Daniel Isn't Talking

by Marti Leimbach

  Stephen told me on occasion all the little things he thought weren’t quite right about me. I swore too much, wore the wrong kind of perfume and needed to do something to get my hair up off my face. When I protested that the perfume was what he bought me, that my hair would never stay entirely off my face as it was two feet long and very fine, such that it slid out of a hair clip no matter what, he sighed. There was also the matter of my American clothes – those annoyed him. He didn’t think leather should be any colour other than black or brown, so my lemon-yellow bag with lots of brass buckles was out. He had a problem with dresses that were too short, telling me I looked like Wilma Flintstone in my gauzy summer skirt with a varied yoke. He particularly hated clothes that suggested a Pacific influence or anything with a decorative border. My favourite suede, cowboy-style jacket with a Western fringe was regarded as a kind of relic that needed quiet removal, and he managed not only to persuade me to get rid of it, but to do so unasked. Nothing is so powerful as the English understatement. Wordlessly, it seemed, he’d transformed me, never reducing me to the point of wearing grey skirts with floral patterns, but I found myself looking for more sensible shoes and rather more dowdy colours at Marks & Spencer’s, rather than what I’d have preferred to buy, found only in places like Ghost.

  I realise upon reflection that it wasn’t that Stephen had a problem with my clothes, but rather a problem with my accent, my class, or lack thereof. I think it was a matter of identity. Unlike Penelope, with her trained musical ear, he couldn’t quite place me in a particular stratum, and that disarmed him. Penelope, it seemed, could get away with bizarre, unusual clothes – animal-print skirts and clinging chiffon that made you wonder if she was wearing any underwear – but then she was a cousin to the Huxleys and the daughter of a dame. She was who she was, regardless of her attire. By contrast, I was nothing. I’d rather fooled him by appearing a serious student, situated as I was at Oxford. But when my mother died, when Marcus died, all I really wanted was a family.

  ‘Well, you have a fair start here,’ says Andy, nodding at the children, who are watching a Spot video. We are sitting behind them, whispering our conversation as they watch the video on cushions we’ve placed on the floor. It’s sort of like a date, his being here. And sort of like he belongs here anyway.

  ‘You come from a big family?’ I ask.

  ‘Not so big,’ says Andy. ‘I’m number four.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ I say. ‘Four.’

  ‘Of eight,’ says Andy. ‘There’s my three small sisters and one wee brother.’

  It is time I got up and did something useful, put away the dishes, do some washing. I cannot remember sitting down for so long. But then, just as I have this thought, I feel Andy’s hand on mine. He takes my wrist, turns it over and kisses my palm, watching my eyes as he does so. Then he lets go, touches his finger to my lips, then his own. It is as though he has placed a message inside me, spelling out desire. He will wait for me to turn to him, knows that I will move slowly in his direction, changing as the seasons change. His love lies before me like the new pages of a diary. One day he will fold me in his arms, for he has touched a part of me that was dying and brought it to life once more. This belongs to him.

  When I was at university I studied poetry, among other things. It fascinated me how the words looked so dry and lifeless, like seed husks or stringy bits of cut grass, sitting on the page. Almost lonely they were, starkly articulated against a whole page of white. And yet when I read them, they came alive inside my mind. I liked to hear the words in my head, flowing through me in a melody that is not exactly sung. If I read a poem now, for example, I find myself reading a stanza, then turning away from the printed page, listening.

  There are ribbons that hold you together,

  Hooks and eyes, hollows at the collarbone,

  As though you dismantle your skeleton

  Before stepping out of the crumpled ring.

  I am listening with my eyes turned away, hearing the words, thinking of my own thin frame, my own wedding ring, which I now remove. I should have sold it when I sold my engagement ring, but it’s hardly worth much, being just a gold band. And now I am thinking something else, about autism. Autism, of course, because the subject is never far from my mind, hovering as it does at the edge of every thought, squatting on my shoulder like a hideous second head.

