One Hot Day

The sun cast its scorching rays as it sneaked past the tree line on that early July morning. The immediate oppression of the heat carried the promise of the day ahead. I was perched on the tailgate of the old white pickup parked along the weathered fence that bent and bowed from age. Next to me, my son explained psychological war tactics as he regaled me with his most recent deployment in Call of Duty.

I tussled his hair. The bus pulled up. A hiss accordioned the door open, and my son stepped on. I sauntered toward the house to fix a coffee.

Autism presents differently in each individual. From my perspective watching my son grow and develop, it was like some of the roads inside his head had been closed and the detours were often down dead-end streets. I guess I mean to say, all the locations seemed to be right on the map, but navigating mental faculties was often an endeavoring feat. Being there as my son learns his own mind has been a deeply rewarding experience as a father and as a man.

Inside the house, my wife was experiencing some heightened emotions. I had thrown her a bone the night before and I laid it into her good, too. So I was taken aback with this wave of uncomfortable feelings I was picking up. Her footfalls popped heavily against the vinyl floor as she slammed doors and cabinets with undue force.

My amygdalin response was on the rise. If I remained caged in this box much longer, I would ape her aggression and, true to form, amplify it. A tactic we both learned from our parents and exercised against one another through pure animalistic response. Our lizard brains held sway over rationality.

I knew I needed to cut sling on this emotional death trap. The thinking part in my head started plotting and planning. Wifey was out the door for work at about 11:30 and it was just about 9:00. I calculated my escape to Avon and back. I'd have time for sure, with enough white space on the clock to lounge a bit, maybe read or write, and stroll through a park somewhere local.

I started the truck, plopped down my phone, notebook, and wallet. I stepped back in to fetch my sunglasses. Hudson issued a plaintive bark. Maybe it was the heat clouding up my thinking parts. Maybe the icy cold sheath of my mind had been withered down with age. I scooped up the mutt and we rode off.

I treated myself to a coffee and a couple of baconegginchese. I only ever order lattes from Dunkin Donuts after I figured that every espresso is made fresh. The espresso machine was built for speed and, more to the point, you cannot retain any semblance of value in premade espresso. It's a delicacy intended to be imbibed on the spot. Cold espressos are the devil's drink of choice.

The rest of the morning passed as seamlessly as I could have hoped. I swung by the old man's spot in Avon to retrieve a tree saw I lent him weeks ago. While in the area, I returned an old truck battery to an auto parts store, effortlessly building rapport with the pair of clerks at the counter before bidding them adieu. The windows stayed wide open on the truck and a steady melody of instrumental jazz poured from the radio. My mind was still.

Glancing at the truck's dash, I realized in about ninety minutes my old lady was out of the crib. The emotionally tense atmosphere she cultivates would be hanging over the house now. Her heat would radiate hotter than the eighty-eight degrees registering on the pickup's thermostat. I needed to remain inconspicuous until I was sure she was in hustle mode. Her prework routine would turn her inward as she donned her earbuds and streamed Netflix to her phone. Once she began that mental retreat, the air would lift.

I put the whole thing on her, but, and this applies to about everything the thinking part serves me up, the blame was not solely hers. On some deep level - way down in the lizard brain maybe - I knew there was a bundle of synapses linking my wife's emotional body language with my mother's. The sound of my mother's barefoot on the creaky tread of the hallway stairs was enough to forecast a full read on the rest of my day. The pace and force, and the point of contact along her ball and heel unconsciously informed me of her emotional disposition. A lot of that carries over.

While laying it all on my wife is not exactly fair, absolving any agency would be to pardon her artful manipulation of my mental state. She works in psychological gaslighting and emotional coercion like a sculptor works in plaster and clay. This is learned behavior.

There is a point when your childhood trauma ceases to be everyone else's problem and becomes exclusively your own mess to clean up. Else we only ever speak past one another.

