Are You Alone on Purpose? (14 page)

Alison didn't even have time to scream. She landed quite safely, half on top of Harry, half on top of the chair. Frightened, she stared at him. She saw him looking back at her, his eyes as angry, as startled, as shocked, as hers. She felt his body under hers. And she saw his eyes change, into . . . into something. Awareness? For a moment she couldn't move, couldn't speak.

Then she rolled away, fast. She scrambled to her knees on the path, pushing the chair away.

“Say something. Are you okay?”

After an endless moment Harry spoke. “Shit,” he said.

Alison thought that meant he was okay. He looked pissed off, too pissed off to be hurt. “I'm sorry,” she said. Her mind started to clear. They hadn't landed very hard, really. “Are you hurt? Can you move?”

“I don't feel like moving,” Harry said. “God, you're stupid.”

“I am not!” Alison snapped back, relieved. It felt good to be angry again, to leave that odd little moment of awareness behind. “And anyway, you asked for it!” She stopped in horror. But no, it was okay, Harry was shifting his torso and arms. Then he pushed himself up to a sitting position, keeping his legs straight out in front of him, putting his hands behind and leaning on them. Alison watched. His arms were shaking slightly.

“What the fuck are you staring at?”

“There's a tree two inches behind you,” Alison said. “You could lean against that.” For a second she thought Harry would be too stubborn to listen, but then he did lean back a little, slowly, until he had his back against the tree trunk. He stared at Alison, defiant, the whole time.

“You're going to have to get me back in the chair.”

“Of course—” Alison started to say, and then she narrowed her eyes. “No. First you take it back.”

“Take what back? That you're stupid?” Harry looked scornful.

“No. The other thing you said—that I don't know what's really important.” Alison adjusted her position on the ground, sitting, pulling her legs up in front of her, and encircling them with her arms. She stared defiantly at Harry. He was the stupid one. He never thought about anyone but himself. “You take it back,” she said. “Go ahead. Do it.”

“Why should I?” Harry was incredulous.

“Because you know better,” Alison said. “All week I thought about you. Do you think that was easy? Do you think after everything you said last year—about my being a nerd, and about my brother—that it was easy? Huh? Do you think it was easy being nice to you?”

“I never asked you for anything,” Harry said. He had gone pale.

“No,” Alison said. “You didn't—”

“And it's not any of your business,” Harry said. He wasn't looking at her now. He was looking away, at the chair turned on its side, out of his reach. And suddenly Alison realized she had made a terrible mistake. She had told Harry he was obligated to her. And unless she said something now to make it okay, Harry would be gone, beyond her reach, left alone at school—left alone, period.

Somehow it was important to her that that not happen.

She put her head down, cheek pressing against her knees, no longer looking at Harry. “You used to call my brother a retard,” she said finally. She wasn't sure why she was talking about Adam. “But he isn't. He's autistic. Nobody is really sure what that means, but Adam's smart about a lot of stuff. He's better at some number stuff than I am, even.” She paused. “My mother says he doesn't have a lot of social skills. Sort of like me, maybe. Nerds aren't too social.

“He's my twin brother, you know,” she said finally.

“So?” Harry said. His voice was quiet, unemphatic.

“So don't say I don't think about important things.”

“Okay,” said Harry, after a long while. “I won't.”

Alison raised her head from her knees. Harry was facing her again. He was still pale. She scrubbed at her eyes. He watched. And then, quietly, he said, “I still don't understand what you're doing here with me.”

“I know,” said Alison. She was suddenly exhausted. “It's not my business.”

They looked at each other in silence for another moment. Then Harry spoke. “Well, it isn't,” he said.

Alison took a deep breath. “I've made it my business,” she said, simply.

They were quiet.

“I don't like cemeteries,” Harry said finally. “Do you think you could help me into my chair?”

Alison looked dubiously at the overturned chair.

“Look, I know what to do,” said Harry. “I just need a little help.”

“I'll try,” said Alison. She looked at Harry.

