Kenny looked to me, then back to Benjy. “Who is ‘we’? Not your dad. He cain’t even fix a broken fan belt.”
“The company that published the catalog?” I asked Benjy. He nodded yes.
Kenny eyed Benjy. “Did you just read the catalog and memorize it? Or do you know how an engine actually works?”
“When I was four, I had a computer program called ‘How Things Work.’ It showed how an engine actually works.”
“Abso-freaking-lootly amazing,” Kenny said.
“I can remember really well,” said Benjy proudly.
“The curious cat and pug nose pup,” I quietly sang, grinning.
“Milo and Otis was a long time ago, Dad!” said Benjy, annoyed as he recognized the movie’s theme song. “I haven’t recited that since I was six!”
Kenny shook his head in wonder, then got down to business. “Well, for the race, we can forget any kind of major rebuild. That would eat up our five-hundred-dollar Garbage budget, and leave nothing for the automatic transmission problems. So we’ll have to scrounge in these boxes for parts or get them out of one of the cars out back. What do you say to that, Professor Corvair?”
“When a major engine rebuild is not practical,” said Professor Corvair, not missing a beat, “we recommend a complete set of gaskets for the O-rings, oil pan, top covers, bell housing, oil pump cover, and oil cooler. It also includes all the other seals and gaskets needed. A new set of gaskets will prevent most oil leaks and increase engine performance.”
“Yes! Exactly! That is abso-freaking-lootly AMAZING!” Kenny shouted. “That’s exactly right! The biggest bang for the fewest bucks! Now, what do you know about tools?”
“Not much,” said Benjy.
“It doesn’t matter—I can teach you.” Kenny was ecstatic. “Man, could I ever use you! Holy cow! You could fetch my tools, hold wrenches, tell me the repair instructions in the technical manuals. You could be my legs! The top floor’s empty in my house. When can you move in?”
I cringed. Yet again. Benjy live and work here? With Kenny? Was he joking? My heart stopped, fearing Benjy would take Kenny seriously.
“No, thank you,” said Benjy politely.
My heart started pumping again. Whew. Annie, we dodged a bullet there.
“We could be Professor and Doctor Corvair,” Kenny joked.
“After I graduate from high school, I’m going to college,” Benjy said. “To James Monroe Community College. My grandfather wanted me to go to Dartmouth, but—”
“Whatever!” Kenny interrupted impatiently. “We’ll just wrench on this job. But it’s pretty darn dry out there for kids comin’ out of college. That’s why I went in the Army. And it’s even worse now with the economy so bad. But a good mechanic can always find work.”
“I am going to college,” Benjy said firmly. “It’s part of my plan.”
“Speaking of college,” I said, hoping we could flee Kenny, the Deathmobile, and the roasting chicken poo, “you’ve got your math assessment coming up. And the way the DMV works, it’s doubtful you’ll be able to race. Maybe studying would be a better use of your time right now.”
He looked down. Disappointed. Still, he nodded. He understood.
Suddenly, I recalled all the times on the schoolyard when he stood to the side, looking on enviously, as the other kids played ball. Or, more recently, when his teachers had assigned group work in his classes and he’d been mysteriously left out of the groups. Now he’d actually been invited to participate and utilize his unique talents. By a friend he had made. I relented. “You know what,” I said. “You’re a responsible guy. It’s your choice.”
“I’ve almost finished the math tutorial,” he said. “I know it really well now.”
“Well, then, let’s stay. Abso-freaking-lootly.”
He smiled a huge, very surprised smile. I loved that smile. He deserved to smile. He said he knew the math. Everything would be fine.
“Did the envelope from the DMV come today?” Benjy asked.
Barely a hundred hours had passed since we’d seen Doc Pollard, I reminded him. As he did with the envelope from Wheeler, he would ask every day whether the DMV envelope had come.
