$18.95
2006, ISBN 1-931282-82-X

Rock and a Hard Place draws the reader into the heartbreaking dilemma faced by Lucy, mother of three children, the oldest of whom has severe autism. Due to 9-year-old Hollie's erratic and often destructive behaviors, the day-to-day life of the rest of the family is fragmented and chaotic, putting a strain on Lucy's marriage and affecting her younger children, who are beginning to show signs of low self-esteem and lack of focus. In trying to get the best possible educational services for her daughter and at the same time preserve her family, Lucy is stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Read an Excerpt from Rock and A Hard Place:

I spent the evening putting off the moment when I would have to tell Simon about my futile little protest. There were plenty of good reasons for skirting the issue. There was too much noise and chaos during the children’s bath time, and a program on TV that Simon wanted to watch while we ate dinner. There was a flooded bathroom carpet to mop up with armfuls of towels. Then there was the final chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to read to Joshua and Lisa. When I finally summoned the nerve, Simon was getting undressed and I was already in bed.

“My God, how could you do that? Sometimes I think you hate Hollie. You’d do anything to get rid of her!”

I swung myself out of bed, my chin set, my fists clenched against each other.

“How dare you say that!” I said, not knowing where to begin to explain the confused, angry feelings that overwhelmed me. “You know she’s impossible to cope with at times. You know what a constant job it is looking after her. God, I shouldn’t have to explain to you, of all people.”

“She’s been given to us. We have to look after her.”

“But she’s destroying us.”

“Look, she barely relates to us. How do you think she’d relate to a load of strangers in a boarding school, even in the unlikely event the education people ever agreed to it.”

“I don’t know,” I said miserably. “I just know that we can’t go on.”

The following day, Saturday, we had been invited to a wedding. I wished desperately we didn’t have to go—I even found myself wishing one of the children would get sick to provide us with a ready-made excuse. But Simon had been a college friend of the groom, David, and nostalgia for his youth mixed with a most uncharacteristic desire to socialize (Simon never normally wanted to go anywhere) had made him determined to accept the invitation.

I was up at eight, changing Hollie’s diaper and preparing the children’s breakfasts. I scarcely exchanged a word with Simon. Actually there was nothing I could think of to say to him. He showered while the rest of us ate our breakfast and emerged from the bedroom stern-faced, already dressed in his suit, as I carried the breakfast plates out to the kitchen.

“I’ll clean up here,” he muttered. “You get them all ready.”

“Okay.”

I set about the task of getting Hollie ready first. Dressing her is a bit like painting a bridge. The key to conducting the operation successfully is not only to have everything you need—dress, top, underwear—on hand before you start, but to try to prevent interruptions. The main problems arise when the phone rings or one of the other children asks you to find a toy they’ve lost, because you return to find she’s stripped everything off and is sitting stuffing one of the socks into her mouth. Then, when you bend down to try to put the socks on her feet again, she grabs your hair and starts to pull it, giggling wildly. And by that time you feel like joining her and pulling your own hair out in frustration.

Today, to my amazement, Hollie was reasonable compliant, perhaps because she was fascinated by the pretty part dress that she’d worn only once before. I strapped her into the car with a bag of chips and a cup of juice, then rushed to complete the rest of the preparations in the few minutes it would take her to consume them.

The bright sunshine was a comfort. I called Lisa, who was collecting the dolls she wished to take on the journey, and dressed her in her pink and blue party dress. I brushed her pretty blonde hair and wiped the breakfast smears from her mouth with a towel.

“Jessica and Jemima need their party clothes too,” she said, indicating the dolls.

“Run and get them quickly,” I said, taking the dolls from her and packing them in her bag.

Joshua was more obstructive. He hid under his blanket and shouted that he wasn’t going to wear the green shirt and new corduroy trousers I had ready for him. He was going to wear the jeans with the knee holes and the ice-cream-spattered favorite T-shirt he had on.

