Of course, not everyone is always in the mood to talk, and it’s not their responsibility to answer my questions. But having Nathaniel taught me that one thing is certain: It’s better to ask than to stare or be rude.
Nathaniel: Around kindergarten or first grade I saw the movie Shrek for the first time. I was already obsessed with superheroes, and Shrek rose above them all. It’s been pointed out to me that Shrek, who is fat and green and dirty, is still portrayed as a hero. He likes the way he looks, and only when the standard beautiful princess is transformed into her true ogre self does he love her. It’s been suggested to me that, as a little kid, identifying with Shrek was the easiest way for me to embrace the idea that I didn’t have to be perfect on the outside to be a good guy. It’s a clever idea. It makes sense. I get it. Shrek equals me. But people around me want everything to be about my differences. Can’t I just love a great movie? Shrek has an 88 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes; maybe I’m just part of that 88 percent. People look to Treacher Collins as the characteristic that defines me, but I don’t see everything through that lens. I don’t even wear glasses.
Not long after we met R.J. Palacio, Russel took a new job in New York, and we had to move again. We left North Carolina for New Jersey when Jacob was almost seven and Nathaniel was nine. Leaving our Charlotte neighborhood—especially Liz—gave me a new burst of energy.
Russel quickly found a pretty house in Maplewood, New Jersey. Coming from our cookie-cutter neighborhood to a town where everything was old and overpriced wasn’t going to be an easy transition, but this house was perfect! We put an offer in on it, but it failed the inspection. Turned out it was infested with black mold. When that deal fell through, we decided to rent. Russel was commuting to work, and one day he called and said, “Guess what! I found a rental. It’s a cute little house, and the boys can walk to school.”
Russel is the consummate salesman. The house he described ended up being three houses off a busy highway. It looked out on the garbage area of a supermarket, and across the street was a shopping center. The location was noisy and unpleasant, but he was right: The boys could walk to school.
That Christmas in New Jersey I started working part time at Lululemon during the holiday rush. I chose Lululemon because when I was about to have my hip replacement, Russel had gone to the one in Charlotte to treat me to a high-end workout outfit. Their philosophy is to create real relationships with people who walk into the store, and Russel told the friendly salesperson about me, and that I was about to have surgery. The store took interest in my plight, and right before my operation, they took photos with me to promote a new line of clothing. Then, when I was still in the hospital recovering, they sent me a video they’d made about how inspirational I was. It made me feel special, and I resolved to work there one day.
Working at Lululemon allowed me to try different gyms—they pay for their employees to do so—and connect with the community. I brought home a little extra money, half of which we used to pay bills, and the rest of which went into savings accounts that I opened for the boys.
Our cockapoo, Smokey, had never been alone for long stretches of time. Now when I left for work, I’d see him sitting in the bay window at the front of the house, waiting for our return with a mournful look in his eyes. When we arrived home, he would be in the exact same place, still waiting. We decided that Smokey deserved a companion.
We needed a hypoallergenic dog—fur and trachs don’t mix—and I found a website for a place in Pennsylvania Amish country where they had cockapoo puppies. At the time, I was ignorant about puppy mills (breeding operations where all they care about is making money and the puppies are treated inhumanely).
Russel, the boys, and I drove three hours to the address I’d been given and came to an oddly empty house. It was clear that nobody lived there. Then an Amish man in his thirties appeared. Acting as if this was his home, he mentioned his wife and children and said that everyone was working. Something was off. Only later would I realize that he’d probably had us meet him there instead of at a huge, filthy warehouse stuffed with hundreds of dogs.
Nonetheless, he went inside and returned with two cute puppies, releasing them to tumble and jump on the grass. He picked one up. “This is yours.”
This was definitely not the dog I’d seen in the picture online, a cockapoo named Monica. This was a mixed breed dog. A shedding dog. Possibly a golden retriever/Chihuahua mix.
Russel said, “That’s not a cockapoo.”
