As I say, I have never cared for my work. But during our son’s upbringing, I applied myself to the job as never before. And an amazing thing happened. I was successful. Raises followed promotions, and respect followed these. I excelled at the not always legal task of peering into the financial lives of others. At times, my duties were more akin to a hacker than a pencil pusher.
A certain tension remained between me and Rachel, but she enjoyed my success. Rode my coattails. I became, in years, a top executive. Rival companies vied to steal me away. But I remained loyal to my own. I reached a plateau where I could rise no higher. Just as Rachel had reached her own plateau with our son. He was too violent, too unpredictable for her to safely manage. After her injury and hospitalization, a change seemed mandated.
It was at this time that we finally decided to institutionalize Albert.
SEVEN
At first, we visited Albert every week. The halls of the institution were brightly lit and carried sound alarmingly well. It was impossible to discern if the scream you heard was right behind you or yards ahead into the brightness. The smell of industrial disinfectant (a smell I associated with Band-Aids from my boyhood), though it permeated the atmosphere, could not quite mask the odor of human life exerting itself at its most biological level. Rachel’s newly permed hair glowed like a curly halo in the bright fluorescent light as we made our way down the corridor. Later, that night, as we performed our dutiful sex act, I would smell vestiges of the disinfectant in the curls.
Albert’s suite (Mrs. Jones, the matronly administrator, used this word- suite -six times when originally describing to us the accommodations) was nicely, if practically, furnished. No glass, no hard angles, lightbulbs secured behind metal cages, all furniture securely bolted to the floor. On one visit, before entering Albert’s room, we stood in the doorway and watched as our son interacted with Jack, his suitemate (another selection from Mrs. Jones’s argot).
“Albert, Albert, did you hear what I said to you? I said, good day, sunshine.”
Albert, sitting on his bed, uncrossed and then recrossed his legs. He rocked back and forth.
“Albert,” Jack said, “did you hear what I said? I called you sunshine!”
Albert continued to rock back and forth, but Jack was insistent. “I called you sunshine! Albert! Albert!”
Albert rocked even faster yet; he grunted and smoothed his hands over his hair. Classic signs of Albert’s growing agitation. He yelled at Jack. “Leave Albert alone! Jack, leave Albert alone!”
Jack apparently recognized the danger in Albert’s voice. He skulked past me and Rachel, muttering to anyone who might care, “Jeez, all I did was call you sunshine.”
Albert saw his parents watching him. He jumped from the bed and ran to us. “Mommy, Daddy! Albert did bad wrong. Albert did bad wrong.” Bad wrong was Albert’s newest catch-phrase. He used it whenever he saw us. Apparently, Albert had decided that his sentence at the institution was the result of his wrongdoing. And he was right.
Our visits grew less frequent. Albert aged physically. He grew into something of a hulk. A mostly silent giant who looked like neither me nor Rachel. At one point, there was talk of a group home for Albert. As Mrs. Jones described it, a group home is a noninstitutional setting for those with developmental disabilities similar to Albert’s. A group home is staffed with workers called houseparents. Living in a group home was apparently a great advantage. The list of applicants was long, but Albert was considered a prime candidate. The group home would offer something that Albert would find at no institution no matter how advanced its therapies. It would offer him normalization. Mrs. Jones used this word- normalization -in our meetings. Over and over, she repeated the word as though it obtained some magical quality when spoken aloud. Normalization. Normalization. Normalization. Your son is now normal.
Or perhaps the magic the word wove was on Rachel and me. With a wave of the bureaucratic wand, your son no longer lives in a barren institution. You are now free from guilt. Please return to your former lives. Your son now lives in a normal home, just like you. You can visit him there, just as you would visit a son who was normal. You can return to your normal lives. Everything is normal now.
A month before he was to move to the group home, Albert killed his suitemate, Jack, in a dispute over a pair of socks. We never heard the word normalization again. Albert did move, however. He was transferred to a larger facility called the Hendrix Institute, where he is given daily doses of Mellaril, Haldol, and Ativan. The few times we have visited him there, he has been only semiconscious. His clothes were soiled with fecal matter, drool slicked his unshaved chin, and scratches covered his face-self-inflicted from his ragged, broken fingernails. Neither Rachel nor I have ever spoken of objecting to this heavy regimen of antipsychotics and sedatives. Why would we?
EIGHT
After sex, Rachel sleeps. Content. My semen her trophy. Stolen from me and locked secretly away inside. She has me. She will never let me go.
I learned long ago that to deny Rachel her trophy is to risk anything, everything. She will grow suspicious. Become moody. She will smoke incessant cigarettes. Her sleep, if it comes at all, will be broken and restless. I must consent to her rape or suffer the consequences. She will pick fights. Demean my manhood. She will cry, say that I do not love her, never have. Her fingers will seek out her hair, coiling clumps of it. Twirl. Twirl. Twirl. Strands will loosen. Twirl. Bald spots appear. Twirl. Scabs grow. Twirl. I give in. She has won.
After sex I lie awake in the darkness. A victim. I think of Albert. Would things be different if he were here for Rachel to love? As it is, all of Rachel’s energies are focused on me. I am Rachel’s world. Her work in progress. I wonder if Albert knows the dark. Where is his basement? Where is his dark place? But then I see that he was born to the darkness. He has never lived with the others in the top of the house. The basement, the dark, is all that he knows. He is satisfied, I think.
NINE
In a moment of sudden clarity, I call Monty from my office. When I tell him my plan and what I need from him, he denies me.
“That’s fine,” I say, not willing to give up this last bit of fortitude I’ve found. “I’ll just hire someone else.”
Monty sighs over the phone. “First of all, I’m a criminal defense lawyer. I don’t do divorces. Secondly, all I’m saying is give it time. I don’t think you’re thinking clearly.”
Oh, but I am, I am. “You don’t understand. She’s… She… When we have sex, it’s as if she… If she doesn’t get it, she gets suspicious.”
“Lots of women get a little crazy when they don’t get sex.”
“No, that’s not what-”
“I know, I know. Listen, all I want to know is, is she forty million crazy? That’s what her old man’s worth. I checked. Are you willing to give up that kind of money? Seriously.”
“I don’t care about the money.”
“You don’t? Not the money, not the house, not the car, not the job? Oh, you thought, after you label his daughter as psychotic in divorce court, her father would say, ‘No, Adam, your job is safe; as a matter of fact, we’re promoting you. Keep the car, too. In fact, keep the house; we’ll put the crazy bitch in a loony bin. I’ll adopt you. You’ll be my heir.’”
But I didn’t care, not then, I really didn’t. “Are you going to file the divorce papers for me, or do I go to someone else?”