The Speed of Dark (30 page)

door, carry my laundry through,relock the door. It is important to lock the door every time.

As usual on Friday evening, the apartment building is quiet. I can hear the television in someone’s apartment as I go down the stairs. The hall outside the laundry room looks the same as usual. I do not see anyone looking in from outside. I am early this week, and no one else is in the laundry room. I put the dark clothes in the right-hand washing machine and the light clothes in the one next to them. When no one is here to watch me, I can put the money in both boxes and start both machines at the same time. I have to stretch my arms to do it, but it sounds better that way.

I have brought Cego and Clinton, and I sit in one of the plastic chairs by the folding table. I would like to take it out into the hall, but there is a sign that says: RESIDENTS ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN TO

TAKE CHAIRS OUT OF LAUNDRY AREA. I do not like this chair—it is a strange ugly shade of blue-green—but when I am sitting in it I do not have to see it. It still feels bad, but it is better than no chair.

I have read eight pages when old Miss Kimberly comes in with her laundry. I do not look up. I do not want to talk. I will say hello if she speaks to me.

“Hello, Lou,” she says. “Reading?”

“Hello,” I say. I do not answer the question, because she can see that I am reading.

“What’s that?” she says, coming closer. I close the book with my finger in my place, so that she can see the cover.

“My, my,” she says. “That’s a thick book. I didn’t know you liked to read, Lou.”

I do not understand the rules about interrupting. It is always impolite for me to interrupt other people, but other people do not seem to think it is impolite for them to interrupt me in circumstances when I should not interrupt them.

“Yes, sometimes,” I say. I do not look up from the book because I hope she will understand that I want to read.

“Are you upset with me about something?” she asks.

I am upset now because she will not let me read in peace, but she is an older woman and it would not be polite to say so.

“Usually you’re friendly, but you brought in that big fat book; you can’t really be reading it—”

“I am,” I say, stung. “I borrowed it from a friend Wednesday night.”

“But it’s—it looks like a very difficult book,” she says. “Are you really understandingit?”

She is like Dr. Fornum ; she does not think I can really do much.

“Yes,” I say. “I do understand it. I am reading about how the visual processing parts of the brain integrate intermittent input, as on a TV monitor, to create a stable image.”

“Intermittent input?” she says. “You mean when it flickers?”

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“In a way,” I say. “Researchers have identified the area of the brain where the flickering images are made smooth.”

“Well, I don’t see the practical use of it,” she says. She takes her clothes out of the basket and begins stuffing them into a machine. “I’m quite happy to let my insides work without watching them while they do it.” She measures out detergent, pours it in, inserts the money, and pauses before pushing START.

“Lou, I don’t think it’s healthy, too much concern with how the brain works. People can go crazy that way, you know.”

I did not know. It never occurred to me that knowing too much about the way my brain worked could make me insane. I do not think that is a true statement. She pushes the button and the water whooshes into that machine. She comes over to the folding table.

“Everybody knows psychiatrists’ and psychologists’ children are crazier than average,” she says. “Back in the twentieth century, there was a famous psychiatrist who put his own child in a box and kept it there and it went crazy.”

I know that is not true. I do not think she will believe me if I tell her it is not true. I do not want to explain anything, so I open the book again. She makes a sharp blowing sound and I hear her shoes click on the floor as she walks away.

When I was in school, they taught us that the brain is like a computer but not so efficient. Computers do not make mistakes if they are correctly built and programmed, but brains do. From this I got the idea that any brain—even a normal brain, let alone mine—was an inferior sort of computer.

This book makes it clear that brains are a lot more complex than any computer and that my brain
is
normal—that it does function exactly like the normal human brain—in many ways. My color vision is normal. My visual acuity is normal. What is not normal? Only the slightest things… I think.

I wish I had my medical records from childhood. I do not know if they did all the tests on me that this book discusses. I do not know if they tested the transmission speed of my sensory neurons, for instance.

