Valley of Ashes (44 page)

I nodded.

“She’s gonna be just fine, I promise. And you can tell your friend that autism’s incredibly rare. Less than one case in fifteen thousand births. Then
Rain Man
comes out, right? Another thing for the nervous moms to obsess over. But we’ve
never
had an autistic child in this practice. I’ve been here twenty years, and I’ve seen just about everything else.”

“Okay,” I said, incredibly relieved.

“You’ve got two terrific kids here, and you’re doing a great job with them. I don’t want you to worry about this. You look exhausted, and Lord knows twins will run you ragged. Not to mention you just moved here, right?”

“I drove across with the girls, from Colorado,” I said.

Her eyes went wide. “Alone?”

I shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Now,
that
takes guts.”

“My husband still has some work to finish up out there. He’s due in tomorrow night.”

“My Teddy ever tried making me drive our kids cross-country without him, back in the day? He’d
still
be sleeping in the garage.”

“Actually it was kind of fun,” I said. “I blew bubbles for the girls to chase around on rest-stop lawns every couple of hours.
And
I didn’t have to do any dishes, which was totally awesome. The only bummer was when we got to Kansas City late at night during an undertakers’ convention. Wasn’t a motel room for miles—I had to drive all the way to Leavenworth.”

She laughed. “See? You’re one tough cookie.”

India decided this was the perfect moment to trot out her new favorite sentence: “Mummie farted!”

I bit my lip, trying not to encourage her by laughing.

“That India’s gonna be
trouble
,” said the nurse, shaking her head as she stifled a grin of her own.

S
ometimes, the worst possible shit in life unfolds slowly, inexorably. And I think maybe that’s harder to take than sudden disaster—tornadoes, car crashes, spontaneous combustion. That kind of stuff, it slaps you into fight-or-flight instantly. You can’t even think about it. You’re just there and you have to dive in, no questions asked. You make it or you don’t.

The slow tragedies, though… suffering that inches forward just outside your line of sight, one appalling grain at a time, until it’s too late? You look back and can’t believe you didn’t know, didn’t appreciate the last precious, unsullied time while it was building all around you, eating away at the walls and the floorboards and your very marrow.

The most awful thing that’s ever happened to me took a month. Well, it was happening even before that month. The month was how long it took for the experts to weigh it and poke and pry and type up the reports.

First the nurse practitioner. Then an audiologist, who passed me on to a speech pathologist in the office next door.

That prompted a diagnostic panel, two weeks later: eight clinicians, a playroom with a one-way mirror, signing release forms so they could videotape the session.

Me and Parrish in that little room for two hours, people coming in and out. Colored blocks. Different toys. Tests. Questions. Play-Doh.

All of them trying to get her to look up, engage, speak.

Parrish did cheerfully utter what had lately become her two favorite phrases: “Happy Birthday!” and “Winnie-the-Pooh!”

Apropos of nothing in particular. Giggling. Not really looking at any of us.

And still, I didn’t know.

None of it scared me, and it fucking well should have.

After the little white room there was a big beige one. A round table, lots of chairs.

We all sat down. I had Parrish on my lap.

And they didn’t say anything, not at first.

Or look me in the eye.

I smiled. “So?”

The woman directly across from me put down her clipboard. Dark-haired, nice-looking. Maybe ten years older than me. Child psychiatrist.

“Madeline,” she said, leaning forward so her lab coat bunched up a little, hands clasped on the table in front of her.

She looked up at me.

“Yes?”

“Parrish is a wonderful little girl,” she said. “Gorgeous. Very sweet. And you’re wonderful
with
her.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“It’s… We’ve agreed on a diagnosis.”

“Okay.” I rubbed Parrish’s belly, jiggled her a little on my knees.

“This is what we classify as PDD-NOS,” the woman said.

I waited.

She smiled at me just a little, her eyes crinkling up. “That stands for ‘Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified.’ ”

I nodded. “Um, okay… I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s relatively recent terminology, actually,” she said. “Describing a newly recognized, well, subtype of an existing disorder.”

“Of which disorder?”

I still didn’t get it, that her next word would be the poleax, whistling down toward the back of my neck.

Sharp enough to slice clean through a sheet of paper, a column of bone.

One word to cleave my life in two: before/after. Ignorance/devastation.

“Autism,” she said.

It was twilight out, when I carried Parrish up the stairs to our new place. Everything soft outside, purple.

Dean was on the sofa in the living room, watching India play on the floor.

I stopped in the kitchen doorway, Parrish quiet, straddling my hip.

How the fuck do I even begin?

He looked up at me. His eyes were red, the lids swollen and puffy. He inhaled a ragged breath and I watched tears slide down his cheeks.

I walked over to the sofa, sat down beside him.

He knows already. Okay.

He reached for Parrish, pulled her over onto his lap, pressed her head against his chest. He rubbed her back and she started sucking her thumb, relaxing into him.

“Bunny?” he said.

I took his nearest hand, twined our fingers together.

His breath caught in his throat again.

“Shhhh,” I said. “It’s okay. We’re going to get through this.”

He shook his head. “Setsuko hung herself last night.”

I took my hand back, then got to my feet and reached for Parrish.

“Please tell me the bitch is actually
dead
,” I said.

Parrish wrapped her legs around my waist, laid her head to rest against my collarbone.

Dean slumped forward, and then he had the gall to
sob
.

