Heather A. Ryan
Notes to Self on Retrospection and Humor
2016. Near the chalkboard your husband stands with your son who is spinning in circles. He’s trying to keep him under control, calm. You’re talking to another parent, pretending to ignore the scene the way other people are pretending not to look.
“Wow, autism. Really?” the man says, when you tell him, with something akin to awe and faux surprise. It’s the same reaction every time. It never changes, not really, though you’ve noticed that men are more condescending, tend to ask “how do you do it, two kids, and then this one?” after you tell them, while women offer practical advice, a doctor they heard about in Seattle, a naturopath in Salem. Everyone’s heard something; autism is the diagnosis du jour. Some people tell you about food stamps or disability checks, some look your son over with an appraising eye, some gesture at their children running amok, say it isn’t any different. You invent things, tell them that SSI is really good now, that Medicare is fab. You, like always, make it easier for them. You’re ready to do the same with this man, if you need to.
“Yeah,” you say, because there is nowhere to take this conversation, at least not right now, with a stranger. You watch for his reaction, steel yourself. You’ve learned that people can say anything in this moment, that there’s no real way to protect yourself. This father has twin boys—both of whom are precocious, beautiful, loved without cost—in your son’s kindergarten class. Out of the corner of your eye you spot your husband trying to keep up with your son.
The father gets a sudden expansive look on his face. “It’s great that they let disabled kids in school now!” he says. He is beaming with his small generosity.
“Yes,” you say to this father. “And next year they’re going to start letting the coloreds in, too.”
The father takes a breath, looks around the room for his wife. “It was good talking with you,” he says, looking hurt, horrified.
You feel guilty, sick, a familiar feeling in the pit of your stomach, though this will not survive your memory of the exchange, and the precise moment when all the exhaustion and frustration and embarrassment and pride focused themselves into a white hot anger. How you’ll look back as if into a scene from someone else’s life. You are not, you tell people, normally this caustic.
Out of the corner of your eye you catch sight of your husband and your son, who is windmilling his arms. You remember when your husband laughed at your jokes, the nights he kissed your belly, talked to the baby inside.
You imagine how you’ll recast this man in the story you’ll tell friends, how you’ll call him The Man, and close your eyes as though sleepy or stupid, crinkle your forehead, and it will become something funny and no longer hurtful. You’re good at this. You’ve done it a lot.
Your son screeches, knocks pencils off the teacher’s desk. Everyone pretends they don’t notice. When your husband lays his large-knuckled hand on your son’s head he looks, for a moment, like he’s trying to hold him down, keep him from flying away.
2014. “There are more important things to worry about than his first day of preschool.” This is what you tell your husband on the car ride over.
He cocks an eyebrow, a trademark of your marriage, a mix of distance and cautious affection.
“For example, appropriate shoe wear for Thing One,” you say, referring to your daughter, who has just started kindergarten.
Your husband turns to the road, smiles thinly at the pet name. He’s mentioned several times that the joke is old, no longer funny. This is because he doesn’t understand that the essential quality of humor is the ability to leave some people out while letting others in.
“They have rules about the shoes. No dark-colored soles. No open-toes. No slip-ons.” You poke a corner of the carpet with your foot, pull at its frayed ends, notice the metal rusting underneath. You look up. “Or slip-ons are okay as long they have at least two rows of Velcro.”
“What if they hate him?” he asks in a voice so small it reminds you of your brother, the youngest, on the nights he’d call through the wall separating your rooms.
“This is Portland,” you say, gesturing with sweeping arms. “They can barely work up the energy to ‘agree to disagree.’ They can’t manage hate.” You turn, look at your son in his car seat. He stares out the window, flapping his hands and laughing at the buildings and cars slicing by. “Right, Thing Two?” you say, even though you know he won’t answer you. The rest of the way, all down the highway lined with pine trees and the red blurs of queuing lights, you purposely ignore your husband’s worried looks, and the way he’s bouncing his leg—the left—as he drives.
2013. The doctor’s expression before he delivers the diagnosis is the thing you notice. You know this look, how people empty themselves the moment before telling bad news, admitting the truth, breaking your heart.
When the doctor leaves, saying, “I’ll give you a few moments,” you realize you are angry. You are angry because this man expects you to cry, expects you to take the news—“mentally retarded,” “life-long disability,” “institution”—like a normal person.
Your husband sits on the couch looking stunned. When he opens his mouth to talk his lips stick together, as though he’s waking from a long sleep. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he says. “I can’t believe this is happening.” He licks his lips. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
Your husband—his voice, the flat terror, the repetition—scares you.
You stand up and go to the doctor’s desk, look for something, anything. The office is decorated in dark brown leather and African-esque statues and huge, leafy plants, and glass vases filled with colored rocks.
“It’s like a Pottery Barn showroom in here,” you say. You are surprised at the glibness in your voice, but you know it feels better than anything else would right now.
Your husband looks up. “Is that good?” he asks, confused.
“Yes.” You nod. “Nothing bad ever happens in Pottery Barn.” You find the doctor’s pen and pick it up. You feel its weight, its thickness, the smooth silver cold under your fingers while you unscrew the pen. It’s expensive, probably European. You gut it, pull the insides out. Then you catch your husband’s eye, hold the pen’s innards over the gap between the couch and the wall. “Fuck him,” you say, making your voice hard, as your drop the pen’s contents. You say this not because you think the doctor is wrong, but because you still believe in your anger.
