Alexander Matthew

He has these perpetually sticky fingers, so when you take his hand in yours, your lip curls just a little from the goo of yogurt, cheese, chocolate, and taffy that has collected there. Mom sighs, shakes her head. Says he’s saving it for when he gets hungry. It’s amazing how much he could tell you with those hands. When he touches his thumb and forefinger together rapidly, it means that he’s excited or hyper, that you should probably go outside and play. He puts his palm on his chin then flings it out again as he says, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

And that voice of his. If you could imagine a sound that cuts butter, it is his shout. He can make a heartless crone smile with his laughter, especially when he breathes in while he does, creating a squeak similar to the opening of an old door with rusted hinges. You hate to anger him, though, because his shriek makes you think that a blood vessel burst in your left temple every time.

You wish he lived in Antarctica on those days.

When he’s had his medicine, he sits down at his computer for two or three hours at a time, staring into the blue screen that lights up his face as he plays a cooking game, watches DVDs, or looks up new “Rob Alexander’s” on the Card Kingdom website. This is the best time to rest, so you turn on the television. Every now and then, you glance back at him. Sometimes he looks like he hasn’t moved. Sometimes he covers his ears and looks at you with dead eyes. You turn the volume down, stand up, and you ask him if he needs his headphones. His lip moves, and you ask again, softly, leaning down close to hear his ice-melting voice. “Yes,” a barely audible whisper tells you. So you help him put on the black glossy headgear as your mother says for the five-hundred-and-tenth time that he needs to do that on his own. You roll your eyes, wondering again why exactly it was that she started to call you “the second mom”.

His hair smells like soap. You’re never going to figure out that one. Why does his hair smell so clean when his fingers are so dirty? It must just be one of those mysteries that only a brother could create. His cheeks are almost always hot, since he is either wearing footie pajamas in the middle of summer or recovering from an ear infection in the winter. You ask him, “Can I have a lip kiss?” You specify because asking for a kiss means that he will offer you one of his too-warm cheeks. Instead, he half opens his mouth and lets you give him a little kiss, and when you do, you always wipe your own mouth because he has frog-like wet lips.

When he’s happy, you can ask him for a hug, and he will oblige. If he’s angry, though, you need to ask for a “squishy” instead, because he needs to let that anger out before he has a chance to blow the hearing-aid off of the elderly man five aisles away at the grocery store. As for why your mother dubbed it “squishy”, you can consult your ribs if they are still intact afterwards or your eyes and ears if they did not pop right out of your head.

His hair is blonde, typically shaggy. Haircuts are such pains that your mother lets the hair in back reach the big vertebra that sticks out before she even considers pulling out the clippers. His ears get in the way when you do. He used to have dopey ears that stuck out like Alfalfa’s on that old TV show, but they’re slowly getting closer to his head. Very slowly. And he has the most amazing smile. You go out of your way to get him to smile, just to sneak a glimpse of the gap between his front teeth. People tell you it’s classy in a man, but in a child it’s just adorable.

He’s thin, tall, like a flagpole. That could just be the pica, though. And if he would stop eating his fingertips, he wouldn’t complain about the “owies” as much. You blame yourself for teaching him that one. You also blame yourself for about a third of the words he uses, your favorites of them being “Shut up, Erik!” Even though he’s serious, your whole family laughs because it’s too precious to remain silent. You consider teaching him “Get a job, Erik,” next.

But if there is anything about him as complex as his brain, it is his eyes. You can look at them ten or fifteen times in a day and see something new each time. A swirl of bright amber creates a frame around the pupil of each eye. Then you see a hurricane of greys and blues that are as deep as your mother’s eyes and just as beautiful. A thin ring of black divides the chaotic, oceanic eyes from the rest of the white orbs.

When he’s asleep, you think about those eyes and that laugh, and you wonder about the universe and science and what could possibly be going on inside that brain that makes him so special. Because that’s what autism is. You hear all the time about the “autism cure”, but why on earth would you even consider giving up such a unique movement in the symphony that you call life in a band where everyone plays the trumpet, but you brother is kicking drums. And you realize, right before you close your eyes, that this is it. This is all there is. He is going to be a child for what feels to you like forever.

You smirk as you fall asleep. What you wouldn’t give for a life like that…


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