Hate Mail

by Polak, Monique;

  Samantha is close enough to overhear our conversation. I smile at her, expecting her to smile back. She must be impressed I stood up for Todd.

  But she just shakes her head.

  “Is something wrong?” I ask her.

  Samantha shakes her head again. “I don’t know why you can’t admit you two are related.”

  Chapter Ten

  I’m not the kind of kid who listens in on other people’s phone conversations.

  What happens is I’m in the kitchen, about to call Tyrone, when I pick up the portable and hear Mom and Aunt Anna talking.

  I could say “Oops” and hang up, but, well, I don’t.

  They are discussing the letter. Aunt Anna doesn’t use the word letter though. She uses the words hate mail.

  “The police say it’s a hate crime, but that there isn’t much they can do about it. That’s why I’m going public. You can’t keep telling me not to, Julie. I’ve had it with pretending everything’s okay. There are horrible people out there, people who hate kids like my son. I want to expose that hatred.” Aunt Anna is sobbing.

  “Oh, Anna,” Mom says and I can practically see her wringing her hands, “I know how hard this is for you. But you need to think about Todd—about what’s best for him. He’s a shy child. If you go to the media, there will be interviews.”

  I’m picturing it in my head, Todd’s face in the newspaper and on TV, his voice on the radio. It would be a total disaster! And what if people see Aunt Anna and they figure out she’s mom’s sister and I’m Todd’s cousin? Then what?

  “They won’t want to talk to only you, Anna,” Mom continues. “They’ll want to talk to Todd. And what if he finds out about what’s in the letter? Frankly, I don’t think he could handle it.” Mom pauses. “Even a normal child would find it difficult.”

  Yikes, I think to myself, that’s the worst possible thing to say to Aunt Anna.

  “A normal child? My god, Julie! I can’t believe you just said that! How many times have I told you children with autism are not abnormal?” I’m surprised at how quickly Aunt Anna switches from sad to angry.

  “I’m so sorry, Anna. Of course, I know you’re right. The word just slipped out, I think because I’m so ups—”

  Aunt Anna won’t let her finish. “I know you try to be a good sister and a good aunt, but sometimes I think you don’t understand what my life is like! Between looking after Todd and worrying about Fred!”

  “I’m trying to understand, Anna, honestly I am. I know how tough things are. I’m trying to be supportive. Why do you think I encouraged you to move back here? But maybe with so much pressure…you’re not thinking clearly.”

  Aunt Anna makes a noise that sounds like a growl. “For your information, I am thinking perfectly clearly. And let me tell you something else: just because you’re my big sister doesn’t mean you’re always right. You always try to smooth things over, but you know what, Julie? Sometimes it’s better to stand up. Even if it’s hard!”

  When Aunt Anna says that, I remember what happened at detention. I tried standing up for Todd, and Aunt Anna is right, it was hard.

  Mom won’t back down. “This isn’t about you, Anna. It’s about Todd and what’s best for him. I know you’re upset, but you have to put your son first.”

  “Don’t speak to me like that,” Aunt Anna hisses. “I have always put Todd first. Always. You know that!”

  “Anna, can you at least agree not to do anything rash? Can we talk about this in a few days when we’ve both calmed down?”

  “All right,” Aunt Anna says, “I’ll wait a few days. But I’m warning you, Julie, if I still feel like this, I’m going ahead with my plan.”

  Mom sighs into the phone. “I think a few days will give you some perspective. By the way, have you talked to Fred about it?”

  “Fred?” Aunt Anna laughs. It’s not a happy laugh. It’s an I-can’t-take-much-more kind of laugh.

  “Yes,” Mom says, “how does Fred feel about your plan to go public with the letter?”

  “Fred?” Aunt Anna says again. I wonder if maybe Aunt Anna is cracking up too. “Fred can’t talk about anything except that ridiculous movie he wants to make. He hasn’t slept in two weeks. He’s up writing treatments and proposals.”

  “Oh no.” Mom sounds almost as distressed as when Aunt Anna was talking about the hate letter.

