The Meridians(61)

At last, exhausted, they broke from the seriousness of their conversation, and for a time talked about nothing more nor less amazing than what it was to be a parent, a spouse, a part of a family. Scott's heart ached when he heard her speak of her love for Robbie, and ached still more when she spoke of her love for Kevin. And it was not that he thought his own spouse less important than his dead child; it was instead the fact that when she spoke of Kevin she spoke of a person still present, a member of her family who still lived and, as much as was possible, thrived, with her. Scott had no corresponding family member to be with him, so he twinged with the slightest hints of aching jealousy as she spoke of Kevin, of his good heart, of his typed communications that were the only and best way that he spoke to others.

At that moment, as if on cue, Kevin wandered out. They had put him to bed several hours before, and Scott almost wept when he helped the boy into his bed. Kevin was only a little bit older than Chad had been when he died, and he had not realized, in all the fading halls of his memories, how much he missed putting his son to bed.

He did cry, in fact, just a little bit, when Kevin reached up and hugged him goodnight.

But apparently the boy had not done much sleeping, for he was wandering out of his room, looking wan and thin, looking in fact as though something terrible was happening. Sensing that he needed to say something, Scott immediately grabbed the boy's laptop from where it had been sitting on the table between him and Lynette, and though he fancied it was only imagination, still he thought that he caught her looking at him with something more than gratitude for the action, stronger than gratefulness for the movement.

He felt warm at the thought.

No time to comment on it, though, for Kevin grabbed the laptop and immediately began typing.

"It's all wrong," he wrote.

"What is, honey?" asked Lynette, and just as he had missed putting his son to bed, so now Scott realized that he missed the sight of a mother longing to aid her son, of a woman who existed primarily - if not only - to care for another.

"It's all wrong," he wrote again.

"What is, baby?" she repeated. "What's all wrong?"

"It's all wrong. It's all wrong. It's all wrong."

Scott could sense Lynette growing frustrated, and raised his hand, looking for all the world like one of his students who needed a pee break.

"For goodness' sake, we're not in school," she said. "You can speak without raising your hand."

"I just...you said that Kevin gets overwhelmed more easily when he's agitated."

"Yes, so?"

"Well, what if your asking is overwhelming him? I mean, he's certainly agitated."

Lynette looked stricken. Again, the mothering instinct was surfacing harder than a whale breaching the waves after staying too long underwater.

"Can I try something?" he asked.

"Please."

He looked away from Kevin, and said, "Kevin, I'm going to ask you a question." He knew from what he had observed and from what Lynette had told him over the course of the night that looking at him while he was distressed would be a mistake, just as doing what he was about to try without warning him would likely bear only disastrous results.

He heard typing, and glanced at the computer. "It's all wrong. It's all wrong." The same thing, over and over.

"I know it is, bud, I know it is, and we want to help, but first I've got to do something."

And with that, Scott reached out and, slowly, took the keyboard from Kevin's tight grasp. He almost had to pry the boy's fingers away, but he firmly removed the computer from Kevin's hands and held it in his own.

"What are you doing?" Lynette demanded, and he heard more than a trace of vinegar in her voice. Again, though, he could hardly blame her: he was taking away Kevin's only mode of regular conversation - or at least, so it seemed.

But that was not Scott's intent. He looked at Lynette with an arched eyebrow. "Trust me," he whispered.

Then, slowly, he typed something on Kevin's keyboard and then returned it to the boy.

"What's wrong?" it said, the cursor blinking steadily next to the question mark.

Kevin looked at the sentence - probably the first one that anyone other than him had ever entered on his computer - for a long time, and Scott began to worry that perhaps his plan had backfired. He didn't know what he would do if it turned out that, instead of helping the boy to talk, he had stolen his only voice.

Apparently Lynette was worried about the same thing, for she began, "Scott, I don't think that -"

Then she stopped midsentence, as Kevin began to type. His fingers, long since grown proficient on the keyboard, practically flew across the black lettered tiles, typing a response so quickly that Scott was amazed. If nothing else, he could see that the boy was a prodigy at typing, and could probably get a job even now at any software company that needed high-volume data entry done.

What Kevin was doing was not mere data entry, however. At least, it didn't seem so, because every so often he would pause as though thinking of the next phrase, then would resume his lightning clickety-clack.

Scott felt something on his arm and looked down. It was Lynette's hand. "Oh God, please let this work," she murmured. Scott couldn't imagine what she was feeling right now. What if this was in reality a truly effective way of communicating with her boy? What if Scott had just opened the doors to real communication between mother and son, simply by inputting the question on the computer rather than asking it aloud?