Saving Elijah

Presley was on the screen, doing "Hound Dog."
    It was as if Elijah had never heard music before. There was Elijah, age three, dancing naked around the room to Elvis. What a wiggle. You couldn't help but laugh at him, standing there naked and wet, imitating Elvis bumping and grinding, shaking his butt, his little penis wiggling.
    Sam came in from a late night at the office while we were all standing around watching this, me holding the towel, all of us just hooting. Then Elijah saw Sam, and he smiled. He closed his eyes and started moving his mouth to the music, too, pursing his lips and then smiling, and pursing and smiling again, over and over. We laughed even harder. I didn't realize at the time that all that pursing and smiling was a compulsive behavior of sorts, one that intensified within the year. At the time it was just funny.
    He was adorable, hilarious, irresistible. But no matter how adorable he was, or how much progress he seemed to be making with his language and cognitive development, his physical ailments were perpetual. And on a Tuesday evening, a year after he did his wiggling, wacky Elvis dance for the first time, as we ate a dinner of chicken Marsala to celebrate Sam's success, Elijah quietly laid his head down at the dinner table.
    His forehead was cool, but he was obviously coming down with something, again. I put him to bed a little early, hoping to head it off. He slept through the night but in the morning, he did have a little fever. I kept him home from school, canceled a meeting with my editor, got the woman in charge of the Winter Fair on the phone, apologized for leaving her in the lurch for the clown toss, and made an afternoon appointment with the pediatrician.
    Elijah sat on my lap all morning with Tuddy. We watched a Willie Wonka tape, his favorite. He loved to say "Wonka." He'd say it three times:
    Wonka, Wonka, Wonka—the way he'd said his numbers when he started to speak and count. He had to do everything three times. Three times I had to read his story to him; three times he had to walk through the door; three times I had to kiss his cheek. Sometimes I even had to sing him his lullaby three times.
    Everyone seemed to think he wasn't all that smart, but I thought he was very smart, just a different kind of smart. I tried to get him to say "Wonka, Wonka, Wonka" that morning as he sat on my lap, but he wouldn't say it. He wouldn't even wear his glasses. He just sat with his head against my chest and we watched the tapes together, and I read to him.
    "He's got another ear infection," the doctor said, after a quick examination.
    I'd lost count of the number of ear infections. Well, at least he wasn't screaming. Elijah hated doctors, of course. Hated white coats so much he'd been known to scream at the sight of a butcher in the supermarket.
    The doctor shrugged. "And there could be something else going on, too." Casual. Unconcerned.
    He prescribed another antibiotic, and by dinner Elijah seemed to be feeling better. He ate some soup. His fever was nearly normal, just over 99.
    Sammy helped Alex with his homework while I put Elijah to bed, then I caught up on some of my own paperwork. Looking through a magazine with a spread of the latest creations from Paris, a bizarre collection heavy on feathers and uneven hemlines, I thought I might try a piece on the absurdities of the fashion industry. A "who do they think they're fooling?" kind of thing. But I was simply too tired. Tomorrow. Around 11:30 Sam and I went to bed, turning on the intercom into Elijah's room while we were getting undressed. I'd used it for Alex and Kate when they were babies, was still using it for Elijah at five because of all his problems.
    Sam and I made love that night, and right in the middle of it we heard Elijah. Ah-ba-ba-ah-k ... a singsong babbling.
    We giggled. With Elijah you never knew what to expect.
    "What in the world is he doing?" I glanced at the night-table clock. Almost midnight.
    "He's singing, Di."
    "Should we go in there and tell him to stop?"
    "In your next life."
    He was right. Elijah hadn't even slept through the night until he was four. Given his sleeping history, it was best to let him go back to sleep on his own.
    Which he seemed to have no inclination of doing anytime soon.
    We resumed our lovemaking, but Elijah kept up his odd singsong over the intercom, louder now, as if he were delighting in it: Ah-ba-ah-ba-LA-LA-La. We kept dissolving into laughter, so finally we shut the thing off.