Brain Child

by John Saul

  The memories were clear in his mind now. He could remember having been in that cemetery, having looked down at the grave, having listened to the nuns telling him his uncle was dead.

  His uncle.

  As far as Alex knew, he had no uncle.

  And certainly he wouldn’t remember an uncle who had died in 1850.

  But it was all so clear, just as clear as the memory he’d had at school last week. Clear, but impossible.

  He took a deep breath, and his last sob released its grip on his throat. Lisa found a handkerchief in her bag and handed it to him. He blew his nose. “What happened?” she asked.

  Alex shrugged, but his mind was whirling. It didn’t make any sense, and if he told her what had happened, she would think he was crazy. But he had to tell her something. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I … I remembered something, but I’m not sure what. But it was like I was here before, and something terrible happened. But I can’t remember what.”

  Lisa frowned. “Were you ever here before? Maybe something did happen here.”

  Then, before Alex could say anything else, Bob and Kate moved toward them, their expressions a mixture of worry and uneasiness.

  “What happened?” Kate asked. “Are you okay, Alex?”

  Alex nodded. “I just remembered something, and it made me cry. Dr. Torres said it might happen, but I didn’t really think it would.” Lisa looked at him sharply, but said nothing. If he didn’t want to tell them what had really happened, she wouldn’t either. “Maybe it’s a good sign,” he said, making himself smile. “Maybe it means I’m getting better.”

  Kate and Lisa exchanged a glance, each of them realizing what might have to happen. Finally Kate voiced the thought.

  “Are you going to tell your folks about it?”

  “He can’t,” Bob said. “If he does, then all our folks will find out what we did, and we’ll all be in trouble.”

  “But what if it’s important?” Lisa asked. “What if it means something?”

  “Why can’t he just say it happened at the beach?” Bob suggested. “Besides, what’s the big deal about crying in a graveyard? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

  “I didn’t say it was a big deal,” Lisa replied. “All I said was that it might mean something, and if it does, none of us should worry about getting into trouble. I just think Alex should tell his folks exactly what happened.”

  “Well, I think we should vote on it,” Bob said. “And I vote he doesn’t tell.” He looked expectantly at Kate Lewis, whose eyes reflected her uncertainty. Finally she made up her mind, looking away from Bob.

  “Lisa’s right,” she said. “He should tell. And I think we should go home right now.”

  “I don’t,” Alex suddenly said. The other three looked at him, puzzled. “I think I should call Dr. Torres and tell him what happened. Maybe he’ll want me to stay here.”

  “Stay here?” Lisa asked. “Why?”

  “Maybe something else will happen.”

  Bob Carey stared at him. “What are you, some kind of a nut? I’m not gonna waste the rest of the day waiting for you to freak out again!”

  “Bob Carey, that’s just gross!” Lisa said, her voice quivering with anger. “Can’t you ever think of anybody but yourself? Why don’t you just go away? We can get home without you. Come on!” She grabbed Alex by the hand and began walking quickly toward the church door. Kate hesitated, then started after them.

  “Kate—” Bob called, but his girlfriend whirled around and cut his words off.

  “Can’t you ever think about anybody but yourself? Just once?” She turned and ran to catch up with Lisa and Alex.

  They found a phone booth half a block away, and Alex studied the instructions carefully before placing his call. On the second try, he managed to get through to the Institute. While Lisa and Kate fidgeted on the sidewalk outside the booth, he tried to explain to Torres exactly what had happened. When he was finished, Torres was silent for a few seconds, then asked, “Alex, are you sure you remembered that cemetery?”

  “I think so,” Alex said. “Do you think I should stay here? Do you think I might remember something else?”

  “No,” Torres said immediately. “I think one experience like that is enough for one day. I want you to go home right away. I’ll call your mother and explain what happened.”

  “She’s gonna be pretty mad,” Alex replied. “I … well, I told her we were going to the beach. She thinks I’m in Santa Cruz.”

