Daniel Isn't Talking (9 page)

‘Stephen, don't do this,' I say.

‘Don't do
what
!' he says.

I have no answer. What shouldn't he do? Be angry? Of course he should be angry. Anyway, in this new world we've entered since Daniel's diagnosis there is no emotion that is out of bounds. But there is something more going on here, and I don't want to say it and he doesn't want to say it.

Stephen begins to shake and I see now that he is crying. I realise all at once that I've never actually seen him cry. I've seen him shout, hit a wall or two, and I saw him when Daniel was diagnosed, how floored he was. But this is different. It is as though he has been completely brought down. I can do nothing to soothe him, although I try. On my knees, beside our bed, I speak to the back of his neck, but he will not turn to me, or look at me, or answer.

‘Don't blame me,' I say. ‘Don't blame yourself.'

I write this letter and fold it carefully, putting it in an envelope, and pressing it into my jewellery box, an ornamental wooden box lined with crimson velvet that Stephen gave me on our first anniversary along with a pearl necklace. It is hard to remember that he loved me that much, but I'm trying to.

Bettelheim has been dead for many years now, of course, A case of suicide.

I want to be a good wife. A good mother The glue that keeps a family together, a sign of permanence and peace in our lives. Isn't that what a woman is? What else are we anyway? Lots of professions, lots of titles you can read in the want ads. I lost my first family early and ever since then I've been scrambling to get a new one. Marcus and I were trying to start a family before he died. We weren't
married because both his parents and my own mother thought we were too young. So our plan, if you can call it that, was to fake an accidental pregnancy. What kind of idiots fake an accidental pregnancy? But that is what we were doing. And I'm sure we would have succeeded, given our commitment – which went far beyond simple bedroom lovemaking, and included the seasonal shelter of willow trees, cornfields and beach dunes, not to mention several modes of mass transport. But that didn't work, although it might have done if we'd had more time. I try not to think too much about him because if he were still here then certainly Emily and Daniel would not be. It's an awful thing to admit, but if it meant losing Marcus to have my children, then that is a deal I would make.

‘This is a completely twisted sort of logic,' says Jacob, wagging his chin back and forth slowly as though to punctuate the sentence. ‘Nobody had to be killed in order that you would have your children. I don't understand your meaning.'

‘Yes you do,' I tell him. I'm glad I didn't tell him about the letter to Bettelheim. God knows what he'd have made of that.

He looks up at the ceiling, then down to his clipboard where he writes furiously, his lips pressed grimly together.

‘I'm a mother. And mothers are like bears,' I say. ‘OΚ, you don't have bears in this country.'

‘But you wouldn't actually
kill
Marcus?' Jacob says, his pen angled toward me like a microphone.

‘Jacob, stop it. Of course not. No.'

‘Then what are we talking about?' he says, his hands outstretched.

‘I'm just saying that if he hadn't died I wouldn't have my children. And that I don't allow myself to think of
him or miss him or anything because to do so would be like a betrayal of Daniel and Emily.'

‘And Stephen?' says Jacob.

‘OΚ, add him in,' I say, rolling my eyes.

Today, as part of being a good mother and wife, I do a survey of all the local dry-cleaners as I can't remember where Stephen's clothes are. He is sure it was me who deposited clothes at the dry-cleaner and did not retain the ticket. OK, so maybe it
was
me, I say. I have to admit it sounds like something I would do. I will find the two suits and three ties he needs right away, yes, I will do that before his business trip to Vienna. No problem. It was a real oversight on my part not to keep that ticket taped up on a cupboard door or strapped onto my person or someplace anyway. A mistake, though if I may say, it would help if the dry-cleaner put the name of their enterprise on their tickets instead of just a number, which one can easily mistake for a raffle ticket or any number of other things, like Lucky Dips or racing stubs.

So I'm going from dry-cleaner to dry-cleaner all morning with Daniel in the pushchair dragging his toes along the pavement so we can't go quickly, that's for sure. Emily is in pre-school so I can focus all my attention on him, but he does not want to include me in whatever fun he finds in his disc-shaped objects. He keeps these objects in his lap, and is particularly attached to the top from a Snapple bottle. Nobody is any help at all finding Stephen's suits. And aren't they an unfriendly bunch, these dry-cleaning people? They want all sorts of very specific information like
when
did I bring them in. Isn't it enough that I brought them in? At least,
may
have brought them in because I have brought other items here before. Of that I am certain.

Another thing – and I'd just like to say this now – is that I think parents with autistic children should have disabled parking badges. No, they should have their own badges that let them park even closer than those with regular disabled parking badges. I think the other disabled people would agree. Certainly this lady in a wheelchair, who my son is now trying to push off the chair so
he
can sit in it, would see the logic in my idea. She is screaming for help, and the race is on now between me and a security guard.

‘Just tell me if you found the suits,' says Stephen. I am breastfeeding Daniel, which is annoying Stephen, who feels all babies should be off the breast by nine months. Emily was off the breast by nine months, he often reminds me. But Daniel is different – if one can make such an understatement without begging laughter – and he has a cold coming on. The glands in his neck are up. His nose is running and I can see it is hard for him to turn his head. The only thing I can get him to take is breast milk, so Stephen will just have to live with that.

