Prototype

by Brian Hodge

  Crying, Adrienne? As unexpected as it was, even more so was that she made no effort to hide it or dam it back. Real tears, real grief, she was fully human after all, more human to him for that than even for her obvious love of Sarah. It was like looking into the wet red eyes of a person he had only thought he'd met, the moment somehow more devastatingly honest than any moment in all their sessions.

  Adrienne. Crying.

  It was nothing to stare at but stare he did, as the paintings continued to find keepers and curators, peering out of the corner of his eye. Adrienne. Crying. Sarah's arms around her and the two of them leaning into each other. Take one away and the other would fall, but together they balanced just fine.

  I want what they have, he thought. Other people managed, so why couldn't he? It was the grand failure of his life, being born, being born so different there wasn't even a name for it until six years ago. He looked at the paintings he had claimed so far, closed doors and piles of slag and scrap, and he thought, There it is, my life, it's all right there, he painted it and probably never knew it was me. Because it was him, too.

  Adrienne. Crying. Being held.

  He met Erin's eyes, almost went to where she sat on the couch but his legs would not move, his arms would not reach, and maybe Graham had had the right idea after all: If the fucking things don't work right, then cut them off.

  Erin had him over to her tiny apartment that night, her invitation almost shy, so unlike the Erin he thought he had known, the Erin he preferred to know. There was so much to say and none of it seemed to come out right, from the very start, so they gave up and tried to go to bed. No camera, just the two of them face-to-face, eye-to-eye, a pair of candles burning on her dresser while outside the snow had gone icy enough to peck at the window. It should have been romantic but seemed instead a desperate, last-ditch attempt at pretending to be that which they were not. She trembled as she kissed him, and when he tried to enter her she was dry, completely dry, as if the rest of her body had sucked up all the moisture and held it for ransom. He rolled off her, his erection dying, and soon Erin burst into more tears than he had ever seen from her.

  Tears — she had found them at last.

  "What … what'd I do wrong?" he asked.

  She shook her head against the pillow, continuing to dampen it, and he got up, mentally answering for her: You lived, that's what. And went off to sleep on the couch, where he could do no more harm.

  He supposed he would have made more of an effort to shatter those walls, any walls, no matter how alien such tender advances would have felt, had he known he would never see her again. Never dreaming she would resort to what she did, never considering the possibility that Erin would pack up what she could and leave the rest, then do the unthinkable: drive away, return to South Dakota, and move back in with her parents. It seemed the ultimate defeat, a living death; the final degradation in a life filled with them — she had the pictures to prove it.

  No phone call, no advance warning. He knew it only when Nina came over Wednesday afternoon to tell him, and give him a videotape that Erin had entrusted to her on the way out of town two hours earlier.

  "Did you watch it?" he asked.

  "She told me not to." Nina stood in the doorway, the only remaining vestige of her New Dehli persona the jeweled bead at her nostril. Jeans and parka and limp hair, just not Nina anymore.

  "But did you watch it?"

  "I tried to," she confessed, "but I couldn't, I had to turn it off, it hurt too much. But if you want I'll watch it with you."

  Clay shook his head, held up a flat hand as if to ward her off, then shut the door. Probably it would have been all right, but this was Nina, and if anyone was the mother of the bunch, she had served that purpose. She would want to comfort him, and while she loved Twitch, things happened. Consolation got out of hand, became something else, never planned for, then never to be talked about because it meant that a new door had been opened and could fly open again.

  So he watched alone, as he was surely meant to.

  The camera was trained on a chair in her living room, rigid and unmoving, a tripod's point of view. Empty chair, the brittle tick of a clock out of frame, its metronomic advance little slices out of the time they'd had left together while only one of them had been aware of it.

  A blur of motion as Erin's skinny bottom receded from an abrupt close-up and she walked to the chair. Facing the camera, saying nothing, a sticklike index finger winding absently around a single hair, tugging it free, letting it fall to the floor. She did it again, her movements slow, even, soothing.

  Her eyes roved into their own focus, found the lens. They could always find the lens. She could always pull herself together for that.

  "I'm sorry, Clay, I, I can't say goodbye to your face because if you asked one wrong question … I wouldn't know how to answer. I don't do answers much anymore. If I ever did."

  She went on, occasionally halting and staring off, at times slumping lower into the chair, less and less of her visible in the frame until she would become conscious of it, and straighten. Nothing seemed prepared, just Erin, alone with the ticking of that hostile clock, sometimes speaking, sometimes pondering what to say, sometimes trying to hang on to what she had just said. None of it pleasant to listen to: She needed more, there had to be more than this, and while she might have been able to admit to loving him someday, it could never happen with him as remote as an Arctic plateau.

  "I do awful things sometimes," she told the camera, "and I need someone to tell me it doesn't matter what I've done. Even if it does, I need to hear that it doesn't."

  It didn't go on much longer, for she had already begun to dissolve, big eyes gone hollow and moist, blinking back the goodbye tears as she buried her head for a moment, then raised it, pleading for something beyond words, palms uplifted, shaking.

  "I don't even feel like a human being anymore," she said, then crumbled entirely.

