Flowers for Algernon

by Daniel Keyes

  "Charlie!" She said it the same way my mother had, gasping. And she looked the way my mother used to look—thin, sharp features, birdlike, pretty. "Charlie! My God, what a shock! You might have gotten in touch and warned me. You should have called. I don't know what to say..." She looked at my mother, sitting on the floor near the sink. "Is she all right? You didn't shock her or anything..."

  "She came out of it for a while. We had a little talk."

  "I'm glad. She doesn't remember much these days. It's old age—senility. Dr. Portman wants me to put her into a nursing home, but I can't do it. I can't stand to think of her in one of those institutions." She opened the bedroom door to let the dog out, and when he jumped and whined joyously, she picked him up and hugged him. "I just can't do that to my own mother." Then she smiled at me uncertainly. "Well, what a surprise. I never dreamed. Let me look at you. I never would have recognized you. I'd have passed you by in the street. So different." She sighed. "I'm glad to see you, Charlie."

  "Are you? I didn't think you'd want to see me again."

  "Oh, Charlie!" She took my hands in hers. "Don't say that. I am glad to see you. I've been expecting you. I didn't know when, but I knew someday you'd come back. Ever since I read that you had run away in Chicago." She pulled back to look up at me. "You don't know how I've thought about you and wondered where you were and what you were doing. Until that professor came here last—when was it? last March? just seven months ago?—I had no idea you were still alive. She told me you died in Warren. I believed it all these years. When they told me you were alive and they needed you for the experiment, I didn't know what to do. Professor ... Nemur?—is that his name?—wouldn't let me see you. He was afraid to upset you before the operation. But when I saw in the papers that it worked and you had become a genius—oh, my!—you don't know what it felt like to read about that.

  "I told all the people in my office, and the girls at my bridge club. I showed them your picture in the paper, and I told them you'd be coming back here to see us one day. And you have. You really have. You didn't forget us."

  She hugged me again. "Oh, Charlie. Charlie ... it's so wonderful to find all of a sudden I've got a big brother. You have no idea. Sit down—let me make you something to eat. You've got to tell me all about it and what your plans are. don't know where to start asking questions. I must sound ridiculous—like a girl who has just found out her brother is a hero, or a movie star, or something."

  I was confused. I had not expected a greeting like this from Norma. It had never occurred to me that all these years alone with my mother might change her. And yet it was inevitable. She was no longer the spoiled brat of my memories. She had grown up, had become warm and sympathetic and affectionate.

  We talked. Ironic to sit there with my sister, the two of us talking about my mother—right there in the room with us—as if she wasn't there. Whenever Norma would refer to their life together, I'd look to see if Rose was listening, but she was deep in her own world, as if she didn't understand our language, as if none of it concerned her any more. She drifted around the kitchen like a ghost, picking things up, putting things away, without ever getting in the way. It was frightening.

  I watched Norma feed her dog. "So you finally got him. Nappie—short for Napoleon, isn't it?"

  She straightened up and frowned. "How did you know?"

  I explained about my memory: the time she had brought home her test paper hoping to get the dog, and how Matt had forbidden it. As I told it, the frown became deeper.

  "I don't remember any of it. Oh, Charlie, was I so mean to you?"

  "There's one memory I'm curious about. I'm not really sure if it's a memory, or a dream, or if I just made it all up. It was the last time we played together as friends. We were in the basement, and we were playing a game with the lamp shades on our heads, pretending we were Chinese coolies—jumping up and down on an old mattress. You were seven or eight, I think, and I was about thirteen. And, as I recall, you bounced off the mattress and hit your head against the wall. It wasn't very hard—just a bump—but Mom and Dad came running down because you were screaming, and you said I was trying to kill you.

  "She blamed Matt for not watching me, for leaving us alone together, and she beat me with a strap until I was nearly unconscious. Do you remember it? Did it really happen that way?"

