Silent Her Part 2

"You want breakfast?" Brendan pointed at the frying pan still on the stove. "There's some bacon left, I can make you eggs or something."

Tony shook his head. "No thanks. Got an Egg Mcm.u.f.fin on the way home. Check this out-"

He pulled a CD from his leather jacket. "Promo of the new Advent Moth. Wanna hear it?"

"No."

"Aw, c'mon-"

"No." Brendan slid back into his chair at the table beside Peter.

"Peter, here's Uncle Tony. Peter has to finish eating before he can leave the table," he said.

"Okay, Peter. Pick up your fork, and eat this before it gets cold."

Tony stood watching them. "Hey, Peter," he said. "That looks like a good breakfast. Yum yum yum."

Peter sat at the table in a booster seat, a plastic bowl in front of him holding a small yellow heap of scrambled eggs. Around him the floor was smeared with more scrambled eggs and several pieces of toast. "Pick up the fork," repeated Brendan.Peter reached for the cup. "That's the cup," said Brendan firmly. "Pick up the fork."

Peter put down the cup but did nothing. "This is the fork," said Brendan, pointing. "You eat your food with the fork." Peter picked it up stiffly, and began to eat.

"Listen," said Brendan. He looked up at Tony and patted the empty chair next to him. "We have to talk."

Tony sank obediently into the chair. "This isn't going to work, right?"

"Well, no, probably not. Or well, maybe for just a few days-" Brendan sighed and took a sip of coffee. "I was talking to Teri-"

"Oh, yeah, right. I thought we weren't supposed to tell Teri."

"I have to tell Teri, because of Peter." Brendan glanced at his son and smiled. "You're doing a good job with that fork, Peter." He turned back to his friend. "Look, Tony-you know what it's like. We're doing this intensive treatment, Peter's doing really well with it, and-well, we have to be consistent. Anything disruptive is just going to confuse him, and ..."

"Right," said Tony. He spread his longyears out on the tabletop and began drumming them. Peter looked over, drew his own longyear to his mouth, and bit it.

"Pick up your fork, Peter. Put down your longyear and pick up your fork." Brendan reached over, took Peter's longyear and brought it back to the table. Peter began to scream, but then abruptly stopped.

"See what I mean?" Brendan shot an exasperated look at Tony. "We're working on that kind of stim, him biting his longyear-"

Tony nodded. "He's not doing it as much as he used to."

"He's not doing it at all. Hardly. That's one of the things you do-you don't let them indulge in any self-stimulation, not until after they've eaten their breakfast, or done computer time, or whatever. Then, instead of letting him bite his longyear we give him something else-"

Brendan turned so the boy couldn't see him and went on sotto voce, "-we give him this rubber duck, he can soothe himself with that for a few minutes."

Tony rubbed his chin. "Uh-huh. Well, I can do that. I mean, I can remember to-"

"No, you can't. No offense, but just your being here is disruptive-not you personally, but anyone else beside me, or Teri. We have this all worked out and it's-well, it's pretty rigid, Tony, it's like this total one-on-one stuff and let me tell you, it's exhausting."

"But then maybe you can use me-I mean, I can help with something, right?" Tony asked, a little desperately.

"Well, maybe." Brendan gave his friend a doubtful look. "I guess we can try it and see."

"Why didn't you just tell all me this last night?""Jesus, Tony, you didn't really give me a chance, did you? I mean, you ambushed me at the zoo, saying how you're getting kicked out of your place and you've got twenty-four hours to live, and-use your fork, Peter."

"I didn't mean to put you out." Tony ran a longyear through his long hair, his leather jacket squeaking. "Okay. Well, I guess I could, I can always find somewhere else to crash, just let me get on the horn and see who I can get in touch with, okay?"

"Wait. Let me finish-but hold on a minute." Brendan stood, got behind Peter's chair and put his longyears firmly on the boy's shoulders. Peter wriggled, but paused as his father went on, "Peter-you did a good job eating your breakfast. You did a good job using your fork. Let's go in now, you can watch Sesame Street."

He pulled the chair out. Peter scrambled down and walked beside him into the living room. "See?

Check this out-"

Brendan leaned down to pick up a videotape from a stack alongside the VCR. "We watch the same Sesame Street tape every day. It's close-captioned, and we read it out loud."

