Vencer from holland

I learned how lipstick can ruin your kid's life the same day Donny did. Him and his mom came in to sit on a newish couch in an office smelling like things that were meant to smell nice. Donny's mom sported the drab pantsuit of a woman whose wardrobe highlighted her disinterest with fashion highlights.

A plastic nameplate on a desk at the other end of a varnished table read, 'Dr. Bleuler.' Some potpourri smorgasbord sat in a brass bowl on a client coffee table, so strong the orange, almond, and ginger smacked you in the face as you crossed the threshold.

An older woman with the silver-streaked hair of a professional listener seated across from the pair produced a small book with large print, but rather than starting to read for Donny, she turned herself and the booklet to his mom. It was a story about how sometimes in life you plan a trip to Italy; to see the Rembrandts, the Colosseum, Italian people. You book your flight and pay extra for the ocean-facing hotel suite so the sun can wake you up to the scent of salty waves before each day's adventures. But, Dr. Blueler read aloud, wagging her finger in impending doom, sometimes the flight you booked gets redirected due to weather, or airline strikes, or lead-laden autism-inducing lip balm, and you don't land in Rome. Instead, you land in Holland.

Donny's mom's eyes spill tears down the GMO makeup she still wears, as, suddenly, says Dr. Blueler, none of what you spent all that time preparing for is relevant anymore.

Donny's eyes find mine for the very first time, followed by his finger as he points and says, "Vencer's from Holland."

The woman with the children's book that was really for grown-up's took Donny's mom's expression as a cue. "Could your mother and I have a moment alone?"

Donny's mom who was technically my mom beckoned him outside.

Donny and I went out into the waiting room, where another woman with glasses attached to her neck by a string of beads was sitting half visible above a wall as high as our eyes. She gave us an obligatory glance, saying, "There's a puzzle under the table," pointing to a repurposed wooden end table in the middle of several mismatched couches.

I sat on one couch and waited to start a puzzle with Donny.

"Cars!" Donny shouted, more to himself than anyone.

"We won't know what it is until we do it," I said. Donny turned to me as if, between the two of us, I was the one not making sense.

"You're named after the Sarthe," he said. "They said it was the best supercar in 2013. Not just in the Netherlands. Best in the world. That's why they sold it all over China. You're from Holland, just like the Sarthe."

"You're the one from Holland. Weren't you listening to the story?"

"It wasn't about cars."

"No," I said seriously, "No, I think it was about the dangers of travel. Or pregnancy woes. It's a metaphor."

Donny perked up. "MetaFord? I haven't heard of that one. Is it new?" He leaned toward me conspiratorially. "Is it fast?"

The woman with the beaded specs peeked down over her drywall parapet. Some BLT mayo crusting the left side of her jowls, she said, "Dear? who are you talking to?"

I wasn't an apparition. I wasn't some creeping supernatural specter. I must have been a part of Donny as much as he was a part of me. If we were an iceberg, I must have been the submerged part you couldn't quite see from the deck of a ship. Where Donny was small and razor sharp, I was the vast awareness of social cues he had no inclination for. And to him, apparently, also the Dutch sportscar he was contentedly trapped in.

All the time Donny spent obsessing over cars, I was collecting and cataloguing the periphery. I learned to read when he did, and over time had seen the pamphlets at the doctor's office. I'd pieced together Donny' dilemma as he organized his toy car collection to the tune of frantic typing and muffled audio from the YouTube videos mom obsessively watched, trying to make something about her son make sense. Sometimes he'd line his mini dealership up alphabetically by make, then by make and model, and then maybe, if he was feeling bold, by make, model, and color.

Seeing the lineup would taste like the banana split he'd get when he didn’t throw a tantrum at Applebee's after learning the fries that came with his burger weren't all the same length. What he made sure he never did was line his cars up by size. Seeing the cars go from big to small almost brought his last meal back up right from where it'd come as his mouth filled with the bile taste of boogers - or worse - broccoli.

A lot of kids like Donny were like this, so said the pamphlets I could mostly catch out of Donny's eyes. Sometimes the neural wires that got crossed when genes decided to turn on conditions like his hit the senses too. Not only would kids like him not know how to relate to themselves or others, but some felt sounds. They saw smells. They tasted sight. The nasal cocktail concocted in Dr. Bleuler's office potpourri must've triggered Donny and all the sudden I was no longer the silent ride he sat in. He saw me. He could hear me. I was a newly appeared reflection of him he seemingly didn't much care to look into, because I didn't really look like a roadster. I looked like what he would've looked like if he maintained eye contact and a balanced diet.

