Like No Other Boy Read online

  “Now ain’t that somethin’,” he intoned. I turned away from Tommy and realized we were surrounded by a growing group of onlookers.

  “Hey, Brandy,” I heard a voice say. I spied a tall woman in a white dress standing next to her black-haired female friend. Smiles had blossomed on their faces. “Look at that kid. The chimps can’t take their eyes off that little boy. It’s so cute!”

  On the other side of us was a lanky teenager with pimples on his chin. He’d whipped out his phone and was recording Tommy’s interactions, the way the chimp was imitating Tommy. “This is so rad,” he mumbled.

  Oh, God. A YouTube moment. I thought about tapping the kid on the shoulder and making him stop. But why cause a scene? Besides, when you were out in public, wasn’t privacy a thing of the past? Maybe I should record this, too. But my cell phone was just about out of battery power.

  “Whose kid is that?” asked a man behind me as I swung around.

  “There’s the dad,” a woman said in a New York accent. She was short, with black hair and black glasses. She pointed at me. “The tall guy with the Padres cap.”

  “That’s me, all right.” I raised my hand slightly and everyone laughed. I felt my face flame up as fatherly pride melted like warm butter in my chest. I stood a little taller, straightening my shoulders.

  Tommy flicked his fingers even more vigorously. Then he made the sign for play: hands turned sideways, shaped like the sign for Texas Longhorns, wiggling up and down. Then back to the flicking, which looked as if he were somehow tapping out the primate version of Morse Code.

  Big Guy opened his mouth wide and let out a jungle-shriek. He returned the finger flicking, and then wiggled his hands and held them in a way that looked awfully similar to Tommy’s “play” sign. Wispy Hair tried to shove Big Guy out of the way, but the big chimp refused to budge.

  Tommy and Big Guy swayed a minute more, continuing to gaze at each other, flapping fingers and bobbing heads. Big Guy did a little dance to the beat of Tommy’s hand clapping, and then Big Guy clapped his hands and it was Tommy’s turn to dance, elbows angled out and knees bent as he hopped up and down. It was amazing. The crowd resounded with laughter and a few Ooos and Aahhs. The teen continued recording, looking amused.

  Then just like that, Tommy backed a few feet away from the glass, and the chimps scampered off to their playing, grooming, and swinging around, completely ignoring the humans, as if the show was over. A few kids tried to replicate what Tommy had done, trying to get the chimps’ attention. They failed to get a response. I just stood there, keeping an eye on Tommy.

  “Play . . . make . . . chimps.” Tommy gazed up at me. He made the play sign, then the chimp sign.

  “I see that,” I said. “I had no idea you liked chimps so much!”

  “Do, Daddy. Doooo.”

  I reveled in another delightful moment of Tommy’s lingering eye contact and in the brightness on his face. He seemed unlocked by the experience, transformed.

  Before we left the exhibit, I turned around and gazed once more at the chimps, who were still scampering around. They were so human-like, with their contemplative gazes, their self-conscious movements, their gestures. Surely, there was more than a bit of Homo sapiens running in their blood. And were we humans more chimp-like than we realized?

  Maybe some of us more than others. I smiled to myself, thinking of the bearded man I’d bumped into, then edged closer to Tommy, who now fidgeted and hung his head, silent as ever. What was Tommy contemplating? His shoes? The shadows that dangled around him?

  “Those chimpies really like you, Tommy.” I crouched down to his level. A bead of sweat dotted his upper lip.

  He didn’t say anything, but he gave me another wondrous moment of direct eye contact and I drank it in. Then snot bubbled from his nostrils. I produced a tissue from Mister Backpack, which was stocked with a change of clothes, tissues, band aids, the works, and tried to wipe Tommy’s face clean. He grimaced and jerked and twisted away from me, but I persisted.

  “Nooo!” He folded his lower lip in defiance.

  “Come on, son. Let me just wipe your . . . there,” I said when I was done. “Thank you.”

  “Daddeeee.” Tommy rubbed his nose with the palm of his hand, reddening his nostrils. His stubborn refusal to allow me to touch him had always hollowed me out. He pointed back at the chimps. “Like.” He spoke loudly, then expanded his arms like wings and made the “like play” sign. “Like chimpies, Daddy. Big lots!”

