Lisa Gardner - Live to Tell

Evan started kindergarten. He interrupted the teacher. He laughed at inappropriate times. He screamed if told to stop doing an activity he wanted to do, and refused to engage in an activity he didn’t want to do.

In the first eight weeks, Michael and I were summoned to the school nearly a dozen times. We sat there self-consciously. Well-groomed, professional parents who had no idea why our child was a five-year-old hoodlum. We loved Evan. We set boundaries for him. We fought for him.

Still, Evan wanted to do what Evan wanted to do and he was willing to employ any means necessary to get his way.

Third and fourth diagnoses: ADHD and Anxiety Disorder NOS. At the school’s insistence, we put him on the antidepressant Lexapro. Lexapro affects the serotonin levels in the brain. We were told it would calm Evan, help him focus.

Your son’s brain is a busy, busy place, the specialist told us. Imagine standing in the middle of a parade and trying to remain still while hearing the horns blow in your ear and feeling the marchers sweep by. Evan loves you. Evan wants to do well. But Evan can’t exit from the parade long enough to be Evan.

We dutifully filled the prescription. It’s the American way, right? Your child is disruptive, misbehaving, nonconforming. Drug him.

Two weeks later, while quietly sketching a picture of a race car, Evan sat up and drove his pencil through the eardrum of the five-year-old girl sitting beside him.

That was the end of kindergarten for Evan.

Later, we learned Evan suffered from a paradoxical reaction to the Lexapro. A paradoxical reaction is when a drug has the opposite effect than intended. For example, a pain reliever causes pain. Or a sedative causes hyperactivity. Lexapro was supposed to calm our son. Instead, it sent him into a new orbit of agitation, and he acted accordingly.

We found a new doctor for Evan. Best Ph.D. in Boston, we were told. I hired nanny number nine and settled in to home-school Evan.

Michael started working longer hours. Gotta pay for the specialists, he would say, as if I couldn’t smell the perfume that lingered on his coat, or see how many times he checked his cell phone for text messages.

I wondered if she was young and beautiful, maybe with frosted blonde hair that didn’t suffer from neglected roots. Maybe her womb had never filled with poison. Maybe she could take her son to the grocery store without him hurling produce at the other shoppers. Maybe she went to restaurants without her child dumping pasta on the floor and making handprints out of red sauce.

Maybe she slept through the night and read the newspaper each morning and could converse wittily on a variety of adult topics.

Or maybe she just giggled, and told Michael he was perfect.

You try as a parent. You love beyond reason. You fight beyond endurance. You hope beyond despair.

You never think, until the very last moment, that it still might not be enough.

It’s four in the afternoon on Friday, and the sky is dark with thunderclouds. Given the intense August heat, most people are grateful for the upcoming relief. I don’t care. I left the house five minutes late and now I’m driving too fast, trying to make up for lost time.

I have only two hours. I get them twice a week. It’s not like I can leave my eight-year-old with the teenager down the street. But Michael pays child support, and I use that money for respite care, so that twice weekly a specially trained person comes to watch Evan. One of those days, I go to the grocery store, pharmacy, bank, doing all the things I can’t do with Evan in tow. That was last night. Tonight, my second night off for the week, I drive to Friendly’s.

My daughter is waiting for me there.

Chelsea sits in a back booth; Michael’s across from her. He’s wearing a light summer suit over the top of a striking blue Johnston & Murphy shirt. The suit drapes his muscled frame nicely. Obviously, he’s been keeping up with his weekly boxing habit. You can take the boy out of the neighborhood, but not the neighborhood out of the boy.

When Michael spots me weaving my way through the crowded dining room, he puts away his BlackBerry and slides to standing.

“Victoria,” Michael says.

“Michael,” I answer.

Same exchange, every week. We never deviate.

“I’ll be back at six-thirty.” He says this more to Chelsea than to me, bending down, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

Then he’s gone and I’m alone with my daughter.

Chelsea ’s six. She has Michael’s dark hair, my fine features. She holds herself tight, tall for her age, mature for her years. Living with an older brother like Evan can do that to a girl.

“Have you ordered?” I ask, sliding into Michael’s seat, placing my purse beside me on the red vinyl.

She shakes her head.

“What looks good?” I sound forced. It’s like this every week. I have one evening to try to prove to my daughter I love her. She has six evenings that tell her otherwise.

Chelsea closes her menu, doesn’t say anything. A balloon pops across the room, and she flinches. By the terms of our divorce decree, Michael’s supposed to provide counseling for Chelsea, but I don’t know if he’s doing it. After all the experts we saw for Evan, he’s soured on that sort of thing.

But Chelsea isn’t Evan. She’s a lovely little girl who spent her first five years never knowing if her brother would hug her with affection or attack her in a psychotic rage. She learned by age two when to run and lock herself in the nearest bathroom. By three, she could dial 911. And she was there, eleven months ago, when Evan found the crowbar in the garage and went after every window in the house.

Michael and Chelsea left the next day. It’s been me and Evan ever since.

“How’s school?” I ask.

She shrugs. I have to honor the mood, so I reach across the table for the cup filled with crayons. I flip over my place mat and start drawing a picture. After a moment, Chelsea does the same. We color a bit in silence, and I tell myself it’s enough.

The waitress comes. I order a garden salad. Chelsea goes with chicken fingers.

We color some more.

“I get to be the flower girl,” Chelsea says abruptly.

I pause, force myself to find yellow, add to my gardenscape. Wedding? The divorce was only finalized six months ago. I knew Michael was seeing someone, but this… It seems undignified somehow. A gross display in the middle of a funeral.

“You get to be a flower girl?” I ask.

“In Daddy and Melinda’s wedding. It will be during Christmas. I get to wear green velvet.”

“You’ll… you’ll look beautiful.”

“Daddy says Melinda will be my new Mommy.” Chelsea ’s not coloring anymore. She’s staring at me.

“She’ll become your stepmom. You’ll have a stepmom and a mom after the wedding.”

“Do stepmoms like to eat at Friendly’s?”

I can’t do it. I put down the crayon, stare hard at the tabletop. “I love you, Chelsea.”

She picks up her crayon and returns to coloring. “I’m mad,” she says, almost conversationally. “I don’t want a new mom. Sarah has one, and she says stepmoms are no fun. And I don’t like green velvet. It’s hot. The dress is ugly.”

I say nothing.

“I want to rip the dress,” she continues. “I want to get scissors and cut it up. Cut, cut, cut. Or maybe I could drip paint all over it. Drip, drip, drip. Then I wouldn’t have to wear it.” She looks up again. “Mommy, am I turning into Evan?”

My heart twists. I take her hand. There are so many things I’d like to say to her. That she’s special, unique, beautiful. That I have loved her since the moment she was born. That none of this is her fault, not her brother’s illness and certainly not the Sophie’s Choice made by her mother every day.