The Bookseller(78)

Mitch and Missy were aglow with all they learned at nursery school. They adored music hour, and they would insist I turn on the car’s radio on the way home, so they could sing along with the catchy tunes. They learned in full detail the name and sound of each letter in the alphabet, and they quickly became skilled at counting to twenty. These accomplishments made me smile, thinking that even at their tender age, they already displayed an extraordinary ease with and love of learning, much like my own.

Still, my joy was bittersweet. While they flourished in this introduction to school life, Michael and I both withered.

Kindergarten the next year only made things worse. I was thankful Mitch and Missy had had the nursery-school experience; they were a few months shy of age five when they started kindergarten, and thus younger than many of their peers. But having each other, and having a little bit of schooling under their belts, they did splendidly. They learned to write their own names, and they could recognize a number of words in their picture books. Their drawings transformed from scribbles to stick figures and recognizable houses and suns and stars. They remembered to hang up their jackets and carefully line up their boots in the coat closet when they got home, as they did at school. Lars and I marveled at these wonders, at how smart and accomplished Mitch and Missy were.

And then we would both be silent, thinking about Michael.

There was never a question of sending him to school. Not regular public school, at any rate. The public school was not required by law to educate him, and we did not feel it would be fair to anyone—the teacher, the other children in the class, or Michael himself—to force him into a typical classroom situation. He would be disruptive, we knew, and he would learn little; a teacher with a room full of other young children to manage would not be able to give Michael the type of one-on-one attention he so clearly would require.

Of course we researched other options. We looked at a few special schools, private schools designed for children who could not function in a regular school. But the children at those schools were either high achievers who were completely out of Michael’s league, or else children with much more severe disabilities, for whom the schools seemed little more than babysitting services, somewhere such children could be during the day, giving their mothers a break.

“I can teach him at home,” I told Lars. “I have the credentials; I have the experience.”

He gave me a skeptical look.

“I can do it,” I insisted. “I had the occasional difficult child in my classes, you know.”

“But none like Michael, right? And none that were your own.”

“True,” I conceded. “But really, Lars, what other choice do we have?”

I didn’t bother giving Michael formal lessons during the kindergarten year, but we began working on some basic skills. Knowing that forming accurate circles, squares, and triangles is the foundation for writing letters, I encouraged him to draw. This he appeared to enjoy on occasion, although his drawings were generally indecipherable as any particular objects. Quite often I read to him, hoping that he would eventually fall in love with stories, as most children do when frequently read to. Michael did not relish these sessions, the way most children would, but he tolerated them for short periods.

Not until Mitch and Missy started first grade did I decide it was time for Michael’s lessons to start in earnest. His learning might be delayed, but, I reasoned, I had as long as it would take to teach him.

Whatever it took.

I set up a little desk for him in the dining room. I would sit him there, put paper in front of him, and work with him on writing his letters. We started with A. I didn’t ask anything else of him—just to write A’s and to look for A’s when we read books. At first he was willing, but as time went on, he became less and less interested.

I was in despair. I thought he’d never learn a thing. He could recite the alphabet, but it had no meaning for him. Words on a page meant nothing. He’d shake his head if I asked if he recognized an A, or any other letter. He was a compliant student, if not an eager one; he did not protest when I said it was time for lessons. Instead, he would sit at the little desk and write his A’s, staring at the blank wall, waiting wordlessly for me to say it was all right for him to rise from his seat, that lessons were over for the day. Which I would do, eventually—sometimes two or three exhausting hours later, when I was ready to give up.

I couldn’t understand it. “He knows how to do it,” I told Lars. “He just doesn’t want to.”

“He’ll get it, in time.”

That was mid-October of last year. Right before Halloween. Right before . . . that week.


Now, standing at the closet door, I select a pair of dark slacks and a gray sweater. They match my mood. I slip them on, find knee-highs and a pair of black leather flats, brush my hair and pull it back with a headband.

I return to the living room. Alma has vacuumed here, making neat lines in the carpet from the picture window to the dining room table. As I cross it, my feet leave prints in the pile. I stand by the window and watch for Lars’s car.

When Lars pulls up and opens the car door for Michael, I see my son emerge sullenly, sniffling. This surprises me; he always seems more cheerful around Lars than he is around me. I go to the door to greet them.

Lars helps Michael off with his coat. “Go on upstairs,” he tells our child, and Michael complies, wordlessly.