About finding his suits, I say, ‘Not yet.'

‘Mel, I need those suits. They cost hundreds and hundreds of pounds. I don't even have time to replace them right now and I need them for this trip.'

‘Don't they sell suits in Vienna?'

‘Who the hell knows? Yes,' he says impatiently. ‘But I want
my
suits.'

I promise I will find them and I set off the next day, doing the rounds once more to all the dry-cleaners, not having a clue when I dropped the suits off but begging them to look anyway. According to the one sensible book I read about teaching autistic children, you are meant to
spend the whole of the day distracting the autistic child away from their autism, their odd obsessions with objects, for example. But today is a total loss. Feeling ill, stuck in his pushchair, forced to charge around with me looking for Stephen's suits, Daniel is getting no help out of this crisis at all. Not today anyway.

‘Did you find them?' asks Stephen, calling me from the train platform around dinner time.

‘Yes,' I say.

‘And where were they?'

‘In the closet,' I state flatly.

‘In the wardrobe?' he says, immediately translating my American ‘closet' to his British ‘wardrobe', a mild correction I choose to ignore. Then he starts to laugh. He says, ‘They were in the wardrobe the whole time? Oh, Melanie! You banana!'

But I'm not laughing. I'm actually very upset. Daniel has his face pressed up against the front of the television and Emily is sulking because her Febo Dumbo has broken. Earlier in the day Daniel turned off the washing machine mid-cycle, which I didn't notice, so when I went to open it gallons of water poured on to our kitchen floor. I haven't had more than two hours' sleep in a row since Daniel caught this new virus and, generally speaking, I am not in a good mood. But I have to make myself laugh along with Stephen – I know I do – because the man hasn't touched me in three weeks and because I am beginning to think he's never going to again.

And I'm feeling scared. Sleepless, tearful. I can't concentrate or think straight. I race through the house adjusting curtains, organising toys, scrubbing a stainless-steel pan until it is surgically clean. Veena asked if I wanted her to babysit the children so that Stephen and I could go out
to dinner tonight before he leaves for his business trip, but I said no. I couldn't do it. Couldn't sit that long in a chair.

‘Whatever you are taking, stop taking it,' said Veena.

‘I'm not taking anything,' I said. ‘I do it all on Nescafé.'

But I guess I ought to have gone out with him. Once again, I'm the idiot. Because the next morning, after he leaves for the airport, I find a Hamleys bag with a present for Daniel's third birthday – a shaggy Elmo glove puppet which you might call ‘life-size' if Elmo were an actual living thing, which I am sure he is not despite how lifelike he seems, certainly more lifelike than my husband, who for the past few weeks is always on the telephone, in the office, or typing emails on his laptop. There is a card with Thomas the Tank Engine on the cover, a button saying ‘I am 3' and a roll of bills inside a rubber band. A thousand pounds. A thousand pounds is way too much if he is planning to return in a few days, as he told me he would. And it's pitifully little if he's never coming back. Which is my new, and not unfounded, fear.

The speech therapist is pregnant – I'd say about six months, judging by the look of her. She has an intelligent, lively face and a jolly American voice. She turns in her office chair, Daniel's file in front of her, and hikes her legs up under her skirt. With no hesitation whatsoever she speaks to me directly about the problem, my son, before her.

‘Moderate, but not severe,' she says, squinting through her rimless glasses. She wears a half-dozen studs in her left ear, has a cloud of curly black hair pinned up over her head, and a big smile that overshadows the acne she's acquired during pregnancy. ‘Of course, I am perfectly wrong to even
say
he's autistic. It's not in my training. If I were you, however, I'd be thinking about special school and about respite care. You really have no choice.'

This is what Stephen says, that we have no choice. He thinks Daniel must go as soon as possible to a special nursery school for children with learning difficulties. He insists. That is the worst problem he is handing me right now, but not the only one.

‘Yes, I do have a choice,' I say.

She laughs. ‘You're a tough cookie, but I'm telling you for a fact this is a big one, autism. Regular speech therapists like me can't even touch it. Give me your basic kid with a mild language disorder and I'll fill your ears with good ideas. But your boy?' She shakes her head.

In front of us, Daniel sits with his feet behind him so his legs form a ‘w'. He tears the pages of a magazine I've bought him, one featuring Thomas the Tank Engine. He seems completely oblivious to me and the speech therapist, to all the speculation about him. Nothing interests him at all other than the steady ripping sound he makes on the glossy pages of his magazine.

‘Why not Daniel?' I say. The speech therapist looks at me, then at Daniel, chewing her lip. I say, ‘Just tell me the truth. You cannot possibly make me feel bad.' Of course, this is a lie. She's already made me feel bad. She's telling me no. And she's telling me no because she sees Daniel as unteachable, at least this is how I see it. ‘Please,' I urge her. ‘I've already been through it all. Just level with me.'

