And then they begin in earnest. Percy dons a pair of goggles and sends the first piece of wood through the band saw. Shavings and sparks fly through the air. Mead measures and Percy cuts. And, piece by piece, the maze begins to come together.
MEAD IS SITTING IN HIS BEDROOM, drawing up the chart he will use to track the progress of his experiment, when his mother bursts in and plunks down on his desk four packages of Kraft American Cheese Slices, individually wrapped. “Does this belong to you?” she asks, all accusatory-like, as if she just found a stash of pot in his underwear drawer.
“Yes.”
“And what’s wrong with the food I buy you?”
“It’s not for me; it’s for my science experiment.”
“What experiment?”
“The one Mr. Belknap assigned me for extra credit.” And he holds up the wire cage containing the mouse.
His mother studies the small rodent as she might a long-lost orange found in the back of the refrigerator with a full beard of white-and-blue mold sprouting on its skin. “And what exactly do you plan to do with this mouse?”
“Win first prize in the county science fair,” Mead says.
His mother picks up the packages of Kraft American Cheese Slices. “All right. But that filthy rodent goes the day after the fair, got it?” She marches out of his room.
THE MAZE TAKES EIGHT AFTERNOONS to build. Eight afternoons spent hanging out with his cousin Percy. Aunt Jewel pops in and out of the shed with cookies and lemonade but the rest of the time it’s just the two of them. They don’t talk much, except to compare notes on the progress of the maze. Percy seems to be enjoying himself as much as Mead is —maybe more —even though he has next to nothing to gain from it. No grade. No ribbon. No mother to get off his back. Which Mead finds somewhat puzzling. So on the sixth afternoon, he asks, “Why are you doing this?”
“Dovetail joints? Because they hold better than glue. I know it’s taking a bit longer but it’ll be worth it in the end. Trust me.”
“No, I mean why are you helping me?”
Percy gives Mead a why-are-you-even-asking-me-that-question look and says, “Because you asked me to, cousin.”
“I know, but would you jump in front of a train if I asked?”
Percy stops sanding and looks at Mead. “How fast is the train going?”
“All right, never mind. I’m sorry I asked.”
Percy goes back to sanding then says, “Do you ever think about the future?”
“All the time.”
“Me, too. What do you see?”
“World peace.”
Percy gives Mead his stop-being-such-a-smart-aleck look.
“Okay,” Mead says. “Maybe not world peace. I’d be satisfied to just graduate from high school in one piece and get on with my real life.”
“Me too,” Percy says.
“Really? But you have it so good. You’ve got tons of friends. A great mom.”
“Well sure, things are great now but I’m talking about the future. Does it ever scare you? The thought of life after high school?”
“No. Quite the opposite. I can’t wait.”
“It’s just that when I look at my dad —at his life —it just seems so, I don’t know, lonely. There’s no one standing on the sidelines cheering him on.”
“You’ll just have to learn to cheer yourself on.”
“I suppose,” Percy says, picks up two notched pieces of wood, and slides them together. His dovetail joint is perfect. Setting it aside, he reaches for another piece of wood and starts cutting more notches. “That’s why,” he says.
“Excuse me?” Mead says.
“You asked me why I’m helping you and I’m telling you, okay?”
They don’t talk for the rest of the afternoon, except to compare notes on the progress of the maze.
WHEN THE MAZE IS DONE it looks like a whatchamacallit from the pages of a Dr. Seuss book. Three separate mazes, all starting at the same point, loop around, cross over, and dip under one another, ending at three different locations. The shortest route, accessed through a hinged door marked A, offers three wrong turns, a bridge, and two tunnels to reach the end where a single one-inch square of American cheese will be waiting. A second door, marked B, leads to a maze twice as long as A and features twice as many wrong turns, bridges, and tunnels. When successfully completed, the same one-inch reward will be at the end. Following this logic, the third door, marked C, leads to the longest and most difficult maze of them all, and offers the same reward.
“So what exactly do you hope to prove?” Percy asks.
“My hypothesis,” Mead says, “is that mouse, like man, wants to do the least amount of work to gain the largest amount of reward, his life choices based primarily on monetary gain. Only in a mouse’s world, money equals cheese.”
“Sounds kind of cynical, if you want to ask me.”
“I didn’t ask.”
