Chapter 3

Is everything science cannot measure fictitious?

I kept trying to think of Tony as mentally retarded. Retarded people lived in
institutions. If Tony were in such a place, maybe I could forget him. My little boy
would no longer be a part of my life, but I might eventually escape from this
relentless grief. The thought of abandoning Tony to a state hospital couldn't
possibly have increased the anguish I was already suffering. That morning after
Sherry and Guy left for school, I called the pediatric clinic.

"I spoke with a doctor there yesterday, a pediatrician. I don't remember his
name," I said to the woman who answered. "Maybe he had blond hair and wore
glasses."

"What did you talk to him about?"

"My little boy. The doctor said--well--I guess he said Tony was mentally retarded."
I began to cry again. "Somehow, I didn't realize what the doctor meant
yesterday."

"Try not to worry," she said. "Give me your name. I'll find out which doctor and
have him call you."

I put down the phone and looked out the window at Tony playing in the yard.

Oh Tony, please do something clever! These past few hours must surely
be a nightmare from which I will awaken. Tragedies like this happened to other
other people, not us. I can't explain why I thought we should be exempt.

Tony came in and emptied two pockets of dirt out of his little trousers onto the
floor.

"Oh, Tony," I scolded.

Tony picked up the edge of the rug, kicked the dirt under it, and looked up at me
inquiringly. Ever since rugs were invented people have thought it clever to sweep
dirt under them, but Tony's ingenuity dispelled none of my despair, and I hugged
him to me unhappily.

After a while the pediatrician phoned.

"When you said yesterday Tony wasn't normal, the meaning didn't seem to register.
I'm sorry."

"But I didn't say he was mentally retarded," the doctor objected.

"You didn't?"

"No. Actually, I suspect his trouble might be something quite different."

"If you mean some emotional problem, I wish I could believe that. It's not true of
Tony. He's a happy child."

"Don't feel too discouraged yet," he said. "Come in again next week. We'll try to
get your little boy an appointment at a psychiatric clinic."

A psychiatric clinic? Where psychiatrists do whatever they do? I vaguely imagined
those mysterious medical specialists sitting silently, listening to a patient
on a couch describing his dreams. From a few obscure clues, they could
scientifically detect people's deepest subconscious thoughts. They also had
formulae to measure a child's intelligence more accurately than any fallible human
judgement could. Although a few things existed that science hadn't yet learned to
measure, those of us who believed in science knew anything "real" was measurable.
Human traits, such as intelligence, were obviously neither fictitious nor imaginary,
and surely by this time psychiatrists had devised scientific methods to measure
them. Psychiatrists also delved into a person's past, didn't they? Tony didn't have
much of a past, but I thought over the few years of his life.

There was nothing unusual about Tony's delivery. Bastille Day was probably
an appropriate date to launch us upon those next turbulent decades, for Tony was
born on July 14, 1957. He arrived several weeks early, on a Sunday, and Ike had
gone fishing. Leaving the children with a neighbor, I took a taxi to the hospital,
where I discovered my doctor had also gone fishing. The baby didn't wait for my
doctor. Tony was born after a few hours, and my first question was the same one
most mothers ask,

"Is the baby all right?"

"A fine healthy boy," the substitute doctor said from behind a surgical mask. Such
was my faith in medical science, I assumed the doctor had determined Tony's
normalcy in that first glance. I never gave the matter another thought.

When Tony was sixteen months old, Ike was sent to an artillery school in
Oklahoma for a few months. He had orders for Korea after he finished the
school. The children and I went to California to stay near my family.

I'd suspected a two-day train trip in a cramped little compartment with three small
children might not be fun. It wasn't. The two older ones bickered to relieve their
boredom. Tony, the only one who seemed to enjoy himself, jumped up and down
on my lap. He made a mess every meal, even breaking a bottle of catsup and
spilling it over us all. I stole moments of relief by ordering a cup of coffee and
locking myself in the tiny toilet. If the designers of railroad cars had anticipated
mothers might use that little closet to escape rambunctious toddlers and bickering
children, they would have surely made it larger.