  I consider that this listening and turning away that I do when reading poetry is because I cannot truly glean the words while staring directly at them. I must consider them in quiet, and so I cast my gaze away from the page. Perhaps this is what Daniel does when he turns away from me as I speak. He cannot hear and look at the same time. He must choose.

  So I stop asking him to both listen to me and look at me, which I can see pains him in a mild way, as though staring into a bright light. I think I understand. I promise him, kneeling before my child of three, that I will let him be Daniel, and that I will let him turn away.

  With his eyes focused over my left shoulder, he asks for new shoes.

  ‘I want buckle shoes,’ he says. Four words together – this is unprecedented. With his eyes toward the ceiling he says, ‘I want shoes with buckles.’ And now five.

  Alone in the living room, drinking the Guinness that Andy left me from its heavy amber bottle, I hold my face still in front of the hand mirror we use to encourage Daniel to make certain facial expressions, or to help him get his mouth into the right shape to create a particular sound. I can see now that my hair is getting thicker, my skin gaining in colour. Every Saturday morning while Stephen takes the children to the park, I go to the pastry shop and they give me a little sack containing the home-made tomato sauce Max’s wife has made for me, this woman whom I have never even met. I heap as much sauce as I can on to Daniel’s gluten-free pasta, but he is suspicious of it, refusing as he does to eat vegetables. Somehow he knows tomatoes are involved with this sauce, and he eyes the specks of basil with disdain.

  ‘Burger,’ he says. He always wants burgers.

  ‘I want a burger,’ I say, because if he’s going to get what he wants, he’s going to have to use as many words as possible to get it.

  ‘I want a burger,’ says Daniel.

  Pretending I don’t understand, I say, ‘What do you want?’

  Daniel says, ‘I want a burger.’ So I make him a burger.

  Meanwhile, Emily and I gorge ourselves on ravioli so large and rich you can only eat two of them at a sitting, lapping up the sauce that is made with tomatoes so sweet you could drink this sauce and call it dessert.

  ‘Sauce?’ I offer Daniel.

  ‘No sauce,’ he shakes his head. He understands negatives now, and he pronounces his ‘no’ with an Irish accent.

  ‘You love him more,’ says Emily, ‘You’d never make me a burger.’

  ‘You didn’t ask,’ I tell her. ‘Would you like me to make you a burger?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ smiles Emily. ‘I prefer ravioli.’

  Emily’s accent is like her father’s. She will fit into her pre-prep without any difficulty whatsoever but thank God for these summer holidays we have, during which she is all mine, and I am hers.

  ‘You do know how much I love you, Emily?’ I say now.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says, bored already of the subject.

  ‘And I love you, Daniel, you know that?’ I say, leaning toward him. He looks at me for a split second, then away, then back again. But he doesn’t speak.

  One morning I wake with a terrible backache and I don’t know why. The pain is familiar exhausting, a cramp that seizes me so that I long for a hot bath. When I take off my clothes I realise my periods have started again, and that I haven’t had one in almost a year, and that I have gained weight. I am healthy once more.

  I phone Veena to tell her that I am well, that I am not starving at all. That Daniel is talking, little by little. That I am alive, alive, alive!

  But there’s no one by that name at this number. And no, they don’t know where Veena has gon
e. It has been months since I thought of her, since I spoke to her. I collapse onto the floor, realising I have let go of this precious friend. She is shy, thinks people do not like her, fears that her accent and her foreignness make her unwelcome. She would never have rung me, and must have concluded that I had no use for her except as a cleaner. How do I tell her it wasn’t the cleaning that I valued? With no forwarding number and only a dim recollection of how to spell her complicated surname, how in this blasted city do I find a lone Indian woman?

  Here is Bruno Bettelheim, heavy mouth, aged half-moon eyes, balding, weak chin. He has tortoiseshell glasses and an accent I cannot place. ‘I said I was sorry. Why blame me now?’ he asks.

  I know I am dreaming, but it feels so real. He is a small man but fierce and quick. The lenses in his glasses are so thick you cannot tell where exactly he focuses his eyes. He nods his head as he speaks, as though punctuating each word.

