The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [29]
Finally Ava glanced up at her, disoriented, like she’d just woken up. “This has some pictures in it I’ve never seen before,” she said. “From when he lived in Germany. Where’d this come from?”
Caroline explained that Nance had brought it, which made Ava sit up straighter and smile. If only Ava weren’t so beautiful, Caroline thought for the millionth time, and then scolded herself for thinking such a dumb thing, for wishing ugliness on a girl who already had the cards stacked against her.
“After you finish studying, there’s some forms you need to sign,” she told Ava. “For Rhodes College.”
Ava kept looking at the book.
Elvis sang that he was just a roustabout. Going from town to town.
Caroline marched over and pulled the plug on the iPod dock. “We need to get those forms in the mail as soon as possible.”
Ava, surrounded by pictures of Elvis, kept looking at the book with a little smile on her face that indicated total absorption. Mother did not exist. Nothing else existed but Elvis.
Caroline considered her options. She could go get the forms from her desk and thrust them in front of Ava’s face. She could rip the Elvis book from Ava’s hands. She could thrust the math book in front of Ava and yell at her about passing math and how she wouldn’t get into Rhodes College if she didn’t pass math this time. Ava would scream back at her that she didn’t care, didn’t care about math or college or anything and just wanted to be left alone, and she might even start in yelling about how dumb she was, how ugly, how fat, and even start hitting herself, until Caroline ran from the room holding in tears.
This scene had happened many times, even though Caroline knew better than to start it, knew better because of all the years of therapy they’d had and books she’d read about how to deal with Asperger’s syndrome; but it was hard to act like a calm, disinterested therapist with your own child.
Caroline, like all the other mothers she knew who had autistic kids, had become the designated therapy parent in the family. Vic’s only contribution to their therapy was to get the kids hooked on watching reruns of Seinfeld. He pointed out that the show was all about social gaffes and miscommunication, and, who knows, it could be that watching Seinfeld and afterward discussing the many ways that Kramer, Jerry, Elaine, and George screw up might help Ava and Otis more than anything. Could be, Caroline agreed, but we can’t just stop there. Sometimes she admired and envied his ability to stay aloof, but other times it maddened her. She needed help and he wouldn’t help her. She knew it was good for the kids to have one calm person in the family, but why did it have to be him?
When Caroline got Ava diagnosed at age nine, she flung herself into trying to fix her. She quit teaching preschool in order to devote herself full-time to the cause. There were the no-wheat no-dairy diets that the family endured for only a month before Caroline called it quits, then the vitamin and mineral supplements, physical therapy, occupational therapy, Relationship Development Intervention, HANDLE neurological therapy, chelation—removal of toxic heavy metals that might be making things worse—tutoring, counseling, support groups, psychiatrists, etc., etc., etc. The trouble was that all these so-called therapies were very expensive, and they never had any measurable results. Caroline could never tell what worked and what didn’t work, because they did many things at once. They had to. They couldn’t afford to waste any time.
And Ava did seem to get better, leaving some of her bigger, more obvious problems behind her—such as public temper tantrums and huge social gaffes—but that could have been due to growing up as much as to any treatment.