by Gary Braver
“I guess. Yes.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, please, thank you,” Rachel gasped.
He then turned on his heel and slouched back into the kitchen.
Rachel saucered her eyes. “My God! I feel as if I’ve just been interrogated.”
Sheila chuckled. “He is a tad intense.”
“A tad? Someone get him a straitjacket.”
“It could be worse. He could be your caddy. Ask him for advice on a club and he’ll cite everything from barometric pressure and dew point to the latest comparative test data on shaft technology. He’s a walking encyclopedia. He also has a photographic memory.”
“I noticed he didn’t write down our orders.”
“He never does.”
A kid with a photographic memory who smashes himself in the face while ogling girls through field glasses.
“He can also recite Shakespeare by the pound. In summer stock last year they did Romeo and Juliet and he ended up memorizing every part. He’s amazing.”
“Where does he go to school?”
“He dropped out.”
“Lucky for his teachers,” Rachel said, and looked over Sheila’s shoulder through the one-way glass.
Her stomach knotted. Lucinda had wandered over to Dylan and Shannon’s computer and parked herself at their desk, explaining something that they apparently couldn’t get right. As she watched, Rachel felt a wave of sadness flush over her resentment. While she wanted to go in there and shake Lucinda, the girl’s confidence had clearly left poor Dylan in the shadows. While eager to be with it, his frustration had reduced him to making goofy faces and sounds to deflect attention—a measure that pained Rachel for its desperation. Some of the nearby kids laughed, but not Lucinda, who chided Dylan so that Miss Jean had to come over and ask him to settle down. She then took Dylan and Shannon to a free terminal and reexplained the procedure.
Rachel tried to hold tight, but she could feel the press of tears. Dylan was out of his league in there. He had a great singing voice, and she had thought someday to enroll him in a children’s choir, but he was not one of those “cyberbrats,” as Martin called them. Dylan was adorable and sociable and funny, but he lacked the focus of these other kids. Yes, she chided herself for making comparisons even though every other parent did the same thing—gauged their own against the competition: OPK, as Martin labeled them—“other people’s kids.” Yes, she reminded herself that what mattered was his happiness.
But in a flash-glimpse down the long corridor of time, she saw how hard life was going to be for him, especially being brought up in a community that thrived on merit.
“Was it something I said?” Sheila asked, noticing tears pool in Rachel’s eyes.
“No, of course not.” Rachel paused to compose herself as Brendan delivered the coffees then moved off to adjust the dinnerware at a nearby table.
She took a sip. “It’s Dylan. He’s fine … just fine … healthwise, thank God. It’s just that he’s got some learning disabilities.”
“He has?”
Rachel had known Sheila for only a few months, but she felt comfortable confiding in her. It was Sheila who had helped them get settled in town. Besides, all of Rachel’s old friends were fifty miles or more from here; and her mother lived in Phoenix, and her brother Jack, in San Diego. “He’s having difficulty reading,” she said. “He tries, but he has problems connecting written words to sounds.”
“Give him a break! He’s only six years old. Some kids start later than others.”
“I guess, but he’s a bit behind.” The reality was that the other kids in his class were miles beyond him. She and Martin had hoped to get him into Beaver Hill, a well-respected private elementary school where Lucinda was enrolled, but he didn’t pass the entrance tests. So they enrolled him at Marsden Public Elementary. Only a month into the school year, and his teacher had alerted Rachel to his language difficulties and problems following simple instructions.
“Have you tried those phonics books and tapes?” Sheila asked.
“We’ve got all of them—books, tapes, videos. You name it. We even have a language therapist. He’s got some kind of blockage or whatever. He doesn’t get it.”
“But he will. All kids do. He’s just a late bloomer. In ten years he’ll probably be a published author like Vanessa Watts’s son, Julian. Didn’t talk until he was four, and at age thirteen he wrote a book about mazes. I don’t know anything about them, but I guess there’s a whole bunch of maze freaks out there. Whatever, he got it published and had all this press.”
Rachel nodded but felt little consolation.
