When Nathan had returned from one of these netherworlds of neurology, we would try to discuss what he had been feeling. Our progress was slow, but it helped that he had been a neurologist himself, a researcher in the neuro-lab at Dartmouth’s medical center. He had the training to approach each of his deficits with an objective attitude, and the vocabulary to communicate precisely what was happening to him. He was a very engaged patient, always trying to aid in his own treatment.
Sometimes the delusions became too powerful, and he would have to be sedated. His bouts of Transient Global Amnesia, for instance, were terrifying for him. “Who are you people?” he would shout at me. “Why am I being held here? What is all this?”
I always did my best to explain, but the true TGA sufferer (and Nathan was clearly one of these) cannot be calmed by logic. It is an experience of almost pure panic. Without memory, all context is lost. The patient forgets not only what he or she had for breakfast that day, but everything else about the years leading up to that moment. The life, the whole internal history that lets us place ourselves – that lets us know ourselves – is wiped away.
Afterwards, when his hippocampus had resumed its normal behavior, Nathan would become deeply frustrated with himself. “My own mind betrays me,” he would whisper. “I am someone else.”
Always I would try to be encouraging. “You’re improving every day, Nathan. I believe in you.”
Sometimes, when he was in a better mood, he liked to chat about his life before the murder. “Do you know what I was working on?” he asked me one day.
I did have an idea, but I wanted to hear him explain it. So I kept quiet and waited.
“Charcot’s Last,” he said, and a rare look of excitement came into his eyes.
“The Postulate, you mean?”
He smiled. “Do you know the precise definition of that word, Doctor?”
“Postulate?” I shrugged. “An underlying assumption. An axiom, like in geometry: two points determine a line.”
But Nathan shook his head. “Strictly speaking, a postulate is one step further up the logic chain – it’s an idea that seems as though it should be true, but one that isn’t sufficiently self-evident to be considered axiomatic.”
“Like Jean-Martin Charcot’s alleged claim about intelligence?”
“Exactly,” Nathan said, grinning. “Because his idea made sense, right? Your brain, my brain, the brain of some accountant on Wall Street – they’re all put together in essentially the same way. So if Isaac Newton can be a genius, why can’t we all? If a hit of methamphetamine can make me more creative, then why shouldn’t some other treatment make me – ”
“Because that’s just wishful thinking,” I said, trying not to sound patronizing. “Let’s remember a few things. First, no one has ever been able to conclusively link Charcot to that idea.”
“Oh, but you’ve got to admit – ”
“Second,” I said, not letting him interrupt, “you know as well as I do that people’s minds are set up in subtly different ways, and that those differences are what count in the end. We can’t all be geniuses. Experience tells us that we all have our limits.”
Nathan was suddenly animated. He brought his fist down hard on the table. “That’s a lie!” he shouted. “I’ve seen what’s possible. I am what’s possible. And it’s not just intelligence. There are other kinds of mental capacity. You don’t understand the concept behind – ”
“Nathan?” I looked at him steadily. “I need you to calm down.”
His expression changed immediately, and all at once he was contrite. Deferential. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m such a damn mess.”
It is distressing to look back now at those times with him, and to have to wonder how often I was being deceived. The progress he made was real enough, I suppose. But the frustration was an act. So few of the patients at Clancy Hall are even aware of the outside world, and it never occurred to me that Nathan might be thinking about leaving. It was something I had considered, but only in the sense of rehabilitation. If I could help someone like Nathan reinsert himself into everyday life, it would be, I thought, a real victory for Clancy Hall.
And, yes, a victory for me.
But Dr. Nathan Kline was always two steps ahead. He had been making plans from the beginning.
Plans, and a list.
Melissa
1
When Melissa Hartman was in kindergarten, she brought home a permission slip for a class field trip. The kindergarten class was going to visit the children’s museum in downtown Boston, and Melissa was excited. She gave the slip to her mother. Janet could see the eagerness in her daughter, and she filled out the form as best she could. “There won’t be much real art there, honey.”
Melissa shrugged and smiled. Any art was better than none at all. It was fun to make, and fun to look at. Art never argued. Or cried.
She was the first student to hand her slip in the next day. Ms. McCartney, the kindergarten teacher, glanced at the slip, then stopped. “Melissa, Dear.”
Melissa looked up.
“Permission slips are serious. You must have one of your parents fill this out.” She frowned and picked out a fresh sheet from her drawer, and gave it to the little blonde girl.
Melissa stared at her with wide, uncomprehending eyes.
“I’m glad that you can write your own name, Dear. But did you really think you could fool me with this?” Ms. McCartney patted her on the head, then shooed her away, back to where the rest of the class was playing with blocks. Melissa sat by herself, silently, for a long time, studying the blank permission slip for answers.
Now, a flash of understanding on her face.
Melissa sighed. It was a long, adult sigh. She put the permission slip in her pocket. Later, when Ms. McCartney was not looking, she took a pencil from her backpack and wrote out the necessary information herself. Ms. McCartney’s class had not yet covered writing, so there was no need for her to disguise her penmanship.
