For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,7
the Asperger’s kicks into overdrive and he gets into a dark mood, you’d better give him a wide berth and lock away the sharp objects. An Asperger’s tantrum is like a regular tantrum, but on Jolt! Cola.
“How’d the day go?” I asked him.
“Fine.” A tornado could tear through his school, killing half his classmates, and he’d say “fine.” On the other hand, let him lose one Pokémon card he has 14 copies of, and the day is “terrible.” So I’ll take “fine.”
He took his books out of his backpack and got straight to his homework. Like most kids with autism, Ethan is a creature of ritual. He does his homework as soon as he gets home. Let him wait until later, even a half-hour later, and there will be a scene resembling King Kong’s rampage after the infamous flashbulb incident. Ritual can be good.
By this time, Leah had also made it home. She goes to a so-called primary school. In a year, she’ll begin attending Ethan’s elementary school. She gets to and from school on a bus. When the bus lets her off in the afternoon, she walks the two doors down from the corner “all by herself,” since she is now, at seven, officially “a big girl.”
When Leah enters a room, she takes it over through sheer force of personality. This afternoon, she slammed the door behind her, hung up her backpack on the last remaining banister hook, and smiled. “Hi, Daddy.” She need do no more—that child has me wrapped around all ten of her fingers and a number of her toes. I have extracted from her a solemn agreement that she always call me “Daddy,” no matter how old either one of us gets. In return, I have agreed never to call her “Pussycat” in front of her friends. I got the better end of the deal on that one.
Leah is a peanut—in the fifth percentile for height in her age group. It actually suits her beautifully, since she has raised being cute to an art form, and being small adds to the effect.
“How’s my girl today?”
“Good.” See previous observation re: comments on the day. I don’t think she’s ever said anything except “good.” A couple of times she’s come home in tears, and when I asked how the day had been, she said, “good.”
She was already working away on her homework when I forced her to come over and give me a hug. Leah hugs are renowned in my family as the best hugs in the Western Hemisphere, and they are a highlight of any day. She certainly wasn’t getting away without one today.
Once they were busily ensconced in homework, I decided I’d better get to work on what I had decided to call the Beckwirth story. Calling it “the Beckwirth case” would have been just too Jim Rockford. I started by calling Ladowski in his law office—not the borough office—and telling him that I was investigating. He tried, unsuccessfully, to keep the smirk out of his voice. He also filled me in on some of the details.
He said Gary Beckwirth had been a web specialist for a brokerage house in “The City” (nobody in New Jersey ever actually says “New York”) until hitting on exactly the right dot com to invest in and make himself a pile of money. At the age of 46, he was handsome and rich, but I had to work for him anyway.
Madlyn, 44, had been a college student when she met young Gary and fell head over heels. Problem was, every other girl in the dorm fell head over heels for Gary, too, so she had to make herself stand out. Madlyn wasn’t the most beautiful girl in the dorm, or even on that floor, but she made sure she slept with Gary first, and that had forged a certain kind of loyalty. I guess what the beer company says is true— you never forget your first girl. Gary had his flings, but he kept coming back to Madlyn. When he was 22 and in business school, he came back once too often, and Madlyn got pregnant. They knew all their options, but still chose to go the old-fashioned route, and got married. Two months later, Madlyn miscarried.
Bucking the odds, they stayed married, Ladowski continued. Gary worked, and Madlyn finished her degree in history, with an eye toward law school. But they didn’t have enough money to swing the tuition during those years. And by the time they did, they