“A mouse and a hippo!” she said.
“Yes, that sounds about right,” he said.
“We should write it together!”
“Yeah. That’s a great idea,” Owen said, thinking, No, it’s not a great idea.
“It is a great idea. This is how things happen. The universe likes to make things happen.”
She had this kind of twitchy way of smiling and moving her shoulders, twitchy but in a good way, like a kitten or a stripper. Her bare shoulders and her long neck kept on moving, moving the entire time she was talking to him, and it took Owen a while to realize she was dancing to the music that was thrumming softly through the store. She also had a half smile that, when you looked into her eyes, you could have sworn was a full smile. Her eyes were bright blue.
“So,” he said. “I’ll, uh, take the honey.”
“Fabulous!” she said. “It’ll be thirty-eight dollars. Cash’ll save you the sales tax,” she said. And she winked.
*
“No spitting, Wyatt. You know that.”
Wyatt was angry at Lucy, but she had no idea why. Sometimes it was clear why he was mad: You didn’t let him have a second helping of ice cream. You took away the iPad. But then there were days like this one, days where everything was fine, and nothing unusual had happened, when, on a dime, Wyatt turned on his mother.
Wyatt spit at her.
“That’s one,” said Lucy.
He spit at her again.
“No spitting, Wyatt. If I make it to three, you’re getting a time-out.”
He spit in her direction, ineffectively, and the spit dribbled off his chin and landed on his shirt.
“Okay, that’s two. Let’s go find something to do”—Redirect, the therapists loved to say, although it felt like giving him a reward for bad behavior, especially when she was already at two. “Do you want to play a game with Mama? Let’s see what’s in the playroom.”
Wyatt narrowed his eyes, and a look of what seemed to Lucy to be pure hate crossed over his face, a look so primitive and raw it always took Lucy’s breath away.
He stepped toward her, looked her in the eyes, and spit again, this time in her face.
“That’s it, Wyatt. That’s three. Upstairs. Time-out.”
Wyatt took off like a shot.
“Do not run away from me, Wyatt! Time-out!”
Wyatt darted into the playroom. The layout of the downstairs was such that you could run in a circle, a big circle, from the kitchen through the playroom and the foyer, through the living room, and back to the kitchen again. Catching Wyatt when he settled on this path was nearly impossible. You had to outwit him. You had to hide in a nook or behind a door and then pop out and grab him when he passed by, all of which he found unbearably exciting.
Lucy did just that. She hid behind an old wingback chair and then grabbed Wyatt’s arm when he ran past her.
“Walk!”
Wyatt went noodle-y. Lucy was afraid she was going to pull his arm out of its socket, like one of those awful nannies you were always hearing about in the city.
“Feet on the floor, Wyatt. Walk!”
Lucy did a hold one of his therapists had taught her, kind of one hand dug into his armpit and the other on his upper arm, and he slowly got to his feet. His other arm was completely free, though, and he used it to scratch her as they walked up the stairs.
“I hate you.”
“That hurts my feelings, Wyatt.”
“I’m going to kill you, Mama. I hate you. I’m going to kill you!”
Wyatt’s time-outs used to be in a chair like normal time-outs. But Wyatt would not stay in the chair. No matter what Lucy and Owen said or did, Wyatt would not stay put in the chair. So the only answer Lucy could come up with was to hold him in the chair, grab his wrists, and sit behind him, basically making herself into a human straitjacket. And he would struggle and bite and yell and sob and spit and pinch and scream, driving himself into deeper and deeper hysterics. Lucy had had bruises up and down her arms and scratches all over her hands ever since he was old enough to walk.
How do you discipline a child like this? It felt impossible. It was impossible.
“I can’t wait for you to die, Mama,” Wyatt yelled through the closed door once she got him into his bedroom.
“I’ll be sad when I die,” said Lucy calmly. “Dying is a very sad thing.”
“I can’t wait for you to die, Mama.”
“That hurts my feelings, Wyatt.”
“I can’t wait for you to die. And when it’s your funeral, I’m going to have a big party, and I’m going to make a cake, and it’s gonna say Ding-dong, the witch is dead. And I hope that hurts your feelings!”
That’s actually pretty creative, Lucy thought. That’s an interesting and original use of language.
“You’re in a time-out, Wyatt. And the timer doesn’t start until you’re calm.”
“I’m calm! I hate you, Mama! I can’t wait for you to be dead! Dead as a doornail!”
Lucy slumped down on the floor in the hallway, her left hand on the doorknob to keep Wyatt from getting out.
Behavior is communication. That was one of the first things the therapists had told them about Wyatt. Over the years, Owen and Lucy had repeated that phrase to each other hundreds of times—when Wyatt was arching his back and spitting, when he poured water onto her computer keyboard, when he shattered the fake Tiffany lampshade at that Applebee’s. It means he’s having trouble with this transition. It means he’s overstimulated by the noise in the restaurant. It means he’s frustrated because he can’t catch the ball. It means he feels out of control around other children. It means his brain doesn’t work the way everyone else’s does. It means he’s tired. It means he’s hungry. It means he’s scared or confused or excited or worried or anxious or angry or sad.
Lucy’s arms were scratched and bloody. Wyatt was pulling on the doorknob with all of his might. She closed her eyes and held on.
From age two until just about age four, Wyatt did not sleep. It wasn’t a question of not sleeping through the night—he flat-out didn’t sleep. He napped a little, in fits and starts, on the bus to and from his special preschool, sometimes falling asleep on the couch when he got home or in his car seat on his way to one of his therapies, but at night, he did not sleep. He couldn’t sleep. It was as if sleep were beyond him, and sleep had no connection to tiredness.