Extraordinary

by Brad Schaeffer

Genres: Coming of Age; Siblings; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Wes Scott, a teenage boy on the autism spectrum, tells us in his own words about his struggles to cope with a chaotic, confusing, and scary world—while his family tries to handle both living with an autistic child and a Marine father who returns from Iraq debilitated by wounds and suffering PTSD. Wesley Scott is a teenage boy with autism. He lives within his own intimate realm of sensory overload, dysfunction, sometimes violence, and fear of the outside world. He describes himself as the only actor on a stage without a script. We learn through Wes’ own words that he is a deep, thoughtful young man…but no one knows it. Wes is unable to connect with anyone other than his father, a captain in the Marine Corps. He in turn adores his extraordinary son, his “Ex-man,” as he fondly calls him. When Captain Scott ships off to fight in the Middle East, Wes is confused and senses foreboding in what it all means, although he cannot express it to his family, friends, or teachers. With his father overseas, Wes finds himself further isolated in a world of “Ords” (his dad’s term for the ordinaries, unlike his “Ex” son) and a stranger in his own family. His mother is distant and cold, his high school brother resents the inordinate attention his autistic brother constantly steals from him, and his twenty-something sister has chosen to move away from it all to Manhattan. The burden on the family gets exponentially worse when Captain Scott returns home wounded. The family tries to cope as best they can, but when his father succumbs to PTSD, Wes must somehow make sense of all that has happened—which is difficult for a teenager under normal conditions, let alone one on the autism spectrum who’s suddenly lost the only family member who ever really bothered to know him. The Scotts seem on the verge of unraveling and Wes finds himself in a bewildering land of family turmoil. How will Wes come to understand this tragedy? And how will the family ever come to fill the void left by a father who understood what the rest have yet to discover…that Wes is an extraordinary young man indeed. And that all of us, no matter how much the world seems to scorn our existence—or has simply forgotten our pain—have something extraordinary to offer and make that world a better place. Extraordinary is not just the title of this book—it’s a description of the beauty within the pages.

Release date: August 31, 2021

Publisher: Post Hill Press

Print pages: 352

Sample

THE DREAM

I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever see Dad again. The dream starts off the same. The darkness; the scrape of blowing, twisted branches on the window, like the tapping fingernails of a giant. It wakes me and I try to open my eyes, but all is black. I hear the rain falling. A rushing of sound as if my bed’s in a cave hemmed in by a waterfall pouring past the only exit to the outside world. I must walk through it. When I get to the other side, wet and cold, I find myself at a gate. My white hands grip the rusting bars and I pull with all my might, but the chain and padlock holding the doors closed won’t give. I see my dad through the bars. He walks upright, his legs intact, and wears his dress blue uniform, white gloves, and hat. He smiles. I reach through the bars and then he’s gone. I look down into my hand, up to the forearm through the gate, and open my fist to reveal a tiny sand crab. It lies on its soft shell on its side; its legs, like the teeth of a translucent comb, are stiff and lifeless.

Then I wake up.

SAND CRABS

“The waves. What do you think, Wesley?”

Dad smiles as I stare down at the wet sand covering my bare feet. The cool seawater feels good against my ankles as the brine rolls over them. Dad crouches down and looks into my eyes. I look away. I don’t like to meet others’ stares. Not even his. Faces bother me. I don’t know why. There’s a lot I don’t know. But there’s a lot I do know too. Dad understands. He’s the only one in the family who understands. He digs his thick fingers into the soupy wet sand and takes my hand. I usually don’t like to be touched. I sometimes panic, and it makes Mom very angry with me. Dad never gets mad. He scoops a handful of grainy porridge like a steam shovel and lays it into my palm. The salt water drips through my fingers. Something tickles. I stare at the mound as it moves. “It’s a sand crab,” he says with a smile. “See?”

As the sand drips away, the little creature emerges. He looks panicky. I know the feeling and I feel compassion for the animal the size of an almond. Whirring legs under a soft shell. I touch it with my finger. I want to smile. But I just can’t. So I stare at the crab until Dad gently removes it from my hand and lays it back on the sand. It frantically burrows into the earth and disappears. My father puts his hands on my shoulders. I look away to the haze of the horizon. What’s beyond the edge, I wonder?

Dad smiles. “I thought you’d like that. There are thousands of them down there, Wes,” he says. “Do you see? You never know what lies beneath the surface.”

He stands up tall and straight. A military posture about him. Even people who first meet him when he doesn’t wear his uniform know he’s special. A Marine. An officer. He runs the house like he runs his unit. Tight and in control. I like that. I like to know I can lean on him. He is my pillar under my very shaky world. I’ll miss him when he goes away tomorrow.

I briefly glance up at him. I’m fourteen, but Dad says I’m still growing so I won’t catch up to him for another year. He always tells me I’ll be tall like him. “A height to match the man,” he says. “And you are my man, Wes. I know you hear me.”

