by Condition
2. The evening of the Ruxton faculty holiday gathering, Penny had emerged from their bedroom in a dress cut down to her navel, revealing a third of each breast; they had swollen to the size of grapefruits during her second pregnancy and had never returned to their original dimensions. When Scott wondered aloud if a skirt and sweater wouldn't be more appropriate, she had told him to go fuck himself. He had gone to the party alone.
"I couldn't believe the way you sucked up to her," Penny said now. "I know how it is. I'm an educator too."
He winced at her gruff imitation of his voice, aware, on some level, that he had mocked her first. The dull churlishness of their fights depressed and mortified him. He felt strongly that marital spats should display some esprit: some brittle cleverness, some Edward Albee-like theatricality. His parents had fought brilliantly, though his mother had often resorted to tears in the end. Penny, luckily, was not a crier; but neither did she engage in clever repartee. Together they sounded like children on a playground.
"I was trying to show some empathy," he said."Sow a little goodwill. It was working too until you opened your mouth."
"It was working?" She spat out the word like a knot of phlegm.
"What do you mean, 'working'? She wants to put our son on drugs!"
"Since when are you so righteous about drugs?"
He had her there. The early years of their marriage had been an out-and-out potfest. Recently, out of concern for Scott's urine—Ruxton teachers were subject to random drug testing—she had instituted a strict zero-tolerance policy in the house, but they were both prone to lapses.
"Scotty, we're talking about Ritalin. That's gnarly stuff."
With the reverence of a former surfer, Penny reserved the term gnarly for the truly atrocious: ritual killings, self-immolations and child torture, the lurid subject matter of Faces of Evil, a tabloid TV show she watched every evening while preparing dinner.
"You may be right," he allowed."But it won't kill us to do a little research. We're not doctors, Pen. Let me call my brother."
"Billy?" Again the van swerved."Billy barely knows Ian."
Please God, Scott thought, get us home in one piece.
"Well, he saw what happened at Christmas."
"Please. Don't get me started on Christmas. Your mother and that freezing-cold house. She makes the poor kid sit at the table for hours on end. And all that fussy food! You can't expect kids to behave like adults. She doesn't know the first thing about children."
Scott regarded her with amusement. "Well, she raised three of them."
"Oh, please. Don't tell me you and Billy and Gwen sat at the table for an hour every night!"
"That's just it, Pen. We did. I don't know how we felt about it, or if we even gave it any thought. It's just what we did." As he said this, he remembered a time his mother had stormed away from the dinner table in frustration and refused to return. You deal with it, Frank. I've had them all day. The exact nature of his infraction, Scott had forgotten, but he was sure, from the guilt curdling his stomach, that the misbehavior was not Billy's or Gwen's. It was his.
"We weren't perfect, of course," he added. "But that's not the point. What matters now is Ian, and what we can do for him."
"A different teacher, for starters. This one doesn't know what she's doing. And she obviously has it in for him."
"I don't think that's true," he said."And anyway, I doubt we have that option, unless we want him in special ed."
"No!" The van swerved, finally, into Canterbury Lane. "Those kids get tortured, Scotty. My stepbrother Benji—" Her voice broke. To his astonishment, two fat tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Easy."Tentatively he touched her shoulder, trying to remember if she was premenstrual."Benji? In Idaho?"
She pulled into the driveway and engaged the brake. Finally he relaxed his grip on the door handle.
"He wasn't retarded, Scotty. He was actually very smart. He just had some trouble reading, and he was very shy." She spoke softly now, just above a whisper."My asshole stepfather let them put him in special ed, and oh my God, you wouldn't believe what the other kids put him through. Finally he couldn't take it anymore, and he ran away."
She sniffed loudly. "I'm dead serious. He ran away to California. He never came back."
"Okay," Scott said, stroking her shoulder. "No special ed. We'll figure out something else. I promise."
That evening, at the basement computer, Scott clicked through Web sites, avoiding those plastered with drug advertisements: Meds by Mail. Ritalin and Adderall. PharmCanada. Rock-Bottom Prices. Finally he found what he was looking for, a sober list of diagnostic criteria.
There were two types of attention deficit disorder—inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive. Scott scrolled down the page and read: 1. Inattention often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly Just then he became aware of a banging on the ceiling above his head. "Honey!" Penny shouted from upstairs. "I've been calling you for five minutes."
"Jesus, what?"
"The garbage disposal is still making that noise. I thought you fixed it."
"I did," he said."I will." He stared at the screen.
often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace
"You said that last week," Penny crowed.
"I know, I know. I have to buy a part."
often loses things necessary for tasks or activities (e.g., school assignments, books)
"Honey, you already bought it. It's sitting on top of the refrigerator."
"Oh," said Scott. "Good. I've been looking for that fucker all week."
"Great, but Scotty?"
"Can you leave me alone for five minutes?" he yelled."We talked about this, remember? No more shouting up and down the stairs."
often has difficulties sustaining attention in tasks or play activities
No answer from above. He returned his attention to the screen, but the letters had begun to swim before his eyes. He skimmed to the bottom of the page. Wow, he thought. This list is long.