She handed the slip in the next day.
“That’s more like it,” Ms. McCartney said with a satisfied smile. “Have you ever been to a museum, dear?”
Melissa nodded happily. Her mother liked museums. They calmed her. Janet Hartman had been taking her daughter on regular weekend visits since before Melissa could walk. “I’ve been to every one in the area,” said Melissa. “But never the children’s museum.”
Ms. McCartney pursed her lips and looked sideways at the child. She did not approve of telling stories.
At eight years old, some of the blond was starting to leave Melissa Hartman’s hair. It lay in great, unruly tangles across her face while she worked on her drawings. There was no one to tell her to cut it. Her mother now spent most of her time in the den, where the television delivered its soothing, mindless balm without end.
Martin Hartman made only rare appearances on the premises. The Hartmans were not divorced. Why bother?
On those few occasions when Melissa’s father did make his way through the house, he would usually stop just long enough to exclaim over Melissa’s drawings.
“What is all this crap?”
Melissa would pause in her work, and look up, and smile as though her father were a breeze on a late July day. “Hi, Daddy. You like my drawings?”
“Is that what all this crap is?”
Then 8-year old Melissa would take a slow, deep breath through her nose, and tell her father something about himself.
“You smell like smoke, Daddy. Were you at a fire?”
“Did you bring the car to a garage this morning, Daddy? Something smells like oil.”
“You smell pretty today, Daddy. Like a lady.”
Martin Hartman would stare at his daughter for a moment, and then he would grab the bottle of Jack, or the handle of Stoli, or whatever it was he had been looking for in the kitchen, and he would go stomping out the door. Sometimes he would kick loose drawings out of his way as he left.
“Okay, bye,” Melissa would call. Her head would go
back down, and she would return to her work.
The little charter school in Fitchburg did not have much money for courses outside of the standard, Math-English-History ilk, but the administration did what it could. When students reached the fourth grade, they were given the option of taking a general art elective.
Melissa did not expect much. Still, art was art, so she signed herself up for the elective and prepared for the worst. They would have large, flat tables she could use, at least. Her living room was getting crowded with papers and canvases everywhere.
The art teacher, Ms. Cooper, was a wide, strong woman with a round head and sparkling eyes. She wore her white smock fitted snugly about her apple-shaped body. Melissa saw her and breathed her in. She smelled of scrubbed surfaces, and the turpentine for washing paint off brushes. Like a kitchen that had been cleaned by a professional.
“Someone tell me the rules of drawing, please,” Ms. Cooper demanded of the class on the first day.
Melissa raised her hand. “There aren’t any I am aware of,” she said.
“Now we’re talking,” said Ms. Cooper.
Melissa could barely contain her smile.
“You need a haircut,” added Ms. Cooper.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Martin came home one day to find his house more orderly than he remembered it. All that crap seemed to have disappeared somewhere. It looked as though someone had even vacuumed. He poked his head into the den, but no, his slack-jawed wife was still wrapped in a blanket in front of the television. When did that fool woman get her meals?
He made his way slowly into the living room, as though expecting an ambush. There he found a girl he barely recognized. A girl with long but neatly trimmed hair that still had a few streaks of blond left in it. The girl looked up, and Martin was surprised to find that she was his daughter.
“Hey,” he said. “How old are you these days?”
Melissa smiled. “Hi, Daddy. I’m eleven.”
“Uh-huh. Is there something cooking in the kitchen?”
“Sure is. You staying for dinner?”
Martin considered. “Dinner” was no longer part of his regular vocabulary, but he remembered the concept. “I guess.”
Melissa nodded. “You better go wash,” she said, sniffing the air like a beagle. “You smell like the man on the corner by the bus station.”
Her father’s eyebrows shot up, but he did not argue. He went to the downstairs bathroom and splashed water on his face.
When Martin arrived at the kitchen table, there was a plate of scrambled eggs, spaghetti, and chopped carrots waiting for him. He sat back in his chair and glanced around the room, as if searching for a waiter to bark at. “You call this dinner?” he yelled.
Melissa came walking in from the den, having delivered a plate of food to Janet. “You didn’t wash very well,” she said, her nose wrinkling.
“Who eats eggs and spaghetti together?”
“I do. Mom does.”
“Did Mom teach you to cook?”
Eleven-year old Melissa Hartman paused and looked at her father.
Martin shook his head, momentarily embarrassed at having asked such an absurd question. He pulled his chair forward and began eating the food that had been given to him. When he was finished, he pushed away his empty plate and burped. “We got anything to drink?”
From the living room, Melissa’s voice: “Good drinks or bad drinks?”
Martin thought about this. “Bad drinks.”
“No.”
“Then I’m leaving.” He rose from his chair. “God-damned loony bin around here. Freaking me out.”
He paused at the front door. “Get that idiot mother of yours out of the den,” he shouted, loud enough for the neighbors to hear. He slammed the door behind him. “Can’t figure out why I don’t just sell this place,” he grumbled from outside.
Because you don’t own it, Melissa thought, as she prepared herself for bed. Good thing, too.