She sighs, shrugs her heavy shoulders, heaves her opulent, pendulous breasts. ‘Because he isn't talking,' she says. ‘If he was even saying a handful of words I'd give it a shot. But I'm not qualified to treat this kind of thing. You are going to need special help here. Like I said, you might consider a school –'

‘He's only three years old.'

‘I mean later, when he's a bit older.'

‘I don't want to wait until he's older!' I say, perhaps a little too harshly.

The speech therapist opens her mouth to say something
and then, just as quickly, decides not to. She sets her face and I know at once that I've lost this one. Then she says, ‘I'd like to help you, Mrs Marsh. Really, I would. But I can't.'

I waited four weeks for this appointment. I'm here instead of at the airport where, according to my watch, Stephen's plane has just landed. He's been away for three days and I haven't gotten a single phone call. I keep waiting for the call that says he's sorry, that he's coming home. When I dial his mobile all I get is voice-mail. I don't know if that's because he can't get his phone to work in Vienna or whether he has decided not to answer it.

‘Surely you could help me get started,' I beg the speech therapist. ‘To get him talking, I mean.'

‘No, ma'am. Really, I don't know how.'

I have pages of questions, an open cheque book, a lot of time. I am ready to do whatever she says he needs – and she says she doesn't know
how
?

‘What about this stuff called Applied Behaviour Analysis?' I ask. I have discovered a book called
Let Me
Hear Your Voice
by Catherine Maurice, the mother of two autistic children. In it, she claims that ABA brought her children from autism to normality in just over two years. It sounds impossible, but it also sounds like hope.

‘ABA is Lovaas,' says the speech therapist, raising her eyebrows. ‘I'm from Los Angeles where Lovaas worked. Lovaas kids don't use language in context. They can respond robotically to specific stimuli. Like if I said, “What is your name?” then the child would state his name. But he wouldn't
understand
language.'

‘I see.'

She scoots her chair forward a bit, tries to cross her
legs, but finds that is too much effort with her pregnant belly.

‘But if Daniel could say his name and a few other words, you would work with him. That's what you said before. A handful of words and you'd try.'

She laughs, points at me. ‘You got me,' she says.

‘I got you,' I smile back. However exasperating, I am willing to play the game.

‘OΚ, look,' she says, shrugging one shoulder, then the other. ‘If he learned them spontaneously, yes, but not if they were drummed into him Lovaas-style,' she says.

‘How would you know?' I ask her. ‘Can I at least try?'

‘I'd know,' she says, gives me a wink. I don't know how she stays so cheerful through this conversation. There is something very abnormal about how happy she is to tell me she can't help. ‘And don't even
think
about using that Andy O'Connor. You'll hear of him if you're looking toward the behavioural psychology approach. He's got no qualifications other than an undergraduate degree, no formal training in working with children. He's a maverick. No decent university or health authority would have him. And he charges the moon, too. A cornball rip-off artist, swindler of the first degree. You don't even want to come near him.'

‘What does he do, this Andy O'Connor?' I ask.

‘Oh, he
claims
he does everything,' she says, rolling her eyes. ‘Teach them to talk, get them to play. What a shyster.'

Andy O'Connor. I will not forget that name.

Because Stephen won't ring me back, I go to his office with Daniel. Third floor, end of corridor, corner office, overlooking Hyde Park. I sit in his big office chair swivelling the minutes away, while Daniel climbs over
his desk, paws at the computer keys, presses buttons on the phone.

Ten minutes and no Stephen. I switch on his computer, log on to the Internet using his password, which I guess first time: Emily. I then pull up his emails and have a little look through. From his brother I get cricket scores and some boring garbage about team selections. Many emails from others in his office, of course. From me scores of unread posts with headers such as ‘Read this PLEASE' and ‘SHALL I ALERT THE POLICE?'. I dispatched them from an Internet café on Baker Street. All … let's see … seventeen of them.

A quarter of an hour goes by. Well, he's probably in a meeting.

Daniel is in the chair now and I'm on the desk. I've kicked off my shoes and am turning Daniel in the chair with my feet. He likes this, his eyes light up. What I am trying to do is to get him to clap, so I turn the chair, stop, clap, then wait for him to do the same before turning it again. But he won't clap. I have pictures of him clapping when he was only twelve months old, but he won't clap now. Why won't he clap?

‘Clap,' I tell him. But he doesn't understand. I take his hands and bring his palms together. ‘Clap,' I say, then wheel him in the chair again. ‘Yeah! You're clapping!' I tell him, which is almost the truth.

Twenty-five minutes. I am breastfeeding Daniel in Stephen's office chair. He would just scream if he saw this.

Forty-minutes. Daniel is asleep.

Fifty-five minutes. Stephen's assistant, a woman, comes into his office with some papers, finding Daniel and me there.

‘I'm sorry, Melanie,' she says now. ‘But he's not in today. Did no one tell you that?'

No one told me.

‘He's working from home,' she says. She looks very confused, a little flustered. Now she leaves quickly, her heels clicking against the floor.