Saving Max

Max’s Asperger’s has magnified tenfold since he became a teenager. As his peers have graduated to sophisticated social interaction, Max has struggled at a middle-school level. Saddled with severe learning disabilities, he stands out even more. Danielle understands it. If you are incessantly derided, you cannot risk further social laceration. Isolation at least staunches the pain. And it isn’t as if Danielle hasn’t tried like hell. Max had cut a swath through countless schools in Manhattan. Even the special schools that cater to students with disabilities had kicked him out. For years she had beaten paths to every doctor who might have something new to offer. A different medication. A different dream.

“Georgia,” she whispers. “Why is this happening? What am I supposed to do?” She looks at her friend. Sadness is one emotion they mirror perfectly in one another’s eyes. Danielle feels the inevitable pressure at the back of her eyes and fiddles with the hem of her skirt. There’s a thread that won’t stay put.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Georgia’s voice is a gentle spring rain. “There has to be a solution.”

Danielle clenches her hands as the tears come hard and fast. She glances at Max, but he is still asleep. Georgia pulls a handkerchief from her purse. Danielle wipes her eyes and returns it. Without warning, Georgia reaches over and pushes up the sleeve of Danielle’s blouse—all the way to the elbow. Danielle jerks her arm back, but Georgia grabs her wrist and pulls her arm toward her. Long, red slashes stretch from pulse to elbow.

“Don’t!” Danielle yanks her sleeve down, her voice a fierce whisper. “He didn’t mean it. It was just that one time—when I found his drugs.”

Georgia’s face is full of alarm. “This can’t go on—not for him and not for you.”

Danielle jerks back her arm and fumbles furiously with her cuff. The scarlet wounds are covered, but her secret is no longer safe. It is hers to know; hers to bear.

“Ms. Parkman?” The bland, smooth voice is straight from central casting. The short haircut and black glasses that frame Dr. Leonard’s boyish face are cookie-cutter perfect—a walking advertisement for the American Psychiatric Association.

Still panicked by Georgia’s discovery, she wills herself to appear normal. “Good morning, Doctor.”

He regards her carefully. “Would you like to come in?”

Danielle nods, hastily gathering her things. She feels hot crimson flush her face.

“Max?” asks Dr. Leonard.

Barely awake, Max shrugs. “Whatever.” He struggles to his feet and reluctantly follows Dr. Leonard down the hall.

Danielle flings a terrified glance at Georgia. She feels like a deer trapped in a barbed-wire fence, its slender leg about to snap.

“Don’t worry.” Georgia’s gaze is blue and true. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

She takes a deep breath and straightens. It is time to walk into the lion’s den.

Danielle files into the room after Max and Dr. Leonard. She takes in the sleek leather couch with a kilim pillow clipped to it and the obligatory box of tissues prominent on the stainless steel table. She walks to a chair and sits. She is dressed in one of her lawyer outfits. This is not where she wants to wear it.

Max sits in front of Dr. Leonard’s desk, his chair angled away from them. Danielle turns to Dr. Leonard and gives him a practiced smile. He smiles back and inclines his head. “Shall we begin?”

Danielle nods. Max is silent.

Dr. Leonard adjusts his glasses and glances at Max’s journal. Dense notes cover his yellow pad. He looks up and speaks in a soft voice. “Max?”

“Yeah?” His scowl speaks volumes.

“We need to discuss something very serious.”

Dr. Leonard takes a deep breath and fixes Max with his gaze. “Have you been having thoughts of suicide?”

Max starts and looks accusingly at Danielle. “I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about.”

“Are you sure?” Leonard’s voice is gentle. “It’s safe here, Max. You can talk about it.”

“No way. I’m gone.” Just as he starts for the door, he catches a glimpse of the leather journal on the corner of Leonard’s desk. He freezes. His face a boiling claret, he whips around and shoots Danielle a look of pure hatred. “Goddammit! That’s none of your fucking business!”

Her heart feels as if it will burst. “Sweetheart, please let us help you! Killing yourself is not the answer, I promise you.” Danielle rises and tries to embrace him.

Max shoves her so hard that she slams her head against the wall and slides to the floor. “Max—no!” she cries. His eyes widen in alarm, and for a moment, he reaches out to her, but then lurches back; grabs the journal; and bolts out of the room. The slamming of the door splits the air.

Dr. Leonard rushes over to Danielle; helps her to her feet; and guides her gently to a chair. She shakes all over. Leonard then takes a seat and looks gravely at her over his glasses. “Danielle, has Max been violent at home?”

