by Larry Center
What was Channel 2 doing at Weller? As I climbed out of my car, something else drew my attention: I spied a helicopter sitting about a hundred yards away, parked in a vacant field.
Tommy pointed at the van as I unhooked him from the backseat and he climbed out of the car. “Two, Daddy. Two.” Then he returned to humming and murmuring again. I wiped dribble from his lips with a tissue from Mister Backpack. He blew his nose into another tissue.
Staring at the news van, I said, “Come on, son. Let’s go talk to Dr. Simmons and see what’s going on. You okay?”
Tommy nodded and I looked him over, afraid that I might find the glimmerings of another seizure about to happen. I used to fear tantrums. Now, I had something even worse to reckon with.
With Mister Backpack slung over my shoulder, we followed the pathway and walked up to the building. Holding Radar close to him, Tommy looked down at the ground, walking by my side, but continuing to keep his distance from me as usual. Once again, the fact that he wouldn’t hug me or let me even hold his hand brought a sadness to my heart that I couldn’t ignore.
When we opened the front door and stepped inside the office, a stocky, black-haired male reporter was in the midst of interviewing Rachel, while a large muscular cameraman in a headset shouldered a Channel 2 camera, its red light on. A lone assistant had her eyes on a computer in a far corner. Rachel kept fiddling with her hands as she spoke, her eyes darting nervously with every sentence.
“What we do here is . . . uh, basic research on nonhuman primates.” She spoke haltingly, glancing at me as we entered.
“So, about this autistic boy. What can you tell us?” The reporter cast his eyes at Tommy and me as we walked in. “Is that him? Is that the kid?” The reporter rushed over to me and thrust a microphone in my face before Rachel could reply, the camera man following.
“Mike Bloomfield, Channel 2 news. Is this your son?” His brash attitude made me instantly dislike him.
“No comment.”
“Is he autistic?” He waved the microphone at me like it was a weapon and this was a news hold-up. I felt accosted.
“I really don’t have a comment.” I shook my head.
This Bloomfield was a real piece of work. He wasn’t just dressed in a suit, he looked as if he’d been finely tailored and primped like some fashion model about to hit the runway.
“Is it true your son actually speaks to chimpanzees?”
“Can we turn that camera off, please?” I said, growing angrier by the minute.
“Is this your son? What can you tell us?” His dark eyes drilled into mine.
“Look.” I rose to my full height, towering over the shorter reporter. “You want the truth? Here it is. I’m not going to tell you one damn thing, all right?” I pointed at the door. “So, you may as well just climb into your van and head on back to your TV station because the news here is that there’s no news for you.”
Bloomfield turned to Rachel. “Care to comment?”
“No further comments,” she said.
Bloomfield’s eyes meandered over to my son. He motioned to the camera man to turn off the camera, then knelt down to Tommy’s level, moving closer. Tommy backed off and screamed. He bit his hands and kicked, whirling around. “Ouuuuu. Oooouuuu. Ooooo . . . ”
Bloomfield’s eyes went wide. “Let’s go, Rudy.” Then he turned to me and stood to his full height. He spoke over Tommy’s motorboating. “Just remember, if there’s news here, it will come out, one way or the other. It’s always better if you give your side of things before that happens.”
“The door’s that way,” I said.
“Oooouuuuu . . .Way . . . way . . . way . . .”
When the reporter and his cameraman were gone, Rachel said, “Did you get my text? I tried to warn you.”
“No. I didn’t get it.” I checked my phone and there it was: a waiting text message. I had turned off the ringer and hadn’t felt the vibration when the text message came through.
She explained. “Evidently some YouTube video of your son at the zoo and the chimps staring at him has gone viral.” I recalled the pimple-faced teen recording Tommy that first day at the zoo and how I’d thought about stopping him, but didn’t. This is so rad. Of course. “It’s gotten tons of hits and your ex’s attorney—” Rachel stopped when I held up my hand.
“I get the picture. Trust me.”
Tommy held Radar and suddenly struck himself on the cheek. We both looked at him.
“Tommy, no,” I said. “Don’t do that.”
