Daisy Lane (11 page)

“I’m supposed to escort you to the computer lab,” he said. “Here’s your pass.”

Grace took the pass, which was filled out giving her permission to spend her study period in the computer lab.

“How did you get this?” she said. “And why?”

“You did Elvis a favor,” he said. “Now he wants to thank you.”

“Who’s Elvis?” Grace said. “I don’t know him. I think you have the wrong person.”

“Nope,” he said. “You’re Grace Branduff, right?”

“Yes,” she said. “What’s this about?”

He shrugged.

“Nothin’ bad,” he said. “Elvis is a righteous little dude. You’ll like him. They call him ‘the fixer.’ If you do him a favor, he’ll help you fix your problems.”

“What did he do for you?”

“He’s helping me keep my GPA high enough to play ball,” he said. “I gotta get me a scholarship or I ain’t going to college. If I don’t go to college, I ain’t gonna play pro ball.”

“He helps you study?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Like with flash cards and memory tricks. There’s a ‘rat’ in the middle of the word ‘separate?’ Did you know that?”

“That’s clever,” Grace said. “I still think you’ve got the wrong person.”

“I can’t make you go,” he said. “Well, I guess I could, but listen, you’ll be glad you did. C’mon. You’ll see.”

Grace searched his face but didn’t see anything mean or deceptive, not even a brief flash of an ulterior motive.

“Okay,” she said.

In the computer lab Grace was surprised to find the same boy she had helped climb out of the garbage can into which Jumbo had dropped him. The big boy departed with a shy wave, leaving Grace and the small boy alone in the room.

Grace had been in the computer lab many times but had never noticed this boy before. He was seated in the back of the room in what looked like a makeshift command central. There were two flat screens and a laptop on top of the four-foot desk; multiple, neatly tethered bundles of wires ran between these, and two hard drive towers were lined up beneath the desk to one side. There were two printers, one of which looked as if it also scanned, copied, and possibly transformed into a weapon.

He was small, even smaller than Grace. He was seated upon four thick foam booster cushions. His feet, which fell several inches short of the floor, rested on top of a hollowed-out hard drive tower resting on its side, like the ribcage of a former trusty steed.

He was dressed like every other twelve-year-old boy Grace knew, in a T-shirt, jeans and athletic shoes, ear buds dangling round his neck. He needed a haircut. The physics equations he was studying on one screen reflected off his glasses.

“Elvis?” Grace asked. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes,” Elvis said. “Good to see you again.”

He removed his glasses and placed them in a protective case he kept nearby. He leaned over and popped open the top of a smaller cooler.

“Juicebox?” he offered.

“Thanks,” said Grace, never one to turn down an offer of beneficial calories and nutrients.

“Organic,” he said. “No BHA in the plastic. My mother’s very particular about that.”

“She cares about you,” Grace said. “That’s nice.”

“Care, like love, is too broad of a term,” Elvis said. “There’s simple sentiment, which just means warm feelings, pleasure in proximity, or hormonal responses easily cultivated and reproduced in high functioning hominids through a system of stimulus and reward. There’s maternal love, an innate instinct which seeks to nurture and protect the young in order to ensure the survival of the species. There’s pride of ownership, or a sense of investiture in a project from which a reasonable assurance of return on investment is expected. There’s common decency, a societal pressure whereby a culture’s agreed upon religious or philosophical beliefs require adherence to a concern for the well being of one’s fellow believer, or at the very least a concerned pity for the nonbeliever and a shared hatred of what is seen as outside or other. There’s possessive desire, overt or sublimated carnal lust, calculated self-interest, nepotism, and favor-currying, which are really just forms of barter. The word ‘care’ can mean so many things.”

Grace thought she might like to take out a notebook in which to take notes. There was a long pause while she attempted to process all that he had said and then tried to remember what they were talking about to begin with.

“Sorry,” he said. “I have a tendency to take a subject and download everything I know about it as a form of conversing.”

