Daniel Isn't Talking

by Marti Leimbach

  ‘Mrs Marsh,’ he says, ‘we are qualified –’

  ‘Qualified by whom? For what? That’s my point. There are all these supposed experts around, but they don’t seem to be able to do anything to help the person who needs help, which is Daniel. What’s it mean to be an expert if you can’t make anything better? I mean, what are you getting paid for?’

  The doctors look at each other. Salt and Pepper, these two, standing beside each other like two dolls in their white coats.

  ‘I think we’re done here,’ I announce now, taking Daniel’s hand.

  But I can’t always be so tough. I fall apart in the silliest places – playgrounds, supermarkets. I think the supermarket is the worst. The only way to get Daniel through what is (for most people) an ordinary shopping trip is to give him a heap of sweets to keep him still in the trolley seat. If he doesn’t have the sweets he screams, undoes the flimsy seat belt, and tries to throw himself out apparently without any thought about the physical damage he’d suffer by doing so. He would succeed at throwing himself out, too, except I use my own belt, buckled snugly around his middle, to keep him in place. So when he tries to hurl himself over the rail he can’t get very far, although he does scream and look completely weird if not the victim of some kind of parental abuse. Comments from me to the other shoppers (‘This is just to keep him from falling’) only serve to make me look like a freak and exactly the sort of person who would make any child miserable enough to want to drop from a height onto his own head.

  There is an alternative, of course. I can chase him through the aisles as he speeds like a dervish, his hands reaching for whatever he might wish to investigate, to open, to eat, to smell. It means I won’t actually accomplish any shopping, or at least not much, and I will probably find myself with a fair bill to pay for items hurled from shelves as Daniel makes room for his feet so that he can climb up to the really good stuff.

  What I want is a third option, though I know this is just too ambitious, which is to let him have a little treat while seated in the trolley. One ice lolly, for example, or a few biscuits.

  I cannot see this working.

  Right now he is leaning toward the rows of chocolate biscuits, seeking with his nose the way a dog might, finding just the ones he wants and then pressing his face right against the packet, his eyes open, staring into the ballooned lettering, his lungs filling themselves with the smell of McVitie’s chocolate digestives. He seems to get immense pleasure from this, a sensual delight greater than I can understand. Even Emily watches him, her expression one of fascination. I suppose, like me, she seeks to discover what delight Daniel finds from this activity of sniffing and staring. And now he takes the packet into his arms and holds it in much the same way a child holds a teddy bear. Then he grabs another packet and tucks it under the opposite arm, his hands turned inward and across his chest, his elbows fanning out as though they are wings.

  I pick him up and place him into the trolley seat. He gives me no help whatsoever with this procedure. He won’t bend his knees or look down to where he needs to place his legs. All his concentration is focused on the biscuit packets. I push his thighs gently through the seat. Emily helps guide him in by pulling on his shoe until it comes off in her hands. Then she drops the shoe like it’s a live toad so that I have to retrieve it from the floor.

  And now comes my next choice. Do I let him have the whole packet of biscuits – and yes, I mean the entire packet as he is gnawing his way through one of them already – or do I bargain, try to get him to have just one or two of the biscuits?

  Today, I am going to bargain.

  I take an identical pack to the ones he is holding, thumb the red tab on the wrapper, lifting it gently, until part of a chocolate cookie is exposed. Because I am becoming attuned to the things that make Daniel unusual, set him apart, I notice the aroma of the cookies as he might, a mixture of flour and butter, sugar and chocolate. I inhale deeply and I have this strange feeling as though I’ve sucked all the flavour from the air leaving Daniel nothing for himself. But he doesn’t appear unhappy about it. Every ounce of concentration is focused on the shiny surface of chocolate that coats the cookie, the crumbs that linger on the wrapper. ‘Say cookie,’ I tell him.

  Emily throws her hand over her face. ‘They’re called biscuits, Mummy,’ she says.

  ‘OΚ, fine.’ Right, of course. They are called biscuits. How can I expect him to say ‘cookie’? How silly of me. I look at Daniel again. He is reaching for the biscuit, staring at my hand as though it is the grabber in one of those machines at amusement parks that pulls a random toy from a stack of others by means of a mechanical arm. He does not look at my face or appear to be estimating whether he can persuade me to relinquish the biscuit.

