The Easy Chain

by Evan Dara

  At first, of course – of course first we feared – CDD – we had read, a few places, about – terrible – but it wasn’t, it wasn’t that – symptomatology not at all the same – timing not right – but even with that thank God excluded we didn’t – there was no – no one really knew – and the school, they said – they needed an OK for her – written, from a child psychologist – with a specialty in – one of their rules – they couldn’t run such risks, they said – explicit in their guidelines – owed this to the other kids the parents – systematically excluding errant behavior – so I, we – we dug around – dug a lot, in fact – called, researched on the net – but all the other schools we contacted, inevitably they asked where, and why Anya had discontinued at – an immediate shadow effect – but for me, more pointedly – more of a concern – if the social settings that we were hoping to enable her for, if they were throwing her off – if the goal was the pathogen – then I was right to pull my car to the side of the road, and sit there – minutes and minutes – and to stop in hallways and shop aisles – with folders in my hands, or package things I was going to buy – to try to work through this – get a damn handle on—

  I had seen read references to ABA all the time – all over the place – in site after site on the net, in most of the leaflets – but it just it never seemed – somehow it didn’t feel – but then I was speaking to a contact I have at the U Michigan center, a doctor – really good people there – about the possibility of home schooling – results, pros – also cons – and he brought up ABA, that approach – Applied Behavioral Analysis – and he said it was good – that it could help – that it had worked very convincingly with a patient he was consulting on in Carbondale – downstate a bit – that the young man, after a few years, had gone on to take a five-day-a-week job in a tool-and-die plant – and but so ABA is a large umbrella – aspects, schools, streams, methods – lots, unreadable numbers of books out – and since, of course, Anya is very high-functioning – the approach, the match-up had to be good – exquisitely tailored to, for – the better the fit the greater the result – hear that phrase a lot – so I had to read some more – lots more – then I found met with someone, yet another professional – over in Bucktown – had an office over an organic butcher shop – and came away pretty much sold on the idea give it a try – in particular, this woman told me about a type of preparatory coaching called Natural Environment Training – it’s an approach that figures into a lot of ABA procedures – and that seemed to fit Anya’s situation her needs highly well – it’s one-on-one – and engages with doing practical, everyday things – in ordinary social settings – with the overall objective of really preparing you for functioning on a day-to-day basis – in the modern demand – both physical/mechanical survival And social – and the Sub-subset of NET that this woman recommended – was a newer technique Really expensive – called prompting – where someone, skilled and trained in the field – called a companion – or prompter – stays with the subject, Anya – and, in addition to some book teaching – follows her around, as she’s doing her ordinary, daily things – and from right behind her ear – very soft and close – whispers directions, suggestions, concrete advice – on how to meet the situation at hand – how to get things done – correctly, efficiently – acceptably – it’s an immediate reinforcement and operant conditioning technique – base-level B-mod, law of effect – that takes real-world inputs – necessities, challenges – and marries them to reactions, the Right Way to react – to handle social cues – on the spot – so the stimulus and the desired behavior – start to flow together – naturally – without thinking, as it were automatically – welding the arc of the behavior into a circuit – through the solder of the verbal prompt – patching you into the moment – and so setting you within the culture’s parameters—

  In fact, the approach has been around for quite some, years – originally coming out of the Ruske Institute – with very good remarkable results – it’s a cousin to what they call, usually for older subjects, the life coach – which is really becoming common now – this also uses just a little human guidewire to – subtly, softly – through words – to keep you on course – you hear about it all the time – people’s external governor – get them through the long day – and so I decided – I decided to give it a shot – instinctively it made sense to me – the one-on-one, the – the personal contact – it seemed, from everything I know about Anya – from how I interact with her – where there’s really never a problem – that it was a good the correct approach – just what she, what the situation – it was obviously the choice to make – the rational choice – what anyone would have done – under the circumstances – and, in fact, I was right – it it worked beautifully! – almost immediately – there was progress practically virtually every Day—

  The whole thing’s easy to understand – I chose a model, just a by-the-book first-rate prompter – a young man named William – twenty-six when he came to us – an Amherst grad – had studied interpersonal psychology, and group – with a minor in drama – so he had the tools – a BA, a way of putting you at ease – the interview was impressive, very comfortable – he was being handled by an agency with an ABA bent – we sat down twice in their offices – he spoke about his family, about growing up with a father who traveled for work – his own challenges – about a high-school semester he’d taken in Bern – about winning an award on the clarinet – and he had experience – he’d worked successfully with another girl – with a family near St. Louis, in Creve Coeur, for four years – until the family moved away – and what else – and he had recommendations – and, well, he only lived twenty-five minutes from us – and had his own car – so that was – and so I chose him – I applied the conventional criteria and – and I chose him – and he was nice-looking, too, very presentable, a bit like John Davidson – blue-eyed, slender slim, what you see called a full mouth – dressed by and large Banana Republic – very presentable – some of the girls on our block, they’d slow down, giggling – ask Anya if she would introduce him – or how they could get a friend like that – it was cute – they, sometimes they asked Begged for his home address—