In California, I rented a house next door to my sister. Her husband's work kept
him away from home much of the time.

"My children resent their father being away.". she said. "Yours will become
unhappy too." Believing one of the obligations of parenthood was to avoid
unhappiness, I thought of ways to keep us busy.

"I don't understand it," my sister said a few weeks later. "Your children are eager
for their father to get home, but they don't seem unhappy." She probably meant I
didn't appear unhappy. Her children seemed all right to me, and I suspected she
was the one who resented her husband's absence.

My sister once took Tony to town to buy him a toy. Tony could not be talked into
anything. He shook his head and responded a decisive "No!" to everything she
offered. Awed by Tony's determination, she took him into a big toy store and told
the clerks she would buy anything in which they could interest her nephew. She
spent an entertaining afternoon as they exhibited their most expensive toys. Despite
the clerks' enthusiastic demonstrations, Tony continued to shake his head and declare
a determined "No!" My sister left the store without a purchase. We laughed when
she told about it

Our yard was always full of children. As I remembered the doctor asking how
Tony got along with other children, I realized Tony never paid much attention to them.
If the other children played in the sandbox, Tony played on the swings, and vice versa.
He would roam out of the yard. I would find him, scold him, and give him a swat on
the diaper. Once, we couldn't find him anywhere. After frantically searching the
neighborhood, we called the police. Someone several blocks away had found him,
and two policemen brought Tony home frightened, tearful and sobbing,

"Tony broke! Tony broke!" Broke was one of the few words in his vocabulary.

Like my older son, Tony had not babbled as a baby. His first words were
see boat. No one knew the reason for his fascination with boats, but we all
joined his game and yelled, "See boat!" when we spotted a car pulling one along
the freeway. However, except for a couple of familiar words or phrases, Tony
was a silent observer. Mine was a family who enjoyed differences in people,
including children. My four-year-old nephew insisted he had a herd of colored
goats which were invisible to the rest of us. "You are sitting right on top of my
green goat!" he would declare, causing startled visitors to jump up in alarm from
wherever they were sitting. At other times my nephew claimed he was a robot and
had to be wound up every morning. We assumed whatever our children did was
normal, and often funny, and that assumption included any differences we noticed in
Tony.

Ike returned from the school in Oklahoma. In a month he would leave for Korea,
and we plunged into a flurry of activities with the children, such as fishing, picnics
and going to zoos and museums. However I could see Ike was troubled. For one
thing, he had purchased a swagger stick. A few officers sometimes carried this
rediculous little item around, for no other purpose as far as I could see, than to
prop up their egos. I couldn't imagine Ike needing one. He had always been a
public information officer, and the school he had attended was an artillery school.
It had included mathematics and difficult, technical information. Ike admittted the
course had not gone well.

A couple of weeks before he was to leave for Korea, what Ike had secretly feared
and dreaded, happened. The armed forces had been cutting back, and orders arrived
relieving him from active duty as an officer in the Army Reserve. That feeling of failure
was one of the most painful things Ike ever had to endure, and my heart ached for
him. However, we had always led a more eventful, unconventional life than most
people, and we turned our attention to dealing with our altered circumstances. With
only five years until retirement, Ike could enlist as a sergeant to finish his twenty
years. Then he would retire as a major. At least now he didn't have to go to Korea.
Although Ike and I were busy trying to adjust to a different future, the children were too
young to pay much attention, and the event didn't have much effect upon them. Tony,
not yet two, wasn't unaware anything was happening.

Ike enlisted at the Presidio at San Francisco. We bought a big old triplex across
the Golden Gate bridge in Marin County, renting out a couple of apartments. I was
happy to try to think of ways to help with the finances. We lived a quiet, uneventful
life until Ike was sent to Greenland eight months earlier. Temporary separations
were routine in the Army, and the children and I went on with our lives while awaiting
Ike's return.