Before BeadSpecs could inquire further about Donny's talking to the empty spot on the other side of the couch, mom burst out of the office, grabbing him by the wrist and huffing, "We're done for today."

We drove home in near silence, a magic trick mom had crafted to perfection. On a 30-minute drive, Donny’s car-manic attention could be occupied with 2-5 candy bars. Instead of an emergency flashlight or an owner's manual, mom's glovebox was stuffed with chocolate. From the backseat, I noticed her notice him polishing off a Butterfinger. Already she was reaching across his lap to retrieve another, a feat not made miraculous by doing so while weaving through traffic, but by traversing her arm through the small space between the glovebox and Donny's middle spilling over his seatbelt extender.

As Donny munched, mom mulled. Between the rustlings of snickers wrappers, I caught pieces of what she was mumbling to herself: "Oh, Holland has windmills." "It's not Rome, but as least it's not Rwanda." "Psycho-babble hack."

"What's she talking about?" I said, already sensing our untethering as his sugary submission reactivated his normal regression. If I could break his trance, he'd notice the new Tesla Model S with Insanity Mode lingering just outside the passenger window. If he noticed the car, he'd be able to talk louder than her.

"Donny, how about that Bentley coupe 3 lanes over?" I tried again. After not so much as a sound of acknowledgement, I tried kicking the back of his seat. No luck.

We pulled into the driveway of our little ranch right as a Milky Way had reached his bloodstream. As he unbuckled his unorthodox seatbelt to belt inside toward his car collection, mom made a note of the number of bars left.

By the time she got inside, Donny had his cars lined up by year of release. Once his nose filled with the smell of his favorite freshly-tostered Pop Tart, he scrambled the collection to begin the tedious task of ordering his fleet by country of manufacture.

"Don't make me tell you again, Donny. Another detention and no more cars." She shook her purse at him, as if to indicate it contained documented evidence of said detentions.

Donny didn't even turn to look at her. He just said, "The teacher said Henry Ford invented the car in 1896 in Detroit. She lied. Karl Benz invented the car in 1885 in Mannheim, Germany. Henry Ford was only 22 when the car was invented. 22 is how old dad was when he left. Mannheim is 4146 miles from Detroit."

Mom looked up at the ceiling, taking a deep breath to let gravity keep the tears away from her supposedly-poison mascara. "It'll be ok," I said to her, knowing she'd never hear me.

As Donny lined up his cars in new ways to experience new senses as psychosomatic reward for successfully controlling his surroundings, mom signified defeat by opening a YouTube channel on the endless hunt for a solution. Soon the room was filled with the background noise of physicians speaking about frontiering treatments interspersed with the rumble of tiny wheels rolling over their living room's off-white carpet.

A while later, after Donny completed a particularly spectacular array of ordering his dealership of toy cars by number of engine cylinders, the sound of a video caught my attention.

Mom had dozed off, but YouTube had continued to auto-play related videos. Most treatments focused on behavior therapy, but since she thought absolution lay in fixing whatever she thought went wrong while pregnant, the related channels played videos on dietary innovations. I'd suspected for quite some time that she didn't see the absolution in treating Donny's diet as she'd been treating her own, evidenced through the sugar submissions she was likely too tired to connect with the havoc it was wreaking on his delicate gut.

"Sugar inflames the colon, and a colon on sugar is a sickly gut indeed," a British MD said on the screen. "And of the Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes ruling 90% the lower intestine, with a steady supply of sugar, Firmicutes begins to outnumber the Bacteroidetes, forcing the colon to shunt calories to the fat stores rather than excreting them."

Since I could only see what Donny saw, I caught glimpses of the thick-glassed doctor as Donny's eyes darted around searching for the Dodge Dart he needed for his next lineup.

"My research shoes a Firmicutes-dominant gut to be a major causer of many otherwise-dormant disease-related genes."

I eyed Donny eyeing his cars on all fours and thought I knew where this was going.

"In fact, having studied stool samples from tens of thousands of autistic children, we've found something of a game-changer: All autistic children exhibit a colonic bacterial environment almost completely absent any Bacteroidetes."

As the video panned to what looked like a storehouse of coolers containing what looked like a re-creation of said samples, Donny had finished a lineup by what looked like wheel size. I felt him feel a warm sensation shiver up from his toes to his tirelessly-tousled hair.

"Our research shows that introducing a sample of a gut rich in Bacteroidetes into the gut of an autistic child can force symptoms into remission as the affected genes retreat back into dormancy."

