Harmony (14 page)

A week after winter break ends, Tilly has a half day at school: teacher in-service or one of those kinds of things. On the way home, you stop at McDonald's for lunch, and you notice that suddenly—since this morning, even—Tilly has developed a compulsion to lick every surface she comes into contact with. She licks the counter, while you're waiting for your food. She licks the display case where the Happy Meal prizes are kept. She licks the table you sit at and the window that looks out on the gray air of the parking lot, the asphalt covered with rough salt and dirty snow. She stops to lick the doorjamb as you pass through it, and you try not to look at the three or four customers who watch it happen.

There's another change, too, though it's harder to quantify: an increase in defiance, in inappropriate language, in not following directions. In doing things she knows she's not supposed to. An increase in pushing your buttons, basically. She tries to open the car door while you're driving; you flick on the child locks. She throws a paper cup out the window; you pull over and walk her back a few hundred yards, so she can pick it up. And all the while, you don't
freak out, not when she licks gum on the pavement, not when she calls you a bitch in front of an old lady. You hold her hand tight, you keep your tone mild, and you wonder what the hell is going on.

Is this a medical issue? She has a cold, and—in addition to thinking of the germs she's spreading and the germs she's taking in—you wonder if there's some connection. These kinds of sudden changes (including the one that got her kicked out of pre-K) have all taken place in winter. But it seems like a tenuous link.

You phone her pediatrician's office, with all the usual misgivings; it's a big practice, connected to a teaching hospital, and your kids never seem to see the same doctor twice. You take her in, do your best to keep her contained in the waiting room, as she giggles and runs for a door that says “Employees Only,” as she tries to knock over an infant in a baby seat, as she sings a song that contains no lyrics except the word “vulva.”

But the doctors—she sees a resident first, and then, briefly, an attending—don't find anything wrong with her, not anything they know how to treat, at any rate. As usual, the medical personnel seem faintly baffled by the mysteries your daughter presents. The attending mentions conversationally that Tilly has “cryptic tonsils” (which apparently means that they have folds in them where bacteria can gather) and you almost laugh. When has anything about Tilly
not
been cryptic?

You get her to sit on your lap for a throat culture; you squeeze her tight and nuzzle her hair like you did when she was little. But she ends up being too frightened, and you have to join a team of two nurses in holding her down and getting her mouth open while a resident jabs at her throat. You're almost crying, too, by the end of it, and the rapid strep test is negative, in any case.

Afterward, you think about taking her for ice cream. It's easy to be fierce and brave in the car: the hell with it, you think. Your little girl has had a hard day, and she deserves a treat. The important thing
is to tamp down your own anxiety. That's one of the tips you took away from Scott Bean's seminar, and it's a good one. Any embarrassment her behavior causes you, any worry about what other people are thinking: it's a waste of your time and energy. Your number one job is being your kid's advocate, and you can't do that if you're nervous about what the people at the next table are thinking.

Easier said than done, of course, and your nerves already feel ragged. In the end, you get her a cone to go, and you count it as a victory.

 • • • 

If you're hoping that this will end as suddenly as it began, you're out of luck. It goes on for weeks and weeks. You speak to Tilly's teacher and to the therapist she sees at school; no one can really explain it.
Just ride it out
seems to be the best advice anyone can give you.

At school, she's not able to behave any better than she is at home, and even in a school designed specifically for kids with special needs, there are limits to what they can handle. When Tilly is too disruptive for the teacher to allow her to stay in the classroom, she gets sent out to “take a break,” sometimes in a counselor's office and sometimes just in whatever empty room they can find. Eventually, the school asks you to keep her home for a little while. Among other things, the current situation is hurting her social interactions with her classmates; they're grossed out by the licking.

Throughout January and February, you and Tilly spend long, difficult days at home. Josh takes time off from work, when he can, to give you a break. When you leave the house, you wonder how you're able to walk around in public without people seeing that you're a complete mess.

It doesn't get better, and it doesn't, and it doesn't.

Sometimes you imagine getting sick—nothing serious, but perhaps something that would require a few days' hospitalization. Sometimes
you wish you were invisible. You wish you'd never made yourself important to anyone at all.

Here are some of the things you're not posting on Facebook during February of 2011:

Alexandra Moss Hammond has kept her daughter home from school again, because she's licking the walls and cursing like a sailor.

Alexandra Moss Hammond's daughter has changed the name of Shel Silverstein's poetry collection to “Where the Pussy Ends.”

Alexandra Moss Hammond's daughter just said in the post office, “Your tits are huge. Did I really used to suck on those?”

In the evenings, or what's left of them after the kids are finally, finally asleep, you and Josh sit in the living room and look at your separate laptops. He's researching fringe theories about autism; you're reading pornography about the characters of a TV show you've never seen a single episode of. The porn thing—and perhaps “erotica” is a better word because you like prose better than pictures—is a successor to the “build your own city” game. You cycle through diversions fairly rapidly; there's a lot that you're trying not to think about, and you find that novelty is the best strategy. Find something new and sink yourself in deep. So last month it was video games and this month it's amateur writing on LiveJournal. Next month, maybe it'll be crossword puzzles or biographies of serial killers. Celebrity gossip or a religious devotion to
So You Think You Can Dance
.

“Here's how it's going to happen,” says Josh, after a long period
of mutual silence. “Here's how it's going to turn out that vaccines
are
responsible, but not for the reasons we think.”

You look up. “Okay,” you say, waiting.

“So we know that the immune system detects and kills pathogens. But what if that's not all it does? What if it's responsible for figuring out what the individual needs to do to adapt to the particular environment he's born into?”

You're nodding, but you let your gaze fall back to the screen. Your characters are making out in an alley, despite the fact that they're both on-duty cops and someone is currently shooting at them.

“So we take this baby, this newborn, and we give him doses of like four major diseases in one day. What's the immune system supposed to make of that? It thinks we're living in plague days.”

You look up for real. “Huh. That's interesting.”

“Yeah. So the cortisol level shoots up, because the fight-or-flight mechanism has to be on super-alert. In plague days, it's every man for himself.”

You pick up your glass of wine from the coffee table; it's the last of the second bottle, and there's a good chance you've had more than half. You pick it up and consider. Just because you poured it doesn't mean you have to drink it. But it's the color of a garnet, an inch and a half of promise. You take a sip.

“So how come it doesn't happen to every kid?” you ask. “They're all on the same vaccine schedule, more or less.”

“Some kids are just predisposed to be extra-sensitive to it.”

You nod. “Maybe.” You go back to your reading: orgasms had, perp caught, Miranda rights read.

Josh looks over at your screen. “How's your porn? Are they fucking yet?”

“It's not really about that,” you say. “But yes.”

You close your laptop and put it on the coffee table. “Will you help me make the lunches?” Using the plural is optimistic; there's a good chance you'll only be needing one lunch in the morning.

“Sure,” he says. He's back to his reading. “In a minute.”

Hard to say what kind of effect all of this (and depending on your current outlook, “all of this” can encompass anything from the current month up to the last ten years) will have on your marriage. Sometimes you fight, but more often you go days without finding the time or energy to say anything private to each other at all.

In the kitchen, you cut up fruit and seal it into small Tupperware containers. Josh comes up behind you. He brushes your hair aside and presses his lips to your neck.

You consider it. “I haven't showered all that recently,” you say.

He barks out a laugh. “That's hot.”

You close your eyes and lean back against him. You are lucky here, if nowhere else. This is what you can't afford to forget. You believe, fervently, that falling in love is the one holy mystery in an otherwise secular life.

“Okay,” you say. “Let me just put this in the fridge.”

Alexandra Moss Hammond can't seem to keep her house clean or her daughters' hair free of tangles.

Alexandra Moss Hammond really should stop crying while she drives.

Alexandra Moss Hammond wonders if it's possible to drown on dry land.

 • • • 

In the morning, you're hungover, and Tilly has to stay home again. She freaks out when you burn her toast; you snap at her; she punches you in the arm. You're all edges today, both of you. You take away an hour of computer; she throws a glass of water in your face.

When you've both calmed down (and her hour has passed), she settles in front of the family computer to read about her current
obsession, which is Greek mythology, and you open your laptop to see if you can find anything that might give you some hope. Social skills groups. Lymphatic therapy. Probiotics. Grapefruit seed extract and young coconut kefir.

