The Perfect Wife

Dr. Eliot Laurence…All the way home you try to recall whether that name means anything to you. But there’s nothing. Other memories come, though; still shrouded in fog, so you’re not sure if they’re real or simply more of those educated guesses Tim talked about.

You can definitely recall how those were the darkest times, after Danny’s diagnosis. When it became apparent how far you’d drifted apart.

For you, your focus for the previous years had been your baby, then your toddler, then your little boy. For Tim, it had been work. The prenup might specify one day a week spent with family, but there was always a call to take, an email to respond to, a function to attend.

You realized, too, that the reason you didn’t argue much wasn’t because your marriage was healthy. It was more because starting a fight with Tim was such a massive undertaking. His stubbornness, intelligence, and refusal to concede even the tiniest thing made every disagreement a high-stakes battle that had to be fought to the point of exhaustion. And since you always conceded in the end, what was the point of starting the battle in the first place? There had been a few memorable exceptions, times you’d refused to give in, like the time he suggested that, as a new mother, your naked-surfing days should now be behind you. But they were few and far between, and over the years they’d gotten even fewer.

You didn’t have sex. But when you talked to your other married friends, neither did they. Too exhausted, they said with a rueful smile. Besides, there was usually a small child in the bed. And so you chose to believe that’s what it was like for you, too.

It’s just that it wasn’t, not really. You weren’t too exhausted. It was more as if Tim, having fathered a child, seemed to feel his job was done. He still adored you, or claimed he did. But somehow he no longer translated that adoration into intimacy.

After Danny’s diagnosis, you were briefly united in shock and anger. That was the only good thing about it—the feeling that you were together again, Team Danny. That the two of you were going to take this thing on and beat it through sheer determination.

“If he can become autistic, he can become un-autistic,” Tim said. “Someone, somewhere, will be doing some cutting-edge research on this.”

But gradually it became apparent that what little research there was wasn’t being done on childhood disintegrative disorder. It was focused on understanding why autism happened in the first place. And the fact was, no one had a clue.

It was you who tracked down the more alternative treatments. The internet was awash with suggestions. You were skeptical, of course you were, but you were also desperate. So secretly, you gave most of them a try. Because after all, you never knew.

Tim’s view was that, if the science didn’t stack up, there was no point in wasting time and money proving that the treatment didn’t, either.

You even went back to the expensive, highly qualified speech and language therapist who, only a few months ago, had told you he’d grow out of his lisp. Danny had been silent for weeks after his regression, but recently he’d started making small, truncated sounds. Ss meant “yes.” Sssss meant “juice.” Vuh was “video”—his Thomas the Tank Engine tapes, the only things he watched since coming home from the hospital.

“What do I do now?” you asked her desperately.

She asked if you’d thought about sign language.

You’d stared at her. She was a speech therapist, for God’s sake. Yet here she was, accepting defeat before you’d even started. You felt a wave of anger at the kind of parents who paid this useless woman $150 an hour to tell them their child’s speech impediment would sort itself out eventually. Even though, recently, you’d been one yourself.

“Sometimes he seems to mutter things from TV shows,” you told her. “That’s good, isn’t it? It means you’ve got something to work with.”

“It’s called echolalia,” she said, nodding. “Kids with autism do that. It’s just gibberish, though. It doesn’t mean anything.

“What I would say, Mrs. Scott,” she added as you got up to leave, “is not to go down the ABA road. A lot of parents do that and end up regretting it. I went to a conference once. There were all these horrible videos of kids being taught like little robots.”

* * *

—

That evening you relayed this whole dispiriting conversation to Tim.

“Well, she’s wrong about one thing,” he said immediately. “I may not know much about autism, but I do know about robots. You train them the way that’s most effective, that’s all.”

“So maybe this ABA thing is worth a try.” You looked over at Danny, whispering nonsense to himself. “We’ve got to do something.”

* * *

—

So you both, separately, started looking into ABA. Tim soon discovered peer-reviewed evidence showing it was the most effective intervention for autism there was, even if the success of the original studies, by a psychologist at UCLA called Ivar Lovaas, had never been replicated. So as far as Tim was concerned, it was a definite yes.

Meanwhile, you’d been asking around about ABA practitioners. That’s how you found Julian. About thirty, with a mass of frizzy brown hair, a bear of a body, and an engagingly boyish manner, he turned up at Dolores Street like Santa Claus, with a backpack full of toys over his shoulder that he swung down and spilled onto the kitchen table. Cheap electronic toys mostly; toys that beeped, flickered, flashed, and jumped. A disco ball on the end of a pen. Three different kinds of jack-in-the-box. A plastic spider that leaped when you squeezed a bulb. A sparking wheel that spat real sparks when you pumped it. It was like a Montessori teacher’s worst nightmare.

“What’ll he like?” he said calmly.

You picked out Toby the Tram Engine. “He loves all the engines. But Toby’s his favorite. I don’t know why.”

“Because Toby’s different, of course.”

Julian went over to where Danny was sitting on the floor, idly staring at his own fingers as he twirled them in front of his eyes.

“Hi, Danny!” he said engagingly. Without waiting for a response, he sat down on the floor next to him and started pushing Toby around, making little “wheesh” sounds as he did so.

“Toby is always careful on the road,” he said conversationally. “The cars, buses, and lorries often have accidents. Toby hasn’t had an accident in years.”

You stared at him, amazed. This man actually knew the words to Toby the Tram Engine by heart!

Danny ignored him. Undeterred, Julian continued. “?‘Is it electric?’ asked Bridget. ‘Whoosh!’ hissed Toby crossly.” Julian gave “whoosh” the full theatrical effect, Toby’s indignation propelling the tram engine into the air like a rocket.

Julian turned and looked at you expectantly. After a moment, you realized he wanted you to supply Bridget’s next line.

“But trams are electric, aren’t they?” you said dutifully.

Julian nodded. “They are mostly. But this…this…this is a…” Julian lifted Toby into the air and held him next to his ear as if listening carefully, waiting. There was a long, expectant silence.

“Steam tram,” Danny mumbled.

“Steam! Tram!” Julian echoed triumphantly. He pressed something underneath Toby. There was a little pop, and a plume of cordite-scented smoke drifted out of Toby’s funnel.

Danny laughed.

Danny laughed. The first time you’d heard him laugh in months.

* * *

—

Five minutes later the toys had been swept away again, and Julian was drinking coffee at the kitchen table.

“No point in pushing it,” he said airily. “That’s mission accomplished for today.”

As far as you were concerned, you’d just witnessed a miracle, not a mission. “What was the mission?”

“Today was all about pairing. Making my presence here a reinforcer. So that when we start work for real, Danny will associate me with fun.”

It was the first time you’d heard words like pairing and reinforcer, and you had to get him to explain. Basically, the toys would be used to motivate Danny to learn skills that other kids picked up automatically. The quicker the gratification, the better, since they’d be used as rewards for as little as three seconds of work.

“As you’ll discover soon enough, Mrs. Cullen-Scott, we ABA types do like our jargon. It’s to make what we do sound serious, when actually we’re just having fun.” Julian spoke lightly, but you got a sense that this was someone who knew exactly what he was about.

“Well, whatever you were doing, I liked it. And please, I’m Abbie.”

64

When you get home you email Dr. Laurence to ask for an appointment, using a false name and saying he was recommended by a previous client, Abbie Cullen-Scott. The answer comes back within an hour.

I would be happy to offer you a consultation. My waiting list is five months. However, I should inform you I have no record of a client named Abbie Cullen-Scott.