*
After the break, a girl named Nellie told us about her brother, who was really smart but flapped his hands and grunted a lot, which made it hard to take him anywhere. Three girls in a row said they had siblings with Asperger’s. This other girl, Dora, said she was the only normal kid out of four siblings. The other three were all diagnosed PDD-NOS, and one of them was totally nonverbal. Amber suggested that Dora stop using the word normal and substitute neurotypical instead.
“It’s less hurtful that way,” she explained. “And besides—in your family, it actually seems like autism is the norm, right?”
Dora shrugged. “My mom always calls me her normal one. That’s how she introduces me to strangers. This is Dora. She’s my normal one.”
The hipster, Kwan, had a brother named Zhang who acted out too much to go to a regular school. He was totally hyper and would run around in circles whenever he got worked up. The only thing that calmed him down was playing the piano. When he was seven years old, he sat down and played “The Entertainer,” from that old movie The Sting. It came out of nowhere. No one in the family had seen the movie, and Kwan’s parents were first-generation immigrants who only listened to European classical music. But Zhang totally nailed it.
“My parents were so happy that day,” Kwan said. “It was like, Oh my God, our son’s a genius! They were really proud of Zhang, which was amazing to see, because they were usually pretty ashamed of his condition, and didn’t know how to help him. They hired a piano teacher who specialized in kids with special needs, and did everything they could to encourage his gift.”
Kwan stopped talking and looked around, in case anyone had any questions. He was wearing cuffed jeans, a tight plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his biceps, and a beige fedora, but I liked him anyway.
“That’s so cool,” Cat said. “Does he play classical or jazz?”
Kwan shrugged. “He plays ‘The Entertainer.’ Over and over and over. Every fucking day of his life. Every time I call home I hear him in the background, banging it out: dada dada DA DA da DA DA! I hate that song.”
*
My little half brother was autistic, but I hadn’t grown up with him. I was already in high school when he was born, and I wasn’t getting along with my father at the time, or with my stepmother, Bethany, who I liked to think of as The Evil Bitch Who Ruined My Life. I realize now that it was stupid to blame her for the divorce; it wasn’t like she brainwashed my dad and kidnapped him from my mom and me. Whatever my dad did, he did because he chose to do it. Because he wanted to. I still remember the day he explained that to me. He took me out for ice cream, put his arm around my shoulders, and said, Look, Brendan, if you have to hate somebody for what happened, hate me, okay? Don’t take it out on Bethany. She’s an innocent bystander, just like you.
The custody agreement said he’d get me two weekends a month, but he didn’t complain if I blew him off for a sleepover at a friend’s house, or even if I just needed to stay home and catch up on my schoolwork. I was playing three sports at the time—football, basketball, and lacrosse—so mostly he just came to my weekend games and took me out to dinner afterward. That was pretty much our relationship right after the divorce—my dad and me at Wild Willie’s or Haddington Burrito Works, talking about whatever game I’d just played, acting like everything was perfectly normal, like this was how it was supposed to be.
I saw him even less right after Jon-Jon was born. There wasn’t one specific day when he sat me down and said, There’s something seriously wrong with your brother. It was more like a steady drip of bad news. They didn’t know why he wasn’t talking, why he ignored his toys, why he wouldn’t look his father in the eye or smile at his mother. The doctors had concerns about the severity of his tantrums.
By the time they were openly using the word autistic, I was getting along better with my dad, and even with Bethany, who had turned out to be a nicer person than I’d given her credit for. She was a lot younger than my mom and had been pretty hot when my dad married her, but she’d aged a lot in the past few years. You could see in her eyes how hard it was, having a kid like Jon-Jon, and you couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for her.
There was a brief period during my junior year when we tried to be a two-weekend-a-month family. I’d pack my bag, and my dad would pick me up on the way home from work and bring me to his new house.
The only problem was that Jon-Jon freaked out whenever I showed up. He didn’t just get upset—he totally fucking lost it. Bethany would be all fake cheerful when I got there, like, Hey, Jon-Jon, look who’s here. It’s your big brother! Can you say hi to Brendan? Jon-Jon wouldn’t even look at me. He just waved his arms around and screamed like I was a monster who was coming to eat him. Sometimes he’d throw himself on the ground or start punching himself in the head, which was a terrible thing to see, because he wasn’t fooling around. Once he got going on a meltdown like that, he could keep it up for hours. When he finally wore himself out and fell asleep, the rest of us would have a little time to hang out in peace, except it wasn’t really peace, because we were all so rattled by what had just happened. We’d play a game or two of Yahtzee and then Bethany would head up to bed, and my dad and I would watch an episode of Scrubs, which we both loved. Those were some of the best father-and-son times I can remember, the two of us sitting on the couch, cracking up about something completely ridiculous that J.D. said to Turk. It felt really good, just being in the same place, enjoying the same thing. When the show was over, he’d kiss me good night—something he never used to do before the divorce—and we’d both go up to bed. Then I’d wake up the next morning, head downstairs for breakfast, and Jon-Jon would start screaming all over again.
It was hard on everybody, so we eventually gave up and went back to the old way—me and my dad getting together for the occasional dinner, talking about sports and TV shows and college and girls. He was easy to talk to, a lot easier than my mom, though that was probably just because he was a guy, and because he never gave me the feeling that he was judging me, or wishing I was a different person than I actually am. I always made sure to ask him about Jon-Jon, and he always said something positive, like He’s getting big, or, He really likes his new teacher, but I never pressed for details. Jon-Jon’s life was a mystery to me. I had no idea what he did all day, what he thought about, or why he hated me so much. Mostly I just lived my own life without thinking about him at all.
*