The guy said, “You don’t want it, leave.”
But it was too late. The boys were already fawning over the dog.
Coco was sweet and good, and Smokey loved her. She was the first female dog we’d had, and the boys treated her like their baby, dressing her in pink tutus and choosing pink plushies for her at the pet store. She even had a pink bed. We’d never had pink around the house. Now we had a spoiled baby girl.
Every day we walked to school with the two dogs. The boys’ classmates would pet Coco and say, “She’s so cute! What kind of dog is she?” We told them she was an Amish cockapoo.
Smokey still sat at the bay window waiting for us to come home, but now Coco was right there next to him, and the mournful look was gone from his eyes.
In New Jersey, we were just a twenty-minute train ride from Manhattan, and we played tourists. We went to see Spider-Man on Broadway. We visited the Statue of Liberty. When Nathaniel was younger, he had loved to scramble on the rocks in Central Park. Now he could do so without hurrying back to NYU for a doctor’s appointment.
I had walked past the Empire State Building innumerable times when Nathaniel was a baby and we were living in Hoboken. It was on my route from the subway to the hospital, the route that had been such a struggle with a stroller in winter. I’d never had the time and leisure to go up to the observation deck on the 102nd floor, but now I took the boys. It was the first time they’d been anywhere so high, and they were quiet as they took in the whole city from above: how big everything was, how the water surrounding it showed that it really was an island.
As for me, looking down, I saw the tiny, blurred heads of passers-by and I remembered when I was one of those specks on that same street, eight years earlier. How much fear and pain had been invisibly knotted in my small form, twisting through my cells, rotting into cancer. Each person who happened to be on the street as I gazed down on them was a question mark, an unknown story of struggle and hope. There was no telling if, how, or when one of their stories might intersect mine.
Not long after we moved to New Jersey, I was stopped at a red light in the middle of town when someone rear-ended us.
Nathaniel screamed, “What was that?”
I flew out of the car, furious. “What’s wrong with you? How can you drive like that? I have children in the car! Why weren’t you paying attention?”
A young woman stepped slowly from her car. She was probably in her early twenties, and very thin. She didn’t look healthy. I immediately knew there was something going on; I recognized her from a world that I knew. My anger dissolved.
She said, “I’m so sorry. I’m on my way to the doctor. I reached down to get my papers.”
I said, “No, it’s okay. We’re all okay. The car doesn’t matter.”
She told me that she had colon cancer, and as she spoke I saw that she had a chemo port in her chest. “I just got married, but I’m not going to survive this.”
Life, death, all around us. I had survived, and Nathaniel was thriving. I was grateful to God. I silently renewed my resolution to be mindful of every interaction, to remember what was important, and to do my part to make the world a gentler place.
Nathaniel: When we moved to New Jersey, R.J. contacted us and said, “I’m going to talk at a private school on the Upper West Side. Do you think you could join me?”
It may sound strange, but reading Wonder was not a monumental occasion for me. (Confession: No book is really a monumental occasion for me.) In fact, Jacob had a bigger reactio
n than I did. He was in second grade when he read Wonder for the first time, and, like Dad, he read it all in one sitting. Jacob was excited by the similarities between me and Auggie: How Auggie, like me, had one true friend instead of lots of friends. And how we both loved Star Wars. And our dogs. How Auggie struggled with everyday things: eating, making friends, being in dusty situations, not being able to swim.
Where Jacob saw the similarities, I tended to see the differences. People expect me to identify with Auggie, and get all emotional and cry like my dad. But to me, though Auggie has medical issues that are similar to mine, he has a completely different personality.
But then, when I started to see what people were getting from the book, and how it was actually changing their behavior toward me, that’s when I understood how powerful the book is. That was monumental.
When I did that first school visit with R.J., I sat at the front of the stage with my mom, Jacob, and R.J., and her husband was in the audience. The fourth-grade class gathered in front of us—they had already read the book and were there to meet a “real-life Auggie.” I didn’t know what questions to expect, but a lot of kids asked, “Does it hurt? Were you in a fire? What happened to you?” One kid asked, “Are you in a special class for special kids?”
