The Art of Adapting (3 page)

Those were the times when Matt most missed his nighttime walks. He and Spike had lived in a neighborhood where college kids were out late, and there were always a few of them on the street while Matt walked. Lana was worried that if Matt walked around her quiet neighborhood, even just doing a few laps around the block at three a.m., the neighbors might think Matt was suspicious and call the police. Matt never wanted to talk to the police again. Except maybe Nick Parker. To learn to hit a baseball.

Matt was also still adjusting to Byron and Abby, Matt's only nephew and only niece, fifteen and five-sixths and fourteen years old, sophomore and freshman in high school, Taurus and Libra. They were loud. That was the main problem. They yelled across the house to each other even when they had nothing to say. They sang and whistled and banged cupboards and slammed drawers and argued a lot. And they were messy. Not that Matt was never messy, but he never left dirty dishes all over the place with half-eaten food on them. Matt tried not to waste, and he definitely tried not to leave food out that might attract ants or, even worse, roaches. Not anymore, not after what happened at Spike's. Plus there were the germs. Food left out for even a short period of time was a perfect breeding ground for microorganisms. Matt wanted to explain this to Byron and Abby, but even when his words came easily, they didn't seem to understand him.

Lana's house was big and full of echoes, while Matt and Spike's apartment had been rather small and full of quiet. He missed the quiet. But Lana's house also had a front room, a formal sitting room that no one ever used, with a huge picture window that looked out across the green lawn, the tiny hedges, and into the world beyond. Matt's apartment had windows, but Spike never wanted the curtains open. Sitting and looking out Lana's front window was one of Matt's favorite things to do now, once the kids were off at school and Lana was either at work or out doing whatever she did when she wasn't working.

Matt couldn't drive anymore, so the window was all he had.
Or he could drive just fine, but they wouldn't let him. One night he'd had the same number of beers he always had, but while he was driving to the library a cyclist had distracted him and made him swerve. A police car had pulled him over and he'd gotten into trouble for it, for driving after the beers. The police officer was a huge hostile man with a bushy mustache who wanted to scare Matt, and did, but Matt didn't understand why. He'd only swerved a little, not even across the yellow line, and hadn't hit anything. He'd never had a car accident or even a ticket before, because he knew every traffic rule there was. But the big angry mustached police officer didn't care, and Matt's license was revoked.

After that Matt stayed home more, with Spike and the beers and the whiskey and the pot, and Matt slept a little better, but then there were Spike's good pills, which really helped Matt sleep, until one time Matt slept too much, too hard, and too long, and Spike couldn't wake him.

Matt had woken up in a white hospital room under starched itchy white sheets. He was strapped to the bed and in terrible pain. His body was full of tubes and wires and nose-burning antiseptic smells. His throat ached so much that he couldn't talk, and when the nurse came in and asked how he was feeling, Matt could only tip his head back to show her his raw throat. It felt like it had been scraped with metal on the inside.

“We had to pump your stomach. Your throat will be sore for a little while,” she said.

The nurse undid Matt's restraints, rubbing Matt's arm where they had been, and it felt like being slammed by a hammer, the sudden and unexpected graze of her cold fingers just above the inside of his left wrist. The jolt of pain spread throughout Matt's body in one hard fast shock wave and he'd jumped away from her. Matt didn't like to be touched. He could feel the touch of people's breath, the prickly sensation of their eyes on him. Actual physical contact could hurt his skin in a way that nobody else seemed to understand. He could tell by the nurse's wide eyes that she didn't understand. And with his throat on fire he couldn't speak to explain. He hated hospitals and doctors and nurses in general. They
were always saying they wanted to help you before they caused you some sort of pain.

The nurse left and a doctor came in. Matt knew he was a doctor because his name badge said so. Aside from that, he could have been anyone. He was middle-aged, graying and fat, with ill-fitting glasses that carved deep impressions on either side of his nose. And he smelled like cigarette smoke. Matt didn't like him. The doctor breathed through his nose and it made a whistling sound so distracting that Matt could barely hear him over it. How could Matt trust the advice of an obese doctor who smoked?

