offered him a full-time job. Ten years later the company was sold to Greyhound, so he’d found work as a license inspector, traveling to businesses throughout Calhoun County to verify that the owners were up-to-date with their annual fees. He also checked the status of people’s mobile-home licenses. I worried about his safety—especially after his windshield was shot out. Now the sheriff accompanied him when he issued citations.
What I also hadn’t told Dr. Stout was that Charles’s job was only part-time, and the income, even with his supplement from the National Guard and selling encyclopedias, just wasn’t enough. We had tried to make everything count: eating pinto beans when we were saving for furniture, picking berries in the woods to sell. I even learned to sew the children’s clothes, and I’d go to town and browse the stores to copy the patterns I saw hanging on the racks, just like my mother did. We paid cash for everything we bought, as Charles didn’t believe in credit. The money from the pies I baked and sold to the neighbors and Charles’s unsuccessful peanut- and sweet-potato-growing ventures wasn’t enough—especially when everywhere he worked shut down.
N OT LONG after that appointment with Dr. Stout, I took Phillip to see the pediatrician, Dr. Luther, a tall, boisterous woman who piloted her own plane. I never knew what to expect when we visited her office, decorated with pictures from South African safaris. The summer Vickie caught the measles, she thundered, “Whoever heard of sending a five-year-old to vacation Bible school?” Not once did she let me pay for the children’s medicine, sending me home with boxes of samples when they needed them.
At this visit, Dr. Luther asked Phillip what he’d gotten for Christmas, and he barely answered. She shot her eyes at me, surprised. “Is this the best he can speak?” She signed him up that same day for testing at a rehabilitation center in Birmingham. During the weeks leading up to the appointment, I’d wake up in the middleof the night to find myself standing at the kitchen counter eating the cakes Edna baked for us every week. I must have gained twenty pounds by the time we took Phillip for his evaluation.
On the day Phillip was tested the doctors immediately checked to see if he was tongue-tied. I’d thought that was just an expression; to consider it a real possibility was horrifying. Then the doctors put that poor child through every test imaginable. I’m sure they thought that we were straight from
The Beverly Hillbillies
and didn’t own a refrigerator when Phillip identified the picture of a safe as an icebox. He was right. It looked exactly like the old rusty icebox in Edna’s kitchen, where she stored her sewing material.
The doctors concluded from Phillip’s tests and my interview that he was behind on his speech development because I was so worn out from his chronic allergies and asthma that I didn’t sing and talk to him the way I did Vickie. I’d also taken it for granted that Vickie did all his talking for him, like a little mother hen. He needed speech therapy twice a week to catch up to other children his age.
It tore my heart in two that although I’d given Phillip all I had, still it wasn’t enough. I knew what the doctors had no way of diagnosing: Each day at home, I’d find myself plagued by a discontent I didn’t understand. I was constantly, needlessly restless. I’d hear the dying echo of a delivery truck traveling to its unknown destination, and I’d feel an aching loneliness. I’d been left behind.
T HE MARITAL arguments started not too long after Phillip’s diagnosis. I’d taken Phillip to one of his first appointments with the speech therapist. An unusually cold spell had struck that day, and my car broke down on the way home from town. There I was on an empty country road, without one penny to my name and no way to get help. I stared at the flat tire on the dented green Plymouth we’d drained
What I also hadn’t told Dr. Stout was that Charles’s job was only part-time, and the income, even with his supplement from the National Guard and selling encyclopedias, just wasn’t enough. We had tried to make everything count: eating pinto beans when we were saving for furniture, picking berries in the woods to sell. I even learned to sew the children’s clothes, and I’d go to town and browse the stores to copy the patterns I saw hanging on the racks, just like my mother did. We paid cash for everything we bought, as Charles didn’t believe in credit. The money from the pies I baked and sold to the neighbors and Charles’s unsuccessful peanut- and sweet-potato-growing ventures wasn’t enough—especially when everywhere he worked shut down.
N OT LONG after that appointment with Dr. Stout, I took Phillip to see the pediatrician, Dr. Luther, a tall, boisterous woman who piloted her own plane. I never knew what to expect when we visited her office, decorated with pictures from South African safaris. The summer Vickie caught the measles, she thundered, “Whoever heard of sending a five-year-old to vacation Bible school?” Not once did she let me pay for the children’s medicine, sending me home with boxes of samples when they needed them.
At this visit, Dr. Luther asked Phillip what he’d gotten for Christmas, and he barely answered. She shot her eyes at me, surprised. “Is this the best he can speak?” She signed him up that same day for testing at a rehabilitation center in Birmingham. During the weeks leading up to the appointment, I’d wake up in the middleof the night to find myself standing at the kitchen counter eating the cakes Edna baked for us every week. I must have gained twenty pounds by the time we took Phillip for his evaluation.
On the day Phillip was tested the doctors immediately checked to see if he was tongue-tied. I’d thought that was just an expression; to consider it a real possibility was horrifying. Then the doctors put that poor child through every test imaginable. I’m sure they thought that we were straight from
The Beverly Hillbillies
and didn’t own a refrigerator when Phillip identified the picture of a safe as an icebox. He was right. It looked exactly like the old rusty icebox in Edna’s kitchen, where she stored her sewing material.
The doctors concluded from Phillip’s tests and my interview that he was behind on his speech development because I was so worn out from his chronic allergies and asthma that I didn’t sing and talk to him the way I did Vickie. I’d also taken it for granted that Vickie did all his talking for him, like a little mother hen. He needed speech therapy twice a week to catch up to other children his age.
It tore my heart in two that although I’d given Phillip all I had, still it wasn’t enough. I knew what the doctors had no way of diagnosing: Each day at home, I’d find myself plagued by a discontent I didn’t understand. I was constantly, needlessly restless. I’d hear the dying echo of a delivery truck traveling to its unknown destination, and I’d feel an aching loneliness. I’d been left behind.
T HE MARITAL arguments started not too long after Phillip’s diagnosis. I’d taken Phillip to one of his first appointments with the speech therapist. An unusually cold spell had struck that day, and my car broke down on the way home from town. There I was on an empty country road, without one penny to my name and no way to get help. I stared at the flat tire on the dented green Plymouth we’d drained
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