Read Online It Will Come to Me by Emily Fox Gordon - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Emily Fox Gordon
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happened, no. He learned to read at six, but quickly. Soon he was ahead of all the others in his first-grade class.
If Ruth had a particularly clear and detailed recollection of Isaac's preschool history, it was because she'd been asked to recapitulate it so many times by doctors and therapists. Her memories rarely satisfied them; they pressed her to bring back anything unusual, anything she might have forgotten. But to all appearances he'd been an entirely normal infant and small child. He began to talk at thirteen months, to walk at fifteen—her pediatrician told her that big babies were often slightly delayed in their gross motor development. Apart from that he scored well above age level. Perhaps his many allergies or his refusal to eat anything except peanut butter sandwiches and carrot sticks had had some insidious cumulative effect on his development that she'd failed to anticipate or understand. Maybe the anxious intensity of his will to do things right presaged something—at the time it had simply reminded her of Ben. Illnesses? Nothing outside the usual, except for the case of periorbital cellulitis he developed when he was four. Here her interlocutors brought out their clipboards and pens. When she told them that the cellulitis had been broughtunder control by antibiotics in a few days the pens were returned to breast pockets.
The troubles began in first grade. No, better to say that certain tendencies began to manifest themselves. Any change in the classroom configuration upset him. When one wall was being painted and the reading circle was moved to the other side of the room, for example, Isaac refused to join the class. He planted himself on his usual cushion in his customary place and howled. And when the lockers in the hallway were carted off to make room for new ones he pummeled the workmen with his fists and shrieked. The principal—an idiot, like most of his kind—actually threatened to call the police. That sent Isaac into a state of shivering hiccuping catatonia. Ruth was summoned to take him home.
He was not a sociable child. When Ruth suggested that he share his blocks with another boy in the library children's room he simply shook his head and gathered the blocks close to his body. When she insisted, he stamped his feet and shouted. Other mothers looked up. She had to carry him—kicking hard and gnawing on her shoulder—out to the little yard in back. By the end of second grade he was no longer receiving any birthday-party invitations that were not extended to the whole class.
And yet he did very well in school during those early years. For the most part he was healthy and in his self-contained way he seemed happy, particularly at home. He was content to sit at his parents’ feet in the evenings and look at picture books, or shuffle around the carpet on his knees pushing a plastic car and making quiet urrr-urrr noises. And she, Ruth, was happy too, even later, when things began to go wrong. The truth was that she almost welcomed his problems, if only because they gave her a way tostay involved in his life. She'd never quite felt able to wear the mantle of successful motherhood, at least not for long. The smug, tranquil maternal style was not for her. She felt more like herself when she had reason to serve as his defender and advocate, to intervene on his behalf, to lurk in the hall waiting for a word with the teacher.
Before Isaac she had ruined every photograph taken of her by smirking or lowering her eyes or turning her head. The “candid” shots from her wedding reception made her wince; how had she managed to contort her mouth that way, and why? But in pictures taken with Isaac she was rarely self-conscious. Even in poses where she was deliberately mugging—squatting behind him as he blew out the candles on his birthday cake or trotting after him as he wobbled along the sidewalk on his first bike—she looked relaxed and sane. She looked like any young mother. Her message to the
If Ruth had a particularly clear and detailed recollection of Isaac's preschool history, it was because she'd been asked to recapitulate it so many times by doctors and therapists. Her memories rarely satisfied them; they pressed her to bring back anything unusual, anything she might have forgotten. But to all appearances he'd been an entirely normal infant and small child. He began to talk at thirteen months, to walk at fifteen—her pediatrician told her that big babies were often slightly delayed in their gross motor development. Apart from that he scored well above age level. Perhaps his many allergies or his refusal to eat anything except peanut butter sandwiches and carrot sticks had had some insidious cumulative effect on his development that she'd failed to anticipate or understand. Maybe the anxious intensity of his will to do things right presaged something—at the time it had simply reminded her of Ben. Illnesses? Nothing outside the usual, except for the case of periorbital cellulitis he developed when he was four. Here her interlocutors brought out their clipboards and pens. When she told them that the cellulitis had been broughtunder control by antibiotics in a few days the pens were returned to breast pockets.
The troubles began in first grade. No, better to say that certain tendencies began to manifest themselves. Any change in the classroom configuration upset him. When one wall was being painted and the reading circle was moved to the other side of the room, for example, Isaac refused to join the class. He planted himself on his usual cushion in his customary place and howled. And when the lockers in the hallway were carted off to make room for new ones he pummeled the workmen with his fists and shrieked. The principal—an idiot, like most of his kind—actually threatened to call the police. That sent Isaac into a state of shivering hiccuping catatonia. Ruth was summoned to take him home.
He was not a sociable child. When Ruth suggested that he share his blocks with another boy in the library children's room he simply shook his head and gathered the blocks close to his body. When she insisted, he stamped his feet and shouted. Other mothers looked up. She had to carry him—kicking hard and gnawing on her shoulder—out to the little yard in back. By the end of second grade he was no longer receiving any birthday-party invitations that were not extended to the whole class.
And yet he did very well in school during those early years. For the most part he was healthy and in his self-contained way he seemed happy, particularly at home. He was content to sit at his parents’ feet in the evenings and look at picture books, or shuffle around the carpet on his knees pushing a plastic car and making quiet urrr-urrr noises. And she, Ruth, was happy too, even later, when things began to go wrong. The truth was that she almost welcomed his problems, if only because they gave her a way tostay involved in his life. She'd never quite felt able to wear the mantle of successful motherhood, at least not for long. The smug, tranquil maternal style was not for her. She felt more like herself when she had reason to serve as his defender and advocate, to intervene on his behalf, to lurk in the hall waiting for a word with the teacher.
Before Isaac she had ruined every photograph taken of her by smirking or lowering her eyes or turning her head. The “candid” shots from her wedding reception made her wince; how had she managed to contort her mouth that way, and why? But in pictures taken with Isaac she was rarely self-conscious. Even in poses where she was deliberately mugging—squatting behind him as he blew out the candles on his birthday cake or trotting after him as he wobbled along the sidewalk on his first bike—she looked relaxed and sane. She looked like any young mother. Her message to the
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