“In the pot.”
I poured myself a cup. As my dad cooked, I noted the headlines in the newspaper, knowing he would read the front section first, then metro. He would ignore the sports and life section. A man of routine.
“How was your night?” I asked.
“The same,” he said. I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t ask me anything in return. Instead, he ran the spatula through the scrambled eggs. The bacon was already sizzling. In time, he turned to me, and I already knew what he would ask.
“Would you mind putting some bread in the toaster?”
My dad left for work at exactly 7:35.
Once he was gone, I scanned the paper, uninterested in the news, at a loss as to what to do next. I had no desire to go surfing, or even to leave the house, and I was wondering whether I should crawl back into bed to try to get some rest when I heard a car pull up the drive. I figured it might be someone dropping off a flyer offering to clean the gutters or power-wash the mold from the roof; I was surprised when I heard a knock.
Opening the door, I froze, caught completely off guard. Tim shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Hi, John,” he said. “I know it’s early, but do you mind if I come in?”
A wide strip of medical tape bridged his nose, and the skin surrounding both eyes was bruised and swollen.
“Yeah… sure,” I said, stepping aside, still trying to process the fact that he was here.
Tim walked past me and into the living room. “I almost didn’t find your house,” he said. “When I dropped you off before, it was late and I can’t say I was paying that much attention. I drove by a couple of times before it finally registered.”
He smiled again, and I realized he was carrying a small paper sack.
“Would you like some coffee?” I asked, snapping out of my shock. “I think there still might be a cup left in the pot.”
“No, I’m fine. I was up most of the night, and I’d rather not have the caffeine. I’m hoping to lie down when I get back to the house.”
I nodded. “Hey, listen… about what happened last night,” I began. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
He held up his hands to stop me. “It’s okay. I know you didn’t. And I should have known better. I should have tried to grab one of the other guys.”
I inspected him. “Does it hurt?”
“It’s okay,” he said. “It just happened to be one of those nights in the emergency room. It took a while to see a doctor, and he wanted to call someone else in to set my nose. But they swore it would be good as new. I might have a small bump, but I’m hoping it gives me a more rugged appearance.”
I smiled, then felt bad for doing so. “Like I said, I’m sorry.”
“I accept your apology,” he said. “And I appreciate it. But that’s not the reason I came here.” He motioned to the couch. “Do you mind if we sit? I still feel a little woozy.”
I sat on the edge of the recliner, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees. Tim sat on the sofa, wincing as he got comfortable. He set the paper bag off to the side.
“I want to talk to you about Savannah,” he said. “And about what happened last night.”
The sound of her name brought it all back, and I glanced away.
“You know we’re good friends, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Last night in the hospital, we talked for hours, and I just wanted to come here to ask you not to be angry with her for what she did. She knows she made a mistake and that it wasn’t her place to diagnose your father. You were right about that.”
“Why isn’t she here, then?”
“Right now, she’s at the site. Someone’s got to be in charge while I recuperate. And she doesn’t know I’m here, either.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know why I got so mad in the first place.”
“Because you didn’t want to hear it,” he said, his voice quiet. “I used to feel the same way whenever I heard someone talk about my brother, Alan. He’s autistic.”
I looked up. “Alan’s your brother?”
“Yeah, why?” he asked. “Did Savannah tell you about him?”
“A little,” I said, remembering that even more than Alan, she talked about the brother who’d been so patient with him, who’d inspired her to major in special education.
On the couch, Tim winced as he touched the bruising under his eye. “And just so you know,” he went on, “I agree with you. It wasn’t her place, and I told her so. Do you remember when I said that she was naive sometimes? That’s what I meant. She wants to help people, but sometimes it doesn’t come across that way.”
“It wasn’t just her,” I said. “It was me, too. Like I said, I overreacted.”
His gaze was steady. “Do you think she might be right?”
I brought my hands together. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but…”
“But you don’t know. And if so, whether it even matters, right?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. “Been there, done that,” he said. “I remember what my parents and I went through with Alan. For a long time we didn’t know what, if anything, was wrong with him. And you know what I’ve decided after all this time? It doesn’t matter. I still love him and watch out for him, and I always will. But… learning about his condition did help make things easier between us. Once I knew… I guess I just stopped expecting him to behave in a certain way. And without expectations, I found it easier to accept him.”
I digested this. “What if he doesn’t have Asperger’s?” I asked.
“He might not.”
“And if I think he does?”
He sighed. “It’s not that simple, especially in milder cases,” he said. “It’s not as if you can pull a vial of blood and test for it. You might get to the point where you think it’s possible, and that’s as far as you’ll ever get. But you’ll never know for sure. And from what Savannah said about him, I honestly don’t think much will change. And why should it? He works, he raised you… what more could you expect from a father?”
I considered this while images of my dad flashed through my head.
“Savannah bought you a book,” he said.
“I don’t know where it is,” I admitted.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “I brought it from the house.” He handed me the paper bag. Somehow the book felt heavier than it had the night before.
“Thanks.”
He rose, and I knew our conversation was nearing the end. He moved to the door but turned with his hand on the knob.
“You know you don’t have to read it,” he said.
“I know.”
He opened the door, then stopped. I knew he wanted to add something else, but, surprising me, he didn’t turn around. “Would you mind if I asked a favor?”
“Go ahead.”
“Don’t break Savannah’s heart, okay? I know she loves you, and I just want her to be happy.”
I knew then that I’d been right about his feelings for her. As he walked to the car, I watched him from the window, certain that he was in love with her, too.
I put the book aside and went for a walk; when I got back to the house, I avoided it again. I can’t tell you why I did so, other than that it frightened me somehow.
After a couple of hours, however, I forced the feeling away and spent the rest of the afternoon absorbing its contents and reliving memories of my father.
Tim had been right. There wasn’t any clear-cut diagnosis, no hard-and-fast rules, and there was no way I’d ever know for certain. Some people with Asperger’s had low IQs, while other, even more severely autistic people—like the Dustin Hoffman character in Rain Man—were regarded as geniuses in particular subjects. Some could function so well in society that no one even knew; others had to be institutionalized. I read profiles of people with Asperger’s who were prodigies in music or mathematics, but I learned that they were as rare as prodigies among the general population. But most important, I learned that when my dad was young, there were few doctors who even understood the characteristics or symptoms and that if something had been wrong, his parents might never have known. Instead, children with Asperger’s or autism were often lumped with the retarded or the shy, and if they weren’t institutionalized, parents were left to comfort themselves with the hope that one day their child might grow out of it. The difference between Asperger’s and autism could sometimes be summed up by the following: A person with autism lives in his own world, while a person with Asperger’s lives in our world, in a way of his own choosing.