Language Arts

by Stephanie Kallos

  It was the house’s interior that told the real story, whimsy’s opposite, a former war zone showing evidence of battles, vandalism, lootings: scarred parquet floors, pockmarked walls, chipped archways, boarded-up fireplace, architectural details—wall sconces, ceramic tiles, and plastered porticoes—severely damaged or excised altogether, changes wrought either directly by Cody or in the interest of keeping him safe.

  Alison was always asking Charles how he could bear to keep living there, why he didn’t sell. She wouldn’t mind. He could get a nice two-bedroom condo like hers; there were so many new ones on the market right now, LEED-certified, and several were even within a few blocks, so he could stay connected to the neighborhood, the café, the video store, all of his routines, if that was the issue.

  It wasn’t.

  She didn’t understand.

  For Charles, the house was perfect.

  •♦•

  “He’s different when he’s with us, you know,” Alison’s mother was saying. “I’ve never seen him have one of those meltdowns you and Alison talk about.”

  “That’s good,” Charles said. “I’m glad.” He found it hard to imagine his genteel, diminutive mother-in-law in Cody’s presence when he was shrieking like a cornered possum or smearing feces on every available surface.

  “Fussy, yes. The occasional tantrum. But a meltdown? No. Never.”

  It was a Sunday evening in August, still light outside, about a week after their consultation with Dr. Gayathri. Alison’s parents, Victor and Eulalie Forché, were being given a pre-dinner tour of the house exterior. A light wind was moving in from the southwest.

  Victor and Alison led the way; Charles and Eulalie sauntered along a few paces behind. Some unspoken protocol mandated this arrangement, that a precise distance be maintained between them.

  Energetically, they were already miles apart, Victor and Alison exuding edginess and exigency, a pair of generals about to lead a battalion to the front lines. Eulalie, in stark contrast, was relaxed and gracious, as if she were the one hosting this gathering and they were strolling through the formal grounds of the Forché estate in the Highlands.

  Cody was in one of his clingy moods, demanding that his mother carry him, so Alison was having a hard time keeping up with her father’s brisk pace; Victor, in turn, seemed either oblivious of or indifferent to her difficulties. He squinted at the house as if perusing a legal brief naming him as chief defendant.

  “It might be because of the space, you know?” Eulalie wafted one of her manicured hands in a series of vague, looping gestures. “The size of the rooms, the ceiling height …” The vestiges of Kentucky roots were still evident in her languid delivery; a person could practically recline on those airy, musical vowels and feathery consonants. “This is a dear, sweet little house, don’t get me wrong, and it’s been perfectly adequate for the two of you, but now that you’ve finally started a family, it is awfully confining. And this teeny yard … Where do you run him?”

  “At the park.”

  “Not too far, is it?”

  “No, just a few blocks.”

  “That’s good, because little boys, you know, they need a lot of room.” Eulalie gazed up at the house and sighed. “Are you sure you want to stay? You wouldn’t rather look for a new place?”

  “Alison thinks it would be too upsetting for Cody if we moved.”

  “Ah, well, we know all about Alison’s determination, don’t we?” Eulalie took Charles’s arm, gave it a gentle squeeze, and leaned into him in a playful, teasing way.

  Charles had learned in the years since he and Alison had wed—suddenly, unceremoniously, and with only the most perfunctory introductions to the Forché dynasty—that when it came to Eulalie, it was best not to ponder any possible subtext; to do so meant risking intense feelings of inadequacy, if not outright paranoia. Eulalie did seem genuinely fond of him, so he chose to believe that her remarks weren’t meant to underline the differences between them or the fact that—using the expression of a former century, one from which Eulalie often seemed to have been lifted—Alison had married beneath her station.

  Eulalie took a sip of the cocktail Charles had prepared to her specifications—a dirty martini made with pickle brine and garnished with skewered grape tomatoes and caper berries. “I love my daughter to bits,” she continued, “she is a lioness in every sense of the word, but those qualities … Well, they cut in both directions.”