“I don’t mind,” Grace said. “I’ve never thought about all the ways you could interpret the word ‘care.’”

“I would say my mother’s regard for me contains the appropriate amount of warmth,” Elvis said. “In fact, I’d wager she has thoroughly researched what approximates the optimum ratio of attachment to the encouragement of independence and very closely walks that line.”

“Attachment?” Grace said. “Do you mean love?”

“Love is another word that can mean many things,” Elvis said. “A baby monkey raised in a lab will form an attachment to a cloth-covered puppet. Animals attach to whatever feeds them or appears to feed them. Human attachment is more complex. The human child tends to attach to whoever nurtures him or her, even if it’s inconsistent or sub-standard in quality.”

“I guess you do what you have to in order to survive,” Grace said, thinking of her mother.

“Consider platonic love,” Elvis said, “which is a devoted friendship.”

Grace thought of Charlotte, who did not appreciate her platonic devotion.

“And romantic love,” Elvis said. “Which might or might not include friendship but definitely includes making out. Now there are two subjects that philosophers and poets have spent lifetimes studying.”

“What about unrequited love,” Grace said, thinking of Tommy and Charlotte.

“Sometimes we imagine people have desirable qualities they don’t have, and form an attachment to this imaginary construct,” Elvis said. “You can form attachments based on a perceived relationship with a person when there is actually no relationship at all. One should never underestimate the human ability to jump to a conclusion that suits us. We tend to idealize people and then get disappointed.”

“So maybe there never was a real friendship?” Grace said. “Maybe I just imagined there was?”

“Possibly,” Elvis said. “I would need more data to determine that.”

“I had a crush on a boy who moved away in sixth grade,” Grace said. “He was smart and funny. He made people laugh but he wasn’t mean about it. I think if I ever have a boyfriend I want him to be just like that.”

“I myself get crushes on girls who are just like my mother–detached, critical, clinical,” Elvis said. “But I also like girls who are the exact opposite–affectionate, sweet, sentimental.”

“I’ve never thought about why we get crushes on the people we do,” Grace said. “I thought it was something that just happens in a sort of magical way.”

“It seems to me to be more of a function of finding someone whose personality disorders mirror our own or our parents’,” Elvis said.

“Why would I be attracted to someone who is mean to me?”

“It’s a human instinct to form attachments, especially when we feel endangered. Have you heard of Stockholm syndrome? That’s when you form an attachment to the person who has kidnapped you as a way to make your situation emotionally tolerable.”

“I think it’s smarter not to care,” Grace said. “That way you’re never disappointed.”

“It’s probably wisest to keep a detached outlook anytime you feel an attachment. That was a humorous play on words. I’m smart and funny, just like that boy you had a crush on in the sixth grade.”

“The problem is you can’t trust people,” Grace said.

“Some attachment is necessary for a person’s emotional health,” he said. “Maybe you should be choosier about whom you trust.”

“It must be terrible being as smart as you are trapped in this school.”

“It is,” he said. “I can’t wait to grow up so people will take me seriously. I also can’t wait to meet people more like me so I don’t feel like such a freak. My mom says it will get better eventually.”

“She sounds nice,” Grace said. “It must be nice to feel wanted.”

“She wanted a child. Delete that. She wanted a brilliant, healthy, well-adjusted child, but she couldn’t find someone she liked well enough to argue over how to raise the child. So she saved her money and went to a fertility specialist that offered the best raw material. She sought to balance physical ability with a superior health history and a high, but not too high IQ. Not too much of any of the three, mind you, but a balance. No point in being so smart you can’t function in the real world, or too sickly to survive world travel. My biological father was a star rugby player at university and is a successful British barrister. As a result I have excellent hand-and-eye coordination, but I’m not going to Oxford on a sports scholarship.”

“You’re going to Oxford?”

“That’s the plan,” Elvis said.

