Jeff looked at his wife and felt a wave of anger, mad at fate. He’d gotten the required grades for his Dad's alma mater. He'd gone to an Ivy law school and passed the bar. He'd even met "the right girl." So why, now, after his first promotion at the firm, had he been punished with a retarded daughter?
“She’s retarded,” he said with no emotion, as if commenting on the weather. He just said it, with the same intensity one uses for, “Could you pass the salt?”
That’s right, he thought. He'd said it aloud and now he could say it to himself: His daughter was retarded. She would look funny, speak funny, and everyone who met her would notice then try to pretend they didn't notice her mental deficiencies.
Sheila felt like crying, but she wasn't going to show him what he could later call weakness. But then the nausea came.
“Pull the car over. Now!” she said.
“What? Are you crazy?” Jeff lifted his foot from the gas, but the car was descending a steep hill, so Sheila didn't seem to notice as he guided them to the bottom of the hill and put the car in park.
He rubbed the soft leather of his new BMW’s steering wheel, the same expensive leather that covered most of its interior as he waited for Sheila to exit.
However, she instead shouted, “How could you say that?”
Jeff slammed his fist and the horn belched. “I’m just saying the truth. Just finally addressing what we've spent months ignoring. Our baby, our daughter, she’s retarded.” He felt ashamed but couldn't let her know, so he squinted and pretended to be seriously involved with the process of piloting the car.
Sheila turned to face her husband and his body language infuriated her. This was the man she'd fallen for? This fool, who thought after all those years she didn't know what his squint meant?
“You are the one who's acting re—” She stopped, unable to use the word that had sounded so foreign at that earth-shattering ultra sound.