Scott sat back in his chair, ready to admit defeat, when a line of text caught his attention. Helpfully, it had been underlined in red.
Signs of ADHD may persist into adulthood. This is particularly true when there is a family history of the condition.
Scott blinked. The realization hit him like a physical blow. He was aware of a pounding headache beginning at his temple, a rhythmic thumping, as though some creature trapped in his skull were trying to escape.
Quickly he signed off the computer. The CompuCom USA logo appeared on the screen. A helpful banner informed him, YOUR US AGE IS 61 MINUTES.
Shit, he thought. They were on an hourly billing plan, and the first hour was free. If he'd clicked just a minute faster his session would have cost nothing.
He clicked on a tab marked billing. Another helpful banner informed him: YOUR USAGE THIS MONTH IS 7,920 MINUTES.
He did some quick math. By his calculation, someone had been using the account, on average, six hours a day. He sprang from his chair.
"Penny!" he roared.
She appeared at the top of the stairs."I thought we weren't yelling anymore."
He ignored this. "Have the kids been using our CompuCom account?"
A wary look crossed her face."Why? What's the matter?"
"I just looked at our monthly usage. Someone's been on this computer, like, six hours a day. What did I say about keeping them out of my office? Isn't this why we got them a computer in the first place?"
Penny ran a hand through her hair. "Chill out, will you? It's a mistake. I'll call CompuCom tomorrow and straighten it out."
"Where's Ian? Let me talk to Ian."
"No way," said Penny."Not until you calm down."
She slammed the door. It made a hollow sound, like the clap of a horse's hooves.
Scott returned to his desk and riffled through a tattered little notebook until he found his brother's phone number. As he dialed, he watched the di
gits appear on the liquid crystal display of his cordless phone.
Who had invented such a thing? And how the fuck could you liquefy a crystal?
His father would know. His father would explain it for two hours straight, thinking Scott really wanted to know.
Scott didn't really want to know.
The last four digits of Billy's number were 5151. The display showed SISI. Penny would love that. She'd insisted for years—to Scott's irritation—that his brother was gay.
He hung up quickly. Then, just for laughs, he punched in his office number at Ruxton, which spelled nothing. He turned the phone upside down. The digits still spelled nothing.
He hung up the phone.
The list of diagnostic criteria had made him acutely aware of the movement of his own thoughts, scattering like buckshot. His mind had always worked this way. He'd assumed everyone's did, but how could that be true? People like his father spent lifetimes concentrating on dry, abstract, complex material. Years ago, at Pearse, Scott's classmate "Jens" Jensen had tutored him in chemistry, physics, and calculus, all the subjects Scott hated (avoids tasks that require sustained mental effort). He'd watched, mystified, as Jens pored over a complicated problem, his pale brow furrowed in concentration. At the time Scott had chalked it up to cultural difference. Jens was from—Norway?
Denmark? Some cold northern latitude where it was always dark and people stayed indoors solving equations.
He knew at the time that Jens had saved his bacon. Now he saw that, in a larger sense, the Jenses of the world were saving everybody's bacon. That if every brain worked the way Scott's did, there would be no science or higher math, the kind used to design tall buildings and bridges and airplanes that didn't fall out of the sky. People would live in huts and wear animal skins, or become crummy English teachers who hadn't read a fraction of the books they should have. Who'd only recently, in the last three years, read the ones they assigned to their students.
His whole life he'd concocted explanations for his failure to achieve. His parents' divorce was a favorite. His brother Billy had a stable home life until he left for Pearse; Scott, given the same send-off, would likewise have torn up the lacrosse field, gotten into Princeton, graduated with honors. When Frank encouraged Billy's interest in science, let him spend entire days in the Holy of Holies, his lab at MIT, Scott's jealousy had nearly choked him. I'll take you too someday, Frank had promised when Scott threw a grand mal tantrum. But by the time Scott was old enough, his father was long gone. And of course, there was Gwen: Frank and Paulette had been so busy squabbling over her medical problems that they'd let Scott flounder; if they'd paid more attention, he would have stayed on course. He saw, now, that none of this was true. If his parents had stayed married, if Gwen had been normal, he would still have been a dud.
This condition, if he had it, would explain the way his life had turned out, a fact that both depressed and comforted him. His derelict academic history. The long series of disastrous decisions that had landed him at Ruxton (impairment in occupational functioning). He was a mediocre teacher, a bad actor in a cynical parody of a prep school. A balding thirty-year-old man flattened by marriage, with a daughter who laughed at him and a son who—Jesus.
A son who would turn out exactly like him.
He picked up the phone. Even his brother's telephone rang differently. Billy's ring sounded expensive—low and melodious, a throaty mechanical purr. Scott had noticed, in making local calls, that phones in Gatwick rang with an annoying falsetto chirp. Was the local phone company to blame? His long-distance carrier? Was it a mechanism inside his own telephone, or the one he was calling?
He shook his head to clear it.
Billy answered on the second ring. It took him a moment to recognize Scott's voice. Well, no wonder. Scott hadn't phoned his brother in years.
If Billy realized this, he gave no indication."What's up?" he asked easily, as though they spoke every day.