I don’t mind when people ask how I acquired these facial features, although ideally they could put the question aside and just get to know me. What I really don’t like is when the questions jump to assumptions. Being asked if I was in a fire, or if I’m in a special class rubs me wrong. It’s like saying, “Hi, nice to meet you. Have you ever fallen down a hole?” Or “Why is your hair brown?” I don’t spend time wondering, much less asking, why someone looks a particular way. There’s an answer, but does it need to be known? It doesn’t matter and it’s not my business.
I visited schools to support R.J. and the book, and because it was kind of fun, but in my day-to-day life I don’t want to be seen as Auggie Pullman, or “the real Wonder boy.” First of all, I’m not the only kid with Treacher Collins, and secondly, I just want to be seen as Nathaniel Newman. I want to be seen as a normal kid who happens to look different.
22. Reno
We had only been in New Jersey for a year when the CFO at Russel’s company got caught cooking the books and the company went bankrupt. Russel lost his job. He quickly found another . . . but it was in Reno, Nevada. I couldn’t believe we had just uprooted our family, only to have to move again. We flew to Reno to consider the opportunity, and his new boss took us to dinner in a casino restaurant.
“You’ll be happy here,” he told me. “There’s a small-town vibe.”
After a dinner of hearing from the boss and his wife how great our new life would be, I was sold. The offer was very alluring. We could pay off all our debts and finally relax a little. Russel promised that we could build my dream house. I liked the sound of that.
We bought a lot facing the mountains and rented an apartment to stay in while the house was being built. I started leading workouts again, this time for a New Zealand–based company called Les Mills, and I continued working at Lululemon (thank God for chain businesses!). On weekends we explored as a family, driving to San Francisco or Lake Tahoe, or taking Smokey and Coco on hikes. Life was good.
Nathaniel was unfazed by the move, just as he’d been with the others. He’s a laid-back kid, and wherever we went he always found one good friend, usually an outsider like him, and that was all he needed. Oddly, because of his special needs, there was a certain consistency to his life. We always introduced him to his new class with a letter, as we’d done when he started kindergarten. He always had a nurse accompanying him to school. He always had doctors’ appointments, pleasant or not, which gave structure to his time. Moreover, because of his medical needs, there was a certain amount of attention he still required from me and Russel.
Jacob’s salvation was sports, and he found his best friends on the teams he joined in every new city. It was hard for Jacob to leave Charlotte, where he had three very close friends, but coincidentally they were all moving away too, so it would have been just as bad for him to be left behind. During our year in New Jersey, the greatest thing that happened for Jacob was that he discovered and fell in love with lacrosse. In Reno we signed Jacob up for lacrosse right away. When I think back on our time there, one of my best memories is the spectacular fields where Jacob played. In New Jersey, North Carolina, and Connecticut, all of the East Coast parks I had seen were surrounded by houses and streets, trees and forests. You couldn’t see much beyond the field itself. But in Reno, you could see miles and miles of desert in every direction from any field. When Jacob practiced, usually at an elementary school, Nathaniel would climb and make friends at the playground, and I would perch on a bench with a view of both boys. The open fields that stretched into the beyond captured my imagination. It was the most geographically enchanting place I’ve ever lived.
Driving in Reno you also see endless desert stretching before you. The mountains in Poland were very different. My town, which was built on top of a hill, surrounded a castle the likes of which Reno has never seen, though there is no shortage of McMansions. A river ran along the foot of that hill, and my family lived on the far side of the river. You could see a tall mountain range in the near distance, but mostly the area was hilly and lush, and changed color with the seasons. The houses in town were tiny, each with a neat fence in front, a well-tended garden, and hand-painted flowers on the doors. It was folksy and charming, with enchanted forests full of nooks and crannies where mythical creatures might be hiding.
