Brain Child

by Andrew Neiderman

  Every few days Dorothy Wilson would attempt to revive herself. She would get up in the morning determined to “clean up” and “get back into the swing of things.” She’d start to brush her hair but soon become discouraged with the knots in the strands. When she came downstairs, she would inform Lois of her plans to get her hair done, a wash and trim. Lois would nod and listen while she prepared her father’s breakfast. Billy would go up with it while Dorothy ranted on about what had to be done to get the house back in shape.

  “I think it stinks in here; I think we have odors. Your animals are messing in the house.”

  “No, Mother. I’m very careful about that. None of my lab animals are loose,”

  “I think we’ve got to air out your father’s room today.”

  “I did that yesterday, but if you think we should do it again, we can.”

  “Well, if you did it only yesterday …”

  “Hungry?”

  “Yes, I’m starved.”

  “I made batter for blueberry pancakes. Billy loves them.”

  “That’s good,” Dorothy would say and grow silent. She’d sit in a daze and wait as Lois worked. “I’m gaining weight,” she’d conclude. “I’m losing my shape. Aren’t I?”

  “Go on a diet.”

  “I need exercise. Maybe I’ll go for a walk. I might even walk to town.”

  “Good. I think you should.”

  Lois would put the pancakes on her plate. Dorothy would cut lethargically, nibble on a small piece or two, and then finish her coffee.

  “I don’t know why I’m so tired all the time.”

  “You need vitamins. Everyone needs some vitamins. Maybe you’re anemic.”

  “Your father always tells me that.”

  Lois would put an iron tablet on Dorothy’s plate. After a moment or two, she would take it.

  “I think I’m too tired to go for so long a walk today. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “All right, just rest up today.”

  “Yes. Tell your father I’m resting today. I … I don’t feel up to spending time with him.”

  “It’s OK. He watches television and I’m taking care of his needs.”

  “I know you are, Lois. I don’t know why I feel so tired all of a sudden. I felt so energetic when I got up.”

  “Maybe you’re coming down with a summer cold. Be careful. I’ll make you some tea with booze later. You like that and you always say it’s good for a cold.”

  “Yes.” Her face would brighten some. After a little while, she would go back upstairs to her room.

  Sometimes she would meet Billy in the hall or on the stairs and pet his hair or straighten his shirt. He would wait obediently as she handled him, but he did little more than tolerate her. She was growing more and more distasteful to him—looking the way she looked, smelling the way she smelled. Even the sound of her voice had changed. It was always high-pitched, as though she were nearly hysterical. And she always tilted her head to one side and looked as though she were gazing through him instead of at him. He was always relieved when she would finally stop and walk back up to her room.

  “Why is Mommy acting so funny all the time now?” he’d ask.

  “I told you before. She’s tired and depressed about Daddy.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Sad, very sad.”

  “I’m sad, but I don’t look like that.”

  “She’s a woman; that’s the way some women react. Forget about it. She’ll get better.”

  “I thought you were going to help her, Lois.”

  “I am helping her.”

  “Daddy was crying just now, Lois.”

  “Crying?” She became more attentive. “What do you mean, crying?”

  “I gave him his breakfast drink, just like you showed me to, and he kept blinking no, no, so I stopped.”

  “What?”

  “I guess he just didn’t want it today.”

  “Damn.”

  “Then he started crying. Tears came down his face. You better go see.”

  “I swear, everyone’s falling apart in this place. When I tell you to do something, do it.”

  “But …”

  “All right. Go clean out the rat cages. I’ll take care of it.”

  He left quickly, eager for the opportunity to escape her wrath.

  That’s wrong, Lois thought, considering what Billy had just described to her. He shouldn’t reject what I give him when I give it to him. I don’t want to include any narcotics just yet, because addiction would cloud my experiment in obedience. Getting him to behave in a certain manner through physiological dependence like a drug craving is not a pure exercise in behavioral modification to me, she mused. I’ll have to consider a proper punishment for disobedience—something that won’t be that harmful but will instill fear. What could it be?

  She thought about a lesson Professor McShane had once taught. He had used Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Pit and the Pendulum” as an illustration.

  “What frightens and terrifies us the most—the threat of something terrible or something terrible?” He waited, that wry smile on his face. “I see I have many of you confused—even Miss Wilson.”

  “I’m not sure I understand your question.”

  “Let me simplify it. Everyone here, including myself, has some particular fear. Some of you might hate being in the dark or being closed in; many detest spiders and snakes. All of us have a fear more terrible than any other. How we came upon this fear isn’t the question right now. Accept the fact that we all have at least one.”

  “Agreed,” Lois said. She was the only one who spoke, and once again McShane felt as though he were alone with her rather than in a classroom with twenty other students.

  “Now, Edgar Allan Poe used this simple truth to develop a terrifying mechanism: the pit in his short story The Pit and the Pendulum.’ A prisoner, you’ll recall, is placed in a cell that has a pit in the center, and all that he is told is that something terrible, the thing he hates the most, is at the bottom of that pit. He cowers in fear as the walls of the cell close in on him, pushing him closer to the pit. But that’s not what makes Poe a genius. By not telling his character what’s in the pit, he doesn’t tell us; and what does each and every one of us do?”

