As soon as I had closed the door to his bedroom, I realized the preposterousness of the whole situation. I had spent the week neglecting and excluding the boys so that I could plan an elaborate party to delight my friends and showcase my mothering abilities. But no one would be fooled. It would be clear to everyone that my sons had no connection to me. Everyone would see it. My incompetence would be revealed to the world. I would make a spectacle of myself and become gossip fodder for months to come. I had sacrificed my career to take care of them, but I was a failure as a mother.
The truth was that those boys were nothing like other children: they didn’t talk. They were violent, inadequate, isolated. I was already bracing for the worst. They would assault another child, or an animal, howl or hurt themselves, and I wouldn’t know how to control them. This party was a horrible mistake.
I was pacing the upstairs hallway and didn’t hear Gregory come up the stairs.
“Emma, what are you doing?” he said. “Come on, quit tearing your hair out like that. Have you had a look at your head? Go to the bedroom and calm down. The guests will be here any minute.”
He pushed me toward our bed and ordered me to pull myself together. A violent migraine had come on and I curled up in a ball to ease the pain.
I heard Gregory welcoming the first guests. I tried to raise myself up on one elbow, but the pressure in my skull was so powerful that my head fell right back on my pillow. I couldn’t move. My whole body was in pain. I could feel my joints grinding.
The doorbell rang incessantly. I heard laughs and cries, and I fought to stay awake. They needed me; I couldn’t fall asleep. I had to get downstairs and get the party in order, but I was paralyzed in my bed. Holding my head with both hands, I pressed on my temples to try and ease the pain. I concentrated on my breath, took a few deep, slow inhalations. It took a moment, but the controlled breathing started working and my migraine receded little by little. I opened my eyes.
I could see nothing at all.
Blackness, everywhere. Panting, I blinked several times, rubbing my eyelids. I was blind. I looked around the room and could make out nothing, not a sliver of light. I covered my eyes with my palms and started screaming for Gregory.
Only a whisper emerged from my mouth. My throat was parched and burning. But I had to find the strength to call Gregory, I could have been having a heart attack.
“Gregory! GREGORY!”
His hand gripped my shoulder forcefully, his thumb in the divot of my clavicle. Gregory was shirtless, lying beside me. He had turned on the bedside lamp, throwing a dim light on our room.
“Where were you?” I said. “I thought I was having a heart attack.”
“Emma, I’m here. It’s two-thirty in the morning. Go to sleep.”
“But… the party?”
“You missed it, Emma. I tried to wake you up, but you pushed me away and said you wanted to sleep. So sleep. I’m tired too, you know.”
“The guests came? The children got their cake? And the activities with the animals?”
“Emma, the birthday is over. Yes, they got their presents, their cake, everything.”
“And there were no problems?”
“No, everything went fine. I’ve had enough, Emma. Go to sleep, okay? We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
Gregory turned out the light and I lay there staring into the dark room, my eyes adjusting to the blackness.
I received a number of emails the next day from friends, hoping I was feeling better, congratulating me on the lovely birthday party. Magalie even attached some photos of the children with the animals, the twins opening their gifts, blowing out their candles. Scrolling through the pictures, I burst out sobbing. It was their first birthday with us and I had missed everything.
Throughout the next year, I often thought of that birthday; I didn’t want to miss another thing. Gregory and I talked about the possibility of home-schooling the boys. We had admitted that our children were different, and that their uniqueness was worth preserving.
I started reading a ton of articles and books on the benefits of home-schooling. By educating them this way, I could reinforce the lessons and adapt to their needs, and we would still have time for hobbies and exercise. Everything I read about home-schooled children suggested that they were more gifted than others, and sharper intellectually.
The majority of the mothers I started communicating with in the chat rooms split their days in two: they devoted the morning to lessons and the afternoon to cultural activities and sports. And so I started initiating the twins into this system; for the first half of the day, they did preschool exercises, and for the other half, we visited museums and went to recreation centres or to the pool. At this pace, in a few months, they began speaking distinctly in French and English, and managed to channel their energy through sports—particularly swimming—at which they showed a real aptitude. Gregory was very happy with their progress and credited me with every improvement in their behaviour. We agreed that we had been right to integrate them differently, given that there were two of them. It wasn’t as though they were completely isolated.
They played together increasingly well, moreover, and in this respect seemed more advanced than children their age. From the time they were nearly three years old, they knew how to play a number of board games, and when they played dress-up, could stay in character for hours. They fought rarely, but when they did, they were violent.