  Neither of them says anything for a moment. Then Mom adds, “The not sleeping. Isn’t that what happened last time?” Mom pauses. “Before he crashed?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Mom is usually out watering plants when I get home from school Tuesdays. So when I see the van in the driveway and Mom in the front window with her jacket on, I know something’s wrong.

  “I need your help,” she says when I come in.

  “What for?”

  “We’ve got to get right over to Anna’s. It’s an emergency.”

  “Have you ever noticed,” I say, when we’re in the van, “how it’s always an emergency with Aunt Anna?”

  Mom doesn’t stop for a yellow light. “You know what I’ve noticed, Jordie?” she says. “That you’re only interested in your own well-being.”

  “Ouch,” I say. “That hurt.”

  But is it true?

  When we reach the third floor where Aunt Anna lives, one of their neighbors is taking his trash out. It’s the same guy who was unfriendly to Aunt Anna the other day.

  He doesn’t seem to mind talking to my mom. “You her sister?” he asks when he sees us at Aunt Anna’s door. “You look the same.”

  “Yes, we’re sisters.”

  The man gives me the once over. “So you’re his cousin?”

  “Uh-huh.” I don’t feel like getting into a conversation with this guy.

  “Good thing you’re not autistic too,” the man says as he walks off. His voice drops when he says the word autistic, as if he’s afraid that by saying it too loud, he might catch it.

  Mom’s back stiffens. “You shouldn’t talk that way about my nephew—or about anyone else,” she says, but the guy is out of earshot.

  Mom rings, but no one answers. The door is unlocked, so we walk in. Todd is sitting on the living room rug, hunched over the latest issue of Aviation Week.

  “Todd, honey, we’re here,” Mom says.

  Todd is muttering to himself, probably reading from the magazine.

  Mom goes over to him. “I know this must be very stressful for you, Todd,” she says.

  This time, Todd grunts.

  Because anything beats hanging out with Todd, I follow Mom into Aunt Anna and Uncle Fred’s bedroom. The curtains are drawn and the lights are off. Aunt Anna is perched on the edge of the bed. Uncle Fred is lying down, though it’s hard to know for sure it’s him because the sheets are pulled over his head. The room smells like old gym socks.

  Mom flicks on the light switch.

  “No!” Uncle Fred moans from underneath the sheets.

  Mom turns off the light.

  “Has he eaten?” Mom asks Aunt Anna.

  “Not a thing.”

  Mom walks over to the side of the bed. “Fred,” she says, addressing the sheets, “you’ve got to see a doctor. We’re worried about you.”

  Uncle Fred doesn’t say anything. The sheets move up and down as he breathes.

  “Fred,” Mom continues, “Anna and I are going to take you to the hospital. We need you to get up now. Anna”—she pats my aunt’s shoulder—“you’ll need to pack him some clothes and his toothbrush.”

  “I’m not going,” Uncle Fred says from underneath the sheets.

  “Oh yes you are.” I recognize my Mom’s no-nonsense voice. I feel like telling Uncle Fred there’s no point arguing with her. “If you don’t go with us now, Jordie’s going to phone an ambulance.”

  I am?

  I can hear Aunt Anna rustling in the bathroom.

  Mom kneels down. She whispers—I guess she doesn’t want Aunt Anna to hear—“Fred, if they have to drag you out of here in an
ambulance, it’s going to be hard on Todd. It’s a lot easier on him if you come with us now.”

  At first, Uncle Fred does not respond. But then he throws off the sheet that is covering his head and says, “All right. I’ll go.”

  Aunt Anna is watching from the doorway. “Thank god,” she says.

  Mom helps Uncle Fred up. She even has to help him lace his shoes.

  “What do you want me to do?” I ask her.

  “You can look after Todd. We’re taking Uncle Fred to emergency at Montreal General. If it’s a long wait, you may be here all night, Jordie.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  I try to distract Todd when Mom and Aunt Anna lead Uncle Fred out of the apartment. “Wanna show me that magazine?” I ask him. “Any Dash 8s in there?”

  But my strategy fails. Todd lumbers over to the door, clutching the magazine under his arm. “Where’s Dad going?” he wants to know.