  The rules of engagement with Alison’s father were more difficult to ascertain. Victor was pleasant enough in a hale and hearty way, but Charles had seen him be just as congenial to strangers and underlings: the waitstaff at Canlis, the salesclerks at the Bon Marché. Charles suspected that Victor’s expansiveness was in direct proportion to his distrust. Eulalie may have had issues with Alison’s choice in a husband, but she didn’t appear to hold Charles at fault; with Victor, however, Charles often felt less like a son-in-law and more like a parolee.

  Eulalie inhaled deeply and looked upward. The wind was drawing a series of connected clouds across the sky: shape-shifting pull toys. “I believe that we are in for some rain tonight. It’s starting to feel like autumn already.” Charles helped her resecure her linen stole around her shoulders. “Where has the summer gone?”

  Up ahead, Victor and Alison had come to a stop. Alison was gesturing toward the house with a manic intensity, jabbing, pointing, slicing. Her stance was wide and lock-kneed; her spine rigid. It struck Charles that her body language was in exact opposition to Cody’s diffuse restlessness.

  “Tell me more about what this Indian doctor said,” Eulalie prompted, gazing into the contents of her martini glass as she swirled it rhythmically in a small circle.

  Before the evening began, Charles had been thoroughly coached by Alison as to their respective roles: she would handle her father, appealing to his practical side by laying out the contractor recommendations and stressing the fact that the proposed alterations to the house would increase its resale value; Charles would emphasize their concerns over Cody’s health with Eulalie—although Ali was emphatic that the word autism not be uttered.

  “Do you and Alison trust her opinion?” Eulalie asked.

  “Oh, yes. Absolutely.”

  Victor and Alison started walking again. Eulalie and Charles followed.

  As Charles began to recap the major points supporting a link between mycotoxicity and Cody’s mild developmental delays, he overheard fragments of Alison’s monologue: “… the floor will have to be entirely concreted … below forty percent humidity … Visqueen and additional venting … fogging versus pump spraying …” She was trying hard, Charles could tell, to sound knowledgeable and confident, but these efforts were being undermined—not only because she was carrying an unwieldy twenty-six-pound child, but because she was extremely nervous.

  “So the primary concern is mold and moisture,” Eulalie said, “is that right? And it’s mainly located in the crawlspace?”

  “Yes, but we’ve found problems in other parts of the house as well.”

  Eulalie clucked her tongue. “Victor is going to pitch a fit with the inspection company he hired before he offered on the house. He certainly won’t be doing business with them again. He’ll probably have a few choice words for the friends who recommended the company as well—good friends too …”

  Cody was growing more agitated—he’d started grunting, fidgeting, burrowing his head into Alison’s hair, forming a tangled nest; she was trying to restrain him against her hip with one arm while gesturing toward the house with the other.

  Charles wished he could help, but Cody had begun to express a fierce preference for his mother. Attempting to relieve Alison could result in one of the very meltdowns Eulalie had been spared. This was not the occasion to risk that.

  “This is an excellent martini, Charles. I might have to have one more before we open the wine. We brought red and white, by the way. I wasn’t sure of the menu …”

  Alison had made it a point of pride her enti
re adult life not to dip into the deep well of her parents’ wealth. My older brothers drank the Kool-Aid years ago, she wrote in a letter to Charles early in their courtship. Kendall and Grant graduated and went right into Dad’s law firm, they didn’t even try to get away, and poor Aidan—Dad’s just waiting for him to fail as a musician so he can say “I told you so.” We’re all expected to fail if we don’t do what my father thinks is best, which is basically to marry money in all its forms.

  I understand now why you’re attracted to me, Charles joked in reply.

  It’s weakened all of them, she wrote back. I will not let it weaken me. Once you give in, once you let wealth define who you are, you can’t go back.

  Eulalie was old money, Victor was new money. Charles was not privy to the details of their net worth—nor did he care to know—but his general assumption was that between them, they could subsidize a small country.