With Benjy’s senior year at high school wrapping up, ebullient Katie in the James Monroe Disability Office sent me an e-mail urging that Benjy retake his math assessment as soon as possible; fall college registration was well underway and she didn’t want him to be shut out of a class he needed. I explained to her that, for hours each day, Benjy concentrated hard on the math tutorial. He had no choice; I’d spent those hours with him, looming over his shoulder, then catching up on my own work after he’d fallen asleep. When his mind wandered to Corvairs, or racing Denny Hamlin, or Lydia, or National Treasure, or elsewhere, I cleared my throat. My throat was on fire, I told her. She replied to my joke with a line of smiling and dancing emoticons, then a series of questions about Benjy and his Asperger’s, and asked for my suggestions on how she could best ensure his success at college.
I told her that the best thing she could do for Benjy was get James Monroe to waive its math requirement. I wanted her to know that, for Benjy, math was hieroglyphics, and he didn’t have a Rosetta Stone to help him translate. His weakness in math was likely my fault, I told her. Until I discovered my mobile phone had a calculator, I asked waitresses how much I should tip them. No wonder they fought to have me seated at their tables. In her reply to that joke, Katie sent me guffawing emoticons, then sweetly informed me there was no waiving Benjy’s math requirement, and asked if I knew what made math so hard for him.
Benjy might know how to do the math, I wrote back, but where he often struggled was in understanding what he was being asked. Key words, clues, and concepts in word problems often threw him for a loop, or else caused him to ask questions rather than give answers. If a test asked, “Did the seller earn a profit?” Benjy might stop and consider: Was a profit only money? What if the seller liked selling so much that he’d do it for free? Or he just happened to like the buyer? Should that count as “profit”? Benjy also disdained scratch paper and calculators, even if the test suggested he use them. It was a point of pride for him; he wanted to work everything out in his head. But then, in the middle of working a problem, his mind might shift tracks and focus on things that interested him more, like the ever-fascinating conundrum of why Riley was called Irish in National Treasure. After a few minutes of puzzling through that riddle, the math problem was a distant memory and he had to start the problem all over again.
Katie e-mailed me a list of test-taking techniques she thought might be helpful. She suggested that Benjy slowly say the test questions out loud, word by word, to make sure he understood them before trying to answer, and to block other thoughts from distracting him. He should have a rule to use the calculator for every computation—no exceptions!—even if the problem was as simple as two plus two. He should employ the process of elimination, crossing out wrong answers to multiple-choice questions and then choosing an answer from the ones remaining. He should check over the answers a second and third time.
Of course! A list! Just like Annie would have made! What hadn’t I thought of that? After I had Benjy follow the list, his practice scores improved dramatically, I e-mailed Katie. I also told her about Annie and her lists, and a lot of other stuff about Annie that, an instant after I hit the Send button, I realized was far too personal. What possessed me to do that? Was that ordinary social awkwardness or Asperger’s? Or loneliness? Whichever, she wrote back quickly, this time with lots of Thumbs Up emoticons, and suggested Benjy retake the assessment the next Saturday. And she talked about how great Annie was and how hard it must have been to lose her. She said it just right: not too much empathy, but not too little. I admired that so much. I admired that she e-mailed me so often and replied back to me so quickly. And that she liked my jokes. And she had such gorgeous teeth.
On Saturday morning, I prepared Benjy a lighter breakfast than usual; getting him too full might make him drowsy
. During one math test he took after lunch a few years earlier, he’d put his head on his desk and napped. As he ate toast with jam from one hand, he paced intensely, reciting, “Principal. Interest. Compound interest. Amortization,” while flapping his other hand to the cadence of each syllable. He knew this stuff cold.
We made our way across the driveway to the Toyota and he stopped reciting to say, “Dad, we need to fix the Corvair. The fan belt is one of the easiest—”
“Focus,” I interrupted. “No distractions.”
“Right!” he agreed. “No distractions! Remember Katie’s list!”
At the Learning Center, as the attendant prepared the private test-taking room reserved for Benjy, I asked if Katie was going to meet us. “It’s Saturday, Dad,” Benjy said, eyeing me closely. “She doesn’t have a job like yours. Lots of people don’t work on Saturday.” The attendant confirmed it, and also said that Benjy was not allowed to take her list into the test-taking room.
