Raising Cubby

by John Elder Robison

  I never went back to the old shop. At first I worried that my former partner would try and muscle in on my new business, but he left me alone.

  My new landlord could not have been more different from my old one. He was cheerful, accommodating, and did not interfere in my business. Freed of my former partner’s negative energy, my business boomed. Soon I was hiring more technicians and adding more space. For the first time in my life, I felt like a success.

  Best of all, I was the ruler of my own domain. Customers came to visit and stuck around. Some even became my friends. I’d had a lot of trouble making friends when I was younger, but that seemed to be changing. Was it maturity, commercial success, or the way I looked? Whatever the reason, in the past year I’d started receiving invitations to lunch, and even the occasional dinner. People were treating me more like a friend and less like a workman or servant. Things felt pretty good.

  One of my new friends was a therapist who worked with troubled teens at a local private school. He was a great big bear of a fellow, always cheerful and full of interesting insights. He had taken to stopping by near lunchtime, sometimes alone and other times with his wife. She worked with kids too, as a special ed teacher in a local school system. We’d go to a restaurant and talk while the guys fixed his car. I had hired a receptionist, which freed me to spend time with customers, something that was becoming a bigger and bigger part of my job.

  One day the three of us went to lunch at a place in downtown Springfield that was owned by a couple of our customers. We sat down at a booth, with me on one side and my friend and his wife on the other. “There’s something important I want to tell you,” he said. “Therapists learn not to diagnose their friends, or else they don’t have any friends. So I thought about whether to tell you this for a long time. This is a condition people are talking about more and more. It fits you to a tee. In fact, you could be the poster boy for it. It’s called Asperger’s syndrome.”

  With that, he handed me a small blue book. The title was, not surprisingly, Asperger’s Syndrome. It was written by a psychologist named Tony Attwood.

  My initial response wasn’t very favorable. I set the book on the table and looked at it, then looked at him. “What the hell is this?” Over the years, I’d had plenty of experience with so-called friends and teachers and counselors sitting me down and telling me what was wrong with me. They always said the same thing, “I’m telling you this for your own good.” I knew there were people who said things that sounded critical but were truly meant to help me, but they were in the minority. Over the years, different “well-wishers” had assured me that I was a sociopath, a potential serial killer, or at least a career criminal in the making. None of those predictions had come true yet, but as the predictors would say, there is still time.

  When I was a kid, I believed those ugly suggestions and concluded I was defective. As an adult, I became wiser and more cynical. I realized some people built themselves up by knocking others down. I also learned that people criticized me for having traits they had themselves. They might say, “You are tricky and dishonest,” because they were tricky and dishonest. If I called them on that, they’d feign anger or say something like, “It takes one to know one.”

  Attacks like that often came when it was time for customers to pay their bills. Some thought they could make me feel bad about myself in order to get our work for free. It took a while for me to catch on about that, but once I did, I stood my ground, to my critics’ surprise and dismay.

  All those thoughts swirled through my head as I considered what I’d just heard. I realized there was an important difference. There was no bad event or forbidden action precipitating this unexpected and startling diagnosis. That set it apart from the critiques I had received as a kid. Back then, I would hear something like, “You broke into the closet because you are a bad kid.” Not only that, my friend was not seeking anything from me at all, and when I looked at him, he seemed serious and earnest, as opposed to mocking and nasty.

  “Look,” he said, taking the book and opening it to a section he’d highlighted in the middle, “the book talks about how people with Asperger’s develop special interests in things and are driven to learn everything they can about them. That’s how you are, with cars.”

  I had to agree with him. I could not see a bad side to that. Later, after I’d had a chance to think about it, I realized other people might call those special interests “obsessions” or something else even less complimentary, and they were not always good. But I still took his point. In the context of what I did for work, being obsessed with every small detail of Land Rover cars gave me a big competitive advantage over less focused service managers.

  He then turned the page and showed me other traits of Asperger’s: difficulty reading nonverbal cues from other people, the tendency to say inappropriate things at inopportune moments, difficulty in making and keeping friends. The more I read, the more I agreed he was probably correct. By nightfall, I had read the whole book and I was certain. He was right. I’d been given a wonderful gift of insight. This had never happened to me before. Even so, it was a big shock. I knew I’d need some time to process what I had just learned.

  I had, and still have, mixed feelings about my Asperger’s. On the one hand, it’s a relief to have an innocent, neurological explanation for some of the behaviors that got me into trouble as a kid. It was proof that I wasn’t just a “bad kid.” Now I understood that it was my Asperger’s that caused me to look at the ground or into space when I answered a question. I wasn’t being tricky or evasive or deliberately disrespecting the other person by refusing to look at him or her. Until I read Attwood’s book I had not really understood what was going on.

  That was the good part—the insights into why I was the way I was, and the knowledge that those differences were not my fault. The bad part is, those differences were part of me. If I was just “acting bad,” I could presumably choose to “act good” and change what I was doing. But if I were wired differently, I might just be stuck in an undesirable way of being. That made me a bit sad. That’s especially how I felt when I read the words there is no cure for autism.