  Only after it was over did Clay remember sliding to the floor and sagging on his knees before the television, mouth working soundlessly as he watched her wrench herself free of the chair and advance toward the lens. Static frame once more showing nothing alive, just that mechanical ticking, ticking. He clung to the television to preserve the moment, eyes on the empty chair, knowing Erin was somewhere in the room, just out of sight; he could hear rustling movement and a sob caught in her throat. If he could just stop her from ending the recording, there might still be hope. The camera still rolled and contact was held. She might return to her chair and this time, why, this time she might even smile —

  But then it all vanished, her chair, her clock, her entire life, zapping into white static as sudden as a nuclear blast.

  Which might have been preferable, really.

  In a holocaust, no one dies alone.

  He spent some time screaming after that, wordless sounds that came erupting from the poisoned wellspring within. He imagined that men in wars screamed this way as they lay broken and dying in fields of mud and smoke and land mines, screaming for help or for their mothers, but never truly believing either would come.

  No one else in the building banged on their walls, or shouted for him to stop.

  He missed that, too.

  *

  Throat like a raw scrape, Clay stared at one of the paintings that had become his inheritances.

  Iron rungs on an iron wall, centered between rows of rivets resembling cold hard nipples: a ladder. Turn it upside down, right side up, it worked either way, an Escher-like ambivalence. The ladder led from one door to another, virtual twins, opening into the glowing hellfires of blast furnaces.

  No Escape, the artist might have named this one, if only he had extended the effort. Were Graham not dead already, Clay might just kill him and be done with it. It would be a favor to all of them who had suffered under his tyranny, his blackmail by melancholy.

  Why couldn't you hang on? You fucking coward, why couldn't you just hang on? I should be missing you but now all I can do is hate
you because look what you did, look what you cost me.

  This was the downside of suicide he'd never considered. Graham had not just killed himself, but all of them. What had they been if not a family? Not the healthiest, nor free of abuse and neglect, but they were better together than they could ever have been alone. And now? Their numbers had been sheared, checks and balances destroyed. All that was left was one couple and a spare.

  Plus, for the time being, a pair of inquisitive types who'd found them to be specimens worthy of study.

  If he believed in portents, he might have wondered if this past week wasn't precisely that: You have been here long enough, lived your life in its latest rut and dug it as deep as you dare.

  A specimen worthy of study — what more was there now? What else was left but well-intentioned friends who could barely take care of themselves, and the will to know why his heart could never be what he wished?

  He concluded that he had three families: the family into which he had been born, and left by choice; the family of his heart, which he’d accepted out of mutual need and had just watched die; and the peculiar family of those he’d never met, but whose similarities ran so deep they were biological mandates.

  Dim as the future appeared, there could be only one choice. The road was opening bit by bit, week by week. Someone in Boston was seeing to that.

  Was it merely coincidence, then, with Graham dead a week and Erin gone a day, with the holiest of the year's holidays just two days away, that the mail brought his greatest surprise yet? Or was some other infernal machine grinding him toward an ultimate destination?

  Standing in his living room, while in the window the sun blazed diamond-brilliant off melting snow, he opened the day's mail. A Christmas card from Sarah — it made him smile even though he didn’t believe. And a large envelope with a Boston postmark, whose weekly arrival he had come to count on.

  He shuffled through the papers long enough to see that they were research overviews, nothing specific as to case studies; dry reading ahead. Tales of chaos and mayhem were always more captivating. My brothers, he had once thought. My crazy brothers.

  Clay saved the brief, handwritten cover letter for last, as always. He would scrutinize the cramped scrawl and try to picture the stranger who had penned it.

  I think you deserve a Christmas present, the note said.

  You know you're not alone in the world. But you don't fully know just how alone you're not. Not every Helverson's subject is on the books. Not every one of us is under 35. At least one of us is all of 44.

  That's right. Us.

  Give me a call sometime. You might even catch me in the mood to talk.

  Still no name, but when Clay saw that a phone number had been provided, he realized that his hands had begun to tremble.

  Joy to the world, indeed.

  Twenty-Six

  It was the one dependable aspect of working with the mentally ill, being able to find your boss in his office on Christmas Eve. They were still psychotic on holidays, and reality still as fluid. Adrienne found the weird stability in that comforting; something to believe in, count on.

  "I'm wondering if you might be able to explain something to me that perhaps I should know about," Adrienne said.

  She sat with both feet on the floor at her desk, hair tousled and in her eyes. Sarah had gone shopping and this phone was the only way she was sure Tempe still existed, or ever had.

  "And that would be … what?" asked Ferris Mendenhall.

  "Do you have any knowledge of something called the Cassandra Study?"

  "No. I can't say that it sounds at all familiar. This is a study of what?"

  "I assume it has something to do with Helverson's syndrome, but beyond that I haven't a clue."

  "Where'd you come across the term?"

  "I didn't. Clay did. It was mentioned in the latest mailing from whoever it is in Boston that … well, you know. Whoever."

  "Mmm hmm." Mendenhall sounded irritable. He had said little on the subject of this rogue informant, but she could tell that the longer such a presence was felt, the more he loathed it. It was an element out of control, beyond his sphere of influence. It was, therefore, a small and hateful nugget of chaos. "In what context was this study mentioned?"