  This could be the first time I’ve ever heard Todd start a conversation that wasn’t about airplanes. Todd is worried—the way any kid would worry about his dad.

  Uncle Fred looks confused, and Mom and Aunt Anna are too busy steering Uncle Fred out the door to answer Todd. I figure it’s up to me. “Your dad has to see the doctor. We’re going to hang out.”

  “Hang out?”

  “Yeah, me and you. Do stuff. Like cousins do,” I tell him.

  “Okay, we’re going to hang out. Like cousins.” Todd’s voice is flat, but I get the feeling he’s pleased.

  I remember what Mom said in the van—how I’m only interested in my own well-being. So I try to think about Todd’s well-being. About what would make him feel better right now. “Wanna show me your magazine collection?”

  Todd keeps his magazines underneath his desk. “I have fifty-seven issues,” he says. “Two are doubles. So it’s really fifty-six.”

  I grab a magazine from the pile and start flipping through it.

  Todd scratches under his arms. He keeps scratching. I know it’s that stimming thing he does. Part of me wants to tell him to stop, but the nicer part of me knows I shouldn’t.

  I remember something Mom once told me: neurotypical people—that’s the scientific term for people who do not have disorders like autism—engage in repetitive behaviors too.

  “Ever notice how your dad is always playing with the remote?” she had asked me. Dad must have heard us talking because he called out from the other room, “Or how your mom is always pinching dead leaves off plants?”

  Now Todd is straightening out the pile of magazines.

  “All I did was grab the one on top,” I tell him.

  Todd looks down at the floor. “I like the edges lined up,” he says.

  “Why?”

  Todd doesn’t have an answer. Now that he’s got the edges of his magazines lined up, he starts scratching at his pits again.

  I need to do something to distract him. “I guess you’re looking forward to visiting that flight school.”

  “Yeah.”

  Well, I think, that wasn’t exactly a conversation starter. I need to come up with something better. “How many seats in a Dash 8?”

  “The Dash 8-300 or the Dash 8-100?” Todd actually looks at me for a second.

  “Uh, both, I guess.”

  “The Dash 8-300 has fifty seats. The 100 has thirty-seven seats. I also know their cruising altitudes.”

  “You do?” I try to sound interested.

  “The Dash 8-300 and the Dash 8-100 have the same cruising altitude: twenty-five thousand feet.”

  “I’m sorry about your dad.”

  Todd’s Adam’s apple jiggles in his throat. Is it possible I am about to have a normal conversation with Todd, the kind of conversation regular cousins have? Is Todd going to say he’s worried about his dad? And when he does, will I be able to say something helpful?

  But when Todd speaks again, he doesn’t mention Uncle Fred. “Twenty-five thousand feet,” he says, “is seven thousand, six hundred and twenty meters.”

  Maybe Todd catches me looking at him funny. Or maybe he’s worried about his dad. Because now Todd keeps repeating, “Twenty-five thousand feet is seven thousand, six hundred and twenty meters.” He says it over and over, faster and faster like a top spinning round. “Twenty-five thousand feet is seven thousand, six…”

  Todd pays no attention when I ask him quietly to stop.

  In the end, I have no choice but to shout. “Stop it! Stop it now! You’re driving me crazy!”

  Todd stops.

  Then he does something even worse.

  He starts to cry. I’ve never seen anyone sob so hard.

  Watching him is awful.

  “Your dad’s going to be okay,” I tell him. “He’s just going through a hard time.”

  Todd wipes the snot from his nose with the back of his hand.

  “Don’t hug me,” he says when he finally calms down.

  Chapter Twelve

  I wonder if Aunt Anna had anything to do with choosing the destination for this field trip. She meets a lot with Mr. Delisle, so maybe it was her idea that the grade eights and nines visit a flight school. She must have known it would make Todd happy.

  We take a bus to the school, which is in Lachute, a town in the foothills of the Laurentian Mountains. Todd and Darlene sit up front. But even from the back, where I sit with Tyrone, Mark and the girls, I can see Todd stimming. I don’t know if it’s because he’s anxious (Uncle Fred has been in the hospital for over a week), or if he’s excited about spending a day around airplanes.