“Possibly it would have been helpful to you if Katie could go over her test-taking techniques with you one last time,” I said. “So I’m disappointed she’s not here, that’s all.”
Benjy eyed me even more closely. He wasn’t usually adept at reading the subtext of a conversation. But he saw one here.
“I know how to take the test,” he assured me. As he closed the door to the test-taking room, he said, “You just like to see her teeth.”
Three hours later, I waited in the Camry at James Monroe’s front door. When Benjy emerged, he marched to the car as he always did, betraying nothing.
“So? How’d it go?” I asked as he opened the car door.
“Fine,” he said.
“Did they give you a score?”
“Yes.” I waited. He waited. Then he finally repeated the words I hoped never to hear again: “It wasn’t all that we’d hoped for.”
His score was worse than the first time he took the test.
“I wasn’t allowed to take Katie’s list in,” he explained.
“But you had memorized it,” I said. “You didn’t need the actual piece of paper the list was written on, did you?”
“It wasn’t the same,” he said.
I winced. I sighed. I was bewildered. How could Benjy put in dozens of hours on the tutorial and have his score actually decline? Now he still faced two and a half years of remedial math before he could take the college-level math course required to graduate.
“I can do better,” he said. “I know I can.”
I couldn’t be angry. He had worked hard, and somehow that just hadn’t registered on the test. We’d figure something out. I rubbed his shoulders. He leaned forward so I’d scratch the center of his back.
“Dad, did the envelope from the DMV come yet?” he asked.
It hadn’t come.
After the test, Benjy wanted to drive to Kenny’s. They worked together on the engine rebuild, Benjy handing Kenny the tools and parts as he repeated the instructions over and over, whether Kenny wanted to hear them or not. I excused myself and went outside, where the chicken poo pungency was fortunately no more. Wandering, I found myself drawn to the rusting Corvairs in Kenny’s back field. No one had ever answered Kenny’s Craigslist plea to come to their rescue, so they were destined for the scrap yard. It was an ignominious end to a celebrated experiment in automotive innovation. But what other fate could there be for a car that was now best known as a failure, a botch job, a punch line, a menace to society, a killer, and the car that even a half-century later was still being blamed for bankrupting General Motors? No matter how unfair that fate might be, how could the Corvair not be shunned and voted off the American island?
Yet, the Corvair still had its fans and friends. And they had stubbornly kept them in fields like Kenny’s all over the country, resisting sending them to the scrap yard for recycling. In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, a musket-shot away from our nation’s greatest battlefield, the Corvair Ranch gave refuge to more than 700 Corvairs that over the years would give up a useful part here or piece of bodywork there to a Vair that still endured. But here in Kenny’s field, these Corvairs couldn’t even look forward to those meager prospects. They endured their fate in stoic dignity, peacefully rusting, awaiting one final journey down the highway—the highway to the crusher.
I stopped as I realized I was making the same connection Benjy had—that the Corvair was a different car that he, a different boy, could identify with and appreciate. But now in this field I confronted the fate the different Corvair faced in our society; having so much life still to give, they instead sat here decomposing in the muck because the world had no place for them. How could I make sure my different son did not suffer the same fate? How could he find his own satisfying and accepting place in the world?
I didn’t know. All I knew was I had to get away from these Corvairs, and quickly returned to the barn.
CHAPTER 13
Sitting alone in the bleachers in Benjy’s high school gymnasium, I used up all my Kleenex as he accepted a Senior Day award as the school’s Most Outstanding Special Ed Student. All his accomplishments were recounted: the autism and disability panels and workshops he’d participated in, the novel he’d written, the plays he’d performed in, the volunteer work he’d done. As Benjy dutifully strode to the podium to accept his award, I read amazement on more than a few parents’ faces. For his hand-flapping, pacing, and self-talking, Benjy was one of the most recognized students at the school. Many didn’t know there was much more to this book than its cover.