“You know, you could have him evaluated to see what his skills and problems are.”
“We did all that already.” She had even arranged an MRI scan the other day, although she did not mention that to Sheila. In fact, she hadn’t even told Martin.
“I see.”
Rachel could sense Sheila’s curiosity, wondering how he had tested. But Rachel would not betray him. Although Rachel questioned the validity of IQ tests, there was something terribly definitive about them—like fingerprints or Universal Product Codes. Once the number was out, a person was forever ranked. Hi, my name is Dylan Whitman and I’m an 83, seventeen points below the national average.
“I know I’m being foolish,” Rachel said, struggling to maintain composure. “It’s not like he has some terrible disease, for God’s sake.”
“That’s right, and you keep telling yourself that. Test scores aren’t everything.”
Easy for you to say with your little whiz kid in there, Rachel thought sourly.
Sheila was right, of course—and were they still living in Rockville, she wouldn’t have been so aware. But this was a town of trophy houses and trophy kids—a town where the rewards for intelligence were in-your-face conspicuous. Hawthorne was an upscale middle-class community of professional people, all smart and well educated. To make matters worse, Dylan was now surrounded by high-pedigree children, bred for success by ambitious parents who knew just how clever their kids were and where they stood against the competition: which kids were the earliest readers, who got what on the SATs, who ranked where in their class, who got into the hot schools.
Suddenly Rachel missed Rockville with its aluminum-sided Capes and pitching nets, tire swings, and kids who played street hockey until they glowed. Where the only scores that mattered were how the Sox, Bruins, and Celtics did, not your verbal and math; where the pickup trucks sported Harley-Davidson logos and bumper stickers that said KISS MY BASS and SAVE THE ALES unlike all the high-end vehicles outside with stethoscopes hanging from the rearview mirrors and windows emblazoned with shields from Bloomfield Preparatory Academy, Harvard, and Draper Labs, and Nantucket residency permits.
She looked out the window onto the splendidly manicured course with its two pools and tennis courts and showplace clubhouse. She felt out of place. The Dells was one of the most exclusive country clubs in New England; and now that Martin’s company had taken off they could afford the privileged life for their son. How ironic it seemed, given their expectations and presumptions. Rachel and Martin had both graduated from college so Dylan’s limitations were as much of a surprise as they were distressing. Even worse, they made her feel that the perimeters of their lives had been irrevocably altered.
You did this to him, whispered a voice in her head.
No! NO! And she shook it away.
Outside a green Dells CC truck pulled up with two greenskeepers. The men got out. They were dressed in jeans and the green and white DCC pullovers. One of them said something that made the other man break up. As she sipped her cappuccino and watched them unload a lawnmower, Rachel could not help but think how she was glimpsing her son’s destiny—a life of pickup trucks, lawnmowers, and subsistence wages.
“I guess I just didn’t do enough,” Rachel said.
“Like what?” Sheila said.
“Like when he was a baby. I guess I didn’t give him a rich enough e
nvironment. But I tried. I read all the zero-to-three books about brain growth and early childhood development. I talked and sang to him, I read him stories when he was two months old—all that stuff.” They had bought him Jump-Start Toddlers and other computer games, Baby Bach, Baby Shakespeare and Baby Einstein toys. When he took a nap, she played classical music. From his infancy, she read him poetry because the books said how babies learn through repetition, and that repeated rhymes, like music at an early age, are supposed to increase the spatial-temporal reasoning powers. She breast-fed him because of a Newsweek story on how breast-fed babies scored higher on intelligence tests than those formula-fed—as silly as that had seemed.
Newsweek. The very thought of the magazine made her stomach grind.
No! Just a coincidence, she told herself. Not true.
Tears flooded Rachel’s eyes. “And now it’s too late. He turned six last month.”
Sheila laid her hand on Rachel’s. “Pardon my French, but those first-three-years books are bullshit. All they do is put a guilt trip on parents. I bet if you took twins at birth and played Mozart and read Shakespeare around the clock to one for three years and raised the other normally you wouldn’t see a goddamn difference when they were six. You didn’t fail, Rachel, believe me.”