He looked back.

Neither smiled.

“
D
o you know anything about autism?” Harry asked Dr. Jefferies.

They were in the middle of their Tuesday afternoon session, with Dr. Jefferies asking the usual sorts of questions about Harry's father and school, while Harry parried with as few words as possible. Silences were hallmarks of their sessions; this particular one had gone on for nearly four minutes before Harry, to his own surprise, interrupted it.

He could see Dr. Jefferies was surprised too. She leaned forward, and the words “Why do you—” came out before she stopped herself. She sat back. “I know a little about it,” she said.

Harry waited, watching her watch him. “Could you please tell me what little you know?” he said, politely.

For some reason Dr. Jefferies smiled. She looked off into space for a moment and then looked back at Harry. She said slowly, “Autism is still an enigma. We don't know exactly what it is or what causes it. It's really just a name given to people, often children, who share some odd behaviors—”

“Like what?”

“Well, one common autistic behavior is not talking, or just echoing back what other people say. An autistic child seems to have difficulty learning that words have meaning. The child might even appear deaf.”

Harry shook his head. Alison's brother wasn't like that.

Dr. Jefferies was watching him carefully. “That's only one kind of autistic behavior. Some autistics grow out of that stage, though I think they might always have trouble with pronunciation or with voice tone.” She paused. “Does that sound more familiar?”

“Maybe,” said Harry. “Go on.”

“Another key thing is that autistics seem to be in their own world. They don't interact normally with other people, dislike being touched, behave oddly in social situations. And some autistic people may also be retarded.” Dr. Jefferies paused. She gave Harry a straight look. “Harry, this is a big subject. Help me out. I can concentrate on what you want to know if you'll tell me what that is.”

He didn't really have a choice. “I know this boy,” he said carefully, after a minute. “His sister says he's autistic.”

“Tell me about him.”

“He does act strange. I always thought he was retarded, but he's not stupid, you know? He's going to have a bar mitzvah, and my father says...”

“What does your father say?”

“That he's really bright. Adam—that's his name—picked up Hebrew like it was nothing, and he's already mostly memorized his Haftorah portion. He came over to our house for a lesson last Sunday, and I heard him singing it.”

Dr. Jefferies nodded. “Sometimes autistics have special skills. A fantastic memory or the ability to play music by ear. Or great mathematical talent. It's almost as though it's to make up for the other losses. It sounds like this boy, Adam, may have some of these abilities.”

Harry nodded, thinking. They sat in silence for a few moments.

“Harry?” said Dr. Jefferies gently. “Why are you so interested in this boy?”

Harry sat up, startled. “I'm not!” he snapped. “His sister—” He broke off. Shit, he thought.

“His sister?” said Dr. Jefferies. “You mentioned her before. What's her name?”

“Forget it,” said Harry. “It's not important.”

“Does she go to your school?” Dr. Jefferies persisted.

“Yeah.”

“Is she a friend of yours?”

No, thought Harry. I don't know. Maybe. “She cares about her brother,” he said. It just came out, the way his question about autism had. He stared at Dr. Jefferies defiantly.

“She sounds very nice,” Dr. Jefferies said quietly. “This girl. Adam's sister.”

Harry stared at Dr. Jefferies. Then he looked away.

There was another silence. Harry could feel Dr. Jefferies looking at him, could feel her trying to work her way into his head. Finally she spoke. “Harry? You said your father is getting Adam ready for a bar mitzvah?”

Harry looked up. “Yes.”

“I'm a little puzzled. Is that part of his job, training kids for bar mitzvahs?”

Harry shook his head. “Not usually. There are tutors who do it for most kids.”

“Then why—”

“I don't know,” Harry interrupted. He didn't say that he'd been wondering himself. “Maybe nobody else would do it. I don't know. Okay?”

“You sound a little tense.”

“Why don't you just—” Harry swallowed what he'd been about to say. “I don't know why he's tutoring Adam himself,” he repeated, slowly, word by word.