  “Well, that’s great, Tom-Tom.” I beamed, grinning.

  “Chimpies,” Tommy said. “Chimpies.” He clapped his hands and jumped up and down, excitement flashing on his face.

  As we headed away from the chimps, Tommy shuffled along by my side, his hands in his mouth again, walking with that pelican strut. We passed a small sign planted at the edge of the primate area. I stopped to read the words:

  Did you know chimpanzees only have babies every four to five years? We are very proud to announce that here at the San Diego Zoo, Wanda G, our newest chimp, is expecting a baby in approximately eight months!

  I read the sign twice, blinking rapidly. Damned if there wasn’t a picture of Wanda G herself on the sign—the chimp who looked awfully like the one Tommy had said was pregnant.

  I stood still, hairs on the back of my neck tingling. How in the world had he known?

  * * *

  We stopped at the Zoo Brew and I bought an iced latte, something I really couldn’t afford given the dire state of my job situation. But what good was living without an iced latte every once in a while? I mean, really. I tried to interest Tommy in a treat, but he refused.

  I found a shaded bench near the lake, where ducks glided past and children played around the edges, their shrill voices rising in the air. Walking behind me and finally catching up, Tommy plopped down next to me on the bench, staring into space as he put one finger up his right nostril and another in his mouth. Was he just zoning out? Or was he contemplating his time with the “chimpies?”

  I was, for sure. Tommy didn’t have the reading skills to read that sign. It was totally out of the question. And yet he had known Wanda G was pregnant.

  I studied my son’s face, pensive and twisted with worry—the way he almost always looked. Now he stood, kicked at the ground, then rubbed the side of his head, where the infamous scar was. Two and a half years ago, while Cheryl and I were still barely hanging on to the threads of our marriage, he’d fallen in the yard outside our home and hit his head. We’d rushed him to the hospital, bleeding and nearly unconscious. I’d been out of my mind with fear. The diagonal scar on the left side of his head still remained, along with the painful memory of that awful day, the emotional scar as real as ever.

  “Hungry, Daddeee,” Tommy said, rubbing his stomach.

  “Know what? Me, too.”

  Ten minutes later, we returned to our bench and I was cutting Tommy’s hot dog into circles and squares, throwing away half the bun, and adding exactly two dabs of ketchup. Three dabs would throw him into a fit.

  He needed his food sliced into shapes. That was his way. Squares, circles, triangles—the geometric diet.

  We’d tried all kinds of diets—gluten-free, non-dairy, vegetarian, even camel milk, and on and on—but nothing seemed to help him. Like all autistic children, his gastric issues abounded—constipation, diarrhea. The works. If only treatment was as simple as choosing tofu over hamburgers, apples over potato chips.

  When we finished our meal, Tommy took my plate, and along with his, tossed our trash into a nearby receptacle, then returned to the bench.

  “Good job.” He’d offered to take my plate without me even prompting him. I was impressed. I had the urge to mess up his hair. Since he always moved away whenever I tried to touch him, I restrained myself. And yet, the distances he kept from me, emotional and physical, his intractable inwardness, had somehow drawn me closer to him than I was to anyone else I’d ever known.

  “Want anything else to eat?” I asked. />
  Tommy just bit his fingers.

  “No, Tom-Tom. Not your fingers. You’re not that hungry, are you?”

  I smiled. He didn’t get the joke, this one and only child of mine.

  He’d planted his hooks deep inside me, really, ever since he was born, a normal-looking, beautiful healthy baby boy. We’d named him Thomas after Cheryl’s grandfather, who died just a few years ago. I liked the name, solid-sounding, an oak of a name. The delivery went without a problem, and we proudly brought our little bundle of joy home where we had prepared a nursery. Cheryl and I felt blessed. We watched him curl his miraculous little fingers into fists, felt the smoothness of his angelic face, adored his inconceivably perfect nails.

  Ever since I’d witnessed him coming into this world, I felt it was my duty, my obligation, to see this son of mine through whatever hardships he endured. If love is the bond between two people, ours was surely made of emotional superglue.

