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I could tell he was listening to me, hearing me, but he didn’t say anything or look at me.
The trick was to be patient.
“Can you show me?” I asked him and he stopped playing with the doll. He held it in his hands.
“I would love to see it, just for a minute?”
After a few seconds, he handed it to me. I told him how cool it was and asked if he could show me what the doll could do. “Can it fly? Or maybe smash things?”
He took it back and said, “Climb walls.”
“Oh, wow, that sounds really awesome.”
He said something else, and I asked him to repeat it. Then I realized he said “Spiderman”. He knew that was what the doll was called. I was excited by the realization that he had learned the name of this character and had been able to repeat it. For a child with autistic tendencies, this was a major developmental step. He had been barely talking or interacting with people and here he was talking with me about his new toy.
I had to be careful about over-stimulating him, however, especially after the two days away from home, so we went downstairs where he could play while I prepared a simple dinner. I thought about what Skye had said about the ice-cream, but Ethan was quiet and calm. I bathed and put him to bed. When I came down to clear the kitchen, Sam was waiting for me.
My heart skipped a beat.
It still did that, whenever I unexpectedly ran into him or saw him in the house. It was remarkable how much he was still able to affect me.
“How’s Ethan?” he asked.
“He’s fine,” I said.
“Not upset or keyed up from his visit?” His face darkened. “Sometimes Skye does completely inappropriate things with him, taking him to parties where there are loads of children he doesn’t know and he ends up eating too much sugar, throwing up afterwards.”
I assured him that Ethan was fine, that he had eaten a good dinner and had gone to bed without any trouble. Then I told him about how he had spoken to me about the Spiderman toy and what I thought that meant. I could see him paying attention, processing the information.
I didn’t want to tell him about the ideas I’d been having over the last few days about Ethan. I wasn’t so sure that he was autistic. It was entirely possible that he was merely slow to develop or traumatized by his parents’ divorce. I wanted to take him to an audiologist and have his hearing tested. I also thought he needed speech therapy.
Sam nodded, “Set it up.”
I wanted to talk about maybe getting Ethan to an educational psychologist for another evaluation, but Sam’s phone rang, and he held up a hand, indicating that I should stop speaking.
He took the call and left the room. I hoped he would come back and waited around so that we could finish the conversation. After I had tidied the kitchen, there was nothing left to do. I stood around, waited some more, and went looking for him. Sam was nowhere to be found. I didn’t want to go upstairs or intrude into his personal space. I went to the home gym and checked if he was there perhaps. As I came around the corner to go up the stairs, we almost ran into one another.
“I was just looking for you!” I said.
“Why?” He seemed irritable.
“To continue our conversation?”
“I thought we were done talking,” he said. “Make whatever appointments you deem necessary.”
“Okay, but…”
“We don’t need to talk about every single thing, do we, Natalie? I mean we’ve discussed this. What the fuck more needs to be said?”
His words and the venom behind them, stung me.
I shut down completely as I always do when faced by so much negativity.
He glared at me for a few moments, then shook his head and walked away.
It was like I was unable to move. I thought about turning around and walking away, I thought of going to my room and maybe taking a bath. At the same time, I thought about leaving this house, walking out the front door and keeping on walking.
If there was one thing I had learned over the years, it was to take care of myself. If I stayed on in this house, I would be destroyed. Again. I needed to protect myself.
I had learned how to do this. The hard way. It was like an invisible shell that I’d needed to visualize for myself, to keep out all nastiness. It wasn’t something that came naturally to me. As a girl, I had often heard that I was too sensitive or too emotional, but it was only later that I really started seeing how I needed to be more careful about the kind of people I surrounded myself with. I noticed how easily I was influenced by people’s moods and how negative people and behavior upset me. I became more focused on positive thinking and surrounding myself with cheerful thoughts. I liked helping children and I was good at that. It brought me an incredible sense of satisfaction when I’d managed to break through with a child that was experiencing problems, or when a kid opened up to me about what they were thinking. At these times I knew that working with children was absolutely the right choice for me. I wanted to work with Ethan and could see that my way was helping him. He was responding so well to a more patient and loving approach. But there was no getting away from Sam and I knew myself well enough to know that I wasn’t tough enough to take that kind of emotional abuse. Part of being able to protect myself was the awareness of what I could and could not take and not overestimating my abilities.
I forced myself to snap out of this state and to go upstairs, and to go online to start looking for another job. I would work out the month and at least, get a month’s pay out of this. I would find another way to pay for Tucker’s rehab.
I would find a way to get through the next few weeks.
But I couldn’t stay here.
Not like this.