Dr. Jefferies considered that. Then she asked, “Do you have any theories?”

“No,” Harry said. Who did she think he was, Sigmund Freud? Theories. Yeah, he had a theory. His father liked Adam because the kid did just what he was told. Parroted Hebrew right back. No attitude. And when the lesson was over, he went home and left the rabbi alone.

 

After the session, Harry called The Ride. For once, they had a van near the hospital, and it arrived fairly quickly. But there were two other passengers to be dropped off first, so it would be a long drive. Harry didn't care. He settled his chair far back in the van, so the others wouldn't talk to him, and stared out the window as the van left the hospital and headed over the Charles River. He wanted to think.

Dr. Jefferies's definition of autism sounded like Adam, all right, but knowing more about autism hadn't helped Harry. He still didn't understand what Alison had meant the other day in the cemetery. Why was she hanging around him after the way he'd treated her? She'd talked about her brother, but what did Adam and his autism have to do with Harry?

Dr. Jefferies had a good point: What was Adam doing at Harry's house, learning Hebrew from his father and getting trained for a bar mitzvah? His father had never before tutored one on one—not even Harry. What were his reasons?

Of course, his father had mooned over Adam right from the first time he'd seen him at the synagogue. Harry closed his eyes briefly. Then, determinedly, he turned his thoughts back to Alison.

At the cemetery, after she'd talked about her brother, she'd said she'd made Harry her business. But she hadn't said why, and Harry hadn't asked.

Is she a friend of yours? Dr. Jefferies had asked.

Once Harry would have said that someone like Alison Shandling could never be his friend. But he was starting to understand her. Even the really weird stuff about her, like being a math brain.

She had spoken about that only yesterday, during lunch in the cafeteria. He'd been looking at her math book. Indecipherable stuff with strange-looking equations.

“It's interesting to me,” Alison had said, watching.

Harry had rolled his eyes. “I just don't get it.”

She'd wrinkled her brow, and then, to Harry's astonishment, tried to explain. “I guess . . . this'll sound weird, but math is almost a
place
to me . . . a place—a universe, really—where everything makes sense. Or would if we knew more. You can't see this universe with your eyes, but the more you learn, the more clearly you can see it without your eyes. It's real. And it's so beautiful.” She'd paused, and then, unexpectedly, smiled. He'd been staring at her. “I know you think I'm nuts,” she'd said. “But that's okay.”

But he had not been thinking that. He had been feeling—almost jealous. “I don't think you're nuts,” he had said, slowly. “Just—you're really on your own planet.”

Alison had looked surprised. “Isn't everyone?” she had said. “When you think about it?”

It was a new idea for Harry. He had had a sudden vision of his father, alone on a planet, spinning in space with the ghost of his wife, trapped there.

In that moment, staring at Alison, Harry had had the odd sense that a puzzle piece had slipped, finally, into place.

Not that it helped.

W
ith half an ear, Alison listened while Adam sang. His voice traveled clearly through the open door of his bedroom, down the hall, and into the study where her mother was finishing a term paper and Alison was checking through the bar mitzvah invitation list one last time. Adam practiced chanting his Haftorah portion every day at four o'clock for exactly half an hour, and Alison could almost have sung along with him by now. With his bar mitzvah still two weeks away, Adam was word, if not note, perfect.

The invitations had gone out nearly two weeks ago, and responses were pouring in. Her father had put Alison in charge of tabulating them so that they could give a final count to the caterer. He had taken over the whole process—guest list, invitation selection and ordering, mailing, responses, hotel arrangements for out-of-towners, everything.

Alison hadn't realized that Adam's bar mitzvah was going to be such a big deal. At first, her mother had spoken of a small affair, maybe fifty close relatives and friends, with a buffet luncheon at the house after the service. “My mother and Rosalie will help,” Mrs. Shandling had said. “Crudités and dip, pasta salad, cold chicken, French bread. Maybe gazpacho...”