Brain Child (17 page)

And the time of vengeance was coming. She could feel it, deep in her old bones.

At last she came into the boy’s room, and suddenly she knew. Alejandro was here. Soon,
la venganza
would begin.

For Ellen, the lunch she had so looked forward to had been a disaster. As she’d expected, the conversation had revolved around Raymond Torres and Alex, but she had found herself totally distracted with worry over
what the dean might have to tell her after lunch. And now, though she’d listened carefully, it still didn’t make sense. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I still don’t understand exactly what it all means.”

She and Marsh had been in Dan Eisenberg’s office for nearly an hour, and thirty minutes ago Raymond Torres, too, had arrived. But Ellen still felt as confused as ever—it all seemed quite impossible.

“It means Alex is finally using his brain,” Marsh told her. “It’s not so difficult. We’ve seen the results of the tests. His scores were perfect!”

“But how can that be?” Ellen argued. “I know he’s been studying all summer, and I know he has a good memory, but
this”
—she picked up the math-testing booklet—“how could he have even done the calculations? He simply didn’t have the time, did he?” She dropped the test back on Eisenberg’s desk and turned to Torres. If anyone could make her understand, he could. “Explain it to me again,” she said, and as his intense eyes met hers, she began to relax, and concentrate.

Torres spread his hands and pressed his fingers together thoughtfully. “It’s very simple,” he said in the slightly patronizing tone that never failed to infuriate Marsh. “Alex’s brain works differently from the way it did before. It’s a matter of compensation. If a person loses one sense, his others become sharper. The same kind of thing has happened to Alex. His brain has compensated for the damage to its emotional centers by sharpening its intellectual centers.”

“I understand that,” Ellen agreed. “At least, I understand the theory. What I don’t understand is what it means. I want to know what it means for Alex.”

“I’m not sure anyone can tell you that, Mrs. Lonsdale,” Dan Eisenberg replied.

“Nor does it matter,” Torres pronounced. “With Alex we are no longer at a point where we can do anything about his abilities, or his responses. I’ve done what can be done. From now on, all I can do is observe Alex—”

“Like a laboratory animal?” Marsh broke in. Torres regarded him with cold eyes.

“If you wish,” he said.

“For God’s sake, Torres, Alex is my son.” Marsh turned to Ellen. “All this means for Alex is that he is a remarkably intelligent young man. In fact,” he went on, his attention now shifting to Dan Eisenberg, “I suspect there probably isn’t much this school can do for him anymore. Is that right?”

Eisenberg reluctantly nodded his agreement.

“Then it seems to me that perhaps we should take him down to Stanford next week and see if we can get him into some sort of special program.”

“I won’t agree to that,” Torres interrupted. “Alex is brilliant, yes. But brilliance isn’t enough. If he were my son—”

“Which he’s not,” Marsh replied, his smile gone.

“Which he’s not,” Torres agreed. “But if he
were
, I would keep him right here in La Paloma, and let him reestablish all his old friendships and old patterns of behavior. Somewhere, there might be a trigger, and when he stumbles across that trigger, his mind may fully reopen, and the past will come back to him.”

“And what about his intellect?” Marsh demanded. “Suddenly I have a very brilliant son, Dr. Torres—”

“Which, I gather,” Torres interrupted in a voice as cool as Marsh’s own, “is something you have always wanted.”

“Everyone hopes his children will be brilliant,” Marsh countered.

“And Alex
is
brilliant, Dr. Lonsdale,” Torres replied. “But keeping him here for another year isn’t going to affect that. I should imagine that the school can design a course of study for him that will keep his mind active and challenged. But there is another side to Alex—the emotional side—and if he has any chance to recover in that area, I think we have an obligation to give him that chance.”

“Of course we do,” Ellen agreed. “And Marsh knows
it as well as we do.” She turned to her husband. “Don’t you?”

Marsh was silent for a long time. Torres’s words, he knew, made sense. Alex
should
stay home. But he couldn’t just go on letting Torres run his life, and the lives of his wife and son.

“I think,” he said at last, “that perhaps we ought to talk to Alex about it.”

