brittle literalisms that he wears like a snug suit of clothes. The Disney scripts have been built—by him and us both—into a scaffolding where we can see him, and meet him, and increasingly nourish him with basic learning. Though we won’t know about the Iago script for years, we now know of this surprisingly intricate rewrite of The Rescuers Down Under displaying the same urgent capacity.

  He’s not reciting or mimicking here. He’s creating. Whatever change in him is driving it, he’s beginning to reinvent these beloved narratives, actually altering the landscape where he spends so much of his life.

  Sitting in the kitchen at midnight, Cornelia examines the script with a trained eye, finding references from schoolwork that he’s used in crafting the scenes, including the problem that most of the movie’s main characters are mice, which frill-necked lizards eat. This is something Owen learned—after Cornelia used Frank to prompt a lesson about lizards—that he deftly handles in his rewritten dialogue:

  ONE OF THE THREE MICE QUIPS, “THANK GOODNESS WE’RE NOT BLIND.”

  FRANK JOKES BACK, “AND THANK GOODNESS I’M NOT HUNGRY.”

  She rolls her eyes and puts the script down on the kitchen counter. “He’s running his own little home school in the basement. Wonder where he learns more—days with me or nights alone.”

  “It seems like they may finally be working hand in hand,” I say.

  “Well, that’s the hopeful view,” she answers. “But how do I get him to write this lucidly about anything other than animated movies, or the voices in his head?”

  I ask if we should look for an opportune moment to talk to him, to see if he can explain some of his underlying emotions, like we did when we found the sidekicks sketchbook.

  “No, you do it. That’s more therapy. I’m his teacher,” she says wryly. “And I’ve got to be up early for school.”

  Soon, I’m sitting alone at the kitchen island with the script. My first thought is to put it back right where I found it so Owen won’t know I saw it and I can pick the right time to talk to him about it. Or perhaps just not let him know I ever saw it, like I’m covering my tracks after a source passes me a government document. And that thought—the wrong thought for this moment—makes me recoil.

  I deal so much in secrecy that I’m sick of it. The federal investigation from last year ended, leaving my lawyers to battle over my right to keep the documents. They’re sure I’m being wiretapped, though there’s no way to confirm it, and I’ve started a new book about how the response to 9/11 reshaped the country and its government. That means for the past year I’ve been walking between sunlight and shadow, talking off-the-record with intelligence officials and operatives—professionals in the game of conceal and mislead—trying to fit bits of gleaned information into patterns that frame larger truths.

  But I own this kitchen in this house; I have a right to know what’s happening on Owen’s secret matrix. We have to stop walking on eggshells with him, afraid if we press him, at the wrong moment, he’ll close up, like some reluctant whistle-blower.

  After school the next day, I simply hand him the script.

  “I read the changes you made to this script, Owen,” I begin.

  He looks at the script and at me. I know I’m crashing into his secret world, a place he wants to control, but I have to know what goes on in there to know him.

  He pulls back. “I still love The Rescuers Down Under! I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?”

  I’m caught by surprise—he feels like he’s betraying his beloved Disney by changing their script.

  I tell him it’s okay, that the 1990 movie, and its script, won’t change.

  “You’re starting to create things that are yours—like the way you helped Frank become more interesting and alive.”

  We’re standing in his room. His jacket is off, the backpack’s on the floor. It’s late afternoon. Our Friday ritual of visiting the video store and grabbing pizza will soon begin.

  We just stand there for a moment.

  “Frank wasn’t appreciated. Some of the sidekicks aren’t,” Owen says. “I made it so he’s more important in helping the hero fulfill his destiny.”

  He pauses. There seems to be some other thing he’s thinking. I wait.

  “Dad, Frank had more he wanted to say.”

  The children arrive with dusk, one after another, filing into the foyer of our house, their parents close behind. They’re tallish for Halloween, all fourteen-year-olds, but dressed in precise, elaborate costumes that carry no trace of horror or teenage angst. A few dress as Disney characters, a couple are simple ghosts, and there’s even a princess. Their host, dressed as Lucky Jack, the wisecracking jackrabbit sidekick from Home on the Range, tells everyone to get hot dogs, and to make it fast. “We need to get out as quick as we can,” Owen says. “This is our night.”

  He’s not normally so forceful, so much in charge. But this is his annual Halloween party, a tradition, now six years along. He plans it, months ahead, down to the minute. It’s his favorite night of the year, every year. And his guests are appreciative. They don’t get invited to many parties. With the exception of Nathan, Owen’s stalwart “typical” friend from next door, they’re all autistic.