  “When does she plan on making the Big Ask?” Eulalie remarked. “After dessert?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, come on now, Charles. Don’t play innocent with me. I’ll be surprised if she hasn’t catered the entire meal and hired a master of ceremonies.”

  Eulalie was shrewd, that was certain; no emcee, but the feast awaiting them in the dining room—laid out on good china next to a lavish floral display—had indeed been prepared by a caterer recently featured in the New York Times as a Northwest regional best.

  “I wish someone would tell her that she doesn’t have to treat us like potential corporate sponsors,” Eulalie continued. “Lord knows we get enough of that from total strangers …”

  The five of them were curving around to the east side of the house. Alison was pointing out the aluminum windows, the place where a proposed drainage system would siphon water away from the house.

  “All this fuss, this strategizing … she really needn’t make it so complicated.” Eulalie downed the rest of her drink. “But that’s my daughter, always choosing the path of most resistance …”

  Up ahead, Alison shifted Cody to her left hip. She must have been getting tired.

  Immediately, Cody began to thrash against her in protestation, moaning and keening, shaking his head. His long hair—which Alison had gone to great pains to detangle and neaten into a ponytail before Victor and Eulalie arrived—came undone and fell around his face like a thatched roof, making him look even more feral.

  Victor reached for him, Cody’s screams intensified, and the three of them turned the corner and disappeared from sight—at which point, Eulalie gripped Charles’s arm with sudden firmness and came to a stop.

  “I have a confession to make,” she began. “I haven’t been entirely truthful. It is a fact that I’ve never witnessed one of Cody’s full-blown fits, but I’ve … sensed something, nothing I could put a finger on, just a feeling that things weren’t quite right …”

  Charles felt a sudden rigidity seize his chest; he was taken back to the day when he too began to sense something, a Saturday when Cody was about a year old.

  Alison was working that weekend, and the two of them were on their own. Charles had put Cody in his high chair for his morning snack. He had made the wonderful discovery that children would eat anything that was arranged to look like a face, and he’d improvised an especially inspired and colorful meal: a rice cake with spaghetti-squash hair, a necklace of peas and blueberries, apple-slice lips, elbow-macaroni earrings, cucumber-and-black-olive eyes, yam cheeks, and string-cheese eyebrows.

  He offered it up to Cody with a flourish.

  Here you go, buddy. Eat up!

  Cody stared at it, expressionless.

  Charles pointed. What’s this, Cody? Cody? What do we call this?

  Cody continued to stare; slowly, he opened and closed his mouth. He did this a few times, inhaling and exhaling with increasing panic: a beached guppy gasping for air.

  It’s okay, sweetheart, Charles said, stroking his head. These are eyes, right? Can you say eyes? And this is … This is the hair. See? Hair? And these are … ?

  Ears, Cody, Charles thought. Those are ears.

  His own breath had begun to quicken; it was as if Cody had never seen a face before. Yesterday he could say ears, eyes, mouth—all the parts of a face. He could say a lot of words, but that morning, he couldn’t find a single one of them.

  Cody started to weep, not cry, but weep, as if for all the world’s tragedies, all of life’s great irredeemable losses.

  What is it, Cody? Charles said, picking him up, but he thrashed against him and moaned, inconsolable. What’s wrong, little man?

  That was really when it started, the long, slow decline.

  Eulalie went on. “I didn’t feel that I could say anything, not with Alison being the way she is.” Eulalie grimaced; it was an unguarded, inelegant expression, the likes of which Charles had never seen on her. “That sounded unkind,” she added, “but you know what I mean.”

  Charles nodded, staring ahead into the darkening area between their house and the stand of trees that separated them from their neighbors to the east: Cody’s forest.

  Out of sight, presumably in the front yard, Cody was still wailing, but he sounded less distraught—almost certainly because Alison had relented and resituated him on the right side of her body. Their son’s desperate insistence that he be held on the right, never the left, was just one of many accumulating enigmas.

