Overheard in a Dream. Torey Hayden

all parents of autistic children.”

      Lars rolled his eyes teasingly. “But then you’ll be used to celebrities, won’t you? The high-falutin’ crowd. City Boy.” He grinned.

      City Boy, indeed. Culture shock was too mild a word for what James had experienced in moving from Manhattan to Rapid City. South Dakota might as well have been the dark side of the moon. James did manage to do what he’d dreamed of – set up his own private practice in family therapy – but it hadn’t turned out to be exactly like his fantasies. Even at South Dakota prices, James had discovered he couldn’t afford to go it alone. Consequently, he’d ended up in partnership with a local psychiatrist, Lars Sorenson. If James had wanted freedom from the strict Freudian theory that had ruled his life in New York, he couldn’t have done better than Lars, whose ideas of psychiatry had more to do with football scores or gilt hog prices than Freud. James’s former colleagues would have frozen stiff at Lars and his homely country doctor approach. Indeed, James himself had taken so much thawing out when he first came that he’d probably left puddles behind him, but if Lars had noticed, he’d never let it bother him. In the end, James was grateful for the partnership. Lars was never in such a hurry that he wouldn’t stop and listen or answer one more stupid question about “real life,” as he liked to call living and working in Rapid City. And while there was a lot of good-natured teasing, he had never once laughed outright at James’s city-bred ideas.

      “Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh,” Conor murmured. “Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh, ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh.” As before, he stood only just inside the playroom door.

      James listened carefully to the noise. It had a distinctive mechanical sound, like a car ignition turning over on a cold morning. Turning, turning, turning but never catching.

      “Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh. Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh, ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh.”

      Conor had the stuffed cat clutched tightly against his chest. Slowly he lifted it up until it was pressed under his chin, then higher still until the head of the cat lay against his lips. He stopped the ignition sound. Taking one hand off the cat, he flapped it frantically. “Meow?” he said.

      Was he making the noise on behalf of the toy? James wondered. Was he trying to make it ask something that Conor dared not voice himself? Or was it the other way around? Was the cat putting its words in Conor’s mouth?

      “Meow?”

      “When you’re ready, Conor, you can come all the way into the room and we’ll shut the door,” James said. “But if you wish to stand there, that’s all right too. In here you can choose what you want to do.”

      The boy remained immobile in the doorway, the toy cat pressed against the lower half of his face. His eyes flickered here and there but never to meet James’s gaze.

      An expectancy seemed to form around them and James didn’t want this. He didn’t want Conor to feel there were any expectations of what he should or shouldn’t be doing, so James attempted to diffuse it by lifting up his spiral notebook. “This is where I take my notes. I am going to write in it while I sit here. I will write notes of what we are doing together so that I don’t forget.” He picked up his pen.

      For a full five or six minutes Conor stood without moving, then very cautiously he began to inch inward. As with the first session, he stayed near to the perimeter of the room and kept well away from James, sitting at the small table. Once, twice, Conor circumnavigated the room and pressed the cat’s nose lightly against things as he went.

      He was saying something under his breath. James couldn’t hear at first, but as Conor passed the third time, he could make out words. House. Car. Doll. Conor was naming the items he saw, as he passed them. This was a good sign, James thought. He understood the meaning of words. He knew things had names. He had at least some contact with reality.

      So it was when Conor came again on Thursday. And again the next week. Fifty minutes were spent quietly circling the room, touching things lightly with the nose of the stuffed cat, naming them. James didn’t intrude on this activity. He wanted the boy to set his own pace, to construct his own sense of security within the room, to understand that James had meant what he’d said: that Conor alone would decide what he wanted to do in here. That was how trust was built, James believed. That was how you made a child feel safe enough to reveal all that was hidden. Not by schedules. Not by reward and punishment. But by giving time. There were no shortcuts. Even when it meant session after session of naming.

      Three weeks passed. During the sixth session Conor circled the room upon entering and again touched everything he could easily reach with the toy cat’s nose, still murmured the names, but this time it was different. He elaborated. Red house, he whispered. Brown chair. Blue pony.

      For the first time, James answered Conor’s murmuring.

      “Yes,” James said, “that’s a blue pony.”

      Conor’s head jerked up abruptly. “Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh.” He stared straight ahead. The hand not holding the cat came up and fluttered frantically in front of his eyes. “Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh.”

      James sat very still.

      Moments passed.

      Slowly Conor exhaled. Extending the cat away from his body, he touched its nose to the edge of the shelf. “Wood,” he murmured very softly.

      “Yes, that’s made of wood,” James said.

      The cat was retracted instantly.

      James watched the boy, who kept his head averted to avoid eye contact.

      “Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh.” There was a long pause, then Conor whispered, “Brown wood.”

      “Yes, the wood is brown.”

      Conor turned his head. Not to look at James. His eyes never left the far distant point they were fixed on, but his head inclined a little in James’s direction. That was all that happened.

      “Bob and I were thinking of going over to the Big Horns to squeeze in a couple of days of elk hunting,” Lars said and sank down in the beige-cushioned softness of James’s office. “You want to come?”

      “That’s a very kind invitation, Lars, but I don’t know one end of a rifle from the other.”

      “You can borrow one of Davy’s guns,” Lars replied. “Davy killed his first buck when he was just twelve. Did I tell you about it? A six-pointer.”

      “Yes, you mentioned it.”

      “So come with us. Time you got blooded, Jim. How else we gonna make a South Dakota man out of you?” Lars laughed heartily. “It’ll just be Bob and me. We’ll take some beers and some grub and have a great time.”

      “When?”

      “Next weekend.”

      Relief flooded through James. “Well, damn! Wouldn’t you know it? I’ve got the kids coming out next weekend. Remember? Because I’m taking Monday and Tuesday off the following week.”

      “Oh Jesus, yeah.”

      “Darn. I’m sorry to miss it. Maybe next time.”

      Stretching his arms up behind his head, Lars settled back into the chair. “So how’s it been going between you and Sandy? Is she getting any more reasonable about the kids?”

      “Not really. They can come out at Easter but she says no way over Christmas,” James replied, but he couldn’t quite keep the disappointment from his voice.

      “Why not? I thought you got to alternate Christmases,” Lars said.

      “The court says yes. But Sandy keeps on about how disruptive it is for them at their ages.”

      “Yeah, but they’re your kids too. You’ve got the right to spend time with them.”

      “I know, but all this fighting over them isn’t good for them either. I don’t want them to grow up seeing Sandy and me at each other’s throats the whole time. And she’s probably