Danielle shakes her head too quickly. The scars on her arm seem to burn. “No.”

He sits quietly and then puts his notes into a blue folder. “Given Max’s clinical depression, suicidal ideations and volatility, we have to be realistic about his needs. He requires intensive treatment by the best the profession has to offer. My recommendation is that we act immediately.”

She tries not to let him see that her breathing has become irregular. Like an animal trapped in another’s lair, she has to be extremely careful about her reaction. “I’m not certain what that means.”

“I mentioned this option earlier, and now I’m afraid we have no choice.” His usually kind eyes are obsidian. “Max needs a complete psychiatric assessment—including his medication protocol.”

Danielle stares at the floor, a prism of tears clouding her eyes. “You mean …”

His voice floats up to her very softly, very slowly. “Maitland.”

Danielle feels her stomach free-fall. There is that word.

It is as final as the closing of a coffin.

CHAPTER TWO

During the trip from Des Moines to Plano, Iowa, she drives as Max sleeps. Despite the chaos of suitcases, cabs, traffic and nightmarish arguments, they somehow caught the flight from New York. She had tried every form of plea and coercion to get Max’s agreement to go to Maitland. It was only after she broke down completely that Max relented—just barely. She didn’t wait for him to change his mind. She stayed up all night, constantly peeking into his bedroom to make sure he was … alive. The next day they were on that plane.

Her anxiety lessens as she settles into the thrum of the road. She lights a cigarette and lowers her window, hoping that Max won’t wake up. He hates it when she smokes. The landscape is a flat, weary brown. It is only after they reach Plano and turn off the highway that all around them explodes. Every broad leaf is a stroke of green, bursting with liquid sun. She smells the aftermath of swollen showers and imagines a flood of expiation that wipes the world clean, leaving one incorruptible—the black, secret earth. It is a sign of hope, she decides, a presentiment that all will be well.

As she drives on, she turns her face to the sun, relaxes in its warmth, and thinks of Max as a small boy. One afternoon in particular flashes in her mind. At her father’s farm in Wisconsin, shortly before he died, Danielle rocked gently in the porch swing and watched as the afternoon sun burnished gold into the summer air and turned her bones to butter.

As she sank deeper into the worn cushion, Max clambered up and sprawled across her lap. They had been swimming all morning and, exhausted, Max wrapped his arms tightly around her neck and fell into that syncopated stupor unique to young boys. She breathed deeply of the heady scent of magnolias that hung over them—voluptuous, cream-colored blossoms so heavy and full that their tenuous grip upon stem and branch threatened to drop them softly onto the lush green below. Their scent was interlaced with her son’s essence—a mixture of boy sweat, sunburned skin and dark spice. As she held him closer, she felt his heart echo the strong beat of her own. Eyes closed, she gave herself up to the languid moment of mother and child, perfect in its communion and im-permanence—so intense as to be indistinguishable from piercing sadness or exquisite joy. They would always be like this, she had thought. Nothing, she vowed, would ever tear them apart.

It is then that she looks up at the white, arched gate. It is then that she reads the weathered sign. Faded words hang in black, metal letters, pierced against the sky.

Maitland, it says, swinging in the breeze.

Maitland Psychiatric Asylum.

CHAPTER THREE

Danielle and Max sit in a bright orange room and watch the group leader arrange a circle of blue plastic chairs. The linoleum is a dizzying pattern of white-and-black squares and smells of disinfectant. Parents and awkward adolescents file reluctantly into the room. Danielle’s heart twists in her chest. How can she possibly be in this place with Max? The faces of the parents all reveal the same ugly mixture of hope and fear, resignation and denial—each with an unholy, tragic story to tell. They look like burn victims steeling themselves before another layer of skin is stripped away.

Max is by her side, angry and embarrassed because he’s old enough to know exactly where he is. He has not spoken since they arrived. He looks so—boy. An oversize polo shirt finishes off rumpled chinos and Top-Siders with no socks. The sports watch he wears is too big, as if he’s playing dress-up with his father’s watch. Unbidden, he shaved off the wispy moustache the night before they left New York. His mouth is a small line, the width of a piece of mechanical pencil lead. His one act of defiance remains—the cold, ugly piercing on his eyebrow.

Suddenly, the door swings open and a woman rushes in, pulling a teenaged boy by the hand. She stops and surveys the circle. Her blue eyes make direct contact with Danielle. She smiles. Danielle glances left and right, but no one looks up. The woman makes a beeline in her direction. She sits next to Danielle and pulls the boy down onto the chair next to her. “Marianne,” she whispers.

“Danielle.”