Like No Other Boy

by Larry Center

  Cheryl gave her blessing and I was overjoyed. She planned to help with Tommy in chimp therapy as well. Even after all she’d done against me, after all she’d put me through, I couldn’t deny the importance of maintaining our connection as father and mother for Tommy. After all, we were still joined together at the hip when it came to Tommy—till death do us part.

  Chapter 23

  Another connection loomed just as important: Tommy’s and Albert’s.

  Tommy and I were at Weller in the room with the one-way mirror once again later that afternoon. Tommy was standing in front of Albert who was sitting at his chair in front of his easel. Albert was wearing a diaper that fit snugly around his bottom. Albert raised his hand, Tommy raised his as well, and the two of them put palm against palm. I never grew tired of watching Tommy relate with the chimps. Especially with Albert. They had the ultimate connection, boy and chimp. I smiled broadly.

  “It’s the pain,” Rekulak said, rubbing Albert’s shoulder. “Chronic pain so intense I can’t seem to relieve it, even on his best days. And his heart’s failing. Nevertheless, I’m so glad you’ve come. Albert’s been asking about Tommy so much, signing Tommy’s name, at least twice a day. You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Tommy, would you like to talk to Albert?” I asked.

  But Tommy was silent. He shook his head.

  He and Albert began to sway together, back and forth, left, right, gradually gaining more and more momentum. Albert was taller than Tommy, but not by much. Finally, as if the hypnotic spell was broken, Tommy stepped even closer to Albert.

  Albert said, “Hoooo . . . Eeeiii . . .” He stretched his lips.

  “Is there anything you want to tell Albert?” I asked Tommy. “Anything at all?”

  Albert wailed and the sound reverberated throughout the room, eerie and primitive. I felt it in my bones. Then Albert grabbed his stomach. He seemed shot through with pain. My stomach churned.

  Tommy put his face against the chimp’s broad chest. Albert lowered his head and wrapped an arm around Tommy’s shoulder, then the two hugged in a long embrace.

  I kneeled next to Tommy. “Tell us more about old Albert,” I said.

  “Awbert want . . . free, Daddy,” Tommy said. He gave me direct eye contact. “No cage. Awbert want . . . free!” Yes, I understood, as Tommy had hinted before. Freedom meant the final phase, beyond the body.

  Ultimate cagelessness.

  “So, this was what he meant by Albert being free,” Rekulak said. “It wasn’t about putting him in a sanctuary at all.”

  I nodded. “No. He meant Albert’s dying. How astute was that?”

  “Completely astute,” Rekulak said, his eyes falling on Tommy’s face. “I’m amazed at his understanding.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “I kind of think Albert was waiting for Tommy to come back before he died.”

  The chimp groaned. His body quavered and flinched. Then he gave a loud cry of pain. He rested his head against Tommy and snuggled close. Albert's body shook one final time. Heaved.

  Rekulak’s eyes were brimming with tears, his face contorted in grief. He sighed with sadness. “Oh, Albert,” Rekulak said. “Goodbye, my friend.”

  “So long, Albert,” I said. The poor chimp. I shed tears myself. My chest felt like it was caving in with sorrow. What a hard life he’d led, this close cousin of ours, so many of his difficulties caused by human beings. It was such a shame.

  “Awbert!” Tommy cried. “Want free!”

  Albert closed his eyes and went limp, peace at last descending on his face.

  Peace at last.

  “Awbert no cage no more,” Tommy said, turning to me. He spoke louder. “Awbert free.”

  “Free,” Tommy said. He looked at me for a quick slice of a moment, lowered his head, then sucked on the backs of his hands.

  Ah, life. What a strange and unfathomable mystery you are. Does our inevitable passing lead to ultimate freedom? Or is it only a path toward another prison made of dirt or ashes?

  I’d come so close to losing Tommy.

  Sure hope my Dad finds peace when his time comes, too.

  Chapter 24

  As time passed, the voice-over jobs started to come back more and more—Wade even helped me land a major job for a chain restaurant—and I was finding enough to keep me afloat. With the Weller stipend now back on, all in all, I was making it, if not doing fairly well.

  Then, sometimes a son has to do what a son has to do.

  I decided I needed to move in with my dad. He still refused to sell the house and move into assisted living, and when he fell in the den about a month ago—his second fall—I knew I had no choice. He hadn’t hurt himself, thank God, but I couldn’t take any more chances. Since we couldn’t afford a live-in aid, I was the next best choice. I put my condo on the market and it sold in less than a week! It actually felt good to get out from under the payments. I’d even made a small profit on the sale.

  The day came for me to move in. I’d packed all my stuff into a U-haul, which I pulled behind my old man of a car. I parked at the curb of my father’s house and was getting ready to haul my belongings inside. I’d sold all my furniture and my TV and was basically down to what was left of my material life: my clothes—never really owned a whole lot of clothes—my liquor bottles, and a few pictures and paintings. It was time to return to the Essential Chris Crutcher. Back to my Roots. Something like that. I had to smile.

