Eddie Michaels

Quick Facts

• Role: Seven-year-old son of Alice and Wade; great-grandson to Hanna (Babcia)
• First appearance: the Prologue
• Communication: Mostly nonverbal; uses an AAC app on an iPad
• Key relationships: Mother (primary caregiver), Babcia (mutual lifeline), Father (growing bond), Sister (protective yet strained)
• Thematic function: Embodies the novel’s exploration of voice, silence, and translation across generations

Who They Are

At first glance, Eddie Michaels is the silent center of his family’s storm—his needs drive the rhythm of the modern timeline, his meltdowns shaping where his mother can go and whom she can rely on. Look closer, and he becomes the novel’s clearest translator: the child who cannot speak becomes the one who helps others find words. Through his AAC device, Eddie gives Babcia a voice after her stroke, and through his routines and repetitions, he teaches his family how to listen. Eddie’s presence resists pity or simplification; the story repeatedly reveals the scope of his perception, challenging assumptions about what he understands and how he loves.

Appearance

Eddie is blond like both parents. Medication-associated weight gain leaves him at sixty-eight pounds—large enough that Alice can no longer physically contain his meltdowns. When overwhelmed, he pinches his upper arms, leaving “ugly purple and red bruises,” a visceral reminder that sensory pain often becomes bodily.

Personality & Traits

Beneath Eddie’s quiet is a disciplined mind seeking order and connection. His echolalia and routines aren’t barriers but tools—structures that let him enter conversations and make meaning on his own terms.

• Nonverbal communicator: Eddie has “virtually no expressive language” and relies on his AAC app to convey needs and thoughts, transforming technology into intimacy, especially with Babcia.
• Echolalic as meaning-making: Phrases like “I love you, Eddie” or “Eddie darling, do you want something to eat?” become portable scripts he deploys to connect or self-soothe, revealing intention even when original context is gone.
• Dependent on routine: Small disruptions—like a change in Go-Gurt packaging, as seen in the Prologue—can trigger disproportionate distress, underscoring how predictability functions as safety.
• Prone to sensory overload: Loud, fluorescent public spaces (e.g., grocery stores) overload him, leading to screaming, thrashing, and self-harm; the behavior is not defiance but a body saying “too much.”
• Empathetic and loving: He shows attuned care for Babcia in the hospital, asking if she is hurt and frightened; his calm after her reassurance shows mutual regulation.
• Intelligent and perceptive: Eddie uses Google Maps, learns chess with his father, and appears to intuit Babcia’s death before he’s told—signs of pattern recognition and emotional insight that others underestimate.

Character Journey

Early chapters frame Eddie through the effort required to care for him—Alice’s exhaustion, public judgment, the logistics of food and schedules. That perspective shifts when Alice travels to Poland: removed from his usual scaffolding and alone with Wade, Eddie adapts. He learns chess, adjusts to the new yogurt packaging, and begins a tentative bond with his father—proof that his need for structure does not preclude growth. The device that once seemed a barrier becomes a bridge: he uses it to converse with Babcia after her stroke and, later, to articulate “Babcia finished,” a spare, devastating recognition of death. By the end, Eddie is not defined by limits but by the clarity with which he perceives—and communicates—what matters.

Key Relationships

• Alice Michaels: Alice is Eddie’s relentless advocate and daily interpreter. Their bond is fierce, but caregiving isolates her and narrows how she sees Eddie, until his progress in her absence forces her to recognize his capacity for flexibility and connection.
• Hanna (Babcia): Eddie and Babcia share a rare, unfiltered affinity. When Babcia loses speech, Eddie’s AAC becomes their common language, turning him into her conduit and anchoring the novel’s most tender scenes of mutual comfort.
• Wade Michaels: Initially uneasy and avoidant, Wade keeps his distance from Eddie’s needs. When circumstances force him to parent solo, he meets Eddie inside a shared system—chess—and discovers that pattern, patience, and play open a door he couldn’t previously find.
• Pascale (Callie) Michaels: As Eddie’s older sister, Callie is both frustrated by the family’s constraints and fiercely protective. Helping Wade care for Eddie matures her empathy, reframing resentment as responsibility and kinship.

Defining Moments

Eddie’s most significant scenes double as lessons for the family: he is telling them how to understand him—if they’ll listen.

• The grocery store meltdown (Prologue): The changed yogurt package triggers a full sensory crisis. Why it matters: It reframes “behavior” as overwhelm, exposes the cruelty of public scrutiny, and establishes routine as Eddie’s lifeline.
• Communicating with Babcia: In the hospital, Eddie asks on his device, “Babcia hurt?” and receives typed replies. Why it matters: His AAC becomes an intergenerational prosthesis for speech, enabling Babcia’s final wishes and affirming Eddie as an active participant in the family’s most sacred conversation.
• Learning chess with Wade: With Alice away, Eddie learns a game governed by clear rules and predictable patterns. Why it matters: Chess becomes their shared language—structure as intimacy—proving Wade can bond with Eddie by honoring how Eddie thinks.
• “Babcia finished” (the Epilogue): Eddie states a spare, precise truth before being told. Why it matters: It reveals the depth of his emotional attunement and repositions him as the family’s truth-teller, not merely its dependent.

Symbolism

Eddie is the novel’s living emblem of Communication and Silence. His non-speech mirrors Babcia’s aphasia and her decades-long reticence about trauma; both require translation. His AAC device literalizes the book’s central ethic: to hear what is hard to say, you may need a new medium, a new patience, a new kind of listening. Through Eddie, the family learns that silence is not absence but a different grammar—one that, once understood, can bridge past and present and make healing legible.

Essential Quotes

"Eddie is on the floor, his legs flailing as he screams at the top of his lungs. He’s pinching his upper arms compulsively; ugly purple and red bruises are already starting to form."

This image refuses euphemism. The bruises make visible how sensory overload becomes physical pain, shifting the reader from judgment to empathy and underscoring the stakes of routine and environment in Eddie’s wellbeing.

“He doesn’t speak,” I try to explain, but Eddie chooses that exact moment to dig deep into his bag of embarrassing autism tricks as he turns his gaze to me and says hoarsely, “I love you, Eddie.”

Echolalia here functions as both miscue and meaning: while the phrase is borrowed, the timing is intentional. Eddie’s repetition complicates assumptions about communicative “competence,” showing that borrowed words can still carry authentic connection.

Babcia hurt? Eddie asks now. Babcia scared, Babcia types. Eddie scared, Eddie types. Eddie...is...okay, Babcia slowly pecks out. Babcia...is...okay.

This dialogue—slow, typed, halting—renders technology as tenderness. The exchange equalizes them: each needs the device to be heard, transforming Eddie from care recipient into comfort-giver and establishing their bond as reciprocal.

I sit up properly. He swipes to the AAC and hits the repeat button. Babcia finished. And then Eddie looks back toward me, calmly waiting for confirmation.

The economy of “finished” captures Eddie’s precision and gravity. He knows, and he waits—not for words he lacks, but for acknowledgment from adults who must catch up to the truth he has already voiced.