MEAD BEGINS WITH AN EXPERIMENTAL RUN, the baseline against which he will gauge all future runs. He places the mouse in the starting box, opens door A, and starts his stopwatch. The furry critter feels its way along the freshly glued plywood walls, noting every nook and cranny with its whiskers. It peeks around each corner it encounters, exploring all the options, including the dead ends. It crawls through a tunnel and up into the red tube that arches over maze B, sniffing high and low. In just thirty seconds, the subject completes the first three-quarters of the maze, then it suddenly turns around and heads back toward the start.
“What’re you doing, Mr. Cheese?” Percy yells at the mouse. “You almost had it. Turn back around, you’re going the wrong way.”
“Maybe he can’t smell the reward,” Aunt Jewel says. “You should’ve used real cheese, Teddy, not that processed stuff. Something with a strong scent, like Roquefort.”
“Mr. Cheese?” Mead says. “Where did that come from?”
“The little guy needed a name,” Percy says and shrugs, “so I gave him one.”
Mr. Cheese gets tired of the maze and decides to try and get out. Stretching his body up the wall as far as it’ll go, he scratches his front feet against the smooth surface of the plywood, hoping for traction, and comes upon a little drop of hardened glue. He grabs hold of it and hoists himself up off the floor, but not high enough to scale the walls of his prison. As one minute passes into two, and two into three, Mr. Cheese continues to scratch and claw at various parts of the wall, making no attempt whatsoever to complete the maze.
“Looks like you got yourself a defective mouse there, cousin,” Percy says. “If I was you, I’d exchange him for a better model.”
“He’s a perfectly fine mouse,” Jewel says. “He’ll figure it out. Do you know how long it took me to get you potty-trained?”
“Mom! Geez, could you think of anything more embarrassing to say?”
Jewel ruffles Percy’s hair with her hand and he pulls away. And Mead feels that all too familiar pang of jealousy for what his cousin takes for granted.
Mr. Cheese sits down and starts grooming his face.
Percy stands up. “I’m gonna go pitch a few balls with Dad. Let me know if Mr. Cheese ever figures it out.”
Jewel gets up too. “Would you like anything to eat while you wait, Teddy? Some cookies or something?”
“No, thanks, Aunt Jewel. I’m fine.”
But she’s back five minutes later with a plate of brownies and a glass of milk.
“How’s he doing?”
“Not so well,” Mead says and picks up a brownie. “I shouldn’t have fed the subject this morning. He’s too complacent. I’ll have to note that in my observations and alter my controls for a better result.” He takes a sip of milk.
Ten minutes later, Mr. Cheese completes the maze and finds the cheese. Aunt Jewel claps her hands and cheers. Mead clicks the stopwatch and writes in his notebook: “Maze A: First run completed in 29 min. 37 sec. Remarks: Subject has no sense of why it is here or what it is supposed to be doing. Without incentive, it has no sense o
f urgency and so takes its time exploring whatever crosses its path. Having now discovered the cheese, however, I anticipate improved performance in all future runs.”
Mr. Cheese finishes his reward and sniffs around in search of more food. Mead scoops the subject up in his hand, sets out a second piece of cheese, places the subject back in the starting box, and starts the stopwatch.
BY THE END OF WEEK ONE, Mead has run Mr. Cheese through all three mazes several times and established a “reference point” against which he will compare all future runs. Now it is time to start the real experiment. Now it’s time to see how the subject will react when presented with a choice. Instead of opening just one door, Mead will open two and the subject will have to decide through which maze it wishes to run. As soon as the subject makes its choice, the selected door will be closed, committing the subject to its decision. A cause-and-effect relationship. Mead has also decided, as one of the controls of his experiment, that Mr. Cheese will conduct only six runs per day. Six runs equal six pieces of cheese. It will be left up to the subject to decide how hard it wants to work for its six pieces of cheese per day.
“Seems kind of cruel, if you ask me,” Percy says from his ringside seat, having regained an interest in Mr. Cheese once the mouse started clocking in each run under thirty seconds.
“I didn’t ask,” Mead says and sets the subject in his starting box for his first run of the day.