  “Tommy? You ready to go, or do you want to see something else?” I tried to get his attention.

  Nothing. He looked everywhere but at me.

  “Tommy?”

  He looked down and scratched at his shoes, messing with the laces. He hyper-focused on them and I just let him go at it. I crossed one leg over the other and simply sat there, not wanting to get up from the bench either. This March Saturday afternoon was just too ridiculously gorgeous, the breeze too hypnotic; seventy-two degrees, crisp and sunny.

  Leaning back, I studied the crowds of people roaming past us, herds of them, like buffalo wandering over sun-swept plains of pavement. They formed an interesting display, these zoogoers: the long-legged females with their designer purses, their smartphone-appendages and stylish footwear; mothers leading toddlers by their hands accompanied by paunchy, pale-faced fathers whose twitchy expressions and long faces made them look like they were suffering from ESPN withdrawal; the weirdly tattooed and nose-ringed; the proud, grey-haired grandparents. I smiled. Maybe the real zoo existed outside the cages, and the true spectators were the animals, calmly eyeing this odd assortment of human beings who traipsed by. Tommy and I were just two more animals in the pack.

  I recalled Tommy’s interactions with the chimps again. How was it possible? I would’ve Googled chimps and children with autism to see if there was any known relationship if my phone wasn’t about to run out of juice. I still couldn’t get over what had happened.

  Still, we’d been at the zoo over two hours and now it was definitely time to go. Too much time out and about was not a good thing. It would lead to fatigue and most likely, a Tommy tantrum.

  “Okay, Tom-Tom, ready to go?” I asked, turning to him.

  “Beanie,” Tommy said. He tossed two monotonically shaped and packaged words out: “Beanie. Me.”

  I reached into Mister Backpack and withdrew Radar the bat, Tommy’s ever present Beanie Baby, and handed it to him. Radar was black all over except for his white flappy ears and looked mostly like a rat with wings. But it was cuddly and soft. Theirs was an intimate relationship. Tommy was always playing with the stuffed pet and at times even spoke to Radar in bizarre, nonsensical phrases.

  Tommy zoomed Radar in the air, then snuggled the bat as we trooped through the massive parking lot, joining the rest of the Home sapiens who were checking their phones, hurrying kids along, or sipping sodas.

  I glanced at the leather-strapped watch I was wearing: It was 2:45.

  The watch was a gift from Cheryl, my ex.

  What a ride, my marriage. Yes, we’d had a history all right, beginning with our own version of the Garden of Eden, and ending with Exodus.

  As we approached my cringe-worthy blue Altima in the vast parking lot—we were in section CC-12—a security alarm went off from someone’s nearby car. The loud, continuously beeping horn startled Tommy, who slammed his hands over his ears, doubled over, and let out a high-pitched scream. Loud sounds almost always threw him into a fit. The doctors had a name for it: hyperacusis, but naming the problem did nothing to solve it. Radar slipped out of his hands and fell to the ground. As the blaring continued, the car’s lights flashed as well. Adrenaline pumped through me, my mind in a whirl.

  “Ouuuu! Eeeee!” Tommy pounded his feet on the asphalt, the delicate lines of his face all twisted into crooked pathways. “Ouuuu! Stop!”

  Passersby gawked at us, some slowly taking it all in while others quickly scurried by.

  “Ouuu! Eeeeeeeee!”

  “Settle down, Tom-Tom.” I crouched next to him and kept my voice calm, trying to find that smooth surface in an emotional undercurrent that only wanted to suck me under. I whispered as gently as I could. “If you settle down, I’ll give you a token.” I reached into Mister Backpack. “I’ll make this one red. How’s that sound? Red’s your favorite color, right?” I had twelve tokens ready to go. If he earned all twelve, he would be allowed a bevy of sugar packets to play with. He loved playing with sugar packets, arranging them in all kinds of shapes and patterns on the kitchen floor.

  But when I showed him a token, Tommy just knocked it from my hand and grew even more upset. The token fell to the ground, an unwanted little orb, spinning away.

  He screamed even louder, closing his eyes, his face screwed up into a fierce contortion. “Ooouuu!”

