“Oh, I know,” the woman had said, laughing and chewing. “He loves jewelry.”
Suzanne had looked back at the boy, who was now spooning clam chowder into his mouth. Slumped in the highchair beside her, Elliot gravely and repeatedly raked a fork over a paper napkin.
After that, Suzanne avoided taking her son into public. Brian hadn’t yet been awakened to Elliot’s differences, and she did not bring them to his attention. Then, at Elliot’s eighteen-month checkup, she couldn’t make him sit up. He screamed when the nurse put him on the baby scale and arched his back like a swordfish. When the doctor came in, Elliot was squirming belly-down on the examining table, kicking his legs. Suzanne smiled and shrugged. She had dressed for the appointment in a tweed pencil skirt and black turtleneck, as if to convince the doctor of her competence.
The doctor had kept Elliot for longer than expected. Her usual reassuring manner was gone, replaced by a disconcerting professional gravity. She gave Suzanne the name of a specialist and urged her to schedule an evaluation quickly. Later, she and Brian watched helplessly as the specialist sat across from their son, spoke his name, waited for eye contact. He rolled a ball to see if Elliot would reciprocate. He showed Elliot a book with a picture of a monkey, then put the book on his own head. Throughout all this, Elliot stared into the middle distance, unsmiling, periodically slapping the table in front of him.
Early intervention was important, the specialist said. They should find a support group. They should investigate which therapies their insurance might cover: home-based speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy. He recommended that they visit treatment centers in person, to determine which approach might be best for Elliot. And the most important intervention would have to come from the family itself. He smiled when he said this, rubbing his glasses. It would be optimal, of course, if one parent were able to stay home with the boy, to engage with him each day in a rigorous and focused manner.
Now, Suzanne’s laptop computer rests on the kitchen table in the periphery of her vision, sleek and white, its little light pulsing with intelligence. She is conscious of its pull through every moment she spends on the floor, but girds herself against it. Finally, when Elliot wrangles the last ring onto his tower, she applauds, then rewards herself by getting up to check her e-mail. There is nothing of interest in her inbox, but she lingers anyway, browsing Vogue.
Elliot has abandoned the stacking toy and is now on his feet, turning circles on the carpet. Suzanne watches passively for a few moments, until he topples sideways onto the couch. The specialist has explained that such behavior is often caused by too little sensory input. Her fault, this time, for having left him alone. She goes to him, takes him gently by the shoulders, and pulls him into a bear hug, as instructed. After a moment of steady pressure, she feels his body relax. The next activity should be something physical, she knows, so she goes to retrieve the balance board. Her watch glitters. Noon. Brian won’t be home until at least four. She is jealous of his being outdoors. The world shimmers with life, but she cannot muster the energy to shepherd Elliot into the yard.
Once he has begun on the balance board, Suzanne steps away again. She goes to the kitchen and pours a glass of lemonade, adding the ice afterward to avoid the clatter of the cubes, too harsh for Elliot’s ears. Last, she adds a finger of chilled vodka from the freezer.
Outside the living room window, through the border of young pines, Suzanne sees a man cross the adjacent yard and disappear into the woods. Their next-door neighbor. She has often seen him skulking outside like this, even on the few weekdays she’s been at home. It appears that he does not have a job.
She met his wife, Madeleine, after they first moved in. A pretty, bewildered pregnant woman. A few months later, pink balloons had appeared on the neighboring mailbox, and Suzanne had brought over a key lime pie. The husband had answered the door. He was tall and lean and not handsome, but his eyes were brazenly green and unapologetic, almost rude.
Suzanne had shaped her face into a neighborly smile. “Suzanne Crawford from next door.”
There had been a smell of something earthy, spicy, inside the house. Incense? Marijuana? She’d glimpsed Madeleine in the background, holding a bundle close to her body, perhaps breast-feeding. The husband apologized that his wife wasn’t able to come to the door. His voice was soft and resonant, in contrast to the impolite stare.
She felt herself redden, handed him the pie. “Well, I don’t want to disturb her. Just a little something from us to you.”