  And, as I said, he was good with the girl – they hit it off very quickly – after William surprised Anya – and me – the first time they met – with a small box of Junior Mints from his pocket – Monday to Friday he was with us, with her, afternoons, four hours a – at our house, and on normal outings – walks, shops – trips to Wicker Park – and the curriculum, the training, was almost no curriculum at all – mostly he, very gently, he would just keep Anya on track – he would be with her, just walk right behind her as she went about her business, her day – or did the small bookwork that the program set out for her – and as she confronted the ordinary episodes decisions of – he would whisper his reinforcements – why don’t you do this, or try that – now say this, and say that – go here, and wear this, now offer that – small, positive suggestions like that – subtly, almost imperceptibly – all but inaudible to anyone else around – but always there, always with her – guiding her, helping her out – and it was amazing how she straightened up, how quickly she learned – William would say But now you have to pick it up – and she would – or Put that back where it came from – and she would – or Say you’re sorry – and she – or Tell her that you’re happy to see her – Tell her that her dress is very pretty – that you’re having so much fun – and now say yes, please – yes – thank you – Thank you!—

  Two days of watching her this – and I could See how powerful a technique it is – why it’s gaining so much respect traction in the industry – just having this little personal gyroscope keeping you up and on the wire – Anya had Never acted so easily or directly before – with such purpose or fluidity and concentration – doing chores, interplaying with other people – never anything like it – and the key to the method here, the real brilliance of this approach – is that every littlest bit of behavior is an addition
al opportunity for reinforcement – a means of strengthening the lessons – it’s a total learning tool – I mean, it was touching – I would see the two of them together, baby steps apart – with William paying the most thorough, the most delicate attention to what Anya needed, then gently whispering to her – simply, reliably Being There for her – and helping her – helping her relate to other kids people – counseling, reminding her, with fabulous gentleness, to say hello how are you – I hope you’ve been well – would you like some of my popcorn – then offering the bag forward – and accepting the glass of Strawberry Quik, even if she didn’t really want it – and, again, the more practical things – not to kick scuff her shoes together – to stand or sit with her mouth closed – not to tug on, or scrunch up, her dress – not to hold her elbow at an obtuse angle—

  Immediately, from the outset, Anya made sigNificant progress – it was visible – absolutely so – and very gratifying – according to the guidelines I got from the agency, improvement was to be measured along four scales – motor control, language mastery, emotional/social integration, self-confidence – and William, we had meetings every final Friday of the month, he said Anya was tracking good-to-very-good on all four of them – I thought he was being modest – but still, like I said, it was gratifying – what helped contributed, of course – was that Anya and William pretty quickly developed a kind of I suppose closeness – exactly what the guidelines said was desirable – and come on, it was almost inevitable – William was good, and – and with so much time together, such constant communication – a kind of sympathy or pact developed between them – for Anya, I think it was also or mostly a question of dependability – predictability – she knew that someone William, that he would be with her for the – for so much of every day – weekday – following her every step, keeping her company – in fact, she would be sad, flummoxed, when William went on vacation – one week in February, one in August – or when he called in sick – she refused to read on those days – she’d just sit and fiddle her coloring books, or sit, couch, in front of the TV – was generally mopey – but, surprisingly, she wasn’t clingy – by the next year, that would be September ’98 – the ABA agency said that, in light of her progress, Anya should make a return to school – not to public school – but to what they called a regular and controlled exposure to a group setting – and not full-time, no more than two hours a day – well I was thrilled – and William agreed it was the right thing to do – so the agency and I set up something – with a special ed school over in Lakeview – and it was just a great thing for her a dream – Anya got along Very well with the other students – about twelve of them – and she learned without a hitch right at her level – and just no problems, no problems at all – we arranged our schedules so that I would drop Anya off on my way to work – and William would pick her up on his way to our house – where they’d spend the rest of the afternoon – and did I tell you she got a prize for a collage she made about human rights? – ML King day—