  ‘I killed myself. Isn’t that enough? Why do you hound me? I am no criminal!’ he says, spitting the words. Like a cornered toothless animal, like an assailant who has been caught and has no weapon now.

  When I wake from this dream I find, to my surprise, that it doesn’t frighten me.

  17

  I can no longer go into a shop and buy whatever the children need. That ended some while ago. I find myself fanatically recapping Emily’s markers so that they won’t dry out, buying the children clothes that are too big for them so there is more room for growth, hoping they won’t need new shoes. When Emily goes on her painting sprees, covering her model animals with poster paint, I find myself watching with a measure of resentment the paint she wastes, and trying in vain to pour it back into a bottle that, because of a design flaw in the packaging, makes this impossible, I hate myself for caring about such small matters – for noticing, even – the wasted paper and broken crayons. And for hurrying Emily past the toy shop lest she should see something she wants, meanwhile buying whatever Daniel needs to help him speak and learn.

  The one buyer I had on the cottage pulled out after the survey, and Stephen continues to make it impossible for me. He gives me no cash at all He says we need to talk – and I know what that means – and he says that he still thinks Daniel should be in special school, which I refuse. So he punishes me. I cut the children’s hair to save money on a hairdresser, can’t use the credit card past a certain limit. Stephen is right that I shouldn’t need to spend so much each week on groceries, but I am buying organic fruit, raw goat’s cheese, goat’s butter and grass-fed beef. These are all extremely upmarket items; and then there are all the supplements I need, which have to be specially ordered so they contain no harmful fillers. Daniel’s chocolate costs five times what normal chocolate costs; I will not let him eat normal bread, only gluten-free bread which is four pounds a loaf unless I make it myself, which I often do, but even then you are talking about organic eggs at thirty pence a yolk.

  Even though there are times I hate him, I do not stop wishing he would return. For Emily’s sake, I wish this. For Daniel’s, too. Stephen is their father and so I feel I owe it to them to dress him in a robe of benevolence that does not quite suit him now. It is a deliberate action, this reworking of my husband, who will not allow me to call him at his flat, but requires me instead to ring his office or text his mobile. Unless it is an emergency, he has stipulated. He grunts when I tell him that the whole of the past six months has been an emergency. He makes the same face I’ve seen him use to dismiss a blundering waiter or to instruct the chattering cab driver that he does not wish to talk.

  ‘What do you remember about me that you loved?’ I ask him now, meeting him at the Princess Diana Memorial Playground with its impressive ship. The ship, angled to one side and sunk into a bed of sand, is not a real ship of course but an elaborate toy for children. Arriving with Daniel and Emily, I had the thought that our lives had become a little like that ship that will never experience the sea, a kind of marvellous pretend family in a wonderland of the imagination. Looking at us, we appear happy, united. Wouldn’t you think so? See the tall man with the loose shirt and crisp khaki trousers beside the woman with the light hair and a summer dress that flows down to her ankles? See their children who play in Hyde Park on a summer’s day? Aren’t they lovely together? But it’s all a trick of the eye. When I ask Stephen what he remembers about me, what he loved about me, what he cherished, he only turns away, distancing himself even more on this wooden bench we share.

  So I speak.

  ‘I remember how you tipped an amber bottle and filled your palms with the smell of almonds, then pressed them into my back so that the whole room smelled like an orchard,’ I tell him. ‘And how when you finished making love it was almost as though you were going to start all over again, those shy kisses, those delicate hands. On Sundays you brought me a mug of tea, the newspaper that of course I would never read. But you read it to me, the bits you thought I ought to know.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ he says, his voice sounding as though I’ve touched some private part of him to which I am no longer allowed access.

  ‘I’m remembering how you swung me round at that party where we met and said, “If you think you’re leaving without me, you’re kidding.” I’m remembering how whenever I took a journey longer than five miles you made me promise I’d call you to tell you I was all right. I’m recalling, not without pleasure, how you watched your children being born.’

