Through the front door of the house, I heard music blaring. The volume was turned up so loud that it distorted the sound to the point that I couldn’t identify the tune. Sarah, seventeen, was listening to one of her tapes in the radio/cassette player that Sally and I listened to while we cooked supper or loaded the dishwasher. At a normal volume it had plenty of depth and clarity, but Sarah had cranked it up so loud that the one small speaker rattled and buzzed as if it were tearing itself in half.
Sarah sat in a kitchen chair, weaving back and forth to a jingle-like melody. In front of her, an open quart of vanilla ice cream lay on its side, a glob of melting ice cream oozing onto the table. A jar of Nestle’s Quik was open, and the dry brown powder had settled on the tabletop, chairs, and floor. The melted ice cream seeped into the pale brown dust and made it glisten, dark as espresso beans.
Sarah’s eyes were closed, and her face was turned upward as she sang: “How do you solve a problem like Maria, how do you keep a wave upon the sand?” Her arms spread wide, palms up, fingers splayed.
It was a track from The Sound of Music—Sarah’s favorite album. I had heard it a thousand times, Sarah’s voice warbling half a beat behind. She had watched the video of the film so many times that a white grainy line skittered along the bottom of the screen. “She’d outpester any pest, drive a hornet from its nest, she could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl,” Sarah sang along.
With her eyes still closed, Sarah swayed side to side. Strands of her blond hair had fallen into the bowl of soupy brown ice cream in front of her. The tips of her hair were matted into dark, sticky points.
I walked over to the tape player. Bits of pecans and chocolate chips crunched underfoot. I jabbed the “off” button with my finger.
Sarah jumped in her chair, and turned to look at me, eyes wide, mouth open. Her lips, cheeks, and forehead smeared with chocolate.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said, more baffled than angry. Sarah was typically so neat and orderly, so careful not to make a mess.
She stared at me. Then, in a soft, clear voice, she said, “Being wild.”
I was too surprised to laugh.
The room was quiet. The afternoon sun streamed through the curtains, catching the fine brown dust floating in the air.
I felt a subtle pressure expanding in my chest. I didn’t know what it was: maybe unexpected pride that she could be so articulate, so precise.
Outside, a lawnmower’s drone was barely audible.
Sarah stared at me, waiting.
When I was seventeen, being wild involved the touch of clumsy, eager fingers. The taste of my girlfriend’s tongue. A final, goodnight kiss in the front seat of the car. Then racing home through dark, winding roads, rural mailboxes flashing past in the headlights, bright and sharp-edged at the very moment they disappeared. The radio throbbing with AM rock and roll, and the night wind roaring through the open windows of my mother’s Skylark coupe.
Ever since infancy Sarah had endured sessions with speech therapists, physical therapists, and occupational therapists. Special education classes. Inclusion with the normal kids. Mainstreaming. Relentless requests from her parents to “Make sure you speak slowly and clearly so we can understand you.” Struggles to tie her shoes, make her bed, brush her teeth. Each skill had been an effort. Down syndrome had been her full-time job. It wasn’t surprising that she wanted to bust loose. Be wild.
Melted ice cream dripped to the floor.
“Am I in trouble?” Sarah held my gaze.
“Look at this mess.” My voice was stern.
Sarah leaned forward and looked at the floor.
“Pecans everywhere. Chocolate everywhere,” I said. “What do you plan to do?”
“Clean it up?” she said.
“Yes ma’am.”
She turned to look at the tabletop. “This too?”
“Of course.”
She surveyed the mess on the floor and table. She seemed to have a sense of awe, maybe pride, at the extent of the wreckage she’d created.
“Do you want the music back on?” I asked.
I dialed the volume knob back down to a setting more suitable for news or classical music, and held my finger above the “play” button.
“No.” She pushed away from the table. “The song was almost over.”