PROSPECTIVE
buyers must wonder about the hard-packed runway of dirt in our backyard where
grass won’t grow. And the hasp and padlock on the refrigerator. They must
wonder why the gate on our six-foot-high picket fence is permanently bolted
shut.
Deb and I
hardly think about these things. We’ve been with Michael for 11 years.
There are
two runways inside the fence. One traces the edge of the house. The dog made
this one. He sprints from window to window, tracking my location. Am I in the
kitchen? Leaving the kitchen? Walking to the living room? Walking back to the
kitchen? D’Artagnan’s head pops up in each window as I pass. It might be cute if
it weren’t for the destroyed windowsills and muddy paw prints on the siding.
The other
runway, in the center of our tiny backyard, belongs to Michael. It’s a
10-by-3-foot stretch of shiny earth. There are three layers of sod beneath it,
each one representing Deb’s hope that this time the grass will take hold, this
time the grass will take hold, this time ...
Once she
placed lawn chairs over the spot, but Mike moved them. She tried a heavy picnic
table, but it blocked the sunlight and the grass almost died anyway. So we
moved the table and Mike finished the job with his pacing.
First thing
in the morning, whether at 2 or 6 or 8, you can depend on Mike finding one of
my leather belts, sneaking out the back door, and starting to pace on that
patch of dirt, a brown packed surface, hard on dry days, slick on rainy days.
What could be better? A belt that, if you grab it by the buckle and move it
back and forth at a certain pace, will make sine wave after sine wave, its tail
lapping the ground ever so gently as it releases the previous wave into the
universe.
It is a
mesmerizing thing. So absorbing. So incredibly fantastical that Mike can’t help
releasing loud shrieks of delight. Or agony. Or pent up frustration. Or joy. In
that muddy patch. In that sinusoidal belt. In that release into the universe.
Typically he
will be naked. Or have only boxer shorts on. He will be screaming or singing or
howling in a shatteringly high pitch; he is a supersonic Tarzan, an alarm clock
we cannot ignore. Because we have sleeping neighbors: a veterinarian and his
wife, a guy who is the head of some department at the University of Iowa, and
another who works in the penal system.
And one of
us, Deb or I, cursing beneath our breath, will peel ourselves out of bed and
hurry down the creaking stairway.
“Michael!”
we will say in our most authoritative voice. “Michael. Get in here!”
And Michael
will drop the belt and do as we say. He will leave behind the thing he loves
most. More than food. And he will do what we say. Until we are back in bed. And
then he will return to his beautiful runway. With his magical belt. And he will
make the world understandable in a sinusoidal way.
It is a poor
substitute, we have learned, for the real thing, ocean waves. When Mike first
saw the ocean, two summers ago on a beach in San Francisco, he was enthralled.
He dropped the belt he always carries, threw himself on the sand that was warm
and fine, and listened to the sound of the surf. It was as if he had finally
found someone who spoke his language. The Pacific Ocean. Mother of all sine
waves.
We visited
the beach everyday for five days, but this was only vacation. And despite what
boys want, vacations end. Soon Mike was back in Iowa and it was the belt again,
lapping against the brick walkway while he waited for the school bus with his
father.
One evening
Michael’s twin sister, Lucy, said to Deb and me: “The teachers will think I’m
stupid. Like Mike.”
“Mike is not
stupid,” Deb said.
“Mom,” Lucy
said, patiently. “You know what I mean.”
“Yes,” Deb
said. “I know what you mean. But you’ve got to know what I mean, too. Imagine
if you found yourself in the middle of China somewhere. And everyone was trying
to talk to you. But you couldn’t understand them. And everyone thought you were
stupid. But you were still just like you are. How would you feel?”
I have had
glimpses of the kind of man I should be. Such are the revelations we are
afforded. Passing glimpses, like the small, hidden pond you pass while driving
on a particular road for the first time. Suddenly opening up and then closing
once again. So that it can be instantly forgotten, or recalled only in part.
I have had
these glimpses. Once, while attending some frighteningly capitalistic rally for
Amma, the hugging saint, her face magnified and simulcast throughout the
convention center in Coralville, Iowa, and printed on mugs and glossy paper and
everything else, I had such a glimpse.