The doctor told Matt that his liver was compromised, like that made sense, like there was a negotiation going on inside his body, but there wasn't any negotiating—Matt's liver was broken somehow and he was to blame even though he'd known nothing about it. He felt like he should apologize, like he'd violated some rule, when he was always so careful to follow every law and rule. He didn't like troubling people. He could feel the doctor's disappointment. It filled Matt up from his chest to his head, made the buzzing start inside his ears, and he didn't know what to do with the feeling or the sound. Sometimes he hit his ears to stop the sound, but he knew the doctor wouldn't like to see that. Most people didn't like to see it, although Matt didn't understand why they cared what he did to his own body.

The doctor told Matt that he had to stop the alcohol and drugs and take Wellbutrin to stay calm instead. He told Matt that he had Asperger's syndrome and that's why he wasn't like other people, but Matt didn't know what other people were like so it didn't mean anything to him, except that he couldn't drive or drink or smoke pot anymore, and could only take the pills the doctor told him to, and never sleeping pills in case he took too many again. The doctor's nose whistled and whistled and Matt agreed so that the doctor would go away and take his noises and disappointment with him.

But being alone in the hospital room wasn't better. The room was too bright and the antiseptic smells made Matt feel sick. Then he'd had to go to the bathroom, but the rolling IV stand wouldn't
fit in the small bathroom with him. He really had to go, though, so he pulled out the tube in his arm so he could shut the door and before he'd even finished peeing the nurse was back and yelling at him and there was saline and blood all over the dirty white linoleum floor and then the doctor came in whistling, whistling, shaking his head, even more disappointed.

“Asperger's,” the doctor said to the nurse, and they both nodded like it was code for something Matt couldn't see or feel. He tried to be good after that, holding very still while they put the IV back in his arm, but it hurt too much to bear, and he flinched and they yelled at him like he was a bad child. Matt kicked the IV stand away and it hit the nurse in the chest and then they left him alone. Moments later two huge orderlies came in and restrained Matt again, and they gave him a shot of something that made the room go all fuzzy.

When Matt woke up he was still restrained, and the IV was back in his arm, and the scratchy sheets still hurt and his throat burned even more because he'd screamed when the orderlies had pinned him down. But Lana was there, the warm rose-petal smell of her competing with the antiseptic to soothe Matt's nerves. She stood next to Matt's bed, her back to Matt, her arms crossed and legs locked and strong like when they'd been little and she'd told other kids to leave Matt alone. And then he felt safer. Not completely safe, because he was still in the hospital, but better, calmer. Or maybe it was the doctor's new pills that made him feel calmer. But only until a social worker came to visit and said she was worried about Matt going back to live with Spike. She had short blond hair, messy and wet-looking even though it was dry. It was full of some product that smelled like men's cologne. She had lots of earrings on one side and only half as many on the other, and red-framed glasses. She didn't seem like she wanted to help Matt, even though she said she did. She spent more time looking at her phone and clipboard than she did at Matt or Lana.

The social worker tried talking to Matt but he couldn't stop counting her earrings: nine on the left and four on the right. Why nine and four? He needed to count again and again, trying to find
the significance, and she became very irritated with him because he couldn't stop counting to answer her questions. Then she talked to Lana instead of Matt, which was fine with him. She cleaned her red-framed glasses on the hem of her shirt and told Lana that Matt needed more care, maybe some help from the state, maybe a facility that would better fit his needs, as if Matt had any needs, aside from the need to get out of the hospital and away from all the sick people there with germs they couldn't contain, not really, even with all of the antiseptic. Matt could feel the germs in the air, getting into his lungs with each breath, and even with the calming pills he couldn't sit still and had to rock against his restraints to stop thinking about the germs on every surface around him.

Then suddenly Lana was angry. She used her loud voice to tell the social worker to leave and never come back. And then it was decided, before Matt even knew they were deciding. He was going to live with Lana.

And so he'd moved into a house of red accents: burgundy curtains and cranberry-colored throw pillows and a huge Persian rug with golds and greens dancing on a sea of maroon, and he'd fit in his soothing blues wherever he could.