  “I’ve raised three boys,” Eulalie continued. “I’m a grandmother seven times over. I may not be good for much, and I’m no medical expert, but I’ve always been a keen observer—as, I believe, are you. Did you try to get Alison to see it?”

  “Eulalie …”

  “I love my daughter dearly,” Eulalie repeated, “but she has a tendency to let hope outlast the truth. I believe that in modern-day psychological terms, this would be known as denial.”

  Charles felt an urge to sprint away, to catch up to Alison and Cody, but Eulalie held him fast; her body seemed suddenly intractable, geologic in weight and density. He’d need a backhoe to move her off this spot and into the house.

  “You did say something, didn’t you? How long ago? How long have you known?” Eulalie’s voice had lost all its softness. “Never mind, you don’t have to answer that. I’m not asking you to indict yourself …” Her grip loosened. Charles felt her body drain of energy so quickly that he feared she might collapse.

  “What do you think is wrong with him, Eulalie?” he asked. “What’s happening?”

  Before she could answer, Cody exploded into view, rounding the corner of the house, completely transformed from the child they’d seen only moments before: joyful, laughing, anointed with garden soil and jam as all young children should be, bounding toward his grandmother looking like any other toddler who hates getting a haircut.

  There he is, Charles thought. There’s Cody.

  But on the heels of his relief and joy came another thought, because now there was this word, this ugly word, and Charles found himself suddenly seeing his son differently, judgmentally. There was, wasn’t there, something disorganized about his movements as he ran, something not quite right, and from there he thought, Yes, of course, I see it clearly now, Cody runs like that because he has autism instead of Cody runs that way because that’s the way Cody runs.

  “There he is!” Eulalie cried. “There’s my snuggle bunny!” She handed off her martini glass to Charles and sank into an open-armed crouch, instantly muddying the hem of her designer dress. “Hello, sweetheart! Hello, darling!” she cooed, just barely maintaining her balance as Cody collided with her. She hugged him fiercely and then set him at arm’s distance and regarded him with solemnity.

  “Eskimo kiss.” They touched noses.

  “Horse kiss.” They pressed their foreheads together.

  “Butterfly kiss.” They blinked against each other’s cheeks.

  Eulalie wrapped her arms around him and, with a strength that belied her small size, stood up and settled him in his preferred position. Gently, C
ody freed a few strands of hair from her chignon and began brushing them against his face.

  She started toting him back into the house. Stopping partway, she looked over her shoulder and added, “My opinion doesn’t matter, Charles. Not in the long run. It’s what you and Alison believe that’s important.”

  Charles remembered a remark Alison had made near the end of their first session with Dr. Gayathri; it had surprised him.

  I know what you’re thinking, Charles, I know, but we can’t be proud about asking for help, not anymore …

  The funny thing was, he hadn’t been thinking anything of the sort. Knowing how Alison felt about her parents’ wealth, he would never in a million years have suggested that they solicit their financial support in this way. This evening, the whole plan, every part of it: it was entirely Alison’s idea.

  •♦•

  Charles got up, stretched, and started another pot of coffee. While waiting, he decided to take a break from Seven Postcards and scan through the eighty-seven e-mails that had accumulated in his inbox over the past few days.

  He noticed a new message from Romy Bertleson (bertletheturtle@gmail.com), CC’d to Pam Hamilton and with the subject heading first photos!

  Hello Mr. M and Ms. H, i thought you’d like seeing some pictures from my first day at art without boundaries. thanks and see you soon, romy

  There were three attached JPEGs; Charles wondered if one of them would contain a picture of his son.

  But all the photos were of the same elderly woman. She was standing next to a tall young man (uniformed, likely a caregiver) on what looked like a church dais. The setting was puzzling until Charles remembered that Art Without Boundaries conducted classes at a Catholic church on Capitol Hill. The pictures had obviously been taken in quick succession; they formed a triptych, a pictorial narrative of some sort.