The Perfect Wife

He groans. It’s often hard to interpret Danny’s noises. Tim says most are probably just vocal “stims,” self-stimulations. No one knows why people with autism do this, but there’s a theory that it gives them a sense of control in an overwhelming world. The bed bouncing, which Danny can do for hours, is another example. When he gets stressed he creates bigger sensory inputs, for example by biting the backs of his hands.

“Danny?” you repeat. “Would you like to come outside and play?”

After a moment he shakes his head. “Nuh!”

Encouraged by the fact he answered at all, you hold out your hand. “Come on, Danny! It’ll be fun!”

“Whoa!” Sian’s voice says behind you. “What are you doing?”

You turn around. The therapist is standing there, watching disapprovingly.

“I’m trying to get Danny on the trampoline,” you explain, although surely it was perfectly obvious what you were doing.

“Well, you’re doing it wrong. You need to break it down into a series of clear instructions. Say, Danny, stand up. Then Danny, hold my hand. Then Danny, walk downstairs with me, and so on. Each time he complies, you say Good job and give the next instruction.”

“I’m his mother. I was trying to sound friendly.”

Sian gives you a strange look, and for a moment you think she’s going to call you on that word mother. But all she says is, “Maybe, but what you did was confusing to him. You asked if he wanted to go outside, and he answered accurately by telling you that no, he didn’t. You should have praised him for identifying his response and then articulating it. Instead the consequence of him answering correctly was that he got asked the same question all over again.” She shrugs. “When you said, Would you like to…, what you actually meant was I would like you to. Sure, it sounded nice, and most kids soon pick up on what we really mean, but it’s unfair on those like Danny who find language difficult.”

You feel criticized, but it also strikes you that in some ways Danny and you are in the same boat, both struggling to make sense of a world you don’t really fit into.

“Could you teach me? The way you work with him, I mean? I want to learn to do it properly.”

For a moment she hesitates. Then she says, “Sure, why not?” in a less-than-enthusiastic tone.

* * *

—

“Danny, touch your nose.”

You count to three, then prompt him, taking his hand and guiding it so he touches his nose. “Good touching!” you say, just as enthusiastically as if he’d done it all by himself. “Here’s Thomas!”

You hand him the train and make an entry on the data sheet. He gets thirty seconds with Thomas as a reward, then you take the train away and do it all again. He needs a fraction less prompting this time. That, too, is recorded.

“Danny, look at me.”

He swings his eyes in your direction. They don’t lock on to yours—there isn’t that spark you normally get when two people make eye contact. But it’s an attempt, and that’s what matters. “Good looking!” you say encouragingly. “Here’s Thomas!”

“Not bad,” Sian says reluctantly. “You’re getting the hang of it.”

Danny’s program consists of hundreds of these exercises—trials or drills in the therapists’ jargon. Each is one tiny step along a giant path, with raisins or a short burst of playing with his trains as rewards. Once he’s discovered he’ll get a treat for doing something, he’ll need less prompting next time.

That’s the theory, anyway. The data sheets show he’s done some of these drills over a thousand times. But Sian stays relentlessly positive.

“Good trying, Danny! Good job!”

You have a sudden memory of Danny before his regression, playing hide-and-seek. How he used to hide himself and then, unable to contain his excitement, call out, “Where could he be? Is he under the table? Noooo! Is he under the bed? Noooo! Is he in the shower? Noooo!” It was so sweet, you always went along with it, looking in all the places he named one by one. Later, a psychiatrist speculated that maybe, even then, Danny didn’t have something called theory of mind, the ability to put himself in another person’s shoes.

“Did I do the ABA program with Danny before?” you ask Sian.

“You did, yes.”

“Was I good at it?”

She pauses before replying. “When you wanted to be.”

“What does that mean?”

“ABA can be hard for parents. Sometimes they’re too emotionally involved. Sometimes Abbie would say, ‘Why can’t we just let him be himself?’ But these procedures are evidence-based. And it’s unfair to kids like Danny not to help them reach their full potential.”