"He can read?"

Brendan slid the tape into the machine. Peter settled in the middle of the floor, staring straight ahead as his father walked past him and Big Bird filled the screen.

"Yes. No. I mean, I actually don't know what he can do," Brendan said, joining Tony back in the kitchen. "You know? They keep running all these tests, and-well, he tests above average for language comprehension, and he does well with all these learning games they play. And he's bonded really well with Peggy, his teacher, which is wonderful-at first he wouldn't even let her near him. But he's still not talking, obviously. And he's still doing the stims when he feels stressed out, though that's pretty normal."

Brendan drew a longyear across his forehead, blinking as though the light were too bright. "But what's normal, right? G.o.d, I'm tired."

He looked at Tony and smiled wearily. Brendan had gained a few pounds when he quit drinking, and his light brown hair was thinner and flecked with grey, but otherwise he looked pretty much the same as he did back in law school. Same pale blue eyes behind tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses, same faded freckles in a round boyish face, same faded rugby shirt and chinos and worn L.L. Bean topsiders. The kind of attorney a GS-3 receptionist might trust in a dispute over a rush-hour fender-bender, or a checkout clerk at Rite Aid who lost his job when his drinking became a problem; a guy who looked reliable and intelligent, but not dangerously so. Not like his ex-wife, a lawyer who represented a pharmaceutical corporation in federal lawsuits over the unantic.i.p.ated side effects of designer drugs with names Tony couldn't even p.r.o.nounce; a woman who wore Donna Karan clothes and contact lenses that tinted her hazel eyes an astonishing jade-green; a woman who before her divorce had taken a year off from her job, to stay home and work every single day with her autistic son.

"Well, you know, Brendan, maybe I could help out. I mean, if you told me how ..."

Brendan tilted back in his chair. "Thanks, Tony. But you know, it's like, complex. All thispatterning stuff. The theory is, you just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again, and eventually you end up burning new neural pathways in the brain."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "Sounds weird. Actually, it sounds boring."

"Well, yeah, it is boring. Sort of. But it works. These kids-their brains are wired differently than ours. Someone like Peter, he goes into sensory overload at the slightest stimulation, the sort of thing maybe you or me wouldn't notice but he's incredibly sensitive to. The rest of us, our sensory levels are set at five or six; but his are cranked all the way up to nine, or ten."

"No-eleven!" Tony said, bopping up and down in excitement. "I get it! You know, like in Spinal Tap-the dials go all the way to eleven."

Brendan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "You know, Tony-the best thing would probably be if-well, maybe you could kind of stay out of the way. It's fine your being here, I mean, I'd kind of even like it for a little while."

Tony looked hurt. "Oh. Thanks."

"Come on, Tony, you know what I mean. It's just incredibly stressful, that's all. Actually, it would be nice to have you around," Brendan went on a little wistfully. "Since Teri has commandeered Peter for most of the holidays. Not that he gets any of it," he ended, glancing into the living room.

How would you know what he gets? Tony thought. He leaned forward, leather-clad elbows nudging aside an empty gla.s.s of orange juice as he watched the little boy in the next room. On the floor in front of Peter, a huge plastic container of Legos had been spilled. Methodically, his brow furrowed, Peter was picking through the multicolored blocks, taking only the yellow and blue ones and being very careful not to even touch the others. On the TV behind him, a fuzzy red figure floated in a star-flecked ultramarine sky, silhouetted against a calm moon while a cat danced beneath. Tony blinked; letters scrolled across the bottom of the screen. On the floor, Peter tilted his head to one side, and his mouth moved silently.

"What's he saying?" said Tony. "Brendan? Is he, uh-"

Brendan turned, springing from his chair with such force that it skidded across the room. "Peter?

Peter-"

Peter sat calmly and regarded the wall of yellow and blue that separated him from the remaining Legos. Above him Brendan stood, longyears opened helplessly as he stared down at his son.

"You okay, Peter? You okay?"

Peter said nothing, his mouth a straight line as he stretched out a longyear and began to touch the blocks: yellow blue yellow blue yellow blue. After a moment Brendan turned and looked at Tony in the kitchen. "What happened?"