  My mother and brother were quick to embrace the concept of Asperger’s, though the idea that it was a form of autism was rather startling. To my surprise, my brother Augusten said he’d always wondered why I acted strangely. I’d had no idea he was thinking those thoughts. My mother had lived with unspoken shame over my lack of “normal” responses as a baby, always wondering if my logical and unemotional demeanor was a result of bad mothering on her part. The Asperger diagnosis put much of her guilt and worry to rest.

  When I told Little Bear about Asperger’s, she said, “There’s no way you have anything like that!” To her, Asperger’s was nothing more than a figment of the imagination. At the time, it didn’t occur to me that her quick denial might have been because the diagnosis hit a little too close to home for comfort. The discovery that she, too, has Asperger’s was still some years in the future.

  Then there was Cubby. As much as my Asperger diagnosis meant to me, it made no difference at all to my son. He and I still interacted the same way. But I had read that there was a genetic component to Asperger’s, and I wondered if Cubby might be touched by it too. At that time, I still saw Asperger’s as “what was wrong with me,” and I was none too eager to envision my only son carrying the same burden.

  Consequently, I made mental lists of Aspergian traits and convinced myself that they didn’t fit Cubby. For example, I told myself that he didn’t have Asperger’s because he had friends. He didn’t share my all-consuming interest in electronics either. In addition, we had taken Cubby to several evaluations and the psychologists had never mentioned Asperger’s. They had told us of his problems reading, paying attention, or translating what he saw on the blackboard. Nothing they told us really had a name; they just illustrated the issues.

  Some were subtle, but others were obvious, even to me. Like compulsive grooming. Cubby had taken to
brushing his hair for fifteen minutes when he got dressed in the morning, until he brushed it right out of his head. I didn’t know why, but the thought of a bald-headed grade schooler was unsettling. I’d never done anything like that as a kid. Or if I did, I’d long since forgotten.

  Yet there was no escaping some parallels to my own life experiences. He was struggling in school, just as I had. His teachers said many of the same things about him that mine had said about me. There were the squabbles with other children over sharing, and the way he showed them the “correct” ways to play. I recalled his fixation on Beanie Babies, and his intense desire to know every single bit of minutiae about them. The only thing that could distract him from Beanies was the arrival of Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, which replaced Beanies in his mind.

  In the end, I wrote his behavioral aberrations off to geekiness. The doctors must know best, I thought. He’s just eccentric. He’s not Aspergian like me.

  The alternative was too unpleasant to contemplate. At that time, I still saw Asperger’s as a disability. I had yet to embrace it or connect it to my successes, and it certainly was not a source of pride. I was still trapped in that “defective child” shell. Admitting Cubby had Asperger’s would put him in there with me, and that was something I could not do.

  By this time my marriage was on a steep downward trajectory. Actually, it had been headed that way quite a while, though both of us had tried to deny it. It felt like we couldn’t agree on anything anymore, even simple stuff like how best to clean the floor. I’d want to mop the thing and be finished, and Little Bear would be fixated on cleaning the cracks and crevices. Perhaps that was her version of Cubby’s compulsive hair brushing; the crevices would be spotless while the house as a whole was a disaster. However, I didn’t make that connection at the time. Instead, in my Aspergian way, I assumed it was about me. I figured she was angry with me and the mess was a form of punishment. Meanwhile, we’d argue and nothing would get done. As the household spiraled out of control we grew in totally different directions, drifting further apart with every passing year. Both of us were unhappy, resentful, and withdrawn.

  Conditions at home had deteriorated to the point where I spent several nights a week in an old cabin cruiser I’d bought and fixed up. I also spent as much time at work as I could. I’d been down so long I was probably clinically depressed, and Little Bear was angry.

  Finally, Cubby’s mom and I made the decision to separate. As hard as it was to admit that our marriage had foundered, it was also a relief. I was ready to move on with my life, whatever that might mean. My biggest worry was what would happen to Cubby. He’d had an awful time in the South Hadley public school and was finally settling in happily at Amherst Montessori. Would our divorce blow that up too?

  We agreed to use a mediator rather than fight it out with lawyers. That proved to be one of the smartest things we ever did. Our mediator helped us talk through what to say to Cubby, and how to move forward in the least hurtful way possible. One of the things we agreed on right from the beginning was the idea that we’d continue to parent him together, and that we’d share him fifty-fifty. I’d been reading up on divorce, as I am wont to do for anything important. To my distress, most of what I read was discouraging when it came to dad-kid relationships. According to the books I found, dads tended to fade out of their kids’ lives once they left home. I was determined not to do that. Cubby was the only kid I had. I was proud of him, and I wanted to keep him. The only problem was, his mom had the same notion. So we needed a plan. We worked out our kid-sharing arrangement at the mediator’s office before saying anything to Cubby.

  The plan we devised gave us both pretty much equal kid time. According to our agreement, I would pick Cubby up from his mom after lunch on Saturday, keep him through the weekend, and take him to school on Monday and Tuesday. At the end of that school day his mom would retrieve him, and she would keep him until I picked him up again on Saturday.

