Inappropriate Behavior: Stories (23 page)

“Sorry,” George said.

“Seriously, you know what, I'd rather he
was
sick, I'd rather he had leukemia or whatever horrible thing you said. You know, I looked at you right before you said that, and I knew you were going to say some horrible crap thing like that. I could see it in the shape of your mouth. I waited for it. I should have started screaming right when I saw your mouth.”

“I just—”

“Yeah, I know what
you just
—you think that makes it better, makes me
feel
better? You're just trying to shut the whole thing down. Ah, yes, everything's okay because at least Archie's healthy. Well, he's
not
healthy, George. He's got some kind of mental illness.” She stood up to move to the bathroom, suddenly remembered the lotion in her hand. She looked at it as though she didn't know how it got there. She stopped, rubbed the lotion into her elbows and forearms.

“If he were sick,” Miranda said, “there would be a course of treatment, viable options. What I can't handle is this.” And she shut the bathroom door and stayed in there for quite a while.

So George has learned not to talk that way, and he understands where Miranda's coming from, he agrees that, yes, that whole line of thinking is stupid and sentimental. There's a small part of him that still thinks it's possible to recover from all this, but he can't get to feeling sorry for himself. It's going on five months, and now whole weeks go by when George doesn't have an interview. He's even started looking out of town, out of St. Louis, although so far, St. Louis's unemployment rate has stayed slightly below the national average, which currently sits at 9.4 percent. In St. Louis, it's 9.1, which means that George is not as good as 89.9 percent of the working adults in the St. Louis metropolitan area. This is one of the grievances George nurtures late at night.

And the worst thing is, he made it through the worst. Or they thought he'd made it through the worst. They'd even started to relax, or, if not relax, to grimly carry on. They started putting back some money in 2008 and 2009, when they started worrying, when people in George's field were being plowed under at a truly inevitable rate. But he survived 2008 and 2009, and in 2010 they all took pay cuts, and then he was laid off. There's an unfinished toolshed in the backyard. It has a floor, three walls, and part of a roof.

“You've got to go to sleep,” George tells Archie. For two-and-a-half hours now, the child has lain in the bed making his noises. Sometimes the noises Archie makes are words, the grand stories he tells himself, acting out all the parts as he fails to fall asleep. At a certain point, about an hour before he finally falls asleep, the sounds become just sounds, noises—gun noises, airplane noises, wizard-spell noises, miracles. Miranda grew up on a farm in northwestern Missouri, and she believes that the problem with all kids today is that they don't spend any time outdoors just running around on their own. They have organized activities. They have play dates. But Archie doesn't have any play dates. The doctors say a child Archie's age needs between ten and twelve hours of sleep a night, and a child like Archie needs more. They put him to bed at eight o'clock every night, and he's never asleep before eleven. Then he has to be up at seven to go to school. “You have to go to sleep,” Miranda tells Archie.

When they think he's finally asleep, they'll go to close his door, and about half the time he's not quite asleep. When he's not quite asleep and you try to close his door, Archie will scream, “No!” It feels like an electrical pulse from the doorknob, straight up your arm and into a vital organ. “You don't have to scream at us,” George and Miranda tell him, shaking. “We're right here. Just say, I'm still awake. Don't scream.”

Once they finally get Archie to sleep, Miranda goes to bed because she has to work in the morning, and she's liable to be up with Archie's nightmares in an hour or two. George checks the ads on Monster, even though LaShonda at the outplacement agency says no one ever gets a job off of Monster. The only way to get a job in this economy is to meet people, LaShonda says. Network, network, network. George looks at Monster. He looks at hockey scores. He jerks off to porn. He e-mails résumés. The Internet costs $24.99 a month. He nurses his grievances. He reads the news. In Washington, Congress has averted a government shutdown. The deal includes another six months of
unemployment benefits. Six more months? He can't imagine what will happen if it's six more months. Don't let feelings of worthlessness ever enter your mind, LaShonda says. You are not worthless because you've been laid off. There is no stigma attached to losing a job in this economy.

Are you churchgoers? the doctors ask. Because a lot of times bright kids like Archie can find some sense of structure in organized religion, and moral prescriptions appeal to their inherent need for boundaries and control. Even if we don't believe in it? George and Miranda ask. Immaterial, the doctors say. So they go to church.

Are you churchgoers? the next set of doctors ask. Because the last thing kids like Archie need is one more structured place they have to go to on the weekends where they can't be kids. Archie needs that time to himself. So they stop going to church.

