In a Different Key

by John Donvan

  Discussions erupted on the forums of Wrong Planet. One thread, entitled “DSM-5 is taking away our identity,” laid out one of the key fears heard in the Asperger’s community. The opening post argued that the merging of Asperger’s syndrome with autism “would do great damage to the small amount of Asperger’s awareness we have worked our A$$es off for in the past fifteen years. Autism has many negative connotations, which are not exactly unwarranted, but to be lumped into such a broad group will set us back 20 years.”

  A second concern raised by the new definition appeared in a New York Times headline in early 2012: “New Definition of Autism Will Exclude Many, Study Suggests.” This touched off a whole new furor. At Yale, three researchers, including Fred Volkmar, had run some old case data through the parameters set by the proposed new definition. Their results showed that of all those in a 1993 group who had been given any of the four soon-to-be-obsolete autism diagnoses, almost 40 percent would now not qualify for the new DSM-5 autism category. Fear spread throughout the autism community that, under the new definition, people would lose their access to government services and support.

  Responding to the panic, the DSM working group itself issued assurances that the risk of people losing their diagnoses was an overblown concern, and that the new definition could well include people whose autism had been overlooked in the past. Before long, studies appeared supporting this prediction.

  Interestingly, some of the posters at Wrong Planet made the same argument. And Ari Ne’eman began writing papers proposing that an all-in-one diagnosis should appeal to people on the spectrum because it in fact recognized the validity of the spectrum, which was a concept the neurodiversity movement cherished. Ne’eman and UCLA’s Steven Kapp coauthored a paper that praised the reconceived disorder as “a positive development both from the standpoint of expanding access to service provisions and as a means of showing fidelity to the research literature.” As a philosophical matter, as well, Ne’eman favored the erasure of division of the autism population into so-called high-functioning and low-functioning groups, which the neurodiversity movement saw as a false division based on “neurotypical” dictates of what constituted “functioning” in the first place.

  In the end, after six years of tweaking the definition of autism based on continuing research, the working group and the editors of DSM-5 approved Autistic Spectrum Disorder—the new, all-encompassing definition of autism, which became effective in May 2013. Asperger’s syndrome was gone, although, in the words of Francesca Happé, another member of the working group, it had made a valuable contribution while it lasted. “Asperger disorder…did a great service in raising awareness that some people on the autism spectrum have high IQ and good language,” Happé wrote. But with that purpose served, it was also time, as Lorna Wing had been arguing for decades, that autism—whatever it was, however many ways it manifested—be recognized as something that existed across a spectrum.

  At last, that was the triumphant idea.

  For the time being.

  —

  THAT IS PROBABLY autism’s single certainty: that the story is far from over. The mystery remains complex. Attempts to investigate its nature continue to bring new questions to the surface. The boundary lines set by professionals can, and should be expected to, move yet again.

  In that uncertainty lies much of the explanation for why, over a span of eighty years, the story of autism has been so uniquely riven with division and dispute. The concept’s inherent elusiveness, the vagueness in how it has been described, and the variety in how it presents itself—to a degree that hints at infinity—has meant that anyone could say anything about autism, and eventually probably would. This effect was seen repeatedly, in the latching on to the word “autism” by all manner of theories, therapies, claims, interpretations, and controversies—from the scientific to the social to the legal to the nearly religious.

  While only some of this helped shed light on what autism is, all of it served as a mirror for the societies that recognized autism as something real. Not everything revealed in that mirror was flattering: not the blaming that autism inspired, or the vituperation, or the exploitation, or the grandstanding, or the outright and sometimes willful neglect of the vulnerable.

  At the same time, however, that mirror showed how, in the search for treatments and services, for recognition and understanding, some good and admirable qualities came into play over the decades, on the part of many people. They demonstrated talents for organization, self-sacrifice, the expansion of knowledge through solid science, and for channeling love into pure, inexhaustible energy. This was most true of parental love. To be sure, that love could run awry at times, and be fierce to a fault, but it was one element in the whole long saga that was always, unquestionably, pure.

  Indeed, the fact is that even with all the contentiousness attached to the word “autism,” the momentum pushing all the argument has also, over time, pushed all the societies that have tried to deal with autism in the most commendable direction, which is toward ever greater recognition of the dignity of individuals who are different by virtue of fitting the label in some way. It is this interpretation of autism that has come to be shared by the bitterest foes and the most casual bystanders: that having autism—being autistic—represents but one more wrinkle in the fabric of humanity, and that no one among us is living a life “unwrinkled.”

  46

  A HAPPY MAN

  In September 2013, Donald Triplett’s friends and family took over an art gallery in Forest, Mississippi, to throw him a party. Everyone in the room was from town, and pretty much all the guests had known him most of their lives. Three years earlier, an article in The Atlantic had told the story of his role in the early history of autism—something most of them had not heard before. It added a mild luster of celebrity to their well-loved neighbor, of whom they were also proud. More than one hundred people showed up that day, including many of Forest’s business and political notables. There was wine and cheese, toasts in Donald’s honor, a cake with eighty candles, and a boisterous rendition of “Happy Birthday.”