MR. CHEESE SCAMPERS AROUND inside the kitchen sink, his toes clicking against the stainless steel basin, sounding like rain against a windowpane, while Mead sits on the floor and cleans out his cage. Wearing a pair of his mother’s rubber gloves, Mead sticks his hand through its open door, pulls out last Sunday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch —which has been chewed up and shaped into a nest —and dumps it into the trash can under the sink. He then pulls out the bottom tray, scrapes off all the mouse droppings, and slides it back into place. Mead is still sitting on the floor, ripping up yesterday’s newspaper and stuffing it into the clean cage, when his father enters the kitchen.
“I had a pet when I was your age,” he says. “A rabbit by the name of Peter. You know, for Peter Rabbit.” He takes a glass out of the cupboard, holds it under the cold-water tap, and fills it. Residual drops of water drip off the faucet into the sink and Mr. Cheese saunters over to check one out, then laps it up. “He’s a cute little fella.”
“He’s not a pet, Dad, he’s the subject of my science experiment.”
His father looks over at him. “I know what your mother said, Teddy, about you having to get rid of him after you complete your experiment, but that may not be necessary, not after she sees how well you’re taking care of him.”
Mead stands and places the clean cage on the counter. “Mice can live up to two years in captivity, did you know that?” He takes off the gloves and picks up Mr. Cheese, who immediately starts crawling up his arm. It tickles. When the mouse reaches his elbow, Mead lifts him by the tail and puts him back in his hand. But Mr. Cheese immediately starts up his arm again, crawling all the way to Mead’s shoulder this time. Once there, the mouse stands up on his hind legs and appears to whisper a secret into Mead’s ear. Mead giggles because the mouse’s whiskers tickle, picks up Mr. Cheese by the tail, and sets him back in his cage. “Besides, a scientist isn’t supposed to become attached to his subject. It’s not professional.”
His father drinks his water and sets the empty glass in the sink. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” he says and leaves the kitchen.
SO FAR MR. CHEESE HAS PERFORMED pretty much as expected, consistently choosing the shorter of whichever two routes he is offered, proving the mouse to be a smart subject, his actions motivated by reward. By now he knows the mazes so well that he doesn’t even hesitate before choosing door A over door B, or door B over door C. He has got it down pat. So it’s time to change things up, to further challenge the subject. Mead will accomplish this by varying the size of the reward at the end of each maze. Now, the longer the run, the larger the reward will be. With the promise of a larger payoff, Mead hopes to entice Mr. Cheese to change his behavior, to opt for the longer maze over the shorter one. To work a little harder in hopes of acquiring a bigger reward. To make different life choices based on a different outcome.
THE CALL COMES IN OVER SUPPER. “I’m on my way,” Mead’s dad says to the county coroner and jots down an address. Mead’s mother wraps up the uneaten portion of his meal, so he can finish it in the car on the way, while Mead’s father calls Martin. “There’s a crime scene involved,” he says into the receiver, “so it could take a while. Why don’t you meet me over there. The address is 221 Rosebush Lane. Sheila Waseleski.”
“Waseleski?” Mead says when his father hangs up the phone. “There’s a kid in my grade by the name of Waseleski.”
“What happened?” Mead’s mother asks.
“Gunshot wound to the head,” Mead’s dad says. “They suspect the husband. Seems he has a history of violent behavior.”
It cannot be the same family. There must be two Waseleskis in town. But the next day at school everyone is talking about it. How Freddy’s father killed his mother over an undercooked hamburger. And Freddy is nowhere in sight.
The memorial service is set for Saturday and Mead’s mother insists that Mead go.
“No,” he says.
“He’s a classmate of yours. It wouldn’t look right if you didn’t.”
“We’ve only been classmates for six months and next year I’ll either skip another grade or he’ll be held back again.”
“You’re going. End of discussion.”
The funeral chapel is an annex off the furniture store where mourners can socialize, view the deceased, or pray, depending on which of three rooms they are standing in. Mead stands next to the coat rack, ducking behind it every time one of his classmates enters, snubbing them before they have a chance to snub him.
Freddy does not show up until the two-hour service is nearly over, looking almost unrecognizable in a suit that was probably purchased at Sears just this morning. His hair has been cut and combed, his sneakers replaced by black shoes. He is accompanied by two girls, both younger than himself, who Mead takes to be Freddy’s sisters, and a female adult who obviously is not his mother because she is the one lying in the next room pumped full of formaldehyde.
