The Meridians(24)

"There are a few signs that are highly indicative. It's mostly rather arcane stuff - I don't even understand it all myself - but the gist is that there are certain brain functions that are highly randomized in autistic people."

"Randomized?" said Robbie.

"Yes, it feeds into my theory, actually. It is as though there are certain parts of the brain that lack the ability to function in a patterned, self-centered way. Put simply, the brain does not have the ability to distinguish between what is important and what is not; or even perhaps between what is oneself and what is the outside world. An autistic person is not, as you said in our first meeting, Mr. Randall, a stupid person. It may well be that he - autistic people are five times more likely to be male than female - is actually so smart he perceives everything at once, and it's like overloading a supercomputer."

Robbie was not consoled by this jaunty view of his son's disability. "Is there any way to cure it?" he asked, though he already knew the answer.

"Mr. Randall, I'm sorry," was all that Doctor Chen said.

And through it all, Kevin spoke not a word, though he was now over a year and a half old. He just sat in his favorite corner, a place with nothing but white walls to look at on two sides, and played with his cars.

Robbie felt his heart break.

But it was nothing compared to the feeling he would experience a few months later, during the magic show.





***





11.

***

It was a magic show that signaled the beginning of the end of their life in Los Angeles, and the end of Lynette's life with Robbie.

The magic show was the usual thing for a kids' birthday party: a brightly bedecked man with a silly hat who specialized in basic magic tricks that were colorful and guaranteed to captivate a group of two to four year olds.

Actually, that was a joke. Nuclear holocaust in their front yard, complete with mutant invaders, would bore some four year olds. But that was just reality, and Lynette, along with most other mothers, chose to believe that those children really were capable of having a great time at something as mundane as a magic show, even if they didn't know it yet.

Lynette had been invited to the party. Actually, technically, Kevin Angel had been invited. The card had come to him, the invitation asked for him by name, but since little Kevin had yet to speak a word, and since he never played with anyone, Lynette knew full well that either the invite was a mere formality, or the invite was really for her since she was friends with the birthday girl's mother. They had met during a support group for parents with autistic children. Her friend, a beautiful woman in her mid-forties named Doris, had a twelve year old autistic son named Christian, who was not the birthday child; and a four year old daughter named Jenna, who was.

Both children were beautiful in their own ways. In the months since Kevin had been positively diagnosed with autism, Lynette had found out a great deal about the disorder. One of the most surprising things was how great a range of personalities were affected by it. She realized after a few weeks of interacting with other parents of autistic children - and with the children themselves - that she, like many people, had had subconscious prejudices about autistics. Mostly she had thought they were all like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man: low functioning people who bobbed and weaved back and forth and were well-meaning and likeable after you got to know them, though always something of a chore.

In reality, autistic children had nearly the same vast number of differences from person to person as anyone else did. There were, of course, differences in the level of functioning that different autistic people had. Some were completely incapable of anything but the most rudimentary actions or interactions with other people. Others were very high-functioning, and could even hold down steady jobs, though those jobs tended to involve either special aptitudes, like an ability to instantly calculate mathematical logarithms, or highly repetitive tasks, like database entry.

More than the basic differences in levels of ability, however, she realized that autistic people were just that: people. There were nice ones and not-so-nice ones. There were happy ones and sad ones. There were autistics who brightened a room by walking in, and those who cast a cloud as distinct and palpable as any thunderhead wherever they went. There were autistics who loved Sesame Street, and those who would pitch a fit if they didn't get to watch their favorite crime drama each week. There were even those who - like Kevin - were young enough that they had not yet developed completely, so whose futures were a nearly closed book, with only the barest hints of plot and characterization visible from the cover of the children's present actions.

Christian, Doris' son, was one of the best kids that Lynette had ever met. Like all autistic people, he suffered from an inability to interact socially on the same level as most people his age. But unlike other twelve year olds, who could be self-absorbed and egocentric to the point of being nauseating, Christian seemed to exist only to help others. He might not look at you while he was doing it, but whenever a job needed doing, there would be Christian, quietly helping to clean a room with his mother, or setting out the table settings at a picnic bench, or simply being near the smaller children and calling whenever one of them wandered too close to a street or other source of possible danger.

Doris' daughter, Ashton, was equally beautiful, though she did not suffer from the restrictions - or receive the blessings - of autism. She was a precocious four, a friend to all. Often at the park days hosted by the local FOAC - or Families of Autistic Children - Ashton would see a stranger walking by a block away and would call repeatedly to the person, saying "Hi, Mister," or "Hi, Miss," until the person either wandered out of eyesight or finally turned and returned the greeting. When the latter occurred, Ashton invariably turned to whatever adults were near and reported with large eyes, "That's my new best friend." Then she would laugh and scurry off to play with someone on the monkey bars and within seconds would make a new new best friend, and would do the same thing over and over.