  The horn had stopped blaring, but it didn’t matter. The residual aftershock lived on. Tommy went berserk now, entering into full tantrum mode, and there was no telling how long it would last. I didn’t dare try to move him. Once, I’d tried to pick him up while he was in the midst of a tantrum and he’d poked me in the eye and I’d strained my back. No, it was not a good idea.

  This much was true: if raising a child with autism and dealing with all its responsibilities had placed me in the major leagues of fatherhood, Tommy’s tantrums had upgraded me to the World Series.

  Tommy wailed as if I were beating him. His eyes turned inward and unfocused.

  “Noooouuuu!” He doubled over again and started breathing in quick, successive spasms; tiny gulps of air, snot bubbling from his nostrils. “Nooouuu!” My only hope was to wait it out. I felt myself go red in the face as he self-stimulated, shaking and wriggling his fingers in front of his eyes. He bit the backs of his hands, twisted his head side to side. The backs of his hands started to bleed.

  “Ooooouuuuu . . .” He ran his tongue around his lips.

  “Tommy, please.” I spoke gently, making sure I didn’t aggravate him anymore than he already was. “Can you stop that? Please?”

  I pulled his hands away from his mouth, and he quickly returned them. I clenched my teeth and sighed. Just as I was about to try another token, a tall woman wearing a flowery dress approached us, stepping right into our daytime nightmare.

  “Is he okay?” she asked timidly as Tommy proceeded to cry out and slap his ears, then stomp on the ground and scream at the sky.

  She was holding her daughter’s hand, a child of around four or five, with freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose and wide eyes that absorbed Tommy with awe and wonder. The calm little girl sucked on the remains of a green lollipop that matched the color of her eyes while Tommy continued to wail at the sky.

  “Is he all right?” she repeated.

  I stepped back and wiped my forehead with the front part of my bicep. Sweat dribbled down my sides as if I’d been digging ditches. This was emotional construction. “Yes. Thanks for asking. He’s fine, I think. Just overtired. That, plus his autism.”

  “Oh.” She looked suddenly sympathetic and at a loss for words. “I see.”

  Tommy groaned and then whacked himself across the face, hard. I felt the sting inside my body. Empathy pain, again.

  “Tommy,” I said, trying to hold onto my calm while the winds of my own Daddy-tantrum crept my way and the woman looked on. “Please. Settle down. Don’t you want a token?” Patience, Lord. Patience.

  He surprised me when he stopped screaming and studied the new little plastic orb I was holding up. A gagging sound blurted from his throat, then he co
ughed. He tried to snatch the token from me.

  “No, no. First, you settle down,” I said, holding the token away from him.

  “’Oken.” He kicked a foot out.

  “Settle.”

  “’Ooooken! ’Oken!” He wriggled his fingers in front of his face. If I was going to follow the rules of the program, I couldn’t give him a token until he stopped fussing. Otherwise, I’d be rewarding bad behavior.

  “Well, good luck,” the woman said with a sorrowful expression. “Come on, Amy. Let’s go.”

  “Mommy, that boy’s crying,” Amy said, moving closer to her mother.

  “Yes, darling, I know.”

  “We’ll be all right,” I said. Then, turning to Tommy: “Breathe, Tommy,” I urged as the mother and daughter departed. “Breathe.” I felt my face burn with embarrassment. “Breathe. Come on. Please? You can do it. Settle down, Tommy.”

  But now he gasped for air, lungs heaving. It was as if he were forced to suck in oxygen through a straw.

  “Come on, Thomas Crutcher. Breathe.”

  He started hyperventilating, his back arching, chest heaving, then bent down and put his hands on his knees.

  “Breathe!”

  “Uhhhhh…. ouuuu . . . eee . . .”

  He looked like a person who’d almost drowned. The panic in his troubled eyes when he looked up at me for Daddy-help turned my anger into complete sorrow. I felt totally helpless. What could I do but suffer through this with him? I shoved the token in my pocket, then thought about retrieving the blanket I kept in my trunk for meltdowns, wrapping him up in it and giving him body pressure. Body pressure sometimes soothed him, but it only worked when we caught his tantrum in the earliest stages, right at the beginning. Now it was too late for that.