Bad Animals (23 page)

The newest addition to the board consists of Cynthia's research into local synagogues, namely which one might be best at accommodating Jonah once he starts preparing for his bar mitzvah. She's learned enough so far to know we have left this too long. Her friends, who have already been through bar and bat mitzvahs for their kids, have a tendency to shriek, “What are you waiting for?” when she tells them Jonah is eleven and a half. There's a phone number on the board for a Hebrew tutor.

I would like to see these items removed. I had my first crack-up in a while the other day when Cynthia came down to the basement to talk to me about a synagogue visit she'd just made. She usually doesn't interrupt me in my office, especially these days, but this information couldn't wait. Evidently, Jonah wasn't getting any younger. The good news was that the rabbi she'd just spoken to was happy to meet Jonah's particular needs—his congregation had some experience with autism—at least up to a point.

“What point?”

“Well, we'll probably have to join the congregation, all of us.” She was looking down at the pile of books on my desk and picked up a copy of
The Horse Boy
“I like the picture. Is that the author?” The cover of
The Horse Boy
is, indeed, a photograph of author Rupert Isaacson, a dashing fellow, along with his six-year-old son Rowan. They are on horseback together and look as if they've joined forces to defeat Genghis Khan. Isaacson is laughing triumphantly; his son's arm is raised in the air, also triumphantly. Even the horse, grinning wildly, looks like she's on the verge of a breakthrough.

“Did you say all of us have to join the congregation? What does that mean?”

“It means we'd have to start attending Saturday services regularly, well, pretty regularly. The rabbi said a bar mitzvah is not just about having a catered party; it's about fostering a sense of community in your child. He sounded insistent, like this was a deal-breaker.”

“Okay, here's what I'm insistent about,” I said, as I grabbed
The Horse Boy
out of her hand. “I'm not going to synagogue. I'm not spending my Saturday morning listening to strangers praising God for no conceivably good reason. I'm just not. I draw the line there.”

“And what about Jonah?”

“He doesn't need a bar mitzvah. I didn't need one. It didn't exactly make much of a Jew out of me, did it?” I pause, waiting for my wife to add:
Or a man.

“But you had a bar mitzvah.”

“How's he going to keep up? He has too much homework now as it is. Next year will be worse. You know, we don't have ... we can't keep up. How's he supposed to learn Hebrew? That language is nuts. Besides, if you're telling me he's going to make friends, then ... you don't know what eleven- and twelve-year-old boys in a bar mitzvah class are like. They'll eat him alive.”

“There are girls, too.”

“I rest my case. What makes you think this is going to be any different than anywhere else? And this is not Jonah's community. We are Jonah's community.”

“I hate this. I hate it when you give up on him, on us so easily.”

CYNTHIA BELIEVES IN research. She is convinced if you look hard enough for a solution to a problem you will find it. Almost twelve years ago, she prepared for our first date—a blind date—by not only reading the autobiographical novel I'd written but preparing a list of questions to ask me pertaining to it. Her most important question she saved for last. How much did I resemble my narrator? In other words, was I as clueless as he was when it came to women? I've interviewed a lot of writers over the years, a lot who've claimed that while it was true that their fiction was based on actual events, none of it was really true. I never believe them, of course, and I felt safe assuming that Cynthia wasn't going to believe a similar denial coming from me. So I confessed. My narrator was me, more or less. Less, I hastened to add, when it came to relationships. In that regard, I wasn't quite as big a knucklehead as my protagonist. What else could I say? It was our first date. You're expected to lie. Cynthia weighed my answer, and, curiously, she seemed satisfied. I think that's when I began to fall in love with her, while I watched her gradually, methodically come to the conclusion that there are limits to research, that at some point you just have to play a hunch. She did. She took a calculated risk. She believed me.

“I didn't really,” she says, correcting me now, all these years later. She's holding a handful of coloured push pins. The bulletin board is almost bare. “I just thought you were cool. You'd written a book and everything. Do we still need this
New Yorker
cartoon?”

