chapter 15
Update 4: What you see when the lights are on
Therapy was not optional. The court ordered it for him, for Tyler, for me. Tyler got a child therapist who wears owl socks and keeps a jar of smooth stones on her desk. If you’ve ever watched a six-year-old teach an adult how to be less afraid of a word, you know theology.
For supervised visits, we met at a center with anodyne murals and furniture designed to survive juice. Matthew came on time, sat on the carpet in a suit, and asked Tyler the kinds of questions that come from reading an article about engaging with kids. Tyler ignored him for exactly six minutes and thirty seconds (I timed it in my head like a petty metronome), then handed him a Lego body with no head. “Fix,” he said.
Matthew tried to put the wrong head on. Tyler snatched it back. “No,” he said. Then he rooted around and found the head with the scar on the brow, the one he’d drawn on with a marker the day after we moved. He handed it to Matthew. “This one.”
Nobody cried. I thought I might. Matthew gave the little figure a scar to match his father’s. They built a ship. Tyler named it after my mother. I breathed for what felt like the first time in months.
During one visit, the supervisor explained epinephrine pens and the dance of label and expiration and practice injector. Matthew did the motion three times, hands careful on the blue cap, firm on the orange. Tyler, for the first time, looked at him without calculation. “You learned,” he said, not a question.
“I didn’t know,” Matthew said. “Now I do.”
Tyler nodded, the solemn little king of our small republic, and handed Matthew a gold star sticker from the therapist’s desk because of course he did that. Of course he did.