I did take Castor Oil and Quinine, the book about Tony's great grandfather.
I think I hoped it might give substance to my vague belief Tony was unusual
because he would grow up to have some mysterious quality like Dr. Vandegrift.
Tony was not precocious, but I'd decided precocious children didn't necessarily
grow up to be the most capable adults, and apparently Dr. Vandegrift had agreed.
In fact, Tony's great grandfather was quoted as recommending children not
start school until the age of eight in order to guard against early intellectual
development. Perhaps late bloomers ran in the family.

The pediatrician's hair was dark, not blond, I noticed. The words he had spoken
were stark in my memory, but other details of the doctor's appearance had been
blasted out of my mind.

He greeted me briefly, as though impatient to begin, with only a glance at Tony.
He didn't mention the psychiatric appointment he had spoken of on the phone.
Instead, he tenaciously continued with the same menacing demand of the previous
week,

"Well now, tell me about yourself."

Weren't we going to even make a pretense of discussing Tony? I wanted to
answer him, but somehow couldn't. I'd always found doctors intimidating, but
but I'd never encountered one so threateningly intrusive.

"If you have some wild idea you are going to get to know me, forget it! No one
knows me as intimately as you seem to have in mind," I said. Then I sighed. "But
for some reason I don't understand, this is supposedly for Tony. Go ahead. What
do you want to know?"

"Just tell me anything you can think of."

The doctor apparently wanted me to rattle on about myself, saying whatever
popped into my head. If I attempted such a thing I'd probably blurt out something
inane. Was that what he hoped I would do?

In 1961 in the United States, the validity of this new science, psychiatry, was rarely
challenged. Psychotherapy was prescribed as treatment for many ailments of
unknown cause. Anyone who resisted such personal intrusion was contemptuously
accused of refusing help'. The doctor and I spent a half-hour verbally sparring, and
I managed not to tell him much of anything. Tony, sensing my distress, stood and
watched the doctor instead of pursuing his usual explorations, but like the previous
week, the pediatrician ignored him. Finally, the despair on my face must have
convinced the doctor I wasn't being intentionally difficult. He stopped and tried a
fresh approach.

"Was your husband a sergeant when Tony was born?"

"No. He was a major. He was RIFF'ed a couple of years ago, but that did not
cause us any terrible unhappiness. There are even advantages--such as not having
to attend officers' wives' luncheons."

"You don't like officers' wives' luncheons?"

"No. Would you?"

He hesitated, and I detected a trace of smile at the corners of his mouth. Maybe I
could distract him from badgering me for a minute.

"Well? How would you like to attend women's luncheons?"

His grin finally materialized. "I can't picture myself wearing the appropriate
clothes," he said. He didn't stay distracted for long though, and soon resumed his
relentless questioning.

"Everyone has their peculiarities," I said. Which of mine was this doctor so
determined to expose? I would willingly confess to something if it would end this
inquisition. "Maybe Tony is simply going to grow up to be peculiar like his great
grandfather." I indicated the book I'd brought about Dr. Vandegrift.

"What was peculiar about him?"

I faltered. It would seem immodest to come right out and admit I thought my
child was exceptionally intelligent, and I finally blurted out,

"Well, he was clairvoyant."

Tony's great grandfather was said to have once jumped up from the dinner table in
New York and declared his barn in Maryland was on fire. It was. I was aware that
extra sensory perception was not a respectable notion in our twentieth-century,
scientific society, and like most modern, educated people, I didn't question science.
I usually avoided thinking about Dr. Vandegrift's reported psychic abilities by
deciding he was probably highly perceptive, and had somehow convinced everyone
he was clairvoyant. To my relief the pediatrician ignored my suggestion and didn't
ask me to explain. His seemed preoccupied with something else I'd said.

"Peculiar," he said. "Peculiar."

He stood up and walked over to the window. Then he turned and resumed
questioning.

"Where did you grow up?"

"In Ukiah, a small town in Northern California."

"And your husband?"

"He's from New York."

"Where were you married?"

"We were married by a one-armed preacher in Alaska." I wasn't trying to be
flippant. I merely thought this miserable ordeal might become less grim if we
could inject a little levity into it.