  To say Owen is friendly with all of them demands an alteration to the typical notion of friendship. There are a few from Ivymount, some of whom he had playdates with over the years. A few he sees only on this night, once a year. But he thinks about them all, often giving them sidekick identities, and they’re all invited. As Owen says, “No sidekick gets left behind.”

  From the start, Cornelia and I always make these Halloween parties for both children and adults. By now, we know all of these parents. We recognize in each other, without words, the pressures of never letting a child out of sight, of watching them, intently, for clues about what’s happening deep inside, of being uncertain, always, about what the future may hold.

  Finding others who understand all this merits celebration—so, there are bottles of foreign beer, wine, and quesadillas, chips, and guacamole to complement the hot dogs. “Why doesn’t everyone relax,” Cornelia says, as she collects the kids’ dirty plates. “I’ll take the gang out with Walt,” I add. “Everyone can have an hour off the clock.” This draws knowing nods. Yes, that’ll be just fine.

  Susan, one of the moms, takes me aside. Her daughter, Megan, a pretty dark-haired fourteen-year-old, has no speech. She’s dressed as a princess—Ariel—for many years; she has been her favorite character. “You know Megan’s rarely away from me, and she doesn’t know her way around here.”

  “She’ll be fine, Susan. We’ll keep a close eye on her, both of us.” Walt, downing a hot dog a few feet away, offers a got-it-covered nod.

  Moments later, the troupe is out, crunching leaves underfoot, with Owen in the lead. Among these kids, though, it hardly matters who leads or who follows. They do not size each other up the way most kids tend to, looking for an advantage. So what if this one moves his arms in fits and jerks, or that one carries on a running dialogue under his breath. What does it matter if the pretty young lady can’t speak? It’s like that old Baptist hymn about heaven: “There’ll Be No Distinction There.”

  And, for them, tonight is heaven, America’s feast of self-invention. That’s something the autistic kids, facing an onslaught to their hair-trigger senses and disapproving stares, know how to do: how to hold tight to their favorite stories, to live within them, until they can reimagine themselves in a world renewed.

  The streets of exhaustively carved jack-o’-lanterns, fence-post cobwebs, and inflatable skeletons are like one block party after the next. It’s a neighborhood of old brick houses, filled with Washington, DC’s professional class of civil servants and advocates, lawyers, and journalists, including a few with theatrical pasts. Several haunted houses, every few blocks, have drawn trick-or-treaters from surrounding neighborhoods.

  They move easily in this costumed crowd, weaving through a landscape that, to them, now seems pr
operly imaginative and festooned.

  Here—just as when he visits Walt Disney World—Owen does no self-talking or scripting. There’s no need to conjure a movie through recitation. He is walking within it, smiling and hyper-attentive.

  So, it’s Lucky Jack who first notices what’s gone wrong.

  He turns to Walt, wide-eyed. “We’ve lost Ariel.”

  Walt grabs my sleeve. “Megan’s gone!”

  A moment of sheer panic. She could be anywhere; the street is jammed. There is a dark forest—Rock Creek Park—nearby. “We need to find her,” I blurt out, “and someone needs to stay with the other kids.”

  Owen—who often averts his gaze—locks eyes with his brother. “Tonight, you’re the hero,” he says, evenly. Walt nods. The competing worlds of these two boys—Owen, in tandem with his mother each day, fighting against and alongside his imagination; and Walt, who’s now a popular high school football player, big and charming, with boundless ambitions—collapse into one. Walt breaks into a sprint, swift and sure, and vanishes into the crowd.

  The throng seems to thicken. Walt is gone two minutes, then five.

  “She can’t speak,” I say softly to myself, as my thoughts race: She doesn’t know where she is. She could be lost in the woods. We may have to call the police.

  Owen looks at me intently, like he’s trying to get behind my eyes.

  “Don’t worry, Dad. Walter will be the hero,” he says.

  “Owen, those are movies. This is real life!” I respond.

  He pauses, searching through The Little Mermaid for a handle. “Walter is a lot like Prince Eric,” he says about the movie’s hero, before matching a few key characteristics. “Walter’s fun loving and courageous, like Eric. Right?”

  “Yes, Owen. I suppose so.” Talking about a Disney movie is just about the last thing I want to do right now.

  He puts a hand on my shoulder as another minute passes. The kids are getting restless. I’m running through what I’ll tell Megan’s mother. Then, all together, we see it—Walt emerging from the crowd, holding Megan’s hand.