Brain Child

by Andrew Neiderman

  “I’m sure you’ve read or seen the play The Miracle Worker.”

  “Of course. What’s your point?”

  “I don’t think there can be too many better situations or conditions for obedience control than the one Annie Sullivan finally had in relation to Helen Keller.”

  “How so?”

  “She got Helen’s family to the point where they agreed to permit a situation whereby Helen was dependent on Annie for everything, even her bodily needs. It was through control of those needs that Annie conquered her.”

  “I don’t know if conquered is the right word.”

  “It isn’t. I should have said controlled. Because she could control her, she could manipulate her, which in this case was for her own good.”

  “Urn. I see what you mean.”

  “It’s basically what we do with our laboratory animals: we starve them and feed them in order to get them to do what we want or change what we want. We heat them, freeze them, shock them.” McShane nodded. He decided to simply wait for her conclusions. “Complete obedience control can come, therefore, if one has complete control of the subject’s basic needs.”

  “True, but you could be describing a form of slavery as well as a scientific experiment.”

  “I’m not interested in slavery,” she said with some disdain.

  “Does any of this have to do with your valedictorian speech next week?”

  “In a way. I want to show how everything—political, social, whatever—boils down to basic behavior modification.”

  “I might just come to hear that speech.”

  “I hope you do. I gave you what would have been my father’s invitation.”

  McShane changed expression and sat back. “How’s it going?”

  “As is to be expected.”

  “Your mother holding up?”

  “No, but that was to be expected.” She said it dryly, without the slightest note of sarcasm or sorrow. It made him think of Sherry’s comment: “The girl’s emotionally disabled.” Was Sherry right? Did this make Lois Wilson dangerous in a unique way, a way not easily detected?

  “I suppose, in some ways, you see your father in Helen Keller’s state before she was able to communicate.”

  “Precisely,” Lois said, her face coming alive with an excitement he had seen only on rare occasions. “You see that, too?”

  “Give your senile old teacher some credit,” he said. She neither smiled nor laughed. “I suppose all this is part of that obedience-control paper you’ve been dangling before me continually.”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, it is.”

  “How much longer before I see something?”

  “Most of the summer. But don’t worry, you’ll read it before I leave for MIT.”

  “Looking forward to it. Well,” he said, looking at the wall clock, “I’ve got to do some shopping in Middletown tonight.” She gathered her things quickly. He thought for a moment and then stood up. “You know, I could just as easily go through Sandburg to get to the main highway. No problem dropping you off, if you’d like.”

  “I’ve got to drop these two books off at the library.”

  “Meet me in the teachers’ parking lot.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate it.” He watched her leave and then sat back again. Why was it, he wondered, that Sherry’s admonitions were growing louder and louder? It was ridiculous, silly, to read such romanticized horror into this girl. It’s just a characteristic of her brilliance; she’s the personification of science, as pure as an idea.

  “She’ll never cry at sad movies,” Sherry had told him.

  Was that such a great sacrifice in the name of progress? he had asked. She had said yes, but she was wrong. Wasn’t she? He was still arguing with himself when Lois joined him in the parking lot.

  “What have you been working with for this paper on obedience?” he asked after they had started out. “Laboratory animals?”

  “Some.”

  “Something additional?” He waited, but she didn’t reply. He looked at her and then out at the road again. “Top secret, eh?”

  “For the time being. I don’t want any outside input just yet. It might influence my thinking.”

  “I see.” The rest of their conversation was small talk until they reached Sandburg. She wanted to be dropped off in town, but he insisted on taking her to her house, driven by his own curiosity concerning every aspect of Lois Wilson’s life. He regretted that he couldn’t meet her father now, but hoped to meet her mother soon, just so he could get an idea about the home environment that had produced such a girl.

  “This is it,” she said. He pulled into the driveway.

  “Interesting house.”

  “Belonged to Dr. Fleur. Ever hear of him?”

  “No.”

  “Sandburg’s most famous citizen.” She opened the door.

  “That your little brother on the porch?”

  “Yes. He hasn’t reacted well to my father’s being an invalid. He’s actually acting out aggression because of it.”

  “Understandable.”

  “I haven’t had time to deal with it, but I will.”

  “Keep taking on more and more, don’t you?”

  “Not any more than I can handle. I’d invite you in, but my mother would panic. She’s developed the idea that waiting on my father like a full-time nurse is taking its toll on her, causing physical degeneration.”

  “I’m sure it’s not easy.”

  “She’s always been neurotic about her looks. It’s a classic example of a neurosis on the way toward becoming a psychosis.” She stepped out and started to close the door. “Thanks for the ride,” she said. He watched her walk toward the house, noting how the little boy was digging at a wooden column with a small pocketknife.

  He backed out and continued down the road. As he drove on he felt as though he had gone in and out of some strange nightmare. He couldn’t imagine what life inside that house must be like, with an invalid father, a neurotic mother, and a daughter peering about with microscopic eyes. The little boy looked tormented. How could anyone grow up normal under those conditions? He felt sorry for the kid, but he didn’t know what he could do about it. How much more involved could he become? Sherry thought he was too involved as it was. Maybe she was right. He used scholastics as an excuse for his interest.

  “Maybe I’ll write a paper about her,” he had told Sherry. “She is a phenomenon.”

  “You’re just as bad as she is,” she had replied. He laughed, remembering.

  Forget Lois Wilson and think about what you have to buy, he mumbled and drove on.

  He thought he had succeeded in pushing her to the back of his mind when suddenly, for no apparent reason, he conjured up the image of her little brother. He had looked out at them with a face characterized by blankness and lack of interest. Children were usually curious about strangers. It was as though her brother were blind or … in a spell.

  It gave him the chills, so he rolled the window up to cut down on the incoming breeze. Then he turned the radio up to help drown out his thoughts.

  “What’s going on?” Lois asked.

  “The therapist was here again. Mommy was mad you weren’t here to listen. She did a lot of work and then fell asleep on the couch.” He went back to gouging the column.

  “Stop that. Why don’t you find something constructive to do?”

  He folded the knife quickly and put it into his pocket.

  “She started yellin’ at me for nothin’. She said I was makin’ too much noise. I can’t even play with my cars.”

  “Just ignore her. That’s displaced aggression.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” he said in a belligerent tone. Lois was amused by his anger.

  “She’s not happy taking care of Daddy, but she can’t yell at him, so she yells at you.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Who ever said things had to be fair?” she replied and went inside.

  Heavy silence greeted her. Th
e gloom that had been part of the old Fleur mansion, a heavy, depressing atmosphere that Dorothy Wilson had never succeeded in removing despite her efforts at redecoration, had intensified the day Greg was brought back from the hospital. The laughter that had once existed between them was smothered in the silence of Greg’s eyes. His presence, without the sound of his voice, amplified her own sounds, making her aware of her own breathing. She had started talking to the walls, catching herself in the middle of monologues. The new, deeper, more permeating quiet caused every ordinary sound to take on a shriller, higher note. The banging of pots and pans, the clink of dishes, the hollow echo of footsteps on the wooden floors, the creaking of banisters and doors, the scraping of chair legs—all conspired to tear at her, bringing her to a more hysterical frame of mind. And Lois was of little help.

  Her daughter continued to stay to herself. Their conversations were one-sided and short. Dorothy was even willing to discuss some of the girl’s scientific projects, but Lois would have none of it. She contributed to maintaining Greg, she cooked and cleaned and looked after Billy with just as much vigor as before, but she provided no substitute for the absence of small talk. She disliked watching television and thought most parlor games a total waste of time.

  Billy was no help either. She recognized that he was going through some sort of psychological upheaval, but his avoidance of her was intolerable. He was treating her as though she were to blame for what had happened to Greg. She wondered if Lois could have put such a thought in his mind. In any case, she realized that what she had succeeded in doing now was isolate herself terribly. Since she was no longer working in the store, her contact with the outside world was limited to shopping for food and going to the post office and the bank. It couldn’t go on; she had to think of some changes.

  Lois found her mother, as Billy had said, asleep on the couch. She studied her for a moment. There was some physical degeneration. Lois could recall when her mother had worked on her hair, babying each strand. Now her hair was wild and stringy. It looked greasy and dull. Instead of taking the time each morning to select her day’s wardrobe with an eye to fashion and color coordination, her mother threw on housecoats and wore them from morning to night. All of her makeup went unused; she didn’t even open a lipstick tube.

  The work and the mental strain were reflected in her complexion as well. Gone were the rosy cheeks, the glittering eyes, the dazzling white teeth. She was pale and dull. One thing fed on another. Because of her self-imposed isolation, she neglected her appearance; and because her appearance degenerated, she reinforced her isolation.

  For a few moments, as Lois studied her in sleep, she felt genuine pity. Despite her own attitudes about cosmetics and fashions, her mother’s attention to them often brought a shine and cheerfulness to an otherwise dreary world. Granted, it was a surface gleam and liveliness, but it was, nevertheless, something in contrast. Her mother was a flower without sunlight now, and Lois sympathized with her as she would for any living thing transplanted out of its natural habitat.

  But after she analyzed this reaction, she sensed an even deeper sorrow, one that touched on feelings and thoughts so dormant they were nearly nonexistent. She remembered how it was, even as a little girl, to walk in the streets with her mother beside her. She recognized that she felt a certain pride in the way other people looked at her mother, appreciating her good looks, her fashionable appearance. Perhaps—and she fell back into the role of psychoanalyst again—because her mother shone so brightly, eclipsing her, making her aware of her own physical inadequacies when it came to good looks, perhaps because of this Lois had become so hardened against her mother’s continual attention to physical beauty.

  AH these thoughts passed through her mind as she stood there in the doorway staring in at her sleeping mother. They came and went with the same telegraph-like, electric pattern most of her thoughts took on. And when they were finished and she became fully conscious of the moment again, she rejected conclusions that would lead her away from her purposes. For an instant she thought of herself as a modern-day Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. However, she quickly rejected the voices that told her she was like someone possessed and out of control. That was ridiculous. If anything, she was someone with more control. Determined, she turned away from her pathetic mother and started up the stairs to her father’s bedroom.

