Chapter 8
“Thanks for the heads up.” Josh said before he hung up the phone.
“What was that?” Donna asked as she put breakfast on the table.
“There’s an op ed in the paper in Minneapolis that got picked up in the Rochester
paper too.” Josh answered.
“About Julie?” Ben asked.
“Yeah.” Josh picked up some bacon off the plate in between them. “Got anything
going on after school today?”
“I have basketball practice ‘til 4.” Ben replied.
“How about you, Alley Cat?”
“Nope.”
“Then I say we have a family movie night tonight.” Josh proposed.
“You didn’t ask me.” Tori piped up.
“Didn’t ask you what?”
“If I had any plans after school.” Tori pointed out.
“Okay. Tori do you have any plans after school?” Josh obliged and Donna smiled at
him over Tori’s head. Ally giggled.
“No.” Tori answered.
“Are you sure? No afterschool sports or a book club of some kind?” Josh pressed.
“They don’t even do book clubs in kindergarten, Daddy.” Tori replied.
“Oh, how silly of me.” Josh deadpanned. “Well since you don’t have any plans,
would you like to attend a Lyman family movie night?”
“What movie?” Tori wanted to know.
“What movie do you think we should watch?” Josh turned the question around.
“No, don’t ask Tori.” Ally pleaded. “She always picks the same one.”
“Do not.” Tori retorted.
“We’ll take a vote tonight.” Donna, ever the peacemaker decided. “Finish your
breakfast. The bus will be here soon.”
“Jake, what are you and Jenny doing today?” Josh kissed his youngest son’s head
before putting some scrambled eggs on the child’s plate.
“Trains.” Jake replied while stuffing his mouth with eggs.
“No, library day.” Jenny corrected. “We’re going to get some new books to read.”
“Train books.” Jake insisted.
“I think we’ve read ALL the train books at the library.” Jenny chuckled and missed
the concerned look between Josh and Donna.
“You should go to Barnes and Noble.” Tori offered. “They have a much bigger
selection.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Jenny replied. “Maybe for your birthday, Jake. Just 3 more
weeks until you turn 4.”
“What do you want for your birthday, old man?” Josh asked.
“Trains.” Jake, Tori, Ally, and Ben all answered in unison.
“Clear your plates. It’s time for the bus.” Jenny ordered and amazingly everyone
obeyed. Maybe it was Friday fever, but the 4 Lyman children bounded happily off to
the bus with Jenny trailing slightly behind them.
“Trouble in the Twin Cities?” Donna asked, pouring coffee for each of them.
“There’s a story profiling Julie that’s innocuous enough, but they’re piggybacking off
that with two different op-eds. One is all over me for defying the D triple C and
bringing in my own handpicked candidate from D.C., the other one is all about how
Julie doesn’t understand Minnesota values anymore after living in D.C. for the last
several years.”
“How’s that going to play?” Donna set the coffee in front of him.
“Not well.” Josh admitted. “You Canadian/Midwesterners like to close ranks when
outsiders come around.”
“Is Billy going to hit back?”
“Hitting back now, will just make it a bigger story.” Josh decided. “It’s Friday too, so
maybe it will die a quiet death over the weekend.”
“Maybe, but I think the campaign should have some kind of response.” Donna
opined.
“Billy’s already in contact with Laura. They’ll take care of it.” Josh paused. “We need
to talk about it, Donna.”
“The op ed?” She asked as she continued clearing the table.
“No. Not the op ed.” Josh said nothing more and she froze with her back to him.
“He’s not four yet. They said to wait until he turned four.” She countered.
“He turns four in three weeks. It takes that long to get an appointment.”
“They said to wait until he was four.” She repeated.
Josh got up and walked over to where she was frantically scrubbing a pan. He
wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and rested his chin on her shoulder.
“Would you like me to make the appointment?” he asked quietly.
“I would like it if nobody made the appointment.” Donna admitted.
“Baby, that just isn’t a good idea.”
“Why not?” Donna turned around to look into her husband’s face. “Are we going to
treat him any differently if he has a formal diagnosis? Is that going to change
anything for our family? They said his assessment was inconclusive last time. What’
s the point of putting him through that again?”
“Putting him through that?” Josh shook his head. “It’s 45 minutes of playtime with
experts in the field, not amniocentesis or a series of rabies shots.”
“We already know how to handle autism; IF that’s what this is. And just for the
record, an obsession with trains and a small vocabulary does not mean-“
“We don’t know WHAT it means, Donna. So please don’t talk to me like I haven’t
read the same literature you have. It’s not just trains, and it’s not just a small
vocabulary. It’s lining things up all the time, obsessing over things that spin, and
even getting him to make eye contact sometimes.”
“All of which, those medical experts of yours said, could just as easily be attributed
to learning from his closest sibling who has an autism diagnosis.”
“MY medical experts?” Josh rubbed his hand over his face and took a deep breath.