Remission was my mission. Getting Donny's attention today was the closest I've ever come to getting through to him.

"It's the bacteria causing the autism-linked genes to express themselves, but through aggressive Microbiota Transfer Therapy, and without the Medical Industrial Complex seeming to give two shits -excuse the pun - we have essentially found a way to oust autism by balancing the bacterial ratio."

Off camera, another voice - presumably the video's interviewer - said, "Sorry, Dr. Nunn. Microbiota Transfer Therapy?"

"Oh. Yes," Dr. Nunn said, sounding a little uncomfortable, "It's our way of avoiding its more visceral description: Fecal Matter Transplantation…"

What ended up being just a clip of the interview started to quiet as another related video got ready to play. I looked from mom to Donny in horror. A Fecal Matter Transplant? The prescription for autism was...poop?

I tried one last time for Donny's attention, but either he'd tuned me out, which, given the circumstances, wasn't out of the question, or, equally likely, I'd returned to my invisible, submerged state in his mind. I'd have to wait for the next time he was smell-battered by the fortuitous effect of Dr. Blueler's ginger potpourri. That way, I could find a way to intervene via spectral poopourri.

---

The moment had come. We were in the office and the old witch of a therapist was reinforcing her travel parable.

"How does Holland having windmills have anything to do with my son?" Mom asked, getting heated faster this time. "If I was supposed to go to Italy, I wouldn't just let the weather stop me. I'd rent a car." She considered for a moment, saying, "I'd walk if I had to."

Bleuler affected one of those sad smiles that somehow bent simultaneously into condescension. "And that's part of why we're here, Judy. If you spend your whole life refusing the reality that you didn't make it to Italy, you'll never be able to appreciate the beauty of Holland."

Judy reeled like she'd noticed a rancid scent no one else could. She looked at Donny. Donny, Ginger magic back in full fumy effect, looked at me and pointed. "Vencer's from Holland."

Judy stared at Bleuler, her mouth pouring down into a discomforting pout. "The beauty of Holland… excuse me, doctor, something has just upset my stomach." She stood abruptly and fled the room.

It was just Dr. Bleuler. And Donny. And me. She smiled at him sweetly, saying, "So am I right to understand, Donny, that you have a friend named Vencer? And you say he's from Holland?" She scribbled furiously on some legal paper, then looked at the spot Donny had pointed to. The spot where I sat.

"Vencer only sells the Sarthe, but they're not new. They used to sell a special 2-cylinder engine, but they called themselves DAF cars until Volvo bought them in 1975. Volvo has the highest safety ratings."

Dr. Bleuler nodded, scribbling away. "I've heard that, too. So your friend, Vencer, he is a car?"

"A supercar," Donny said.

At that moment Judy stormed back in. "I hope however your spending our money is more important than common plumbing maintenance for your clientele. Your toilet is broken! Donny, wait for me outside. Say goodbye to Dr. Bleuler."

My eyes were wide as I saw the path. Donny saw my gaze, smirking for the first time I could remember, and said, his head shaking slightly, "Vencer from Holland." But he sat without moving.

Judy knew the game. She pulled from her purse an ace, a replica of Dom Moretti's 900 horsepower 1970 Dodge Charger from The Fast & The Furious. Every muscle in Donny's body became rigid.

"Donny," Judy said, teasing, "Outside, please." Donny got up, hands reaching. When they closed around the car, an entire orchestra went to work inside his head, playing 'Say Ah' by Shawna, the song from the scene before Dom and Brian's first race, starting their both on- and off-set friendship before Brian would eventually die in a real-life fiery crash worthy of a Fast and Furious film. A real racing song. We left the room.

"Donny," I said. He turned to me. Thank you ginger potpourri.

"Vencer from Holland," he said back to me in the same expectant tone, rolling the Charger across the waiting room end table to a concerto playing just for him.

The part of Donny's mind that was me raced. What I was about to ask him to do was mad, just maybe slightly less mad than the madness that warred daily inside Donny. I reminded myself: Remission was the mission. And this was the only way I knew how to get it for him.

"Do you want a car like that one day?" I tried, pointing to the car. Donny's gaze took on a feverish note, like he'd been waiting to be asked since he could remember what it was to be asked something. His nod was all business.

"What if I said you'd have to do something crazy to get it."

Donny's eyelids grew heavy. When he spoke, his voice was as gravelly as an 11-year-old could make their voice gravelly. In his best prepubescent Vin Diesel impersonation, he said, "I live my life a quarter mile at a time."

