Dysfluency
Auggie stops scrolling and smiles at something, then flicks it away with his thumb. “I’m just going to say what happened,” he says.
“Of course,” I say, driving slowly through the campus. I think of the boy from North Carolina who was expelled when he said hug and she said grab. Was it because he said it with too much emotion? Or not enough? “But still, you should practice.”
Auggie stares at his phone. Maybe he is reading; maybe the screen is black. “It’s stupid,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“All of it. All of this, over nothing.”
Wet flakes collect on the windshield and become transparent as they melt. My hands tighten on the wheel as I turn onto the main road. I want to say, Then prove to me it’s nothing.
“Auggie,” I say. “This is serious.”
He is typing something, a text, but to whom?
“I know,” he says.
“Do you?”
Auggie sniffs, wipes his nose with his sleeve. He looks out the window.
“Are you scared, honey?” I ask. His face is turned away from me. Another sniff.
“Because it’s okay if you are. Anybody would be scared.”
Auggie wipes his nose again. “Mom,” he says, and the way he says it—Mom—softly and upturned, is the way he used to call out for me at night when he had a bad dream.
This is it, my crack. My way in. “What, honey?” The windshield is patchy with drops and crystals, like looking through a prism. I want to tell Auggie that I will fix everything if he just opens up to me. He’s so close. I turn and touch his upper arm, rub the swishy fabric of his jacket. “You can tell me. It’s okay.”
Auggie presses his eyes, says nothing. When I turn back to the road, the traffic light is a red blur through my windshield, and I brake too quickly. The car fishtails. Auggie bolts forward, one hand braced on the glove compartment. The car comes to rest, and we sit there for a moment, breathing together, even after the light has changed. Then Auggie’s phone dings, and he goes back to the screen. I turn on the wipers, and in one swoop everything becomes sharp.
*
Auggie goes into his room when we get home. I thaw chicken thighs in the sink. The light in the kitchen feels too bright, the sound of the cat crunching her food amplified in the silent space. The letter from the dean is where I left it, on the island, refolded and fit back inside the opened envelope.
My phone trills. It is Auggie’s father. I picture him, pulling closed the pocket doors to his den in the oversized colonial he and Lana bought with her money, days after the divorce became final. Auggie was six. He thought his father lived in a castle. I answer as I always do. “Ronald,” I say.