“Don’t do this, Donna. Don’t make this into something between you and me.”
“Why are you pushing this so hard then?”
“Pushing it so hard?” Josh repeated in astonishment. “You didn’t want to put him in
preschool this year. I said fine. You didn’t want to discuss this again until he turned
4. I said fine, but he’s turning 4 in less than a month, Donna. And avoiding it isn’t
going to help Jake or make it go away!” Josh knew that raising his voice now was a
strategic error as soon as he stopped talking. Donna looked stricken and started to
cry.
Talk about bad timing, Jenny and Jacob returned after seeing the other children off
on their bus. Jenny picked up on the dynamics and tried to move Jake out of the
room, but he got sidetracked by the magnets on the frig and started lining them up
which only got Donna more upset.
“Jake. Stop it.” Donna directed but Jake continued. “Mommy told you not to touch
the magnets. Stop!” Jake looked up at Donna’s shout confused at her tone of voice.
Donna covered her mouth with her hand.
“Come on, buddy, let’s go find your trains.” Josh held his hand out for his son and at
the word train, Jake ran over to take that outstretched hand. They left without
another word. Jenny started to follow them.
“Don’t go, Jen.” Donna implored. “Can we just sit for a minute?”
“Sure.” Jennifer agreed. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Sure. It will go well with the crow I’ll be eating soon.”
“This is about Jake?” Jennifer guessed and poured the coffee for her aunt and
friend.
“We got into a fight about scheduling a new autism assessment.” Donna confirmed.
“You know it’s bad when Josh is the voice of reason, right?”
“Yeah…that’s never a good sign.” Jennifer concurred. “Can I ask…what is it that’s
bothering you so much about the assessment? You’ve been through this before with
Tori, you both do so well with her! Why would Jake having the same diagnosis make
you so upset?”
Donna thought about this for a minute. It was a reasonable question. “If there’s no
diagnosis, I can pretend everything is normal. I don’t have to deal with Early
Childhood Special Ed again. I don’t have to explain another child to everyone we
meet. I don’t have to think about whether or not it was something I did while I was
pregnant that hurt my children. That Tori’s diagnosis was just a fluke.”
“Donna, God, you can’t believe that?” Jennifer was astonished. “You took very good
care of yourself while you were pregnant. I was there! You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then why-“
“Free advice. Move past the ‘why’ and go to the ‘what’; as in what should we do now
so the kids are happy, healthy, and feel successful in life.” Jen continued. “Is this the
reason you didn’t want to send Jacob to preschool? Because that’s where Tori was
first identified as child with autism?”
“What, are you taking psych classes now?” Donna said drily.
“Maybe I should?” Jen teased. She had adopted her aunt’s philosophy of college;
taking a variety of classes with no clear focus. When Josh would press her about it,
she’d tell him she just loved learning and she was happy with her job taking care of
the Lymans.
“Maybe you should.” Donna confirmed. “I don’t want to do this.”
“I know. I even understand why, but you still need to do it.”
“I know.” Donna turned her head toward the family room where she could just barely
see her husband and her son putting together the train tracks. Jake was directing
his father in the best way to do that and Josh was purposefully doing the opposite,
causing howls of protest and tons of laughter from her son. They were SO good
together. “I guess I’ll go make a phone call then.”
*****************************************************
“I don’t understand why this is so bad.” Julie stated.
“Because what little you have in name recognition right now, is in association with
Lyman consulting which means it’s easier for anyone to paint you as a political
outsider; a carpet bagger.”
“A carpet bagger? Are you serious?” Julie questioned. “I was born here. I was raised
here. My family is here.”
“They’re pointing out that since you’ve worked and lived in D.C. for the last several
years…” Brian tried to explain. “Try not to overreact to-”
“What a load of crap!” Julie exploded.
“Like that.” Brian finished.
“They don’t even bother talking about the issues they go straight to mudslinging?”
Julie demanded.
“They want to cut you off at the knees with this trivial stuff so you can’t even get to
the issues.” Billy responded while reading the op ed again. “Render you ineffective,
because by the time the public actually meets you, they’re going to believe you’re a
Washington insider with no idea what life is like in Minnesota.”
“So what are we going to do about it?” Julie asked angrily.
“We’re going to garner a little free publicity of our own.” Billy told her.
“And just how are we going to manage that? We don’t have the State Party chair to
pick a fight with anymore.” Julie said sardonically.
“No, but there is another guy we could try.” Billy smiled.
“And that would be…?” Julie asked.
Brian lifted his eyebrows at her.
“No.” Julie stated with certainty. “He already hates me.”
“All the better to bait him with, my dear.” Billy teased. “Brian, get Taylor’s public
schedule. Let’s see where we could accidentally bump into him.”
“Couldn’t we do something more productive? Say, like, shoot at pheasants through
the car window?” Julie rolled her eyes.
“No reason we can’t do both.” Brian quipped.