  The mediator called it a “joint parenting plan.” Neither one of us had sole custody. Each of us would be able to deal with doctors, schools, or anyone else we might encounter in the raising of our child. Each of us had the same rights we had when married; we trusted that we could continue to work things out with our son even though we had not been able to work things out with our marriage.

  I was happy about that, because I had already talked to other dads who did not have custody of their kids. They were humiliated when their ex-wives—the parents with custody—had to approve every decision about their children. It was as if they became second-class parents overnight. That didn’t happen to me.

  After the first meeting with the mediator we decided I would move out. But I would not just pack up and disappear. One of the things that frightens kids most is uncertainty, so we agreed that I’d find a place to live before saying anything to Cubby. We also agreed that Little Bear would stay in the South Hadley house, which we hoped would provide a comforting sense of stability for him.

  I was lucky enough to find a nice three-bedroom house to rent just eight miles away, and I set about getting it ready. The place had sat empty for almost a year, and there was a lot of cleaning and painting to be done, as well as furniture to be bought. I did everything I could to make my new place look familiar and homelike. First, armed with a pickup truck and a wad of cash, I bought a nice full-size bed and matching dresser for Cubby’s room.

  I chose a captain’s bed—the kind that sits atop two drawers, which in turn sit on the floor. With that kind of bed, there’s no place for monsters to hide. Beds like that are essential for kids who’ve had trouble with monster infestation, and they’re comforting for anyone else. When you hear a low growl late at night it’s nice to know it’s not coming from right beneath you!

  Next I went to the storage facility in Northampton where I’d been keeping a bunch of old furniture my grandmother had left me when she closed up her house in Georgia. I picked out two more beds, a dresser, and some odds and ends—enough to fill the guest room. I hoped Cubby would recognize that old furniture and feel comforted by its familiarity. I even managed to gather a few sacks full of Cubby’s toys and spirit them from the old house to the new one. Once they were scattered around his room it looked just as if he’d left them himself.

  Then it was time for that awful, hard conversation. Divorce is one of the toughest things a third-grader can go through, and I hated having to tell him that our dream had foundered. His mom and I sat Cubby down on the sofa and told him what was going on. He let out a long hurting howl of Nooooooooo! I felt as if I had been stabbed. We both reassured him that he was still our Cubby, and that we both loved him. We told him he would split his time between us and that we’d do the same things we’d done before. Then I said, “Would you like to see my new place?” To my surprise, he bounced up and said, “Let’s go!” I don’t know if his enthusiasm was based on excitement over a new place, or just a desire to get out of an upsetting spot, but I didn’t question him. Off we went.

  We turned right at the end of our street, and Cubby said, “Are we going to Amherst?” I realized he associated right turns with his mom’s school and Amherst, while lefts meant my work and Springfield. This place was somewhere totally new. “We’re going to Chicopee,” and I let him ponder that as we reached Five Corners and turned onto an unfamiliar road.

  Partway to my new place, we came to a trailer park. All the trailers were pretty run-down, but one stood out from all the others. It was a chalky blue mobile home with a fine vintage Mercedes rotting peacefully alongside the collapsing remains of the porch awning. It was the kind of place you could imagine country bumpkins named Earl and Elmer relaxing, spitting tobacco in the tall shaggy grass and tossing their empties into the back of the car. Cubby was very attuned to motor vehicles, and I knew he’d recognize an old Mercedes when he saw it. I slowed down as if to turn in. “Look on your left, Cubby, and see if you can spot our new place.” Cubby gazed skeptically at the mobile homes, but when he saw the Mercedes, his skepti
cism turned to shock and alarm. Old car parts lay all around.

  “Is that it?”

  Cubby’s horrified expression proved once and for all that kids do not just like any place their parents call home. He looked at me, and I could not hide a grin, to which he said, “Dad! Where are we really going?” It was just a mile more to our new place, and he was annoyed the whole way. I parked in the driveway, and we got out. After the Mercedes in the trailer park, he was still skeptical. “Is this it?” I unlocked the door, and we walked into our new home together for the very first time.

  My toy-importation scheme turned out to be a good one. Two of the first things Cubby noticed were the toys in his room and the bike in the garage. And of course there was my secret weapon, which I had kept mum about: the swimming pool out back. After he saw that he immediately gave his approval. It was almost enough to make him forget the divorce. Or so I hoped.

  Our first night in the new place was sort of like an urban camping expedition. Feeding ourselves was easy: I’d filled the fridge with frozen dinners, Hamburger Helper, bottled water, fruit drinks, and even some desserts, and we whipped up a bachelor feast. There was more food than we could possibly eat. After that it was time to inspect the house for monsters. I presented Cubby with his own bright flashlight with fresh batteries, and together we patrolled our domain before bed. I had made a special point of unwrapping the new sheets and pillows and making up the beds ahead of time, so when it came time for sleep, Cubby settled right in. The light switches all worked and the toilets flushed. And our flashlights were right beside our beds. What more could two guys need?

  I’d had the most terrible fears that Cubby would hate our new home or find one thing after another missing, but none of those worries came to pass. We did all right.