The question is, why is she sitting in her car hoping to catch a glimpse of him with her postdoc? Curiosity, certainly. Prurient curiosity. And beneath that, the desire to know how much Harlan will grant Nasira. Jackie was so patient during their relationship, and in the end, after five years, Harlan denied her. Already she suspects he is moving faster with Nasira, and Jackie must know why.
Why her and not me?
Jackie winces at her own weakness. She checks the dashboard clock and drives away, glancing at the house one last time in her rearview mirror.
Belize Drake, a thirty-year-old law student, sits across the table from Jackie, holding her infant son in her lap. The boy has his mother’s wide-set dark eyes and polished-bronze skin, but his dimpled knuckles are all his own. Jackie is always amazed at how much the babies change from when she first sees them at six months to when she sees them again at a year. This one-year-old, Xavier, is now his own person, solidly himself.
Gretchen, one of Jackie’s graduate students, also sits facing Xavier and his mother, but off to the side. Both Jackie and Gretchen are using iPads to record the child’s responses. The room is painted a sunny yellow and the floor is carpeted. Cabinets hold a vast selection of toys, plus playpens to confine children for certain tests. Video cameras and microphones record sessions, primarily for backup. The work is painstaking but Jackie is certain of its value. Finding the earliest signs of autism—at any point on the spectrum—is crucial in caring for these children and their families in the best way possible.
Jackie smiles at the boy. “How are you doing, Xavier? Ready to play some games?” He sticks his fist in his mouth. Jackie selects the rattle from the box on the seat beside her. She shakes the rattle in front of Xavier to get his attention, then moves it to her right. His eyes follow. Jackie moves the rattle back to the middle and over to the left side. Xavier tracks it all the way. “Bah,” he says as she puts the toy away.
Jackie types a zero next to “Visual Tracking 1” on the form on the iPad, indicating that his response was typical. Later in the twenty-minute session, Jackie will again challenge Xavier to track an object. Gretchen also enters something on her form, but they won’t compare the data until later.
The mother resettles her son. Jackie gets up and positions herself to the side of the Drakes. She waits until Xavier’s attention is elsewhere, then says his name. He does not turn to her. Belize Drake casts a glance at Jackie over her son’s head. Jackie nods to reassure her. Belize knows that Jackie will repeat the test, and how Xavier reacts to any one challenge is not crucial. When the Drakes signed up for the study, Jackie explained what all the assessments and procedures would entail. Today’s test, the AOSI, or Autism Observation Scale for Infants, has been the gold standard in the field for ten years, using a standard set of objects, plus free-play sessions, to score the eighteen items that make up the scale. Some of the items are social, like smiling when the examiner smiles and sharing an emotion. The rest probe other behaviors relevant to a diagnosis of autism, like motor control, attention, and visual tracking—following the rattle.
But Jackie understands why Belize can’t help but see any glitch in her child’s performance as worrisome. Xavier’s older brother, Charles, was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder two years ago, at the age of three. In Jackie’s study, that puts Xavier in the high-risk group, since he has about a 10 to 20 percent chance of getting the same diagnosis. Belize and the other parents who volunteer for the research are anxious to know as soon as possible how the die has been cast. So far, a diagnosis at six months has been impossible, and it’s pretty unreliable at Xavier’s age, too. But Jackie’s work is all about searching for early, reliable signs, and given that she interacts every day with parents who do the same searching in an informal way, she feels nothing but sympathy for Belize’s anxious monitoring.
“Why don’t we play on the floor for a bit?” Jackie crosses the room and kneels on the floor.
Belize holds her son under the arms and stands him upright. He teeters toward Jackie.
“Look at you!” She stretches out her arms, but he falls onto his behind in front of her. He startles, sees Jackie’s broad smile, and grins.
Jackie glances up at Belize in time to catch her smile.
After the session ends, Jackie digs her lunch out of the lab fridge and heads to her office. She clears away the stacks of papers and regards her kale salad dolefully. She ought to have chosen something that didn’t require quite so much chewing to have a chance of finishing before the lab meeting. This semester, Mondays are doomed: a 9:00 a.m. developmental psych lecture, followed by a graduate seminar on social development, then a one-hour break, during which she squeezed in the session with Xavier. Next comes the lab meeting, several more study appointments, and today, as the second Monday of the month, the departmental talk at 5:00 p.m. She considered moving the lab meeting to a different day, but in her experience, it pays to get everyone pointed in the right direction at the start of the week. Graduate students are prone to drift.
She sorts through her emails—delete, delete, highlight, delete—and pauses on the reminder for Thursday’s reception for new adjunct faculty, visiting professors, and postdocs. The word “postdoc” evokes Nasira, and Jackie struggles to dispel the image of Harlan and Nasira after the Dinner, walking away together in intimate conversation, and sharing breakfast at Stateside. As Jackie reads the details of the reception, however, thoughts of Nasira are replaced by those of herself at a similar reception ten years ago. Three recent faculty hires, including Jackie, were being honored.
She stood at the perimeter with a tepid glass of chardonnay, wondering if it was too soon to leave. The stacks of moving boxes occupying every room of her house called to her. Her lab and her classes held top priority, but living out of boxes wasn’t her style.
Harlan entered the room, scanned the sea of heads, and caught her eye. He snaked through the tight crowd at the refreshment table, nodding at those who greeted him. Jackie had first met him when she interviewed for the position. Their conversation had been brief, and she had no memory of the topic. She remembered him, though: his eyes, his voice, and that smile, warm and edged in mischief.
When Harlan reached her, he smiled that smile and extended his hand. “Harlan Crispin. Congratulations.”
“Thank you. I’m delighted.”
“I hoped the search committee would put you forward. You were the best of the ones they brought in, but they don’t always get it right.”
Jackie sipped her wine while she unpacked Harlan’s statement. No doubt it was complimentary, but it also suggested he didn’t think highly of some of his colleagues, either those on the search committee or the allegedly ill-advised hires. She was tempted to ask Harlan whom he viewed as weak, but opted for diplomacy. Who knew which way the political winds blew in this department? “I’m flattered you think so, but from what I know, Josslyn Burnes and Hamid Kamar are first-rate.”
He leveled his gaze at her. “You don’t have to do that. Not with me, certainly.”
“Do what?”
“Be evenhanded and thereby sell yourself short.”
Jackie cast about for a quip to end this line of talk; she distrusted bold flattery. Harlan watched her, waiting, his eyes deep brown and inquisitive. He was striking rather than handsome, and something about him drew her closer, the temptation of a door left ajar.