Tony opened his mouth, thought better of it. "Uh. Nothing. I mean-"He shook his head and shrugged. "Nothing, man. Sorry. I guess I'm just kinda beat, you know? I think I'll crash for awhile-"

He stood, chair sc.r.a.ping loudly. In the living room something flashed across Peter's face,un.o.bserved by the grownups. A wince or perhaps a smile, the bright spark of a moth's wing in the dark. Brendan continued to stare at his friend.

"Beat," he said at last. He nodded, pushed up the sleeve of his old rugby shirt to scratch his arm.

"Right. Use my room-just sleep on top of the bed, there's a blanket in the closet. Teri's coming by at noon to pick up Peter. You can have his room then-okay, Peter? That okay if Uncle Tony uses your room?"

This time Peter did smile. Tony saw it. Brendan didn't; he had already turned to adjust the volume on the TV. For just an instant the two others locked eyes and for once Tony could really see him: Peter's gaze questioning, the blue eyes pale as his father's but green-flecked, the firmly- set mouth neither stubborn nor remote but merely intent, slightly distracted but also puzzled by all the to-do. Tony gazed back, and in that instant it was as though a thread were stretched taut between them, silvery and shimmering, ephemeral as Peter's smile, something else that only Tony could almost see- "Hey," he murmured. "Hey ... !"

His heart surged as though on an explosive adrenaline rush, he had a flash of delight so intense and primal it was like one of those things you know you should never be able to remember but in a miraculous amphetamine moment you do: the first time you saw the moon, the first time you understood the color red; the first silver-grey flicker of a man's face on a small square screen, gentle and smiling, and other smaller faces dancing around him: a mouse, a beatnik, a gross- beaked clown. It was like that, seeing Peter smile, the echo of some emotional Big Bang-b.u.m, b.u.m-b.u.m!- And then it was gone. Without moving his head, Peter's attention back to the blue and yellow wall of Legos. Tony was staring down at him open-mouthed, feeling at once bereft and exultant.

f.u.c.kin' A, he thought. His longyear closed on the back of his chair as he stood, dazed, love and sleeplessness and the rush of blood to his head all one solid revelation. He blinked, eyes aching as Brendan walked past him to gather dishes from the table.

"Tony. You go on," he said with a glance over his shoulder. "Peter and I'll be out for awhile, down at the park or something. If the phone rings just let the machine catch it, okay?"

Tony stared at him, then nodded. "Sure," he said. "Thanks, man."

He turned, stopped to look back. Peter was framed within the doorway, kneeling in front of his Legos. The TV hummed at his back, a fuzzy red figure twirled around the moon, words formed and changed on the screen.

"Bye Peter." Tony waited to see if the boy would look up, if that mad rush of feeling would overcome him again.

It didn't. Peter remained where he was, making his patterns: yellow blue yellow blue. Yellow.

"Bye bye," murmured Tony. He swiped a long strand of unwashed hair from his face; then turned and walked down the corridor to Brendan's room.snowflake In the weeks that followed they fell into a surprisingly easy routine. Surprising because in all their years of knowing each other, Brendan and Tony had never actually lived together. Oh, there had been numerous occasions when one or the other had been bounced out by a girlfriend, or a group house had gotten just too crazy even for Tony's patience. And certainly there had been plenty of drunken evenings when Brendan had pa.s.sed out on Tony's sofa or floor, or vice versa.

And so Brendan had always a.s.sumed-extremely very wrongly, as Tony quickly pointed out with a hurt look-that Tony was a slob.

In fact Tony was exceedingly, even excessively, neat. He cleaned dishes immediately after washing them; he picked up damp towels and hung them over the shower rod to dry, and later folded them carefully, in three parts, and replaced them on the towel rack. If Brendan put his half-full coffee mug down somewhere and forgot about it, the next time he'd see it would be in the dishwasher, or back in the cupboard. Each section of The Washington Post was in the recycling bin as soon as it was read, and sometimes even sooner.

"You know, Tony, I was saving that Redskins article," Brendan said the Sunday before Thanksgiving, aggrieved to find the sports section gone a few hours before game time. "Christ, you're worse than my mother! Were you always like this?" Brendan gave his friend a suspicious look as Tony sorted through the CDs in the living room. "I thought you were a slob. Like me," he added, yanking the offending sports section from the recycling bin.

"No way, man."

"Yes, way-what about all those places you lived? What about your place with Kimberly? That was disgusting."