There was a noise from the den, and Melissa headed downstairs to see what her mother might need. A drink of water, perhaps. Or some help making her way to the bathroom.
2
On the first day of Melissa’s eighth-grade year at Fitchburg Charter School, Ms. Cooper greeted her with a hug and a strange expression. The art teacher stood back and looked at her star pupil as though examining a fresh canvas for defects.
“You’ve grown,” Ms. Cooper declared.
Melissa smiled uncertainly.
Ms. Cooper began nodding to herself, as if suddenly realizing something important. “Lord, look at you,” she said.
Melissa’s eyes widened, and her hands went to her face. “What?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing. Never mind.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. Now let’s talk about your project for this semester.”
Melissa clapped her hands with excitement. Art projects were wonderful things. They took her mind off everything else.
When she was painting, she never thought of home.
Melissa Hartman’s growth spurt ended at age fifteen. Walking through the crowd outside the high school each morning, she was now a shade taller than most girls.
“Hey, Melissa!”
This was Charlie, who had been in Melissa’s art class every year. Not necessarily because he liked art.
She changed direction to meet him. Melissa enjoyed Charlie. He never yelled. And even to Melissa’s exquisitely sensitive nose, Charlie smelled clean enough.
She talked to Ms. Cooper about him that afternoon.
“I think Charlie Lane might ask me out pretty soon.”
Ms. Cooper nodded seriously and said nothing. The middle-school student she had met six years ago was gone. The girl in front of her was a different creature. This girl’s hair had no more blond left in it. She had the smooth, curving face of a mother who had once been beautiful, and the hard, bright eyes of an angry father no one saw anymore. The combination was striking, and Ms. Cooper had seen people noticing. She was tall, this girl. Tall and shapely and strong. She ate well, and she played on the field-hockey team. Other students’ mothers gave her rides to the games in their minivans. They enjoyed her company.
So, Charlie Lane. Ms. Cooper supposed that Charlie might not be the only boy at the high school thinking about a date with Melissa Hartman.
Maybe the only one brave enough, though.
Most of the other boys seemed intimidated by her. Or at least by the way she made them feel.
“Will you say yes?” Ms. Cooper asked.
Melissa shrugged. “Maybe. I could fix Mom some dinner ahead of time, I guess.”
Ms. Cooper waited, and Melissa was silent for a while.
Then she turned to her teacher. “When’s the deadline for that art competition?”
Ms. Cooper paused to think. Melissa had switched subjects abruptly, probably in an effort to avoid dwelling on her mother for too long. “Entries are due October first,” Ms. Cooper said.
“I’m going to make it into the finals, right?”
Ms. Cooper laughed. Her round, solid body shook from the shoulders, and the string-ties of her white smock strained at the waist. “Not if you don’t get busy,” she said.
“To work, then.”
“Yes. To work.”
Melissa labored on her entry for the autumn art festival. Ms. Cooper pressed her to take risks with her work, and in the end they were both proud of what she created. It was an oil on canvas, the scene of a girl running through a city that might have been Boston. Melissa had used two distinct color palates for the buildings and the running figure, and the effect was one of clear separation. The girl in the painting seemed only coincidentally associated with the city through which she ran. Light struck her from an unseen sun. She floated above the sidewalk.
“It’s a mature work,” Ms. Cooper told her when it was done. “I’m proud of you. Let’s wrap it up and send it in.”
In a month the reply letter came,
and they opened it together.
Melissa put her hand to her mouth.
“You should go home and tell your mother,” Ms. Cooper said.
Janet Hartman was awake and alert when Melissa got back that afternoon. The television volume was turned low, which told Melissa that her mother was available for discussion. She ran to the den and threw herself onto the couch. “Mom! My painting got into the finals!”
Janet turned and looked at her daughter. She shook her head slowly, as though coming out of a dream. “You? What?”
Melissa was unfazed. Her mother often needed a few tries to get going. “My painting! The one Ms. Cooper’s been helping me with. It’s going to be in the autumn festival!”
A significant interval, in which Janet Hartman appeared to weigh the information she had been given. Her eyes moved over her daughter’s face. She clutched at the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. “Oh, don’t worry, honey.” Janet said finally. She took a breath, and the tears began flowing down her cheeks. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.”
Melissa took her mother’s hand and nodded. “I know, Mom.” They sat together while Janet sobbed. Melissa reassured her that everything would be okay. Eventually her mother tired herself out from crying, and Melissa wrapped her up tightly in the blanket and left her there, sleeping on the couch.
The judges at the autumn festival tried to appear thoughtful and professional. They took extra time to wait and stare critically at every entry in the high school division. Some tilted their heads at different angles, scribbling illegible notes in their little books. They stood like statues in front of one work or another, frowning with concentration. These pieces are all so good, one murmured. Yes, said another. This is very difficult.
None of them seemed to study Melissa’s painting very carefully. The judges, and everyone else, had plenty of time to admire it after they had awarded it the unanimous first-place prize that afternoon. Melissa let out a little yelp when she saw them pin the ribbon on her stand.
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