I do. Which is why he reads my thoughts now. “I’m sorry, Son. I have to go. It’s, well, it’s my job. There are bad people out there, and I have to stop them from hurting good people. It’s hard to understand. Even for the Ords.” “Ords” is his term for people who aren’t special like me. He calls me an “Ex.” “You’re extraordinary. Unique. A gift to me,” he would say. He briefly catches my eye. It’s a fleeting moment. Like a rare bird that flits past an otherwise ordinary landscape and then is gone. “I’ll miss you too. But it’s just one tour.”

One tour. I know that means one year. Three hundred sixty-five days, three-sixty-six during a leap year, but this isn’t one of those. Like the song my mom likes to listen to when she cooks. Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes. I sometimes try to count them down when he’s gone. It’s a long time to be left alone with my family.

I want to hit my head with my hands when I think about it. I want to scream at the ocean. It’s such a chasm between where I will be and where he is going. Dad sees my fists clench. He looks around, and then quietly says, “Fight it, Son. You’ll be okay. Breathe in.” People walking past us on the water’s edge glance my way as I shout out in protest. But then I’m calm again. My scream is carried away by the salty air to the far shore beyond the edge of the world.

“Come on. Let’s go back to the house. I’m hungry. Aren’t you?” No, I think. I’m lonely.

LAST DINNER

Supper. We sit in an oval as Mom, forty-eight and looking painfully thin in a floral summer dress, orbits the dining room table laying out place settings that for one more day will number five of us. Her straw-colored hair is styled. Teeth capped. Sixty-four inches, one hundred seventeen pounds of icy Northeastern reserve. Thomas, my brother, is a junior in high school. He plays the guitar. He also plays football and, although I don’t really pay attention to what he does on the field when we go to his games, his numbers jump out at me when I study the local paper: 16.0 sacks (national average 1.19), 11 interceptions (national average 1.16), total tackles 38 (national average 14). I find comfort in numbers. They’re concrete. Finite. Honest. Not all confusing and jumbled like the world around me. Thomas is big and square, and I don’t think he likes me. He gets mad at me a lot. He doesn’t like that I don’t say much and never look at him. He sometimes calls me “weird” behind my back. (I guess he doesn’t know that my ears work a lot better than my mouth.)

As we begin eating, Becca makes her appearance. But she won’t stay with us, even though Mom set up her plate and utensils just in case. She lives and works in New York. Finance or something like that. She’s just here for the weekend. She’ll grab a quick mouthful of food and then tear out to meet her friends at a club on the shore. It’s Dad’s last night, but this is how she copes, I guess. Becca’s ten years older than me. We had another sister, between her and Thomas; that’s why there’s such a gap. But she died when she was just a baby. Fell asleep in her crib and never woke up again. My mom tried to tell me once what happened to her. I didn’t ask. I didn’t look at her when she described how she stepped in the nursery and saw her baby lying still, her face like a blueberry. When I was a little boy, I thought someone named “Sid” killed her. But now I know it was something called SIDS. Whatever it’s called, it left my mom hollow inside. She had Thomas and then me. She does her job as a mother. But she still brings up little Annabel when we’re alone sometimes. I think she wanted me to be a girl. I know she wanted me to be an Ord. Annabel, she said, was “normal.” Why couldn’t I be? “Why couldn’t you just be normal like your sister would have been, Wes?”

But she’s not saying those things now. She has other things on her mind. Dad has to leave in the middle of the night. There’s a pall over the house. I can feel it. Sadness. Fear. Regret. Mom’s like the core reactor that sets the mood of our home. This evening that mood is dark, and it frightens me. At dinner I want to scream. I’m not hungry. I just want to rock and moan and bang my plate. I don’t want Dad to go away.

Thomas is also tense, and he’s sharper than usual tonight. It’s in the air. “Can we please just one time eat in peace?”

Dad glares at him. “Thomas. Your brother’s upset. Can’t you see that?”

Thomas recedes. Dad’s the only one who intimidates him. “He’s always upset,” he says quietly, looking my way. I stare down at my carrots.

Becca passes through the kitchen on her way out the door for the night. She’s very pretty. Brunette. Short hair, almost like a boy’s. Athletic, with toned legs highlighted by a denim miniskirt. She ran track at Penn State. I imagine boys like her. She rubs my hair as she walks by and I throw my hands up to deflect it. “I don’t know why I bother,” she sighs.

“You know he hates that,” says Thomas.

Mom says to my sister, “You’re going out even though it’s your father’s last night home?”

She pauses at the door, her hand with slender fingers and brightly painted nails grips the doorknob tightly. She exhales, bows her head, and turns to face Dad. He looks up at her. “I can stay home if you want.”

“No,” he says. “It’s okay. You have a life to live.”