  “I see.” There was another silence, and then Torres spoke once more. “Alex, when you lied to your parents about where you were going today, did you know you were doing the wrong thing?”

  Alex thought for a few seconds. “No,” he said finally. “I just knew that if I told them where we were going, they wouldn’t let me go. None of our folks would have.”

  “All right,” Torres said. “We’ll talk about all this on Monday. In the meantime, I’ll fix things with your mother so you don’t get into any trouble. But I don’t see how I can do anything for your friends.”

  “That’s okay,” Alex said. He was about to say good-bye when Torres’s voice came over the wire once more.

  “Alex, do you care if your friends get into trouble?”

  Alex thought about it, and knew that he was supposed to say yes, because part of having friends was caring what happened to them. But he also knew he shouldn’t lie to Dr. Torres. “No,” he said. Then: “I don’t really care about anybody.”

  “I see,” Torres replied, his voice barely audible. Then: “Well, we can talk about that, too. And I’ll see you tomorrow, Alex. We won’t wait ’til Monday.”

  Alex hung up the phone and stepped out of the booth. Kate and Lisa were staring anxiously at him, and a few feet away, Bob Carey stood uncertainly watching them all.

  “He wants me to go home,” Alex said. “He’ll call my mom and tell her what happened.” He fell silent, then decided what he should say. “I’ll try to get my mom to make it all right with your folks too.”

  Lisa smiled at him, while Kate Lewis looked suddenly worried. “How are we supposed to get home?” she asked.

  “I’ll take you,” Bob Carey offered. He stepped closer, his eyes fixed on the sidewalk at his feet. Then he hesitantly offered Alex his hand. “I’m sorry about what I said back there. It’s just that … Aw, shit, Alex, you’re just different now, and I don’t know what to do. So I just get pissed off.”

  Alex tried to figure out what he should say, but couldn’t remember being apologized to before. “That’s okay,” he finally replied. “I don’t know what to do either, most of the time.”

  “But at least you don’t get pissed off about it, and if anybody has a right to get pissed, I guess you do.” Bob grinned, and Alex decided he’d chosen the right words.

  “Maybe I will sometime,” he offered. “Maybe sometime I’ll get really pissed off.”

  There was a moment of startled silence while his three friends wondered what his words meant. Then the four of them started home.

  Marsh Lonsdale hung up the phone. “Well, that’s done,” he said, “even though I still don’t approve of it.”

  “But, Marsh,” Ellen argued, “you talked to Raymond yourself.”

  “I know,” Marsh replied, sighing. “But the whole idea of four kids getting off scot-free after going someplace they knew perfectly well they shouldn’t go, and lying about it to boot, just rubs me the wrong way.”

  “Alex didn’t know he shouldn’t go to San Francisco—”

  “But he knew he shouldn’t lie,” Marsh said, turning to Alex. “Didn’t you?” he demanded.

  Alex shook his head. “But I know now,” he offered. “I won’t do it again.”

  “And Alex is right,” Ellen added. “It isn’t fair for the other kids to be punished, and him not. And besides, if they hadn’t decided to break all the rules and go up to the City, Alex might not have had this breakthrough.”

  Breakthrough, Marsh thought. Why was burs
ting into tears in a graveyard a breakthrough? And yet, when he’d talked to Torres that afternoon, the specialist had assured him that it was, even though Marsh had suggested that it might be simply a new symptom of the damage that still existed in Alex’s mind. Still, Marsh was not yet ready to accept Torres’s assessment. “And what if it’s not a breakthrough?” he asked, then held up his hand to forestall Ellen’s interruption. “Don’t. I know what Torres said. But I also know that I’ve never been to Mission Dolores, and I don’t think Alex has either. Did you ever take him up there?”

  “No, I don’t think I did,” Ellen admitted. Then she sighed heavily. “Oh, all right, I know I didn’t. I’ve never been there either. But I think you might consider the possibility that Alex went there with someone else. His grandparents, for instance.”

  “I’ve already called my parents,” Marsh told her. “Neither of them can remember ever taking Alex there.”

