Back at Midtown, Eloise had invited her best friend over to discuss her misfortune.

“I am considerably disappointed, Audrey,” Eloise said solemnly as she twisted the top off of a bottle of gin.

“Why is that?”

Eloise sat down next to her friend on the upholstered sofa, extending a glass to her. “It’s Arran.”

“Why?” Audrey started with a subtle mock gasp. “What has he managed to do between the time that you dropped him off this morning and now?”

Eloise smiled at her friend’s candor. It was Audrey’s custom to make light of her potential over-dramatizations. But she felt that this was different. For her, there was considerable reason to be disappointed in Arran, or at least in how life was turning out for him (an outcome more self-inflicted by elevated hopes than anything else). She had finally come to terms that whatever signs of brilliance she had seen in him when he was younger were a fluke, if not something dishonest colored by her own imagination…But she had already admitted to being a biased mother, so there was less surprise when the idea of blaming herself became an option.

Just then Audrey saw her friend’s face evolve with emotion, and she quickly changed her tone. “Oh my, what’s wrong, dear?”

Eloise made a hard swallow as she wiped away under her eyelid, “You know, I thought it would go away…”

“You thought what would go away?”

Eloise let out a deep sigh to keep her voice from shaking, “Do you remember when I told you to only speak English with Arran.”

“Yes, I do,” Audrey lifted her lively brown eyes with the upturn of her head, a movement that caused her red hair to shimmer. “And it wasn’t just English, you made me speak in different accents – switching every month from Scottish to Irish to American to Australian and so on.”

“Do you know why I asked you to do that?”

“You wouldn’t tell me…but you said it was for cultural enrichment.”

“Yes…You thought that pretense?”

The corner of Audrey’s mouth flexed upward, a what-do-you-think? smile – which only made Eloise grateful that she had such a loyal friend.

“So, what was the real reason?”

Eloise gathered her thoughts in the length of an inhaled breath. “When Arran was two, Alastair and I agreed that we would only speak with Arran in our native tongues, him English, me French – that way Arran would be brought up in a bilingual environment.”

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“Makes sense.”

“Well as you may know, Alastair wasn’t very preoccupied with being a father during that time, or a husband for that matter.”

“And so,” Audrey put the pieces together, “Arran was falling behind with English.”

“Not just falling behind – you remember how he abhorred it, how ugly he thought it was?”

“Ha, how can I forget.” Audrey reenacted the abhorrence in a whiny tone: “C'est si moche! C'est si moche! – though, I thought that was just in response to my accents.”

Eloise shook her head. “No, that was a declaration to all things English.”

“But he speaks English so well. How did he learn?”

It was Eloise’s turn for a what-do-you-think? smile.

“Oh, you poor woman; I understand now.”

“Do you?”

Audrey held up her petite frame as she offered a salute of her glass. “And so began the long and strenuous process of teaching a child how to talk.”

“But only worse because Arran already had a language he insisted upon using.” Eloise took a long swig in memory of the endeavor. “I know it seemed cruel. I kept him away from you at first to spare you the hassle and me the embarrassment; but those first few months were the hardest. It was a relentless series of fits and tantrums while he only attempted to speak in French. I told him I’d never speak French to him again until he learned English.”

“But you did explain the situation to him? – that it’s an Aesthetic requirement and a non-negotiable for his education.”

“I did, but there’s only so much a three-year-old can understand.”

Audrey became quiet for a moment and Eloise studied her. Amid her distress, she could still admire Audrey’s beauty, her marvelous red hair. She caught herself looking at it then – sculpted backward to a large bun that peaked over her head, like a little sunrise.

“But there’s more?” It was more of a statement than a question.

Eloise remembered her angle – why she had made Audrey recall Arran’s struggle with English. “Of course,” she looked at her friend searchingly while she set her glass down, “Audrey you have to understand how optimistic I was. It was after jumping this hurdle for two long years, when I was satisfied enough in Arran’s progress with English, that I finally returned to speak in French again. And I thought that that was the end of our struggle – or at least the worst of it.”

“How do you mean?”

Having felt again a new wave of strong emotion, Eloise looked away; and Audrey placed a patient hand on hers.

Eloise reflected out loud: “All of it was hard; it wasn’t just teaching him English. The calculations, the sciences, synchronicity, music, fluency, history, and even culinary – all of it was hard.”

She later told Audrey that when she had first come to this conclusion (right before Arran was twelve years old), she had unenthusiastically decided to take him to a neurological specialist, a proper follow up to her concern (though not expecting to be affirmed of this concern). But after this visit, she was told to come back again so that a series of tests could be run. And when Eloise asked what for, she was informed of its standard nature, that most patients are requested to undergo this procedure for diagnostic purposes.

Feeling that this was just another medical scam, she reluctantly agreed to reschedule. But after the course of the next couple weeks, when it was all said and done, she was finally confronted with the reality of the situation, or rather, the reality of her son’s condition.

***

After Audrey had left, Eloise sat on her bed blankly staring at the ground, only half aware that she was officially an empty-nester. Honestly, she would’ve rather been more occupied with that existential crisis. Instead, this whole experience she was currently reeling back on begged the question more than ever before: Was Arran an Innocent after all?