The academic departments handed out their awards next. As I settled back to applaud Benjy’s classmates, I wondered how he felt right now. His successes usually had “special” or “disability” pinned to them, and that frosted him. He said it was like being told, “You’re great, considering how abnormal you are.” Judging by how unimpressed he’d looked as he accepted today’s award, I expected he’d probably dismiss it as just another left-handed compliment. I’d have to speak to him about that. He should be proud that he had achieved so much. He shouldn’t feel like a second-class citizen.
Suddenly, my ears perked up. Ms. Burnley, Benjy’s English teacher, his favorite, was speaking. “I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know this student and his writing over the past two years in my Creative Writing class. As a writer, he authored his own novel, displaying and developing a strong, confident voice….”
Wait. What? Was there some student at this school other than Benjy who authored a novel?
“This student’s questioning mind and passion for learning will no doubt bring him great success in the years ahead….”
Annie, are you listening to this? Can you hear? Can you believe it?
“He’s a wonderful role model for his peers. The English Department’s Most Outstanding Student Award goes to Benjamin Bennett the Third.”
Benjy again mounted the podium, this time with his most surprised and enthusiastic grin. As if they could read his overjoyed mind, the parents and students this time rose in a standing ovation. Kleenex came at me from every side to sponge up my uncontrollable blubbering. Benjy got a warm embrace from Ms. Burnley, then waved shyly to the crowd.
Oh Annie, I hope you are seeing this.
All his grumbling about the disability asterisk on his achievements? Not this time. That talk I had to have with him about thinking he was a second-class citizen? Never mind.
When I caught up to Benjy after the ceremony, I reached out to hug him, but he resisted; like many kids with Asperger’s, he wasn’t wild about hugging or touching. So I raised my hand high and he high-fived it gingerly. “You are the Toast of the School,” I declared. “We are celebrating.”
“Thanks,” Benjy said, grudgingly. He was never one for compliments. Besides, right now, I could see, his thoughts were elsewhere. Far down the hall, Lydia was surrounded by friends.
“Go on,” I nudged. “Say hello. I’ll bet she wants to congratulate you on your award.”
“She’s with her friends, Dad!” Benjy prote
sted.
“You’re her friend, too. And you are The Man today. You are Big Man on Campus. Go up to her.”
Benjy thought about it. He took a step. Lydia saw him and waved. He took another step.
And then Lydia’s boyfriend planted a big fat kiss on her lips that went on and on and on.
“Let’s go home,” Benjy said, deflated.
“C’mon,” I urged. “The kiss will end, and then you can talk.”
“No,” he insisted. “I want to go home and see if the envelope came.”
I dropped Benjy off at the curb to grab the mail, then pulled the Camry into the driveway. I saw his head drop after he’d thumbed through the stack. Clearly, the DMV envelope hadn’t come. “Dad,” he said as he pulled himself despondently up the drive, “it’s only thirty-three days till the race.”
“Maybe we should tell the DMV about these great awards you just got,” I said. “Maybe they can put a hurry on it.”
“They aren’t for driving, Dad!” he said, throwing up his hands.
“But they are for character and intelligence and responsibility and focus. Those should all be important to them in deciding whether you can drive.” I was just trying to cheer Benjy up; there was no way the DMV could even respond to a message from us about Benjy’s awards in the three days necessary for him to get his license in time for the Grand Prix.
“The DMV is just discriminating against people with Asperger’s,” he fumed. “I should never have even tried. I’ll never get to race.”
One of his best days had turned sour, and, no matter what I said, I couldn’t cheer him. As we quietly walked to the house together, I turned and glared at my nemesis, the Corvair, sitting broken and abandoned. “You still remember how to replace the fan belt?” I asked.
“I have an almost photographic memory, Dad! Remember?!” I had apparently insulted him.
“Well, what do you say? Let’s put on our work clothes and do it.”
“No, I need to study for the math assessment.” Katie had reluctantly agreed to permit Benjy an unusual third and absolutely final try at the math assessment after I begged shamelessly, invoking Benjy’s “disability”—precisely the kind of special treatment he loathed.
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