  She did not need the paper before her to recollect it, so scant was the mention, but still it would have been preferable. Clay, though, had refused to leave the report behind when bringing it along this morning. At least he was sharing information again, which she counted as a major triumph. Possibly a miracle.

  "It was in an overview on general conclusions drawn from the latest case studies on Helverson's subjects," she said. "The most up-to-date entries. Including Clay's. But there was this passing reference to something called the Cassandra Study. It said that the study's first significant data wouldn't be available for another three to four years. There was no definition. As if it'd be generally understood by the intended readership."

  Mendenhall sighed; here we are on Christmas Eve and I do not need this. "You know, Adrienne, someone is getting a lot of satisfaction out of what's basically cloak-and-dagger bullshit."

  "I agree."

  Whoever it was wanted Clay to know about this study, wanted him to learn for himself rather than having it spoon-fed via the mail. Its importance would be magnified a hundredfold if someone had to go digging for it. There was nothing at all incidental about this, the dropping of a single hint in all those pages.

  "And Clay Palmer's given you no indication of having been told anything about whoever's been sending him information, is that what I'm to understand?"

  "Either he doesn't know or he's keeping it from me. I tend to believe he doesn't know. Whoever it is maintains power by remaining anonymous. But it's not coming from a prankster's mindset. Whoever it is obviously feels a strong need to protect him- or herself. And won't drop the mask until feeling assured of Clay's dependence. So he'll continue to protect that anonymity."

  Mendenhall told her that he would get on the phone with someone at Arizona Associated Labs, see if they could shed any light on this study. Told her she had done the proper thing in phoning him instead of routing a call directly to AAL. He knew how to bureaucratically finesse his way around far better than she.

  She thought he was about to say goodbye when he said, "You sound tired, Adrienne. You sound exhausted." His voice in her ear like a nagging conscience that hadn't quite gotten it right.

  "No I don't, I sound drained. That's what you hear. There's a difference."

  "Hmmm." She could almost hear him frowning into the phone, closed-mouthed, his droopy moustache twitching. "Is there anything you need to talk about, unload?"

  She nearly laughed, straightening at her desk with her hair tossed back from her forehead, swishing along her shoulders, her head rolling limply back. Was there anything she needed to unload?

  I have broken enough regulations to probably get me barred from practice. A week ago I stood present while a young man nearly liquefied himself and I did nothing to prevent it. I have watched as almost every inner support of my sole patient got torn from beneath him, and for some reason he still trusts that I have his best interests at heart. And I believe that I am ready to accept whatever comes from him next because I feel as if I've been hit and hit and hit again until I just can't be surprised anymore…

  So precisely where would you like to begin?

  "It's just been an intense emotional week for everyone around here, Ferris," she said. "And I'm not going to be home for the holidays. I'll get over it."

  "I'll call back when I have anything for you. And if it's not later today, then, um … merry Christmas."

  "Merry Christmas," she said. Automatic, a parrot's reply, and she hung up.

  She found herself staring across the room to the painting that Clay had given her. Graham's bridge to nowhere, an iron island in the sky for seekers marooned. She could almost hear the turbulent river below; had he meant it to be life itself, amniotic waters become raging eddie
s of confusion? Of course he had — she could see it so clearly now. Graham could view life in no other way. None of them could, try as they might. They all clung valiantly to a precipice, attempting to climb, but the waters rose as inexorable as a tide to sweep them away, one after another.

  She could see it in the way Clay had come to her following Graham's suicide. He had needed their session the way recovering addicts crave methadone. He'd come to her this morning and wrenched his way through news of Erin's departure, and his eyes, she imagined, looked like those of schizophrenics in the glory days of electroshock therapy. A blinding light and a lockjaw taste of metal, a whiff of burnt ozone in the forebrain, then a blank slate with hazy recollections of something wrong, somewhere, with someone. Clay had no fight left, it seemed, merely the capacity for acceptance. He was beaten and she had allowed it to happen.

  Ferris Mendenhall called back after more than three hours, in the middle of the afternoon. Across the city, across the miles separating them, Adrienne imagined millions of people succumbing to the sloppy temptations of office parties. Would that she had no more worries than making a guileless fool out of herself. But no, no harmless sin for us, we guardians of the mind.

  "I found out what the Cassandra Study is," Mendenhall said with slow contemplation. "When you were doing your cramming on genetics, and the double-Y … well, do I need to fill you in on the study that was run out of the Boston Hospital for Women between 1968 and 1975?"

  "No," she whispered. "Oh Ferris. They're not doing it again, are they?"

  "Yes and no."

  Boston again. What was it with that city? The study to which he referred had been the project of a Harvard child psychologist and a pediatrician. They had karyotyped newborn boys in the maternity ward of the Boston Hospital for Women; those found to have an XYY genotype had been marked for systematic tracking, for years. Each boy's behavioral development was to be recorded by home visits, schoolteacher questionnaires, periodic psychological tests; no abnormality would remain undetected. They proposed what was termed anticipatory guidance: counseling to help families cope with whatever problematic behavior might arise.