“And now?” I'm fishing, expecting to hear something I will like.

“Now, I think you should write another one,” Cynthia says. “Two more, as a matter of fact—keep working on that sequel to
Bad Animals,
okay? Try, at least.”

“Jonah has a bad case of writer's block. Trust me, I know what that's like.”

THIS IS PROBABLY obvious by now, but with Jonah and me, new projects have a way of appearing and disappearing quickly. With his compulsive nature and my impatience, we do not always make the best team. Or maybe we're too good a team, too much alike. I worry that he is, down deep, a defeatist and a quitter like his father. I'd like to be able to teach him useful things, things he needs to know, like crossing the street safely, like understanding a story, watching a movie through to the end, things he is capable of learning, if I were just able, somehow, to figure out a way to reach him: if I had a plan, patience, follow-through.

There are lines in books that stay with you for years, not necessarily because they speak to you when you first read them but because you have a gut feeling that one day they will. It's as if they're waiting for you to catch up. I first read the South Carolina novelist Josephine Humphreys's
The Fireman's Fair
in 1991, not long after it was published. It's a lovely, funny story of an unrequited relationship, something I'd had my share of by then. As a consequence, every line in the novel resonated: none more so than the hero's declaration that “hope fails on this earth a million times a day.” The first time I read this line I took it to be an eloquent commentary on the necessity of accepting defeat. It never occurred to me that Humphreys might also be making the opposite point: that the reason hope fails so often is because we have no choice but to keep trying to make it work. As it turns out, I misremembered the line. Humphreys wasn't talking about hope. She was talking about love. “When you love,” Humphreys goes on to say, “you're not supposed to count the failures....It's like tossing coins. For a given toss, the chance is even, unlinked to history.”

But history, like it or not, keeps getting in the way. I've watched people give up on Jonah: doctors and teachers and therapists. If it hasn't always been apparent in their words and actions, in their general comments and formal diagnoses, I've seen it in the way he's treated. I've seen conversations ended abruptly when it was clear they weren't going anywhere. I've seen games with prospective friends suspended, rules amended, play dates cancelled. I've seen the sideways glances. I've seen him ignored and overprotected and underestimated. And the reason I know what it looks like is because I've done it myself, all of it, so many times. Sometimes it feels like a million times. I fail him every day. The difference is that I know at some point during the day or the next one or the one after that, I will have no choice but to believe he can do more and better and that so can I. It's simple really: giving up on my son is a luxury I can no longer afford.

Be a good sport, sweetheart.

—CYNTHIA

The bad animals want a story.

What kind? the Worst-Daddy-Ever says.

They want a sad one, they said.

But with a happy ending.

—MORE BAD ANIMALS: THE SEQUEL

“Do you have a plan?” Cynthia asked as she left this morning for her parents' house in the country.
Her
plan was to spend the weekend there, alone, catching up on her reading, required and otherwise. Jonah was still sleeping as I watched her pack. She wasn't whistling exactly, but there was a kind of lilt in her voice, like you hear from one of those animated heroines—Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty—in the Disney sing-a-long videos Jonah loves to watch. They are perpetually rosy-cheeked and hopeful and about to burst into song. Say: “Some Day My Prince Will Come” or “It's a Whole New World.” Cynthia hadn't been away from Jonah overnight for a long time, longer than either of us could remember, and she was banking on one night on her own, but if everything went all right—which is to say with Jonah and me, which is also to say if I didn't crack up—she would consider making it two. She told me this by way of advance warning. I took comfort in the fact that she was packing light—a bathing suit, a copy of
Oprah Magazine
(the summer makeover issue: “Ten Ways Oprah Changed and You Can Too”), and, her required reading, a manuscript copy
of My So-Called Memoir.

“I was going to have it spiral-bound, or self-published, but there wasn't time.”

“Can I write on this? In case I have notes.”

