But really that’s how it was, how it’s always been, at least since I was eighteen. No one.
So Susan comforted me and then she told me she thought I needed some support, and she suggested a group that met at the community center in Elmwood, for parents and caregivers of autistic children. Except Dylan wasn’t autistic; I knew he wasn’t. I’d looked up the symptoms and they definitely weren’t his. He made eye contact; he didn’t have “sensory sensitivity”; he didn’t engage in soothing, repetitive activity, unless I counted building with Lego or doing jigsaws. Although he was often silent, it wasn’t from lack of ability. He could speak, but he chose not to.
Still, I knew, to the average observer, he could seem autistic, just because he was different, and shy, and a bit high-strung. I was sure Susan meant well, even if she didn’t understand us at all.
I couldn’t take Dylan to a support group, not even one with people who would be understanding, with lots of soft toys and a soothing atmosphere and all the rest of it. Dylan gets nervous in crowds; he sticks to me like glue at the best of times, even when we’re alone. We only go to the park or library when they’re virtually empty, which means showing up right at opening or right before closing.
Neither could I go to a support group without him, because nobody has taken care of him besides me since Marco left. Marco stopped visiting years ago, even though he also lives in Bloomfield, the next town over. Susan asked about that arrangement too, and I told her that Marco wasn’t involved beyond visits once or twice a year, although he did put some money in my bank account once in a while.
So, for the last four years it has been Dylan and me for every single minute of every single day—and mostly, that’s fine. I like his company. He likes mine. Most of the time, we’re very happy together. I love my son, and I’ve figured out a routine that works for us both. Mostly.
So when Susan gave all her well-meaning and totally improbable suggestions, I just smiled and murmured something vaguely affirmative, all the while knowing she wasn’t going to be able to help me at all.
And she didn’t. She just put us back on the hamster wheel of appointments with therapists and psychologists that were impossible to get to. I tried once, at least. I took Dylan to the pediatrician for a well visit, since he hadn’t been since he was two. He was seen by a junior associate who had never met him before, which could have been horrendous but actually wasn’t.
The doctor was young and friendly, and fortunately seemed unfazed by Dylan’s behavior—sitting on my lap the whole time, not saying a word, and burrowing his head in my chest whenever the doctor tried to talk to him.
But, amazingly, Dylan still passed all the usual checks—his hearing and eyesight were perfect, he could point to an object or arrange things in order, and in the end the doctor said he didn’t see any cause for concern regarding developmental delay—code word for autism—and he sent us on our way with some ridiculous but well-meant advice on children developing at different rates in terms of social behavior.
It was enough, thank goodness, for Susan to leave us alone, saying she’d check up on us in six months.
Sure enough, she came back six months later, when Dylan had just turned six.
I hadn’t taken him to any other appointments, of course, which she already knew, and she walked around the apartment and made little notes and ticks on her clipboard which made me want to scream. What did she see? What was so wrong?
“You share a bedroom?” she asked in a neutral tone that didn’t feel neutral at all.
“There’s only one bedroom in the apartment.” I didn’t think it was as weird as it might have seemed—the only way Dylan went to sleep is if I was lying next to him. So yes, we slept in the same bed. It’s easier. And anyway, what about all those people in the Middle Ages who slept, like, six to a bed? That wasn’t weird, was it?
Susan came into the kitchen, which was messy, I knew. I usually saved doing the dishes till the end of the day, when Dylan was asleep. I cringed at the way she looked at everything—the dirty dishes piled in the sink, the spilled cereal on