“I agree,” Torres replied, rising to his feet. “But not for at least a week. I want to think about this for a while, and then I’ll decide what’s best for Alex.” He glanced at his watch, then offered Eisenberg his hand. “I’m afraid I have another meeting. If you need me for anything, you have my number.” With nothing more than a nod to either Marsh or Ellen, he left the dean’s office.

Alex lay on his bed staring at the ceiling.

Something was wrong, but he had no idea what it might be, or what he ought to do about it.

All he knew was that something was wrong with him. He was no longer the same as he had been before the accident, and for some reason his parents were upset about it. At least, his mother was upset. His father seemed pleased.

They had told him about the test results as they drove him home that afternoon, and at first he hadn’t understood what all the fuss was about. He could have told them he’d correctly answered all the questions before they even checked. The questions had been easy, and didn’t really involve anything like thinking. In fact, he’d thought they must be testing his memory rather than his ability to think, because all the tests had involved were a series of facts and calculations, and if you had a good memory and knew the right equations, there wasn’t anything to them.

But now they were saying he was brilliant, and his father wanted him to go into a special program down in Palo Alto. From what he’d heard in the car, though, he
didn’t think that was going to happen. Dr. Torres would see to it that he stayed home.

And that, he decided, was fine with him. All day, he’d been trying to figure out what had happened at school that morning—why he had remembered some things so clearly, other things incorrectly, and still others not at all.

He was sure it had something to do with the damage his brain had suffered, and yet that didn’t make sense to him. He could understand how parts of his memory could have been destroyed, but that wouldn’t account for the things he had remembered incorrectly. He should, he was sure, either remember things or not remember them. But memories shouldn’t have simply changed, unless there was a reason.

The thing to do, he decided, was start keeping track of the things he remembered, and how he remembered them, and see if there was a pattern to the things he remembered incorrectly.

If there was, he might be able to figure out what was wrong with him.

And then, there was María Torres.

She had been in his room when he got home that afternoon, and when he had first seen her, he’d thought he recognized her. It had only been a fleeting moment, and a sharp pain had shot through his head, and then it was over. A moment later he realized that what he’d recognized was not her face, but her eyes. She had the same eyes that Dr. Torres had: almost black eyes that seemed to peer right inside you.

She’d smiled at him, and nodded her head, then quickly left him alone in his room.

By now he should have forgotten the incident, except for the pain in his head.

The pain itself was gone now, but the memory of it was still etched sharply in his mind.

Lisa Cochran’s face set into an expression of stubbornness that Kate Lewis had long ago come to realize meant that the argument was over—Lisa would, in the end, have her way. And, as usual, Kate knew Lisa was right. Still, she didn’t want to give in too easily.

“But what if he won’t go?” she asked.

“He’ll go,” Lisa insisted. “I can talk him into it. I’ve always been able to talk Alex into anything.”

“That was before,” Kate reminded her. “Ever since he’s come home, he’s … well, he’s just different, that’s all. Most of the time he acts like he doesn’t even like us anymore.”

Lisa sighed. Over and over again she’d tried to explain to Kate and Bob that Alex
did
still like them—and all his other friends too—but that right now he was just incapable of showing his feelings. Kate and Bob, however, had remained unconvinced.

“If we’re going to go up to San Francisco,” Bob repeated for the third time that afternoon, “I want to go
with people I can have fun with. All Alex ever does anymore is ask questions. He’s like a little kid.”

The three of them were sitting in their favorite hangout, Jake’s Place, which served pizza and video games. While the games had long since lost their novelty, the kids still came for the pizza, which wasn’t very good, but was cheap. And Jake didn’t mind if they came in right after school and sat around all afternoon, nursing a Coke and talking. Today, gathered around a table with a Pac-Man unit in its top, they had been talking a long time as Lisa tried to convince Bob and Kate that they should take Alex along to San Francisco day after tomorrow. Jake, they knew, had been listening to them casually, but, as always, hadn’t tried to offer them any advice. That, too, was one of the reasons they hung out here. Suddenly, however, he appeared by their table and leaned over.

“Better make up your minds,” he told them. “Alex just came in.”

Kate and Bob looked up guiltily as Lisa waved to Alex. “Over here!” Alex hesitated only a second before coming over to slide into the seat next to Lisa.

“Hi. I looked for you after school, but you didn’t wait. What’s going on?”