“Okay. But, remember, it's a rough draft. It doesn't have an ending yet. As a matter of fact, I should have another look at it before you go.”

“I'm leaving now.”

“It will only take a couple of years.”

Cynthia's parents' place is an hour's drive from Montreal, which means she's likely already there and that she'll have most of today and tomorrow to focus on what I've spent the last seven years writing and not writing. You don't have to be Rain Man to do the math. The first time I heard the word
autism
attached to my son, it was clear I was going to write about him, about us. What choice was there? I couldn't ignore this new fact of my life, our life, and I couldn't face it head-on either, so turning it into material was the remaining option. It just never occurred to me it would take so long. On occasion, however, it has occurred to me that Cynthia would have to read what I'd written and that, yes, she would have “notes.”

Cynthia will not be the first person with notes. I was accepted into that literary journalism workshop at The Banff Centre after all, and I spent much of the last month there. The program consisted of eight writers, all working on personal essays or on some version of their memoirs. But the real advantage of being in Banff was not the feedback. It was being left alone for the better part of a month in a cabin in the woods to work on my stubborn story. It was a wonderful opportunity—one Cynthia wouldn't let me pass up—but even so it took me a few days to settle in. I couldn't quite get over the feeling of suddenly having no direction, no purpose. I did my laundry the second night I was there just to have something useful to do. In the cafeteria, I had to resist the urge to clear the tables. I'd plan my unencumbered days, as if any minute Cynthia was about to hand Jonah off to me for a couple of hours. I should have felt liberated; instead I felt lost. But once this feeling was gone, it was gone for good. By the end of the first week, I was beholden to no one and couldn't imagine living or writing any other way.

In Banff, my colleagues were the first to read excerpts from the bits and pieces about my life with Jonah. Their comments were mostly encouraging, but the most memorable advice I received was from a music critic and blogger, a smart, intimidating fellow in his twenties, who seemed genuinely worried that the subject might prove too daunting. “All I have to say,” he added, by way of conclusion, “is don't fuck it up.”

When I returned from Banff the summer was already half over, and Cynthia was anxious to cash in a month's worth of brownie points. She wasn't complaining; she was just ready to be alone for a little while. Even so, the summer had been going well for her and Jonah. He was going to day camp on his own and seemed to be enjoying himself. He'd made a friend there, too, a boy Jonah called Jumpy for reasons he never shared with us. Anyway, Jumpy was a ten-year-old, who didn't seem to mind that Jonah didn't talk much or make much sense when he did. In fact, Jumpy indulged Jonah's repeated requests for mad or sad faces and his jokes about lazy lions and drunken elks. The two also shared a love of chocolate ice cream, and, by happy coincidence, the kind you inevitably attribute to divine intervention when you're a kid, Jumpy lived a block from a Dairy Queen. I called home from Banff every evening, and though Jonah was not much of a talker on the phone I did hear a great deal, relatively speaking, about Jumpy and
his
Dairy Queen. Cynthia was succinct on the phone too. She said she and Jonah were doing fine. Things were less stressful, without school and other, well, stressful things. “It's all right,” I said, “you can say it—without me.”

“We miss you, sweetheart, it's not that. But...”

“But I take up a lot of space, physically and otherwise. I know.”

I also agreed during those phone calls that things would be different when I got home. I agreed, for instance, to take care of Jonah for a day or two while she took some time to herself. Even so, when I returned from Banff and Cynthia announced she was taking me up on my offer and would be going away this coming weekend, I assumed she was kidding. I hadn't spent an entire night alone with Jonah since his diagnosis. My first reaction to Cynthia's announcement that she was officially on vacation was involuntary. I said, “Yeah, right!”

“Just have a plan,” Cynthia repeated as I carried her bag to the car this morning. It was heavy, even though the only significant weight in it was my manuscript.

“I do. I have a plan.”

“But you're not going to tell me what it is, is that it?”

