Torey Hayden - Overheard in a Dream

“I never wanted Conor in that Colorado school,” Alan finally said. “That’s the first thing I want to make clear. I mean, who sends their young child seven hundred miles away? We shouldn’t ever have done that. Autism happens. A lot of people have autistic children. They cope with it. They don’t put the kid away.”

“So how did the decision come to be made?” James asked.

“Laura. This, here,” he said with a broad sweep of his hand. “It’s about the fact that Laura needs treatment.”

James was not quite certain what Alan meant. “You’re saying that coping with Conor is causing problems for Laura? Or coping with Laura is causing problems for Conor?”

“Both, really. I don’t think they’re two different things,” Alan replied. “But the biggest problem up to now has just been getting Laura to take responsibility for it. When she said this was a family therapy thing, that we couldn’t get Conor in here unless we were involved too, I thought ‘Thank God . She’s finally taking me seriously.’ She’s always pooh-poohed the idea of therapy and been so quick to blame it all on Conor, make it all Conor’s problem. But it’s also been about Laura not being able to cope with him. That’s how I got railroaded into sending him to Avery.”

“Can you tell me how you saw Conor’s problems starting?” James asked.

“We had a couple of absolute shit years. It was about the time Conor was two or three. Everything just happened at once. I was having some serious money problems with the ranch. People assume because Laura’s work is well known that we must be wealthy, but there is a big difference between literary and commercial. The truth is, both ranching and book-writing are very uncertain ways to earn a living.

“So we were having major financial problems. Right in the middle of it, Laura got pregnant. It was unplanned and quite complicated. We thought Laura had actually lost the baby, because she miscarried, but apparently it was a twin pregnancy and she’d lost only one. Anyway, cue for lots of medical problems and bills just at a time when we desperately needed her earnings. Poor Conor. His little life just got turned on its head. I was gone all the time because I was hiring out to other ranches to earn some extra money and Laura felt so unwell. Conor’s always been a sensitive kid, and this just made it worse. He got fearful of just about everything. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I thought he’d settle down once things were more stable, once I was able to be around more and the baby was born. What I didn’t appreciate was that during all this time I was away, Laura was falling apart too.

“I felt bad – feel bad even now – because I know I left Laura to cope on her own too much of that time, even when I did see signs of trouble. But, Christ, it’s hard to know what’s right. I was working all the hours God sends to save the ranch and I just couldn’t be in two places at once.

“The turning point came when the preschool told us they couldn’t keep Conor any longer. After that, he was home all the time. Laura just was not handling it. So that’s when she started looking into residential placements for Conor … I felt I had to let Laura have a chance to recover, because otherwise … Well, to be honest I was afraid if I didn’t, I was going to end up on my own with two young kids.”

Alan fell silent.

James sat back in his chair. “So did placing Conor in the residential school help Laura recover?” he asked.

“Things settled down.” Alan lifted his shoulders in a faint shrug. “But I guess ‘recovery’ implies they got better. That didn’t happen. It just got buried, because that’s Laura’s way of handling things. And I’ve about had my fill of it.”

“Horse?” Conor said in a sing-songy tone that was halfway between a statement and a question.

“Yes, that’s a horse,” James replied.

“Whirrrr, whirrrr.” Conor stood the small plastic animal up on the table. He reached into the basket and drew out another animal. “Elephant?”

“Yes, that’s an elephant.”

“Whirrrr, whirrrr. Pig?” he said, taking out the next animal.

Conor didn’t look over as he did this. He didn’t encourage the slightest amount of eye contact. James was interpreting Conor’s behaviour as an attempt to interact, but it may not have been. If James wasn’t fast enough responding, Conor would quickly move on to the next animal. It could be simply the self-referencing play so typical of autistic children.

The next animal out of the basket was one that James himself wasn’t all that sure about. A wildebeest or something else equally odd to be in a child’s play set. Conor looked at it and perplexity pinched his features. “Cow?” he asked and his high-pitched tone betrayed a genuine question.

“You’ve found a cow,” James replied, reflecting back Conor’s words to indicate he was listening. Whatever the creature was, it was undeniably cow-like so James was comfortable with calling it a cow.

“Ehhh,” the boy muttered under his breath. “Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh!” Then his fingers abruptly splayed wide and the plastic animal clattered to the table top as if it had become too hot to hold. Snatching up the stuffed cat, Conor clutched it tightly. “Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh! Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh!”

James could see the boy was becoming agitated. “Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh,” he kept repeating, like an engine that refused to catch. He started to tremble. His pale skin and colourless hair gave him a naked vulnerability that made James think of newly hatched birds, owlets and eaglets, almost grotesque in their nakedness.

“You didn’t like it when I said that,” James ventured. “Are you worried that it may not be a cow?”

“Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh.”

“You want to know precisely what that animal is. You don’t like not knowing,” he interpreted.

“Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh! Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh!” Conor sputtered frantically. Bringing up the stuffed cat, he pressed it over his eyes. “Meow? Meow?”

James picked up the plastic animal and examined it. “Perhaps it’s a wildebeest. Or a yak. No, I don’t think it’s a yak. They have lots of hair. Perhaps it’s an auroch. That’s a kind of wild cow.”

Without warning Conor took the cat by its hind leg and swung it like a weapon in a broad arc that cleared the table entirely. All the plastic animals went flying, as did James’s notebook. Making a shrill, piercing noise that caused the inner parts of James’s ears to vibrate, Connor screamed. His complexion went from white to red to a deep blotched colour like clotted blood in milk. He slid off the chair onto the floor and pressed the cat over his eyes.

Emotional upset was an expected part of play therapy and as long as the child was not hurting himself in any way, James found the best response was to remain in his chair, calm and composed, to show things were still in control and then endeavour to put words to the child’s inarticulate distress.

“You’re feeling very frightened,” he said quietly as Conor lay on the floor and howled. “You feel so scared you want to scream and cry.”

His words seemed to upset Conor more, because the boy began to shriek even louder.

“In here, it’s all right to scream, if that’s what you need to do,” James said. “No one will be angry. No one will be upset. It’s safe to cry in here. Nothing bad will happen.”

Minutes ticked by. Still Conor thrashed and shrieked. Temper? James wondered. He didn’t think so. There hadn’t been any precipitating event that he could discern. Panic? Just plain terror at a world full of things the boy didn’t know? Or frustration, perhaps, at his wordlessness?

Conor grew hoarse. Pulling himself into a foetal position, knees up, head down, arms around his legs, the stuffed cat tucked in against his heart, Conor at last fell into hiccupping silence.