  Norma was fascinated by my description of the memory, as if it awakened sleeping images. "It's all so vague. You know, I thought that was my dream. I remember us wearing the lampshades, and jumping up and down on the mattresses." She stared out of the window. "I hated you because they fussed over you all the time. They never spanked you for not doing your homework right, or for not bringing home the best marks. You skipped classes most of the time and played games, and I had to go to the hard classes in school. Oh, how I hated you. In school the other children scribbled pictures on the blackboard, a boy with a duncecap on his head, and they wrote Norma's Brother under it. And they scribbled things on the sidewalk in the schoolyard—Morons Sister and Dummy Gordon Family. And then one day when I wasn't invited to Emily Raskin's birthday party, I knew it was because of you. And when we were playing there in the basement with those lampshades on our heads, I had to get even." She started to cry. "So I lied and said you hurt me. Oh, Charlie, what a fool I was—what a spoiled brat. I'm so ashamed—"

  "Don't blame yourself. It must have been hard to face the other kids. For me, this kitchen was my world—and that room there. The rest of it didn't matter as long as this was safe. You had to face the rest of the world."

  "Why did they send you away, Charlie? Why couldn't you have stayed here and lived with us? I always wondered about that. Every time I asked her, she always said it was for your own good."

  "In a way she was right."

  She shook her head. "She sent you away because of me, didn't she? Oh, Charlie, why did it have to be? Why did all this happen to us?"

  I didn't know what to tell her. I wished I could say that like the House of Atreus or Cadmus we were suffering for the sins of our forefathers, or fulfilling an ancient Greek oracle. But I had no answers for her, or for myself.

  "It's past," I said. "I'm glad I met you again. It makes it a little easier."

  She grabbed my arm suddenly. "Charlie, you don't know what I've been through all these years with her. The apartment, this street, my job. It's all been a nightmare, coming home each day, wondering if she's still here, if she's harmed herself, guilty for thinking about things like that."

  I stood up and let her rest against my shoulder, and she wept. "Oh, Charlie. I'm glad you're back now. We've needed someone. I'm so tired.... "

  I had dreamed of a time like this, but now that it was here, what good was it? I couldn't tell her what was going to happen to me. And yet, could I accept her affection on false pretenses? Why kid myself? If I had still been the old, feeble-minded, dependent Charlie, she wouldn't have spoken to me the same way. So what right did I have to it now? My mask would soon be ripped away.

  "Don't cry, Norma. Everything will work out all right." I heard myself speaking in reassuring platitudes. "I'll try to take care of you both. I have a little money saved, and with what the Foundation has been paying me, I'll be able to send you some money regularly—for a while anyway."

  "But you're not going away! You've got to stay with us now—"

  "I've got to do some traveling, some research, make a few speeches, but I'll try to come back to visit you. Take care of her. She's been through a lot. I'll help you for as long as I can."

  "Charlie! No, don't go!" She clung to me. "I'm frightened!"

  The role I had always wanted to play—the big brother.

  At that moment, I sensed that Rose, who had been sitting in the corner quietly, was staring at us. Something in her face had changed. Her eyes were wide, and she leaned forward on the edge of her seat. All I could think of was a hawk ready to swoop down.

  I pushed Norma away from me, but before I could say anything, Rose was on her feet. She had
taken the kitchen knife from the table and was pointing at me.

  "What are you doing to her? Get away from her! I told you what I'd do to you if I ever caught you touching your sister again! Dirty mind! You don't belong with normal people!"

  We both jumped back, and for some insane reason, I felt guilty, as if I had been caught doing something wrong, and I knew Norma felt the same way. It was as if my mother's accusation had made it true, that we were doing something obscene.

  Norma screamed at her: "Mother! Put down that knife!"

  Seeing Rose standing there with the knife brought back the picture of that night she had forced Matt to take me away. She was reliving that now. I couldn't speak or move. The nausea swept over me, the choking tension, the buzzing in my ears, my stomach knotting and stretching as if it wanted to tear itself out of my body.