A hush goes through the chapel as word spreads that “the children” have arrived. Necks crane this way and that to get a look at their faces. Freddy appears to try and stare a hole in the floor, presumably so he can fall through it. He repeatedly shrugs the hand of the female caretaker off his shoulder but eventually he is coaxed into the viewing room to say goodbye to his mother.
“At least when Freddy’s father shot Freddy’s mother, he was thoughtful enough to shoot her in the side of the head,” Mead’s uncle said at dinner last night. Okay, so maybe those weren’t his exact words, his point being that it was a lot easier to camouflage the entry and exit wounds the way it happened. For the sake of the children. So that their last memory of their mother’s face would be a pleasant one. Or at least as pleasant as these things get.
When Freddy steps up to the casket and looks down into the face of his thirty-one-year-old mother, does he see it? Does he see the yellow bruise on her left cheek? It’s all Uncle Martin could talk about this morning: How he was afraid that it might still be visible through the makeup and powder he so painstakingly applied to her face and neck. The almost-healed bruise was from a prior altercation Mr. Waseleski had with Mrs. Waseleski. Uncle Martin placed the time of contact at two weeks prior to her death. But even if Freddy doesn’t see it, he must know it’s there. He probably witnessed the actual punch.
Freddy stands over his mother for a long time, looking down at her face, then turns to the female caretaker and says, “Who put red lipstick on her? My mom never wore red lipstick. She thought it made her look like a whore. She only wore pink. Who put this lipstick on her? Who’s trying to make my mom look like a whore?”
&nb
sp; “Freddy, please,” the female caretaker says and places her hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right. It was an honest mistake.”
He shakes her hand off. “No, it ain’t okay. It’s insulting. I want somebody to wipe it off her mouth. Right now.”
“Freddy, please. I think it’s time for us to go.”
“No! I’m not leaving till they fix my mom.”
“Freddy —”
“If somebody don’t wipe it off her right now, I’m going to.” And with that, he grabs a box of Kleenex, pulls free a fistful of tissues and begins to rub at his mother’s mouth. Only then does he discover that it has been stitched closed with sutures. He drops the wad of tissues and reels backward, knocking over a wreath of lilies and then falling on top of it. Mead’s dad abandons his post at the door and rushes into the viewing room. He tries to help Freddy to his feet but the fourteen-year-old boy has the strength of ten men and shoves him away. Undeterred, Mead’s dad tries again and this time Freddy allows the kindly funeral director to lift him to his feet, then falls into his arms and starts crying, bawling his eyes out.
It is hard for Mead to believe this is the same boy who threatened to shove a ruler up his ass just last month. He does not want to feel sorry for Freddy Waseleski. Why did his mother make him come to this funeral? Mead turns and bolts out of the chapel, swiping away tears as he runs home.
A WEEK BEFORE TURNING IN his extra credit project, Mead sits down to compile his observations and draws up a chart to illustrate his findings in a simple and visual way. Aunt Jewel supplies him with a large sheet of poster board and several colored markers to make the chart and his father buys him an easel on which to display it. On the day of his class presentation, Uncle Martin loads the maze into the back of the hearse, because it is too big and cumbersome to fit inside anything else, and gives Mead a lift to school.
Mead emerges from the passenger side of the hearse with a cloth draped over Mr. Cheese’s cage and looks up to see several of his open-mouthed classmates staring back. Among the many gapers is Freddy Waseleski, back after a one-week absence to recover from the loss of his mother. Mr. Belknap helps Uncle Martin carry the maze into the school, Mead follows behind them with his chart under one arm and the cage in the other, and Percy takes up the rear carrying the easel. Since Mead does not have science until third period, he leaves Mr. Cheese in Mr. Belknap’s care and goes off to his other classes. But he finds it hard to concentrate on what his teachers are saying. He keeps thinking about his presentation. And about Mr. Cheese. He hopes that none of the other kids are bothering him. That Mr. Cheese won’t be too nervous and distracted to perform. Not that it is necessary. Mead’s presentation does not rely upon it. All his results are in. He just thinks it will be more interesting if the students can watch Mr. Cheese do his thing. Plus, he wants to give the mouse his moment in the spotlight. It seems only fair.
Life After Genius Page 7