  “We imagine our own worst terror at the bottom of the pit,” Lois said.

  “Exactly. Mr. Poe has forced you to add the most important ingredient of horror—your own worst fear. And so, this is a case where the threat is worse than the thing itself. Understand?”

  She did, and she was happy she remembered it now. She would bring up a wooden box—something she would make very simply and quickly. She would paint it black for the obvious color connotation and psychological effects. And she would tell him:

  “Now, Daddy, when I send something up for you to eat, you must eat it then. You must do what I tell you to do. If you don’t, I’m going to place your hand—the one that you can move a little—into this box. It won’t be pleasant, but you will learn not to disobey,” she would say.

  And she would leave the box there in the room, place it in a spot where he could see it easily, all the time.

  That would be enough. She felt confident of that.

  In the beginning it was as though he had been trapped in a dream. He was a man in the middle of waking up when suddenly the process had stopped. His mind sent continuous commands to all parts of his body, but nearly all of those commands were turned back. It was a mutiny. His first reaction was to be angry with himself. The most important part of him was being let down by all the lesser parts. Reports of failure were coming in from everywhere along his spinal column. As all the avenues and roadways became blocked he found he was shut up within himself. His anger turned quickly into terror.

  In his mind he could hear himself screaming, but all he could actually hear was an indistinct guttural noise that disgusted him. He hated making it. Because he could see and hear without being heard, he often experienced the strange sensation tha
t he was looking into the world. It was as though he were another person inside his shell of a body. He longed to break out and be free again.

  Gradually, as time passed, the two “hims” merged and he evolved into a new creature. He called himself a man-thing. He could dream, think, imagine, just as he had always been able to do. Now, however, he could go little beyond that.

  He had developed an odd relationship with his bed. Lately he had begun to feel he was an extension of it, or it was an extension of him. When he was taken out of the bed, for whatever reason, he became disoriented and weightless, like an astronaut on a space walk. He didn’t like it. Most of the time, he would keep his eyes closed.

  Sometimes, when he fell into a deep sleep, he would dream he was back in the store. He would see himself working, hear his conversations with customers, and even experience the fatigue he would have from standing on his feet all day. The names of various medicines would pass through his mind on a ticker tape, like stock quotations.

  When he awoke from such a sleep and such a dream, he would consider the real world his dream, his nightmare. How often had he thought about being in this condition; how often had he envisioned it. Perhaps that was all this was now. Soon he would awake and be back in the store.

  Considering his confusion, he remembered the Japanese print he had on the back wall by the prescription counter: a picture of a man asleep under a tree with the outline of a butterfly superimposed over the man’s face. Under it was the caption: “I was a man dreaming I was a butterfly. Or was I a butterfly dreaming I was a man?”

  After they brought him home, there was never any question. His first confrontation with Lois ended that. She was cold reality, as tangible as anything solid in the physical world. He searched her eyes for signs of compassion and sympathy but found only her analytical, penetrating gaze. She wore the faces of doctors probing, searching, testing. He felt naked, but even more, he felt microscopic, under glass. The nucleus of each and every cell in his body was exposed. He could cover nothing. She would be at his amino acids; she would scratch his bones and pluck his tendons.

  Oh, God, he thought. How he wanted to touch his wife again, hear soft music, move in candlelight, laugh at small things, lift a fallen autumn leaf and crush it into yellow-gold particles. How he longed to have the tips of his fingers touch the insides of his palms.

  He made all sorts of promises, took oaths, concocted prayers. Nothing worked. The frustration continued to build inside him. He could feel it like a monstrous pocket of gas turning and bouncing as it grew. It was pressing everywhere. He tried opening his mouth as wide as possible in the hope that it would simply seep out and escape into the atmosphere. It didn’t. Instead, like broken kite cord, he continued his limp fall to the earth.

  And then she came to tell him that she would help him. She could do what others couldn’t because she had a unique vision. Ever since she was a little girl, she had been able to see things more clearly than most adults. It was as though people were born with different frequencies and she was more in tune with the forces of life and death. Unable to do anything but listen to her, he felt as though he were slipping under her spell. She was convincing because she herself was so convinced.

  Medicated, put through therapy, diagnosed and prognosed, probed and poked, X-rayed and injected, plugged into IVs, his blood sipped out in little drinks and carried off in cork-topped vials, he remained … a prisoner of himself. Nothing they had done or could do would change it.

  She came to his bed in the night, the small lamp on the table throwing an indistinct yellowish glow over her face, making her eyes sparkle with catlike movements, and held his movable fingers. She touched him to force an intense concentration and maintain a tighter communication. He listened as she spoke about his body, calling it a disobedient animal. Seeing it now as something apart from himself, he was ready to accept her characterization.

  “Yes, it has rebelled, refused direction; but we can bring it back, condition it and teach it until it is obedient again.” He thought she was whispering, but he wasn’t sure whether she was or it was just something else about his body that was failing him. Perhaps his body didn’t want to listen. What an idea! What thoughts she was putting into his head!