2011. You always notice the gym walls of the playgroup—walls muralized with healthy-looking children—in exactly equal numbers white, brown, tan, and yellow—playing under rainbows, sans irony. You embrace your son—he’s over a year, but not yet talking—and let your daughter go play while you sit in the half circle of other mothers. One of them admires your red leather clogs. You tell them how you found them at Nordstrom Rack for twelve dollars. All of the mothers murmur approval.
“I don’t know how you find such good deals,” one of them says.
“It’s just luck,” you say.
The shoes were $115. You only wear them here.
Your daughter runs up and wipes her snotty nose on your shirt.
“Thank you, Thing One!” you say. The mothers laugh at your nickname for her.
When the playgroup director puts up a big sign about sharing, you use your education to do a Marxist critique. You swirl your Starbuck’s latte. “Communist Playgroup,” you say, with that same wry tone all your college boyfriends said they loved. The same one they all came to hate.
The other mothers laugh, say you’re brilliant. They say you’re the funniest person they know.
2010. While your husband is working the graveyard shift at a glass factory, you go into labor. You try not to panic when no one answers at the factory’s front desk. You realize that, of course, it’s the middle of the night. You have never tried calling when he was actually working. You know labor—you’ve done this once before—and you know you’re deep into it, each contraction already a minute long and three minutes apart.
You pack a bag for your daughter. Later, you’ll laugh over what you put in there: four days’ change of clothes, snacks, videos, finger paints. Right now, though, you throw anything you might need into your own bag, packing as though you can’t imagine coming home again.
Between contractions, you call your best friend first, then your aunt, then a woman you know from work. When no one answers—it is, after all, three days before Christmas—and the middle of the night—you hang up, then hold on to the kitchen counter as a wave of nausea hits you.
You could do this alone or you could call for help. This is what it has come down to. The latter horrifies you. You think of all it would entail: a nervous, pale-faced firefighter between your legs, the baby born on the living room floor, the shaky voice of your 9-1-1 call on the local news.
You grip the edge of the counter until your hands spasm. Your daughter is asleep and you can’t wake her now. You remember a flash, something brief, about some tribe in Africa where the women go off to deliver their babies alone. You could do the same.
Between contractions, you grab an armload of towels, two old picnic blankets. In the bathroom, you focus only on the first thing that needs to get done, then the next. The bathroom is bright and generic, a tiny room in an apartment you’ve never bothered to decorate. You turn off the lights, leave the door open, so only the light from the hallway illuminates the room. This is bearable, not having to see everything at once.
The pain in your stomach is excruciating, a long, slow rip up your abdomen, against your spine. You run bathwater while you get the phone, a glass of water, a glass of juice. You lay the towels on the tile floor, the blankets just outside the room. You leave the phone within reach, and dial 9 and 1. You will only have to hit one more button to call for help. This gives you assurance, sets a bar. You will not need this, you tell yourself. You are stronger than that.
Another contraction. You are taking off your clothes when it hits, but you want to get into the tub. You aren’t sure why, but you believe the water will calm you, make this easier. You pull off your nightshirt, your underwear, and see thick ribbons of mucus and blood. You have to pee suddenly—everything comes now without warning—and you straddle the toilet because you’re unable to lower yourself to the seat. Only some of it makes it in. Most runs down your legs onto the floor. There is blood there, too. You try to stop but can’t and it’s a minute before you realize it’s because your water has broken.
Quickly—or as quickly as you can—you step into the tub. Your legs shake as you lower yourself, and you moan, not with pain, but with the control it takes to make your body do this. As soon as you lean back, you feel it: the baby’s head moving down. You scream, push even though you don’t want to. It hurts, there is ripping, and when you look down into the tub, you can see, even in this light, blood in thin swirls coming from between your legs. And then there is the head, an incredible burning. You push against your will because you want it to be over. Your flesh tears, a feeling so deep it is almost like sound. You scream again, look frantically around the bathroom. You wish then for anyone, even the juvenile paramedic.
You grip the edge of the tub and push. You push and scream, let your head fall back. There is a moment of fullness, more ripping, and then sudden emptiness. You reach down into the water, pull your baby up and lay him on your chest. He sputters, cries, and you are helpless with relief.
Only then do you call 9-1-1. You let them come, the paramedics, the ambulance. By the time they arrive, your son is nursing. On the way to the hospital, they look him over.
“Healthy as any newborn I’ve ever seen,” the paramedic says.
“So I didn’t completely screw him up?”
“Not yet, anyways.”
You laugh, but even the paramedic, the epitome of pale-faced, young paramedics, can hear your relief. He tells you that a ride in an ambulance is better than a ride in a limo, and on a lark, you tell him you expect a mimosa when you arrive. He plays along, mimes a notebook and pen, and asks what else you would like in your room. You order a lobster dinner, then lilies in a glass vase.
Years later, there will be moments—at the kitchen sink, or in your apartment, where the kids spend half their time—when you try to remember who you were, and how you got here. How did I get here, you will ask again and again, as though the woman in the ambulance might be able to answer. Shouldn’t she be able to answer?
You still remember the rain and the wind, and that when the ambulanced rocked back and forth you winced, then smiled in case anyone was watching.