I remember that my mother had a big accordion file, green on the outside and blue on the inside, stuffed with papers. I don’t remember seeing it after my parents died, when I packed up things from their house.

Maybe my mother threw it away when I was grown up and living on my own. I know the name of the medical center my parents took me to, but I do not know if they would help me, if they even keep records of children who are now grown.

The book talks about a variation in the ability to capture brief transitory stimuli. I think back to the computer games that helped me hear and then learn to say consonants like
p
and
t
and
d
, especially at the ends of words. There were eye exercises, too, but I was so little that I don’t remember much of them.

I look at the paired faces in the illustration, which test discrimination of facial features by either placement or type. All the faces look much the same to me; I can just tell—with the prompting of the text labels—that these two have the same eyes, nose, and mouth, but one has them stretched out, farther from the other features. If they were moving, as on a real person’s face, I would never notice.

Supposedly this means something wrong with a specific part of the brain involved in facial recognition.

Do normal people really perform all these tasks? If so, it’s no wonder they can recognize one another so easily, at such distances, in different clothes.

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WE DO NOT HAVE A COMPANY MEETING THIS SATURDAY. I GO
to the Center, but the assigned counselor is out sick. I look at the number for Legal Aid posted on the bulletin board and memorize it. I do not want to call it by myself. I do not know what the others think. After a few minutes, I go home again and continue reading the book, but I do take the time to clean my apartment and my car to make up for last week. I decide to throw away the old fleece seat cover, because I can still feel occasional pricks from glass fragments, and buy a new one. The new one has a strong leathery smell and feels softer than the old one. On Sunday I go to the early service at church, so that I have more time to read.

Monday a memo arrives for all of us, giving the dates and times of preliminary tests.PET scan. MRIscan

. Complete physical.Psychological interview.Psychological testing. The memo says we can take time off from work for these tests without penalty. I am relieved; I would not want to make up all the hours these tests will take up. The first test is Monday afternoon, a physical exam. We all go over to the clinic. I do not like it when strangers touch me, but I know how to behave in a clinic. The needle to draw blood doesn’t really hurt, but I do not understand what my blood and urine have to do with how my brain functions. No one even tries to explain.

On Tuesday, I have a baseline CT scan. The technician keeps telling me it won’t hurt and not to be frightened when the machine moves me into the narrow chamber. I am not frightened. I am not claustrophobic.

After work, I need to go grocery shopping because last Tuesday I met with the others in our group instead. I am supposed to be careful about Don, but I do not think he is really going to hurt me, anyway.

He is my friend. By now he is probably sorry for what he did… if he is the one who did those things.

Besides, it is my day for shopping. I look around the parking lot when I leave and do not see anyone I should not see. The guards at the campus gates would keep out intruders.

At the store, I park as near to one of the lights as I can, in case it is dark when I come out. It is a lucky space, a prime: eleven out from the end of the row. The store is not too busy tonight, so I have time to get everything on my list. Even though I do not have a written list, I know what I need, and I do not have to double back anywhere to find something I forgot. I have too much for one of the express lanes, almost a full basket, so I pick the shortest regular lane.

When I come out it is darker already but not really dark. The air is cool, even above the parking lot pavement. I push the basket along, listening to the rattling rhythm made by the one wheel that only touches the pavement now and then. It is almost like jazz, but less predictable. When I get to the car, I unlock the door and start putting the grocery sacks in carefully. Heavy things like laundry detergent and juice cans on the floor where they cannot fall off and crush something. Bread and eggs on the backseat.

Behind me, the cart suddenly rattles; I turn and do not recognize the face of the man in the dark jacket.

Not at first, anyway, and then I realize it is Don.

“It’sall your fault. It’s your fault Tom kicked me out,” he says. His face is all bunched up, the muscles sticking out in knots. His eyes look scary; because I do not want to see them I look at other parts of his face. “It’s your fault Marjory told me to go away. It’s sick, the way women fall for that disability stuff.