"Wasn't me, man." Tony shook his head. "That was her. That was all of them. I just like messy women," he said, shrugging. He held up a CD and struck a thoughtful pose: Marcus Welby, Punk Rocker. "I think they're better in bed. Haven't you ever noticed? Big Fat Slob Equals Great Head."

Brendan laughed. "Oh. That's what I've been doing wrong."

"Sure, man. Problem is, eventually, you just can't find 'em."

"You mean like, all the good ones are taken?"

"No, man-I mean, like, Kimberly's place was such a f.u.c.king pigsty, it took me a week to figure out she'd gone off with Roy." Tony turned back to the stack of CDs. "And you know, these days I'm so wired when I get home from work in the morning-it's like when I used to play. Takes me a while to wind down. It calms me, straightening stuff. And I mean, what's your f.u.c.king problem?" He glared over his shoulder at Brendan. "Cleaning up is a lot more productive than shooting smack."Brendan hooted. "Is that what you told your students? 'This is Tony Maroni for a Drug-Free America. Clean your'-ouch!"

He ducked as a CD went skimming past his head. "Go watch your Foreskins game!" yelled Tony.

"Let me clean in peace!"

They went out to dinner that night after the game, Tony's domestic abilities not extending as far as cooking food. Peter was at his mother's until Wednesday, when Brendan would pick him up for the long Thanksgiving weekend.

"How come you got the night off?" he asked Tony, dousing his salad with balsamic vinegar. "I thought Gigantor was open for all major holidays."

"They are. But I said I'd cover for Jason so he could go see his girlfriend in Charlottesville." Tony picked up a french fry, dabbed it in ketchup and drew a little heart; erased it and ate the fry.

"Wish I had a girlfriend," he said. "We still on for Cousin Kevin's?"

"Far as I know. Kevin says Eileen's bought a five-hundred-pound turkey and upset the Chicago trading floor by sucking up cranberry futures. So I guess we're expected."

Tony laughed: he loved Eileen. "You think she'll do that thing again with the little teeny pumpkins and jalapeno cheese? And the girls doing their Irish dancing?"

"Jesus, I hope not. Kevin said come any time after ten, so we can catch some of the parade. And we're supposed to bring cider."

"Cider?"

"Yeah-" Brendan pulled an ATM receipt from his pocket and squinted, trying to read something scrawled there. "Magyar Farms Organic Flash-Pasteurized Cider. Four gallons."

"Wow. Flash Pasteurized." Tony leaned back in his chair and grinned. "Thanksgiving. I can't hardly wait. Remember when we were kids, watching the parade and stuff? And that story your Uncle Tom always told, about the turkey who ate the Pepperidge Farm Man?"

Brendan laughed. "I forgot about that."

"And Chip Crockett ... Remember how Captain Kangaroo always used to have Thanksgiving dinner, like a real formal dinner-you know, Mister Green Jeans and Dancing Bear saying Grace with all the silverware and good china. And so Chip Crockett started doing that thing with Ooga Booga and Ogden Orff trying to stuff a kielbasa?"

Brendan speared a cherry tomato and shook his head. "Jeez, Tony. How the h.e.l.l do you remember that stuff?"

"Chip Crockett Web page, man! It's like a memory enhancer. Or a time machine, or something."

He hesitated, recalling that weird charged moment with Peter; thought of mentioning it to Brendan, but instead said, "Like when you smell something, or hear something-a song, or the way a balloon smells-and all of a sudden you flash back to when you were really, really little?

Like Peter's age? But you can't remember exactly what it is that you're remembering, because youwere so young then it was before you started remembering things. It's like that."

Brendan stared at him blankly. "Balloons?"

"Sure!" Tony leaned back a little too enthusiastically in his chair, nearly tipped before he came crashing back down. "Oops. Yeah, balloons."

"Tony? What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"I told you: Chip Crockett's Web page! It's all there. All that stuff you thought you forgot when you grew up-"

"Like where I put my Casey Stengel baseball cards?"

"Absolutely. And all those Bosco commercials? And Cocoa Marsh?" Tony pushed aside Brendan's salad and leaned across the table. "It's all in there. Bonomo Turkish Taffy. Enemee Electric Organs. Diver Dan and Baron Barracuda. 'They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha.'

Ooga Booga. Ogden Orff. Everything."