Brain Child Read online

  In the rearview mirror, Marsh saw Ellen’s worried eyes, and wondered if either of them would be able to stand seeing their son’s memory wiped clean of every experience they had all shared. “Do you want to swing now?” he asked.

  Alex hesitated, then shook his head. “Let’s go home,” he said. “Maybe I’ll remember our house when I see it.”

  They drove into La Paloma, and Alex began examining the town he’d lived in all his life. But it was as if he’d never seen it before. Nothing was familiar, nothing he saw triggered any memories.

  And then they came to the Square.

  Marsh bore right to follow the traffic pattern three-quarters of the way around before turning right once again into Hacienda Drive. Alex’s eyes, he noted, were no longer staring out toward the front of the car. Instead, he was leaning forward slightly, so he could look across Marsh’s chest and see into the Square.

  “Remembering something?” he asked quietly.

  “The tree …” Alex said. “There’s something about the tree.” As he stared at the giant oak that dominated the Square, Alex was certain it looked familiar. And yet, something was wrong. The tree looked right, but nothing else did.

  “The chain,” he said softly. “I don’t remember the chain, or the grass.”

  In the back seat, Ellen nodded, sure she understood what was happening. “It hasn’t been there a long time,” she said. “When you were little, the tree was there, but there wasn’t anything around it.”

  “A rope,” Alex suddenly said. “There was a rope.”

  Ellen’s heart began to pound. “Yes! There was a rope with a tire on it! You and your friends used to play on it when you were little!”

  But the image that had flashed into Alex’s mind wasn’t of a tire at all.

  It was the image of a man, and the man had been hanging at the end of the rope.

  He wondered if he ought to tell his parents what he’d remembered, but decided he’d better not. The image was too strange, and if he talked about it, his parents might think he, too, was strange.

  For some reason—a reason he didn’t understand—it was important that people not think he was strange.

  Marsh pulled into the driveway, and Alex gazed at the house.

  And suddenly he remembered it.

  But it, like the oak tree, didn’t look quite right either. He stared at the house for a long time.

  From the driveway, all he could see was a long expanse of white stucco, broken at regular intervals by deeply recessed windows, each framed with a pair of heavy shutters. There were two stories, topped by a gently sloping red tile roof, and on the north side there was a garden, enclosed by walls which were entirely covered with vines.

  It was the vines that were wrong. The garden wall, like the house itself, should be plain white stucco, with decorative tiles implanted in it every six feet or so. And the vines should be small, and climbing on trellises.

  He sat still, trying to remember what the inside looked like, but no matter how he searched his memory, there was nothing.

  He stared at the chimney that rose from the roof. If there was a chimney, there was a fireplace. He tried to picture a fireplace, but the only one he could visualize was the one in the lobby of the Institute.

  He got out of the car, and with his parents following behind him, approached the house. When he came to the wide steps leading up to the garden gate, he felt his father’s hand on his elbow.

  “I can do it,” he said.

  “But Dr. Torres told us—” his mother began. Alex cut her off.

  “I know what he said. Just stay behind me, in case I trip. I can do it.”

  Carefully he put his right foot on the first step, then, supporting himself with the cane, cautiously began to bring his left foot up toward the second step. He swayed for a moment, then felt his father’s hands steadying him.

  “Thank you,” he said. Then: “I have to try again. Help me get back down, please.”

  “You don’t have to try right now, darling,” Ellen assured him. “Don’t you want to go in?”

  Alex shook his head. “I have to go up and down the steps by myself. I have to be able to take care of myself. Dr. Torres says it’s important.”

  “Can’t it wait?” Marsh asked. “We could get you settled in, then come back out.”

  “No,” Alex replied. “I have to learn it now.”

  Fifteen minutes later Alex slowly but steadily ascended the three steps that led up to the gate, then turned to come back down. Ellen tried to put her arms around him, but he turned away, his face impassive. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go in.”

  As she followed him into the garden, across the tiled patio and into the house itself, Ellen hoped he’d turned away before he saw the tears that, just for a moment, she had been unable to hold back.

  Alex gazed around the room that was filled with all the possessions he’d had since he was a child. Oddly, the room itself seemed vaguely familiar, as if sometime, long ago, he’d been in it. But its furnishings meant nothing to him. Against one wall was a desk, and he opened the top drawer to stare at the contents. Some pens and pencils, and a notebook. He picked up the notebook and glanced at its contents.

  Notes for a geometry class.

  The name of the teacher came instantly to mind: Mrs. Hendricks.

  What did Mrs. Hendricks look like?

  No image.

  He began reading the notes. At the end of the notebook there was a theorem, but he’d never finished the proof of it. He sat down at the desk and picked up a pencil. Writing slowly, his handwriting still shaky, he began entering a series of premises and corollaries in the notebook. Two minutes later, he’d proved the theorem.

  But he still couldn’t remember what Mrs. Hendricks looked like.

  He began scanning the books on the shelf above the desk, his eyes finally coming to rest on a large volume bound in red Leatherette. When he looked at the cover, he saw that it was emblazoned with a cartoon figure of a bird, and the title: The Cardinal. He opened it.

