Left Neglected

Chapter 21





The biggest change around here turns out not to be the orange tape on the walls or my mother sleeping in the sunroom. Charlie has ADHD. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Bob broke the news to me in bed on my first night home, said that the doctor was sure and that Charlie’s symptoms are classic but not severe, and I cried quietly in his arms while he assured me until I fell asleep that Charlie would be okay.

Charlie’s taking Concerta, which is like Ritalin but releases medication steadily over time for twelve hours. He takes one each morning with breakfast. We call them vitamins instead of medicine so he doesn’t think of himself as sick or disabled or broken. So far, he hasn’t complained of any headaches or loss of appetite, and Ms. Gavin says she’s noticing a positive difference in his behavior at school.

We’ve also started making lots of “Lifestyle” adjustments that are supposed to help him succeed. We’ve modified his diet—no more sugar cereal, no more gummy sharks and Popsicles loaded with Red No. 40 and Blue No. 2, no more soda, no more fast food. He’s less than thrilled about this particular change, and I don’t blame him. Even I miss the gummy sharks. He has a morning and evening To Do list neatly printed out in a grid on a poster board taped to his bedroom wall, so he can clearly see and check off what he needs to accomplish before school and before bed each day. And Charlie’s Rules are written on a piece of paper magnetized to the refrigerator.

No hitting.

No yelling.

No interrupting.

Listen and do what you are told.

Do your homework without complaining.

With Ms. Gavin’s guidance, Bob and I also designed an incentive program—Marble Minutes. Charlie starts each day with six marbles in a coffee mug. Each marble is worth ten minutes of TV plus or minus video games. If Charlie follows all of the rules without infraction all day, by five o’clock, he can have one hour of television. But for each crime he commits, he loses a marble.

Today, he’s having a typical day. It’s 4:00, and he’s already lost half his marbles. He ripped Lucy’s iPod out of her hands and smacked her on the head with it when she tried to grab it back. My mother had to ask him three times to pick his coat up off of the floor and hang it on a hook in the mudroom. And I was talking on the phone with my outpatient occupational therapist when he peppered me with a machine-gun volley of Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom. I should’ve taken away one marble for each Mom, but he’s desperate to play Super Mario, and I already know better than to run out of marbles before we tackle homework.

We’re sitting at the kitchen table, his homework in front of him, my outpatient homework in front of me, both of us wishing that we could be doing something else. I know he’s praying that he doesn’t lose the rest of his marbles. I hope I don’t lose mine along with him. Bob is at work, and my mother and Linus are at Lucy’s dance lesson. The TV is off, the house is quiet, and the table is cleared.

“Okay, Charlie, let’s get this done. Who should go first?”

“You,” he says.

I size up the cafeteria tray centered in front of me. A vertical line of orange tape divides the tray in half. The tray is empty.

“Okay, go,” I say.

Charlie’s job is to drop up to five red rubber balls, each about the size of a clementine, onto the left side of my tray. My first job is to identify how many balls are there.

“Did it,” he says.

I begin my homework by tracing the bottom edge of the tray with my right hand, moving left until I feel the right angle of the bottom left corner. An uneasiness invades me whenever I cross my own midline with my right hand and leave it somewhere in the unknown Land of the Left. The feeling reminds me of a trust exercise that I once participated in at a Berkley employee workshop. Standing, eyes closed, I was asked to fall backward and trust that my colleagues would catch me. I remember that split second before allowing myself to fall, not being able to see or control how and where I’d land, not wanting to crack my head on the hard floor over a silly exercise, when common sense and primitive instinct chimed in, Do not do this. But somewhere inside, I was able to hit the override button. And of course, my colleagues caught me. I go through a similar experience when my right hand crosses the orange line. Instinctive fear, inner courage, blind faith.

Now I scan to the right of my right hand, which feels natural and easy, and which happens to be across what is the left side of the tray.

“Four,” I say.

“Yes! Good job, Mom!” says Charlie. “Gimme five!”

Finding the balls is the easiest part of my homework and doesn’t deserve a celebration, but I don’t want to discourage his encouragement. I smile and give him a quick slap of the hand.

“High-five me with your left hand,” says Charlie.

He loves working me. I have to find my left hand for the next part of this exercise anyway, so I humor him and begin the search. I find it dangling down by my side and manage to lift it up, but I can’t say for sure exactly where it is now. Charlie is waiting, his high-five hand held up as my target. But he’s using his right hand, which is on my left, which makes it less than easy to keep track of. Charlie might just be the toughest occupational therapist I’ve had yet. Without a shred of confidence that I’ll succeed, I swing my arm from the shoulder. I miss his hand and smack him square in the chest.

“Mom!” he says, laughing.

“Sorry, honey.”

He bends my arm at the elbow like I’m one of his action figures, spreads my fingers open, winds up, and slaps my hand with his, connecting with a loud and satisfying clap.

“Thanks. Okay, next step,” I say, eager to finish.

Now I have to pick up one of the red balls with my left hand and squeeze it. The palm of my left hand is still tingling from Charlie’s high five, which is a nice stroke of good luck because that keeps my hand from disappearing, and I’m able to move it onto the tray with relative ease. I feel around and grab the nearest ball. Then I give it a feeble squeeze.