  The weather was San Diego fine, another temperate afternoon, just like the one at the zoo when Tommy had first showed me his unique ability. There are lots of things to complain about in this world, but San Diego weather isn’t one of them. It was a Saturday afternoon. Tommy was with me, helping me move. Max was on a leash tied to a pole in the front yard, watching our every move, tail wagging.

  Before I started hauling my stuff in, I looked around and just took a long breath. A slow-moving red car clattered down the street. Then a bicyclist waved at me as he passed me by. I waved back. It was a great neighborhood, really, North Park, full of shade trees and memories, my childhood home. Mrs. Rosenkrantz still lived next door, at least ninety-five by now, her mind still sharp. I used to mow her lawn. The two dollars she’d give me was a fortune in my twelve-year-old eyes.

  I knelt down to Tommy’s level and gave him the news. He was carrying Radar in one hand.

  “This is where you’ll come on your days with me now,” I told Tommy.

  “Good, Daddy. Like.” Tommy clapped his hands. “Like lots.”

  I did a cartoon character, Dexter, one of Tommy’s fav’s. “Me too, Tom-Tom. Lots. Me thinks this place’ll be really and really really nice!”

  Tommy laughed. “Fun, Daddeeee . . . You fun.”

  Tommy had returned to Weller several times, and with the chimp therapy he’d undergone under the guidance of Dr. Dunn, he was definitely coming out of his shell, just as I’d known he would. Cheryl and I had worked out a schedule so that Tommy could go to school at Hillwood in the mornings, and then I would drive him out to Weller in the afternoon, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Sure, it was a long haul, but it was so worth it. He was giving me lots of direct eye contact now and his speech was improving, for sure. He spoke with longer sentence patterns, though far from perfect, and there was a bit more emotional inflection in his tone. I couldn’t have been happier.

  Later, after moving everything in, I left Tommy outside to play with Max in the backyard and stepped inside. My father, who had watched me carry things in for a while, who hadn’t offered to help move even one thing, was now asleep in his favorite old chair, his jaw dropped and his head turned to the side. He had berated me on how long it took for me to move everything in.

  “Can’t you go any faster than that?”

  A nearly empty beer glass rested next to him on the table. The Padres were on TV. I was glad he’d just missed a run scored by the Mets. I had to smile.

  I spotted a piece of paper next to his chair; another poem! I slowly read the words, once again written in his
scrawl:

  The meaning of existence

  lies not in who you are, or will be,

  but in who follows after you.

  No greater thing there is than a child to watch over,

  to raise like a rose,

  its human petals emerging in the bright sunlight of your folly, your guidance,

  your sun and shadow,

  the soil of your love as rich as the tenderness you cultivate.

  For this is your future, your hope,

  which harbors your past in its bones.

  Wow! Beautiful! He’d answered my question! So, this was his meaning to life after all. I stared at the scrawl again with tears in my eyes, and felt the rumblings of an earthquake in my heart no Richter scale could ever measure. Raising Tommy is, was, always will be the meaning to my life, for sure. We were all a dash, me, Tommy, Cheryl, Rachel, everyone, but we were an important dash, a meaningful dash. That was because our actions had consequences, ripple effects that reached out into family, friends, future generations, ultimately, the world.

  I sighed and tried to wrap my heart around it all, feeling a rush of love run through me, and how great and large almighty love was. Love, the ultimate ripple effect.

  EPILOGUE

  “Often, it’s not about becoming a new person, but becoming the person you were meant to be, and already are, but don’t know how to be.” –Heath L. Buckmaster

  Tommy takes his time as Zutu slowly stands and shrieks. Zutu is a wounded chimp recently placed in the sanctuary. He walks but in a halting stop-and-start way, one arm hanging limply from his side. Tommy watches his every move, helping him, a natural-born assistant. The chimps here in the Congo are all living deep inside the sanctuary where there’s plenty of forest and room to roam. They are free and safe. A poacher had tried to capture Zutu, hurting him, but the chimp had escaped. Now he is safe, too.

  Tommy smiles and coos at Zutu, and the chimp shakes his head. He shrieks. The chimp moves closer to Tommy and actually whispers in Tommy’s ear.

  “Daddy, Zutu has secret,” my son says to me.

  “What?”

  He moves next to me, takes my hand, and pulls me down to him. When I bend down to his level, he whispers in my ear, “Zutu misses his brother.”

  Zutu’s brother had been lost to the poachers.

  “Really?”

  Tommy nods.

