The Perfect Wife

As soon as Tim’s asleep you call Mike Austin. It’s gone midnight, but he picks up immediately.

“I need to see you,” you tell him. “It’s important.”

He’s silent a moment. “Tim’s mad at me, isn’t he?”

“It’s not that. It’s Abbie—the real Abbie. She’s alive.” You pause. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

* * *

—

He arranges to meet you at the office. Jenny’s sleeping, he says, and he doesn’t want to disturb her.

You summon an Uber to the back gates. The roads are quiet and the app tells you you’ll be there in half an hour.

You spend the time in the car searching for memories. There’s a knack to it, you’re discovering. Instead of straining for them, you have to drift. If you reach for them, they slip from your grasp. If you go blank and just let them come to you, they will.

They do.

70

Within a few weeks Julian had assembled a whole team of therapists. Tim came to a training session readily. He was right behind ABA, after all.

“Okay,” Julian said, setting a chair in the middle of the room. “Tim, today you’re jack-in-the-box, and this chair is the box.”

He put a big red squeaky button on the floor next to the chair. Then he got Tim to sit on the chair. Eager to play now, Danny allowed his hand to be positioned over the button. “One, two…” Julian prompted.

“Free.”

Julian pushed down on Danny’s hand and the button, and Tim stood up.

“Hmm,” Julian said. “Maybe a bit more engaging. Like this.”

He took Tim’s place in the chair while you helped Danny push the button. Immediately Julian rocketed into the air, arms flailing. “Yeaaaaargh!” he yelled. Danny laughed.

Julian turned back to Tim. “Like that.”

Tim tried again, but he just wasn’t as naturally playful as Julian. His “Yeargh” sounded like a retch of disgust.

“Okay. Let’s try something else.” Julian switched to a game where Danny got tickled every time he made eye contact.

Watching them, it struck you that, even before Danny’s regression, Tim had never really done horseplay with him. He was trying to follow Julian’s instructions now, but you could tell he found it difficult.

“Gotcha!” Julian pounced on Danny, who giggled. Tim gave them both a dark look.

* * *

—

“I just don’t think what he’s doing can be proper ABA,” Tim complained later, when Julian had gone.

“It’s modern ABA. Same principles, but it’s moved on since Lovaas’s day,” you said confidently. Julian had been explaining this to you, in between sessions.

“But it hasn’t, has it? Moved on. Not in terms of results. It’s moved backward. No one’s been able to match Lovaas’s original success.”

“Lovaas’s therapists shouted and used electric shocks.”

“That’s what’s worrying me. What if those methods were actually integral to the results? You can’t just take one whole vector out of a study and assume it’ll work the same.”

“But we can see it’s working. Besides, Danny adores Julian.”

On reflection, you realized later, that may not have been the smartest thing you could have said.

* * *

—

You assumed it was Julian’s relationship with Danny that Tim was jealous of. It took you a while to work out that, actually, it was Julian’s relationship with you.

“You three seemed to be having a great time,” Tim said one day after he came home and found you in mid-session. You’d been lying on the floor, taking turns to hold Danny above you at arm’s length. Every time Danny made eye contact he got bounced off your tummy.

“We were, yes.”

“Remind me—did we do background checks on this guy?”

“On Julian?” you said, bemused. “Of course. He showed me his child protection certificates himself.”

“Well, at least Danny’s safe.”

Something about the way he said it made you turn to look at him. “What do you mean by that?”

Tim shrugged. “Just the way he looks at you, that’s all.”

“You’re imagining things,” you said firmly.

* * *

—

One day Julian suggested a trip to the ocean.

“As a break from therapy?”

“As motivation for therapy. You say Danny loves waves. Let’s make waves today’s reinforcer.”

So the three of you drove out to the beach. You and Julian walked Danny down to the water. When a wave came, Danny had to say, “Jump,” and then together you’d pull him, squealing with pleasure, into the air, just before the wave crashed over his tummy. Or you’d crouch down and he’d have to look you in the eye, and you’d reward him by scattering a handful of glittering seawater in front of his gaze.

It worked, too. He loved those games so much, he tried extra hard.

Back at the beach house, you were euphoric. “That was the best session so far! This is working!”

Excited, you hugged Julian. And that’s when he kissed you.

Just for a moment, you kissed him back. Of course you did. You’d been lonely for so long. But just as quickly, you came to your senses.

“I love you, Abbie,” Julian said urgently as you pulled away. “I want to be with you.”

“Don’t be crazy,” you said slowly. “I’m married.”

“People can’t help who they fall in love with. I didn’t choose this. Abbie, I love you.”

But it was you who truly had no choice, although it took you a while to see it. If you had an affair, Tim would find out; and anyway, you weren’t the sort to do something like that behind your husband’s back. You couldn’t go on working with Julian, not now. Even if he could pretend this hadn’t happened—which you doubted—you couldn’t.

There were other therapists, you reminded yourself, but you only had one marriage. So after a sleepless night, you told Julian he had to go.

You felt furious with him, actually. By what sense of entitlement did men think their romantic needs trumped their professional obligations? Why couldn’t he simply have kept his mouth shut? What was so terrible about unrequited love that men just had to blab about it?

You told Tim that Julian had gone abroad. And you set about finding a replacement.

But it turned out Julian had been unique, after all. None of the other therapists you tried bonded with Danny the same way, or made therapy such fun. You ended up with a nice Romanian woman called Magda who was extremely competent and emphasized the data-collection side of things, which Tim liked.

You did suggest going to the beach, once, but she looked at you as if you were mad. “Time is precious,” she said. “Danny needs us to focus.”

The episode with Julian had one good outcome, though: It made you realize your marriage was drifting toward the point of no return. You told Tim you thought the two of you could benefit from some couples therapy.

“Why? We’re fine, aren’t we?” he demanded, puzzled.

“They say eighty percent of couples with an autistic child get divorced, don’t they? It can’t do any harm to give our marriage a refresher.”

Eventually Tim agreed to a Reiki ceremony in which both of you wrote down all the bad thoughts you’d had and burned them. You spent twenty minutes working out what to write.

As you lit the pieces of paper, Tim’s flipped over in the updraft from the flames, so you saw what he’d written. There were just two words. Fucking Reiki.

71

With a jolt, you realize you’ve arrived at Scott Robotics. The parking lot is empty except for Mike’s black Tesla. The Uber drops you off and drives away.

Inside, the place is lit only by the screensavers of the Scott Robotics logo that flicker from every screen—an animated S that chases its own tail, over and over, so that it becomes an upended infinity sign. Every screen is in perfect sync—that was something Tim had insisted on, you remember: He spent weeks niggling at the designers because there was a tiny lag, no more than half a second, between some of the screens.

It got fixed, of course. Everything Tim wanted got fixed in the end.

Mike’s over at the far side, by Tim’s office. “What makes you say she’s alive?” he says without preamble.

“I’m in touch with her.”

He’s silent a moment. “Does Tim know?”

“He’s always believed she’s alive. That’s why he built me—he thinks I can find her.” You pause. “I haven’t told him we’re in contact, though.”

Mike exhales. “Good. Don’t tell him. It’s the kindest thing. Think about it—he’s already done the hard part. Five years without her. Five years of grieving, of going all the way to the bottom. If he finds her now, and she doesn’t want to come back…It’ll break his heart all over again. And he won’t recover, not a second time—”

“Stop bullshitting me,” you interrupt.

Again he’s silent, considering you.