Daniel Isn't Talking (15 page)

‘OK, er …' says Andy to Stephen. ‘The tone is, may I say it, a little businesslike. Probably because you've just come from the office. Put a little … uh … joy into your voice. You know, like you've got a great surprise for him.'

Stephen nods, then squares his shoulders. ‘Daniel!' he calls.

‘Definitely better,' says Andy. ‘But if I'm terribly honest, Stephen, you sound a little cross when you say it that way. Try this: “Daaaaanieeeeel!”'

‘Oh, I get it now,' Stephen says. He takes a few steps closer to us in the garden and says, ‘Daaaaanieeel!' in a sing-song voice, loud and clear.

I am sitting on the bench with Daniel. When Stephen calls his name I say, ‘Daddy!' which Daniel will repeat. ‘Daddy!' he says, and now Stephen brings him the chocolate.

‘A little faster on the chocolate,' I tell Stephen, ‘so that he connects the reward with what he has done, which is to answer his name.'

‘Oh, for fucksake,' he says.

Striding toward us now is Andy. ‘Brilliant, the both of you,' he says. ‘Not to mention our little star here.'

He kisses Daniel's hair while Stephen frowns.

Because I am so broke, I ask my brother to please-please-please lend me some money. My brother is not concerned about pollution, has no nagging conscience about the environment, is not interested in green issues of international importance. He has established what he calls a ‘Vice Fund', which is to say he pours all his money into companies that produce cigarettes, alcohol, gambling casinos, weapons. He's a jerk but not poor. His investment slogan is ‘Bet on vice to win, place or show'.

‘It's all tied up,' he explains to me. ‘And anyway, money isn't going to help you.'

Of course. Why do I bother asking him? He thinks autism is incurable and hopeless, like everyone else. And anyway, he lacks empathy, a condition Daniel is supposed to have, but does not. If someone cries, Daniel cries. It's almost as though he has too much empathy. So I try to keep Emily from ever crying by plying her with sweets. If I feel a tear coming on, I run to the sink to splash water
on my face. Meanwhile, my brother who is, I suppose, perfectly normal – this man who lives with shouting parrots and believes with all his heart that no matter how bad the economy is people will still buy everything they need to kill themselves – says he has no money to help out his only nephew.

However one night I get a call from Larry. This is most unusual because he is too cheap to phone overseas. He tells me that the Chinese, due to a shortage of grain, have decided to save their grain by killing all their sparrows. Something he has heard about or read or perhaps been notified about through one of the millions of user groups he's on. He calls while I am reading a story to Daniel, or trying to read it. Keeping him still is the first part.

‘What?' I say.

Larry says nothing.

‘What?' I say again. All I hear is miles of empty silence.

Larry says, ‘I can't tell you. I'm speechless. I don't have words to describe … language doesn't have the capacity to hold the depths of …
what is it?
Anger, frustration, shock, a feeling of
intense
betrayal …'

‘You're doing very well, actually, but
why
do you feel like that?' I ask. Has Wanda left him? Has a parrot amputated his ear?

‘Birds,' he says. ‘Are. Being. Gassed.'

We sit in a circle and I say, ‘Mummy!' Andy says, ‘Andy!' Daniel says, ‘Daniel!'

‘You
are
Daniel!' I say, tickling him, delighted, laughing, proud of him in a way you cannot know unless you've lived with a child who cannot say his own name at three years old, and at times during those years seemed to have no identity at all.

But Andy shakes his head violently, telling me to stop. ‘Don't use pronouns. He's not ready for pronouns.'

‘OΚ,' I say, committing this information to memory as I do everything Andy says, ‘I won't do it again.'

He begins to speak again, then stops, touches my shoulder. His eyes hold a tenderness that makes me turn away. ‘Don't worry so much,' he whispers.

‘Andy!'

‘Mummy!'

‘Daniel!'

Later, I ask if I can try to teach Daniel to say ‘I am Daniel'.

‘You can try,' says Andy. He's lying on the floor catching his breath after a particularly taxing session during which he had to fly Daniel around in the blue plastic child's chair again. ‘But he's got to get two words together solidly before he will get three.'