He motor-boated back at me.
“Weller’s come up with an official statement that we’re prepared to give if necessary, explaining that we are a research facility and that yes, we are considering doing research with an autistic child as part of our experimental protocol, but no, we don’t believe the boy actually speaks to chimps,” she explained as my eyes lifted from Tommy to study her face. “But you know how the media is. Always snooping around. I had no idea he’d actually show up like this, totally out of the blue.”
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She was still breathing hard. The color had drained from her face. “Yeah, sure. I just need a moment. Let me go to the ladies’ room. Be right back.”
Speaking to Radar, Tommy went into a nonsensical stream of pseudo-words.
“Hey, Tom-Tom, what are you saying to Radar? Maybe you could tell Radar your ABC’s.” I spoke in my Mister Rogers voice, soothing and easy, hoping to get a response.
But Tommy ignored me, dropped Radar to his side. Head down, he put a finger into his mouth and sucked on it. Another finger went up his nostril as a sad heaviness tugged at my heart. Then he smacked himself on his cheek and gnawed on his knuckles.
“No, Tommy, please don’t do that.”
He looked down as if he knew what he’d done was wrong.
“Noooo,” he said. “Nooooo.”
When Dr. Simmons returned a few minutes later, I said, “Why can’t guys like that cover real news, like for instance, the exorbitant salaries that TV reporters are paid?”
She laughed. She seemed in control now. “I know,” she said. “He’s clearly on a power trip of galactic proportions. You know, short man’s syndrome? Anyway.” She blinked and let out another long breath. “Let’s go.” She beckoned me and Tommy forward with a wave of her hand. “We’re all assembled and we need to get this show on the road.”
We walked out the door, passing through the courtyard and heading toward the buildings, Tommy at my side mumbling to Radar again.
“By the way, I was wondering. Is there no room for a compromise of some sort between you and Cheryl?” Rachel asked.
“Well, there’ve been letters and counter-letters.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “My lawyer and I were trying to get Cheryl to agree to chimp therapy for a year and then see what happens. And if there’s no result, then I would agree to try the Acorn School.”
“What did she say to that?” she asked. Her eyes meandered over Tommy and Radar and then she looked at me.
“To translate the legalese—hell, no!”
“I see.”
“Actually, the court date’s been set. Cheryl wouldn’t even agree to mediation. Her lawyer wanted a hearing with a judge and nothing else and she knows the law well enough to make it happen. My attorney just notified me this morning. It’s going down one month from now. May 12th, to be exact. Friday. 10:30 a.m.”
“It’s really going to throw a wrench into things, isn’t it?” She pinched her lips together and wrinkled her brow as she touched my shoulder.
“More like a bomb.” I sighed.
“Then we’ll just have to work as fast as we can to show that Tommy is benefiting from the chimps,” she said with determination in her voice. “This is most disconcerting.”
“Chimpies?” Tommy said. He gave Rachel a free-flowing smile, flicking his fingers.
“Oh yes,” she said. “And we have a big surprise for you today.”
“’Prize? ’Prize?”<
br />
“Yes, indeed.” She nodded eagerly. “We want you to meet someone very special. Let’s go. Actually a few special people, just this way.”
I grew worried that Tommy might have a meltdown in front of these new faces. And I hoped that he wouldn’t start convulsing and seizing up.
Instead of heading toward the play yard, Rachel led Tommy and me toward a building fifty yards away, to the left of the barn. It was a brick edifice about the size of a four-car garage, set back all on its own. The sign on the shiny metal door said: Research A-12.
We entered a green-walled conference room, with sophisticated-looking machines resting against one wall. I was so surprised that my hand went to my mouth and I gasped in awe. In the room sat three other white-coated scientists, along with Dr. Evans, all studying notes and staring at the equipment. And at the head of the conference table sat Carly Yates herself. The real deal. I couldn’t believe it.
I recognized her instantly and grew breathless. How many times in your life do you actually get to meet a famous billionaire? As soon as we stepped in, all eyes turned our way. I ushered Tommy in slowly, not sure how he would react.