  ‘Biscuit,’ I say. But he seems to pay no attention whatsoever to my words. I just want him to try, to make an attempt, to give some sign that he wants to talk to me. But Daniel does nothing, says nothing. He reaches for the cookie and then kicks out because he cannot have it.

  ‘Biscuit,’ I whisper. Oh, why can’t he just try to say it? He strains against the seat belt in the trolley seat, leans over the bar. I take a step back and now he’s furious, kicking his legs, pushing the handle of the trolley with both hands while rocking his body back and forth. He’s crying so loudly that people are looking, which makes me a little panicky. I move the trolley along with one hand, holding the biscuit packet away with the other. One of the many bits of advice I read in parenting books when I was pregnant was that when a child is having a tantrum the best thing you can do is remove him from the scene. If you are outside, go indoors. If you are indoors, go outside. I can’t remember the logic of why this works, though it certainly seemed to work for Emily when she used to tantrum. She was always so interested in the world that moving her to a new spot within it commanded her attention. But Daniel doesn’t care that we’ve moved past biscuits and cakes, past sweets and crisps, and are now skirting the back of the store and turning toward the frozen-food section. His cheeks are red; his hair suddenly sweaty. There’s a heat coming from him that is almost as noticeable as the tremendous noise he makes, his eyes tearing, his fists pounding the trolley in a way that really must hurt. It pains me. By the time we reach the frozen vegetables, I am nearly crying myself.

  ‘This is Tantrum Sindy,’ says Emily.

  ‘Sindy?’ I try to smile. ‘Where did you learn that name?’

  ‘Sindy dolls. I want one,’ she says.

  ‘Of course,’ I say absently. My mind is racing. I keep trying to placate Daniel, And I keep asking myself why I try so hard. Isn’t it enough that I get around the shop without staring at all the other boys Daniel’s age, sitting in their seats or skipping along beside their mothers? Without watching them as they talk – pointing at the things they’d like to eat, asking questions about whether they can go to see the toys – envying them, sometimes dangerously close to crying out right there in public my own desperate desire to hear Daniel speak? Whenever Daniel produces even the most incomprehensible sound, I drink it in like someone who has crossed miles of desert with no water. I am desperate to hear him. I know what he’ll sound like – if he ever decides to talk at all. He’ll sound like all the other little boys I know. He’ll have the same squeaky, high-pitched voice that I hear all around me. And yet I am desperate for this voice. I am pleading with him now to please stop crying.

  ‘Have the biscuits,’ I say finally, stabbing through the packet with my thumbnail, spilling out dozens of disc shapes into his lap. He’s so delighted. Discs he can eat. He takes them in his hands without looking at me, stacks them neatly and licks the surface of each in turn as though instilling his own mark.

  ‘What about me?’ whines Emily.

  Emily! Of course! I grab a biscuit from where it rests on Daniel’s thigh, which is covered in crumbs now, and she makes a face like she might cry.

  ‘He licked it!’ she moans. So I grab another, and then the first one drops, breaking into pieces at my feet. Emily stare
s in horror, then looks up to Daniel to see if he’s noticed, to see if he’ll start to scream again. But he doesn’t scream – thank God – and Emily accepts the next biscuit I give her, though I think it may have been licked, too. Out of the corner of my eye I see other customers watching us. They may have been watching the whole time or maybe just this last bit, where I indulge what they imagine to be a spoilt child with all the biscuits he can hold. I stare back at them. I think, Damn you, you have no idea. Gradually, they turn away as I try to sweep up the broken biscuit with a tissue, stuffing it now into my coat pocket. Oh, this is pathetic. I just want to go home, but I cannot, because of course I have to pay for all this shopping, which means somehow I have to get through the queue. I can only hope I have enough biscuits to do so.