Abby passed her time at the dinner table flexing and relaxing her abs, glutes, and thighs over and over, counting reps until she could escape back up to her room. She was on twenty, headed for a hundred. She hated meals. Especially listening to other people eat: the click of a fork against someone's teeth, the chomp of their teeth coming together as they mashed food, even the gulp of swallowing—they all revolted her. If she'd been allowed to listen to her iPod at the table to drown it out that might've helped, but it was against her mom's rules. Abby thought maybe when her dad moved out there would be fewer rules, since Graham was the one who always needed everything just so to relax after work each day, but the rules stayed even without Graham there to care.

Uncle Matt was just as restless, rearranging his fork, knife, and napkin over and over, carefully lining them up, waiting for his food. Lana kept watching him as if this stressed her out. Abby thought Matt seemed calm enough, almost robotic a lot of the time, but Lana treated him like he was always about to blow a fuse or something.

Matt was Lana's new project, now that Abby's dad had moved out. Lana hadn't even asked what Abby or Byron thought. She just came back from visiting Matt in the hospital and told Abby and
Byron that he was moving in. She assumed they would be fine with having their weird uncle thrown into the mix just months after their family was ripped in half. Not that Abby wasn't fine, mostly. But she wanted Lana to care about the times when she wasn't. Her mom didn't even seem to notice.

Abby had been a straight-A student for years. Forever, actually. Until now. But did Lana make as much of a fuss about Abby's falling grades as she did about Matt's dinner? Well, it was only one grade, but that was bad enough, a total humiliation to Abby, who had always been the “smart” kid. (Byron was the “athlete,” never mind that Abby was a pretty good soccer player.) Abby had pulled a C on her chemistry midterm and tanked her whole grade and perfect GPA. She'd pretended it was just a onetime brain-freeze to blame, and her mom had bought it, because she wanted not to have to care, Abby could tell. But then her teacher, Mr. Franks, had emailed her mom and said Abby was behind on lab reports, too. The jerk. Lana sighed and hugged Abby like it was Lana's fault somehow, like the separation had caused Abby to temporarily forget how to take a simple test or do her lame labs. Abby was relieved to dodge a lecture on the bad chem progress report, especially when Lana agreed not to tell Graham about it, but Abby also felt annoyed that she was turning into a screwup and her mom didn't even ask why. Not that Abby would've told her.

Lana finally served Matt and Abby, sat down, and started putting a steady stream of bites in her mouth like she was in an eating contest. It wasn't the way Lana ate before, with Graham still in the house, but it was how she always ate now, shoveling and swallowing without much time spent on chewing. It reminded Abby of back when they used to go to the beach and she and Byron would play sea turtles. They'd dig a hole in the sand, throw a couple of rocks or shells in to be the eggs, and use their hands like flippers to chuck sand behind them, trying to fill the hole in before a big wave came up and did the job for them. Abby wasn't sure what hole Lana was trying to fill these days, but she didn't want to have to watch.

Abby's stomach was a mess. She was hungry and queasy at
the same time, all the time. She pushed the food around her plate and watched Uncle Matt. He had to arrange everything a certain way before he could eat. Matt used the same plates and bowls for his food every meal, and he got all freaked out if things were out of sync. No food could touch other food. If his corn and slab of meatloaf collided, Abby was pretty sure he'd have a quiet, choking meltdown, like someone having a seizure.

Abby thought she was the only one with food issues until she met Matt. She had nothing on him. She ate a bite of corn, but regretted it the moment it was in her mouth. The little kernels gushed their sweet contents as she bit down on them. She could taste the sugar, the calories, and something about the way the mushy corn-guts oozed onto her tongue, like fish eggs popping, made her ill. Then there were the pulpy remains of the corn, that weird shiny skin that hardly seemed like food. It gave her the willies. Abby tucked the corn into her cheek and started another round of her exercises, tightening and releasing while her mother ate, two feet away, oblivious to how annoying her ravenous eating habits were.