Frankie Aguirre and Art Jefferson - 03 - Simple Simon

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  Simon Lynch had the contents of the box, five hundred jigsaw pieces of random size and shape, spread out upon the table, none touching another. The top of the box, emblazoned with a picture of a covered bridge in a pastoral setting, he laid face down on the floor without as much as a glance at it. The plain bottom of the box followed. Then he went about starting the puzzle.

  “Chas, he is…”

  “I know.”

  First Simon had to get all the pieces turned the same direction…without letting them touch. They could only touch when he placed them together. And they could only go together when the picture side of each was face down. When the table top was nothing but a jumble of gray jigsaw piece backs, Simon’s rocking stopped. He leaned further forward and, eyes still dancing, began interlocking the pieces. Perfectly. With nary a test fit.

  “My goodness, Chas,” Anne commented in a hushed, almost reverent tone. She was no longer an observer—she was a spectator.

  “Amazing, isn’t it.” Ohlmeyer glanced at his Rolex. Twenty-five seconds. Simon was a quarter of the way done, easily at the pace he’d set in previous sessions. More than two pieces a second. Dr. Chas Ohlmeyer, dean of the University of Chicago’s school of psychology and director of the Lewis Thayer Center for the Developmentally Disabled, smiled fully at the brilliance he was witnessing. Not a brilliance many would ever see, nor that anyone—including him—could fully explain, but brilliance all the same.

  Anne nodded to the screen. ‘Amazing’ began to convey her assessment of the scene. “How many times have you done this with him?”

  “The puzzle? In a test situation, three. It wasn’t something we planned. Simon just sort of happened.”

  “Come again?” Anne asked, keeping her eyes on the screen. Half the pieces had been absorbed into a lopsided triangle of gray.

  “When I say ‘just happened’ I mean more than just this talent you’re seeing,” Ohlmeyer explained. “He might never have come to us—or to anyone—if he hadn’t gotten a nasty viral infection. His parents had kept him pretty much sheltered since he was about one year old. By that time it was apparent to them, and to his doctor, that there were some serious deficiencies in his development. His parents thought one thing: retarded.” For a moment Ohlmeyer’s expression soured, adding years to his 55 year-old face. “So when they brought him to Uni for treatment of the infection a few months back, the attending—you know him: Larry Wollam—recognized the behavioral and developmental symptoms. He convinced Simon’s parents to bring him to Thayer for an assessment. When we gave them the results, they kind of shrugged; they’d never heard of autism.”

  “You’re kidding,” Anne commented, glancing away from Simon’s progress for just a second. When she looked back three corners were complete.

  “They’re simple people,” Ohlmeyer continued. “The father’s a mechanic, the mother’s a housewife, both in their late forties. I was the one that explained it all to them.” He paused briefly. “The mother understands it more than the father, I think. He still believes that he has a retarded son.”

  “But he’s here,” Anne added as a reminder that begged more explanation.

  “Yes, he is. His first day here one of the staff put a twenty five piecer in front of him. Real simple; a blue cow and a red pig, I don’t remember exactly. Simon never touched it. The next day he took a five hundred piecer from a shelf and, well…”

  “On his own?”

  “Entirely,” Ohlmeyer answered proudly. He felt pride in the progress of any patient, and in this instance it was like watching a flower blossom in the dead of winter. “The staff gave him a thousand piecer…nothing. Another five hundred...voila! He only does puzzles with five hundred pieces, and always after turning the pieces face down.”

  “Any other abilities?” Anne inquired. The fourth and final corner was about to appear.

  “Instant recognition and calculation, we’re certain. We gave him a five hundred piecer with one piece removed. He started to turn the pieces over, then stopped within seconds and started rocking nervously.”

  “The uniform out of sorts,” Anne commented. “How soon were the symptoms noticed after he was born?”

  “Within months,” Ohlmeyer replied with a nod. “Early infantile autism. And, yes, he can communicate verbally and has since about the age of two.”

  The loose pieces dwindled until only one rectangle of gray paper, broken by the odd lines of a jigsaw cut, was left. Simon let a hand hover over it briefly, then returned it to his lap and started rocking easily again.

  “The indications are that he’s a Kanner,” Anne said, confirming Ohlmeyer’s suspicion that Simon Lynch probably fell into a portion of the autistic population, numbering approximately 10% of the total, known as the Kanner’s syndrome subgroup. These individuals exhibited similar advanced abilities in memory, computation, and insistence on sameness in their environment. Some exhibited remarkable abilities in math, art, or music. An even smaller percentage of the autistic population showed almost unbelievable talents in certain areas. Dr. Anne Jefferson, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, gazed wondrously at the monitor, watching a young man of remarkable—yes, she told herself, maybe even that—ability sway lazily back and forth. “Or more.”

  Ohlmeyer nodded. “I didn’t want to predispose you.”

  “Ever the scientist, Chas, aren’t you?” She switched off her laptop and closed the lid. “Have you done a right brain/left brain yet?”