As my old pick-up rumbled toward the Avon town line, I thumbed my phone for dog parks along my route home. A spot far enough off the busy main drag of Randolph and close enough to Braintree caught my eye. I was on my way. Upon making the turn onto a residential side street lined with unassuming Cape Cod bungalows, it was pretty evident there would be no dog park here.

Just as this realization came to me, my phone rang. My wife's voice pierced the receiver. I was bombarded with an assault of emotion.

"I just got off the phone with the nurse. Sean ordered a grilled cheese sandwich," she exclaimed through a shrill, rising tone. Milk, wheat, and egg - a triumvirate of allergens and a ton of processed sugar. She was recounting how the nurse had informed her of my son's lunch order but was dubious of any further details pertaining to the event. She was again unsure of how many of the irritants my son imbibed prior to the lunchroom mishp or my son's autoimmune response following the incident.

I cut my wife short of completing the entirety of her tale. I assured her I was on my way to East Braintree Middle School. The stillness of my mind was overcome with a flash storm of emotional thought. A whirlwind of fervor mixed with the ambiguity of the situation and upended my sympathetic response. I attempted to pull my cognition together by running through the situation as I knew it. The ridges of my fists were two frost-capped mountain ranges - white knuckled against the steering wheel. I clung to my composure and began plotting the coming interaction with the school staff. The thinking part in my head was going apeshit: "You fed my son foods he is allergic to. Don't you know he is autistic and prone to inflammation? Feeding him highly processed junk - what did you expect to happen?"

The truck leaned around curves and roared up the hill to the school. I peeled into the parking lot ready to make my presence felt. Flicking on the hazards, I bounded up the stone steps at the front the school three at a time. My truck and dog idled in the school bus pick-up lane. Following the two paper signs taped to the glass paneled doors, I rang the doorbell for access. A buzz heralded the mechanical clank of the heavy door locks. I entered.

In the administration office, blind by the sleety fog in my head now, I was steering on instinct and urgency alone. The executive function of my brain slipped its harness. I was all impulse.

Two women occupied workstations in a long room glass-walled on three sides. The blonde-haired woman, sitting closest to the entrance as I blew in, seemed flustered. A dark-haired woman on my right, radiated an air of intensity, staring at me with a piercing gaze. She assumed a bulldog stance. In the cool of the air-conditioned office, a clear plastic cup of iced coffee was sweating rings on her desk.

I articulated my purpose with determination in my eyes, "I want to pick up my son, Sean." The blonde woman stammered and fussed with the items on her desk as she processed my prompts. "The nurse called. He has eaten several known allergens today at lunch."

Interrupting our exchange, the bulldog interjected. Her words, though escaping me amidst her provocative tone, put my antennae up. The bulldog meant to needle me. She was goading me. She wanted me to take the bait.

I was undeterred. I articulated my expectations again. I wanted my son brought to the office and I intended to take him home right there on the spot. The Ego felt unheard still and offered up an accusation that the school was attempting to poison my son. Hyperbole has formidable power if one can manage the narrative.

I paced the room coolly, ostensibly taking in the space. Inside my head, two bears mashed their teeth and claws, and crashed their heaving flesh against one another. One hulking brute fed on the atmosphere of the room. He grew in strength as my inability to retain control diminished in the wake of the bulldog's fury.

The blonde was on the horn calling the nurse, the teachers, the therapists. She located my son and was having him escorted to the front office. The bulldog barked again; her words laced with aggression.

Having made her way from behind her desk, past me, and out into the foyer, the bulldog's eyes fixated on the pickup parked under the "no parking" sign in the bus lane. "You have to go move your car," she said with a triumphant glance in my direction. She relished the provocation.

I was defiant. "Not until my son gets here, then I'll move it," I said, adding a snappy retort cooked up by the untactful Ego, "Don't tell me what to do." The bears bellowed gutturally.

Our emotions were piqued. The two delivery men entering the building at that moment took note of my countenance and abutted an invisible wall some 20 feet out from the altercation. They sat spectators for the rest of the ordeal. The back and forth must have been comical from their standpoint. The bulldog had me right where she wanted me - I was cornered.

