Chapter Seventeen
Emmet
Jeremey and I were the first residents to move into The Roosevelt, which was nice because we had the place to ourselves. It took me a little while to get used to the new rhythm, but once we had the notes set up, everything was fine with Jeremey and me. It was better for me too once the regular school year started again, as I like a schedule. Living at The Roosevelt actually meant I was closer to the bus stop, which was nice.
In our apartment, Jeremey and I had a good pattern. The notes helped us with organization, and our Saturday morning meetings with Sally and Tammy helped us learn how to make sure we didn’t have any problems we needed to work out. We made a schedule of what days we would go shopping, when we’d do laundry. Jeremey went with me to Wheatsfield, but he still wasn’t ready to go to Target. Sometimes he could go to the small drugstore downtown, but sometimes they announced things over the PA system and startled him too much.
Jeremey was happy, he said, but he was having a harder time than me. He was frustrated and sad sometimes, because he couldn’t find a job that was right for him. Sally had made a list of possible places for him to work, and so far three of them hadn’t been very good. Wheatsfield was okay until a customer cornered him by the green peppers and demanded to know what the differences in the mushrooms were. The produce manager rescued him quickly, but Jeremey still had a panic attack and had to come home and didn’t want to work there after. The library was slightly better, and Darren watched out for him, but Jeremey had the same problem with patrons asking him questions in a rude way.
Dr. North suggested Jeremey help around The Roosevelt once the others moved in, assisting the first-floor residents with laundry, and cooking with Tammy and Sally. I thought it sounded like a good idea, but Jeremey got sad that night. Instead of having sex, I held him on the bed. He told me when I held him it was better than any medicine he took to fight depression.
I didn’t like how sad Jeremey was, but I was feeling pretty proud of how well I could comfort him. I was doing well all over the place, actually. I’d made the transition to independent living pretty easily, and I lived with my boyfriend. All I needed now was to finish college, get a job, and I’d be all set.
Then on September first the other residents moved in, and I wasn’t doing so well anymore.
Mom had warned me, but I learned I absolutely didn’t enjoy living with lots of people at once. Our apartment was soundproofed, but sometimes I could still hear people talking in the halls, people I didn’t know, and it upset me. Bob did his best to make things easy for me and everyone at The Roosevelt. All the autistic people lived on the top floor, except for a girl who didn’t like being up high, and she lived near Sally and Tammy’s apartment. The first floor was for people who needed extra care—most lived in more of a dorm situation, and they ate meals in the community area. They were loud, the first-floor people, but they weren’t jerks. One of the guys named Stuart played a lot of Pharrell Williams music, but he was nice and would put on headphones if you asked. The first-floor people yelled instead of talked. Yelling was talking for them. I understood they couldn’t help it and this was their disability, but it bothered my disability.
The loud people and the strangers weren’t the real issue for me, though. There was one more resident on the first floor. David Loris. Bob’s son.
I hated David.
David wasn’t mentally challenged at all, and in fact most of his life he would have been the last guy in the world to live in a place like The Roosevelt. But then he was in a car accident, and now he was the most disabled person in the building. I should have liked David more since he was the reason Bob had bought The Roosevelt and converted it into an assisted living establishment. But David wasn’t a person like me, or even Jeremey.
Carly Fleischmann talks about being a prisoner in her body. David was definitely more of a prisoner of his physical body than me, but I still think I’m more like Carly than he is, since both our brains keep us from interacting the way we want. Not David. His spine might have been injured, but his brain is perfectly fine. His mouth works too well, and whenever I saw him, he reminded me a lot of the guys on campus who teased me. His body wasn’t buff and bulky anymore, since it had been two years since his accident, but I could tell he used to be a bruiser. He looked like his dad, big and strong. David talked about playing football and having girlfriends. He couldn’t walk, could only move his head and a little bit of his left arm, but he drove his chair around the same way annoying bullies drove their cars.
I was the only person who didn’t like him, though. The day he moved in, everyone acted as if a movie star had come to stay. Even Stuart, who never talked to anybody, came out of his room to see Bob’s son arrive. There were eleven of us living at The Roosevelt, and he was the last to move in, number twelve.
He rolled up the ramp wearing sunglasses and a black T-shirt that said ATTITUDE PROBLEM. Bob and his wife were with him, and a tall black man. Bob waved to us, and the black man smiled and waved when some of the residents greeted him. Stuart asked the man who he was.
“Jimmy.” The man smiled at Stuart and stuck out his hand, but Stuart didn’t take it because he doesn’t care for touch at all. Jimmy pulled his hand back. “I’m one of David’s aides. What’s your name?”
Stuart hummed and turned away to face the wall. That was pretty much Stuart.
David murmured something we weren’t supposed to hear, but I did. He said, “Welcome to the freak house.”
Bob introduced everyone to David and Jimmy, and his wife, Andi, and his two daughters, Caitlin and Trina. I hadn’t met the daughters before. They didn’t smile and stayed close to their mother. I could tell David and his sisters and his mom weren’t like Bob. They were afraid of autistic people and thought we were retarded. I put on my best behavior, remembering all my social interactions and cues as best I could, but they still treated me differently than they did Jeremey. All Jeremey had to do was smile, and they relaxed.
