Stephan Clark - Sweetness #9

“Our son’s fine,” I said. “His brain checks out fine, his vocal cords aren’t tangled or damaged, he’s not allergic to the eight most common food allergens”—I popped the pill into my mouth and dry-swallowed it—“and his chromosomes and genetic material show not the first sign of a known abnormality. He’s just a quiet, verbless boy, that’s all.”

“I’m very glad to hear that, Mr. Leveraux, but the fact remains that Ernest does exhibit ‘stimming.’ The humming and walking in class, I mean. It’s very common among children with Attention Deficit Disorder.”

“ADD? My son and I sat through an entire James Bond marathon this summer, and you’re going to tell me he has ADD?”

“The situation requires our attention.”

“The boy can play the same computer game for seventy-two hours.”

“And Ritalin has been proven to be quite effective—”

“Mrs. Goldfarb.”

“ Golden farb.”

“Everything’s proven! That’s the last thing you learn as a scientist and the first thing they teach you in business school. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll prove it.’”

“Ernest fidgets. He won’t look his teacher in the eye.”

“We can’t all be salesmen.”

“He mumbles.”

“As did Gould, Glenn Gould. The man wouldn’t even stop for a recording session.”

“Are you suggesting your son sit at a piano instead of a desk?”

“Are you telling me music is no longer part of the public school curriculum?”

“Mr. Leveraux, if you don’t like the idea of Ritalin, there are plenty of other drugs we can try.”

“Not with my son.”

“Wellbutrin. Effexor.”

“You’ll see I’m quite firm on this matter.”

“Dextrostat. Desipramine.”

“You’re wasting your breath, Mrs. Goldenfarb.”

“Or Prozac,” she said. “Because I should warn you, if he persists in his behavior — and you persist in yours — this could be considered a matter of parental neglect.”

“Neglect?” I stood so quickly my chair flew out behind me. “Are you threatening me?”

“I am merely making a recommendation.”

“And why are we having this conversation on the phone? Shouldn’t we be speaking in person? What are you, afraid of confrontation?”

“This conversation is over, Mr. Leveraux.”

“I should go before the school board and say you need a pill!”

But I was already talking to a dial tone.

Betty and I descended on the school that same afternoon to demand that our son be returned to his proper classroom. We spoke of lawsuits and bad publicity, of friendships with state senators (a lie) and forthcoming letters to the editor in the local, regional, and national papers (true). But it wasn’t as simple as escorting Ernest out through one door and in through another, as Mrs. Goldenfarb herself told us. Our son had already been reclassified in databases available to the district, county, and state.

“We can’t just hit a few buttons on the keyboard and make it all go away,” she said.

“And why is that?” I asked her. “Because you’ve already hit a few buttons on the keyboard and made it all happen?”

She smiled firmly, sitting back in her chair. “There’s a protocol to follow. So unless your son retakes the test and passes, we’ll just have to let it play out.”

As Betty drove us home (she had met me at FlavAmerica and gone with me to the school from there, saying we could carpool the next day), she suggested we just go ahead and do it.

“Medicate him?” I said. “But why?”

“It could be aphasia voluntaria. ”

Before our insurance carrier had sent us its first letter denying the dubious and explaining its policy on the experimental, we had met with a specialist who had said just that.

“You think he’s faking it?”

“It’s not that he’s not talking on purpose; it’s that something’s holding him back.” These too had been the doctor’s exact words. “It could be Social Anxiety Disorder.”

“And it could be demonic possession, but that’s no reason for us to rush out to one of Aspirina’s old botánicas and a buy a black candle and a smudge stick of sage.”

Betty gave me a steady, unblinking look, then turned off the highway toward home.

“What is Social Anxiety Disorder anyway?” I said. “A few years ago none of us had heard of it, and now we’re not even allowed to doubt its legitimacy? You watch. Here, soon they’ll be warning us about Social Adaptability Disorder. ‘Do you enjoy speaking in public? Do you make friends quickly when you move to a new town or place of work? You may have Social Adaptability Disorder.’”

“David, our son is in ESL. We have to do something.”

“How about military school?”

“You can’t be serious?” She saw that I was. “Well, why don’t we just beat the verbs out of him? Have you thought of that? It’d save us some money.”

As she turned onto our street, I told her he could probably use a little discipline. “I’m starting to think I’ve been lax as a father.”

Betty shook her head, then told me that she’d gone online after getting my call and done a little research. “And apparently there’s this girl in Wyoming who didn’t speak at all until the second grade. Then they gave her liquid Prozac and now she’s talking a mile a minute.”

“Well maybe we shouldn’t be putting words into her mouth,” I said. “Are we going to guarantee her a job on one of these cable news channels?”

“What’s gotten into you? You used to be perfectly sensible. You could even say morbidly sensible.”

“Morbidly sensible?”

“But now you’re no different from Priscilla, afraid of progress and new ideas. Why don’t we at least try it? He’s in ESL, David!”

She hit the button on the clicker and drove the car into the garage, in beneath the tennis ball hanging from a string.

“It’s English for speakers of other languages,” I said.

She didn’t answer; just sat there listening to the hot oil dripping into the collecting pan beneath us.

I took a deep breath, then told her that I too had gone online and done a little research. “And do you know what I learned? The pharmaceutical industry spends eight billion dollars per year on gifts to American physicians. That’s eight billion with a ‘b,’ Betty. And we’re not just talking pens and coffee mugs and memo pads either. They’re shelling out for trips to ski resorts and Honolulu. Honolulu, Betty! And yet still you don’t think Big Pharma exerts an undue influence over our lives?”

“Big Pharma?” She got out of the car and moved in through the utility room. “Since when do you call it Big Pharma?”

“I’m not saying this medicine doesn’t do what they say. I’m only saying maybe they’re giving it out too freely. It’s as much crowd control as it is therapy.”

“And so you’re sure there’s nothing wrong with our son? And what if you’re wrong?”

“Betty. Betty, listen.” We were moving up the stairs to the second floor, speaking in strained whispers. “The adolescent brain is very plastic.” These had been the words of a more optimistic specialist. “If one part can’t do its job, another will adapt to pick up the slack. So if Ernest really is suffering from some condition we haven’t yet uncovered, we probably just have to give him time to heal.”

She chuckled as she moved into the walk-in closet to change. “And to think it’s you who’s saying this!”

“What?”

“A plastic brain? That’s a biological Communism! ‘Do what you can, take what you need.’” She took off her blouse. “And this from the man who campaigned for Nixon?”