especially being brought up in a community that thrived on merit.
“Was it something I said?” Sheila asked, noticing tears pool in Rachel’s eyes.
“No, of course not.” Rachel paused to compose herself as Brendan delivered the coffees then moved off to adjust the dinnerware at a nearby table.
She took a sip. “It’s Dylan. He’s fine … just fine … healthwise, thank God. It’s just that he’s got some learning disabilities.”
“He has?”
Rachel had known Sheila for only a few months, but she felt comfortable confiding in her. It was Sheila who had helped them get settled in town. Besides, all of Rachel’s old friends were fifty miles or more from here; and her mother lived in Phoenix, and her brother Jack, in San Diego. “He’s having difficulty reading,” she said. “He tries, but he has problems connecting written words to sounds.”
“Give him a break! He’s only six years old. Some kids start later than others.”
“I guess, but he’s a bit behind.” The reality was that the other kids in his class were miles beyond him. She and Martin had hoped to get him into Beaver Hill, a well-respected private elementary school where Lucinda was enrolled, but he didn’t pass the entrance tests. So they enrolled him at Marsden Public Elementary. Only a month into the school year, and his teacher had alerted Rachel to his language difficulties and problems following simple instructions.
“Have you tried those phonics books and tapes?” Sheila asked.
“We’ve got all of them—books, tapes, videos. You name it. We even have a language therapist. He’s got some kind of blockage or whatever. He doesn’t get it.”
“But he will. All kids do. He’s just a late bloomer. In ten years he’ll probably be a published author like Vanessa Watts’s son, Julian. Didn’t talk until he was four, and at age thirteen he wrote a book about mazes. I don’t know anything about them, but I guess there’s a whole bunch of maze freaks out there. Whatever, he got it published and had all this press.”
Rachel nodded but felt little consolation.
“You know, you could have him evaluated to see what his skills and problems are.”
“We did all that already.” She had even arranged an MRI scan the other day, although she did not mention that to Sheila. In fact, she hadn’t even told Martin.
“I see.”
Rachel could sense Sheila’s curiosity, wondering how he had tested. But Rachel would not betray him. Although Rachel questioned the validity of IQ tests, there was something terribly definitive about them—like fingerprints or Universal Product Codes. Once the number was out, a person was forever ranked.
“I know I’m being foolish,” Rachel said, struggling to maintain composure. “It’s not like he has some terrible disease, for God’s sake.”
“That’s right, and you keep telling yourself that. Test scores aren’t everything.”
Sheila was right, of course—and were they still living in Rockville, she wouldn’t have been so aware. But this was a town of trophy houses and trophy kids—a town where the rewards for intelligence were in-your-face conspicuous. Hawthorne was an upscale middle-class community of professional people, all smart and well educated. To make matters worse, Dylan was now surrounded by high-pedigree children, bred for success by ambitious parents who knew just how clever their kids were and where they stood against the competition: which kids were the earliest readers, who got what on the SATs, who ranked where in their class, who got into the hot schools.
Suddenly Rachel missed Rockville with its aluminum-sided Capes and pitching nets, tire swings, and kids who played street hockey until they glowed. Where the only scores that mattered were how the Sox, Bruins, and Celtics did, not your verbal and math; where the pickup trucks sported Harley-Davidson logos and bumper stickers that said KISS MY BASS and SAVE THE ALES unlike all the high-end vehicles outside with stethoscopes hanging from the rearview mirrors and windows emblazoned with shields from Bloomfield Preparatory Academy, Harvard, and Draper Labs, and Nantucket residency permits.
She looked out the window onto the splendidly manicured course with its two pools and tennis courts and showplace clubhouse. She felt out of place. The Dells was one of the most exclusive country clubs in New England; and now that Martin’s company had taken off they could afford the privileged life for their son. How ironic it seemed, given their expectations and presumptions. Rachel and Martin had both graduated from college so Dylan’s limitations were as much of a surprise as they were distressing. Even worse, they made her feel that the perimeters of their lives had been irrevocably altered.
Outside a green Dells CC truck pulled up with two greenskeepers. The men got out. They were dressed in jeans and the green and white DCC pullovers. One of them said something that made the other man break up. As she sipped her cappuccino and watched them unload a lawnmower, Rachel could not help but think how she was glimpsing her son’s destiny—a life of pickup trucks, lawnmowers, and subsistence wages.
“I guess I just didn’t do enough,” Rachel said.
“Like what?” Sheila said.
“Like when he was a baby. I guess I didn’t give him a rich enough environment. But I tried. I read all the zero-to-three books about brain growth and early childhood development. I talked and sang to him, I read him stories when he was two months old—all that stuff.” They had bought him Jump-Start Toddlers and other computer games, Baby Bach, Baby Shakespeare and Baby Einstein toys. When he took a nap, she played classical music. From his infancy, she read him poetry because the books said how babies learn through repetition, and that repeated rhymes, like music at an early age, are supposed to increase the spatial-temporal reasoning powers. She breast-fed him because of a
Tears flooded Rachel’s eyes. “And now it’s too late. He turned six last month.”
Sheila laid her hand on Rachel’s. “Pardon my French, but those first-three-years books are bullshit. All they do is put a guilt trip on parents. I bet if you took twins at birth and played Mozart and read Shakespeare around the clock to one for three years and raised the other normally you wouldn’t see a goddamn difference when they were six. You didn’t fail, Rachel, believe me.”
Rachel wiped her eyes and smiled weakly. “Something went wrong.”
“Nothing went wrong.”
Rachel nodded and looked away to change the subject. They were having two different conversations. Sheila did not understand.
Through the window, Lucinda was explaining something to the girl next to her. Sheila took the hint. “By the way, Lucinda’s having a birthday party a week from Saturday. It’s going to be an all-girl thing—her idea. But, in any case, I’m getting her a kitten.”
“Oh, how sweet.”
“It’ll be her first pet. I think kids need pets—don’t you? Something to, you know, love unconditionally?”
“Yes, of course. Dylan has gerbils and he’s crazy about them.”
At a nearby table, Brendan was arranging the dinnerware. To distract herself, Rachel watched him without thought. He was putting out dinnerware, all the time muttering to himself just below audibility—his mouth moving, braces flashing, his eye twitching. He looked possessed. “The poor kid’s a basket case,” she whispered to Sheila, thinking that it could be worse. At least Dylan was a happy child.
“I guess,” Sheila said vaguely. She checked her watch. There was another hour and a half of day care, so Sheila was going to go to her office in the interim, while Rachel would sit outside with a book until Dylan was out.
As they left the building, Rachel’s cell phone chirped in her handbag. The call was from Dr. Rose’s office. The secretary said that Dylan’s MRI results were back. “He’d like to make an appointment to see you and discuss