David didn’t like anyone. He told his dad he wanted to go to his cell, which made Bob angry. They went inside David’s room, all of his family, and his aide stood in the hall looking as if he wanted to flap until Tammy and Sally came over and talked to him.
When David and his family stayed inside his room for a long time, some of the residents went to their rooms or the lounge, but Jeremey and I stayed. David made me nervous, and I wanted to learn more about him. It’s important to know your enemies.
Jeremey leaned in close to whisper in my ear. “Can you hear them through the door?”
I nodded and kept listening.
Jeremey got out his phone and wrote in a notepad, Anything good?
I put my hand over my ear, and he let me listen without interrupting.
Jeremey waited patiently while I listened, recording the conversation with my computer brain until I could tell they’d started talking about boring things. Taking Jeremey’s hand, I led him to our apartment and sat with him on the couch. Jeremey didn’t say anything, only sat patiently, waiting for me to tell what I’d heard.
I’d heard a lot.
“David doesn’t want to be at The Roosevelt. He thinks we’re a bunch of R-word freaks, and he’s angry his father put him in here. Bob told him everyone at The Roosevelt needs somewhere special to live, how some of the families cried when they found out about it because they were so grateful. There was nowhere else for their loved ones to go with as much support and independence. He told David this included him, and David got angry. He said his dad should just let him die. How can my life be worth anything now? he said.”
Jeremey sat up straighter. I couldn’t read the complicated emotion on his face. “Oh. That’s not good.”
“Then his mom started crying, saying Don’t you dare give up, David. She talked about how good the facilities here were, how great Sally and Tammy are, how this is better than the care she could give him at home. She said she hoped he understood she wasn’t kicking him out but that The Roosevelt could give him more than she could.”
“What did he say then?”
“That she shouldn’t give him anything but a clean way off this bus. I don’t know what that means. They didn’t ride a bus here, but the stop is close. Does he think it will be too loud? It’s usually a Cybrid, a hybrid bus, and they’re remarkably quiet.”
Jeremey’s expression was still too complicated for me to read. His lips were flat, his eyes big and round like sad, but his lips were tight like determination. “He’s making a metaphor. He’s feeling suicidal. I suppose that’s to be expected, after such an intense change of how you think your life will go. That’s sad, though, that he feels this way after two years, and with such amazing parents helping him. I can barely get my parents to pay my rent, but Bob built an entire independent living center for David.”
“David is a bully and a jerk. He’s going to be trouble.”
Jeremey frowned and shook his head. “I bet it’s more complicated than that. But I agree, I don’t think he’s going to fit in easily here.”
We stayed in the rest of that first night, so we didn’t find out anything more about David. I had class early the next morning, so after sex with Jeremey, I got on the bus and went to class. I saw David that afternoon when I came home and went to find Jeremey. Jeremey was sitting under his favorite tree, and David was with his aide not far away.
His face was easy to read that day and every day: he was angry, and he hated The Roosevelt as much as I loved it. I tried to avoid him and not make trouble, but David was mean, and he was bored. If something wasn’t trouble, he made it that way.
One day when I got off the bus, Jeremey was there waiting for me, smiling and excited. “I’m so glad you’re home.” He took my hand and pointed toward the railroad tracks. “I was afraid you’d miss it. We saw it coming on our walk, and I came to meet you so you could hurry to see it too.”
He pulled me faster than I would have liked, but when I came around the corner and saw what was coming down the tracks, I was glad he’d pulled too hard.
It was a train, but it was a train different than anything that had ever gone down that track since I’d been watching it. It was a big black steam engine, and when it came close to the track, it pulled its whistle. My skin got goose bumps from the sound. It was so strange and beautiful, and so was the engine. All the cars talk to me, but this one was old and amazing. I wished the train would stop so I could touch it and learn everything about it.
Almost better than the steam engine, though, were the cars behind it. Passenger cars. Old-fashioned passenger cars, with people inside hanging out the windows, waving.
Half the residents from The Roosevelt were at the end of the street, facing the tracks, waving and watching. David was there too, but I ignored him and everyone else because this was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen on my train tracks. I couldn’t stop myself from humming and rocking and flapping in happiness as I stared, counting and memorizing the number of windows and wheels and identifying markers on each car. When the train was gone, I’d go look it up online to see what it was and why it was here, but right now it was in front of me, and I was so happy I felt like electricity.
I was so happy I forgot other people were present.
Jeremey was fine. He smiled a big, bright smile at me when the caboose passed out of sight and the train was gone. Sally and Tammy did too. The autistic boy, Mark, who lived next door to us, didn’t look at me, but from the way he’d watched the train, I knew he’d enjoyed it as much as me. In fact, all the residents had.
Except for one. David hadn’t watched the train. He’d watched me.
He stared at me from his chair, and I wished his face were more complicated. I could tell exactly what he thought of me. To him I was a freak. Probably he’d think that even more if he knew how much I’d been counting. But he’d seen me flap and rock and heard me hum.
He looked at me the way the jerks on campus did.
Bob Loris was a nice man, but his son was not. Sally and Tammy called David that poor boy when he wasn’t around. So did my mom. Even Jeremey felt sorry for him.
I didn’t. He might be in a wheelchair and have a damaged spine, but I didn’t like him at all. I didn’t wish he were dead, but if he found somewhere else to live, that would be okay with me.