Rachel wiped her eyes and smiled weakly. “Something went wrong.”
“Nothing went wrong.”
Something terribly wrong.
Rachel nodded and looked away to change the subject. They were having two different conversations. Sheila did not understand.
Through the window, Lucinda was explaining something to the girl next to her. Sheila took the hint. “By the way, Lucinda’s having a birthday party a week from Saturday. It’s going to be an all-girl thing—her idea. But, in any case, I’m getting her a kitten.”
“Oh, how sweet.”
“It’ll be her first pet. I think kids need pets—don’t you? Something to, you know, love unconditionally?”
“Yes, of course. Dylan has gerbils and he’s crazy about them.”
At a nearby table, Brendan was arranging the dinnerware. To distract herself, Rachel watched him without thought. He was putting out dinnerware, all the time muttering to himself just below audibility—his mouth moving, braces flashing, his eye twitching. He looked possessed. “The poor kid’s a basket case,” she whispered to Sheila, thinking that it could be worse. At least Dylan was a happy child.
“I guess,” Sheila said vaguely. She checked her watch. There was another hour and a half of day care, so Sheila was going to go to her office in the interim, while Rachel would sit outside with a book until Dylan was out.
As they left the building, Rachel’s cell phone chirped in her handbag. The call was from Dr. Rose’s office. The secretary said that Dylan’s MRI results were back. “He’d like to make an appointment to see you and discuss them.”
Rachel felt a shock to her chest. Discuss them? “Is everything all right?”
“I’m sure, but he can see you tomorrow at ten.”
“Can I speak with him?”
“I’m sorry, he’s out of the office on an emergency and probably won’t be back for the rest of the day. Is ten tomorrow good for you?”
“Yes, ten’s fine,” she gasped and clicked off.
Oh, my God.
2
It was only three-thirty when Martin Whitman left the office. He had canceled two meetings and let all the calls and e-mails go unanswered because he wanted to buy some flowers on the way home as a prelude to taking Rachel to dinner at the Blue Heron—a chichi restaurant perched majestically on the cliffs overhanging Magnolia Harbor. Wine-dark sea, sunset dinner, candlelight, and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. Just the kind of romance-shock they needed.
Because something wasn’t right. Martin couldn’t put his finger on it, but for the last few weeks Rachel had lapsed into a black funk. She was distracted much of the time—moody, as if plagued by a low-level anxiety. She would become petulant when he questioned her and lose patience with Dylan when he misspoke or had trouble doing things. Without warning, she’d tear up, then withdraw. He hadn’t seen her like this since her hysterectomy which, three years ago, had left her in a dark malaise, like a slow-acting poison.
His first thought was that something was wrong with her—that her doctor had discovered a lump in her breast. But, surely, she would have told him. Then he wondered if there was another man—that while he spent up to fourteen hours a day at the office, Rachel had found somebody else. She was attractive, witty, warm, and easy to be with. But there had never been any reason to suspect her of cheating. Not until her recent shutdown—sex, of course, being a foolproof barometer. Overnight she had lost all interest in intimacy, going to bed early and falling asleep by the time he slipped beside her. When he brought it up, she said that it was just a phase she was going through—that it would pass. But so far it hadn’t.
Perhaps it was the move to Hawthorne. But she seemed to have adjusted well, making new friends and joining the Dells. They had a great house, and Dylan was a happy and healthy kid. He had some learning problems, but he was probably a late bloomer as Martin had been.
No, it was something else, he told himself. Maybe she needed to go back to work. For six years she had been an English editor of college textbooks at a Boston publishing house. She enjoyed it and had done well. Now she was housebound. More space was what she needed—and to get back into life.
Martin pulled the black Miata down Massachusetts Avenue and onto Memorial Drive heading north to Route 93, which would connect him to Interstate 95. Across the Charles River, a thick underbelly of clouds made a rolling black canopy over Boston, lightning flickering through it like stroboscopes. The forecast was for afternoon showers that would clear out by evening.