Scott pictured him settling into a sleek modern sofa, expensively leather covered. He'd never seen Billy's apartment, but his mother had described it in abundant detail, a fact that drove Penny crazy. He felt a stab of envy for his brother, single on a Friday night. Free to chat up strange women in bars or, even better (this was a symptom of Scott's descent into middle age), simply to be left in peace.
At Billy's, soft jazz played in the background. There was no other ambient noise. On Scott's end, television vibrated the ceiling. Loud running in a southerly direction, from the kitchen to Ian's room.
"Listen, I want to run something by you," said Scott. "What do you know about Ritalin?"
"The hyperactivity drug?"
"Yeah. Ian's teacher wants us to put him on it."
"Have you discussed it with your pediatrician?"
"We did," Scott lied."I want a second opinion."
A pause."Scotty, I'd like to help, but you know I'm not a pediatrician. And even if I were, I haven't actually seen him."
"You saw him at Christmas."
"I haven't seen him clinically. It would be irresponsible for me to give you a medical opinion based on what you tell me over the phone." He sounded less like a brother than a doctor worried about a malpractice suit. Good Christ, Scott thought. What a SISI.
"Jesus, Bill. I'm not going to sue you."
Billy sighed. "All right. Fine. This behavior—the hyperactivity, the aggression, the stuttering—"
"Whoa, wait a minute. Ian stutters?"
"Um, yeah," said Billy. "When he gets excited. You haven't noticed?"
"Oh, that," Scott lied again."Yeah. Sure."
"So tell me: when did you first—"
"Bill, even as a baby he was tougher than Sabrina. Wouldn't sleep through the night. That kind of thing. But he's a boy, you know? I thought it was just the difference between boys and girls. Sabrina was a dream by comparison, Bill. A total dream."
"Let me finish, will you?" said Billy (blurts out answers before questions are completed). "The onset of symptoms. Was it before age seven?"
Scott recalled the endless drive from California to Connecticut, a week of sleeping in roadside motels, the four of them crammed into a single cruddy room. The Golf stifling hot, Ian and Sabrina kicking each other viciously in the backseat. Ian had been five then, a screaming terror. With the same intensity he'd brought to teenage sexual fantasies, Scott had daydreamed of leaving his entire family by the side of the road.
"Yes," he said."Definitely before seven."
"That's significant," said Billy."It's consistent with ADHD."
The water pump kicked in explosively, rattling the plywood wall.
Scott ignored this, though he was easily distracted by extraneous stimuli.
He pressed on.
"Look, don't tell Mom this. Any of it, actually. But especially this part: Penny has a sister who's schizophrenic. Could that have anything to do with it?"Years ago, when he and Penny were living in Eureka, they'd made a weekend dope run to Portland and spent a night on her sister's floor. JoAnn had been heavily medicated then, a bloated, silent version of Penny, her hair hacked into a spiky helmet. It seemed to Scott that she'd cut it herself. (In a fit of self-hatred. With a machete.)
She had scared the hell out of him.
"No," Billy said. "Although, you know, it's an interesting question. There appears to be some genetic basis for schizophrenia. And there is comorbidity with ADHD."
Scott let this slide past him, like a taxi with its light off. He had stopped listening at the word no.
"Back to the drug," he said."Penny says there are side effects."
"Weight loss, sleep disturbances." Billy paused. "On the other hand, certain questions arise with any drug you're prescribing. You have to weigh the risks of the therapy against the consequences of leaving the problem untreated. He's in what, first grade?"
"Third."
"How's he doing in school?"
"Shitty," said Scott. "They're ready to kick him out. That's why I'm calling."
"From public
school? I didn't know they could do that."
"If he doesn't go on Ritalin, they're going to put him in special ed." Scott hesitated. "Look, you saw him at Christmas. Based on that, if he were your kid, would you do it?"
A long pause.
"He did seem agitated at Christmas," Billy admitted. "I think Mom was concerned."
Concerned. Drewspeak for ready to hurl the little monster out an open window.
"I know he's a handful," Scott said lamely. "Mom isn't used to that."
Billy chuckled."She raised you, didn't she?"
Scott felt a knot of resentment in his throat. Reluctantly he swallowed. Billy was five years older; he would remember, if anyone would.
And who else was there to ask?
"Was I like that?" he demanded."Like Ian?"
Again the chuckle."Are you kidding me? You just about landed her in McLean. The way you and Gwen used to pound on each other—"
He broke off."Hey, have you heard the news?"
"What?" said Scott.
"Are you sitting down? Gwen has a boyfriend."
"You're shitting me."
"Some guy she met on her dive trip. And Mom is freaking out.
All hell is breaking loose."
That Sunday morning Paulette ate breakfast in her nightgown.
This was something she did just once a year, when her old friend Tricia James came from Philadelphia to visit. In Tricia's honor she had brewed a pot of coffee, though her second cup had made her jangly.
(She had switched to chamomile tea at menopause.) With Tricia, coffee and nightclothes were a tradition, an unconscious reenactment of their roommate days at Wellesley, where they'd guzzled coffee and spent a great deal of time in their pajamas. Paulette and Tricia had not forgotten. They would always remember the girls they had been.