Tell us about his diet. Does he watch violent television programs? Does he wet the bed? How was potty training in general? Is there a history of mental illness or emotional disturbances? Has anyone close to Archie ever died, a grandparent or a pet? Miranda says no, George says no.

Has there been an unusual amount of stress in the home lately? This is where George has to tell him he's out of work. Going on five months now. The doctors nod knowingly. George wants to kill them all.

This started a long time before George lost his job, Miranda tells the doctors. George still loves her. This—when she sets the doctors straight—this is one of the times George still loves her. She's started having drinks with her coworkers after work on Fridays, and sometimes other days, too, because sometimes one of the bosses shows up for drinks, and she doesn't want to look like she's not part of the team. People are being riffed at her company, too. That's what they call it in this economy—
riffed
.
It's an acronym for
reduction in force
. A near anagram for
fired. Getting fired
is what they used to call it. Then they called it
getting laid off
, but that made it sound like it was something temporary, just until orders picked up again, or something, and the one thing we all know about this economy is that orders are not picking up. Nothing is temporary, except for all the things that are. Especially whatever job you find next. George has been reading about it on the Internet late at night.
Precarity
, they call it. The new economic and social reality of people's lives is
precarity
. In this economy, they call it
getting riffed
. And Miranda's been going out with her coworkers for drinks on the theory that it's harder to riff someone who's popular with her coworkers. Most of these nights cost between $17 and $25.

Then there are the nightmares. They're not like other kids' nightmares. George and Miranda don't have other kids, have never really been around other kids, but they know that Archie's nightmares are not like other kids' nightmares, because if all kids had nightmares like this, the human species would have died out long ago, because no one would put themselves through these kinds of nightmares.

Archie's nightmares—like so much with Archie—start with a scream. The doctors say that if he's screaming, he's already awake. But they're wrong. George and Miranda have stood there and watched it. Archie is sound asleep, and he screams. At the scream, George and Miranda get up, move down the hall. By the time they get to his room, Archie's kicking things in his sleep, spinning in the bed. He looks like the kid from
The Exorcist
. Then the noises start—again, not words, but noises, sometimes they're sharp little barks, sometimes they're deep heaves, like a person who's been running and can't stop. That's when Miranda and George open the door.

Sometimes that's the end of it. Just the sound of the opening door will trigger something in Archie's sleep, and a minute later, he's breathing calmly again. On those nights when Archie goes back to sleep, Miranda and George look at each other like
strangers, unable to read each other's faces in the dark. Neither wants to be the first to admit how incredibly grateful they are.

Because more often, after the heaves and the kicks and the barks and the spins, more screams come. Archie is still asleep, and he's screaming with a power that starts somewhere below the heart. Then he starts clawing his hands in front of him like he's being grabbed by something out of the darkest human visions of fear. Then the thrashing, and all this time, he's still asleep, until George and Miranda go to him and wake him and hold him on the couch for two hours until he falls asleep again. Then they carry him back to bed for a few more hours until the next nightmare, and by then it's more or less time to get up and start the day.

Touching other children. Sudden verbal outbursts, screams or shouts. Constant fidgeting. Singing. Dancing and flinging his arms when inappropriate. Nose picking. Scab picking. Fingernail picking. Talking during book time. Talking during quiet time. Taking other children's belongings. Noises. Sitting on other children. Sudden angry outbursts. Don't look at me, he screams. Whistling. Beats pencils and pens on desk. Doesn't understand no. Unreliable. Won't stay in line. Sometimes gets so locked into something there's no way to get him out. Singing and laughing inappropriately at lunchtime. Impulsive giggling. Can't keep hands to self. Interferes with other children's ability to learn. Unable to focus. Willful. Willfully disobeys rules at PE, games, and sports. Constantly acting up for classmates. Laughter incommensurate with the funny event. Has to be told over and over. Can't take my eyes off him for a minute. Never completes his work on time. Morbid curiosity expressed in frequent discussions of death. Wants always to be the center of attention. Disregards peer censure. Normal range of punishments and consequences seem to have no effect. Almost total
lack of self-control. Seems to lack a sense of self. Prone to sullen moping. Takes other children's food. Cares more about what he wants than about what's asked of him by teachers. Doesn't think before he acts. Difficulty gauging risk/reward. Sometimes lashes out. Doesn't seem to see others as real people. Little sense of the future. Always says, What did I do?