Then I looked beyond Ms. Yates, into the adjoining room, about twenty feet away and separated by a thick glass wall. Something even stranger than the appearance of the famous Ms. Yates made me draw back. I did a double-take and blinked. I couldn’t believe it, but a fully-grown adult chimp sat on a chair doing what I guessed all smart adult chimps did in their spare time:
He was standing at an easel painting.
Chapter 9
Ms. Yates stood and stepped forward to meet me and Tommy, while the scientists remained sitting around the conference table. Tommy moved away from her, hands in mouth now, head down. He cuddled Radar, motor-boated, and spun around. Then he smacked himself.
“Tommy, no,” I said. “Please don’t do that.”
But he was completely in his own world and didn’t seem to even hear what I was saying.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Crutcher,” Ms. Yates said, extending a hand to me after she’d studied Tommy. She spoke in that familiar Boston accent of hers.
We shook hands and I felt my face turn red. For a minute, I grew speechless, a rare moment for me indeed. “Ms. Yates. I’m—I’m honored.”
Her reassuring, thin-lipped smile was unable to put me at ease. As my hands clammed up, a sudden shyness overtook me. I was basically in a mild state of shock. I studied her piercing blue eyes, her broad forehead, her round face, on which she’d applied just a smattering of makeup. She wore a simple navy-blue dress belted at the waist; the ring on her left hand was the giveaway—it was huge, unfathomably expensive looking.
I sensed a kind of fiery dynamism that orbited around her, something that none of the photos in the newspapers or the shots on TV could reveal. She didn’t just look at you, she absorbed you, subsumed you, her entire being fully engaged in the present moment.
“I'm so excited about this,” she said, giving me a wide-open smile. “This has got to be one of my most interesting projects ever.” She looked down at Tommy, who was fidgeting now as he turned and stared again at the adult chimp. She apparently knew not to try to greet him or touch him. I guessed she’d been forewarned. “He’s such a beautiful little boy. I know you’re proud of him.”
“I am.” I swallowed, again at a loss for words. “Tommy, can you say hello to Ms. Yates?”
Tommy gave her a quick look, and then a deep, robotic: “Hello.”
“Hello to you too, Tommy,” Ms. Yates said. “He’s so precious!”
“Hello . . . Fine . . . Hello . . . Fine.” Tommy repeated himself a minute more as we watched him, then sucked on the backs of his hands, which I gently tugged from his mouth.
“One of the reasons I was so drawn to this project was because I have a nephew who’s autistic,” Ms. Yates said. “He’s also eight years old. I see how much he struggles. He’s pretty severe. My sister and her husband are out of their minds with worry.” Her brow wrinkled. “If this research can offer just a small window into how people with autism think and behave, I’m all for it, not to mention what it could possibly mean for our understanding of the nonhuman primates. Dr. Dunn? Am I right?” Yates turned to a shiny-headed bald man with a smooth-shaven face and a jutting jaw.
“Absolutely. This is truly groundbreaking work. I’m pleased to meet you as well,” Dr. Dunn said in a smooth voice as he stood, then came over to me. He was hardly more than five feet five inches in shoes. But his dark eyes were sparkling and filled with what seemed to be a giant intelligence. We shook hands. “Morris Dunn. Pleased to meet you. I’m a neurobiologist and autism researcher from Berkeley, and I’ll be working with Tommy to make sure he advances as much as possible through chimp therapy. I must tell you, we are extremely excited.” Dr. Dunn looked down at Tommy, who was now whirling around.
They were excited? I was through the roof. I had no idea that Dr. Simmons had assembled a team as impressive as this. She hadn’t even given me a clue what she’d done. “Thank you,” I said, gushing. “Thank you so much.”
“The pleasure is all ours,” Dr. Simmons said, looking at me directly in the eyes. Her firm look said it all: You and I are in this together, every single exploratory piece of it.
“Monk,” Tommy said.
I reached into Mr. Backpack and handed Tommy his other stuffed animal friend, which he took in his outstretched arms. Immediately he started mumbling to it as if he were passing along secrets, then banging Monkey against Radar. I looked at Dr. Dunn who gave me a winsome smile.