“Why are you under your blanket,” I asked.

“I broke my Legos. I thought you’d be angry.”

I was under pressure. I knew Hollie would have finished her chips and juice. She was probably at this moment escaping from her seatbelt and entertaining herself by pulling down the rear-view mirror or ripping cassette tapes to shreds.

“Look, we’ll compromise,” I said. “I’ll pick up the Legos if you put these clothes on for me.”

Slowly, Joshua’s unkempt dark brown hair and freckled face appeared from the further end of the blanket.

“Come on, sweetheart,” I said, trying to convey the need for hurry through an air of brisk cheerfulness so that I wouldn’t have to begin shouting so early in the day. Slowly he pushed back the blanket and stumbled toward me across an obstacle course of scattered toys.

“Good boy!” I cried, giving him a quick hug before starting to remove the grubby shirt.

Simon took the children out to the car while I threw on a red and white patterned double-breasted dress and slightly high-heeled red shoes. I studied myself in the mirror. I had dark bronze, very curly hair that reached my shoulder, into which, for today, I slipped two red and gold hair clips. Here and there my hair was flecked with grey, but overall it looked shiny and healthy. I applied some eye shadow and a thin coat of mascara to my eye lashes. In general, I wasn’t too displeased with what I saw. The lines under my eyes may be more deeply etched every day, but there were no lines elsewhere on my face. I looked surprisingly like a normal fortyish woman, not at all like a 18-wheeler with no brakes and loaded with dynamite.

I stood on the doorstep watching Simon packing the wedding present into the trunk of the car. He was tall and thin, too thin. His face was gaunt, and these days seemed to be set in a permanent frown (#43, the stoical, down-trodden husband-and-father frown). His hair was badly receding, exposing a wide expanse of white forehead like a chalky clifftop with fault lines. At fifty-two, twelve years my senior, he looked older. He was a quiet, home-loving man, not interested in parties, socializing or climbing career ladders. All he had ever wanted from life was a job where he could shut himself in a small office with a computer and not have to talk to anyone, and a normal, happy family. He hadn’t talked for weeks after Hollie’s diagnosis. Heavily pregnant with Joshua, I had lived in an almost silent world with a child who couldn’t talk and a husband who wouldn’t talk. Eventually he had been prescribed anti-depressants. He was still taking them.

I tried to think of something conciliatory to say.

“I guess we’ll have to leave before the mail comes,” I said, trying to sound bright and chatty.

“I don’t suppose the stupid letter will come today anyway,” he said, morosely, without looking up at me.

Simon strapped Joshua and Lisa into the car while I went back to get Hollie’s bag of diapers and spare clothes and to lock the front door. I was about to shut the trunk when the mail carrier arrived with a handful of letters. I hesitated, the urge to look through them for the one letter we were awaiting was almost irresistible. Then Simon opened his door and called out, “Put them in the bag till later. There’s no time now.”

“But it’s so vital.”

“Forget it. Just get in.”

Fuming, I shoved the letters in the bottom of the bag and slammed the trunk. Then Simon slammed his door. I climbed into the front passenger seat without looking at him and smoothed out the folds in my dress with deliberately irritating slowness. Then I finally slammed my door. We drove off down the road in silence.

This was the form our arguments had been taking recently. When stress and exhaustion exceeded their normal high-alert levels, snapping at each other was too much effort. Instead, we simply conjured this mutual antagonism like some sort of grotesque, shapeless, invisible monster that filled up all the space between us.

I knew I should have felt happy. We were going out, after all, to a wedding, where I could at least enjoy sumptuous food, look at beautiful dresses, and—best of all—spend time with my best friend, Geraldine, who had just returned from one of her frequent trips abroad. But instead, I felt desperately lonely, shut off on my side of the invisible wall of misplaced anger that separated Simon and me. The children were quiet, out of spirits, sensing the tension. The only conversation in the car was between Lisa’s dolls.