  “All right, maybe it was my folks who took him there. For that matter, it could have been anybody.” She searched her mind, looking for something—anything—that might explain what had happened to Alex. Then she remembered. “One of his school classes went to San Francisco on a field trip once! Maybe they went to the mission. But if Alex remembers it, he remembers it. And I don’t see why you can’t simply accept that.”

  “Because it just doesn’t make sense. Why, of all the places Alex has been—that we know he’s been—would he remember a place that as far as either one of us knows, he’s never been to at all? I’m sorry, but I just don’t think it adds up.” He turned back to Alex. “Are you sure you really remembered being there before?”

  Alex nodded. “As soon as I saw it, I knew I’d seen it before.”

  “That could have been déjà vu,” Marsh suggested. “That happens all the time to everyone. We’ve talked about it with Dr. Torres.”

  “I know,” Alex agreed. “But this was different. When I went in, I didn’t even look around. I just went right into the cemetery, to the grave. And then I started crying.”

  “All right,” Marsh said. He reached over and squeezed Alex’s shoulder. “I guess the fact that you cried is really what’s important anyway, isn’t it?”

  Alex hesitated, then nodded. But what about the words he’d heard? Were they important too? Should he have told his parents about seeing the nuns and hearing the voices? No, he decided, not until he’d talked to Dr. Torres about it. “Is it okay if I go to bed now?” he asked, slipping away from his father’s touch.

  Marsh glanced at the clock. It was only a quarter to ten, and he knew Alex was seldom in bed before eleven. “So early?”

  “I’m gonna read for a while.”

  He shrugged helplessly. “If you want to.”

  Alex hesitated, then leaned down to kiss his mother. “Good night.”

  “ ’Night, darling,” Ellen replied. She watched her son leave the family room, then turned her gaze to Marsh, and immediately knew that the discussion of what had happened that day was not yet over. “All right,” she said tiredly. “What is it?”

  But Marsh shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to talk about it anymore.” Suddenly he grinned, though there was no humor in it. “I guess I’ve just suddenly fallen victim to a feeling, and I don’t like it.”

  Ellen sat down on the couch next to him and slipped her hand into his. “Tell me,” she said. “You know I won’t laugh at you—I won’t even argue with you. I’ve had too many feelings myself.”

  Marsh considered for a moment, then made up his mind. “All right,” he said. “I just feel that something’s wrong. I can’t quite put my finger on it, because I keep telling myself that what I’m feeling is a result of the accident, and the brain surgery, and the fact that I’m not too crazy about the eminent Dr. Torres. But no matter how much I tell myself that, I still have a feeling that there’s more. That Alex has changed somehow, and that it’s more than the brain damage.”

  “But everything that’s happened is consistent with the damage and the surgery,” Ellen replied, keeping her voice as neutral as possible and choosing her words carefully. “Alex is different, but he’s still Alex.”

  Marsh sighed. “That’s just it,” he said. “He’s different, all right, but I keep getting the feeling that he’s not Alex.”

  No, Ellen thought to herself. That’s not it at all. You just can’t stand the idea that Raymond Torres did something you couldn’t have done yourself. Aloud, though, she was careful to give Marsh no clue as to what she’d been thinking. Instead, she smiled at him encouragingly.

  “Just wait,” she said. “We’ve had several miracles already. Maybe we’re about to have another one.”

  As she went to bed that night, she decided that when she took Alex down for the special meeting Raymond had asked for tomorrow morning, she’d have a private talk with the doctor.

  A talk about Marsh, not Alex.

  For María Torres, sleep would not come that night. For hours she tossed in her bed, then finally rose tiredly to her feet, put on her frayed bathrobe, and went into her tiny living room to light a candle under the image of the Blessed Mother. She prayed silently for a while—a silent prayer of thanksgiving that at last the saints were listening to her entreaties, and answering her.

  She was sure the answers were coming now, for she had been in the Lonsdales’ house all afternoon. She had listened as they talked to their son and heard his story of what had happened at the mission in San Francisco, and like all the gringos, they had barely been aware of her presence.