I nod, standing above him. He puts his hand out; I take it and he rises up. For a moment we remain there, standing hand in hand. His fingers are warm in mine. His eyes are the colour of sage. Emily is drawing a picture of Donald Duck, which Daniel notices. ‘Duck,' he says, which makes Andy wheel round and congratulate him.

‘Donald Duck!' says Andy.

‘Duck!' says Daniel.

‘
Donald
Duck!' says Andy slowly.

‘Donna Duck,' says Daniel. Andy takes him by the hands and whirls him around.

‘What about me?' says Emily, holding out her arms. I clasp her wrists and twirl her as she laughs, my little girl, my pal.

With so little furniture in the downstairs of our house,
there is more room for toys and games and tossing children into the air.

The speech therapist is even bigger this time, her belly hanging on her like a cannon ball she's slung onto her waist. I've come back because she told me if Daniel could speak – even a few words – she would work with him. But all I can think about since coming into the office is how pregnant she is. I keep staring at her belly, at her hand that lingers there, at her swollen ankles, her jolly, expectant shape.

‘When is the baby due?' I ask.

‘Two months,' is her shocking reply. I was thinking she might go into labour any second. It crosses my mind that she might be having twins. She notices my wide-eyed silence, glancing down at her bump. ‘This is number four,' she says. ‘When you get to number four the muscles collapse the minute you read the pregnancy test. If they see a dot, they just give up and dive toward your shoes.'

I nod, jealous as hell of this big woman, who for some reason I imagine with a burly, bearded husband, and all her children just perfect. I would love to be pregnant again, to feel the soft kicking, to lie in bed and hold the edges of my belly, feeling for my baby, counting the weeks.

On a red yoga mat, pushing his train along the edge of the mat, is Daniel. The speech therapist heaves the copious folds of her skirt around her and kneels down next to him. ‘Hi there, Daniel,' she says in cheerful American parlance. ‘How're you doing?'

Already I am thinking she is using too much language. Saying ‘Hi' would have been enough. With so much dialogue to take in, Daniel ignores her, preferring his train.

‘So you got a train there, that's pretty neat,' says the speech therapist. Still Daniel will not reply.

‘Do you mind if I just show you?' I say gently. ‘Just to give you some idea of what he can do if he sets his mind to it?'

The speech therapist is not so sure. She pulls off her eyeglasses and rubs her forehead with the back of her hand. ‘All right,' she agrees. She has a mask of freckles across each cheek the same way I did when I was pregnant. And her fingers are a little swollen – yes, I remember that, too. She says, ‘But I still think we're wasting our time here.'

I go to the mat, sit down next to Daniel, and stare hard at Thomas, the train. Then I take two fingers, and walk them up Daniel's leg, opening my mouth as though I am astonished at what these naughty fingers are doing, walking up his leg! Walking across his stomach! And now they are tickling him! When he looks at me I retreat, pretend I wasn't even involved with this tickling business. Then I start again, slowly walking my fingers up his calf, his thigh. This time he's ready for it. Before I tickle his tummy, he shoots his attention my way. ‘Hi, Daniel,' I say.

‘Hi, Mummy,' says Daniel.

I start singing the tune to
Thomas the Tank Engine
. ‘Thomas the Tank Engine …' I sing, and nod my head quickly, indicating he must continue.

‘Rolling along,' says Daniel.

‘Rolling along!' I sing.

‘Rolling along!'

The speech therapist watches this, a look on her face that tells me my ideas are not welcome here.

‘Daniel, how old are you?' she asks. He doesn't answer. He's watching my fingers, which may at any second shoot up his leg to tickle him on the belly once more.

I say, ‘I am twenty-nine!'

Daniel says, ‘I am three!'

He holds his hand up, trying to get three fingers to stick up in the air, which he cannot manage.

‘Good boy!' I say, and help him with his fingers so he's got three pointing up, his thumb and little finger bending across his palm.

‘I don't think you quite understand how to be a speech therapist,' says the speech therapist, a woman whose three children smile from a photo on her desk, and whose fourth child sits quietly inside her. ‘You seem to be playing tricks on him to get him to speak.'