“For fuck’s sake,” I said. “Tell me she got
that
right, at the very least. The suspense is killing me.”

He didn’t say anything, just nodded.

“Excellent,” I said. “
Outstanding
.”

Dean looked up at me, haggard.

“Oh, please,” I said. “You expect me to feel
sorry
for her?”

He didn’t answer that. Didn’t ask how it had gone with all the doctors that day.

More tears.

I shrugged. “News flash:
Madame Butterfly
had a happy ending.”

I turned away from him, lowered Parrish gently to the floor beside India. Stood up again.

“Bunny—”

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’m going to go to the kitchen. Pour myself a beer. So I don’t fucking punch you in the face right now.”

He had the grace to blanch, I’ll give him that.

I got my beer—last bottle in the icebox. Popped the top off. Carried it back into the living room.

Dean’s head was bowed, hanging low and slack from his shoulders. A bull resigned to the coup de grâce, one he richly deserved.

I took the chair farthest away from him. Put my feet up on the coffee table.

The beer was good. Cold and bitter.

“Ask me how my day was, Dean,” I said. “You haven’t remembered to do that in a while.”

His lips got all tight. Pissy looking.

I actually laughed at that, surprising myself. It made my throat hurt.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “You worthless sack of
shit
.”

He crossed his arms across his splayed knees, brought his forehead down to rest on them.

“She killed
Cary
. She tried to kill
me
.”

Our daughter has autism.

“I know,” he said, voice muffled by his sleeve.

“You know nothing, Dean.”

Then something else occurred to me.

“So who told you?” I asked.

“Who told me what?”

“Who told you she was dead. You obviously didn’t know when I left this afternoon or you would’ve started sniveling
then
. So someone called you here,
at our house, while you were taking care of India.
”

He closed his eyes.

They snapped open again when I grabbed him by the chin and yanked his head around so he was facing me. “Answer me, you
asshole
. Who called to tell you?”

“Her father.”

“That bitch’s
father
had our home number?”

He couldn’t look at me.

“Did
she
?”

No answer.

“Had you been talking to
her
, too? Taking collect calls from jail?”

“Bunny, it was my fault. All of it. Everything that happened. Because I was selfish, because I didn’t allow myself to think it could hurt anyone. All the damage. To you. To Cary…” His voice broke.

“You’re damn right it was your fault,” I said.

And then I hawked up everything I had and spat it into his face.

“She tried to fucking
kill
me. Dean. She tried to fucking
hack
me to death with a fucking knife so she could steal
my
children. She told me she’d be a better mother than me, and that they’d love her more, and that they wouldn’t remember me because they would be too young when she killed me.”

He wept. I’ll give him that.

“And you know what else she told me?” I asked.

No answer, of course.

“She told me she’d be a better wife. That you loved her more than you loved me.”

I hadn’t told him any of that, back in Boulder. I’d been too afraid to discover he believed it, too.

“That’s not true,” he said. “For God’s sake—”

“Fuck you, Dean Bauer. I’m a better wife, but Setsuko was
exactly
the wife you deserve.”

“Bunny—”

“Because you’re still in
love
with her. Even though she tried to kill the mother of your children, and even though she’s fucking dead.”

I stood up.

“Let me tell you how
my
day was, Dean. Not that you care.”

His head dropped again.

“Our daughter Parrish was diagnosed with autism this afternoon,” I said. “
That’s
how my fucking day was. And I hope you rot in hell.”

Dean fell to his knees, bellowing like he’d been gored through the heart.

As well he should.

He wrapped his long arms tight around my thighs, pulling me close so he could bury his face in my belly.

I grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked his head back.

“Get off me,” I said.

“Bunny.
Please
.”

I let go of his hair, but only after he’d dropped his arms.

“Do not
touch
me,” I said. “Do not say another fucking
word
to me, you worthless, revolting sack of shit.”

I walked away, squatting down with the girls.

They were unfazed. Happy.

India said, “Love, Mummie.”

Parrish added, “Happy birthday.”

I was back again, fully in the right-there, the right-then.

Alive. Brimming. Grateful—to my beloved dead—to all those I’d lost, whom I could feel around me, right then.

Thank you for this.

For my daughters.

For what I have left: sweetness and light.

It’s enough. More than enough.

More than I deserve.

Let me be brave enough to merit it.

Thank you.

Sweetness and light: what my father used to call me.

Words I had wanted to redeem, ever after.

I rose to my feet.

“Make our children something to eat,” I said, not looking back at Dean. “Give them a bath. You love them so much more than you’ve ever loved me, and they both need you right now.”

Two hours later India was sleeping, tucked into her crib.

I sat on the girls’ bedroom floor in the dark, cross-legged, stroking Parrish’s fair hair as she dozed in my lap.

The exquisite oval of her face was silver-gilt in the moonlight, touched with the palest blue. Mouth parted slightly, long lashes curving dark against her cheeks.

Even in her beautiful sleep, a tide I could not stem was bearing my daughter ceaselessly away: out of my arms, out of herself, out of the world.

She looked like her father, she looked like me.

She looked like everything I’d ever wanted. Everything I’d ever had to lose.

Hostage to fortune.

I didn’t know it yet, not that night: how much I
still
had to lose, and that I would never, ever again have a moment of unadulterated joy.

I could have survived Setsuko. I could have learned to be happy again, even with Dean. We might even have come out of it stronger, he and I. Learned to care about each other more tenderly, around the broken places.