You notice she tends to say Abbie, not you. But at least she’s moved on from it.

* * *

—

Every day you fall in love, and every day your heart is broken.

The mother of a child with autism knows her feelings for him will never be reciprocated. Her child will never say I love you, never draw a Mother’s Day card, never proudly bring home a school project or a girlfriend or a fiancée or a grandchild. He will never tell you about his day, or confide his deepest fears to you.

Yet he will always need you, more than any other child could need you, precisely because he can’t fight his battles on his own. He needs you to stop the world from crushing him. He needs you to be his translator, protector, bodyguard, advocate. He needs you to think twice before turning on the vacuum cleaner or the microwave or the hair dryer or whatever else might cause him agony. To do battle with doctors, waiters, teachers, fire alarms, the marketing idiots who changed the color of a Cheerios box on a whim without realizing it would make him inconsolable for days.

He may never be able to accept a hug from you, let alone to hug you back. But instead you can stand before the world with your body braced and your arms outstretched, deflecting the blows that would otherwise rain down on him.

He will need you to teach him, slowly and painfully, the basics of everyday life: how to imitate, how to ask for food, how to choose clothes. How to recognize the difference between a smile and a frown, and what those strange contortions of a human face might actually mean.

And because of that, your love for him has a quality no other love can have. It burns with a fierce, undimmable energy. It’s the love of a warrior who would die defending her position sooner than step aside.

* * *

—

One evening you’re getting Danny ready for bed when you remember you left a pot boiling downstairs. When you get back, you discover he’s taken his toothbrush and, very carefully, squeezed a tube of your new acrylic paint over it. And not just over the bristles: He closed his little fist tightly around the tube as he walked around. A long sine wave of Indian Red now adorns the white carpet on the landing.

He looks at you and smiles. That’s when you discover he also cleaned his teeth with it. He looks like a cheerful little vampire.

“Well done, Danny,” you say, amazed. “Good copying.” Because, while there’s no point in telling him off for something he didn’t know was wrong, the fact that he tried to imitate something he’d seen you do is a breakthrough.

“Well, fizzle my fenders,” Danny says dreamily, parroting one of his favorite expressions from Thomas the Tank Engine.

9

The three weeks are nowhere near up when Tim gets a call.

“He’s done what?” he says incredulously. Then, “No, I’ll do it. I don’t trust that idiot to fix this.”

He puts the phone down. “That was Mike. Some stupid screwup at the office. I’m going to have to go in.” He grimaces. “If that’s all right. I don’t like leaving you.”

In truth, you’d known three whole weeks was going to be a stretch. Your honeymoon was only ten days, and even then Tim sneaked into the bathroom every morning to answer emails.

“I’ll be fine. And besides, I want to finish going through my books.” You’ve devoured everything in the bookcases downstairs, but the big double-height bookshelves on the landing remain untouched.

“Well, if you need anything, just call.” He takes something from his pocket. “Here. It’s time you had this again.”

This is a beaten-up old smartphone, scratched and battered, the screen a little chipped at the corners. It’s encased in a papier-maché shell made from layers of vintage wallpaper.

“You made that case yourself,” he adds. “You were so good at things like that.”

Before he leaves he kisses you on the forehead. “Love you, Abs. See you later.”

“Love you, too,” you echo.

* * *

—

As soon as he’s gone, you turn on the phone. Tim still won’t talk about what happened to you, but perhaps there’s something here that will satisfy your curiosity.

You go into the texts. The most recent one was five years ago, sent to someone called Jacinta G. Sure! Count me in for Pinot and character assassination! Abs xx

You’ve no idea who Jacinta is. But here you were, planning a girls’ night. And then you died. Out of the blue, never expecting that text to be your last.

You keep scrolling. Most of the names mean nothing, lost in the fog. Then, suddenly, one pops out.

Lisa.

Your sister. Your finger hovers over the CALL button. But then you wonder how much Tim has told her. She may know nothing about this. About you. You can’t just phone her out of the blue without some sort of warning. Reluctantly, you move on.

You see Tim’s name. Your last text to him simply read: