TOM SHOOK HIS HEAD AS LOU DROVE AWAY. “I DON’T KNOW—” he said, and paused.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Lucia asked.
“It’s the only real possibility,” Tom said. “I don’t like to think it, it’s hard to believe Don could be capable of anything this serious, but… who else could it be? He would know Lou’s name; he could find out his address; he certainly knows when fencing practice is and what Lou’s car looks like.”
“You didn’t tell the police,” Lucia said.
“No. I thought Lou would figure it out, and it’s his car, after all. I felt I shouldn’t horn in. But now… I wish I’d gone on and told Lou flat out to beware of Don. He still thinks of him as a friend.”
“I know.” Lucia shook her head. “He’s so—well, I don’t know if it’s really loyalty or just habit. Once a friend, always a friend? Besides—”
“It might not be Don. I know. He’s been a nuisance and a jerk at times, but he’s never done anything violent before. And nothing happened tonight.”
“The night’s not over,” Lucia said. “If we hear about anything else, we have to tell the police. For Lou’s sake.”
“You’re right, of course.” Tom yawned. “Let’s just hope nothing happens and it’s random coincidence.”
AT THE APARTMENT, I CARRY THE BOOK AND MY DUFFEL UPSTAIRS. I hear no sound from Danny’s apartment as I go past it. I put my fencing jacket in the dirty-clothes basket and take the book to my desk. In the light of the desk lamp, the cover is light blue, not gray.
I open it. Without Lucia to prompt me to skip them, I read all the pages carefully. On the page headed “Dedications,” Betsy R. Cego has put: “For Jerry and Bob, with thanks,” and Malcolm R. Clinton has put: “To my beloved wife, Celia, and in memory of my father, George.” The foreword, written by Peter J. Bartleman, M.D., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, includes the information that Betsy R. Cego’s R. stands for Rodham and Malcom R. Clinton’s R. stands for Richard, so the R. probably has nothing to do with their coauthorship. Peter J. Bartleman says the book is the most important compilation, of the current state of knowledge on brain function. I do not know why he wrote the foreword.
The preface answers that question. Peter J. Bartleman taught Betsy R. Cego when she was in medical school and awakened a lifelong interest in and commitment to the study of brain function. The phrasing seems awkward to me. The preface explains what the book is about, why the authors wrote it, and then thanks a lot of people and companies for their help. I am surprised to find the name of the company I work for in that list. They provided assistance with computational methods.
Computational methods are what our division develops. I look again at the copyright date. When this book was written I was not yet working there.
I wonder if any of those old programs are still around.
I turn to the glossary in back and read quickly through the definitions. I know about half of them now. When I turn to the first chapter, a review of brain structure, it makes sense. The cerebellum, amygdala, hippocampus, cerebrum… diagrammed in several ways, sectioned top to bottom and front to back and side to side. I have never seen a diagram that showed the functions of the different areas, though, and I look at it closely. I wonder why the main language center is in the left brain when there is a perfectly good auditory processing area in the right brain. Why specialize like that? I wonder if sounds coming into one ear are heard more as language than sounds coming in the other ear. The tiers of visual processing are just as hard to understand.
It is on the last page of that chapter that I find a sentence so overwhelming that I have to stop and stare at it: “Essentially, physiological functions aside, the human brain exists to analyze and generate patterns.”
My breath catches in my chest; I feel cold, then hot. That is what I do. If that is the essential function of the human brain, then I am not a freak, but normal.
This cannot be. Everything I know tells me that I am the different one, the deficient one. I read the sentence again and again, trying to make it fit with what I know.
Finally, I read past it to the rest of the paragraph: “The pattern-analysis or pattern-making may be flawed, as with some mental diseases, resulting in mistaken analysis or patterns generated on the basis of erroneous ‘data,’ but even in the most severe cognitive failure, these two activities are characteristic of the human brain—and indeed, of brains much less sophisticated than human ones. Readers interested in these functions in nonhumans should consult references below.”
So perhaps I am normal and freakish… normal in seeing and making patterns, but perhaps I make the wrong patterns?
I read on, and when I finally stop, feeling shaky and exhausted, it is almost three in the morning. I have reached chapter 6, “Computational Assessments of Visual Processing.”
I AM CHANGING ALREADY. A FEW MONTHS AGO, I DID NOT know that I loved Marjory. I did not know I could fence in a tournament with strangers. I did not know I could learn biology and chemistry the way I have been. I did not know I could change this much.
One of the people at the rehab center where I spent so many hours as a child used to say that disabilities were God’s way of giving people a chance to show their faith. My mother would pinch her lips together, but she did not argue. Some government program at that time funneled money through churches to provide rehab services, and that was what my parents could afford. My mother was afraid that if she argued, they might kick me out of the program. Or at least she’d have to listen to more of the sermonizing.
I do not understand God that way. I do not think God makes bad things happen just so that people can grow spiritually. Bad parents do that, my mother said. Bad parents make things hard and painful for their children and then say it was to help them grow. Growing and living are hard enough already; children do not need things to be harder. I think this is true even for normal children. I have watched little children learning to walk; they all struggle and fall down many times. Their faces show that it is not easy. It would be stupid to tie bricks on them to make it harder. If that is true for learning to walk, then I think it is true for other growing and learning as well.
God is supposed to be the good parent, the Father. So I think God would not make things harder than they are. I do not think I am autistic because God thought my parents needed a challenge or I needed a challenge. I think it is like if I were a baby and a rock fell on me and broke my leg. Whatever caused it was an accident. God did not prevent the accident, but He did not cause it, either.
Accidents happen to people; my mother’s friend Celia said most accidents weren’t really accidents, they were caused by someone doing something stupid, but the person who gets hurt isn’t always the one who did something stupid. I think my autism was an accident, but what I do with it is me. That is what my mother said.
That is what I think most of the time. Sometimes I am not sure.
IT IS A GRAY MORNING, WITH LOW CLOUDS. THE SLOW LIGHT has not yet chased all the darkness away. I pack my lunch. I pick up Cego and Clinton and go downstairs. I can read during my lunch break.
My tires are all still full. My new windshield is unbroken. Perhaps the person who is not my friend is tired of hurting my car. I unlock the car, put my lunch and the book on the passenger seat, and get in. The morning music I like for driving is playing in my head.
When I turn the key, nothing happens. The car will not start. There is no sound but the little click of the turning key. I know what that means. My battery is dead.
The music in my head falters. My battery was not dead last night. The charge level indicator was normal last night.
I get out and unlatch the hood of the car. When I lift the hood, something jumps out at me; I stagger back and almost fall over the curb.
It is a child’s toy, a jack-in-the-box. It is sitting where the battery should be. The battery is gone.
I will be late for work. Mr. Crenshaw will be angry. I close t
he hood over the engine without touching the toy. I did not like jack-in-the-box toys when I was a child. I must call the police, the insurance company, the whole dreary list. I look at my watch. If I hurry to the transit stop, I can catch a commuter train to work and I will not be late.
I take the lunch sack and the book from the passenger seat, relock the car, and walk quickly to the transit stop. I have the cards of the police officers in my wallet. I can call them from work.
On the crowded train, people stare past one another without making eye contact. They are not all autistic; they know somehow that it is appropriate not to make eye contact on the train. Some read news faxes. Some stare at the monitor at the end of the car. I open the book and read what Cego and Clinton said about how the brain processes visual signals. At the time they wrote, industrial robots could use only simple visible input to guide movement. Binocular vision in robots hadn’t been developed yet except for the laser targeting of large weapons.
I am fascinated by the feedback loops between the layers of visual processing; I had not realized that something this interesting went on inside normal people’s heads. I thought they just looked at things and recognized them automatically. I thought my visual processing was faulty when—if I understand this correctly—it is only slow.
When I get to the campus stop, I now know which way to go, and it takes less time to walk to our building. I am three minutes and twenty seconds early. Mr. Crenshaw is in the hall again, but he does not speak to me; he moves aside without speaking, so that I can get to my office. I say, “Good morning, Mr. Crenshaw,” because that is appropriate, and he grunts something that might have been, “Morning.” If he had had my speech therapist, he would enunciate more clearly.
I put the book on my desk and go out in the hall to take my lunch to the kitchenette. Mr. Crenshavy is now by the door, looking out at the parking lot. He turns around and sees me. “Where’s your car, Arren-dale?” he asks.
“Home,” I say. “I took the transit.”
“So you can take the transit,” he says. His face is a little shiny. “You don’t really need a special parking lot.”
“It is very noisy,” I say. “Someone stole my battery last night.”
“A car’s only a constant problem for someone like you,” he says, coming closer. “People who don’t live in secure areas, with secure parking, really shouldn’t flaunt having a car.”
“Nothing happened until a few weeks ago,” I say. I do not understand why I want to argue with him. I do not like to argue.
“You were lucky. But it looks like someone has found you out now, doesn’t it? Three episodes of vandalism. At least this time you weren’t late.”
“I was only late once because of that,” I say.
“That’s not the point,” he says. I wonder what the point is, besides his dislike of me and the others. He glances at my office door. “You’ll want to get back to work,” he says. “Or start—” Now he looks at the clock in the hall. It is two minutes, eighteen seconds past starting time. What I want to say is, You made me late, but I do not say that. I go in my office and shut the door. I am not going to make up the two minutes, eighteen seconds. It is not my fault. I feel a little excited about that.
I call up yesterday’s work, and the beautiful patterns form again in my mind. One parameter after another flows in, shifting the pattern from one structure to another, seamlessly. I vary the parameters across the permitted range, checking to see that there is no unwanted shift. When I look up again, it is an hour and eleven minutes later. Mr. Crenshaw will not be in our building now. He never stays this long. I go out in the hall for some water. The hall is empty, but I see the sign on the gym door. Someone is in there. I do not care.
I write down the words I will need to say, then call the police and ask for the investigating officer from the first incident, Mr. Stacy. When he comes onto the line, I can hear noises in the background. Other people are talking, and there is a kind of rumbling noise.
“This is Lou Arrendale,” I say. “You came when my car had its tires slashed. You said to call—”
“Yes, yes,” he says. He sounds impatient and as if he is not really listening. “Officer Isaka told me about the windshield the following week. We haven’t had time to follow that up—”
“Last night my battery was stolen,” I say. “And someone put a toy where the battery should be.”
“What?”
“When I went out this morning, my car would not start. I looked under the hood and something jumped at me. It was a jack-in-the-box someone had put where the battery should have been.”
“Just stay there and I’ll send someone over—” he says.
“I am not at home,” I say. “I am at work. My boss would be angry if I did not come on time. The car is at home.”
“I see. Where is the toy?”
“In the car,” I say. “I did not touch it. I do not like jack-in-the-box toys. I just shut the lid.” I meant “hood,” but the wrong word came in my mouth.
“I’m not happy about this,” he says. “Someone really does not like you, Mr. Arrendale. Once is mischief, but—do you have any idea who might have done it?”
“The only person I know who has been angry with me is my boss, Mr. Crenshaw,” I say. “When I came in late, that time. He does not like autistic people. He wants us to try an experimental treatment—”
“Us? Are there other autistic people where you work?”
I realize he does not know; he did not ask about this before. “Our section is all autistic people,” I say. “But I do not think Mr. Crenshaw would do this sort of thing. Although… he does not like it that we have special permits to drive and a separate parking lot. He thinks we should all ride the train like everyone else.”
“Hmmm. And all the attacks have been on your car.”
“Yes. But he does not know about my fencing class.” I cannot imagine Mr. Crenshaw driving around the city to find my car and then smashing the windshield.
“Anything else? Anything at all?”
I do not want to make false accusations. Making false accusations is very wrong. But I do not want my car to be damaged again. It takes my time away from other things; it messes up my schedule. And it costs money.
“There is someone at the Center, Emmy Sanderson, who thinks I should not have normal friends,” I say. “But she does not know where the fencing group is.” I do not really think it is Emmy, but she is the one person, besides Mr. Crenshaw, who has been angry with me in the last month or so. The pattern does not really fit for her or for Mr. Crenshaw, but the pattern must be wrong, because a possible name has not come out.
“Emmy Sanderson,” he says, repeating the name. “And you don’t think she knows where the house is?”
“No.” Emmy is not my friend, but I do not believe she has done these things. Don is my friend, and I do not want to believe he has done these things.
“Isn’t it more likely someone connected to your fencing group? Is there someone you don’t get along with?”
I am sweating suddenly. “They are my friends,” I say. “Emmy says they can’t really be friends, but they are. Friends do not hurt friends.”
He grunts. I do not know what that grunt means. “There are friends and friends,” he says. “Tell me about the people in that group.”
I tell him about Tom and Lucia first and then the others; he takes down the names, asking me how to spell some of them.
“And were they all there, these last few weeks?”
“Not all every week,” I say. I tell him what I can remember, who was on a business trip and who was there. “And Don switched to a different instructor; he got upset with Tom.”
“With Tom. Not with you?”
“No.” I do not know how to say this without criticizing friends, and criticizing friends is wrong. “Don teases sometimes, but he is my friend,” I say. “He got upset with Tom because Tom told me about something Don did a long time ago and Don wanted him not to have told me.”<
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“Something bad?” Stacy asks.
“It was at a tournament,” I say. “Don came to me after the match and told me what I did wrong, and Tom—my instructor—told him to let me alone. Don was trying to help me, but Tom thought he wasn’t helping me. Tom said I had done better than Don had at his first tournament, and Don heard him, and then he was angry with Tom. After that he quit coming to our group.”
“Huh. Sounds more like a reason to slash your instructor’s tires. I suppose we’d better check him out, though. If you think of anything else, let me know. I’ll send someone over to retrieve that toy; we’ll see if we can get some fingerprints or something off of it.”
When I have put the phone down, I sit thinking of Don, but that is not pleasant. I think of Marjory instead, and then Marjory and Don. It makes me feel a little sick in my stomach to think of Don and Marjory as… friends. In love. I know Marjory does not like Don. Does he like her? I remember how he sat beside her, how he stood between me and her, how Lucia shooed him away.
Has Marjory told Lucia she likes me? This is another thing that normal people do, I think. They know when someone likes someone and how much. They do not have to wonder. It is like their other mind reading, knowing when someone is joking and when someone is serious, knowing when a word is used correctly and when it is used in a joking way. I wish I could know for sure if Marjory likes me. She smiles at me. She talks to me in a pleasant voice. But she might do that anyway, as long as she did not dislike me. She is pleasant to people; I saw that in the grocery store.
Emmy’s accusations come back to me. If Marjory does see me as an interesting case, a research subject even though not in her field, she might still smile and talk to me. It would not mean she liked me. It would mean she is a nicer person than Dr. Fornum, and even Dr. Fornum smiles an appropriate smile when she says hello and good-bye, though it never reaches her eyes as Marjory’s smile does. I have seen Marjory smile at other people and her smile is always whole. Still, if Marjory is my friend, she is telling me the truth when she tells me about her research, and if I am her friend, I should believe her.