  “Do a lot of girls take flying lessons?” Isobel asks Mr. Gendron, the owner of the flying school and our tour guide for the day.

  “More than half our clients are men,” Mr. Gendron tells her, “but women make excellent pilots. Are you thinking of becoming a pilot?”

  “Now I am!” Isobel says.

  “Have you ever seen a crash?” Mark wants to know.

  “Never,” Mr. Gendron says. “We have a perfect safety record. When a plane crashes, it makes the news. But there are far more car accidents than plane crashes.”

  Our tour begins in a two-story office building. There’s a snack bar on the main floor. Everyone laughs when Tyrone asks the woman standing behind the counter if she serves airplane food. “You know the kind that comes in plastic trays with foil wrapping?”

  Mr. Gendron takes us upstairs to show us two classrooms and the dispatch office. That’s where students book flights and pick up documents and keys.

  “Every plane has its own logbook,” Mr. Gendron says as he pulls out a logbook from the shelf and opens it. “Pilots and student pilots record their information after every flight. We also record all maintenance and service to the aircrafts.”

  Most kids wander down the hallway to look through the giant windows into the hangar, but not Todd. He’s studying the logbook the way I would study for one of Mr. Dartoni’s quizzes.

  Darlene is standing by the wall, supervising from there.

  I tense up when I see Mr. Gendron clap Todd on the shoulder. But Todd doesn’t freak out. Maybe he is too absorbed in the logbook to notice. “You seem to be an extremely focused young man,” Mr. Gendron tells Todd. “Maybe you should consider a career in aviation.”

  Todd doesn’t react. But Darlene grins. “Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful?” she says.

  The coolest thing upstairs is the flight simulator. Mr. Gendron explains how this machine—it’s basically an armchair with a giant panel in front—teaches pilots how to fly in complete darkness. “See that part of the screen?” he says, pointing to a blacked-out area on the screen. That’s what zero visibility looks like.”

  “I’d freak out,” Samantha says.

  “Not if you studied instrument flying,” Mr. Gendron tells her. “Another thing I should explain is that pilots must constantly monitor weather conditions. You may have noticed the computer outside the dispatch office. Before every flight, our instructors and students check the weather. Weather is a tricky thing,�
�� he adds, gesturing to a window at the back of the room. “Today is a perfect example. It’s bright and sunny, but by this afternoon, we’re supposed to get record high winds. I can tell you that none of my planes will be in the air this afternoon. The good news for you people is that means you’ll be able to visit one or two of the teaching planes on the ground.”

  “I really want to go inside a Cessna 172,” Todd says.

  Mr. Gendron looks impressed. “It’s not often I meet someone your age who knows about airplanes.”

  I see a couple of kids nudge each other and I’m expecting someone—maybe Tyrone or Mark—to make a crack about Todd, but no one does.

  When I hear a weird retching sound from the back of the room, my first thought is that someone must be airsick. My second thought is that doesn’t make any sense since we aren’t in the air.

  Everyone else notices too. Darlene’s hand is over her mouth and her eyes look like they might pop out of her head. It’s clear to all of us that she is about to be sick.

  “I think she needs a barf bag!” Tyrone calls out.

  This time, no one laughs at Tyrone’s joke.

  Darlene rushes to the bathroom. When she comes out, she is so weak she can barely speak. She thinks it’s food poisoning. Her husband is coming to get her. “Your mom is going to have to pick you up,” she tells Todd, “or there won’t be anyone to watch you.”

  When Todd’s face crumbles, I know I have to do something.

  “I’ll watch out for Todd.”

  “You will?” Darlene and Tyrone say at the same time.

  I can feel Samantha’s eyes on my face.

  I take a deep breath, and then I say, “I will.” I pause for a second. Then I force myself to look right at Tyrone. “Look,” I say, “there’s something I never told you. Todd’s my cousin.”

  Tyrone’s mouth falls open. “No way,” he says.

  Mr. Gendron brings Darlene downstairs. Samantha goes to get her a glass of water. Darlene takes small sips.

  Darlene taps my arm when I pass her. “Are you sure you can manage?” she asks.

  “Sure I’m sure.” I hope I sound more confident that I feel.