"I never told you what to do," she replied, luring me further into her engagement. I took the bait. We argued semantics to the point of emotional crescendo. The words hovered in the air, heavy with tension, and awaiting the inevitable release.

I let fly the first of two f-bombs. I savored the sweet taste on my tongue. The second would feel even better than the first.

She said, "We do not speak that way in..." I cut her off midstream. I couldn't wait another moment, like a rat sniffing around the cheese before finally devouring its delectable prize.

"Don't point your fucking finger at me and go get my son." Sweet catharsis. The trap triggered and a proverbial iron bar was snapping down on me.

The bulldog looked satisfied. She said she was not putting up with me any longer. Retrieving a cellphone from her pocket, she stormed past me down a dimly lit hallway to the rear of the room. "Hi, Lisa," her parting words echoed in my ears. Curiosity compelled me to ask the blonde woman who Lisa was, but her clueless response confirmed that she wasn't much of an information source. It didn't matter anyway. I knew who the bulldog was calling.

In the realm of theater, where art intertwines life, directors are keen on a maneuver known as the walk-off. The tactic marks the transition between scenes. One character exits the stage, leaving a ripple of anticipation in her wake. A moment's pregnant pause. The walk-off serves as a bridge, connecting narrative threads and propelling the story forward. Abutted against the backend of a walk-off often follows a walk-on. A new character breathes life into the stage and the story lurches forward.

Around this time, a diminutive woman with a mop of short dusty hair stepped into the office. Judy was the nurse who inadvertently set this whole shit storm in motion with a single imprudent phone call. Already distraught from the run-in with the bulldog, I cut into Judy hard and fast like the snapping lunge of a serpent striking his prey. Judy, baffled, was taken aback and took a moment to compose herself. Later I would apologize for my crass behavior - the bulldog had me spinning. Judy was kind enough to brief me on her earlier message to my wife - the whole matter was mistake on her part. My son never ate the multiple allergens she stated previously - rather the lunch coordinator intercepted my son's order, swapping it out for an apple and a juice box, while Judy was instructed to contact his parents.

The news calmed me. Judy and I set our boundaries early in our interaction. To my benefit, we had found our groove only a moment before I saw the first cueballed officer lead a pair of subordinates up the stone steps. His army green eyes locked onto mine. He had the bead on me.

Cueball entered the room with his companions - a tall blonde cop with a sleeve tat and an unassuming kid who looked straight out of the schoolhouse himself. Cueball sized me up well enough. I was the only man there aside from the delivery guys. Their unbroken presence in the foyer made it officially a scene. Cueball came in a bit softer than I anticipated. His tone, though commanding, implored me to clarify something for him.

I was standing deep in the bowels of the office when the cops arrived. My back was to the interior of the building. My arms were folded across my chest. My countenance conveyed my polite attention, listening to Judy expound on todays events as she knew them. Certainly, an aggressor may be more comfortable between an egress and whatever the target of his aggression.

My cool body language was met with a slow tone occasionally marred by emotional intonations. Cueball catches one and gets his mitts around it.

"You sound agitated right now," he offers.

"Yes, I am very emotionally charged, man. My son was in danger."

Nurse Judy pops in to clarify the point that at no time was my son exposed to allergens. Thanks, Judy.

The cops don't press me much more. They disperse in a meandering fashion but keep close (for reasons which will be apparent later). Judy, sensing she has served her purpose, makes for the door. I stop her short of the threshold to issue her a thank you for how she managed the situation today. The apology was sincere, and I would have felt better about issuing it had our final touching moment not been flanked by officers of the law. It certainly didn't hurt that the cops were there to soak it all in.

Like ships in the night, Judy stepped past the program coordinator who was entering the office at that exact moment. Walk off; walk on. Sheryl's orange freckles scattered across her visage giving her a childlike quality I found serene. I met her kind eyes with mine. I felt compassion when she spoke. She asked me if everything was alright and offered to chat about the circumstances in more detail in her office just upstairs.

