Page 8 of Breathing Under Water

Berry

May 2023

We’ve been sitting in the sweltering heat for nearly an hour watching Phil’s business partner’s son get married, when the verbose officiant finally tells the grooms they are now husband and husband. Normally weddings lead me to a very sappy place where I want to lean my head on Phil’s broad shoulder and remember the beginnings of our own love affair, those early days when we couldn’t stop grinning at each other and dreaming of our future together. Tripp and Alvin reach for each other’s hands and triumphantly raise their joined fists into the air. The crowd cheers and I join in, not wanting to appear unenthusiastic. But mostly I’m relieved the ceremony is over—not only so I can step inside the rustic farmhouse across the lawn and look for some paper towels to wipe the sweat off the back of my neck, but also so I can escape Phil’s company for a minute.

It’s been three days since Leo was approached by the girl at school. Obviously, the invitation to junior prom has been rescinded. I can’t say I blame the poor girl. I wouldn’t want to go on a date with a guy who ran away after I asked him out either.Meanwhile, Phil refuses to engage the topic with me. Leo’s reaction to the invitation is just one more indication that his social skills aren’t progressing the way we’d hoped. If we don’t help him get more comfortable with neurotypical teenagers, I worry that come September, he’ll be doomed without his friend Sebastian.

Despite years of conversations about raising our son to be independent of us one day, suddenly we’ve begun to disagree on how to do that. One thing I know for sure is that Leo needs more than we’re currently giving him, and I just don’t understand why Phil is refusing to admit that.

When I step into the farmhouse, it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting inside. A box fan is propped up on a chair in the corner of the main room, and I head straight for it. I’m halfway across the room before I see another person standing in the fan’s airflow.

“Looks like you and I had the same idea,” I say to my sister, who’s holding her highlighted hair in a twist above her head to expose her neck. I mimic the position and bask in the relief of the breeze against my damp skin.

“Yes, but I’m on the clock,” Yvonne says. Despite the heat, she somehow still looks flawless in her sleeveless navy dress. Something tasteful and expensive, I’m sure, meant to flatter without drawing attention. “At least you can stay here and luxuriate for a few moments before heading back out there to the Sahara.”

Yvonne was hired as the wedding planner for this affair. I always find it ironic that she spends so much of her time at weddings given her perpetually single state. The grooms both work at hedge funds in Manhattan, so I imagine theypaid her exorbitant fees without even needing help from their parents.

“Tell me though.” She looks over at me. “Did you consider what I said?”

Yvonne thinks she’s the only one advocating for Leo to get a social skills coach, the only one thinking about his future—and shame on me, but I’ve consciously allowed her to draw this conclusion. She’s always told me I’m too passive with Phil. She loves him as her brother-in-law, but she worries that I defer too frequently to his judgment, that I’m afraid to speak up when I don’t agree. What she doesn’t understand is that I need Phil’s opinions because he’s the only other person in the whole wide world who gets what it’s like being Leo’s parent.

But as many times as I explain that to Yvonne, she starts talking about my feelings of self-worth. And now I can’t bring myself to tell her I agree about Leo needing a social skills coach. It’s Phil who doesn’t want to pay. I don’t complain to her about how petty Phil’s being, withholding this one service from our kid when we’ve already shelled out so much for him over the years. Worse yet, Phil has started rethinking our plan to send Leo away to college in a couple of years. The specialized programs for kids with autism are expensive, sure, but we make a nice living between us, and we can figure it out. It’s what we’ve wanted for him for years. Yet suddenly Phil now thinks it’s not worth it?

When three-year-old Leo was first diagnosed with autism, other moms, and even medical professionals, warned me about “dad denial.” They said it was often the dads who refused to acknowledge anything different about their child. That I should brace for my husband to reject most suggestions for specialtreatment or accommodations. Moms in the support group I joined described the toll it would likely take on my relationship with him.

But they had been wrong. How smug I’d been for all those years as Phil sat shoulder to shoulder with me in school meetings, no daylight between us as we discussed Leo’s 504 plan and the services he’d need at a public school.

Phil was the one, not me, who insisted we get Leo articulation therapy to help with his inconsistent speech sounds when he was still in preschool. I thought it was cute the way our little boy produced the same sound differently in various instances, like when he’d call a spoon a “foon” one day and a “soon-uh” the next. Phil worried listeners would be confused by the inconsistencies, which would negatively impact Leo in the future—so we found him a therapist. Phil was also the one to think of so many of the mechanisms we provided Leo for coping, such as the headphones he wears when he’s out and about, in case noises get to be too much for him. Even the little airplanes he carries everywhere like itty-bitty security blankets were Phil’s suggestion.

All of Phil’s thoughtful protectiveness is what makes it so hard for me now to grasp why he thinks we should stop giving Leo the help he so clearly needs. Pulling back on the idea of college support programs is a rejection of everything we’ve always agreed would help Leo thrive. But I don’t want to share any of that with my sister, only to have her judge me yet again.

“Please tell me we’re having ice pops as hors d’oeuvres,” I say instead.

Yvonne’s lips twist down. She’s annoyed I’ve deflected her question.

“All I’m saying, darling, is that you and Phil and me, we aren’t going to be around indefinitely, and Leo can’t stay a child forever. He needs to learn how to build relationships with more people, how to be responsible for himself. As challenging as it sounds, he needs something different than what you’re giving him.”

“Things have just been really crazy recently, but we’ll figure it out.”

She looks at me doubtfully but doesn’t say anything else, so I nod my head toward the ladies’ room and walk off in that direction, letting her return to the job she’s been hired to do.

When I emerge from the restroom, Phil is there, leaning against the wall in the vestibule. In his slate-gray summer trousers and white linen shirt, he looks particularly appealing. Despite his fifty-six years, he’s still got a full head of salt-and-pepper curls. Though the volume of it often gives him something of a goofy look, today his hair gel is doing exactly what it should, and he looks obnoxiously suave.

“I don’t know enough people here for you to disappear on me,” he says.

“I had to see a man about a horse.” I point to the restroom behind me, hoping a joke will help get us through this event without biting each other’s heads off. Maybe a little fake politeness is better than the loaded silence we endured during the forty-minute car ride out here to Riverhead.

“I figured,” he says good-naturedly, his head bobbing with a slight nod as his whole body leans a little in my direction. For a split second, I wonder if this attentiveness means he doesn’t even realize I’m still upset with him. Could he be so dense asto think I was actually doing something important in the car, avoiding eye contact and fiddling with my phone all morning? Maybe I should just pretend too, because who knows? All our disagreements could just evaporate into thin air.

“You look pretty,” Phil says gently, finally looking right at me for the first time all day. The humidity has made my hair a little wavy, and I know he’s always liked that, but his eyes are on my floral dress.

My hand goes to one of the wide shoulder straps. “I bought this with your mom to wear to their anniversary party, remember?” She and my father-in-law, Hollis, had hoped for one last night of celebration together, but Arlene was moved to hospice the night before the party was scheduled. “I bet she’d be glad I finally found a place to wear it.”

Phil’s face darkens at my comment, as it so often does whenever I try to weave his mother’s passing into conversation. I’ve told him so many times that the best way past his grief is through it, to bask in the memories, but he seems to prefer talking about anything other than how much we all miss her.

So, fine. If that’s what he wants, it just so happens we do have another pressing matter to discuss.

“How about we find a bench in the shade and talk about Leo?” I ask.