This particular strip of Memorial from Massachusetts Avenue to the Sonesta was his favorite sector of Cambridge—even more than scenic Brattle Street with its august six-generational mansions or funky Central Square, or even Harvard Square which, unfortunately, had lost its renegade soul to mall franchises—the Abercrappies and Au Bon Pain in the Asses. Across the river lay Boston in red brick stacked up against Beacon Hill and surmounted by the gold dome of the State House. On the left were the grand old trophy buildings of MIT—interconnecting classical structures in limestone that emanated from the Great Dome, designed after the Pantheon of Rome, and forged with the names of the greatest minds of history. He loved the area.
By the time he reached 95 North, the rain was heavy and remained so until he reached the Hawthorne exit. Just outside of Barton, a couple towns southwest of Hawthorne, the rain stopped and the clouds gave way to blue. The streets were puddled, but it would be a clear night after all. Dining under the stars.
Barton was a working-class town, the kind of place that tenaciously held on to reminders of its fisher-family heritage. The houses were mostly modest Capes and ranches, a few trailer homes that had intended to move elsewhere but had burrowed in. The center was a strip of fishing-tackle shops, a small used-car dealership, a marine-engine-repair place, doughnut and pizza shops, a dog-clipping service, and Ed’s Lawnmower and TV Repair.
Halfway down Main Street, Martin shot through a puddle that was a lot deeper than it appeared. Instantly, he knew he was in trouble. Water had flashed up under the hood and doused the wires. Thinking fast, he turned into the lot of Angie’s Diner and rolled into a parking space just as the car stalled out. He tried starting it, but the engine didn’t turn over. There was no point calling Triple A since jumping the battery wouldn’t do any good. In half an hour the wires would dry out and he’d be on his way. And a wedge of apple pie and a coffee would go down well.
Angie’s Diner was the epicenter of Barton—a greasy spoon with homemade panache whose brash owner was part of its no-nonsense charm. Martin headed across the lot, which consisted of pickup trucks and some battered SUVs, and a Barton Fire Department car, probably from an off-duty firefighter heading home.
The place was hal
f-full, some people in booths, a few at the counter including the fireman, a middle-aged guy still in uniform. Martin took a seat at the elbow of the counter at the far end, giving him a full view of the booths against the front windows and the staff working the counter. He liked the blue-collar ambiance. The booth radio boxes, red Naugahyde spin-top stools, the gleaming stainless steel and Formica-the place was a 1960 tableau.
In a booth across from him sat a pretty teenage girl and an older guy with bushy hair, talking intensely over cake and coffee. In the next booth, another kid in a baggie black pullover and ponytail thumbed through a book of cartoons while picking on a garden salad. He was probably an art student somewhere.
Martin ordered pie and coffee and opened his copy of Wired. He was partway through an article when he noticed the ponytail kid shift around in his seat. At first Martin thought he was trying to get more comfortable, until it became clear he was craning for a better view of the couple, whose conversation had taken a turn for the worse. The bushy-hair guy was quietly protesting something, while the girl, a cute blonde in a black tank top, coolly pressed her case.
Meanwhile, Ponytail slid left and right for a better view. At one point, he got up to go to the toilet—or pretended to—and walked by them without taking his eyes off the girl. When she looked up expectantly, he marched off. A few minutes later he returned still staring intensely at her. She caught his eye and he scooted into his booth. The girl whispered something to her companion, and they got up and left as Ponytail tracked them through the window to their car.
Martin went back to his magazine, thinking that maybe Ponytail was Blondie’s former suitor. Whatever, a few moments later, a small commotion arose when the boy asked for pancakes and the waitress said that they were no longer doing breakfast.
“Can you m-m-make a special order?”
“I’ll ask Angie,” the girl said and went into the back.
A moment later Angie came out. She was a short blocky woman about forty-five with a wide impassive face and a large head of red frizz held in place by jumbo white clips. She was not smiling. “We stop serving breakfast at eleven,” she declared.
