Overheard in a Dream. Torey Hayden

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      “Thank you very much for coming in,” James said.

      “Nope, my pleasure.”

      There was a pause then while James waited for him to set the tone of the session. In the brief silence James found himself wondering about Alan and Laura as a couple. What had attracted her to this country man? How did he cope with having a world-famous wife?

      Alan didn’t give James much time to think, however, as he almost immediately asked, “So how’s Conor doing?”

      “We’re still establishing trust,” James replied. “He seems very uncertain in the new situation.”

      “Yeah, he doesn’t deal with new situations well. Autistic kids are like that.” A pause. “So what do you actually do with him in here?” Alan asked. “Because I wasn’t quite clear what this was all about from the way Laura explained it.”

      “And how was that?” James enquired.

      “Well, it’s her version, so who knows. To be honest, I’m pleased you’ve asked me in yourself, because this way I actually stand a chance of understanding what’s going on.”

      “You feel you haven’t been consulted as much on Conor’s treatment in the past as you’d like?”

      Alan let out a long, heavy breath. “I don’t think it’s not being consulted so much as that I’ve long ago lost track of what led to what led to what.”

      A pause.

      James waited calmly. He was getting the sense of a man who thought quite deeply but wasn’t quick with words, who took time to organize his thoughts and get them out. How had someone like that ended up with a woman whose life was made of words?

      “I never wanted Conor in that Colorado school,” Alan finally said. “That’s the first thing I want to make clear. I mean, who sends their young child seven hundred miles away? We shouldn’t ever have done that. Autism happens. A lot of people have autistic children. They cope with it. They don’t put the kid away.”

      “So how did the decision come to be made?” James asked.

      “Laura. This, here,” he said with a broad sweep of his hand. “It’s about the fact that Laura needs treatment.”

      James was not quite certain what Alan meant. “You’re saying that coping with Conor is causing problems for Laura? Or coping with Laura is causing problems for Conor?”

      “Both, really. I don’t think they’re two different things,” Alan replied. “But the biggest problem up to now has just been getting Laura to take responsibility for it. When she said this was a family therapy thing, that we couldn’t get Conor in here unless we were involved too, I thought ‘Thank God. She’s finally taking me seriously.’ She’s always pooh-poohed the idea of therapy and been so quick to blame it all on Conor, make it all Conor’s problem. But it’s also been about Laura not being able to cope with him. That’s how I got railroaded into sending him to Avery.”

      “Can you tell me how you saw Conor’s problems starting?” James asked.

      “We had a couple of absolute shit years. It was about the time Conor was two or three. Everything just happened at once. I was having some serious money problems with the ranch. People assume because Laura’s work is well known that we must be wealthy, but there is a big difference between literary and commercial. The truth is, both ranching and book-writing are very uncertain ways to earn a living.

      “So we were having major financial problems. Right in the middle of it, Laura got pregnant. It was unplanned and quite complicated. We thought Laura had actually lost the baby, because she miscarried, but apparently it was a twin pregnancy and she’d lost only one. Anyway, cue for lots of medical problems and bills just at a time when we desperately needed her earnings. Poor Conor. His little life just got turned on its head. I was gone all the time because I was hiring out to other ranches to earn some extra money and Laura felt so unwell. Conor’s always been a sensitive kid, and this just made it worse. He got fearful of just about everything. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I thought he’d settle down once things were more stable, once I was able to be around more and the baby was born. What I didn’t appreciate was that during all this time I was away, Laura was falling apart too.

      “I felt bad – feel bad even now – because I know I left Laura to cope on her own too much of that time, even when I did see signs of trouble. But, Christ, it’s hard to know what’s right. I was working all the hours God sends to save the ranch and I just couldn’t be in two places at once.

      “The turning point came when the preschool told us they couldn’t keep Conor any longer. After that, he was home all the time. Laura just was not handling it. So that’s when she started looking into residential placements for Conor … I felt I had to let Laura have a chance to recover, because otherwise … Well, to be honest I was afraid if I didn’t, I was going to end up on my own with two young kids.”

      Alan fell silent.

      James sat back in his chair. “So did placing Conor in the residential school help Laura recover?” he asked.

      “Things settled down.” Alan lifted his shoulders in a faint shrug. “But I guess ‘recovery’ implies they got better. That didn’t happen. It just got buried, because that’s Laura’s way of handling things. And I’ve about had my fill of it.”

      “Horse?” Conor said in a sing-songy tone that was halfway between a statement and a question.

      “Yes, that’s a horse,” James replied.

      “Whirrrr, whirrrr.” Conor stood the small plastic animal up on the table. He reached into the basket and drew out another animal. “Elephant?”

      “Yes, that’s an elephant.”

      “Whirrrr, whirrrr. Pig?” he said, taking out the next animal.

      Conor didn’t look over as he did this. He didn’t encourage the slightest amount of eye contact. James was interpreting Conor’s behaviour as an attempt to interact, but it may not have been. If James wasn’t fast enough responding, Conor would quickly move on to the next animal. It could be simply the self-referencing play so typical of autistic children.

      The next animal out of the basket was one that James himself wasn’t all that sure about. A wildebeest or something else equally odd to be in a child’s play set. Conor looked at it and perplexity pinched his features. “Cow?” he asked and his high-pitched tone betrayed a genuine question.

      “You’ve found a cow,” James replied, reflecting back Conor’s words to indicate he was listening. Whatever the creature was, it was undeniably cow-like so James was comfortable with calling it a cow.

      “Ehhh,” the boy muttered under his breath. “Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh!” Then his fingers abruptly splayed wide and the plastic animal clattered to the table top as if it had become too hot to hold. Snatching up the stuffed cat, Conor clutched it tightly. “Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh! Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh!”

      James could see the boy was becoming agitated. “Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh,” he kept repeating, like an engine that refused to catch. He started to tremble. His pale skin and colourless hair gave him a naked vulnerability that made James think of newly hatched birds, owlets and eaglets, СКАЧАТЬ