She walks over to him and throws her bare arms around him. Her eyes are swollen. I can tell she’s been crying upstairs. “I’m gonna miss you, Daddy.”

“You have a funny way of showing it,” mumbles my brother while cutting into his steak.

“I know,” says Dad. “I’ll miss you too, baby girl.”

“Skype us?” she says weakly as she disengages from him and heads once more for the exit.

He nods. “Sure, Becks. Have fun tonight.”

I moan in protest. She looks at me and then lowers her head as she opens the door and disappears into the night, shutting it with a slam that sounds like a gunshot to my sensitive ears.

“That’s messed up, man,” Thomas says in protest as he ladles himself a heaping mound of mashed potatoes. His spoon clinks against the plate and makes me start. He ignores me. “Dad’s going off to war and she goes out partying? Nice daughter.”

“It’s alright, Thomas,” Dad says. “In a way it shows she cares.”

Mom stares at him. “Peter, you can’t be serious. If she wasn’t over twenty-one, I swear.”

“But she is.”

I don’t understand. She is, she is, she is! “She is!” I shout and slap my hand on the table with a loud smack!

“Jesus, Wes, shut up!” snaps Thomas.

“What did you say to him?” my father says through gritted teeth. His eyes are malevolent slits. The eyes of a company commander facing down a mutiny.

Thomas looks at him; fear radiates from him. “I’m sorry. I just wish he could control himself. That’s all. I mean, well, shit, I don’t get how you can be so coddling to him.”

“Thomas,” my mother injects. (She sometimes calls him Tommy but calls him Thomas whenever she’s mad at him. That’s how I know she’s mad now). “That’s your brother. And he’s in this room.”

“Is he?” he says. “Does he even know that Dad’s going away? That he could get killed? Does he even care? Christ, does anyone in this madhouse care?”

My mother throws her napkin down and rockets to her feet. “I care! This man is my husband. How do you think I feel? Tomorrow I’ll be left with an absentee daughter, and two sons, one who only thinks about his guitar, football, and girls, and another one who I don’t think cares for anyone at all. Look at him!”

I can only hear all this as I rock in my chair with my eyes clamped shut, arms tightly folded to my chest.

The discussion continues. It’s an old issue. “I swear I don’t know why I married a military man.”

“You’re a sucker for a uniform,” my dad answers as he aimlessly shuffles his peas on the plate with his fork. “That, and we fell in love.”

My mom softens and sinks back into her chair. “Yes, we did, didn’t we? But…I just didn’t bargain for this.”

Although she’s referring to her husband’s career of long absences and danger, I know what she really means. She didn’t bargain for me.

“DON’T GO”

Nighttime is the worst. Ambient crackles and squeals assault me, like a radio that can’t find the proper signal. The busy crickets cree-cree outside my window. The leaves rustle as the late summer breeze passes through them. Although I know it’s too far away, based on the map placemat I always insist upon eating over, I swear I can hear the faint whispers of the ocean in my ears. But also in this blue world of the moonlight, as if sinking down in the abyss of a nautical canyon miles beneath the waves, comes the terror. I can’t explain it really. Just a sense that all the world is atilt and I’m struggling to maintain my balance on a platform that some malevolent giant is determined to gradually pitch ever more steeply until I tumble into the void. I see shadows. Shadows of shadows. Haunting shapes stretch out across the darkened walls of my bedroom like threatening stains. I imagine the world in the blackness as an endless stream of static coming at me. A persistent pulse from a far-distant quasar. It hits me every night as I try to sleep with the restless mind of the Extra-Ord. My heart races and skips. My breath comes to me in staccato chuffs.

I don’t want you to go. Don’t leave me with them. You say they love me, but they don’t understand….

“Hey, Wes.” A soothing yet powerful hand caresses my soft cheek. “You having another tough dream?”

My eyes snap open. All is still dark, but soon the pale moonlight fills my view and lines the chiseled face of my dad gazing down on me. He wears his camouflage fatigues and heavy boots, twin bars of a captain on his collar, and an eagle, anchor, and globe emblem of the Marines on his soft-billed cap. He looks like a different person when he’s dressed to fight the bad people. More serious. Meaner. Maybe it’s just the clothes. Still, I don’t know how a man who picks sand crabs with his Ex son on the beach can also hurt people, which is really what he does if I understand his job right. I wonder, when I watch him without his noticing me, who is my real dad? I think sometimes he does too.

My room is like one of those Picasso paintings Antoinette at the special school shows me. His “blue period” she calls it. “Wes, do you know what ‘blue’ is?” Of course, I do. It’s the color of Dad’s dress uniform when he parades at the camp or attends weddings, funerals, and parties with Mom in her evening best. The color of the ocean and the sky and the canvas of my world.

I look up to him and then turn away. It almost burns to look at him in the dimness of the shadow world. ...