by Drew Perry
He’s glued flags and rocks to a torn windbreaker he found at the Goodwill. He’s carrying a Molotov cocktail that he’s using as a real cocktail, is drinking out of it. “Sectarian Violence,” he says. He’s proud of it.
Easy enough after that. Dinners at her place, mostly, a green garage apartment behind one of the Victorians, a tiny, rickety deck off the back of it. And they take the dogs to the lake: Yul Brynner, who she loves immediately, and Austria, hers, an ancient German Shepherd. White around the muzzle and all the way back to her ears. Yul Brynner will run off, disappear for half an hour at a time. Aus stays glued to Beth. You don’t worry when he’s gone like that? she asks him. Jack says he’s gotten used to it, but he worries every time. Why art history? he wants to know, over glasses of wine, over chicken casserole, over coffee in the mornings. I don’t know, she tells him. I just love it. I don’t think I could imagine doing anything else. Jack’s been starting to worry that he might not feel that way about his own work: He likes history in his own way, likes the Viaduct still, but he’s half-ready to admit to himself that all that’s mainly owing to the fact that he’s good at it. That it’s maybe more like a hobby for him. He’s not sure any more that he loves it the way his classmates seem to, knows he’s probably supposed to. He can imagine doing something else. He just doesn’t have any idea what that might be.
Beth is steady, she’s funny, she’s not crazy. He’s comfortable. He’s happy. Austria dies, thirteen years old, and they bury her at the lake. Jack moves into the garage apartment. They get married in her parents’ back yard in Knoxville. Dr. Dunst gives them a first edition Rivers, Aquifers and Watersheds of the Southern Appalachians, leather-bound.
Beth finishes her dissertation and applies for a job at Kinnett that fall just to see what happens, because it’d be perfect for a couple of years. You could still drive in to Chapel Hill. We’d have enough money to live. You’ll finish up and we’ll both apply for jobs for real. They didn’t think she’d get it, and then she did. Burlington, North Carolina. Maybe forty-five minutes west of Chapel Hill, an old mill town, dying since the early eighties because all the socks and pillowcases get made in China now. And Kinnett’s not even in Burlington. It’s in Kinnett College, North Carolina, which sits right next to Burlington. There’s a town hall and a fire station and a little run of storefronts, all owned by the college. And there is the college itself, immaculately landscaped— botanical labels on every tree, flower gardens anywhere possible. Beth scores Jack an adjunct gig and they move, rent a plain brick box of a house on the west side of Burlington, close enough to bike to campus. A couple of miles. Beth is the second of two art historians. Rena’s the other one, and they’re joined at the hip right from the start. Rena invites them over for dinner, and soon enough it’s every couple of weeks all fall, all year, all the time. Rena and Beth and Jack and Rena’s boyfriend, Canavan. They sit up late into the night yelling at each other about Kinnett politics and general politics and eventually Canavan the tree surgeon will work himself toward some kind of proclamation about whether or not Bradford Pears are too fragile for landscaping, or about how to cure green wood. It becomes, simply enough, a life.
Jack teaches the freshman core classes. It’s easy, teaching—at least the rhythm of it is, comfortable, back to work in the fall, summer vacation right as you get too tired to do it one more day. And he likes the crazy GenHum courses, basically the history of everything. Art and culture and geopolitics. What amounts to an excuse to roll in there and go for an hour and a half about whatever’s happening in the world. Floods. Gaza. High-fructose corn syrup. He gets approval from Chapel Hill to postpone his dissertation hours. He has six years, they tell him. Finish when you want to. Dunst tells him it’s a solid first job, says it’ll be good for him. Take it where you can get it, Lang, believe you me. Write your bridge book when they fire you. By now he’s fully afraid he’ll never write his bridge book, that he might not have it in him. So he takes it where he can get it. He teaches.