I had taken
Mike to see the hugging saint for the same reason we have taken him a lot of
places — with the hope that somehow it might help, that something might reach
him. Anyway, what did we have to lose?
Once there,
however, I did not want to hug the hugging saint. I did not need her blessing.
Or the glazed smiles of her followers. Or the hypnotizing chants. I did not
need anything other than to get my son, who was lying on the floor, feeling the
carpet with his lips, and screaming, outside and in the car where I could maybe
listen to the Cubs game. And then, while I was hauling Michael to his feet,
Amma’s interpreter came on the screen and said something about eternity. And
then he said something about kindness.
When I was
10, I would pray to God and ask for my challenge. “Give me my challenge,” I
would pray. “Give me my challenge.” And at my lowest moments I have thought:
“That was my mistake. I asked for it.”
These days I
rarely talk to Mike because he rarely responds in any way. You may think this
is cruel, ignoring my own son. And if you were to spend one day with him, you
might be full of energy and hope and good will. But I have been with him every
day of his life for 11 years. My bad habit of ignoring my son has become so
ingrained that our routine of noncommunication has become something of a runway
all its own. And I ignore the very things that fascinate Michael. The belt. The
patch of dirt.
Still, once
in awhile, we engage one another. Sometimes, for example, we play the blinking
game. While lying next to each other, very close, Mike will look at me out of
the corner of his eye, a sly smile playing across his face, and he will blink
once. Then, in response, I will blink once. His smile will gain in radiance.
And he will answer my blink with one blink of his own. This will go on for some
time, whipping Mike up into a fit of laughter.
Tonight, I
lie next to Mike. It’s 11, well past his bedtime. He has been nervous. Maybe he
has broken into the refrigerator and eaten some of the food we have forbidden
him to eat — like bread or cheese or milk — since we’ve put him on the
gluten-free, casein-free diet.
He has been
laughing hysterically for at least an hour, which might seem cute to you but to
me indicates that Michael is on the edge of a seizure. Our faces are very close
in the dark. Mike likes it this way. Close. He is a beautiful boy. His eyes are
large and liquid. His facial features are clean.
The great
challenge I asked for when I was a boy, imagining the crack of doom and the
Argonauts and the seven feats of Hercules, is lying in bed next to me, very
close to my face. Faith is nothing other than an acceptance of eternity and, at
the same time, of death. The great challenge, my great challenge, is nothing
other than, in the face of eternity and death, a question of kindness.
Can I, being
alive at this time, love this boy? Can I listen to him? Can I be a good father
to this boy?
We have
glimpsed the future, of Mike at 6-foot-3 and 250 pounds, his sporadic anger
triggering the need for drugs, restraints, while I grow older, smaller and
weaker. And Deb and I decided that we want a shot at a different future, one in
which Mike, near his beloved waves, in a place where it seems he belongs, maybe
isn’t so troubled.
So after
nearly two decades in Iowa, we’re moving to the coast, to the waves. I have no
work there, but I will find work. We have no community awaiting us, but we will
make one.
The people
who come to look at our house don’t understand this, but it is not theirs to
understand. It has not been given to them. It has been given to us.
“Mike,” I
say, in the darkness. “You’re a good kid.” I say it, and then I keep listening
for once. I don’t stop listening after a few seconds as I normally do. Instead,
I let the seconds run on.
Mike has
ceased his laughter now. After some time, I don’t know how long, he whispers
very quietly, “You’re” and “a good kid.” And then, “a good.” And then, “kid.”
And then, “Mike, you’re a good kid.”
“I’m proud
of you,” I say. The words wave and wave. And then they come back. Broken and
then full. “Proud,” Michael says. “I’m proud of you.”
“I love
you,” I say. It’s a profession. It’s also a self-rebuke.
“Love,” Mike
says a few minutes later. “I love you. Love you. I love. I love you. You.”
After Mike
seems to be done with his response, I ask, “How would you like to live by the
ocean?”
This brings
a big smile. He is looking off. Away. At something far. The words wave and
wave. “Ocean,” he says.
Joe Blair, a
pipe fitter in Iowa City, is working on a collection of essays.
