by Larry Center
“He was talking, dammit! You only saw that first visit. You should have seen him when I took him back. It was amazing. He was saying all kinds of things. Besides, yanking Tommy out of San Diego and dropping him in Houston would be entirely disruptive to him.”
Was this the time to tell her about the research grant? About Carly Yates and what the primatologists had planned?
“Chris.” Cheryl softened her voice and then I felt awful as a tear slid down her cheek, which she quickly wiped away. Both her face and neck were inflamed. “Chris. Please. You have to understand, I’ll be with him every step of the way. We’d take it slow. He’ll have his mother right by his side. I know it’ll be a transition, but if the end result’s beneficial, why would you want to stand in his way? I just don’t get you.” She paused, letting her words sink in, nibbled on her food, then pushed the plate away. “It’s like you’ve always tried to stand in that child’s way. Every time I wanted to try a new therapy with him, you were always saying, let the kid be, let’s just encourage him. Well, you can’t just encourage autism. Our son needs treatment.”
“I know he needs treatment. I’m not arguing there.”
“So, why don’t you agree with me? That’s what Acorn specializes in, treatment for children with autism. This chimp thing. Good God, are you kidding me? If I told any psychologist what you wanted to do, they’d laugh me out of their office.”
“Look.” I took a breath. “I haven’t told you everything, okay? Weller has created this entire research grant to study him, and there are these primatologists who are extremely interested in Tommy and . . .” Hell, there was so much to explain; too much for now. I couldn’t get it all in. I changed tact and played with the coleslaw that came with the sandwich. “Why don’t you look at it this way? What if we tried the chimps for just a year? And if there’s no more improvement, I’d say Acorn all the way. What’s wrong with that? We won’t have another chance with Weller—it’s now or never while Acorn will always be there.”
“But there’s no time to waste on those chimps,” Cheryl shot back. “These are his formative years, for chrissakes! Every single year with Tommy counts. We can’t be playing around.” She took a sip of water and then covered her face with her hands.
Then she pulled her hands away and it was as if the curtain came down. A new Cheryl emerged, a woman ready to do battle with me for her son. Her face was flushed, and I was sure I saw swords of light in her eyes. “The truth is, you can fight me on this all you want, but in the end, you need to face it.” She gritted her teeth. “I'm taking Tommy to Houston whether you like it or not. I put the deposit down.” She leaned forward. “It’s done. I have the legal wherewithal to see this through.”
I stared at her, not saying anything. Finally: “Not without my permission, you don’t,” I said. I took a sip of water and put the glass down too hard. “You can’t just yank Tommy out of state without my permission. There are laws about that. We have shared custody, remember?”
“Actually,” Cheryl said, leaning back in her seat now, a mysterious smile crossing her face. “I believe I can take him out of state. In fact, I’m almost certain.”
I furrowed my brow. “How so?”
She spoke with a wily air as she toyed with her fork. “The truth is, Beaman says I actually have a case. And if you’re going to fight me on this, I’ll have no chance but to pursue a legal alternative, and I’ll win, just like I creamed you in the divorce and took everything but your goddamn balls.”
I felt the anger rise up to my throat. “Then let the games begin,” I growled in return.
We drove back to the airport in our rental like strangers forced into the backseat confines of a taxi, the silence and fury between us stultifying. Thin clouds flew high above, looking like they too wanted to get the hell out of Houston. Then just as we pulled up to the rental return area and I turned off the car, I received a text that bolstered my confidence. A pathway cleared:
Mr. Crutcher, Weller’s lawyers concluded: YOUR signature’s all that’s needed. Consider Tommy admitted to program. Thank you. Dr. Rachel Simmons.
This was perfect. A thin smile broached my face as Cheryl climbed out of the car, collected her bag, and quickly strutted ahead of me, acting as if she didn’t even know who I was.
God, she could be so spiteful sometimes. But if Cheryl was going to put down a deposit on Acorn, then I was certainly going to admit Tommy into the Weller program. I had just as much rights over Tommy as she did.