The year Beth is pregnant with Hendrick he starts going to Rookie League Burlington Indians games with Canavan. He’s a little in love with Canavan, because they all are, and for Jack it’s because Canavan’s plenty smart enough, but has no real time for all the bullshit that comes with being smart. At least not how it goes over at The College, anyway. That’s what Canavan calls it. The College. Now I don’t know how y’all would do it over at The College, he says, and then he’ll go on to explain how half of them over there wouldn’t even know how to fire up their own weedeaters without some kind of panel discussion on the ontology of the string pull. Canavan’s probably the only person Jack knows well outside of school, outside of the academy, someone who never says pedagogy or learning strategies or goals and objectives. He’s someone who just wants to go to ball games with him. Rena and Beth come along once or twice, but it’s mainly Jack and Canavan, cheap beer, cheap hotdogs, bad baseball. Games end up 12–10. Errors everywhere. Most games, a woman who’s got season tickets right above the visiting dugout gets up and sings along with “Green Acres” when they play it over the loudspeakers. Top of her lungs. The visiting team looks up at her and stares. The crowd cheers while she belts it out: Darling I love you but give me Park Avenue. Jack and Canavan give her a standing ovation every time.
When Hendrick is born, it’s Rena and Canavan who come to the hospital in Greensboro, who are the first people who aren’t Jack’s parents or Beth’s mother to see Beth. No one sees the baby, not yet. He’s four weeks premature, is whisked off to the ICU immediately, the doctors serious and frowning but saying Don’t worry, it’s just a precaution, we’ll bring him back, we’ll bring him right back. It is hours before they bring him back, and when they do, he’s in a little glass case, tubes running into and out of it. He had some trouble breathing, but he’s doing fine now, breathing on his own. In his glass case, Hen looks like something from a museum, or something for sale—a leg of lamb, a bolt of cloth. His hands and feet are blue, and this is what Jack focuses on, keeps asking the nurses if his hands will be that way forever. That’s perfectly normal, they tell him. The more honest ones say It’s really nothing to be concerned about, this sometimes happens, he should be better later tonight or tomorrow. Rena and Canavan wait until the doctors say they can come back to see the baby, see Hendrick, named for Beth’s grandmother, her maiden name. They tell Beth he’s beautiful. Jack realizes as Rena says it that he hasn’t said it yet, apologizes again and again after they’re gone. I just forgot. I’m sorry. In all of that, I forgot.
Rena and Canavan are also the first people who aren’t Jack’s parents or Beth’s mom to come to the house after Hendrick comes home. They arrive with groceries, cook the meal, clean up when they’re finished. Jack has not once in his life imagined that he could be this tired, that he could feel like this and still walk through his day. The four of them sit quietly in the living room, watch Hendrick sleep on a blanket on the sofa. It’s mid-August. School starts in two weeks and Beth’s off for the semester, maternity leave. Jack can’t quite conceive of going back to school, but in a way, he needs it, needs something predictable in his life. Lectures, papers, tests. A knowable pattern.
In the evenings, he’ll go in there and watch Hen sleep. He can’t wrap his head around the notion of having another person in the house. They have made him. Three years ago he was standing on a porch in Chapel Hill drinking beers with sixteen other grad students. Now he’s a father, for Christ’s sake. The two mandatory parenting classes at the hospital were nowhere near enough. Don’t shake the baby. Don’t bathe him in scalding water. OK. But then what? Does he start saving all his quarters to pay for college? Is the house big enough? Do they have enough rooms? What do babies eat once they stop nursing? He stands in the baby food aisle at the grocery and looks at all the jars lined up like paint chips. Peas and Carrots. Prunes. Pears. Right next to all that, the diapers. He puts Hendrick in the papoose carrier and leashes up Yul Brynner and walks them both around the neighborhood, explaining what he
knows to Hendrick, suburban sprawl and watersheds and cul-desacs and bridges and why kitchens in postwar homes are so tiny, how we thought we’d never cook again, how everything would come frozen, how we had defeated food.
