Life Happens Next (9 page)

“I like Happy Deal,” Debi says.

“Happy Meal?” Mom asks.

“Yeth,” Debi repeats, “Happy Deal.”

Mom smiles and says, “Okay,” and orders our food.

I can't turn to see if Adam's here with his friend, can't see if I'm in danger again.

Mom wheels me over to a booth, pushing my wheelchair up snug against the table. Debi slides in. Adam is off to the side of me at his table. When I finally catch a glimpse of him, I see that he is alone. Our name is called from the counter and Mom goes back to pick up our order.

Finally my head turns fully and I focus on Adam again. He stares straight into my eyes. I feel scared, try to search for what he is thinking, try to know whether I'm in danger.

Something amazing happens. As our eyes meet, I see as clearly as anything I've ever seen his embarrassment and guilt. It's in the way his shoulders slouch down and in his sad expression. In the way his eyes keep glancing away and his face blushes. It's like I can hear his mind and feel what he wishes he could say to me: “I'm sorry for picking on you that day. I'm sorry for what we did. I'm sorry.” His eyes tell me everything I need to know—that I'm safe and that I have nothing more to fear from him.

I've never realized this before, but people connect all the time, in a million different ways. Although Adam may never know it, he and I have just connected. He's spoken to me without words, saying something that words couldn't say any better.

I can't react. But if I could, I'd tell him I forgive him, that we all make mistakes and that it's pretty cool of him to feel sorry—even if he can't find the courage to speak the words out loud.

I think back to that guy in the black pickup truck who road-raged at Mom and me. Maybe he got caught up in an emotion and didn't take the time to think about our feelings. Maybe if he had seen my eyes or had a way to see all that Mom does for me, he would have stopped and felt some compassion. Maybe at some other time, in some other place, he'd be an okay guy like this kid Adam is right now. Maybe if he saw me in a pharmacy, heard me yelling “Ahhhhhhh” and glanced over, maybe his face, his eyes, and the way he looked would say, “It's okay kid, yell all you want—you should see me drive!”

Debi interrupts my thoughts. “I hun'ry,” she says, staring at her Happy Meal box.

“That's good, Debi,” Mom says, unwrapping Debi's hamburger. “Eat up.”

“Yeth,” Debi says. “Are you hun'ry too, boyfrien'?”

“Boyfriend!”
I scream inside, hoping no one has heard this and assumed that Debi and I are hooked up. It must be that when Debi can pry herself away from
The Sound of
the
Music
, she watches some kinda hip TV garbage—
boyfriend!!

Mom slips a French fry into my mouth. It's salty and warm and delicious, and it instantly soothes my mental outburst. Mom rakes her fingers through my hair, and when I happen to gaze at her, the heavenly French fry juice dribbling down my chin, she smiles. “Why should Paul be the only one who gives you treats?”

I chew involuntarily, more like mash stuff around with both my tongue and my teeth. As I munch on my first tiny piece of hamburger, I think again, “Boyfriend!?” I wish I could tell Mom, “New rule: No more MTV for Debi!”

I
t's much later in the day, nighttime, and I'm sitting in my wheelchair and Debi comes and stands near me again. She takes my hand and holds it. We look out the window.

There are two boats, their running lights sparkling against the dark water.

“Purtty,” Debi says, like she said last time. “Yep,” I answer silently.

We are quiet.

“You smart, S-S-S-Swan, but nobody know.”

What? What did she just say?

“Nobody know you smart … nobody know us, S-S-S-Swan, just us know us—you know me … I know you.”

I can't be hearing this right. She can't be saying what I'm hearing her say.

But now she adds, “You love A-A-A-Ally, but she love B-B-B-Baul.”

I feel myself blush.

Debi says, “It okay, you sad but it okay.”

How does Debi know all this? How does she know how I feel?

Suddenly a rush of images races through my mind: Debi staring at me so intently that day when Rusty first came. How she sits quietly so often, watching all of us, listening and staring. I always assumed that Debi didn't understand anything. I, of all people, should have known better. Just like everybody in the world “knows” how much of a veg I am, right? Debi was paying attention to the things most of us can't even see. And she was paying attention to me.

Debi mumbles, still whispering, “Wusty smart like us.”

Mom walks into the room and says, “Hi, Debi, are you visiting with Shawn?”

“Yeth,” Debi answers.

Mom says, “That's nice. What are you two talking about?”

Debi says, very softly, “Wusty.”

“Pardon me?” Mom asks.

Debi is silent, just like always, acting as if she doesn't understand Mom's question.

Rusty, who has been lying near us on the floor this entire time, perks up at the sound of his name, his ears rising as he looks over at Debi and me. He gets up and slowly ambles over to the foot of my wheelchair, and now he plops back down, lying on his side.

Mom says, “Well, you guys have a nice chat.” She leaves the room.

Debi is silent again for a while. At last she speaks. “Wusty 'n' me love you, S-S-S-Swan.”

“Thanks,” I think.

Debi says, louder than she has been speaking, “See you soon, S-S-S-Swan.”

I wish I could nod my head and say, “Okay,” but I can't. And, truthfully, I don't understand what Debi's trying to say. Doesn't she see me right now? She'll see me soon? What does she mean?

O
kay, let's get real, and this is not me going into whiner mode again, it's just stating simple facts: I'll never graduate from high school, not really. Special education students at my level of disability don't actually finish required classes, but we get to hang around until we reach twenty-one, and then, whether we've learned anything or not, we have to leave. I'll never have a first love affair, first time driving a car, first time getting drunk, first time—anything. I won't go to college. I won't sky dive. I won't become a gourmet cook. I won't get married and have kids and argue with my wife. I won't get a job. Or get fired from a job. Or buy a house. Or move anyplace cool or move anyplace not cool, anytime ever. At least not until Mom dies or gets too sick or too old to take care of me anymore. And then I suppose I'll be sent somewhere else to live. Like Debi was sent to us. What will happen to me is whatever life brings next. And in this way, I'm like everyone else.