Chapter 6
The very next Saturday arrived. Tommy and I were just about to leave for the public library to see a 10 a.m. puppet show, then after the show, we planned to head out to Weller for the first day of our program as devised by the scientists. I was all atwitter with excitement and couldn’t wait for it all to begin, to see Dr. Simmons again and the chimpanzees, Obo, Mikey, and the boisterous gang, to watch Tommy’s interactions with them. I was so looking forward to it and felt a rush of adrenaline in anticipation.
The downer part was that earlier in the morning, I’d reviewed the latest email my attorney had sent me and my heart had cannonballed into my stomach as I read it. Mark said he’d received a notice from Gloria Beaman about a possible filing against me for custody so that Cheryl could take Tommy out of state—just what I expected but had hoped to avoid.
Now I was in my den, thinking about facing Gloria Beaman all over again and all her legal maneuvers—she’d torn me to pieces last time—putting on my shoes, when Tommy stepped in front of me, dressed in his khaki pants and a yellow T-shirt. He shook his head right and left and cried out: “Oooo . . . uuu. Oooooo . . . Daddy? I hurt. Hurt heeeerrrre, Daddy.”
“Huh?” My mouth went dry.
Tommy pointed to the same place behind his right ear where William had landed a blow on the playground that awful day when he’d gotten in that fight. I recalled how he’d wobbled after being hit on the head, and how he’d blanked out for a short while. I’d taken him to the hospital after we left school that day and I’d had him examined. Thankfully, the doctor had said she saw no problems and no sign of a concussion after testing him.
But now I gulped down a stone of anxiety.
“Daddy.” His brick word crashed through the window of my heart.
“Yes, son?” I blinked, hands beginning to sweat.
“I . . . ” But nothing else followed.
Max limped over to Tommy’s side and eerily whined up and down the dog scale of notes in a way I’d never heard before, then barked, raising his head to the ceiling. I stared at Max, then Tommy, then Max again, who rested on his hind legs as if he were suddenly standing at attention or on guard. Surely, he sensed something.
“Daddy, I—Daddy, Daddeeee . . .” Tommy swung his head from side to side.
“Tommy, are you all right?” My voice quavered.
“I—you . . . Mommy.” He whispered the words, barely audible.
Then a dazed look came over him, and his eyes rolled up into his head. He turned pale. His body convulsed, and I watched, stunned, as Tommy fell to the floor, hitting it with a hard thud. Walls rattled. It was as if a gun inside my gut triggered and fired. I just stood there watching, not knowing what to do, throat dry.
“Tommy!” I yelled. “What’s wrong?”
Lying on the floor in the middle of the den, Tommy’s back arched and jolted, shuddering, as if volts of electricity were coursing through his body, his breathing growing rapid and shallow. His body stiffened, relaxed, and stiffened again. Damn if it didn’t seem to be a seizure.
Should I hold his tongue? Don't hold his tongue? Could people actually swallow their tongues?
Not knowing what else to do, I scrambled for a pillow from the couch, placed it under his head, and went for my cell phone and dialed 911, returning back to his side, trying to hold him still.
“My son. It’s my son,” I said, when a woman answered, my voice trembling in panic. “He’s having a seizure. I don’t know what to do. He’s on the floor, convulsing. He�
�s never done anything like this before.”
“Your address, please?” the woman said, her voice firm and direct.
“Eight two eight Morningdale, Coronado.”
“Thank you. Your name?”
“Chris Crutcher.”
“Thank you. Okay, Mister Crutcher.” She sounded distant to me, as if she were speaking through a straw, and I wasn’t sure if it was the phone connection or the failure of my own hearing or the panic in my mind. “For starters, have you timed the seizure?”
“Should I?”
“Yes. And make sure his clothing is loose and he has a pillow for his head.”
“Anything else?”
“I’ll stay on the phone with you. Let’s just see how long it will last.”
It lasted a good five minutes according to my watch, an eternal lifetime of bodily trembles, lip biting, and head swinging. Tommy’s body arched high, then fell back, then arched again, gripped in a kind of intermittent paralysis. Max kept pacing and circling, alternating between barking and whining.