  To them, she was nobody, only someone who came in now and then to clean up after them.

  But they would find out who she was, now that the saints were listening to her, and had sent Alejandro back at last.

  And Alejandro knew her now, and he would listen to her when she spoke to him.

  She let the little candle burn out, then crept back to her bed, knowing that sleep would finally come.

  She hoped the gringos, too, would sleep well tonight. Soon there would be no sleep for them at all.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “How come Peter isn’t here?” Alex asked. He was lying on the examining table, his eyes closed, while Raymond Torres himself began the task of attaching the electrodes to his skull.

  “Sunday,” Torres replied. “Even my staff insists on a day or two off each week.”

  “But not you?”

  “I try, but every now and then I have to make an exception. You qualify as an exception.”

  Alex nodded, his eyes still closed. “Because of how I scored on the tests.”

  There was a short silence, and Alex opened his eyes. Torres was at the control panel, adjusting a myriad of dials. Finally he turned back to Alex. “Partly,” he said. “But frankly, I’m more interested in what happened in San Francisco yesterday, and at school on Monday morning.”

  “It seems like I’m getting some of my memory back, doesn’t it?”

  Torres shrugged. “That’s what we’re going to try to find out. And we’re also going to try to find out if there’s any significance to the fact that even what little you have remembered seems to be faulty.”

  “But the dean’s office used to be where the nurse’s office is now,” Alex protested. “Mom just told us so.”

  “True. But apparently it was moved long before you ever went to La Paloma High. So why—and how—did you remember where it used to be, instead of where it is? Even more important, why did you remember Mission Dolores, when you apparently have never been there?”

  “But I could have been there,” Alex suggested. “Maybe yesterday wasn’t the first day I sneaked off to San Francisco.”

  “Fine,” Torres agreed. “Let’s assume that’s the case. Now tell me why you remembered a grave that’s over a hundred years old, and thought it was your uncle’s grave? You have no uncles, let alone one who’s been dead since 1850.”

  “Well, why did I?”

  Torres’s brows arched. “According to those exams you took
last week, you’re smart enough to know better than to ask that question before these tests.”

  “Maybe I’m not smart,” Alex suggested. “Maybe I’m just good at remembering things.”

  “Which would make you some kind of idiot savant,” Torres replied. “And the fact that you just suggested it is pretty good proof that you’re more than that.” He slid a pair of diskettes into the twin drives of the master monitor, then began preparing a hypodermic. “Peter tells me you woke up early a couple of times,” he said, his voice studiedly casual. “How come you never mentioned it?”

  “It didn’t seem important.”

  “Can you tell me what it was like?”

  Carefully Alex explained the sensations he’d had when coming up from the anesthesia that always accompanied the tests. “But it wasn’t unpleasant,” he finished. “In fact, it was interesting. None of it made any sense, but I always had the feeling that if I could only slow it down, it would make sense.” He hesitated, then spoke again. “Why do I have to be asleep when you test my brain?”

  “Peter already explained that,” Torres replied. He swabbed Alex’s arm with alcohol, then plunged the needle into his arm.

  Alex winced slightly, then relaxed. “But if it got bad—if I started hurting or something—you could stop the tests, couldn’t you?”

  “I could, but I won’t,” Torres told him. “Besides, if you were awake, the very fact that you’d be thinking during the examination would have an effect on the results. In order for the tests to be valid, your brain has to be at rest when they’re administered.”

  Thirty seconds later, Alex’s eyes closed and his breathing became deep and slow. Checking all the monitors one more time, Torres left the room.

  In his office, Torres leaned back in his desk chair and began methodically packing his pipe with tobacco. As he carried out the ritual of lighting the pipe, his eyes kept flicking toward the monitor that showed what was happening in the examining room. All, as he had expected, was as it should be, and he would have a full hour alone with Ellen Lonsdale. “I presume you’re going to tell me why your husband isn’t here this morning?”