Rachel and I married two years later. Was I attracted to her mental aberrations? Does darkness call to darkness?
The product of our marriage was spoiled. Our son, Albert, was born mentally retarded, and as he entered adolescence and physical adulthood, he became prone to unpredictable outbursts of violence. Secretly, I blamed Rachel for our damaged offspring, and she, in turn, secretly blamed me.
We did not know at first that Albert was incomplete. His arrival from the hospital was ripe with hopes and dreams of a secure future. As I suppose happens all too often, we invested the arrival of our son with magical, healing qualities for all aspects of our lives. My job, I believed, would take on new meaning; life would not seem pointless. And Rachel, I’m sure, bargained on reawakened passion from her indifferent husband and a wider focus to dilute the glare of her maniacal love, saving both husband and son from wilting in the intense rays of her emotion.
And, indeed, these prophecies seemed to be realized. I really did find an unremembered vigor in life and a renewed closeness to Rachel. I felt that our lives were on the right path, the correct course. And if Albert was a little late in reaching some of his developmental milestones, surely it was nothing to worry about. Surely he would soon begin to make up for lost time and amaze us all with his innate intelligence. But inevitably, relatives and friends began to voice aloud the questions that we had not yet dared voice ourselves.
“Shouldn’t he be talking by now?”
“He never makes a sound.”
“Are all babies this quiet?”
“His eyes. Don’t they look strange?”
We took him to many doctors, specialists, organizations, each with a differing opinion. It was hard to say for sure, they told us. Difficult to pin down an exact cause. But, in the end, a diagnosis was agreed upon. No one’s fault, they said. Fragile X. A soft X chromosome. Unavoidable. No way of foretelling. These things happen.
We resolved, as I imagine all parents in such situations do, to love Albert. We would raise him, love him as though he were normal. Rachel carried the brunt of the responsibility. She devoted her life to ensuring the quality of his. She took him to special classes, hospitals, learning centers. And through her sheer will, her withering love, she taught him basic life skills. He learned to perform tasks that the doctors told us he would never accomplish. Dressing himself, feeding himself, bathing, grooming, continence. And when he reached age fourteen, we had the perfect five-year-old. A five-year-old teenager who thought it natural to strike out at those who slighted him in any perceived way. A five-year-old adolescent who put his mother in the hospital for one rigid week after smashing in her skull with a crystal ashtray when she scolded him for a toileting accident.