In the desert of Reno, the open spaces felt completely different. The space was expansive; you could travel in any direction. The remote horizon was never-ending and seemed to say you can go anywhere, you can be anything, the possibilities are endless.
I had just finished a yoga class when the phone call came. Russel told me awful news. Coco had been hit by a car and had died. I burst into tears. (I’m pretty good at repressing my emotions, but we all have our limits.) Somehow I made it home, where Smokey was licking Coco, trying to wake her up. I was crazed with grief. In my mind there was only one thing to do: find another dog exactly like Coco and bring her back to our apartment.
Nathaniel: Mom came home and took me to an animal shelter to try to find a replacement for Coco. The same day she died! Mom wasn’t really thinking straight. She started looking for another dog that looked exactly like Coco, but it was really like she was hoping to find Coco herself. Like I said, Mom was kind of hysterical. I watched her cry and thought, I have to make sure she doesn’t get a dog today.
I tried to comfort her, saying, “Coco’s in heaven now, let’s just go home.”
Meanwhile, she was looking at all the dogs, saying, “This dog shakes his tail just like Coco . . . the eyes look like Coco . . . the coloring . . .” We spent about two hours there, searching hopelessly.
Then my mom went to the front desk and said, “Are there more dogs? I’m looking for my dog.” She described Coco, and the rescue workers clearly thought she was actually looking for a lost dog, because they took us from the adoption side of the shelter to the other side, where they had dogs who had been found on the street and weren’t yet up for adoption. My mom fell in love with a pair of Brittany spaniels who looked a lot like Coco.
Finally I said, “Please, let’s go home,” and dragged her out of there.
The house felt empty and quiet without Coco. Smokey wouldn’t eat. I couldn’t bear seeing him alone. Three days later, after I had semi-recovered my senses, I brought Smokey with me to a pet store. I told the guy my story, and that I was looking for another cockapoo.
“We only have one cockapoo, and she’s kind of sick.”
He showed me a puppy in a cage. She was the only dog who wasn’t eagerly leaping toward me, wagging her tail and hoping I would take her home. She was just lying there in her own filth. Her eyes were gooey. I wanted her.
“How much is she?” I asked.
The guy
told me her price. It was very high, especially for this poor, sick dog.
“I’ll give you half,” I countered.
He replied, “I’ll give you that price if you have lunch with me.”
I was shocked. “I’m married and I’ve been crying for three days and you’re hitting on me? What kind of person are you?”
By the time I was done scolding him, I had my dog at my price. No lunch date. When I brought the puppy home, I told the boys to think of it as though Coco’s sacrifice brought us Snowball.
The boys had never experienced death before, and they had different reactions to the loss of Coco. Jacob talked about her often, and when Russel took them to a children’s museum, Jacob brought home a blue pillow with buttons on it and “Coco” written on it with a Sharpie. He slept with that pillow every night. Once, when the other dogs (soon to join the family) got ahold of the Coco pillow and tore a hole in it, Jacob carried on like someone had died. I found a sewing kit and fixed it, and from then on Jacob kept it hidden under the pillow on his bed.
Unlike his brother, Nathaniel didn’t talk about Coco much, but he would look at pictures of her and feel sad. Coco was in our hearts, but we had to focus on the living. Together, we read a poem about a pet crossing a rainbow bridge into a beautiful meadow where he would frolic until his owner joined him. Nathaniel seemed to take that image to heart. In his mind, Coco was up in heaven, waiting for him.
Snowball seemed to know best how to help Nathaniel heal. Every night, when he went to bed, Snowball got under the covers with him and waited until he fell asleep. Then she came to let me know that her work there was done, and she was ready to do the same for me.
23. Hollywood
At first we didn’t take much notice of the change Wonder was precipitating in the world. I was preoccupied with my own life: Recovering from surgery. Moving to New Jersey. Moving to Reno. Raising the kids. We knew it as a story, we adored R.J., and we liked helping to spread the word.
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