  She had a knife, and Alice had a knife, and my father had a knife, and Dr. Strauss had a knife....

  Fortunately, Norma had the presence of mind to take it away from her, but she couldn't erase the fear in Rose's eyes as she screamed at me. "Get him out of here! He's got no right to look at his sister with sex in his mind!"

  Rose screamed and sank back into the chair, weeping.

  I didn't know what to say, and neither did Norma. We were both embarrassed. Now she knew why I had been sent away.

  I wondered if I had ever done anything to justify my mother's fear. There were no such memories, but how could I be sure there weren't horrible thoughts repressed behind the barriers of my tortured conscience? In the sealed-off passageways, beyond blind alleys, that I would never see. Possibly I will never know. Whatever the truth is, I must not hate Rose for protecting Norma. I must understand the way she saw it. Unless I forgive her, I will have nothing.

  Norma was trembling.

  "Take it easy," I said. "She doesn't know what she's doing. It wasn't me she was raving at. It was the old Charlie. She was afraid of what he might do to you. I can't blame her for wanting to protect you. But we don't have to think about it now, because he's gone forever isn't he?"

  She wasn't listening to me. There was a dreamy expression on her face. "I've just had one of those strange experiences where something happens, and you have the feeling you know it's going to happen, as if it all took place before, the exact same way, and you watch it unfold again.... "

  "A very common experience."

  She shook her head. "Just now, when I saw her with that knife, it was like a dream I had a long time ago."

  What was the use of telling her she had undoubtedly been awake that night as a child, and had seen the whole thing from her room—that it had been repressed and twisted until she imagined it as a fantasy. No reason for burdening her with the truth. She would have enough sadness with my mother in the days to come. I would gladly have taken the burden and the pain off her hands, but there was no sense in starting something I couldn't finish. I would have my own suffering to live with. There was no way to stop the sands of knowledge from slipping through the hourglass of my mind.

  "I've got to go now," I said. "Take care of yourself, and of her." I squeezed her hand. As I went out, Napoleon barked at me.

  I held it in for as long as I could, but when I reached the street it was impossible. It's hard to write it down, but people turned to look at me as I walked back to the car, crying like a child. I couldn't help myself, and I didn't care.

  As I walked, the ridiculous words drummed themselves into my head over and over again, rising to the rhythm of a buzzing noise:

  Three blind mice ... three blind mice,

  See how they run! See how they run!

  They all run after the farmer's wife,

  She cut off their tails with a carving knife,

  Did you ever see such a sight in your life,

  As three ... blind ... mice?

  I tried to shut it out of my ears, but I couldn't, and once when I turned to look back at the house and the porch, I saw the face of a boy, staring at me, his cheek pressed against the window pane.

  PROGRESS REPORT 17

  October 3—Downhill. Thoughts of suicide to stop it all now while I am still in control and aware of the world around me. But then I think of Charlie waiting at the window. His life is not mine to throw away. I've just borrowed it for a while, and now I'm being asked to return it.

  I must remember I'm the only person this ever happened to. As long as I can, I've got to keep putting down my thoughts and feelings. These progress reports are Charlie Gordon's contribution to mankind.

  I have become edgy and irritable. Having fights with people in the building about playing the hi-fi set late at night. I've been doing that a lot since I've stopped playing the piano. It isn't right to keep it going all hours, but I do it to keep myself awake. I know I should sleep, but I begrudge every second of waking time. It's not just because of the nightmares; it's because I'm afraid of letting go.

  I tell myself there'll be time enough to sleep later, when it's dark.

  Mr. Vernor in the apartment below never used to complain, but now he's always banging on the pipes or on the ceiling of his apartment so that I hear the pounding beneath my feet. I ignored it at first, but last night he came up in his bathrobe. We quarreled, and I slammed the door in his face. An hour later he was back with a policeman who told me I couldn't play records that loudly at 4 A.M. The smile on Vernor's face so enraged me that it was all I could do to keep from hitting him. When they left I smashed all the records and the machine. I've been kidding myself anyway. I don't really like that kind of music any more.