All I could do was sit next to him as my heart trilled like a chased rabbit’s, hands sweating, breath quickening. Finally, the contortions and the trembling subsided.
"Tommy, are you all right?" I stroked his sweaty forehead, the phone resting against my neck.
He didn’t answer.
"Tommy!"
Nothing.
“I think the seizure’s over,” I said to the dispatcher. “But he looks pale and he’s sweating and—”
“How long did it last?”
“A bit over five minutes.” I felt exhausted and scared all at once.
“I'll send an ambulance,” she said. “If a seizure lasts over five minutes, we always send one. I’ll stay on the phone until the paramedics get there.”
“It’s going to be all right, Tom-Tom,” I said, praying it was true. “Daddy’s here.”
His eyes flew open and he looked straight at me. "Mommy," he said softly. “Mommy, where you, Mommy.” His voice was soft, his lips were parched.
“Daddy’s here, son. How do you feel?" I said, trying to force myself to be calm.
"Mommy."
And then it happened again. Before he could even rest for any length of time, Tommy seized once more and it was as if my body seized with him: empathy pain galore. I felt terrified. Watching him, it was as if someone was taking a hammer and nail to my heart. Once again, he arched his back, his eyes rolled up into his head, and the convulsions walked up and down his body. Max stood next to Tommy, a faithful guard dog, barking every so often, as if he knew not to move until help arrived.
Waiting for the ambulance to come, I phoned Cheryl and told her what was happening and to meet me at Harborview.
“Why? How?” she said when I gave her the news. “What do you mean, a seizure? Are you serious?”
“Yes,” I said. “Totally serious. Do I sound like I’m joking?”
Her voice shook. “I’m on my way.”
Chapter 7
Harborview Medical Center. The same hospital where my mother died from cancer. God, it was awful losing my mother like that. She was the cornerstone of our family. Tommy had arrived in the ambulance and I’d followed behind in my jalopy of a car, feeling completely at a loss. The paramedics had taken Tommy into ICU and now, I sat in the waiting room on the third floor, a large room with a TV on the wall playing re-runs of old football games. Four other people were in the room with me, an African-American female holding her daughter’s hand, a grim look on the mother’s face, and an elderly couple who sat close to each other, lines on their weary faces, looking pale and afraid. We were all in a place we didn’t want to be.
I stood and went to the bathroom, then came back and sat down on a green chair in the corner. I mindlessly thumbed through a magazine. But as I continued to wait, I couldn’t help it: The memories of my mother’s sad fate started seeping into my mind, this hospital, two floors higher, memories coming at me one emotional image at a time, breaking the dyke between past and present . . . and then . . . emotional chronology . . . there I was . . .
My mother sat down with me at the kitchen table, a mug of coffee in her hand. Tommy, about four, was with my father in the den, reading a book together. We could hear the sing-song of my father’s voice as he read about a hungry caterpillar. He was able to hold Tommy’s attention and even make him giggle.
Chocolate-chip cookies were baking in the oven and the smell filtered through the house.
“I went for my annual exam this week and they found a problem, Chris,” my mother said quietly.
She sipped her coffee and I covered her hand with my own. Her hands were wrinkled, worn, eroded by time.
“Maybe it’s nothing serious,” I said.
She sighed, and then checked the cookies in the oven just as the timer went off.
Tommy came running into the kitchen at the sound of the buzzer. “Ding, ding,” he said. “Ding. Ding. Ding.”
He knew the ritual. We’d come over many times to eat cookies with my parents. Cheryl was out working, but promised to come by later.
Dad trudged in and scratched his belly. As my mother pulled the cookies out of the oven, he inspected them, smelled them, then said to Tommy, “Hot. We need to wait for them to cool.”
“Hot, Pa,” Tommy said. “Hot!”
My father sat down with us after pouring himself a cup of coffee. He drank it black, like me—like father, like son.