  And that is when a woman in a bright green coat walks up to me with a smile. She has a halo of greying hair, soft eyes behind thick plastic frames. She wears stylish earrings and lipstick but no other make-up. I am used to people making comments about my kids – or rather about Daniel – and I prepare myself for what she might say. I just wish I was in a better frame of mind to hear it. That I had some witty or insulting remark I could make back. But my throat is full of pepper and my eyes feel like they are boiling. I just want to run. If she’d get out of the way now I might do just that. But instead she stops before me and looks at Daniel, then me.

  ‘He’s lovely,’ she says.

  There’s a beat of silence between us. Her eyes lock with mine. I shake my head back and forth, feeling a pressure in my skull as though a dam is breaking.

  ‘He’s not lovely!’ I splutter. I am crying now, crying in front of this stranger, in front of the whole shop. People are looking, then turning away. ‘He’s not lovely at all!’

  ‘Mummy!’ says Emily, holding me around the thigh, her face tilted toward mine, puzzled. ‘You’re not crying,’ she says, and it is a statement not a question, as though she is calling it into being.

  ‘He reminds me of my boy,’ says the woman. She has a whispery voice, expressive eyes. She seems so desperate to tell me something. I have to listen, though really I’d rather she just left, too, like the other shoppers who have the good sense to abandon this aisle. She says, ‘You know, at McDonald’s he used to go around all the tables and take one bite – just one – out of every burger he could get his hands on. People just … well. I thought they’d kill us!’ She laughs now, steps closer to me. ‘And once he was having such a tantrum in the car that the police pulled us over because they thought he must be being abducted.’

  I rub my eyes on my collar, look up at the ceiling, at the signs that tell you the contents of aisles, at the long strips of overbright lights. My head is throbbing like a wound. I look at Daniel, who is getting increasingly upset because he cannot hold all the biscuits he insists on holding. Some are crumbling; some are falling to the floor.

  The lady says, ‘He wouldn’t go into a public lavatory. The hand dryers just threw him.’

  I nod, look down. I know what she is telling me.

  ‘I had to take my husband with me whenever we went into a public place, especially one with food!’ she says. ‘I think you are very brave.’

  She won’t use the word because she’s too nice. And she’s afraid of hurting me. So I say it instead. ‘Your son is autistic?’ I ask, knowing the answer already.

  She nods.

  ‘Can he talk?’ This feels to me the only thing that matters. That one day I will hear Daniel speak. I cannot tell you what it would do for me, just to have his words in my ears, the sound of his voice. If I could hear it, it would be music.

  ‘Talk? Oh, sweetheart,’ she says, looking a little sad for me, looking the way my mother used to when she wished she could cheer me up over some issue that upset me, but that she knew would come out all right. ‘Of course he can talk. And so will your little boy. He will talk.’

  My knees can barely hold me. Daniel is screaming again because too many of his disc-shaped biscuits have fallen now. He’s angry, throwing some down, picking others from his lap and trying to stack them. Emily is pulling at me, wanting me to pick her up. Can I hold her without falling over? I can barely keep myself from shaking. ‘How do you know?’ I say, rather harshly. I don’t want it to sound harsh, but it does. ‘How do you know he will talk?’

  This woman … oh, God, I hope she doesn’t walk away … she says, ‘Because your son is not as bad as you think. He’s really not so bad. I’ve seen a lot of them – not that I’m an expert, just a mother. Your boy will talk. And one day you’ll be able to take him in here and he won’t make a scene. All sorts of things will change for the better – you’ll see.’

  I nod, but I’m not sure I believe any of what she is saying. She writes her phone number on a bit of notepaper and I fold it carefully into the front pocket of my jeans. That’s where I keep every important thing that I don’t want to lose no matter what. My car keys are there, for example, my credit cards. And now her number. And her name, too. She is Iris, like the flower.

  8

  My father-in-law, Bernard, only cares about his own son, Daniel’s father, my husband, Stephen. Stephen is a man perfectly capable of talking, dressing himself, working, laughing at a joke, driving, attending parties, flirting, dancing. These are just a few of the things Stephen can do which Daniel cannot and may never do – but Bernard is worried about Stephen.

  ‘You do know your father is a git,’ I tell Stephen. He’s just returned from a day at his parents’ house trying to reassure Bernard that all is well, even though all is not well. All is more or less in the toilet.