But here's something I've also figured out. Maybe my ideas about being known and knowing others are a little bit off. I thought I knew Rusty. I thought I knew Debi. I wasn't even close. I know that I'm smart. Debi is supposedly stupid and Rusty's a dog. Yet they both figured me out. Maybe it's because this whole business of knowing someone and being known by them is different than I've thought. Maybe my assumptions based on how “normal” people, even my own family, treat me have led me down the wrong path. There's a lot I still don't know. But if Debi and Rusty and I can all connect more deeply, what does that say about how we can connect with everyone else?

It's been a while since Debi told me she knows I'm smart. Now, whenever I see her sitting and staring, I know what's really going on. She is gathering info about Mom, Cindy, Paul, and Ally. It's amazing to feel understood by her and to want to understand her in return.

I'm sitting in my regular spot in my wheelchair by the window when a seagull flies past, low, gliding. It's dark gray, with hardly any speckles at all. Watching it, I think about how much this seagull's gliding flight reminds me of when my spirit escapes my body. I start to think, “Maybe someday after I die, I'll get to come back as a seagull, a beautiful, gray ghost bird soaring.” I laugh inside my mind, thinking, “No, given my luck, I'll probably return as a fly or cockroach.”

Debi, who is across the room, laughs. She says, “S-S-S-Swan funny.”

Mom asks Debi, “You mean Shawn's arms?”

Debi says, “He funny.”

Mom says, “Shawn's arm movements just happen to him sometimes—he doesn't do it to be funny.”

“No,” Debi insists. “He funny inside … good funny.”

Mom nods.

Arm movements? I didn't realize that my arms were moving, flopping about like wings trying to lift me up as I was thinking about flying. I had never put the two things together, that my body was actually working in connection with my brain.

Debi says; “S-S-S-Swan funny lotta times … funny t'ings inside.”

Mom asks, “You mean you have funny thoughts about Shawn?”

I scream silently, “No, Mom, inside ME! Debi means that my thoughts are funny, things that I think about, that's what she is saying! She understands me!”

Debi smiles but remains silent. Mom doesn't say anything more either.

Debi has changed things for our whole family. Despite her handicaps, or maybe because of them, she shows us daily that her feelings and thoughts are real. It's not that Debi loves me more than Mom or Cindy or Paul do. She simply has time to focus, while others, so-called normal people, are always rushing about and tend to see things only on the surface.

It's not that the other people in my life are self-absorbed. They aren't—my mom especially. But they've simply never been trapped in their own bodies. They've never been seen by everyone else as unaware and lost in themselves. From their perspective, there isn't much reason to believe that I'm highly functioning in here. But what if Mom and Cindy and Paul—anyone who is paying attention—could see my wheels turning for just a moment from a look in my eyes, or wonder if my arm movement might be connected to something I was thinking? I wonder what they'd feel. I know this probably won't ever happen.... Then again, never say never.

I
am lying in my bed, waiting for Mom to come get me up. It's Sunday morning, so there's no big rush to feed, bathe, and dress me.

A seizure starts. I relax and let it carry me away.

I arrive in a room, an unfamiliar room, and in the dark shadows of the corner is the figure, the one who keeps showing up in my dreams. The figure has no clear outline of the body, as if it's wearing a cloak or huge coat made of darkness, but for the first time I sense that this figure is a woman. She is not menacing. I don't believe she means me any harm. It's hard to explain, but since she has joined me, I've been pulled away from the absolute freedom I've had in my dream and spirit journeys. At first I was scared, then frustrated. Now I'm not angry or sad or even confused. Maybe excited. I think she has a purpose. I just don't know what it is. If she wanted to hurt me, she'd have done it by now. If she doesn't care about me, why does she keep coming back? I'm not scared of her anymore.

I ask, “Who are you? Why are you showing up in my world?”

She stays silent. But that's going to change. After all, these are
my
dreams,
my
spirit travels, and I have a right to know what's going on.

I
t's the next morning, Monday. Something weird is happening, something different. I feel it under my skin, a strange tingly feeling—I can't explain it, but something is off.

For one thing, Rusty acts as crazy as he did the first day he came here.

Debi finished making her lunch and putting the dishes from the dishwasher away sooner than normal and went to sit on the bench and wait for her bus. Maybe she didn't give Rusty his regular morning treat? If that's what his nutty behavior is about, this dog better plan on a visit to the Betty Ford Doggy Addiction Clinic for Milk-Bone Junkies, because he's driving me crazy.

Rusty sits right in front of Debi, barking and whining. Mom calls, “Hey, Debi, tell Rusty to cool it.”

Debi doesn't answer. Nothing new.

Mom yells a bit louder, “Rusty, hush! Debi, pay attention please!” Still no answer from Debi.

Seriously Debi, do you have eardrums of steel? She must be in one of her zones.

“Paul,” Mom calls, “will you get Rusty? I need some peace and quiet.”

Paul brings a heaping tablespoon full of Honey Nut Cheerios to his mouth and while chewing yells, “Rusty, come here.”

Rusty ignores Paul and keeps barking.

Paul looks up, stops eating, and commands “Rusty, knock it off.
Come
!”

Rusty stops barking but continues to whine and still doesn't come to Paul.

“Dammit,” Paul snaps, dropping his spoon so that it clanks loudly as it hits the side of his bowl. He gets up from the table.