EARLY IN
The Horse Boy: A Father's Quest to Heal His Son,
Rupert Isaacson discovers a shared interest with his previously unreachable son Rowan. Both love horses. As with most parents of children with autism, Isaacson comes to this realization through a process of elimination as much as anything else. You try everything and hope something will stick, at least for a while. Isaacson grew up around horses, and so it was natural for him to introduce his son to them. And,
yes,
the change in Rowan when he's around a horse is immediate and dramatic. Dramatic is how it will appear to any parent of a child with autism, where even the slightest improvement in behaviour or focus can feel miraculous. Rowan stops summing and having tantrums when he and his father are on horseback together. He's calm, present. This change in him leads father and son (as well as Rowan's somewhat reluctant mother) to make a journey across Mongolia. Why Mongolia? it seems the two ingredients Isaacson is looking for are in abundance there: horses and shamans. Indeed, Isaacson stumbles into shamans with relative ease. In Mongolia, they're a bit like big-city buses. If you miss one, wait a few minutes and another will be along—with their exotic ceremonies and their elliptical yet meaningful advice. Having eaten a reindeer more or less whole, meditated a good deal, and, along with his parents, been ritually slapped around by the aforementioned shamans, Rowan gets mysteriously better. He's not cured, Isaacson is careful to acknowledge; he is, however, healed. This can seem, for any parent of a child with autism, like a distinction without a difference. After all, by the end of the book, Rowan is making friends; he's talking and doing well in school, often better than his neurotypical classmates. What's more, he has a career path to follow. Isaacson is informed by one shaman that Rowan has the stuff to make it in the shaman business. Like writing, not the most practical profession, perhaps, but still.

The Horse Boy
reads like fiction, though not especially convincing fiction. It's too predictable for that—scenes with telepathic equines and super-wise Mongolian healers notwithstanding. It's obvious from the start that the only surprising outcome for
The Horse Boy,
for Rowan and his father, would be if this whole “quest” turned out to be a fiasco, and you know that's not about to happen. Still, there are obstacles to overcome. Rowan's mother is a tough sell. She's a psychologist by training, and while she shares some of her husband's new-age beliefs, she also feels compelled to inject a voice of reason into his plans. “Isn't it hard enough just getting through a typical day, let alone going on a crazy journey to the far end of the earth?” she asks Isaacson, who pretty much ignores the question. So after a few chapters in which Isaacson and his wife quickly quit on ABA therapy because they think it's too rigid and then dismiss a few other possible treatments, they're off on the road to Upper Mongolia. Or is that Lower? Whatever happens, Isaacson remains confident in his curious choices. “I broke all the rules. I had to,” he writes.

The question I'm often asked after one of my reviews runs in the newspaper is: “How did you really feel about the book? I mean
really
?” Readers want the straight goods: thumbs up or down, two stars or four. They don't want their reviewers hedging. So let me just come right out and say, if you haven't guessed already,
The Horse Boy
bothers me, big time. There's something about Isaacson's determination, his purposefulness, and,
yes,
his ultimate success that I find insufferable.
Well, at least you finished it, sweetheart.
At the same time, I kept asking myself what kind of person would begrudge a family like the Isaacsons their happy ending? Or Isaacson his seven-figure book deal and shot at writing a Hollywood screenplay? What kind of reader wouldn't want a spirited, charming little boy like Rowan to have his chance at a better life? And what kind of person would have to be prevented by his wife, night after night, from throwing a book as well intentioned, as uplifting, as unimpeachably heroic as
The Horse Boy
across the room?

MY SOCKS ADHERE TO the kitchen floor. The sucking sound this makes is a perfect match for the unpleasant way it feels. Still, I can't do anything, including move, until I make it clear to Jonah that he has to put on his shoes. “Right now, okay, are you listening?” If he is, it's hard to tell since he's laughing so hard. Lately, I find myself grading Jonah's behaviour as it occurs. I keep the grade to myself, of course, but it's not a bad way to stay detached. With Jonah, normal begins at around D+. Am I underestimating him again? Perhaps, but here's my thinking: when it comes to behaving well, all of us should be graded on a curve, the more generous the better. Right now, though, I'd give Jonah a B, even a B+. He's watching his father, who is up to his ankles in maple syrup and shattered glass, lose the last shreds of his temper, his patience, and his dignity. Laughing, I'll concede, is an altogether appropriate response. Under other circumstances, I'd be laughing myself.