Look at your Google history, and there it is, your mind, all its secret curves rolled out flat, like a map. Preoccupations and idle curiosities, mottled hopes and scribbled-out fantasies beating wildly on the screen. Everything you were, are, could be.

You read about home remedies and dietary supplements: Sodium citrate reduces inflammation. Vitamin B3 can have a calming effect. Bitter orange helps with sleep, but the NIH says it isn't safe. Red and green natural clays have antibacterial properties and can cleanse the body of yeast—but are you really going to feed your child clay?

At this moment, autism treatment is still an empty frontier. There are special prayers and crystals for sale. There's a man in Brazil who will perform long-distance “psychic surgery” if you send him your child's picture. But even among respectable doctors and researchers, crazy things are being tested: fecal transplant and chelation, elective tonsillectomies and transcranial magnetic stimulation. Electroshock therapy is being given another chance, and why not? No harm in paging through the history books, as long as you keep a jaundiced eye. Stop before you get to “lobotomy.” Stop before you start tying children to their beds.

The day feels interminable, but together the two of you ride it out. The solace of life is that each day has an end. This one will, too.

The thing about Werewolf is, it's the most fun game ever, but it's really hard to explain. It starts out with one person being the Werewolf—today it was Scott—and everyone else has to build a shelter because the Werewolf is coming. You can build it out of leaves and sticks or rocks or whatever you can find. But there's a secret rule that only the Werewolf knows, like today it was that any shelter built up against a tree trunk doesn't count. Everyone can ask one yes-or-no question about the rule, to try to figure it out, and you can also listen to everybody else's questions. Then you hide in your shelter, and the Werewolf comes to town. Anyone whose shelter doesn't fit the rules becomes one of the Werewolf's spies, and everything begins again.

And it gets even more complicated, because each spy gets to make up a new rule, and they don't even have to be about the shelter. Like Candy was a spy today, and she added this whole truth-or-dare thing that was really fun. And also, spies can betray the Werewolf, and there's probably other stuff I'm forgetting.

So anyway, when we get back to camp around dinnertime, we're all talking about Werewolf and everyone's trying to explain it to their
parents, but the adults are all acting like it's too convoluted and they can't understand it. My mom says, “That sounds like a very intricate game,” and my dad says, “So when do I get to be the Werewolf?” and Tilly and I just look at each other and shake our heads. I have a feeling that Werewolf isn't going to be a parent thing, just a thing between Scott and the kids. If the other grown-ups don't get it, fine. We don't have to tell them about it again at all.

 • • • 

On Saturday, we say goodbye to the GCs and get ready for a batch of new ones. Tilly and I get put on laundry duty: we have to wash and fold all of the sheets and towels, so they'll be ready for the new people tomorrow. So we're in the little laundry building, sitting in these uncomfortable plastic chairs, the kind with a little desk surface attached, waiting for the dryers to finish.

“I wonder if there'll be any good boys this week,” Tilly says.

“‘Good boys'?” I ask. “What does that mean, exactly?”

“I don't know,” says Tilly. “Cute, or maybe hot.”

“Yeah, that'd be nice,” I say. “They're only here for a week, though. That's not a lot of time to get a romance going.”

“Maybe I don't want a romance,” she says. “Maybe I just want to have sex.”

“Tilly!” I'm shocked, like actually shocked. I've heard her say tons of inappropriate things about sex before, but not like this. Not all casual, like it's something that might actually happen.

“What?” she says.

“I just can't believe you said that.” I mean, I know about sex and everything. I just don't get why anyone would want to do it, if it's not for having a baby.

She shrugs. “I can't wait to have sex. It's going to be amazing. Like going on a roller coaster, kind of.”

I start laughing. “A roller coaster? How . . . like you're going up
and down giant hills? And it's really fast and sometimes you scream and think you're going to die?”

She starts laughing, too. “No, I don't know, just . . . it's exciting, but in a physical way, you know?”

“What . . .” I stop to catch my breath. I'm picturing the world's weirdest amusement park. “What would you call that ride?” I ask. “The . . . Thunder Penis?”

“Oh, my God.” Tilly's whole body is shaking, she's laughing so hard. “The Fuck Blaster!”

“Eww,” I say. “The . . .” I can't talk for a second, and I put my hands on the desk in front of me, trying to steady myself. “The . . . Vagina Cannon!”