"Yes, I would much like to continue this conversation. I believe first these gentlemen," I swept an upturned palm past each officer, "would like a moment of my time." I set the hook on cueball. He knodded compliantly and took a half step to back - giving the coordinator and I space to continue our chat. I was going to be alright.

The coordinator and I ascend the stairs to her office. A brute of a man in a red t-shirt escorted my son down the stairs. My boy reached out and hugged my hip. My arm found its groove around the nape of his neck. I squeezed the run of muscle that ran along his tiny back under his shoulder. I asked him to wait for me at the bottom of the stairs. I told him he was going home.

Upstairs, the coordinator and I entered through a door. The hallway was lined with colorful brown monkeys swinging from puffy green trees. Words loitered on the walls in big bubbly letters - Kindness, Friendship, Love, and Compassion. We hooked a left into a cozy office and took our places at a small round table centered in the room. With just the two of us, it felt cramped.

The coordinator listened politely and took notes during our meeting. I explained my perspective of events, "You'll have to excuse me. My emotions are running high right now. But I want to continue our conversation now because I have seen a couple of issues over two days at school. It's only been two days. His bus driver picked him up yesterday and was not aware he was autistic and practically nonverbal. There is no attendant with my son in the morning.

The tall cop came into the room. He looked like a photoshopped image of Vanilla Ice with a stretched out body and squished up face. A curly hair woman in a gray polo was with him. The room is shrinking. Executive function bucks me again. She directs Vanilla Ice out of the room. She's a cop. I stood up at some point, I can't recall why. Ice's handler looked at me with menace in her eye. She was in my head and ready for heavy drilling. She barely gestured to the chair; I sat obediently. Oh boy, this is going to be fun.

Addressing the director, the woman, revealed to be a cop supervisor, confirmed everything was under control. Control is an illusion. She turned those steely eyes on me and, preempting any exchange of polite salutations, immediately launched into a lecture. I catch that she's a cop supervisor - it's the third time she's staked that claim. She conveys the severity of the situation by recounting the six-vehicle response on my account. Six cruisers - a hidden piece inside me celebrates. Tax dollars well spent. She claims that the woman downstairs was "terrified" of me. I wonder if she is referring to the bulldog. The hidden piece chortles. My face retains its icy countenance. She keeps going; she's digging for something. I think to myself, "Hi, Lisa is it?"

Whenever police officers are around, or the mere mention of them arises, I instinctively perform a mental pat-down. Situation: I am in a middle school. I've been confrontational with the bulldog. Clipped inside the waistband of my shorts is a multitool - is it a tool or a weapon? Determining that wasn't up to me at all. Meanwhile, my truck idled in the school bus lane with a large dangerous-looking saw protruding from the bed and enough pot in the glove to jam me up if they felt like telling me I was high. I hadn't smoked any pot that day. I don't, as a rule, smoke in the mornings. Somehow I supposed my principles around recreational drug use weren't going to be heavily considered in this situation. Furthermore, the wife was leaving for work in about an hour. The verdict was clear: shut the fuck up and color.

I sit with closed body language. I meet Supervisor Cop's stern gaze. Through the repetition of her grandstanding, I assure her four or five times that I understand her words crystally. The Ego managed to grab the wheel and toss in a few explanatory statements. Each was met with a recap of Super Cop's threats and accusations. I don't understand what damn near forces me to argue with cops. Whether these monkeys are aware or not, many are psychological magicians. They know how to pull you in.

She tried a few times to get my engine going. In one of my revving sessions, I leaked that the bulldog's wagging finger had set me off downstairs. I tried to convey my emotional unease. The words fell to the floor like lead balloons. She snatched hold of that little gem about the wagging finger. She turned up the dial on her accusations and threats, and accompanied each with a violent, waggling index finger.