  And, well, that’s about it – end of story – it was all real real good – happy ending – Anya kept learning kept improving – and I knew I noticed, definitely – I could see the strides progress she was making – socializing, fitting in – even more so starting that next spring – when I began to spend a little more time around my house – my practice was good, I could I would let myself take a few hours out of the office every week – well not every – but for a few years I’d wanted to – to add a deck to the back of the house, and – and it was a good time to do it – in particular because – because William was around – he was there anyway, four hours a day – and so I asked him if he’d like to help out – you know, with the constructionBuilding – give a little boost to his income – four six hours a week maybe more – because, you know, we had grown quite close – that summer, the previous, we – we took him on vacation with us – Paid vacation – ten days in July, we went up to Thunder Bay, up north on Lake Superior, got an apartment there – extra room – and this way I could get a little bit of a vacation myself – you know, not have to – all the time – maybe even go off on my own for a few – understandable, I hope – into mountain biking – so I invited him – room and meals and every – plus his standard salary – why not?, glad to do it – he was one of us by then – and, in fact, we had just a fine time – good weather, lots of sun, some sailing – I know a place to rent a small boat – swimming I could really relax – there’s a good Mexican restaurant up there that we like – and William, as it turns out, does wakeboarding – and he’s good at it, really impressive – really gets going, flies on the thing, crests way up and – so I set him up with that – and of course Anya was – was wow, was amazed – wanted to try – but we told her – we said she was too young, hope she understood—

  So in the fall – in the fall, we – we were back home, working on the deck – building back of the house – and did I tell you it’s a second-story thing – exit from the living room, not the ground floor – up a bit, above it all – Western Red Cedar and metal construction – room for four chairs – but I only put two – cold storage underneath – good view over the yard, to all the trees at the property line – but then, you see – then I – the laundry is downstairs – down where you come in – from the car the garage – and in the laundry – and on her wrist, you know – the back of her wrist, Anya, she – wouldn’t clear up – I mean I tried Neosporin, Bacitracin – other disinfectant salves – for months – pharmacist gave them to us, and advice – leave it open – let it get air – so we and so the laundry – inside, downstairs – her – while I was working on the deck – did I go down to? – looking for a rag? – and her – her underpants – the washbasket, just happened to be – stretch the elastic – big leg-holes in my hands – and the deck was progressing remarkably by then – nice roan wood color against the house – could easily finish in three four months – really starting to look like something – though then the white – the elastic cotton white – right in my hands – and I was looking – I think I was looking for a rag – and a little ripeplum scream – a stain – right there – on the cotton white – so I couldn’t use it for the deck – to work on the deck – to clean it – that was clear – and maybe it was time for a break, a snack – so I went back up – but I knew I couldn’t use it at all—

  So I went back up – to the deck – nice, maybe sixty percent done – the support posts rising, standing – the first decking laid – the joists carriage bolts – working, holding – an offering fresh air – a sprig from a tree had landed on – really looking good – so the doctor – at Rush Medical – dermatologist – the blemish, the wrist – didn’t use a microscope – but lamplight, high – very bright – toothmarks – undeniably, the doctor said – ridge patterns – erratic, repeated – multiple contusions – undenia – recurrent trauma inflicted from by – over time – in my opinion, he said – so not disappearing—

  And from that point – things went by the book – you know – the rituals, the rhythms – just played themselves out – as they had to – the whole classical symphony – all in tune – the police, six of them – went to his home – as they had to – on a Friday morning – 10:48 – knocked on the door – and he answered, and walked out – without struggle – and clearly identified himself as William – then cuffs, rights, back of the squad car – all the usual moves – surrender of clothes, new safe clothes, detention – as predictable – lawyers, depositions – motions, lists of witnesses – you know – everything as it had to – the machinery running magnificently – on its own – well oiled, very efficiently – all per expectation—

  I had faxed my schedule to—

  In front of the mirror – in her roo—

  And what and just – what he was saying whispering to her when—

  I had asked insisted – to the sales staff – OK, necessary to go into the dressing room with her—

  At the Gap—

  His fingers his—

  Two
three Year—

  Wavy hair her neck – her sweet girl dresses—

  I —

  And then Tuesday that Tuesday I – I had – I had to – also predictable necessary – no way to know, had to know – so in the evening, highest likelihood of – the first time I’d dialed even Looked at the number – and then an answering machine – should I?, screening?, did I Have to speak to a speaking machine? – but didn’t, waited half an hour – watched the yard dim, straightened socks shirts in drawers, made right angles of fabric – and then she picked up, and as soon as she heard my voice – no more words – and I told her, I just straight – what I had to, what words had to – and she the ex just listened, and said thank you – no other words – thank you – hung up—