You probably have dozens of ’em, perfectly normal women all falling for that helpless act you do.” His voice goes high and squeaky and I can tell he is quoting someone or pretending to.“ ‘Poor Lou, he can’t help it,’ and, ‘Poor Lou, he needs me.’ ” Now his voice is lower again. “Your kind doesn’t need normal women,” he says. “Freaks should mate with freaks, if they have to mate at all. The very thought of you taking out your—being that way—with a normal woman just makes me puke. It’s disgusting.”

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I cannot say anything. I think I should be frightened, but what I feel is not fear but sadness, sadness so great it is like a heavy weight all over me, dark and formless. Don is normal. He could have been—could have done—so much, so easily. Why did he give it up to be this way?

“I wrote it all down,” he says. “I can’t take care ofall your sort, but they’ll know why I did this when they read it.”

“It is not my fault,” I say.

“The hell it’s not,” he says. He moves closer. His sweat has an odd smell. I do not know what it is, but I think he ate or drank something that gave it that smell. The collar on his shirt is crooked. I glance down.

His shoes are scuffed; the lace of one is loose. Good grooming is important. It makes a good impression.

Right now Don is not making a good impression, but no one seems to be noticing. From the corner of my eye I see other people walking to their cars, walking to the store, ignoring us. “You’re a
freak
, Lou—you understand what I’m saying? You’re a freak and you belong in a zoo.”

I know that Don is not making sense and that what he says is objectively not fact, but I feel bruised anyway by the force of his dislike of me. I feel stupid, too, that I did not recognize this in him earlier. He was my friend; he smiled at me; he tried to help me. How could I know?

He takes his right hand out of his pocket, and I see the black circle of a weapon pointing at me. The outside of the barrel gleams a little in the light, but the inside is dark as space. The dark rushes toward me.

“All that social-support crap—hell, if it weren’t for you and your kind, the rest of the world wouldn’t be sliding into another depression. I’d have the career I should have, not this lousy dead-end job I’m stuck in.”

I do not know what kind of work Don does. I should know. I do not think what is happening with money is my fault. I do not think he would have the career he wants if I were dead. Employers choose people who have good grooming and good manners, people who work hard and get along with others.

Don is dirty and messy; he is rude and he does not work hard.

He moves suddenly, his arm with the weapon jerking toward me. “Get in the car,” he says, but I am already moving. His pattern is simple, easy to recognize, and he is not as fast or as strong as he thinks.

My hand catches his wrist as it moves forward, parries it to the side. The noise it makes is not much like the noise of weapons on television. It is louder and uglier; it echoes off the front of the store. I do not have a blade, but my other hand strikes in the middle of his body. He folds around the blow; bad-smelling breath gusts out of him.

“Hey!” someone yells. “Police!” someone else yells. I hear screams. People appear from nowhere in a lump and land on Don. I stagger and almost fall as people bump into me; someone grabs my arms and whirls me around, pushing me against the side of the car.

“Let him go,” another voice says. “He’s the victim.” It is Mr. Stacy. I do not know what he is doing here. He scowls at me. “Mr. Arrendale , didn’t we tell you to be careful? Why didn’t you go straight home from work? If Dan hadn’t told us we should keep an eye on you—”

“I… thought… I was careful,” I say. It is hard to talk with all the noise around me. “But I needed groceries; it is my day to get groceries.” Only then do I remember that Don knew it was my day to get
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groceries, that I had seen him here before on a Tuesday.

“You’re damned lucky,” Mr. Stacy says.

Don is facedown on the ground, with two men kneeling on him; they have pulled his arms back and are putting on restraints. It takes longer and looks messier than it does on the news. Don is making a strange noise; it sounds like crying. When they pull him up, he is crying. Tears are running down his face, making streaks in the dirt. I am sorry. It would feel very bad to be crying in front of people like that.

“You bastard!” he says to me when he sees me. “You set me up.”