  ‘What do you want me to do about it?’ he says unpleasantly. Then he plugs himself into his MP3 player and is away.

  Bernard believes, but does not say, that Daniel’s autism is in part a judgment from God. During the brief time Stephen and I lived together unmarried he used to lament that we were ‘living in sin’. One afternoon, at the age of seventy-six, Bernard drove to London to have lunch with Stephen in a restaurant near Stephen’s office. There, in the middle of a room full of business lunches, he took Stephen’s hands in his own and asked, almost tearfully, if living together meant we are were having ‘relations’. This was the bit he could not bear to imagine, that his thirty-year-old son was having sex with a woman to whom he was not wed. When Stephen admitted that yes, he was having sex with me, his father slumped on the table with the weight of this awful news.

  ‘What kind of perfect life has this man led that the thought of his grown son having sex is such a tragedy?’ I hollered, hearing Stephen’s account of the lunch. ‘In America, parents are relieved when their thirty-year-old son is having sex with a woman!’

  Anger. Outrage. Resentment, Stephen didn’t feel any of what I felt. He had in his mind the sad, tearful face of his elderly father, how he’d driven through the London traffic, how he’d taken his hand across the table.

  ‘It’s your fault,’ I told him, ‘for hiding five years of rampant, crazy sex – as in underwater-type crazy sex – with whatsername.’

  ‘Penelope,’ said Stephen.

  ‘I know her name! Why didn’t you tell him about her?’

  ‘What? Tell my father I was having sex with Penelope?’

  ‘Well, yes. When you came up for air, I mean.’

  This time Bernard is worried about Stephen because he thinks that Daniel will ruin Stephen’s life. He keeps saying, ‘To have a child like that is an awful thing.’ Being a relative newcomer to the world of parents of disabled children, I don’t yet have the exact parlance to describe how this remark offends me, but it does. Plus this issue of a judgment from God, which is not visited directly upon us but skirts along the edges of every conversation and report from Stephen’s family. Bernard is suffering with matters involving Christianity, morality, sins of the fathers, all that. And is very worried about Stephen … oh yes, and Daniel, too, although they keep saying Daniel will never ‘know’ so he’ll be happy. As though Daniel is not quite fully human or somethin
g. Meanwhile, I am supposed to be ‘supportive’ of Stephen’s parents.

  David calls and wants something – I don’t give him the opportunity to explain – but it has to do with ‘the family’, meaning himself, Stephen, Cath, Daphne and Bernard.

  ‘Look,’ I say, ‘I do understand and it isn’t that I don’t care about your dad,’ although frankly, I do not, ‘only that your dad isn’t my first priority right now.’

  David says nothing in reply, but then he might have been watching the football anyway. I certainly can hear it in the background. And I think he is a little in shock. Stephen’s parents have always been everybody’s first priority. I have no idea why.

  ‘Try to get Stephen to visit his dad,’ urges Tricia, wresting the phone from her husband, who apparently has been mesmerised by a pivotal moment in the game. ‘He’s going into another of his depressions.’

  So now the preoccupation for Stephen’s family is this: what will happen to Bernard if he gets depressed again. He is too old to take much more of this. He has a weak heart, a problem with circulation, with his lungs, with sleep, with getting through the day.

  ‘Well, me too,’ I say to Tricia.

  ‘Yes, but you’re young,’ she says.

  ‘And what about Daniel? Doesn’t anyone care about him?’

  ‘They all do. They are grieving.’

  But I don’t quite see it that way. Daphne, who is caught up with small issues like how to get her hair just right or keep her ugly carpet from staining, regards more obvious, larger problems in life with considerably less concern. She calls, looking for Stephen, and then tries to find something to say to me, whom she regards as a kind of unfortunate fact of Stephen’s life, the way the mothers of teenage sons regard such intrusions as pop music and big muddy trainers that lie ponging in the hallway. She tells me now she knows the diagnosis is bleak, but isn’t it ‘marvellous’ that nowadays they have such lovely homes for children like Daniel. And they can do such wonderful things.