Reasonable People by Ralph James Savarese

Author:Ralph James Savarese [Savarese, Ralph James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2021-04-20T00:00:00+00:00

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I’m obviously not the best person to narrate the beginning of the reunion, but I have Emily’s journal notes, the two siblings’ conversations on the computer, and a video taken by my father-in-law. After the hour drive to Des Moines, Emily, DJ, and Phil seemed to wait forever at the airport before spotting Ellie, accompanied by an airline employee. Emily had worried about recognizing her; the last photo we’d received was almost five years before. In the video you can see Ellie walking tentatively toward her brother, thinking something like, “It must be him. I tried to prepare myself for how old he’d be, but I hadn’t anticipated he’d be that old.” DJ was pacing and distant, not letting on that he’d seen Ellie. No running up to her and kissing her this time. Rather, it was as if he were enclosed in a plexiglass bubble: a boyish pope who wouldn’t acknowledge the crowds before him. With DJ there was a constant struggle between emotional participation and withdrawal. As Emily moved to greet Ellie, the airline employee demanded identification, something that only seemed to exacerbate an already awkward encounter. The intrusion was reminiscent of other legal intrusions into the kids’ lives—yet another official handover. Emily can be heard on the video trying to speak for DJ, compensating for his apparent indifference. “Isn’t it great to see Ellie after all of this time?”

In the car, Ellie called her father and stepmother, who had insisted she contact them the second her plane landed. DJ didn’t want her to be on the phone; in fact, he tried to take the phone from her: their first real interaction. He generally doesn’t like anybody to be on the phone. Whenever we’re on the phone, he says that we’re ignoring him. Ellie was trying to respond to her father’s many questions. Having been discouraged from coming to Des Moines, he was eager to hear about his birth son. Surprised by DJ’s actions, she moved the phone from one hand to the other in order to keep it out of his reach, which only made DJ that much more insistent. Ten minutes into the ride home, and tension filled the car. Once Ellie said good-bye to her father, Emily turned on DJ’s favorite song and began telling Ellie all of the amazing things that DJ had learned to do since she saw him last, including communicate with a computer. She told her about the method we’d been using called facilitated communication. In retrospect, Emily wished she’d brought the computer with her, but she’d feared it might be too difficult to facilitate DJ in the car. The car only has two bucket seats in the back: if the kids sat together, Emily wouldn’t be able to provide the physical support that DJ needed.

After they returned home and Ellie introduced herself to Emily’s mother, the siblings had their first conversation ever, a conversation that brought a lump to everyone’s throats. Ellie began with a kind of letter, thanking DJ for the picture album he had gotten her for Christmas.

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