  October 4—Strangest therapy session I ever had. Strauss was upset. It was something he hadn't expected either.

  What happened—I don't dare call it a memory—was a psychic experience or a hallucination. I won't attempt to explain or interpret it, but will only record what happened.

  I was touchy when I came into his office, but he pretended not to notice. I lay down on the couch immediately, and he, as usual, took his seat to one side and a little behind me—just out of sight—and waited for me to begin the ritual of pouring out all the accumulated poisons of the mind.

  I peered back at him over my head. He looked tired, and flabby, and somehow he reminded me of Matt sitting on his barber's chair waiting for customers. I told Strauss of the association and he nodded and waited.

  "Are you waiting for customers?" I asked. "You ought to have this couch designed like a barber's chair. Then when you want free association, you could stretch your patient out the way the barber does to lather up his customer, and when the fifty minutes are up, you could tilt the chair forward again and hand him a mirror so he can see what he looks like on the outside after you've shaved his ego."

  He said nothing, and while I felt ashamed at the way I was abusing him, I couldn't stop. "Then your patient could come in at each session and say, 'A little off the top of my anxiety, please,' or 'Don't trim the super-ego too close, if you don't mind,' or he might even come in for an egg shampoo—I mean, ego shampoo. Aha! Did you notice that slip of the tongue, doctor? Make a note of it. I said I wanted an egg shampoo instead of an ego shampoo. Egg ... ego... close, aren't they? Does that mean I want to be washed clean of my sins? Reborn? Is it baptism symbolism? Or are we shaving too close? Does an idiot have an id?"

  I waited for a reaction, but he just shifted in his chair.

  "Are you awake?" I asked.

  "I'm listening, Charlie."

  "Only listening? Don't you ever get angry?"

  "Why do you want me to be angry with you?"

  I sighed. "Stolid Strauss—unmovable. I'll tell you something. I'm sick and tired of coming here. What's the sense of therapy any more? You know as well as I do what's going to happen."

  "But I think you don't want to stop," he said. "You want to go on with it, don't you?"

  "It's stupid. A waste of my time and yours."

  I lay there in the dim light and stared at the pattern of squares on the ceiling ... noise-absorbing tiles with thousands of tiny hol
es soaking up every word. Sound buried alive in little holes in the ceiling.

  I found myself becoming lightheaded. My mind was a blank, and that was unusual because during therapy sessions I always had a great deal of material to bring out and talk about. Dreams ... memories ... associations ... problems ... But now I felt isolated and empty.

  Only Stolid Strauss breathing behind me.

  "I feel strange," I said.

  "You want to talk about it?"

  Oh, how brilliant, how subtle he was! What the hell was I doing there anyway, having my associations absorbed by little holes in the ceiling and big holes in my therapist?

  "I don't know if I want to talk about it," I said. "I feel unusually hostile toward you today." And then I told him what I had been thinking.

  Without seeing him, I could tell he was nodding to himself.

  "It's hard to explain," I said. "A feeling I've had once or twice before, just before I fainted. A lightheadedness ... everything intense ... but my body feels cold and numb..."

  "Go on." His voice had an edge of excitement. "What else?"

  "I can't feel my body any more. I'm numb. I have the feeling that Charlie is close by. My eyes are open—I'm sure of that—are they?"

  "Yes, wide open."

  "And yet I see a blue-white glow from the walls and the ceiling gathering into a shimmering ball. Now it's suspended in midair. Light ... forcing itself into my eyes ... and my brain ... Everything in the room is aglow ... I have the feeling of floating ... or rather expanding up and out... and yet without looking down I know my body is still here on the couch.... "

  Is this a hallucination?

  "Charlie, are you all right?"

  Or the things described by the mystics?

  I hear his voice but I don't want to answer him. It annoys me that he is there. I've got to ignore him. Be passive and let this—whatever it is—fill me with the light and absorb me into itself.