The Touch

Sylvia

"No hurry, Ba," Sylvia said from her seat in the rear of the Graham. "Take your time."

She was not particularly anxious to hear what Sara Chase had to say today. She had resigned herself to the fact that it was not going to be good.

Fighting the melancholia that clung to her like a shroud, she ran her hand over the polished mahogany that framed the tinted side windows, sliding it down to the plush upholstery. Usually she took such pleasure in the interior refurbishing job she had commissioned on this old 1938 sedan, transforming it from a rusting derelict into a warm, safe place, a bright red home away from home. A passenger had once remarked that it reminded him of a luxury stateroom on the QE2. Today it left her cold.

She hadn't gone into this with her eyes closed. She had known from the beginning that it wasn't going to be easy raising a child like Jeffy. She had expected and had been prepared for trouble, aggravation, and frustration. She hadn't counted on heartbreak.

But the heartbreak was there. For months now, Jeffy had receded from her a little bit each day, and each tiny increment of withdrawal was a stab of pain.

She wondered: If she had known from the start that things would turn out this way—slow progress over more than four years, teasing her into a false hope, only to see those hopes dashed in the space of a few months—would she have adopted Jeffy?

A difficult question, but she knew only one answer: yes.

She clearly remembered how she had lost her heart to that little boy from the moment she opened the Monroe Express five years ago and saw his picture. The three-year-old had been left on the steps of the Stanton School for Special Education, secured to the front door by a leash fastened to the dog collar around his neck. A note saying "Please take care of Jeffy I cant do it no more" was found pinned to his shirt. The picture had been published in an attempt to identify him and locate his parents.

It had accomplished neither. But it did capture Sylvia. Jeffy reached through that grainy black and white photo and touched a spot in Sylvia's heart that refused to let her rest until she brought him home.

They had warned her. Right from the start, the people at the Stanton School—Dr. Chase the most vocal among them— had told her that he was profoundly autistic and would be a tremendous financial, psychological, and emotional burden. The entire range of Jeffy's behavior consisted of rocking back and forth, humming tunelessly, eating, sleeping, urinating, and defecating. He never even looked at another person, directing his gaze always just to the right or left of anyone facing him, as if they were an inanimate object obstructing his view. The most rudimentary rewards of motherhood, such as the simple return of love and affection showered on a child, would be denied her.

But Sylvia hadn't listened. She had known she could reach Jeffy.

And she had.

While waiting for all the legal machinery to process Jeffy and clear him for adoption, Sylvia had taken him into her home as a foster child. She immersed herself in his care, spending her nights reading every available reference on autism, her days structuring his environment and using the theories she was studying. Operant behavior-modification techniques worked best with Jeffy.

The operant sessions had been grueling at first. Endless repetitions, positively reinforcing each tiny fragment of a desired response, building a repertoire of behavior, increment by increment, from nothing—it was a seemingly impossible task. But Sylvia's efforts paid off. She smiled now, reliving a hint of the joy she had felt as, bit by bit, Jeffy began to come around, began to respond. Dr. Chase and the staff at the Stanton School had been amazed. Sylvia and Jeffy became celebrities of sorts there.

The dream of the little boy with open arms running toward her across the lawn had looked like it would eventually come true. Until last winter.

She felt her lips tighten as her smile withered.

Jeffy had never come near to being a "normal child"— whatever that was—but he had begun responding to people to the extent that he would look up when someone came into the room—something he had not been doing when found. He responded to animals and inanimate objects much more readily, going so far as to play with Mess and Phemus, and even say a few words to the air. He never spoke a word to another human being, but at least he proved he had the capacity for speech. Sylvia had felt they were on the verge of a breakthrough when Jeffy suddenly began to regress.

It had been so subtle at first, Sylvia had refused to even acknowledge that it was happening. Finally, reluctantly, she was forced to admit that Jeffy was losing ground. She had fervently hoped that she was wrong, but Dr. Chase had begun to notice it, too. She was doing a behavioral evaluation of Jeffy this week and the results were due today.

"I'm afraid the results aren't good," Sara Chase said without preamble as Sylvia seated herself in the chair beside the desk.

Sara was a pleasant-looking woman of about fifty, with ruddy cheeks and wispy brown hair. She never wore makeup and was perhaps twenty pounds overweight. She had long ago told Sylvia to stop calling her "Doctor."

Sylvia sank deeper into the chair. She bit her lip to keep it from quivering. She wanted to cry. "I've done everything. Everything."

"I know you have. The progress he made with you is incredible. But…"

"But I didn't do enough, right?"

"Wrong!" Sara said sternly as she leaned forward on her desk. "I won't have you blaming yourself. Autism isn't simply an emotional disorder; it's a neurological disease as well. I shouldn't have to tell you this. You know almost as much about it as I do."

Sylvia sighed. She knew she had done all that could be done for Jeffy, but it hadn't been enough.

"And Jeffy's disease is progressing, is that it?"

She nodded.

Sylvia pounded her fist against the arm of the chair. "There's a beautiful little boy in there and he can't get out! It's not fair!"

"Oh," Sara said in a placating tone, "I don't know if any of us knows what Jeffy's really like…"

"I do! I can feel him in there, trapped. He's been locked away so long he doesn't even know he's a prisoner. But he's in there. I know it! Last summer I saw him pick a Monarch butterfly out of a puddle, dry off its wings with his shirt, and let it fly away. He's kind, he's gentle, he's—"

There was sympathy in Sara's eyes as she sat and watched Sylvia in silence.

Sylvia knew what the psychologist was thinking—that she was romanticizing Jeffy's condition.

"No new medication?" she asked.

Sara shook her head. "We've tried them all and he's refractory. We could arrange another trial—"

"No." She sighed as depression settled on her like a mantle. "They only made him jittery or put him to sleep."

"Keep working with him, then. Keep using the operant techniques. Maybe you can slow his slide. Maybe it will turn around by itself. Who can say?"

Sylvia walked out into the crystalline daylight. The sun shouldn't be shining, she thought. Dark and rainy were more in tune with her mood.