Waiting Room By Amanda Marples
“No. Stop. Put it back.”
Nothing.
“Jake!” Still, nothing.
He’s not even hearing me.
He’s going to knock something off and she’s just sitting there looking at me. She hates me. What does she expect me to do? Let him wreck everything? He’s got to learn. He can’t be doing things like this when he’s at work. If he ever gets a job. At this rate who knows.
I can’t keep doing this.
I can’t look at him. I can’t lose it in here. What if I lose it and they ring social services? Breathe. Focus on something. Not the woman over there with the boy. Headphones on, same as Jake but much older. Late twenties? Probably not got a job. Probably not got a girlfriend. Probably living at home with his mother, still picking his clothes out for him. How does she do it? Is she just sleepwalking? Is this who we are now?
I can’t do this.
Maybe it’s nothing? A phase? Maybe he’s just bloody naughty and we’ve made all this up to disguise what shit parents we are. Please God let it not be shit DNA. I’ve got to say something.
“Cheryl, tell him will you? He’s going to pull those cups out”. She’s frowning. I can see sweat in her hairline. How does she stay calm? She makes too many excuses for him.
“Jake! Put it back you can’t have that! Cheryl!” I’m shouting now and the woman across is looking in her bag for something. Cheryl’s stopping him, thank god, holding him tight. That sometimes works. Relax. Relax, Mike. It’s okay. He’s sucking his thumb. A good sign even though he’s too old. Christ why can’t we be normal? Cheryl keeps saying well what’s normal anyway but she knows what I mean. He was tiny in my arms and I saw us standing on the kop. I saw him drinking his first pint with me. I saw him asking my advice. Loving each other when I’m old and he’s a married man with kids of his own. Things shared that women don’t understand. It’s disappearing in pieces. He’s disappearing in pieces. Talking less now than he did at four. Cheryl barely looks at me now. She blames me. I feel like we’re all disappearing. The woman has got up and she’s giving Cheryl something. I feel colour in my face and I look away. I want to stroke his face but he doesn’t like being touched. Jesus. Where did our cuddly two-year-old go?
Disappearing. God, I’m weak.
God, Mike, please. He’s losing it. He keeps asking me how can I be so calm but I’m no calmer than he is. It’s hot in here, I need some air. One of us has got to be quiet. We can’t both be shouting. We’re such stereotypes. He shouts. I cry. I don’t want him pulling the cups out either, creating a mess, getting on everyone’s nerves. Jesus Mike okay I’m on it. I pull Jake on to my lap and wrap both arms round him, holding him tight. He struggles and then he’s still. He likes that, sometimes. Doesn’t always work, I can’t figure it out. Maybe I’ll ask Dr Leith. She knows her stuff, just doesn’t smile much.
I need smiles.
God, I need the smiles so I can stop thinking about him alone in a corner of the yard, a circle of boys around him, laughing.
Or just alone. Which is worse? He’s sucking his thumb. I put my face as near to the top of his head as I dare without upsetting him and breathe in deep. He still smells like my baby. He could still be my baby if I close my eyes. He’s still your baby. Okay, then. But he can’t be a baby forever. He’s got to cope. What if he never copes. What will life be like when I am gone? Who will be there to say no thanks to the drugs? I’ve read it all. Too much. And I can feel Mike’s anger. God, it’s coming off him in waves. Who is he blaming today? We’ll talk after and I’ll say to him you need to accept this but that makes me a hypocrite. I cried last week about grandchildren and weddings. I hate this in other people. This selfishness. Why is a stranger giving me a blanket? I can’t focus on her words properly but she’s smiling and her face is kind so I take it and lay it across him. It’s heavy. I feel the tension in his little legs melt away, almost immediately.
The woman smiles, and goes back to her seat.
I try to force my own face into a smiling shape.
Why do I want to cry because a stranger is giving me a blanket?
These cups pull out one-two-three makes a pop-pop-pop noise feels round in my ears. Round and smooth. Daddy has a big voice again too big I like his small voice better. Daddy doesn’t like my cups. Something feels spiky around him. I can roll them to him like he rolls a ball and Mummy claps and her face shines when I roll it back. I like her face when it shines. I don’t like her cloudy face. Today it is cloudy so I pull the cups but Daddy’s voice is big again. Too loud, too white. I need something. But then Mummy is up and around me and I don’t like it when they touch me it hurts and I kick out but oh! Now she’s got me tight and that’s okay that doesn’t hurt that feels good and I don’t like her strong flower smell but she is warm and so it is okay. Mummy dims the lights and she takes the lines out of my socks and makes my t-shirts feel softer so they don’t hurt when they rub on my back like prickles and she hums and that makes me hum too. When we hum it’s good. Daddy doesn’t hum but he rocks with me and sometimes his voice is so so so small and sometimes he cries with no sound. Daddy’s eyes are brown like trees and my thumb is in my mouth and it feels better now but I want to go home to tear paper. Long crinkly tears. And now there is a new voice and I close my eyes tight and I can feel Mummy’s voice through my back. I can see the lady’s shoes through a crack in my eyes. Then Mummy takes something and lays it on me. It is heavy. It is good.