Playing tricks? I don't understand.

‘Daniel, what is your favourite toy? Is it that train? What's the train called?' she says.

Three questions all at once. He cannot cope. He doesn't know which one to answer and which ones to leave.

‘I cannot teach this child,' says the speech therapist. On that we both agree.

I want to see an eighty-pound-per-hour occupational therapist because the NHS has nobody available and Daniel needs help with his vestibular system, whatever that is. There is a ninety-pound orthopaedic surgeon I want to check out because Daniel seems to find it difficult to walk for any distance. Then there is the fifty-pound podiatrist who may or may not have some kind of orthotic sole for Daniel's shoes that will discourage Daniel from walking on his toes all the time. Plus I want to see this rather clever doctor who suggested the gluten-free diet and says that sugar is extremely bad for autistic children.

‘What do you want to use for primary reinforcers,
then?' asks Andy when I tell him that we can't use Smarties any more to motivate Daniel. If he were an Englishman he'd give me a look of exasperation, but because he's Irish he looks amused, interested, wants to hear all about my new-found suspicion that sugar is like heroin for autistic kids.

‘I don't know,' is my honest reply. I am out of answers.

This morning, while Andy works with Daniel, I take the train to Hatton Garden to hock my engagement ring, a square diamond set in white gold. It's a day full of the liveliness of spring. Around me are couples heady with the thought of their own impending weddings, old ladies whose gnarled hands are stocked with gold and stones, tourists looking for bargains. It is not hard to find what you are looking for in Hatton Garden. Even the pawn shops are easily identified, distinguished by the age-old sign: three brass balls hanging above the door.

What I think about as the jeweller examines my ring with his circular eyeglass is not what it means to lose my lover, my husband, the man onto whom I hung every hope, but that I am damned glad I didn't let Stephen give me that ring his mother had. If I'd taken the sapphire and diamond she offered, one that has been in the family for many generations, I'd have had to give it back.

The jeweller is not so impressed with my ring. He tips the spyglass up from his eye, purses his lips, and makes me an offer which I am forced to accept. It's the best one I've had this morning, and I've been up and down this road. I am cross with myself, however. I should have brought the pearl necklace as well.

And now I go home to make my phone calls, set up the appointments, continue with my life.

‘You don't have any beer, do you?' asks Andy. Friday. 4 p.m. He's been worn to a frazzle trying to get Daniel and Emily to play hide-and-seek together It involves me hiding with Emily, and Daniel being guided by Andy to find us. If he finds us he gets the reward we hold in our hand, a bit of chocolate that must be gluten-free, sugar-free and dairy-free and can only be purchased in specialty shops, of which I have now become an expert. I know three different places you can buy such chocolate within a half-mile of my house.

I shake my head. ‘No money for been Anyway, it makes you fat.'

‘Fat you are not, Mrs Marsh. And yes, I have noticed things keep disappearing round here,' he says. In the place we used to have Stephen's armchair Emily and I have put a new papier mâché chair, drying now on newsprint beside an open window.

‘If you took credit cards this would be easier,' I say. ‘He's not yet cancelled my Visa, which is how we eat. Stephen's strategy, I believe, is to starve me of money so that I file for divorce. Some clever lawyer must have suggested it. If I file, then we have to start negotiating. I'll have to compromise, set in writing his rights of access to the children, for example. Right now he doesn't really have any rights, you see.'

‘And you don't have any money,' says Andy. He takes my left hand and studies my fingers. In the spot beside my wedding ring, in the place where the engagement ring used to be, is a waxy-looking circle of pale skin.

‘Oh, he's a sly one,' says Andy, smiling, still holding my hand. ‘Why don't you do the right thing then, and make an honest man out of him?'

‘What? Divorce him?' I laugh. It's how I cope, turning it all into a joke. ‘Why should I be so nice?'

‘Oh, you're tough,' says Andy, his finger pointed at me. ‘I have to admit I like a tough woman.'

The next week Andy arrives with three bags of groceries, an electronic children's book that sounds out the words when you press it with a special tool, and a case of Guinness in bottles.