Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [111]
We were under no illusions that he was like other children. He didn’t laugh much, he didn’t look at people when they spoke, nor did he understand what they said to him. Yet, we wanted nothing more than for Ryan to be accepted for who he was.
He was a sweet kid. A kind child. And with patience and effort, Ryan could be fun to play with. But no one, besides Cat or myself, ever made the effort. Unlike Miles, Ryan had no friends; unlike Miles, none of our neighbors’ kids ever wanted to play with him. Unlike Miles, Ryan was never invited to birthday parties. Unlike Miles, no one ever tried to talk to him. And adults, sadly, were no different. More often than not, they simply ignored him, or worse, took his lack of interaction personally. “He doesn’t like me,” neighbors said to us. Even relatives seemed to ignore him during the course of the week—adding more stress to an already stressful week—and Cat and I would have to bite our tongues to keep from screaming, “You’ve got to try!”
What we really meant was, Please, someone try. Anyone. We love him so much, and you have no idea how frightened we are for him.
We kept this to ourselves while we divided the world into groups. We’d been handling Ryan’s problems on our own, and we’d continue to do so. We didn’t want people to pity Ryan, or pity us; we wanted them to love Ryan as much as we did. Even if something was wrong with him.
Two days after the funeral, Cat and I went out to pick up groceries. Micah had offered to stay with Miles and Ryan, and when we left, Micah was slogging through paperwork in my dad’s office. When we got back to the house, however, Micah was no longer at the desk.
Instead, Micah was wrestling gently with Ryan in the living room, and more than that, Ryan was laughing.
Laughing.
The sound was incredible; had it come from heaven itself, it could have been no less joyous, and all Cat and I could do was stare.
“Oh hey guys,” Micah said, as if nothing extraordinary was happening, “we’re just having some fun.”
Micah didn’t have to be told how Cat and I were feeling. Micah already knew.
My book tour lasted nearly three months. Cat was on her own with the kids, continuing to haul Ryan from one doctor to the next, and the incredibly stressful year had taken its toll on our marriage.
It wasn’t any single occurrence that caused the tension between Cat and myself; in large part, it had to do with the fact that our marriage had been careening from one crisis to the next almost since we walked down the aisle. Our marriage had been less a permanent state of bliss than an attempt to endure a twisted version of survival camp, and the emotions had to flow somewhere. For me, they flowed toward Cat, and for her, they flowed toward me. Our marriage was already under tremendous duress, and Ryan’s problems became the breaking point.
While I worried tremendously about him, my worries were nothing compared to my wife’s. I think it has something to do with motherhood. It’s an almost instinctive response; she had carried Ryan in her womb, she had nursed him as a baby, and while I worked outside the home, she had been the one caring for him every minute of every day.
As the Christmas season approached, we seemed unable to enjoy each other’s company as we once used to. We were also arguing more. I knew my wife not only deserved a break, but needed a break—she’d been on full-time duty for three months while I was on tour—and for Christmas, my gift to her was a trip to Hawaii. While she spent a week with a friend, I would stay home with the kids.
While it may strike some people as odd—if we were having trouble, why didn’t I offer to go with her?—the answer is simple. Someone had to stay home to take care of Ryan. There was no family nearby to help, no neighbors willing to assist, no one, in fact, that we would trust to stay with him for a week. If my wife was to use the trip to relax, I had to stay at home. And I did.
Yet while she was gone, we got into an argument on the phone. Heated words were traded