“I see he’s strongly attached to them,” Dr. Dunn said.
“Yes, he is.”
“I’m hoping we’ll be able to move him away from his interest in things and turn his focus on people,” Dr. Dunn said. “This will be our ultimate goal.”
“My ex just thinks this chimp business is nothing but something for Tommy to obsess on,” I said., “She just doesn't buy into it like I do.”
“Well, I don’t see it that way at all. Of course, no one knows for sure,” Dr. Dunn said, looking down at Tommy, then at Ms. Yates, and finally at me, “but after studying the videos and seeing him now in person, I firmly believe he’ll be able to use this so-called obsession in a positive way so that he can learn to relate to humans through the chimps.”
My heart thrummed. So, I wasn’t such a fool after all. I now had an expert on board. Cheryl had no idea what she was up against. I had power and money on my side now.
After I’d been introduced to Dr. Osikawa, a short man from Japan who was in charge of the fancy equipment lined against one wall, the third scientist stepped forward. This man’s expression was serious, almost pained.
“Mister Crutcher, my name’s Carl Rekulak.” He spoke with a British accent and had a square face with protruding cheekbones, a scar zigzagging across his dimpled chin. Tall and rail thin, with his pale, whitewashed face, he looked undernourished. His thinning white hair was slicked back and he had long sideburns with a silver mustache. Probably in his early fifties. “I’m very glad to meet you.”
We shook hands.
“In the next room, Mr. Crutcher,” Dr. Rekulak said, his voice even and low, “is a chimpanzee named Albert.” He paused, cleared his throat, then said, “Albert is like no other chimp in the world, you see. He’s a unique animal few people even know about.”
I raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
“Awbert!” Tommy cried. It was as if he’d been waiting for the chimp to be named. “Awbert! See Awbert.” Tommy spoke rapidly, excitement coursing through his voice.
“You’ll see why I say this soon enough,” Dr. Rekulak said with a quick smile.
“Well, if you all will excuse me,” Carly Yates said, looking at her watch. “I really wish I could stay, but I’m afraid I need to get going. I have a meeting in LA with my Noah’s Ark people in about an hour and a half. I just wanted to stop by and meet Tommy personally. Sidney,” she said, turning to Dr. Evans and speaking fi
rmly. “I want a full report as soon as possible.”
“Absolutely,” Dr. Evans said, nodding.
Before I could even say goodbye, Ms. Yates swept out of the room.
“Dr. Rekulak’s one of the top researchers in our field,” Rachel touched my shoulder briefly and explained when Ms. Yates was gone. “One of the most authoritative primatologists in the world. He’s lived in the forests of Tanzania studying chimps for the past twenty-five years, and has extensive documentation of chimp communication, both gestural and oral. He’s given his entire life to exploring nonhuman primate communication and has come all the way from Africa to meet your son.”
“I’m entirely grateful,” I said. “Thank you.” We exchanged looks.
“It’s my pleasure,” he said giving me a flick of a smile. “This is too interesting to pass up.”
A minute later, the whir of helicopter blades overhead made me prick up my ears. Ms. Yates’s mode of transportation; pretty cool. I wondered if she flew herself. Knowing what I’d read about her, she probably did.
“Awbert.” Tommy gave Monk and Radar back to me, and I placed them into Mister Backpack as he raced up to the window and peered through the glass. He began flicking his fingers like crazy. We all watched him. “Awbert. Awbert sick.”
The window appeared to be one-way since Albert didn’t seem to notice us.
“He’s right,” Rekulak said. “Albert is sick. And it’s such a tragic story. I should make you aware of his history before we go further. If you don’t mind.”
“All right,” I said, then turned to Tommy. “Tommy, we’re going to meet Albert soon, but first I need to hear what the doctor says, okay?”
“’Kay. Fiiiine.” Tommy shook his head back and forth, then seemed to lose his balance before righting himself. He put a hand to his head, the same spot where he received the blow from Turtle Boy, then rocked back on the balls of his feet as he looked down.