  He was awake, but if he was happy to see her, it did not register in his eyes. His gaze followed her into the room and to his side. He had been left sitting up.

  “Daddy,” she began, “I’ve got to talk to you about Mother. I know you’ve probably seen the change that’s come over her since you were brought home from the hospital.” She waited, and he blinked once. “She just isn’t adapting well; she doesn’t have the right attitude about all this,” Lois said. She walked to the foot of the bed and touched his right foot. “We’ve got to help her,” she went on, not looking at him as she spoke. It was more like someone voicing her thoughts. “It’s simply a matter of adjusting the image she has of herself and the image she now has of you. Why, even this room, this entire setting, the whole house, have changed in the way she perceives them. Understandable, I know, but, nevertheless, not good. You see what I’m trying to say, don’t you?” He blinked twice and then he blinked twice again.

  Lois straightened up and smirked with impatience.

  “If you don’t see, it’s because you simply don’t want to see. You’re smarter than that.” She took an even more pedantic posture. “Mother is caught in what we term an approach-avoidance conflict. The same goal both attracts and repels her. She wants to help you, serve you, cure you. She wants to be the wife who lives up to her moral responsibilities. You know the stuff: ‘for better or for worse.’

  “But she is repelled by your condition, by this situation, and by what it’s doing to her. Thus we have approach-avoidance. People caught in such conflicts often develop behavioral problems. She’s headed that way, I’m afraid.

  “Consequently, as soon as school ends next week, I’m going to change things somewhat. I want Mother in here less and less. It’ll be better for everyone.” He blinked twice and then blinked twice again. “That’s selfish, Daddy. That’s not like you. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing. There are things I want to do, things she’d never understand. She’ll only get in the way. You’ll see,” she said, nodding.

  He opened and closed his mouth. The guttural sound emerged, but she wasn’t interested. She was looking about the room, thinking of changes, thinking of arrangements.

  “I’ll talk to you about this again,” she said and started out. He blinked his eyes rapidly, but she was already gone. In the silence that followed, a tear emerged from his right eye. It traveled a crooked path over his cheek and down the side of his jawbone, after which it fell and was lost in the sheets.

  There was nothing for him to do but wait.

  12

  It began the day after Lois’s graduation ceremonies. They had hired a nurse to stay with Greg while Dorothy and Billy attended the festivities. Lois’s speech was as many had predicted: esoteric, filled with scientific jargon, long; the wrong kind of speech to deliver to excited parents and grandparents. Few people actually listened, and when it ended, the sharp, hard applause was more because it had ended than in appreciation for what was said. There were some graduation parties, but Lois didn’t go to one.

  Although her daughter was the recipient of so many honors and awards, the graduation exercise was a terribly depressing event for Dorothy. She kept looking at the stranger on her right, imagining that he was Greg, that all that had happened was just a terrible nightmare. But no amount of fantasy would change things.

  Afterward, she could see the sympathy and the sorrow in the eyes of those who congratulated her. She shook hands and accepted the plaudits like one resigned to punishment. Later, she was grateful for her chance to escape and go home. On the way to the parking lot, Lois introduced her to a rather good-looking young college professor.

  “I wa
s eager to meet you, Mrs. Wilson,” he said. “It’s anticlimactic to tell you that you have an amazing daughter, but I must tell you she stimulated my class and my own work this spring.”

  “Thank you.” Dorothy could feel the way his eyes searched her. He had the same analytical quickness as Lois, and that made her exceedingly nervous. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but we’ve got to get back to the house. I was able to get a nurse for only a few hours today.”

  “Of course.” He saw how hard she was clutching her little son’s hand. She walked quickly to her car. Lois lingered for a few moments as they exchanged some thoughts on her speech.

  After they left, he remarked to himself how hyper-tense Lois’s mother was. She was nothing like what he had imagined. He had pictured a stereotyped schoolmarm type, actually an older version of Lois. He certainly hadn’t visualized a soft-faced, emotional woman with an attractive figure. It made him wonder more about her father. He wanted to meet him, even in his present condition.

  As Dorothy approached the house she felt her body begin to shake. Lately this was happening every time she left and returned to the old Fleur mansion. The graduation exercises and all those people had turned out to be more of a strain than she had expected. Mentally and physically exhausted, she wasn’t looking forward to dealing with Greg. What she did contemplate was a good stiff drink, a highball or two. It would be a good way to calm down from her emotional stress.

  Lois didn’t go upstairs to show her awards to her father until after the nurse was paid and left. In the meantime, Dorothy made herself a drink and settled on the couch in the living room. She contemplated herself in the wall mirror over the mantel. At the last moment, before going to the graduation ceremony, she had opted for pinning her hair back as a way to hide its poor condition. She told herself she just had to get to the beauty parlor soon and resurrect her good looks, or at least what was left of them. She rubbed her cheeks to stimulate some color. Her skin felt dry and tough. All this made her angry.