The other thing about cops: every one of these psych masters are chiefly closed off to anything resembling empathy or self-awareness. Super Cop was no exception. She kept dropping the ball with her crazy threats of putting my name on a list or something. It made the scene comical in a way and let me have fun with it.

The truth is there was nothing fun about it. I was put under extreme pressure and stress at a time when my child's wellbeing was ambiguous. Sheryl and Judy exercised compassion to quell my frustration. They cut through the antagonist scenario which unfurled in the administration office downstairs. We found steady ground on which to build dialogue. That was all before Super Cop made the scene. I was goaded and harrassed by Supe long after the burning flames were tempered like a splash of cold water. The supervising officer on the scene was actively working to escalate the situation. I was her emotional puppet, and she relished it as she shoved her fist right up my ass. Catharsis. It felt humiliating.

I glanced at her outstretched index finger for a beat. I smiled my most charming smile at it. My gaze returned to those fiery eyes. My face tightened and creased with authenticity around my eyes. I held the grin. She shrank imperceptibly before me. In my mind, I reharnessed my composure. She had lost.

I told her, "look, I am emotionally charged from today's events and because of my son. I am no threat to you or to the woman downstairs. I only wish to finish my conversation here and take my son home."

She gave me the rigamarole one more time for good measure. "I am taking down your name and I could put you in for trespassing and that woman is scared witless downstairs. Do you understand me."

"I understand your words. I have not given you reason to take any further action here today. I don't think either of us want that hassle," ice-cold.

She left unceremoniously. I took a beat. My eyes closed as heat radiated through me. I turned to the coordinator, apologized and closed out our meeting. I got up to leave. I turned my head, and looking over my shoulder said, "This experience has been horrific." My loose fist punctuated my words, rapping on the threshold as I stepped through. She said something to me, but I was too inside my own head to hear.

Vanilla Ice, Super Cop, and Cueball stood in a line as I entered the foyer, strategically positioned to flank my egress. I locked with Cueball's cool green gaze once more and swung a step toward him as I passed. A subtle knife hand shot from my waist. I said, "Thank you for your professionalism today." I commended him. The words melted on his ears like butter on the cob. I hit the "your" with emphasis, leaving a hint of intention hanging in the air. And, yes, maybe I'm tapped, but hand to God, if his "welcome" didn't sound a whole lot like, "sorry, bro. She's a bit of a cunt is all."

Cops are a peculiar breed. Despite their extensive psychological training in the classroom and in the field, self-awareness seems to elude them still. It must be a closed off sort of existence. Perhaps it is the nature of a profession which exposes the human mind to all the most violent sides of man. They perch on the precipice of order and chaos. Each is steeped in the worst elements of human experience. An imprint burns the mind. The scarred grooves run deep with use. They navigate the labyrinth of the psyche and explore the darkest corners of humanity. How much of one's own mind is indelibly tainted - seared flesh of the intellect of man.

I gathered my kid and walked out. Vanilla Ice emerged a few minutes later. In an apologetic tone, he asked me to move my truck - I was still occupying the bus lane and buses had started to arrive. We exchanged smiles, and I wished him a good day.

As I pulled out of the parking lot, a jazzy piano melody poured into the cab of the old white pickup. The sun beat down on us and I donned a pair of shades. Through my rearview, I glanced at my son in the backseat and smiled a contented grin. I tilted the mirror plumb to see Supe, Ice, and Cueball standing sentry atop the gray stone stairs behind me. I skewed the mirror back at my son.

Compassion is understanding we are far less agents of good and evil. Individual agency is less a determinant than we would like to believe. Most of the time, we are, each of us, a monkey swinging through the trees. The sway of those branches makes that monkey what he is.

I delivered my son home. My wife left for work. I felt a warmness deep in my chest as I reached for the clicker. The television buzzed to life. In a moment, cartooned characters were ascending a crescendo in their ditty about generosity and kindness. The colors flashed bright and pleasing on the screen. I descended the steps into the lower level of the home. I closed the door and I wept.