Marcelo in the Real World (32 page)

“No. Vermont is where you belong.”

She shakes her head yes. “You made me wonder whether my house-
slash
-studio was just a place to hide. I thought about it constantly after you asked me that question and after you started trying to help Ixtel. I realized that if I was going to live there, it needed to be a place where I could make the best of my special interest, as you call it.” She pauses and takes a deep breath.

“Did you mean what you said when you told me I could go to Vermont whenever I wished?”

“Do I look like the kind of person who would say something like that and not mean it?”

“After I graduate from Oak Ridge, that is what I want to do. I can help Amos with the farm chores. Namu can come also.”

“Do you see me somewhere in that picture or is it just you, Amos, and Namu?”

I smile. “I see you also.”

“Amos would work your bones off.”

“I can do all that.” Then I look at her. “You are crying,” I say, amazed.

She continues without seeming to respond to me, “You’ve seen so much this summer. Good and bad. It’s only natural to want to exclude the bad.”

“No.” I know what she’s going to say.

“Let me finish. What I want to tell you is that there are no places to hide, not anywhere.”

“That is not why I want to go to Vermont. There is a college forty-two miles from your house that offers a degree in nursing with various specializations. Physical therapy is one of them. After college and after I am a licensed nurse, I could get some
Haflinger ponies and provide hippotherapy to autistic and disabled kids. Amos can help me breed and take care of the horses. It is not possible to have this be a full-time job, so I will also be a nurse like Aurora, working with children. Vermont will be the place where I can follow my special interests.” Then I remember the quote from Abraham Joshua Heschel that Rabbi Heschel read to me. “Vermont will be the place where Marcelo plays his counterpoint,” I say.

“Plays his counterpoint?” She grabs the box with her CDs, stands up, and looks to the heavens as if asking for God’s help.

“God will help you,” I say, trying to be funny. I stand up as well.

She doesn’t laugh as I expected her to. She stops and says seriously, “You checked all this out, the college, the physical therapy degree? The nursing? You really thought about it?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“All of last night?” She pretends to be amazed. I don’t know whether the gesture means she thinks this kind of decision needs more time or maybe she likes the fact that I was checking out ways to be close to her.

“No. Yes. Not just last night but also before that. Last night was when I first thought about Vermont. But the ponies and the kids and the nursing, I thought about before.” I decide that she wants me to go on, that she is enjoying hearing about my plans. “It will be five years before I can be a nurse. I plan to work with the children at the medical center you took Amos to. I won’t have to wait until I get a degree to do that. I can start right away as a
volunteer. And with the ponies, I’ll get a job at Paterson this year working weekends, to get experience. Then in Vermont, I will start with one pony. Then we’ll get more and eventually we will need an indoor track because of the winter. I made a list. Would you like to see it?”

“Mmm.” I see unmistakable happiness illuminate her face. When she speaks, this is what she says. “You will always be welcome there, regardless of why you come. But if it’s to be your home, you need to make sure you come for the right reason.”

“It has to be the right note,” I say.

“Yes. In the overall piece.”

“But how do I know the next note is the right one?”

“The right note sounds right,” she says, laughing.

Then she looks at me in a new way. It is a serious and tender look I’ve never seen before, and I want to rest my eyes in hers for as long as I can. Then she walks to where I stand, and she kisses me softly on my cheek.

And when she steps out, I hear or I remember, I can’t tell which, the most beautiful of melodies.

T
hirty-four years ago, during my junior year at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, I got a job working weekends for the Department of Mental Health. From Friday evening to Sunday evening I lived in a halfway home for the “mentally handicapped” (the term used then) while the regular staff person rested. During my senior year, I moved full-time into a newly founded home that was part of L’Arche—a faith-based community where persons with developmental disabilities and “normal” persons lived together and learned from each other with as few barriers between them as possible. In those days, autism as a diagnosis was reserved for those persons in the very low-functioning end of the spectrum. And even in those cases, likely as not, the diagnosis would be of a known mental illness rather than autism. Looking back, however, I know that some of the young men and women I lived with were persons who fell within the autism spectrum, including Asperger’s syndrome. This book in a small way acknowledges the gifts of these young people and in particular the gift of love I received from them.

I want to dedicate this book to my nephew Nicholas, who I know will one day read this book with pride in his ability to overcome the negative aspects of autism. I want to thank Ann and Jack Syverson for their support; Faye Bender, my agent, for her
unwavering faith through the many years it took to bring this book to life; and Cheryl Klein, my editor, for her dazzling vision, solid direction, and in-the-trenches hard work. She is a co-creator. And finally, I thank my wife, Jill Syverson-Stork, for her insight, her patience, her contagious hope.