“Jonah, go ... now, shoes! Fuck, there's glass everywhere.”

“Daddy said a bad word.”

The truth is I've said about a dozen. At the moment, I'm also entertaining some bad thoughts about my absent wife. Because I'm thinking none of this would have happened if we had just bought cheap maple syrup in a plastic bottle, like I wanted to and like most normal people do instead of the expensive, organic stuff that comes in decorative and, it turns out, easily breakable glass bottles. Of course, if she were here, she'd also come up with a contingency plan to clean up this mess and keep our son from ending up sticky and, in all likelihood, bleeding. What, incidentally, are the ABCs of mopping up syrup and glass? What do you do first? Is it even possible?
First, sweetheart, calm down.

Incidentally, Jonah and I did have a plan this morning. After breakfast, we sat down side by side at his therapy table with a yellow legal pad and a box of newly sharpened pencils and made a list of items he and I were going to need to buy to finally make some progress on
More Bad Animals.
We were like a couple of colleagues at a business meeting, kicking ideas around, brainstorming, chewing the fat. Or in Jonah's case chewing the erasers off the pencils. Most days, there isn't an intact pencil anywhere in the house. But I can deal with that. For one thing, it usually means Jonah is focused on the task at hand, that he does, in his own way, mean business. In
The Siege,
Clara Claiborne Park writes about the importance of motivation, how, for a child with autism, it's probably more important than anything else. How when you do find it, it provides a rare glimpse at your wildest dreams coming true. You will see the difference, subtle but dramatic, between your child isolated and your child engaged, your child harnessing his obsession, even his stims. Jonah is something to see when he is on task and focused and, yes, chewing erasers. So much so I leaned over and kissed him as we sat together this morning, though I knew I shouldn't have. We were doing a grownup thing, after all.

His focus didn't last, of course. After a while he kept disappearing into the kitchen to open the refrigerator and make sure the maple syrup I promised him he could have with his lunchtime French toast hadn't somehow vanished. I kept calling him back and yet remained surprisingly calm.
Breathe, sweetheart.
I knew what he was doing. I understood how easy it was to be distracted from the project at hand, how typical it is, under these circumstances, to procrastinate. This is how you begin every daunting story, small or big, by looking for ways to avoid beginning.

So we were starting slow—with a list, perhaps the thing Jonah cares about more than anything else these days. Lists include schedules, calendars, agendas, timetables. Because who could blame Jonah for checking the refrigerator? Who doesn't worry about the maple syrup supply? We all long to know what's next. We all depend on the weather channel. We want assurances and we want them in writing if at all possible. Jonah isn't really asking for anything more than that. He just wants to know what will be required of him and whether, if there are requirements, he will be able to meet them. One day, though not today, not this weekend, not without Cynthia here to back me up, my plan is to talk to my son about the limitations of lists, not to mention the unreliability of the weather channel. I will tell him that sometimes it's wrong and sometimes there isn't enough syrup to go around. I will talk to him about this when I think he's ready to understand his own limitations a little better. We will discuss the importance of going with the flow, rolling with the punches, taking things in stride. I suppose one day I could encourage him to read this so-called memoir of mine, even though I'm not sure, in the end, that it will deliver the right message, that it will convey to Jonah what I want to convey to him most of all:
Don't be so hard on yourself, kid.
But while I'm well aware I may not be the ideal person for this job, this teachable moment, I am his father. If we've proven nothing else this morning it's that we can have a plan and follow through on it. At least until the glass syrup bottle slips out of your hands and hits the hard tile floor.