  It had been Mary Triplett’s most heartfelt wish that life would turn out well for her baffling, complicated son.

  That wish came true in almost every way his mother had hoped for, the local boy made good.

  —

  DONALD LEARNED HOW to drive when he was twenty-seven, in 1960. After that, the road was his whenever he wanted.

  It was Mary who handed Donald the car keys that September. He was living with both his parents then, in the house that would be his home for the rest of his life. His younger brother, Oliver, had left for college four years earlier, and then gone to law school at Ole Miss. Within two years, Oliver would marry and start a family.

  The Ford Fairlane, a big boat of a car, was parked as always beneath the tall tree that shaded the gravel driveway just off the side entrance to the house. Mary took on the role of driving instructor. It made sense; she had been Donald’s teacher for so many years now. With the engine off, she talked him through it: how to adjust the mirrors, where to place his hands on the steering wheel, how the brake and accelerator worked. Then she told him to put the key into the ignition and turn it.

  No doubt, when the Ford hopped alive, Donald tensed a bit, and his hands slid toward the top of the steering wheel, pulling him forward so that his chin almost touched it. From then on, that would be his preferred pose in the driver’s seat. His mother had instructed him to let up on the gas with his right foot and use the same foot for braking, but Donald didn’t get that part right. As the car moved slowly away from the house and out toward the paved road, he was using both feet, left on the brake, right on the gas. It was a little rough, as the car jolted forward in small surges and hiccups. But it worked well enough that Donald could never be talked out of it. He would remain a two-footed pedal man for the rest of his driving life.

  That first day, though, he was still a tentative driving student turning onto the road for the first tim
e. Maybe it occurred then to Mary that this was the same road she had obsessively worried about throughout Donald’s early childhood, fearing that he would run out into it and get himself killed. That was back when her little boy seemed incapable of recognizing danger. But this was one of many things about Donald that had changed. Once she had thought him hopelessly insane, lost to the world. But as the pair of them advanced in fits and starts up and down the road between the pines, she realized how incredibly far he had come.

  —

  BACK IN 1953, as he finished high school, Donald had scrawled that one-sentence note to himself beside his picture in the yearbook: “I wish myself luck.” At the time, luck was already rolling his way, setting the tone for the next several decades of his life. A pattern was already in place. One after another, he met the milestones of growing up—finishing high school, going to college, starting a job, learning to drive. To be sure, he did all these things “behind schedule,” often years after his peers. But with help from others, he kept on hitting the marks, in his own way and in his own time.

  —

  JOHN RUSHING, the teenage football star who had been one of Donald’s protectors at Forest High School, was home packing for college in the late summer of 1953 when the phone rang. It was Beamon Triplett, offering him a ride with the Tripletts when they drove Donald to college in a few days. Both Donald and John were starting at East Central Community College, about forty minutes by car from Forest. Beamon also asked a favor. It would mean a great deal to the family, he said, if Rushing could keep an eye out for Donald at school. Rushing was a little taken aback, honored to be confided in by one of the most important men in town. He accepted the ride and the role, giving Beamon his word that he would allow no harm to come Donald’s way.

  In fact, Donald and East Central clicked so well that Rushing’s unofficial guardianship was never put to the test. This might have had something to do with Donald’s new, unbridled enthusiasm for joining clubs. During his two years at East Central, a more socially engaged side of Donald began to emerge as he packed his days and weekends outside the classrooms with group activity. According to the school yearbook, Donald was treasurer of his freshman class, song leader of the Young Men’s Christian Association, member of the Student Christian Association, member of the Drama Club—and that was only half the list. He was earning mediocre grades—mostly B’s and C’s—but his social life was exploding.

  Yet he retained all his quirks: not looking people in the eye, an odd way of walking, abrupt exits from conversations—if they could even be called conversations. He began every utterance with the two-syllable warm-up “Uh, uh—” followed with a single sentence, at most two, and then lapsed into silence. If he was ever curious to know the thoughts or feelings of the person trying to speak with him, he never let it show in a conventional way. He wrote his mother often from East Central, sharing details of activities like coursework or shopping, but never about what he was thinking or feeling.

  Donald still had autism. His fellow students at East Central were reminded of that during a pep rally held before a key game against a longtime basketball rival. As the cheers and speeches went on, the crowd chanted for Donald to be summoned from the stands and onto the gym floor, where he was handed a microphone and asked to predict the outcome.

  “Uh, uh! I think East Central will lose that game!” Donald declared, literal-minded and truthful to a fault.

  This produced a stunned silence, followed immediately by an explosion of booing and catcalls. The reaction threw Donald off balance. He understood what booing signified, but he did not grasp what he had done to provoke it—it had to be explained to him. The razzing was, in fact, good-natured, but Donald was unable to tell that he was still liked by the people in the stands—that they understood that he was different, and that they accepted him.