  It was his high-school annual from last year. Taking the book with him, he went to his bed, stretched out, and began paging slowly through it.

  An hour later, when his mother tapped softly at the door, then stuck her head inside to ask him if he wanted anything, he knew what Mrs. Hendricks looked like, and Mr. Landry. If he saw them, he would recognize them.

  He would recognize all his friends, all the people Lisa Cochran had told him about each day when she came to visit him at the Institute.

  He would recognize them, and be able to match their names to their faces.

  But he wouldn’t know anything about them.

  All of it was still a blank.

  He would have to start all over again. He put the book aside and looked up at his mother.

  “I don’t remember any of it,” he said at last. “I thought I recognized the house, and even this room, but I couldn’t have, could I?”

  “Why not?” Ellen asked.

  “Because I thought I remembered the garden wall without vines. But the vines have always been there, haven’t they?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I looked at the roots and the branches. They look like they’ve been there forever.”

  Ellen nodded. “They have. The wall’s been covered with morning glory as long as I can remember. That’s one of the reasons I always wanted this house—I love the vines.”

  Alex nodded. “So I couldn’t have remembered. And this room seemed sort of familiar, but it’s just a room. And I don’t remember any of my things. None of them at all.”

  Ellen sat on the bed next to him, and put her arms around him. “I know,” she said. “We were all hoping you’d remember, but Raymond told us you probably wouldn’t. And you mustn’t worry about it.”

  “I won’t,” Alex said. “I’ll just start over, that’s all.”

  “Yes,” Ellen replied. “We’ll start over. And you’ll remember. It will be slow, but it’ll come b
ack.”

  It won’t, Alex thought. It won’t ever come back. I’ll just have to act like it does.

  One thing he had learned in the last three months was that when he pretended to remember things, people seemed to be happy with him.

  As he followed his mother out to the family room a few minutes later, he wondered what happiness felt like—or if he’d ever feel it himself.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Monday after Labor Day was the kind of California September morning that belies any hint of a coming change of season. The morning fog had burned off by seven, and as Marsh Lonsdale dropped Alex off in front of the Cochrans’ house, the heat was already building.

  “Sure you don’t want me to take you both to school?”

  “I want to walk,” Alex replied. “Dr. Torres says I should walk as much as I can.”

  “Dr. Torres says a lot about everything,” Marsh commented. “That doesn’t mean you have to do everything he says.”

  Alex opened the car door and got out, then put his cane in the back seat. When he looked up, his father was watching him with disapproval. “Did Dr. Torres tell you not to use the cane anymore?”

  Alex shook his head. “No. I just think it would be better if I stopped using it, that’s all.”

  His father’s hard expression dissolved into a smile. “Good for you,” he said. Then: “You okay with going back to school?”

  Alex nodded. “I think so.”

  “It’s not too late to change your mind. If you want, we can get a tutor up from Stanford, at least for the first semester …”

  “No,” Alex said. “I want to go to school. I might remember a lot, once I’m there.”

  “You’re already remembering a lot,” Marsh replied. “I just don’t think you should push yourself too hard. You … well, you don’t have to remember everything that happened before the accident.”

  “But I do,” Alex replied. “If I’m going to get really well, I have to remember everything.” He slammed the car door and started toward the Cochrans’ front porch, then turned to wave to his father, who waved back, then pulled away from the curb. Only when the car had disappeared around the corner did Alex start once again toward the house, idly wondering if his father knew he’d lied to him.

  Since he’d come home, Alex had learned to lie a lot.

  He pressed the doorbell, waited, then pressed it again. Even though the Cochrans had told him over and over again that he should simply let himself into their house as he used to, he hadn’t yet done it.

  Nor did he have any memory of ever having let himself into their house.

  Their house, like the one next door where he knew he’d spent most of his life, had rung no bells in his head, elicited no memories whatsoever. But he’d been careful not to say so. Instead, when he’d walked into the Cochrans’ house for the first time after leaving the Institute, he’d scanned the rooms carefully, trying to memorize everything in them. Then, when he was sure he had it all firmly fixed in his mind, he’d said that he thought he remembered a picture upstairs—one of himself and Lisa, when they were five or six years old.

  Everyone had been pleased. And since then, after he’d relearned something he was sure he’d known before, and discovered as much as he could about its past, he would experiment with “remembering.”

  It worked well. Last week, while looking for a pen in his parents’ desk, he had found a repair bill for the car. He’d studied it carefully, then, as they were driving to the Cochrans’ that evening, and passed the shop where the car had been fixed, he’d turned to his father.

  “Didn’t they work on the car last year?” he’d asked.

  “They sure did,” his father had replied. Then: “Do you remember what they did to it?”

  Alex pretended to ponder the question. “Transmission?” he asked.

  His father had sighed, then smiled at him in the rearview mirror. “Right. It’s coming back, isn’t it?”

  “A little bit,” Alex had said. “Maybe a little bit.”

  But, of course, it wasn’t.

  The front door opened, and Lisa was smiling at him. He carefully returned the smile. “Ready?”

