Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [10]
Thad’s anchored by his seat belt but each time he sees neon lights he ducks. My friend Callie used to go with us, and her presence made for less wear and tear on Thad.
—We’re almost there, I assure him.
—We’re almost there, he repeats, in his self-soothing way.
Finally we hit the upscale condos, the Cambridgeside Galleria, and the parking ramp to the museum. Inside, we get a locker for our jackets and Thad and I use this machine where we turn a penny into a thin piece of copper with a T. rex imprinted on it. This he will rub for hours between the thumb and index finger of his left hand, because that’s what Thad does. He has long eyelashes and soft downy hair that people admire. But he’s a big guy, nearly twice the height of his classmates at school, and he has a solid girth, so even though he’s only eight sometimes he’s mistaken for an older boy and there’s a lot of confusion about his behavior.
We head for the cafeteria, where we sit by the big picture windows and look at the lights of Boston reflected on the Charles. A tour boat is anchored at its helm. The stern makes a slow arc across the water as it’s pushed back and forth by the current. This always has a calming effect on Thad. We eat french fries in paper cups and watch our reflections in the glass as we become full and satisfied.
Live musicians play jazz and the IMAX lines bulge. After we’ve slurped up all the Coke we can manage, Thad takes my hand and pulls me through the lobby into the turnstile where we show our passes. The crowds have already thinned out, so pretty soon there’s no waiting to punch buttons, lift handles, open drawers, move levers, spin wheels. We ride up the escalator until we’re right there in his favorite place: The Playground. Here Ping-Pong balls are sucked up air tubes, people watch their heartbeats on monitors, and try to outrun a sequence of flashing lights. In one room kids leap into the air and if they time it right, they can see flat shadows of themselves frozen on a blank white wall until those impressions start to fade, and then they press the light button again and start over.
The only exhibit Thad likes is the one where he can make a small digital recording of himself on a monitor. He likes to get it to replay and replay and that makes him laugh some and then he says, I love that. Though we could certainly make videos at home, I think there’s something about the silliness of hamming it up around other people that has a particular draw for Thad.
My brother sees a lot of specialists and physical therapists. He was put on meds when he was four. I call them elevator drugs. Without them he seems to flatten out in a way that worries Allison. I know that side effects are part of life, but Thad’s biochemistry mixed with the drugs, produce, well, he fires off this steady stream of predictions now like a crawl at the bottom of a screen. You don’t want to pay attention to all of it but you do. Beautiful and crazy oracles ride up from the basement of his brain and spill out of his mouth in frequent spurts. He feels compelled to share this stuff with me, as if I’m the local translator or the seer’s assistant, and I do my best to take it all in.
Thad looks into the video screen, presses the green button, and the monitor starts to count down from three, signaling that he should get ready for his ten-second personal recording. When it hits zero, he looks into the tiny eye of the camera embedded at the top of the screen and says, in this way that some people would mistake for deadpan, —I’m the most famous person you’ll ever meet.
Then he stares, waiting for the tape to stop.
He presses the replay button and there’s Thad, his large head and the precise teeth marks in his chapped lower lip.
—I’m the most famous person you’ll ever meet.
Then: the stare.
We both laugh. I tell him how professional