All fall, Canavan comes over with burgers to throw on the grill, and he and Jack watch the end of the baseball season, the playoffs, the World Series. Hendrick, two months old, three, generally falls asleep for good by the second inning, either in his little motorized swing or in a folding crib Jack keeps behind the sofa. Beth gets to go to bed, and Jack does the night feeding. Hen’s already, for the most part, sleeping through the night. Jack and Canavan cheer for both teams, cheer for the Series to run on longer, talk about the infield fly rule, four-seam fastballs, the Texas steal. About the women in Jack’s classes, about how Canavan drives through the college between tree jobs just to see the girls walking the sidewalks. Every other weekend or so, the four of them—the five of them—have dinner. Jack’s classes go fine. Hendrick slowly catches up to most of the benchmarks in the baby books. Eye contact. Smiles when talked to. Responds to his name. Jack turns in his grades and he and Beth get their spring schedules worked out to where she’ll teach mornings, he’ll teach afternoons. Someone always home with Hen. No day care. They can’t afford it, anyway. Christmas with his parents in Atlanta, New Year’s back home, eight-dollar champagne, the two of them trying to stay up long enough to watch Dick Clark make the ball drop in New York. Spring semester, summer, Hen’s first birthday: There’s a sheet cake Beth cuts into the rough shape of a dog, ices to look like Yul Brynner. Photos of Yul Brynner with his own piece, icing all over his face, photos of Yul Brynner and Hendrick looking like long-lost brothers.
When does it happen? It’s another World Series, so it’s October, just into November. On television, the pitchers blow into their cupped hands to keep them warm. Hen’s almost sixteen months old. He gets quieter, at first, seems a little withdrawn. Like he’s maybe considering something. Then he quits trying to talk. For a week he doesn’t make any noise at all, doesn’t acknowledge their presence, even, except to watch them. He stops making facial expressions. Jack and Beth take him to a restaurant, get him into a high chair. This is new, taking him out, but because he’s so damn still, they can. In his high chair, he doesn’t move, does not fuss or complain. He slumps down a little and ignores the beads that slide across the bar in front of him. He doesn’t chew his blanket. Your son is so well behaved, the waitress says. He’s so serious. Jack thanks her. Another half-week goes by, and then there’s one long Wednesday where he does make noise again, finally, but he makes all of it, all at once, everything he’s been saving up. He screams for hours. No tears. Just noise. They’re worried he can’t breathe, or that he won’t. His face goes red, the skin of his arms hot and dry to the touch. Now they’ve got to ask somebody. Now they’ve got to take him in. On the phone, when he calls to make the appointment, Jack describes the symptoms. First he was quiet. Now we can’t get him to stop screaming. They get an appointment for that day.
The week collapses into a cycle of appointments. It’s cold out, Carolina late fall, everything gray and brown. Could still be nothing, that first doctor says. Could still be nothing. But even in the way he says it, there’s an undertow. Still. Could still. The second doctor, Dr. Kriedle, draws blood, does some reflex tests. She picks him up and holds him upside down, and he curls up, a shrimp. Look at that, Beth says. No, Dr. Kriedle says. That’s not right. He should be hanging down. Like a pendulum. She sends them on to another doctor, the one who tells them it could be anything, everything, asks them to sit down, says, I want you to hear me out and ask questions whenever you like, says late onset and spectrum disorder and it’s too early to tell and regular intensive therapies. They sit there and look at her and Jack says, I have to finish classes. I have to give finals in a month. We’re going to Beth’s mother’s for Thanksgiving. They go back to Dr. Kriedle, and she says, I don’t think we’re talking about institutionalization here. But this is the long haul. Jack remembers that so clearly, remembers the way her mouth looked when she said long haul.
After that appointment, Jack drops Beth and Hen off at home, goes to the bookstore, gets the clear feeling that he’s falling through himself. He buys every book they have on the subject—The Autistic Child. Boy in a Box. My Life with Samuel. The man working the register looks at him like he’s buying books about autistic children. They get pamphlets from the doctors, get support group flyers in the mail. Jack reads everything he can find. Autistic children are usually boys. Autism can strike anywhere between birth and six years. These children often have little sense of themselves. Our Christopher was a gift from God. Sensitivity to light. To loud noises. To sudden movement. The autistic child has little understanding of his body in space.
