On a snowy Sunday night at the mall, Alex and I are doing our usual eight laps up and down the corridors, stopping occasionally to allow him to zip up all the misbehaved coats on the racks at Macy's and Dick’s Sporting Goods, the two anchor stores at opposite ends. We are in Macy's and stop to straighten out a rack of blue and white flowered pants which have become askew on their hangers. Two women are standing at the racks when we approach. Both declare the pants "screamy," regardless if you're considering the X-Large or the X-Small. Loud is loud.
Alex is busy, pulling threads, lining up the legs, zipping each pair, forcefully, to the top. One woman walks away and the other holds the pants up and turns them over. She seems overwhelmed by the display, by the whole store actually. She smiles at me and Alex and says, "Sometimes, you just need to get away, even if there's nothing you want to buy." I nod in agreement. I’m not there to buy anything; I’m letting my 22-year-old son manicure the aisles so he’ll stop picking the skin off his fingers and hands, which are a ruin of dark red patches in various stages of healing. I’m tired, as I often am, and down to our last Band-Aid, but she seems fragile and shaky.
"Are you OK?" I ask.
"Yes," she answers quickly. Then, "Well, no, not really."
She is out shopping, she explains, because she just had a baby several months ago and her 5-year-old son hates the baby. The older boy has been smashing his head against the floor. Spinning circles in their living room. Smearing his feces on everything, refusing to toilet train. Her eyes fill with tears. The boy, she says, throws things at the baby while her husband does nothing to help. She has gotten intervention for the boy, but it has done very little to help him. He speaks, but only in screams. He doesn't sleep very much and neither does the baby. Neither does she.
As I put my arms around her, she is visibly shaking. Alex stops straightening the clothes and asks, in sign language, if she is OK. He spells his name for her. I tell her he has spelled, "Alex.”
"I'm Maryann," she says. He attempts to spell her name, and is really close: "M-a-r-i-a-n."
"Nice to meet you, Alex," she says.
Her son cannot go to malls, she tells me. He cannot go anywhere. His diagnosis of autism has alienated her husband who now stays later at work, leaving her alone all day and half of the evening. She, the baby, and her son count the hours. "I worry he will never be able to go anywhere. I worry he will never be happy. He will never know how to love or how to have friends or think of anyone but himself." She is crying fairly hard now and I am holding her, afraid to let go, afraid she will fall down or faint. I tell her that her son will be her son no matter what - that she will love him and marvel at every small piece of progress he can make. I assure her she will find the strength to help him and teach him not to hurt his brother – that she will need to try to be as patient and tolerant as she can in each moment. Alex is moving closer now, and puts his arms out, his face full of her pain. His eyes are wet. She hugs him, and he hugs her back.
"Your son is so sweet," she says, wiping her tears. "Has he always been deaf?"
"He's not deaf," I tell her. "He's autistic."
The woman grabs my hand. "Thank you for sharing your angel," she says.
"You're welcome," I say.
My son signs, “You’re welcome,” and as his hand swings through the air, I know that none of us sees the scars.