Jennifer Haigh (31 page)

"I know, I know. I have to buy a part."

often loses things necessary for tasks or activities (e.g., school assignments, books)

"Honey, you already bought it. It's sitting on top of the refrigerator."

"Oh," said Scott. "Good. I've been looking for that fucker all week."

"Great, but Scotty?"

"Can you leave me alone for five minutes?" he yelled."We talked about this, remember? No more shouting up and down the stairs."

often has difficulties sustaining attention in tasks or play activities

No answer from above. He returned his attention to the screen, but the letters had begun to swim before his eyes. He skimmed to the bottom of the page. Wow, he thought. This list is long.

Scott sat back in his chair, ready to admit defeat, when a line of text caught his attention. Helpfully, it had been underlined in red.

Signs of ADHD may persist into adulthood. This is particularly true when there is a family history of the condition.

Scott blinked. The realization hit him like a physical blow. He was aware of a pounding headache beginning at his temple, a rhythmic thumping, as though some creature trapped in his skull were trying to escape.

Quickly he signed off the computer. The CompuCom USA logo appeared on the screen. A helpful banner informed him,
YOUR US
AGE IS 61 MINUTES.

Shit, he thought. They were on an hourly billing plan, and the first hour was free. If he'd clicked just a minute faster his session would have cost nothing.

He clicked on a tab marked billing. Another helpful banner informed him:
YOUR USAGE THIS MONTH IS 7,920 MINUTES.

He did some quick math. By his calculation, someone had been using the account, on average, six hours a day. He sprang from his chair.

"Penny!" he roared.

She appeared at the top of the stairs."I thought we weren't yelling anymore."

He ignored this. "Have the kids been using our CompuCom account?"

A wary look crossed her face."Why? What's the matter?"

"I just looked at our monthly usage. Someone's been on this computer, like, six hours a day. What did I say about keeping them out of my office? Isn't this why we got them a computer in the first place?"

Penny ran a hand through her hair. "Chill out, will you? It's a mistake. I'll call CompuCom tomorrow and straighten it out."

"Where's Ian? Let me talk to Ian."

"No way," said Penny."Not until you calm down."

She slammed the door. It made a hollow sound, like the clap of a horse's hooves.

Scott returned to his desk and riffled through a tattered little notebook until he found his brother's phone number. As he dialed, he watched the digits appear on the liquid crystal display of his cordless phone.

Who had invented such a thing? And how the fuck could you liquefy a crystal?

His father would know. His father would explain it for two hours straight, thinking Scott really wanted to know.

Scott didn't really want to know.

The last four digits of Billy's number were 5151. The display showed SISI. Penny would love that. She'd insisted for years—to Scott's irritation—that his brother was gay.

He hung up quickly. Then, just for laughs, he punched in his office number at Ruxton, which spelled nothing. He turned the phone upside down. The digits still spelled nothing.

He hung up the phone.

The list of diagnostic criteria had made him acutely aware of the movement of his own thoughts, scattering like buckshot. His mind had always worked this way. He'd assumed everyone's did, but how could that be true? People like his father spent lifetimes concentrating on dry, abstract, complex material. Years ago, at Pearse, Scott's classmate "Jens" Jensen had tutored him in chemistry, physics, and calculus, all the subjects Scott hated
(avoids tasks that require sustained mental effort).
He'd watched, mystified, as Jens pored over a complicated problem, his pale brow furrowed in concentration. At the time Scott had chalked it up to cultural difference. Jens was from—Norway?

Denmark? Some cold northern latitude where it was always dark and people stayed indoors solving equations.

He knew at the time that Jens had saved his bacon. Now he saw that, in a larger sense, the Jenses of the world were saving
everybody's
bacon. That if every brain worked the way Scott's did, there would
be
no science or higher math, the kind used to design tall buildings and bridges and airplanes that didn't fall out of the sky. People would live in huts and wear animal skins, or become crummy English teachers who hadn't read a fraction of the books they should have. Who'd only recently, in the last three years, read the ones they assigned to their students.

His whole life he'd concocted explanations for his failure to achieve. His parents' divorce was a favorite. His brother Billy had a stable home life until he left for Pearse; Scott, given the same send-off, would likewise have torn up the lacrosse field, gotten into Princeton, graduated with honors. When Frank encouraged Billy's interest in science, let him spend entire days in the Holy of Holies, his lab at MIT, Scott's jealousy had nearly choked him.
I'll take you too someday
, Frank had promised when Scott threw a grand mal tantrum. But by the time Scott was old enough, his father was long gone. And of course, there was Gwen: Frank and Paulette had been so busy squabbling over her medical problems that they'd let Scott flounder; if they'd paid more attention, he would have stayed on course. He saw, now, that none of this was true. If his parents had stayed married, if Gwen had been normal, he would still have been a dud.

This condition, if he had it, would explain the way his life had turned out, a fact that both depressed and comforted him. His derelict academic history. The long series of disastrous decisions that had landed him at Ruxton
(impairment in occupational functioning).
He was a mediocre teacher, a bad actor in a cynical parody of a prep school. A balding thirty-year-old man flattened by marriage, with a daughter who laughed at him and a son who—Jesus.

A son who would turn out exactly like him.

He picked up the phone. Even his brother's telephone rang differently. Billy's ring sounded expensive—low and melodious, a throaty mechanical purr. Scott had noticed, in making local calls, that phones in Gatwick rang with an annoying falsetto chirp. Was the local phone company to blame? His long-distance carrier? Was it a mechanism inside his own telephone, or the one he was calling?