Lisa glanced at Kate and Bob, then decided to end their argument immediately. “We’re talking about going up to the City on Saturday. Want to go with us?”

Alex frowned. “The city? What city?”

“San Francisco,” Lisa replied, ignoring the roll of Bob Carey’s eyes. “Everybody calls it that. Want to go with us?”

“I’ll have to ask my folks.”

“No, you don’t,” Lisa told him. “If you tell your folks, they’ll tell my folks and Kate’s folks, and they’ll all say no. We’re just going to go.”

Bob Carey suddenly reached into his pocket, pulled out a quarter, and began playing Pac-Man. Lisa, sure he was doing it only to avoid talking to Alex, glared at him, but he ignored her. Alex, however, didn’t seem to
notice the slight. His eyes were fastened on the little yellow man that scooted through the maze under Bob’s control.

“What’s it do?” he asked, and Lisa immediately knew it was yet one more thing of which he had no memory. Patiently she began explaining the object of the game as Alex kept watching while Bob played. In less than two minutes, the game was over.

“Want me to show you how to do it?” Alex asked. Bob looked at him with skeptical curiosity.

“You? You’re even worse at this than me.”

Alex slipped a quarter in the slot, and began playing, maneuvering the little man around the maze, always just out of reach of the hungry goblins that chased him. But when the goblins suddenly turned blue, Alex turned on them, gobbling them up one after the other. He cleared board after board, never losing a man, racking up an array of fruit, and an enormous score.

After ten minutes, he took his hands off the controls. Instantly, Pac-Man was gobbled up, and a new one appeared. Alex ignored it, and in a few seconds it, too, was devoured. “It’s easy,” he said. “There’s a pattern, and all you have to do is remember the pattern. Then you know where all the goblins are going to go.”

Bob shifted in his chair. “How come you could never do that before?” he asked.

Alex frowned, then shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“And I don’t care,” Lisa declared. “What about going to the City? Do you want to go with us, or not?”

Alex considered it a moment, then nodded his head. “Okay. What time?”

“We’ll tell our folks we’re going to the beach in Santa Cruz,” Lisa said. “I’ll even pack us a lunch. That way we can leave early, and we won’t have to be back until dinnertime.”

“What if we get caught?” Kate asked.

“How can we get caught?” Bob countered. Then, his eyes fixed on Alex, he added, “Unless someone tells.”

“Don’t worry,” Lisa assured him. “Nobody’s going to tell.”

Kate drained the last of the warm Coke that had been sitting in front of her most of the afternoon, and stood up. “I’ve got to get home. Mom’ll kill me if I haven’t got dinner started when she gets home from work.”

“You want us to come along?” Lisa asked. Though none of the kids talked about it much, they all knew about Mr. Lewis’s drinking problem. Kate shook her head. “Dads still sort of okay, but I think he’ll have to go back to the hospital next week. Right now he’s at the stage where he just sits in front of the TV all the time, drinking beer. I wish Mom would just kick him out.”

“No, you don’t,” Bob Carey said.

“I do too!” Kate flared. “All he does is talk about what he’s going to do, but he never does anything except get drunk. If I could, I’d move out!”

“But he’s still your father—”

“So what? He’s a drunk, and everybody knows it!”

Her eyes brimming with sudden tears, Kate turned and hurried out of Jake’s Place, Bob right behind her. “Pay the check, will you, Alex?” Bob called back over his shoulder.

When they were alone, Lisa grinned at Alex. “Do you have any money?” she asked. “Or do I get stuck with the check again?”

“Why should I pay it?” Alex asked, bewildered. “I didn’t eat anything.”

“Alex! I was only kidding!”

“Well, why
should
I pay it?” Alex insisted.

Lisa tried to keep the exasperation she was feeling out of her voice. “Alex,” she said carefully, “nobody expects you to pay the check. But Bob was in a hurry, and he’ll pay you back tomorrow. You and Bob have always done that.”

Alex’s eyes fixed steadily on her. “I don’t remember that.”

“You don’t remember anything,” Lisa replied, her voice edged with anger. “So I’m telling you. Now, why
don’t you just give Jake some money, and we’ll get out of here?” Then, when Alex still hesitated, she sighed. “Oh, never mind. I’ll do it myself.” She paid the check, and started toward the door. “You coming?”