Linda, Gabe’s therapist, came every day from nine to noon. Every. Damn. Day. In her house, in their space. Rain, shine, snow, but not ice; Linda never drove in the ice. She’d announce this in singsong because Linda announced a lot of things in singsong. She blew in with bags of stuff, odds and ends, toys and string and plastic figurines and blocks and letters and numbers. She carried it all in giant gingham-checked plastic laundry totes she’d gotten from Argentina (Alecia knew an awful lot about Linda’s life; she talked more than anyone Alecia had ever met).
Gabe loved Linda. Alecia, on most days, loved Linda. Linda was extraordinarily tall, over six feet, with a loud booming voice and long blond braid down her back that Gabe liked to touch. Sometimes Linda let Gabe touch her braid, tap it to his cheeks, even, grossly, kiss it—truly Alecia almost protested this one—as a reward. Linda could stand to erect a few boundaries.
Instead of staying or watching or learning, Nate would go upstairs. Away from Linda, away from her singing, her relentless talking, her bubbling theories about Gabe. Maybe it was her sheer enthusiasm, for which Alecia felt profoundly grateful most of the time. Nate seemed to want nothing more than to flee from it. The patter of all the things that would burn his paycheck and maybe only marginally fix his son.
But today, Linda had come and gone and Gabe was theoretically napping. Alecia stomped around the kitchen as she listened to him pace. Step, step, step, step, a heavy boom at the end where his hand slapped at the wall. Step, step, step, step, boom. Step, step, step, step, boom. Step, step, step, step, boom. For fun, she matched her steps to his, wallowing.
“Why isn’t he napping? He was up half the night.” Nate was suddenly behind her. She wasn’t sure if he’d crept up on purpose or if she’d just zoned out and didn’t hear him over the patterned racket above their heads.
“He never really naps. I put him up there to get a break. Sometimes he actually does fall asleep.” Alecia pushed back her shoulders and chewed on her lip.
“Well, that’s ridiculous. Maybe he’s too old for naps. He’s five.” Nate put his hands on his hips and eyed her. “Should I go take care of him? Maybe he needs more discipline. Tell him if he doesn’t lie down, you’ll take away his toys.”
Oh my God. “Discipline? Are you crazy?” If he didn’t understand that Gabe wasn’t like other kids, that grounding and punishment and taking away his front-end loaders wasn’t going get him to lie down compliantly and sleep, for the simple fact that he really didn’t seem to know how to sleep unless he was thoroughly exhausted, then she didn’t know what else to do. Step, step, step, step, boom.
“You’re so soft on him. Too easy. You let him get away with everything.” Nate was getting warmed up; Alecia could hear it in his tone. Saying things he’d been thinking for a while, but hadn’t known how to broach. Then he thought better of it and softened his voice. “Look, I know that Gabe isn’t . . . normal.” God, that got under her skin, even from Gabe’s own father. She could think it, even say it, but no one else, not even Nate. She opened her mouth to cut him off, but he put his hand up. “I know, you hate that. I get it. What I’m trying to say is, I’m not stupid. I know how Gabe is. But what if all he needs is someone tougher? Instead of these hugely expensive, all-consuming therapies you try?” Step, step, step, step, boom. She was getting mad now.
“Someone tougher than me? Like who?” Alecia started to laugh; she couldn’t help it. Who would that be? Another someone to take care of their son? Who? Nate? Sure. Have at it. She couldn’t stop laughing. “Someone else? Who, Nate? You?” Her eyes were watering and she hiccupped. “You want to take care of Gabe? Leave your precious school and your kids and your stupid Facebook account—I know all about that—and all the drama you think is real but you don’t realize real life is going on three miles away, here, while Gabe shits himself accidentally because he’s so wrapped up with his toys. He’s five years old and he’s so busy playing with toy construction equipment that he shits his pants, which by the way, the size of a shit of a five-year-old is pretty much the same as an adult. And he doesn’t really care if I have to clean it up, because he struggles with empathy. And I have to not get mad at him, because he cares very much about that, because to him, he couldn’t help it, so getting mad would be counterproductive and would push him into silence and the therapist is coming in an hour and I have to be sort-of-kind-of together, because she suggested last time that maybe my shrillness was causing his mild regression?” Alecia could feel her voice climbing, screeching really, until she looked down and her hands were balled into fists. When she unfurled her fingers, she saw half-moons of purple carved into her palms. She took a deep breath.
Nate thought she was losing her mind, or maybe that she’d already lost it. Alecia could see it in the way his eyes had grown wider during her tirade. It was her fault, really; she’d had a tendency to keep the small details from Nate. The “shitting day,” as she’d come to call it in her mind, wasn’t all that worse than a lot of other days, although many days were much better. The day of the baseball game had been a good one until all those birds. He’d surely asked her how she was and she probably said “eh” and told him the broad strokes, something vaguely innocuous like Gabe had an accident.
Or perhaps she was suppressing things. Admittedly, as she scrubbed adult-size shit out of Mutant Turtle underwear, she was checked out. In the throes of a bad day, she was elsewhere: a beach, somewhere far away with a drink in her hand and nothing but the sound of the rolling, whooshing waves and the tinkling of ice. Sometimes she’d remember being a child, when her mother would bring her tea and soup in bed, tucking her into the soft folds of a hand-knitted afghan. She’d remember the feel of her mother’s cheek on her forehead or the way her small, agile fingers brushed hair back from her eyes and tucked it behind her ears. Then she’d think about how she should call her mother and she’d come to, on her hands and knees scrubbing at something on the kitchen floor with Gabe pacing in front of her saying sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry for whatever she was cleaning up. He didn’t say sorry because he was, he said sorry because it made her better, less mad, and also sometimes he just got stuck on the word and she’d have to say hours later, Gabey, it’s okay, you can stop saying sorry until she wanted to pull her hair out but couldn’t act even a little annoyed because then it would get worse before it got better.
Nate touched her elbow. “I’m sorry. I know it’s hard. I know you’re alone a lot. I’m sorry.” Alecia cocked her head, waited for the but. “Why do you keep things from me?”
“You don’t want the details, Nate. You don’t. Your eyes glaze over. I see it all the time.” Tears pricked at her eyelids and she squeezed her eyes tight.
“Mama! Look!” Gabe stood in the doorway, a configuration of wood in his outstretched hands. Alecia hadn’t even noticed the pacing had stopped.