“Rooster!”
“Alecia, he finally got rooster!” Linda clapped her hands and whooped and Alecia pushed her fingertips against the bridge of her nose. She wanted to yell back, big fucking deal. They’d only been working on rooster for two weeks. Two weeks for the word rooster. Besides, how was it valuable? They weren’t farmers. He’d probably never even see a real, live rooster.
She felt pushed to the brittle edge.
If she could focus on anything but that hat, the muddy coach, Nate and the vision of him sliding down that embankment, losing his hat and running after the girl with the white hair, to what? To do what? Did he catch her? Kiss her? Kill her? Alecia had no idea. Then there was the way Bridget looked at her, like she was some kind of monster. The idea that they were all this close to their lives falling completely apart.
She did not for one second care about rooster. She didn’t have the stamina in her to even summon the enthusiasm for whatever small measure of progress Gabe managed. Following closely behind the fatigue was a crushing guilt that she should care. The knowledge that he would only advance if she cared, and that maybe the reason he was struggling was because she hadn’t quite done enough. Felt enough. Tried hard enough. Pushed herself far enough.
Linda appeared in the doorway.
“I read the paper, honey. No one could blame you for being distracted today.” Linda helped herself to a glass of water, running the tap and flicking the water stream with her fingertips to test for temperature.
“I’m not distracted,” Alecia said, slamming her own glass of iced tea down on the counter so hard it sloshed over the side. “I just don’t see the point in all of this. He’s not getting better. He’s not going to get better.”
Linda filled her water glass and took a long drink. She carefully set the glass on the counter next to Alecia’s and retrieved a paper towel, mopping up the water spill and discarding the towel before she spoke. “This is not a destination trip, Alecia.” She stopped, tapped her index finger against her lips. “He may or may not get ‘better,’ but I think it’s high time you looked at what your definition of ‘better’ is. Your son is a wonderful little boy, exactly how he is. What we are hoping to unlock is his potential. We are not going to fundamentally change who he is. I think you want the latter, not the former. Until you adjust your expectations, you will always feel like we’re standing in still waters.” She stepped closer to Alecia, her voice low, towering over her, and placed a large, weathered hand on her shoulder. “You measure his success here, based on three hours a day, with a limited ruler. You define him by whether or not he knows the word rooster and how fast he knows it.”
“He has less than one year to be ready for kindergarten.” Alecia heard the shrill in her voice, the panicky pitch.
“And so what? What if he doesn’t make it? What if he’s not ready until he’s seven?” Linda’s hand pushed down.
“He has to be ready when he’s six to go to public school. With his friends.”
“He doesn’t have friends, Alecia.”
Alecia winced. She’d meant the kids in their development, the ones who paid Gabe no mind, not even to say hello. The ones who rode bikes in the cul-de-sac and watched Gabe run a cement mixer down their front steps for three hours at a time, up and down, up and down, up and down, never once asking him to play.
Linda sighed. “I think you’ll find if you open your narrow view of Gabe’s world and really look at him, you’ll find that you have plenty of options. There are other schools, you know.”
“You mean special-needs schools. Autism schools.” Alecia shook her head. “No. I just want him to be a normal boy.”
Linda shrugged, her palms out, and gave Alecia a sad smile. “It’s hard to say; what’s so great about normal?”
In the living room, she turned on the stereo, a loud country twang, and Alecia gritted her teeth. Gabe, for some godforsaken reason, adored country music. The guitar, the lament, the soulful crooning. Linda turned the volume up and she and Gabe danced around the living room, singing. Patsy Cline and Willie Nelson and Kenny Rogers and Glen Campbell; the more Nashville, the better.
Alecia texted the baby-sitter next door and got an answer back right away. She called into Linda, “Hey, Mandy is coming over for a bit. I’m going to run to the bank. You okay, buddy?” she asked Gabe, and he waved wildly.
She let herself out the back door, just as Mandy was coming in. Alecia pushed a folded twenty-dollar bill into her palm and raced to the car, where she flipped on the air, the cold blowing in her face. She drove to the end of the block, parking the car in an empty church parking lot, where she closed her eyes and promptly fell asleep.
?????
Avoiding public places seemed like a good idea, but Alecia had an insurance check in her purse pocket for two weeks, and with Nate out of work, they needed the money more than she needed her dignity. The bank seemed like a quick errand, and a decent escape. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes; a quick ten-minute nap had calmed her racing heart considerably. Linda’s little acceptance speech felt very far away, and that was a good thing.
She avoided looking at anyone directly, instead studied the check in her hand, as if the signature on it, the logo held her utmost interest. When her teller called out next! she shuffled to the window and pushed her signed check across the marble top.
She felt a stare, or maybe heard a giggle, or a whisper—it was hard to pinpoint what made her turn around, but she did. Bea Tempest and Jennifer Lawson stood together, looking her way, by the potted ficus inside the front door. She stiffened her back and pretended not to see, rummaging through her purse for something, anything—gum or candy or a hair tie—anything to look busy. She thought of Jennifer Lawson in that red dress, her green eyes quick and darting, that tongue sweeping the corners of her mouth. Your hubby, Saint Nate. No, no, no, no, no.
Alecia was wrung out, the fight clean sapped out of her. She dug through her bag, made a big show of it, shaking her head, mumbling where is it under her breath, waiting for the teller to call next! For Jennifer and Bea to wave their French-manicured fingers at each other, byeeeeee, and go to their respective black SUVs.
She was, in fact, so busy looking busy that she didn’t notice the front door open, the little bell above it chime. Alecia didn’t pay it any attention until she heard the dragging noise, some kind of huffing behind her. She looked up, and the first thing she saw was gray-white hair, slicked straight with grease. Thick, leathered skin. A mouth open like a gray-green O. Words, garbled and unclear.
“Do you care at all that she’s missing?” He asked her, his voice warbling and dense, thick as he coughed.