He shook his head to clear it.

Billy answered on the second ring. It took him a moment to recognize Scott's voice. Well, no wonder. Scott hadn't phoned his brother in years.

If Billy realized this, he gave no indication."What's up?" he asked easily, as though they spoke every day.

Scott pictured him settling into a sleek modern sofa, expensively leather covered. He'd never seen Billy's apartment, but his mother had described it in abundant detail, a fact that drove Penny crazy. He felt a stab of envy for his brother, single on a Friday night. Free to chat up strange women in bars or, even better (this was a symptom of Scott's descent into middle age), simply to be left in peace.

At Billy's, soft jazz played in the background. There was no other ambient noise. On Scott's end, television vibrated the ceiling. Loud running in a southerly direction, from the kitchen to Ian's room.

"Listen, I want to run something by you," said Scott. "What do you know about Ritalin?"

"The hyperactivity drug?"

"Yeah. Ian's teacher wants us to put him on it."

"Have you discussed it with your pediatrician?"

"We did," Scott lied."I want a second opinion."

A pause."Scotty, I'd like to help, but you know I'm not a pediatrician. And even if I were, I haven't actually seen him."

"You saw him at Christmas."

"I haven't seen him
clinically
. It would be irresponsible for me to give you a medical opinion based on what you tell me over the phone." He sounded less like a brother than a doctor worried about a malpractice suit.
Good Christ
, Scott thought.
What a SISI.

"Jesus, Bill. I'm not going to sue you."

Billy sighed. "All right. Fine. This behavior—the hyperactivity, the aggression, the stuttering—"

"Whoa, wait a minute. Ian
stutters
?"

"Um, yeah," said Billy. "When he gets excited. You haven't noticed?"

"Oh, that," Scott lied again."Yeah. Sure."

"So tell me: when did you first—"

"Bill, even as a baby he was tougher than Sabrina. Wouldn't sleep through the night. That kind of thing. But he's a boy, you know? I thought it was just the difference between boys and girls. Sabrina was a dream by comparison, Bill. A total dream."

"Let me finish, will you?" said Billy
(blurts out answers before questions are completed).
"The onset of symptoms. Was it before age seven?"

Scott recalled the endless drive from California to Connecticut, a week of sleeping in roadside motels, the four of them crammed into a single cruddy room. The Golf stifling hot, Ian and Sabrina kicking each other viciously in the backseat. Ian had been five then, a screaming terror. With the same intensity he'd brought to teenage sexual fantasies, Scott had daydreamed of leaving his entire family by the side of the road.

"Yes," he said."Definitely before seven."

"That's significant," said Billy."It's consistent with ADHD."

The water pump kicked in explosively, rattling the plywood wall.

Scott ignored this, though he was
easily distracted by extraneous stimuli.

He pressed on.

"Look, don't tell Mom this. Any of it, actually. But especially this part: Penny has a sister who's schizophrenic. Could that have anything to do with it?"Years ago, when he and Penny were living in Eureka, they'd made a weekend dope run to Portland and spent a night on her sister's floor. JoAnn had been heavily medicated then, a bloated, silent version of Penny, her hair hacked into a spiky helmet. It seemed to Scott that she'd cut it herself. (In a fit of self-hatred. With a machete.)

She had scared the hell out of him.

"No," Billy said. "Although, you know, it's an interesting question. There appears to be some genetic basis for schizophrenia. And there is comorbidity with ADHD."

Scott let this slide past him, like a taxi with its light off. He had stopped listening at the word
no.

"Back to the drug," he said."Penny says there are side effects."

"Weight loss, sleep disturbances." Billy paused. "On the other hand, certain questions arise with any drug you're prescribing. You have to weigh the risks of the therapy against the consequences of leaving the problem untreated. He's in what, first grade?"

"Third."

"How's he doing in school?"

"Shitty," said Scott. "They're ready to kick him out. That's why I'm calling."

"From public school? I didn't know they could do that."

"If he doesn't go on Ritalin, they're going to put him in special ed." Scott hesitated. "Look, you saw him at Christmas. Based on that, if he were your kid, would you do it?"

A long pause.

"He did seem agitated at Christmas," Billy admitted. "I think Mom was concerned."

Concerned.
Drewspeak for
ready to hurl the little monster out an open window.

"I know he's a handful," Scott said lamely. "Mom isn't used to that."

Billy chuckled."She raised you, didn't she?"

Scott felt a knot of resentment in his throat. Reluctantly he swallowed. Billy was five years older; he would remember, if anyone would.

And who else was there to ask?

"Was I like that?" he demanded."Like Ian?"

Again the chuckle."Are you kidding me? You just about landed her in McLean. The way you and Gwen used to pound on each other—"

He broke off."Hey, have you heard the news?"

"What?" said Scott.

"Are you sitting down? Gwen has a boyfriend."

"You're shitting me."

"Some guy she met on her dive trip. And Mom is freaking out.

All hell is breaking loose."

That Sunday morning Paulette ate breakfast in her nightgown.

This was something she did just once a year, when her old friend Tricia James came from Philadelphia to visit. In Tricia's honor she had brewed a pot of coffee, though her second cup had made her jangly.

(She had switched to chamomile tea at menopause.) With Tricia, coffee and nightclothes were a tradition, an unconscious reenactment of their roommate days at Wellesley, where they'd guzzled coffee and spent a great deal of time in their pajamas. Paulette and Tricia had not forgotten. They would always remember the girls they had been.