Tilly almost falls off her chair, and right at that second, the laundry room door creaks open. Scott comes in, but stops when he sees the two of us laughing our heads off.

“Just coming to check on you guys,” he says. “Looks like the laundry's going well.”

“It is,” I say, willing myself to stop. “We're just waiting for the dryer to finish.”

“I see.” He sounds sort of sarcastic, like he's just going along with the joke, but the sun's shining through the door behind him, and I can't see his face. “And may I ask what's so funny?”

Tilly and I look at each other, and I almost crack up all over again. “We were just wondering,” I say, “if there are going to be any cute boys coming tomorrow.”

“Ah, boys,” Scott says. He sounds more normal now. “Well, there will be boys. Whether they're cute or not, I really couldn't say.”

“Why not?” Tilly asks.

“Because I haven't seen them yet,” he says. “And even if I had, I'm not a good judge of what makes a teenage boy ‘cute.'”

“You could be a good judge,” Tilly says. “Like if you're gay.” She starts giggling again. “Or a pedophile.”

I suck in my breath. I only sort of know what that second thing is, but I know she shouldn't be going around accusing people of being one.

Scott's face is still dark and shadowy, but I can see his whole body go stiff for a second. Then really quick, he moves toward Tilly and grabs the edge of her desk with his one good hand. He leans close to her face, and when he talks, his voice is quiet but angry.

“Listen to me, Tilly,” he says, enunciating each word. “For the love of God.”

Tilly's leaning backward, trying to move her face away from his, but he just goes with her. “You,” he says. He's talking like each word is its own sentence. “Are. Going. To get. In enormous trouble. If you don't learn. To watch. Your fucking. Mouth.”

Tilly lets out a breath that's like a laugh at the swearword, but she looks terrified.

“Do I have AD Block?” she asks.

Scott shakes his head. “This is not about AD Block. This is not about Camp Harmony. This is about functioning. In the goddamn world.”

“Okay,” Tilly says. She squirms away from him, and he finally takes a step backward. “I get it. Jeez.” Her voice is shaky, like she might be about to cry.

Scott shakes his head again and walks toward the door. “Get the laundry done,” he yells over his shoulder. “And think before you speak.” Then he's gone.

For a minute, Tilly and I just sit there. The dryer timer buzzes, and it makes me jump, but I don't get up right away.

Finally, Tilly says, “I have a good one.” Her voice sounds totally normal. “The Flying Cock. Wouldn't that be funny?”

“I'm going to get the laundry,” I say, and I leave her there by herself.

 • • • 

When the new GCs arrive on Sunday, it turns out that there really aren't any cute boys. And there's one family that right away I don't
like. They're named the Bakers, and their kids are Jason and Kylie. Partly, I'm annoyed because their mom keeps calling me Lily (which happens more often than you'd think; people get introduced to our family and the thing they remember is that I have a flower name, so they think it's Lily, probably because it rhymes with Tilly). But also, Kylie's kind of snotty—she always has this look on her face like she doesn't believe you, even before you've said anything—and Jason's just really nervous and worried all the time. Right away when he got here, he started asking us about what we do all day, really specifically, like do we brush our teeth before or after breakfast, and what we do if we have to go to the bathroom while we're doing an outdoor activity.

After dinner on Sunday, I'm doing dishes with Candy, Tilly, and Ryan. So far, no one's gotten AD Block, so we're all still in the running for candy. But since we've all been behaving so well, it means those extra chores go right back into the roster.

I'm at the sink, doing the actual washing, while Candy dries. Tilly and Ryan are sort of sharing the job of putting things away, because it takes them both twice as long to do anything. Which is maybe mean to say, but it's also just realistic.

Candy's talking about how Kylie keeps acting like we all work here, like we're servants or something, and Tilly (who's been quiet for a while in that way that makes you think she's probably not even listening) suddenly says, “We should totally mess with the new kids.”

Ryan's head pops up from over by the cabinets. “Your ideas are intriguing to me,” he says, “and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.” (
Simpsons
, as usual.)

“What do you mean?” I ask Tilly, ignoring Ryan.

“We could do some pranks, or maybe make up something that would scare them. They don't know anything about this place; we can tell them anything. We can say that there's like a monster who lives in the woods, and we've heard all these weird noises . . .” She's getting excited, the way she always does when she's making up a story.