"Alaska? What were you doing up there?"

"I don't know. Got restless, I guess."

"Restless," he said. "Restless...hmm. What type of work did you do in Alaska?"

"I've done lots of things. The first money I ever earned was selling acorns to
Indians. In Alaska I made totem poles for the Indians."

"Totem poles! What did they do with them?"

"Burned them."

"Burned them?"

"Oh," I explained, exasperated at how seriously he took my attempts at humor, "I
worked in a store. I carved some totem poles out of candles, and lots of people
bought them, including some Indians."

He stood looming over me. It was probably just as well I hadn't told about getting
into a poker game, down in the engine room, with the crew of the SS North Sea Sea.
When the ship reached Sitka, I didn't have enough money to come home if I had
wanted.

"Architecture is what I studied in school," I said, sensing this was what he was
trying to find out.

The doctor moved back toward his desk and was silent for a moment.

"Got pretty good grades, didn't you." It wasn't a question. He sounded less
contentious, almost sympathetic.

"My grades were all right." They weren't quite as good as the doctor was making
them sound.

"What is your religion. I mean--ah--do you have any religious affiliations?" A
moment ago he had arrogantly badgered me to tell him details of my private life.
Now, suddenly, he seemed embarrassed to ask my religion.

"Agnostic."

"Agnostic or atheist?"

"Agnostic I guess, but I send the children to Sunday school."

Most parents feel obligated to indoctrinate their children with their own theology.
Resolving questions of one's personal philosophy, and finding meaning in twentieth
century life, seemed to me the most difficult, significant accomplishment of
anyone's life. Neither Ike nor I had any desire to impose our beliefs upon anyone
else, including our children.

The doctor sat down at his desk and began writing in Tony's medical record.

"I'll try to get you an appointment at a psychiatric clinic as soon as possible, Mrs.
Vandegrift," he said without looking up from the folder. He appeared
embarrassed, as though he'd been caught brow-beating the general's wife, for
heaven's sake!

I remained in the chair. The doctor still didn't look up. He seemed to consider the
interview over. Apparently he had finally learned some significant fact about me,
some clue for which he had been probing.

What had I revealed? Did the doctor expect me to get up and leave without
ever discussing Tony?

"Isn't it possible Tony is merely slow growing up? I can't believe something is
wrong with him. I've watched every move he made this week. He seems to spend
his time playing, like any child does. For instance, he spent this morning taking a
flashlight apart and trying to pu--"

"He likes to take things apart, does he?" The doctor turned to look at Tony.

"Yes."

During the past half-hour, I had become so involved in the doctor's interrogation I
had forgotten Tony. I looked at him now. He was watching the doctor gravely.
The doctor bent over and spun his pen on the floor like a top. Tony stood
observing the doctor's performance suspiciously.

"Couldn't he just be taking longer to mature?" I asked again. "Such a thing is
possible, isn't it?"

He stared at Tony a few moments. The spinning pen hadn't seemed to effect Tony
as the doctor expected. He picked it up and pocketed it in apparent
disappointment.

"I wouldn't care to make a judgement on the matter," he said, turning his attention
back to the medical records.

I got up and took Tony's hand. I was shaking, feeling as though I had fought off a
physical assault. Tony and I managed to walk through the waiting room and the
the door of the clinic. I hadn't understood the doctor, and he seemed to ignore my
questions. Never had I felt such bewildering inability to communicate. It was as
though the doctor and I spoke different languages.

Since I was unable to convince most people how strangely doctors were suddenly
behaving, I wrote everything down, trying to capture every nuance and detail. I'd
never had ambition to write anything, but I was desperate to make someone
understand. Committing everything to paper was also a way to assure myself it
was really happening. Eventually I discovered writing to be more therapeutic
than any therapist could have been. If I hadn't happened upon this way to deal
with my frustration, I probably wouldn't have remembered what Tony was like
during those years. I wouldn't have remembered what I was like, for I would
grow as much as Tony would.

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