“Tommy, tell us something the caterpillar ate,” my father said.
Ignoring my father’s question, Tommy turned to my mother and hummed. “Granna. Play.”
We’d gone through this before. While we waited for the cookies to cool, my mother would sit at the piano and entertain us.
“Can you say play, Tommy?” my mother asked. “Can you use your words?”
But Tommy just hummed again and shook his head.
“Oh, all right, if you insist,” she said.
My mother loved to perform and didn’t need much encouragement.
We followed her into the den where the old white upright rested against a wall. It was scratched and dinged, but she kept it in perfect tune. My mother sat down at the piano, flexed her fingers and broke into “Satin Doll.” Then a medley of other jazz hits. She still played well, even with the arthritis.
My father nudged me as she continued playing. “Chris, come with me. I want to show you something.” He spoke softly and put a finger to his lips as if to say, “Mum’s the word.”
“Be right back,” I told my mother.
As she played an up-tempo show tune, Tommy stood next to the piano, mesmerized. Drinking in the music. His attention to music, when played live before him, had always astonished me. Music on the radio? He paid no attention to it.
My father led me into his workroom off the garage, turned on a light, and stepped toward a toolbox sitting on a workbench. Boxes of various shapes and sizes filled with receipts, checks, and invoices were piled on the floor. He opened a drawer in the toolbox, then drew a small dark-blue jewelry box out amongst screws and nuts.
“It’s our forty-fifth wedding anniversary next week,” he said, his eyes focused on the box. “I bought your mother something special.”
He opened the box and a beautiful platinum-set sapphire and diamond ring sparkled before my eyes. It looked otherworldly. He’d stored it in the toolbox, and I smiled—where else?
Upstairs, my mother was singing and playing now: “Camptown ladies sing this song, do-da-do-da . . .”
“Do you think she’ll like it?” he asked.
I put a hand on my father’s shoulder, which still felt strong. “Are you kidding? She’ll love it.”
He frowned. “The biopsy came back cancerous, Chris.” He turned to me with tears in his eyes, fingering the box. “I’m going to tell her tonight. She doesn’t know yet. She’s . . .”
My phone buzzed. Cheryl was calling me. My heart boomed. I broke out in a cold sweat.
“Are you on your w
ay?” I asked, my voice quivering.
“Can you believe it? My car won’t start. I’m waiting on an Uber.”
“Just hurry, all right?”
“I’m doing the best I can.” She sounded nearly panicked.
I finally met the pediatric neurologist. Dr. Eugene Whitaker was in his early forties with thinning black hair. He wore a blue bowtie and a long white lab coat. Short neck. Long, thin nose. We sat across from each other at a polished oak table in a wood-paneled conference room. I caught a glimpse of my face in the table’s ultra-shiny surface. The stranger who stared back at me looked openly terrified.
Whitaker studied the screen on the tablet he’d brought with him, and then got right to the point. "Based on our tests, it looks to me like Tommy’s had a grand mal seizure, arising from the temporal lobe,” he said. His voice was dry, without emotion.
“But I don’t get it. He’s never even had a seizure before.” I spread my hands in front of me. “And he was given an exploratory EEG when he was around three, and then again at five, and there were no abnormalities at all.” I dry-swallowed. “I just don’t understand.”
“Unfortunately, as a child with autism grows and matures,” Whitaker explained, “the brain changes in unforeseen ways and a minor undetectable weakness at one age can turn into a dysfunction later on. Actually, seizure activity sometimes occurs so deep in the brain that surface electrodes can’t even detect it. Whether this is a seizure disorder manifesting or just an isolated incident, we won't know until—”
Before he could finish, the door to the conference room flew open, and in stormed Cheryl. Finally. As much as we were on the outs right now, I was thrilled to see her.
“Sorry. I got here as fast as I could.” She placed her purse on the table, smoothing her tailored blue skirt and silk blouse. Her expression was grim as she clutched her cell so hard her knuckles turned white.
“He’s resting in a room down the hall,” Whitaker said. “Everything’s under control now.”