Alecia charged in the house, a bull seeing red, ready for a fight. Ready for the goring. She gave little thought to Gabe, who would witness the whole thing. All this information was ready to burst out of her mouth, her chest full, her stomach roiling. A student? Which student? Alecia’s mind spun with the Rolodex of girls she’d seen at baseball games or in the hallways the few times she’d gone to school events. Cute, bubbly blondes and perky brunettes. Long, tan legs. Smooth, sun-kissed faces. Which student? She didn’t even know their names. Kaylee or Kilee or Brenna. Something New Age and invented.
Instead, the house was empty. She panted in the kitchen, looking for Nate and seeing only the note: Took Gabe to therapy. This will be good for all of us. Relax.
The note was pinned under an ice bucket, a bottle of pinot grigio sweating in the middle, a single stemless glass turned upside down next to it. Alecia would have been gooey at the gesture a week ago. Hell, a few hours ago. Now it just felt suspicious, a deliberate attempt to derail or distract her.
It was a good thing, she realized. She needed to mull this over, decide what to do with everything she’d been told. The idea that a reporter would break the story before she could confront Nate herself left a slick, oily taste in her mouth.
In the bedroom, she sat on the bed, and everything looked different to her. The thin layer of dust on the wooden dressers looked negligent, the fingerprint smudges on the pictures looked grubby. Yesterday she might have called it all lived in. Small piles of clothes that needed to be put away, mended, or dry-cleaned sat on the chaise longue, untouched for months. Nate’s clothes. Hems that needed stitching. Had she neglected him? Where does a person start to deconstruct their life? Is it possible to isolate a single point in time and say here is where I lost him?
Almost three weeks ago, she knew the date exactly, April 2; she’d sat around a long table in the elementary school’s guidance counselor’s office with the special-education director, the guidance counselor, the principal, the reading specialist, and the math specialist. Their names slid around her tongue, familiar but not yet known. Alecia had taken Gabe for testing two weeks prior. They called it kindergarten readiness testing: cognitive, emotional, social, and intellectual assessments. Long days where Gabe became exhausted, retreating into himself to the point of being mute. She’d had to cancel therapy that week, which would set him back. He’d started to control the tics, the stims, the knee slapping and jaw popping, and now they were skipping therapy and it would all come back, but he was just so damn tired. He fell asleep during the car ride home.
During the testing days, Nate would pop in and out with a quick smack of a kiss on Alecia’s forehead. Except for the day of the big meeting, the result meeting, the one where everyone got together and talked about Gabe, like he wasn’t a person. Like they knew everything there was to know about him because he could finally put the red ball in the red box. Alecia sat on the edge of her plastic chair, her nails digging into the curve, ready for a fight. The clock ticked as they waited for Nate.
The school-affiliated psychologist avoided her eyes, picking at her cuticles as the seconds turned into minutes. Alecia grew restless. Gabe was home with the neighbor. Mandy was eighteen, still living with her parents, doing a year at community college. She could handle Gabe, could even sometimes reach him when it seemed like Alecia could not. But even she had her limits.
At six fifteen, the principal kindly asked, “Should we just proceed without your husband, Mrs. Winters?”
“He’s probably held up at the school. You understand,” Alecia offered lamely, and texted Nate one more time to be sure. Still no response. When she had called him an hour before, it had gone straight to voice mail.
The principal cleared his throat at the same moment the psychologist started to talk and everyone laughed nervously.
“We think Gabe would be best served in a special-needs school.”
Alecia had been expecting a buildup, a review of the tests and their outcomes. Analytics, discussion, something. He was only five, he had a full year before he was required to start school. She’d expected them to say things like we have time, we can revisit this next spring. The authoritative finality of the words threw her. They said it like there was no hope for Gabe to “become normal.” They didn’t use those words, they used words like neurotypical and test-in, but it all meant to “become like other kids.” They weren’t the first people to insinuate such a thing: therapists and preschool teachers and social workers had all shunted Gabe along, someone else’s responsibility. Alecia would always feel wild, flinging anger at this: both at the people who wanted to “normalize” Gabe and then, horribly, at Gabe himself for refusing to comply. Just once, she’d wanted him to comply, but he never could, not even for the smallest thing.
Mainstreaming felt right to Alecia because unlike these suited, tired men and women, she knew her son. She’d seen it now that he was in intensive five-day-a-week therapy. His self-awareness was new, in its infancy. She knew what he could do if he was only challenged, even just a little. She also knew the risk. Gabe was big for his age. His meltdowns had grown rarer, but they were mighty and unintentionally violent. She had nightmares about him throwing chairs, hurting kids, getting expelled.
Nate had lobbied hard for special-needs schools in the past. Now he would get his way and he wasn’t even there. Sometimes it seemed like it was Alecia and Gabe against the whole world.
“Mrs. Winters, you should prepare yourself for Gabe’s life. I feel like you might be denying the depth of his issues. Or overestimating him. Both are unfair.” The psychologist rummaged casually in her purse as she spoke, as though for a lipstick. She pushed a shiny black card across the table with a manicured finger. Learning Support Services was lettered on the front. “Do you have support?” Her brows knitted in concern.
Alecia shook her head. Everyone else exchanged glances. “What?” she asked, uncomprehending in the pregnant moment.
“Mrs. Winters.” The reading specialist reached across the table for Alecia’s hand and stopped halfway. “You do realize that Gabe is not likely to graduate a mainstream public high school, right?”
The words were icy knives to her heart. High school was thirteen years away.
“There are lots of options. We have other schools, there is home schooling, and there is an autism school in Scranton,” the psychologist said. Scranton. Close to thirty miles away. She tried to imagine a thirty-mile drive, twice a day with Gabe, his feet kicking relentlessly against the seat in front of him.
Alecia left the meeting, dusk settling over the parking lot, and drove home. She paid Mandy and went through their nightly routine. Bath and bed. Gabe was, for once, calm. Compliant. After all this, he was compliant, finally.
She called Nate and his phone went straight to voice mail. She texted him: Should I call the police? Where are you? You missed Gabe’s kindergarten meeting. No response.