  —

  ON A FRIDAY NIGHT in September 1955, close to the dinner hour, the brothers of Alpha Lambda Chi—a fraternity at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi—gathered in their redbrick chapter house to perform a solemn ritual. Clean-cut and conservatively attired, the young men worked down a list of fifty-four Millsaps men seeking to join their exclusive membership. That night, the brothers were generous in their judgments. Only four men were turned away. Fifty were invited to join. One of them was Donald, who was then a twenty-two-year-old junior.

  Donald’s years at Millsaps College were one of the best things to happen in his life. As with everything else, he ambled into this phase belatedly. At twenty-two, most students have already graduated or soon will. But Donald had only just arrived at Millsaps, after two years at East Central Community College, where he earned his associate degree in liberal arts. At Millsaps, his grades were again middling, but his social understanding continued to flourish, enhanced by his fraternity brothers’ willingness to roll with his oddities. He was befriended by a nineteen-year-old named Brister Ware, a freshman from Jackson who came from a family of doctors and had an instinct for protecting vulnerable people. When he met Donald, Ware saw a decent, guileless, honest young man who could perhaps use some help in parts of his life where his skills were poorly developed. He was concerned that Donald’s speech, perpetually flat-toned and stiff, might prove a detriment to his success, and he began pushing his friend to pump more variety and energy into his conversation. He tried to teach him bits of slang. And when he learned that no one had ever taught Donald to swim, he hauled him to the nearby Pearl River, where for forty-five minutes they floundered through the muddy water. This effort flopped; Donald was too uncoordinated to get the hang of it. But Ware kept looking for other ways to help Donald. This was not charity, at least not in Ware’s eyes. He felt grateful to have Donald as a friend.

  While at Millsaps, Donald once again moved at his own slower pace, taking three years to graduate instead of two. He majored in French, an ironic choice given his inability to hold a true conversation. He survived in part by scoring well on the vocabulary portion of his exams, where he could count on rote memory to get himself through.

  In November 1955, a school dance appeared on the calendar, and Donald wrote his mother about going out to buy a tuxedo “and things that go along with it.” In the same note, he informed her, “The Lambda Chis are expected to bring dates, so I will be taking some girl.”

  Donald did not sound enthusiastic about the prospect. Whether that date ever took place is unknown; Donald did not write to his mother about it. But it was known that Donald did not have a girlfriend while at college or afterward. Well into his twenties and thirties, his deepest relationship with a woman—with anyone—continued to be the one he had with his mother. Mary seemed unperturbed by this. She reported in a letter around this time: “He takes very little part in social conversation, and shows no interest in the opposite sex.”

  Donald’s family had close ties to Millsaps College. Beamon was a star graduate, and president of the alumni association while Donald was a student there. And the college’s founder, a Major Millsaps, was once business partners with Mary’s grandfather. That may or may not have facilitated Donald’s admission to the school, especially with the less-than-stellar grades he’d earned at East Central. However, his family connections were unambiguously helpful in securing a job for him after graduation. Donald returned to Forest, where he went to work as a teller in the family-owned bank.

  Donald’s mother and father were committed to securing their son a place in the world, and the family business was the vehicle for doing so. He was allowed to make mistakes—more than any other employee—and some were notorious. When handling customer phone calls, he had been known to put the phone down on a counter while the customer was still talking and walk away to work on some other task. For a while, he also fell into greeting bank customers by their account numbers, which, for some people, was off-putting. Over the years, as one job or another proved too much for him, he found himself doing more clerical work, which required less face-to-face interaction with customers. As long as the Tripletts c
ontrolled the bank, no matter how erratic his performance, Donald had lifelong tenure.

  Thus ensconced in work, his family, and the bedroom he had known since childhood, Donald moved through life protected from the hardships faced by so many other people with autism. In 1956, he discovered golf and became somewhat obsessed. Throughout the 1960s, the 1970s, and on into middle age and then late middle age, it was a given that, whenever Donald was in town, there was only one place to find him in the afternoon. Golf was a lifelong pleasure he could never explain in words.

  Donald was a sight to see on the golf course of the Forest Country Club, noticeable even from the rockers on the clubhouse porch. His stroke was stodgy, stiff, and awkward, but it was consistent, highly choreographed, and entirely his own. It began with his thumbs. While standing a little too far from the ball, his legs in a wide A-frame, Donald would lick the pad of each thumb in turn—first right, then left—before taking his full grip on the club handle. That done, he would lift the club entirely over his head, until he had his arms nearly straight up in the air, like someone holding a sign on a pole. He would hold that pose a moment and then commence a full rehearsal of the downstroke, heaving the club head in an arc back to earth until it landed between his feet, in the general vicinity of the ball. After a beat, he would yank the club back up into the pole position, pause, and then bring it down again—just as before, only faster this time. Then a third round of up and down. At this point, with the club head approaching full swing velocity, he would inch forward, his eyes fixed on the ball, his body bending toward it, his wrists rolling the right way. When he finally made contact, Donald could almost always get a good crisp thwack! out of it as the ball took off, generally in the right direction.