I smiled and said, "Then come with me."

---

"Shove it up your butt!" I shouted. Donny was moaning, shifting from foot to foot. I'd gotten us inside the women's restroom. In one hand he clutched the Charger. In the other, from the same stopped up toilet, sat mom's unflushable and bacteria-rich, health nut bowel movement. It sagged there on his  palm like a pungent, spooling python, some sort of super-fiber keeping it intact. It was a steaming pile of suppository elixir.

"Donny," I said, desperately trying to appeal to him. "Who invented me?"

"Robert Cobben invented the Vencer Sarthe in 2010,” Donny said, comically scrunching his nose. "It has a V8 engine with 622 horsepower and hits 60 miles per hour in 3.6 seconds."

"Exactly, and he did that by fixing a problem, didn't he? He thought up the car after leaving a plumbing business that was going down the drain. He wanted to unclog Holland's problem of not having any proper old-school sports cars."

Donny looked at me, understanding but not understanding, or maybe caring.

"He realized that sometimes to unclog a pipe you have to snake the drain," I said, looking from him to the stinky snake still slowly uncoiling in his hand. "He made himself whole by doing something crazy. Now he gets to drive one of the fastest cars there is." He looked sick.

"Donny," I said, "If you want to drive the Sarthe, you have to snake the drain."

This gambit was all I had. I was just in Donny's head, and he only knew that because of the potpourri. Before the ginger left Donny's senses I had to make him see. There wasn't much time until I faded back below the surface, so I pushed all of what Donny could see of me into 2 oscillating images. The first of Donny, his corduroys around his ankles, shoving the very thing that comes out of butts right back up his. The second of Donny older, grown up and behind the wheel of the speed demon Sarthe. Back and forth in his head, I pushed the images until Donny knew the only way to get in the driver's seat was a shitty self-sodomy.

Donny closed his eyes tight, seeing his potential future. He looked up at me one last time and whispered, betrayal quavering under the words, "Vencer from Holland." Then he deposited the load.

---

It was 8 days later when we were back in Dr. Bleuler's office. 8 days since mom had crashed into the restroom to find the tail-end of her last payload half-hanging out of Donny's. 8 days since Donny had to undergo 3 days of psychiatric supervision in the hospital, followed by another 4 of observation due to a strange fever. We got home yesterday and for the first time since he could recognize images, Donny walked past his car collection as if it wasn’t there.

"And are you still seeing your friend Vencer?" Bleuler asked, glancing at the spot where I'd sat before. I wasn't there now, I was back behind Donny's eyes. He glanced down at the brass bowl, now covered with a matching brass lid, and shook his head.

"No Vencer here," he said, meeting her gaze and smiling as if his social fortitude had always been there, dormant, one shoddy stool surgery away from breaching the surface. Smells no longer set off choruses between his ears. Sights didn’t taste like anything but the inside of his mouth. “Just me. I feel, I don't know how to say it... Like I've been underwater my whole life, but something helped me swim up to show me that I've been all along.”

Bleuler nodded at the analogy and the psychological implications of maturity it signified. She was impressed, although whether it was with Donny or herself, patting her own back for a cure she unintentionally and indirectly caused, it wasn't clear.

The bags under mom's eyes were ghosts of their former selves. She kept her opinion to herself about the hack in front of them. About how she knew people who accepted landing in Holland were the ones that would never know they could leave.

"I'm glad I could help," Bleuler said, and now it was clear the impressed nod was most definitely self-congratulatory. "The beauty of a broken mind is its ability to heal in a way no one whole ever could." She reached and removed the lid, revealing the brass bowl was indeed no longer filled with ginger potpourri. “Would you like a piece of candy before you go?”

The accepted taffy toxin was halfway to Donny's stomach, and with no way to stop him, its effects were so fast I felt the moment the sugar slammed the door on our once-tenuous connection.

We'd crossed the home stretch, all that work now undone by the arrogance of another practitioner versed solely in prescription. By my inability to let Donny know how we'd finished the race. Suddenly, mom’s irritation with Dr. Bleuler botching the famous poem about being okay with raising special needs kids made more sense now.

Not getting over not getting over to Italy prevents you from enjoying how Holland can be lovely too. It’s not the worst sentiment on its own. Donny seemed to be ok being him without me, and him being ok was the goal. Maybe Holland was an okay place to end up. I’d have time enough to think that through, laying in wait to pounce out in Donny’s periphery at the smallest sign of any looming bowls of gene-powering ginger potpourri.