The autistic child has little to no object permanence. Jack had to look that up. He bought a medical dictionary, made space for it on the shelf in the den. Object permanence: Remembering something exists after it’s removed from one’s field of vision. Jack wonders if he himself has any object permanence. What now, what next? Doctors. Endlessly. Diets and physical therapy—Hendrick’s stopped moving himself around, stopped doing much of anything. Forget about benchmarks: He’s just quit. They get a huge canvas beach ball from Dr. Kriedle, roll him around on it, trying to teach him balance. When he does sit up again, he’s six months behind. And when language comes back—he’s two and a half, so it’s another full year, a bizarrely silent year—it’s the complete text of a News-week article on the decline of Amtrak. Beth and Jack are standing in the kitchen, grazing in the fridge for leftovers, for anything they can cobble together for a late dinner, and Hendrick, clear as anything, says George Santos, regional line manager for Amtrak, notes that rider-ship is down, and that he’s not sure how to get it back. Safety violations pose a problem, too. Beth and Jack sneak into the room behind him, just out of his line of sight, and listen to him. He’s been playing with books, with newspapers, but they had no idea he could read. At two and a half, he can read. But it’s not even that: These are the first words of any kind he’s strung together in almost a year, the first time he’s done anything, really, besides point at what he wants—Pop-Tarts, pretzels—and grunt. It is like someone has plugged him back in, but to the wrong socket.
The therapist—at least their seventh or eighth—tells them the only way they’ll be able to potty-train him is to sit there with him, to literally move him into the bathroom except for sleeping. They’ll try anything: Hen has taken to smearing his shit across the walls of his room. It takes the better part of two weeks. It’s March. Jack sets the little TV up in there and sits on the edge of the tub, Hen on the toilet, and they watch spring training games on cable. On St. Patrick’s Day, all the teams wear green versions of their uniforms, and Hendrick loves that. He repeats, word-for-word, the commercials, what the announcers say. He’s a faucet turned on, an open valve. Jim, I’ll tell you, if this kid can get that circle change figured out, he’ll make this club. And not just make it. He’ll be a contributor. The way he’s able to get hold of words. Holy hell. They watch the games and every fifteen minutes or so they go through the flashcards the therapist gave them, these insane squatting stick figures pissing and shitting. This is Jack’s life now—to somehow supply for Hendrick the notion that his ass is part of his body, too.
Once they do get him potty-trained, he spends forever in the bathroom. He’ll go in, forget why he’s there, and read or spin the toilet paper roll and just disappear. The first few times, Jack jimmied the lock with a coat hanger, found him sitting there. He wasn’t drowning, wasn’t having seizures. He was just sitting there, happy as he ever got. Now they’ll stand at the door, call in to him. Hen, buddy, are you alright? What are you doing in there? Silence at first, and then, if they’re lucky, one time out of five, or ten, he’ll say, I am making a poop. What makes him respond sometimes and not others, they don’t know. They never know. None of the books know. Most often he just picks up mid-sentence in whatever
he’s reading. Like they’ve switched on the audio feed. We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.
That spring, the spring Hen is almost three, Jack’s teaching two sections of GenHum II. His third class, a gift from his chair, is a 300-level seminar on westward expansion. The Donner Party. Custer. Bloody Kansas. The Golden Spike. It is not a generally pretty history, and this freaks the kids out. Any criticism of anything is unpatriotic, is un-American. No, he tells them. It isn’t. We did do these things. He works them through how anyone who fails to understand history etcetera, and their eyes roll back in their heads, their ball caps come further down. But he’s got a few smart ones in there, kids he likes, a little group of eight or ten juniors and seniors who do the readings, ask good questions, hold the class together. Kids who don’t need PowerPoint slides of everything, kids who seem to believe in actual books with actual pages. It’s those kids who stay after class, who email him, who ask him about Beth, about his life. So you and the other Professor Lang are married. The girls want to see pictures of Hendrick, of Yul Brynner. It’s those kids who invite him out for beers that May, after they hand in their final papers, and he goes, asking each of them if they’re old enough. They are, or they lie to him, and it doesn’t matter, really. Why shouldn’t he go? They end up at a place far enough off campus to where he’s reasonably sure he won’t be seen by that many people anyway, a little pizza and beer place in Burlington. Gubbio’s. They drink a few pitchers around, eat pizza, ask Jack questions about his weekends, his house, where he went to school. He’s a zoo animal to them. Teacher in the wild. They’re trying to get hold of him as an actual person with an actual life, as someone who does not simply materialize in front of them every Tuesday and Thursday at 2:10. He is a person who has a vegetable garden. They have never even thought about growing such a thing as a zucchini. This is what their parents do. But he’s still young enough to seem like one of them, or for them to think he is, or could be. They probe. He does not tell them much about Hendrick, doesn’t tell them he’s autistic. That belongs to him. That is what he doesn’t share.