“When?”

“This is my last year of public school,” Elvis said. “My mother wanted me to have as normal of a cultural and social experience as was necessary so I would be able to relate to my peers, but how normal could it be for me anywhere, really? Everyone knows I’m a freak, they’re just nice to me because I help solve the odd problem here and there.”

“That big boy said they call you ‘The Fixer.’”

“I know, I started that,” he said. “A sense of mystery and bartered acts of benevolence often give one power over weaker minds. Use that power for evil and you have fascism. Use it for good and you have the United Nations.”

“You’re using yours for good, I guess.”

“What is a scientist, after all, if not a solver of problems?”

“I don’t think anyone can solve my problems,” she said. “No offense.”

“None taken,” he said. “I do love a good challenge, though. I don’t have much time left here and I would like to do something for you before the end of term.”

“Where will you go after this term is over?”

“I’m going to Disney World in June, and then to Harry Potter World in July. It’s been arranged I’m to have behind-the-scene tours at both venues but my cousins are coming so it will be just for fun as well. While in Coral Gables visiting my aunt’s family I plan to study marine mammals and the healing properties of sea vegetation. In September we’re moving to Palo Alto, California, so I can attend Stanford, where I will obtain degrees in both theoretical physics and existential phenomenological psychology. After that it’s on to Oxford. I should be tall by then. I may blend in better. My father and mother are both tall, so I should have an accelerated growth spurt at some point.”

“Sounds like a fun summer,” Grace said.

“All in all it should be a most pleasant summer,” Elvis said. “My cousins only have average intelligence but they’re very fun. We’ll have water balloon battles and play hide and seek. I’m an excellent hider.”

“Me too,” said Grace. “What will you do after Oxford?”

“It depends,” Elvis said, and then noisily sucked the last of his juice out of the box, collapsing it. “I can keep on learning things, apply what I’ve learned, teach what I’ve learned, or earn money by inventing things. Or do all of that, of course. It’s just a matter of efficient time management and the prudent use of resources.”

“What would you like to do?”

“Well, I’d like to meet a nice girl, get married, and have some children,” he said. “I think the rest will figure itself out.”

“Do you ever wish you were more like other people?” Grace asked.

“I wouldn’t know how,” Elvis said, “and it would be psychologically self-limiting to pretend.”

“Do you worry about disappointing your mother?”

“No,” he said. “I know I won’t.”

“Is she a huggy kind of mother, though?” Grace asked. “You make her sound kind of cold.”

“She’s appropriately physically affectionate, certainly,” he said. “I’m not a robot.”

“I’m sorry,” Grace said. “I didn’t mean to imply that.”

“I’m smart,” he said. “But I’m still human. My feelings get hurt and I have bad moods, just like anyone else. I also have the ability to psychoanalyze myself in any one of a dozen ways and work out all my problems myself, in a rational manner. It’s a matter of having the right tools and the knowledge of how to most effectively use them. Sometimes I just need more rest, or fluids. Hormonal activity is becoming a bit of an issue, of course. It’s the age. Anyone, even the smartest person, can be fooled by oxytocin.”

“Oxytocin?”

“It’s the hormone that increases trust and decreases fear,” he said. “It’s that feeling you get when someone you are attached to hugs you or you see someone who approximates your ideal of beauty. It can be quite addictive.”

Grace thought of the hug she and Tommy had shared in the bleachers. According to Elvis, what she had thought of as a meaningful moment was actually just a chemical change in her brain. It had felt meaningful. Was that just her imagination applying wishful thinking to a biological reaction?

“We don’t have much time,” he said. “You had better tell me about your problem.”

Grace outlined her situation, and was surprised at how easy it was to tell this small boy about her grandfather’s dire pronouncement, along with her feelings and her deepest fears. His total affect was of polite, nonjudgmental curiosity and frank interest. She felt as if she were providing him with a new case study for one of his psychology experiments.