They’re new at this, that couple over there. Written all over them, poor things. We were there once with our Stevie. He’s calm next to me, that’s good. He’s happy enough with his music. We know what works, they’ll figure it out. They need to relax that’s the first thing. He’s always unsettled after clinic but it’ll pass. It’s the lights, the conversation. Doctor Leith will close the blind, she knows us well enough now.
Ah, no-one cares about the cups, Dad’s getting upset. They’re only plastic, let him pull them all out if it keeps him calm. I want to tell them – no-one minds, they’re just plastic cups. Shall I say something? Smile, or nod so they know no-one minds? That we understand here? No, look how red they both are. No need to be embarrassed but no good me telling them that. They have to figure it out. They will. There’ll always be sadness but that’s okay isn’t it? Like a counsellor once said: you’ve got to let yourself feel it, Gail. The world is not set up for Stephen. It’s okay to feel sad. Or mad. But in the end you have to just love him. Oops! Cups all over the floor, bless him. Dad looks furious. Oh dear. Stevie’s noticed too. I can feel him next to me, prickling. Disturbance and movement he wasn’t expecting, noises even through his Bruce Springsteen. Why Bruce Springsteen? people ask. Why not? I always say.
‘It’s okay love,’ I say to Stevie. He’s drumming his legs, stimming. Stimming helps. You have to find what works. She’s got him on her knee now – yes, that’s good. Some kids like the pressure. That seems to have settled him a bit. Good. So hard to watch them struggle. Fighting it. We did for a while. But now look at our beautiful boy. My beautiful Stevie. In fact, the blanket might be great for them if he likes being held tight. Sod it. They’ve got to learn to accept help. They can have ours. A bit dog-eared but it’s clean. I cross the waiting room to the boy and his mother.
‘See if your little one likes this. It’s weighted. My Stevie doesn’t use it anymore really but it was a godsend once. You can keep it.’
She tries to smile back but she looks like she might cry. The husband is looking at the wall. I want to say more, to say you’re doing great or hang in there it gets easier or something but I don’t. I smile again, hoping she can read it in my face. I go back to my seat where Stevie is happy enough in his world of rhythms and sensations. I send them silent good wishes.
They’ll get there, eventually.
Judges Comments
Waiting Room, Amanda Marples' winning entry in our First Line Short Story Competition, tackles a sensitive subject – the experience of parenting a child potentially on the autism spectrum – with insight and sensitivity. But this in itself is not why her story won this competition: if anything, a story that generates sympathy and compassion because of its subject matter has to work even harder to establish its creative writing credentials.
Amanda succeeds wonderfully in Waiting Room. Told through the perspectives of four people, it builds not just into a tentatively hopeful resolution but into a greater insight into what it might feel like to be in the position of four people whose lives are altered by the child's condition: Cheryl, the mother, desperate to understand her son Jake's condition and appease her upset partner; her partner Mike, whose anger is the only way he can express his sorrow; the child Jake and the unnamed, more experienced mother, further along the path than this family, who offers the weighted blanket that soothes not just Jake but offers comfort for his desperate, exhausted mother.
There's nothing heart-on-sleeve about this story, in which Amanda confronts and conveys the very difficult emotions of rage, disappointment, grief, bewilderment, plea-bargaining and appeasement as well as love. It's immensely moving but never sentimental. Amanda writes the interior lives of her characters with clarity and insight into the particular traits and circumstances of each individual involved, and the way she conveys Jake's sensory world and the way it differs from conventional expectations and affects his life is exceptionally well done.
Waiting Room builds the story from the initial first line into a complex dramatic arc involving four narrators, with Amanda progressing her story through four interlinked dramas to a resolution that affects each character. She's crafted a story about a difficult subject that's very easy to read, which means that she has taken care of every element with great skill and care. It's an object lesson in how to write short stories with empathy and understanding, so they read as if they're written from the inside of the experience, rather than by an observer.
Runner-up in the First Line Short Story Competition was Celia Jenkins, Corhsam, Wiltshire, whose story is published on www.writers-online.co.uk
Also shortlisted were: Zsolt Batki, Coventry, West Midlands; Jennifer Bickley, Shrewsbury; Victoria Bolton, Maltby, South Yorkshire; Michael Callaghan, Glasgow; Andrew Hutchcraft, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire; Jennifer Moore, Ivybridge, Devon; Lizzie Strong, Storrington, West Sussex; Hazel Whitehead, Shere, Surrey; Darren Whitehouse, Buxton, Derbyshire.