  “I know we can do it, Daddy. Everything I’ve learned and seen tells me we can do it. If you’ll only cooperate. I’ll have to make you cooperate. It’ll be for your own good. In the end, you’ll thank me.

  “Mother mustn’t know all of it; she would never understand. She couldn’t understand, but don’t worry. Everything will be under control. Mother and Billy will not interfere. Billy will help and Mother will be occupied.

  “You must trust me. No matter what, you must always trust me.”

  He could do little else. When she set up the Skinner box bar, he tried to resist but was quickly defeated. He told himself that although he would do what she wanted, he wouldn’t do it for the reasons she wanted. For a while he could live with that difference. Soon, that diminished too.

  In the beginning, he had great confidence in Dorothy. After all, wasn’t she the one who had continually warned him about Lois? Didn’t she see things he had failed to see? Surely that vision wouldn’t fail her now. Whenever she came into his room, he tried telling her. He looked at the bar and blinked his no. Each time she left, he felt sure she had gone down to chastise Lois and end the experiments. But that wasn’t happening.

  And then he began to notice a change in Dorothy. At first it was just a physical degeneration, but he thought that was somewhat understandable. She wasn’t going out very much; she wasn’t working in the store as much. He was surprised to see her face get softer, rounder. He couldn’t believe she was actually putting on weight, getting chunky and permitting her hips to expand. That wasn’t like his Dorothy, the woman who paid such religious attention to her figure and her exercises. He tried desperately to communicate his confusion, but she grew farther and farther away from him.

  He panicked when he first recognized the empty-eyed look of someone into drugs. One day her face simply turned into a mask. It was as though she had eyes behind those eyes, lips under those lips. She avoided looking at him. Whenever she came into his room—and that was growing more and more infrequent—she looked at the walls and the floor when she spoke. It was obvious that she couldn’t face him, either because she couldn’t stand looking at him in his condition any longer, or because she didn’t want him to see her condition. He wasn’t sure which. Perhaps it was a combination of both.

  As time passed she did less and less for him and Lois did more and more. Despite his reluctance, he became totally dependent on his daughter, to the extent that he actually looked forward to her visits, even when those visits were filled with what he considered insane ramblings. He didn’t believe it was possible for him to feel fear any longer. What could happen to him that hadn’t already?

  But when she brought the black box in and threatened him with it, he experienced an all-encompassing chill. It moved over his body like a paper-thin blanket of ice. Although he didn’t actually move, he felt himself shudder. When he looked at Lois’s face, he believed he had reason to know fear again.

  One night Billy came to him. He had little hope that his small son could do anything to change things. He didn’t make any real effort to communicate a serious thought. Once he had cried in Billy’s presence, but all that had done was frighten the child. Now he saw him only as a pawn of Lois’s, carrying out her orders, performing whatever duties she assigned him.

  Still, he looked innocent and gentle. His round cherub face had tanned under the summer sun. With his small facial features and tiny fingers, he was doll-like. Gregory longed to hold him again or wrestle with him on the living-room floor.

  Now the boy sat at the foot of his bed and bit his lower lip. He traced the lines on Gregory’s blanket with his right forefinger. Gregory waited, his stare intent.

  “Did you know that Mommy hid Mick and Nick one day?”

  Gregory blinked t
wice.

  “Right here in this closet.” Billy pointed. “Lois and I came up and we found them behind a carton. Lois told me why she did it,” he added, looking down. “I took them back. I got them hid in my room. You want me to tell you where?”

  Gregory blinked once.

  “Well, Lois said Mommy would probably hide them again, so I—”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Billy jumped off the bed instantly. Lois was standing in the doorway. She was dressed in her nightgown and she was barefoot, which explained why Billy hadn’t heard her coming up the stairs.

  “Nothing.”

  “Why are you up here?”

  “You know Daddy never knew Mommy took Mick and Nick?”

  Lois looked at Gregory for a moment. He tried not to blink. Then she came farther into the room and put her hand on Billy’s shoulder.

  “Don’t believe that,” she said. “Mommy never does anything without telling him.”

  Billy spun around and looked at Gregory. He blinked his no. Without taking his eyes off his father, Billy spoke.

  “You mean, Daddy would lie too? Lie now?”

  “Of course. He’s just being a good adult. Don’t mind that.”

  Billy stared at his father a moment more and then turned around quickly and ran out of the room. She heard him pounding his way down the stairs.

  “Don’t let that bother you, Dad. Children … fantasize.”

  She shut off the light and left him in darkness. Oh, God, he thought, she’s doing something to all of us. The echo of his scream traveled down the corridors of his mind.

  15

  Professor McShane rehearsed his opening lines as he turned down Turtle Creek Road. Although what he was doing seemed harmless enough on the surface, he felt nervous and insecure. Most ordinary people would be unable to read anything into his behavior. They wouldn’t have the insight or the perception that would lead them into suspicions. He had been passing by, on his way to Middle town, and had decided he would drop off the articles and the book because he was sure she would appreciate them. That was his story.