  ‘Stop it,’ says Stephen. He blinks his eyes rapidly, as though having entered a room full of dust. He turns away, his back hunched. He does not want to hear.

  ‘Stephen, I guess I’m saying that if there is any chance whatsoever that you want me back in your life and your bed, then you better tell me now. Because I’m done scraping myself up against you, and I’m tired of being so poor.’

  Across the playground, Daniel chases a starling. Emily climbs the rope ladder of the pirate ship, calling ‘Ahoy, matey!’ She is not a convincing pirate, dressed as she is in lime-green overalls. Tied to her wrist is a gaudy balloon, shaped as a pink pony.

  Stephen reaches behind his back, touches my fingers, and it is as though he has stretched back in time and plucked fruit from last year’s withered tree. ‘Don’t let us go,’ I whisper as he removes his hand once more.

  ‘I can’t see how we can fit back together,’ he says. ‘I feel like what’s happened to Daniel has just blown us apart for ever. And you are so unwilling to do anything about it.’

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘I am doing everything about it! What are you doing about it?’

  Stephen glowers. I have violated the sacred code to winning his favour, which is never to criticise him. If there is anyone who requires criticism, it is me. Can’t I see that?

  ‘He needs special school,’ Stephen says. ‘The experts all say so.’

  ‘He’s learning by the minute. I don’t care about these so-called experts. What makes them experts anyway? You can have all the degrees you like, but if you can’t help the child talk and play, you’re not much of an expert in my view.’

  ‘He’ll never be normal,’ says Stephen. ‘I think we’re going to have to accept that. I’ll be honest with you, Melanie, I find it hard to live with that fact so up close, all the time. I don’t want to.’

  Poor Daniel It seems he must not only struggle to understand a world that, to him, is defiantly elusive, but put back together a grown man’s heart. No, he will never be like Emily, who dropped into the world as though she owned it and is always three steps ahead of anyone’s expectations. But then he is doing infinitely better than these ‘experts’ ever imagined. Surely there is hope in that. I say, ‘OΚ, I understand what you are saying. But there are plenty of couples with a child who is autistic. They make it somehow. Maybe we should meet some of them –’

  ‘No,’ says Stephen, firmly. He shakes his head back and forth, blows out his cheeks.

  From far off, Daniel searches for us, his head like a periscope, turning. I raise my hand and wave.

&nb
sp; Stephen says, ‘I don’t want lots of friends with wonky children. I don’t want to live in that world. That is not in the plan.’

  ‘What plan?’ I say.

  ‘You see!’ says Stephen, as though that settles it. He rises from the bench, stands over me, a big and commanding man. He does not need to raise his voice to make me think that he is shouting. He is shouting, in that he is presenting his thoughts as one might dispatch a warhead. ‘This is what I mean!’ he says. ‘You can’t understand why I might not want to spend my time around people with damaged children. Well, I don’t! It’s not how I want to live my life, do you understand? It’s depressing and hopeless and unattractive. Call me selfish, call me wrong, call me politically incorrect, non-inclusive, uncaring! Call me any crap name you want, but don’t call that my life!’

  ‘I’m not calling you names,’ I say.

  ‘This isn’t my fault!’ he says. ‘It’s just the way it is.’

  I want to explain to him that he cannot run, and that there is in any case no point in trying to run. He can no more contain his love for Daniel than alter the flow of blood to his own heart. If I could, I would hold him in my arms and promise him, swear to him, that I will shield him from this hurt with every ounce of strength from my body. I have been given tools to help control the way autism has seized our son. Six months ago Daniel would have come to a playground like this, plopped down on the ground, scooped up sand and let it flow in front of his eyes for hours without any thought of other people around him, of swings or slides or ships that allow for the playful reverie of pirating. But Stephen will not hear this, and has his own invented notion of how things will be in the future. I cannot reach him, though he allows me to touch his arm, to speak softly to him. I say, ‘Look across the sand right now, Stephen, and you will see your little boy.’

  There, beside the giant pirate ship, Daniel waves.