  Two years after the coma, Tommy is flourishing in this sanctuary in the Congo. We live in a complex of two concrete buildings and a series of huts, and the sanctuary itself is nearly 300 acres. We are here for three months, a summer retreat for us. Rachel had arranged it. I’d left my father back home with Belinda, who would be his live-in aid until I returned to the States. Dad is taking care of Max and nursing more beers, I’m sure, partying it up in his own way. I tried to Skype with him once to tell him how me and Tommy were doing, but he couldn’t figure out how to work the computer and all I heard was, “This goddamn bullshit thing . . .” before his voice faded away, a bit worn with time and a touch even more ornery as well.

  All of the workers at the sanctuary, native Africans, both men and women, are astounded by Tommy’s uncanny ability to communicate with the chimps, using a combination of mental pictures, signs, postures, and who knows what else. Dr. Rekulak has assured me that Tommy will still play an important role in chimp studies for a very long time as well.

  All I know is that Tommy is happy here and his human speech is greatly improved. It’s still not perfect, but it’s come a long, long way.

  Rachel strides over to us. She looks radiant, her smile is wide, suffused with the richness of being here. Her eyes are bright, filled with an inner vitality. She’s just gotten back from a visit to the rain forest in Gombe. I can’t take my eyes off her. Her hair is longer now, reaching to the middle of her back. I can see the effects of being in the Gombe written in her eyes, in the lightness of her walk, the happiness blossomed all over her face. Just like she said in the coffee shop when we met to discuss the Weller data, I see how Gombe changes a person, teaches them to see in living color and to dwell in the luxury of the present moment.

  “Time for dinner,” she says. “Are you guys ready?”

  “Absolutely.” I tingle inside just seeing her, being with her in Africa. It feels incredible.

  Rachel has packed sandwiches and a bottle of wine. We climb into a jeep, Zutu sits on my lap, and we head to Nawango Beach, to tree-lined, windswept ocean and pure white sand. Tommy, Rachel, Zutu and I sit down to dinner on a blanket on the sand.

  “We have to get ready for your Mommy,” I say to Tommy who takes a sandwich from Rachel. She’s cut it into a square especially for him. “She’s coming in two weeks.” Cheryl’s still all for the chimps, and her new child, Clarissa, seems healthy as any normal two-year-old. We’re all entirely grateful.

  “Goodie,” Tommy says quickly, a special light sparkling in his eyes and real emotion flickering on his face. “Talk good for Mommy. Show. Me and chimpies now. Show . . every . . her . . . thing!” He gives me a broad smile, just like any kid; and my heart surges with a rush of joy and love for him.

  Tommy and Zutu sway with each other. Then Tommy signs and Zutu shakes his head up and down in sympathy.

  Rachel and I uncork the wine, pouring two glasses of an African cabernet.

  “Damn good,” I say. We raise our glasses and clink them together. She’s been sending me strong signals of attraction lately, a bit of flirtation here, a touch there, and all I can say is: I plan on sending a few signals of my own. Those candlesticks that she’d loved in that antique shop? I went back and bought them two days later and was planning to surprise her with them tonight.

  I gaze out into the open ocean, admiring this great white beach, old as life itself, this water and this blue uninterrupted sky. A flock of birds soars above us, gifted with their natural-born ability to fly away from predators.

  “Me love you, Daddy,” Tommy says, turning to me, giving me beautiful direct eye contact.

  “And I love you too, Tom-Tom. So very much! This big.” I spread my arms wide. Rachel looks on, smiling.

  “This big, Daddy?” Tommy says, spreading his arms wide too, his voice full of emotion.

  “Yes!” I stretch my arms even wider. “All the way to the moon and back. This big!”

  We all laugh. Then I get on my knees and he runs into my outstretched arms, not even hesitating. It’s happened at last—I can hug him and he hugs me back. It feels so good to hold my little boy next to me, clutching him tightly. I give him a long, warm embrace. He doesn’t resist. My heart swells.

  My own fight to rescue Tommy has taught me so much, but this most of all: We have to stand up for what we believe in. We have to go the distance, to fight the odds, if we want to make a change. In the end, it’s worth it, though while you’re doing the fighting, it certainly sometimes seems like it’s just easier to give up.

  Has Tommy’s autism been healed? Not at all. He still stares from time to time. He still goes into his own world and sinks his teeth into the backs of his hands. He still hyper-focuses. But he’s come such a long way. The most important thing of all to me is that I just want him to be who he is in all his uniqueness, his special “me-ness.”

  I think Tommy is on the way to becoming that person. He’s found the best spot on the planet for him, where his unique abilities make the most sense, where a happy and positive future stretches before him.

  No, he won’t be staying past the summer for now. And yes, he’ll be going back to school in the fall. But at least for now, this place can bring out the best in him. I am proud and overjoyed to be here with him, where he can be who he is—for surely, Tommy Crutcher is like no other boy.

 

 

 
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