“Yay, Mom! Now put it back.”

Here’s where I get stuck. I can’t release the ball. I’ll carry that ball to bed with me, not even conscious of the extra passenger I’m toting, and wake up the next morning with it still nestled in my obstinate hand unless someone comes along and mercifully peels it out of my grip.

“I can’t. I can’t let go.”

I try shaking it loose, but my grasp is too tight. I try to relax my hand. Nothing happens. My brain has always preferred holding on to letting go.

“Charlie, will you help me?”

He pries the ball out of my rigid hand, drops it onto the tray, and pushes the tray to the other side of the table. It’s his turn now.

“I wish I had your homework. Your homework’s easy,” says Charlie.

“Not to me, it isn’t,” I say.

He aligns my red page marker on the left edge of his homework sheet so I can follow along, and we both start reading. But within seconds, the most noticeable thing he’s doing isn’t reading or writing. He’s moving. He’s wiggling all over the seat of his chair, rocking back and forth, up on his knees, back onto his bottom, swinging his legs. Before my accident, I always entered Charlie’s homework process several hours in, after he’d already been beaten by it. By then, his body was a listless lump and resembled nothing of this chaotic, undulating bundle of energy I’m witnessing now.

“You’re going to fall out of your chair. Sit still.”

“Sorry.”

His inner perpetual motion machine is quieted for a minute, but then something twitches, and all gears are up and running again in full force.

“Charlie, you’re moving.”

“Sorry,” he says again and looks up at me, his gorgeous eyes wondering if he’s about to lose another marble.

But I can see that he isn’t consciously acting out or disobeying. I’m not going to punish him for fidgeting. But it’s clear that he can’t devote his mental energy to the words on the page when so much of it is ricocheting through his body.

“How about we get rid of your chair? Can you do your homework standing up?” I ask.

He pushes the chair back and stands, and I notice the difference immediately. He’s tapping one of his feet on the floor, as if he’s keeping time with a stopwatch, but the rest of his squirming is gone. And he’s answering the questions.

“Done!” he says, tossing his pencil down. “Can I go play Mario now?”

“Hold on, hold on,” I say, still reading the third question.

Jane scored 2 goals in the first game and 4 goals in the second game. How many goals did she score in all? I check his answers.

“Charlie, the first three answers are all wrong. Go back.”

He groans and stomps his feet.

“See, I’m stupid.”

“You’re not stupid. Don’t say that. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“No.”

“Right. Neither of us is stupid. Our brains work in a different way than most people’s do, and we have to figure out how to make ours work. But we’re not stupid, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, not really believing me at all.

“Okay. Now why did you go so fast?”

“I dunno.”

“You have plenty of time to play Mario. You don’t have to rush. Let’s slow down and do one problem at a time together. Read the first problem again.”

I read it again, too. Billy has 2 pennies in his left pocket and 5 pennies in his right pocket. How many pennies does Billy have in all? I look over at Charlie, expecting him to be looking back at me, poised and ready for my next instruction, but instead he’s still reading. And his eyes appear to be focused three-quarters of the way down the page.

“Charlie, is it hard to concentrate on one question at a time when there are so many on the page?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I have an idea. Go get the scissors.”

I draw a horizontal line under each question with Charlie’s pencil. He returns to the table with scissors, the very thing I asked him for, which is a significant victory all on its own.

“Cut each question out along the lines I drew.”

He does.

“Now pile them like a deck of cards and hand them to me.”

I hand him question number seven first. He taps his foot and reads.

“Eight?” he asks.

“You got it!”

His face lights up. I’d give him a high five to congratulate him, but I don’t want to distract him or lose momentum. I turn over another card. He reads it and counts in a whisper as he presses his fingers one at a time on the table.

“Six?”

“Yes!”

With no other words tempting his attention, he sees only the one question, and it doesn’t get jumbled up with any other information. I hand him all ten “question cards,” and he gets all ten right. We’re done in about fifteen minutes. A 22 Pilgrim Lane record.

“That’s it, Charlie, no more cards. You did them all.”

“I’m done?”

“Yup. Awesome job.”

Jubilant pride skips along every inch of his face. It strikes me that he looks like me.

“Can I go play Mario?”

“You can. But you know what? That was so awesome, I think you earned three marbles back.”

“I did?!”

“Yup. You can play for a whole hour if you want.”

“Woohoo! Thanks, Mom!”

He barrels out of the kitchen and then barrels back in.

“Hey, Mom? Can you tell Ms. Gavin about the question cards and standing up? I want to do all my work that way.”

“Sure, honey.”

“Thanks!”

He’s gone again as fast as he reappeared, and I hear his feet speed down the basement stairs like a drumroll.

I look down at Ms. Gavin’s homework assignment, shredded into strips, and hope she’ll understand. We could always tape them back together if she cares. Our brains are wired differently, and we have to figure out how to make them work.

I hear the familiar bleeping sounds of Super Mario and picture the unfamiliar look of self-satisfaction on Charlie’s face. I stay seated at the kitchen table, waiting for my mother and the other two kids to come home, also feeling satisfied. Like a Super Mom.