“A werewolf,” I say. It just suddenly all comes together in my head.

“
The Werewolf says you have to hide . . .”
says Ryan. That's something from the game.

“
Are you on the Werewolf's side?
” Tilly answers.

“So what do you mean?” says Candy. “Like the game?”

“Well, they don't know about the game yet. We're not playing it till Friday. So we could just start making comments about a werewolf, and make it seem like we're talking about a real thing, instead of a game.”

“That's awesome,” Candy says.

Ryan is totally into this idea, and he and Tilly start talking over each other. “We can have someone hide . . .”

“. . . fur and fake blood and stuff . . .”

“. . . scare the shit out of them . . .”

“Don't make it too crazy,” I say. “It has to be believable.”

“Yeah,” says Candy. “And it all depends on whether you bozos can keep a secret.”

“Shut up,” says Ryan. “Of course we can.” I'm not convinced that's true; even though he's my age, he's not particularly good at keeping his mouth shut. And Tilly's not much better.

“Because no grown-ups can know,” Candy warns. “Especially not Scott.”

“Duh,” says Ryan.

“Okay,” says Tilly. “Let's get our stories straight.”

 • • • 

After we get back to the cottage and go to bed, Tilly keeps me awake late, talking about the monster. We decided earlier with the other kids that it's going to be
like
a werewolf, but a little bit different. It only comes out at night, but it doesn't matter whether it's a full moon. And we don't know if it's a person who turns into an animal,
or if it's just an animal all the time. Candy said that we should keep the details vague, that it's scarier if we don't know what it is exactly, just that there's
something
out there in the woods.

But Tilly can never leave anything at “vague.” I'm only half-listening, because it's not really a conversation; she's making up all kinds of background stories and coming up with a plan to have a different monster every week, something new for each new group of Guest Campers. This kind of thing is always a problem for her with other kids, because she has such specific ideas about how things should go that she gets upset if anyone else wants to do things differently.

I was tired when we went to bed, but now I'm wide awake. Tilly's voice is getting sleepier and sleepier, and there are longer and longer pauses between sentences, but she never really stops talking. The last thing she says before she falls asleep is, “And you don't need a silver bullet to kill it. That's an urban legend.” And then she's finally quiet.

I can hear my parents in the living room; I can't hear everything they're saying, but the walls are thin enough that I get most of it. First, they're talking about some of the other parents—my dad really doesn't like Ryan's dad, and he's making my mom laugh by telling a story about a conversation they had. Then my dad asks, “Hey, do we have any cranberry juice left?”

“No,” my mom says. “Just OJ.”

“Can I interest you in a nightcap?”

“What kind of nightcap? The Evian bottles are empty.”

“I've got a couple of tricks up my sleeve,” my dad says. “Airplane bottles. At the bottom of my shaving kit.”

“Ooh, tricky.”

I sit up in bed. They're talking about alcohol, I think, which is definitely not allowed here. It's sort of exciting to find out that they're not following all of the rules exactly. Because they're grown-ups, and why should Scott get to be in charge of them? I don't really
understand what Scott is to them here. I don't think he's their
boss
, even though he tells them what to do. I don't think anyone gets paid, but then again, we never have to buy anything, so I guess it works out.

I get out of bed really quietly and sneak out to the hallway. My dad's gone to the kitchen, and after a minute, he comes back with tall glasses of orange juice (and, I guess, alcohol) for them both. They clink glasses and take a sip, and then without looking at me or anything, my mom says, “Are you just going to sit there in the dark, Iris?”

I start laughing. “How did you know?” I ask.

She turns and smiles at me. “Moms have secret powers. Do you want to come sit with us for a few minutes?”

“Yeah.” I get up and walk to the couch. They were sitting close together, but now they move apart to make room for me in the middle. I get in between them and put my head on my mom's shoulder. She strokes my hair.

“Couldn't sleep?” asks my dad.

“Nope.” I point at the glass he's holding; there's ice clinking in it, and it's already got beads of water rolling down the sides because the room is warm. “Can I have some juice, too?” I ask.

“Sure,” says my dad.

The couch bounces as he gets up. As he's walking to the kitchen, I call after him, “No alcohol in mine.”