  “Who’s ever ready for the first day of school?” Lisa replied. “Do I look all right?”

  Alex took in her jeans and white blouse, and nodded gravely. “Did you always wear clothes like that to school?”

  “Everybody does.” She called a good-bye over her shoulder, and a moment later the two of them set out toward La Paloma High.

  As they walked through the town, Alex kept asking Lisa an endless series of questions about who lived in which house, the stores they passed, and the people who spoke to them. Lisa patiently answered his questions, then began testing his memory, even though she knew that Alex never seemed to forget anything she told him.

  “Who lives in the blue house on Carmel Street?”

  “The Jamesons.”

  “What about the old house at the corner of Monterey?”

  “Miss Thorpe,” Alex replied. Then he added, “She used to be a witch.”

  Lisa glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, wondering if he was teasing her, even though she knew he wasn’t. Since he’d come home, Alex never teased anybody. “She wasn’t really a witch,” she said. “We just always thought she was when we were little.”

  Alex stopped walking. “If she wasn’t one, why did we think she was?”

  Lisa wondered what to tell him. He seemed to have forgotten everything about his childhood, including what it had been like to be a child. How could she explain to him how much fun it used to be to scare themselves half to death with speculations on what old Miss Thorpe might be doing behind her heavily curtained windows, or what she might do to them if she ever caught them in her yard? For Alex never seemed to imagine anything anymore. He always wanted to know what things were, and who was who, but it didn’t seem to matter to him, and he didn’t seem, really, to care. In fact, though she’d told no one of her feelings, Lisa was glad that school was finally starting and she could legitimately spend less time with Alex.

  “I don’t know,” she said at last. “We just thought she was a witch, that’s all. Now, come on, or we’ll be late.”

  Alex moved uncertainly around the campus of La Paloma High School. Deep in the recesses of his mind, he had a faint feeling of having been here before, but nothing seemed to be quite right.

  The school was built around a quadrangle, with a fountain at its center, and from the fountain, some of the campus seemed familiar.

  And yet, the picture in his mind seemed incomplete. It was as if he could remember only parts of the campus; other areas were totally strange.

  Still, it was a memory.

  He looked at his program card, and when the first bell sounded, he started toward the building that housed what would be his homeroom that year.

  It was in one of the buildings he had no memory of, but he had no problem in locating the room. Just before the second bell rang, he stepped into the classroom, and started toward an empty seat next to Lisa Cochran. Before he could sit down, the teacher, whom he recognized from the picture in the yearbook as Mr. Hamlin, told him that he was to report to the dean of boys. He looked questioningly at Lisa, but she only shook her head and shrugged. Silently he left the classroom and went to the Administration Building.

  As soon as he was inside, he knew that he was in familiar territory. As he glanced around, the walnut wainscoting seemed to strike a chord in him, and he stopped for a moment to take in the details of the lobby.

  To the left, where it felt as though it should be, was a large glass-fronted office. Through the glass, he could see a long counter, and beyond it, several secretaries sitting at desks, typing.

  Straight ahead, and off to the right, two corridors ran at right angles to each other, and without thinking, Alex turned right and went into the second office on the left.

  A nurse looked up at him. “May I help you?”

  Alex stopped short. “I’m
looking for Mr. Eisenberg’s office. But this isn’t it, is it?”

  The nurse smiled and shook her head. “It’s in the other wing. First door on the right.”

  “Thank you,” Alex said. He left the nurse’s office and started back toward the main foyer.

  Something, though, was wrong. When he had come into the building, he had recognized everything, and known exactly where the dean’s office was. Yet it wasn’t there.

  Apparently he hadn’t remembered after all.

  Still, as he made his way into what really was the dean’s office, he had the distinct feeling that he had remembered, and when the dean’s secretary glanced up and smiled at him, he decided he knew what had happened.

  “How do you like the new office?” he asked.

  The smile faded from the secretary’s face. “New office?” she asked. “What are you talking about, Alex?”

  Alex swallowed. “Wasn’t Mr. Eisenberg’s office where the nurse is this year?”

  The secretary hesitated, then shook her head. “It’s been right here for as long as I’ve been here,” she said. Then she smiled again. “You can go right in, and don’t worry. You’re not in any trouble.”

  He passed the desk and knocked at the inner door, as he had always knocked at Dr. Torres’s door before going inside.

  “Come in,” a voice called from within. He opened the door and stepped through. As with everyone else who had been pictured in the yearbook in his bedroom, he recognized the face and knew the man’s name, but had no memory of ever having met him before. Whatever his flash of remembrance had been about, it was over now.

  Dan Eisenberg unfolded his large frame from the chair behind his desk to offer Alex his hand. “Alex! It’s great to see you again.”

  “It’s nice to see you, too, sir,” Alex replied, hesitating only a second before grasping Eisenberg’s hand in a firm shake. A moment later, the dean indicated the chair next to his desk.

  “Sorry to have to call you in on the first day of school,” he said, “but I’m afraid a little problem has come up.”

  Alex’s face remained impassive. “Miss Jennings said I wasn’t in trouble—”