  “Cursory, but I think now we’re going to need to do that and a full protocol. Of course I have to convince his father to allow it. The mother’s on our side, but it was a major effort to get pops to let him come to Thayer three days a week. We had to work out transportation, arrange for the fees to be waived, yaditta-yaditta…” Ohlmeyer set his clipboard aside and took a magazine from the viewing room’s desk. He rolled it tight in one hand and pointed it in mock accusation at Anne. “You’re thinking it, aren’t you?”

  “That he could be a savant? Aren’t you?”

  Ohlmeyer demurred with a tilt of his head. “Would you like to meet Simon?” He held the magazine up. “I have to give him this before he goes home.”

  Anne reached out, took the magazine, and uncurled it. “The Tinkery?” She noted the address label. “You are a member of the Tinker Society?”

  “Is that impossible to believe?” Ohlmeyer asked with a grin. “My intelligence is up there, and has been for a very long time.”

  She gave a friendly roll of her eyes in response and paged through the slick pages. The Tinker Society was a loose gathering of those with verifiable genius level IQ’s, and this was their bi-monthly publication, though a dated one she could tell from the cover. “Why are you giving this to him?”

  “Simon doesn’t like only jigsaw puzzles, Anne. His mother told me that he’s been doing crosswords, word searches, sequences, all sorts of puzzles since his early teens. That’s when he found a fascination with them. Funny, though, she said he never had an overt fondness for jigsaws.” Ohlmeyer boosted his shoulders in wonder and stood, taking the magazine back from Anne. “Anyway, The Tinkery has a puzzle section at the back. I thought I’d let him have a look at one of mine that was gathering dust. A purely unscientific exercise, I will remind you.”

  “Of course,” Anne said with a slow nod.

  “Come.”

  They left the viewing room and made the short trek to the observation room. Chas Ohlmeyer held Anne up there. “There’s one other minor thing you should know before meeting him.”

  “Yes?”

  “Until about a month ago he had a tendency to wet himself whenever he was around a…well…person of color.”

  Anne’s eyes bulged.

  “He grew up in a very…insulated environment, Anne. He’s white, his parents are white, his neighborhood is white. Anyone he’s seen in or near his home is likely white.”

  “I see.”

  “It hasn’t happened recently, but since you will be a new face to him, well, I
wanted to prepare you.”

  Anne giggled quietly.

  “What?” Ohlmeyer inquired, his eyes narrowing.

  “To think that I could scare the piss out of anybody is a bit on the laughable side, Chas.”

  “Anne… Come on.” Ohlmeyer twisted the knob and let Anne enter before he followed and closed the door behind. The pace of Simon’s rocking increased, but he did not look up. “Hello, Simon.”

  A boyish face rose in a flash, and fell as quickly. “Hello Doctor Chazzz.” His voice was young and tinny, and he over enunciated the last sound in Ohlmeyer’s given name. It was intentional, but not mocking.

  “Simon, I have someone I’d like you to meet. Her name is Anne. She’s a doctor, also.”

  Another glance at the face. Anne noted very fair skin this time before it retreated to ponder the nearest edge of the table. There was little color in the cheeks, maybe a hint of natural blush, and bright white teeth gleamed through a chance part in thin lips. “It’s nice to meet you, Simon.”

  “It’s nice to meet Simon,” Simon said as though parroting her greeting, but he was not.

  “You can call her Dr. Anne,” Ohlmeyer suggested.

  “I can call you Dr. Anne,” came the repetition. Simon’s chin rose a bit. He was now tracking the far edge of the table.

  “Dr. Anne is a good friend of mine,” Ohlmeyer said as a subtle assurance. And for a more important reason.

  Simon wore an oversized grey sweatshirt. He reached up and then down through the loose collar, and pulled out a set of ringbound three-by-five cards that hung around his neck on a lanyard. A small pen, clipped to the front card, was similarly attached by a single string to one of the rings that held the cards together. Simon pulled the pen free, clicked the top, and flipped through a precise number of cards. He stopped at one with the large title FRIENDS written across the top in blue marker. Below it were rudimentary scribbles on individual lines. Anne could make out the name DOKTR CHAZ near the top, and thought immediately: He writes phonetically…but without e’s.

  Simon held the stubby pen close to the card in a fierce grip. He found the next empty line and wrote DOKTR AN. He now had a friend named Dr. Anne. Friends were good people who could be trusted. Only friends could tell you if another person was a friend. Father had told him that. So had mother. And what they said was right.

  Anne dipped her head a bit, eyes trying to meet Simon’s. “You do puzzles very well, Simon.”

  His head seemed to nod between extremes of the rocking. “I like this puzzle.”

  “Simon, Anne is going to be working with you some days,” Ohlmeyer said. “Is that all right with you?”

  He inspected the FRIENDS list, then dropped the cards back down the neck of his sweatshirt. “It’s all right with me.”

  “Good!” Ohlmeyer said with enthusiasm. Tone conveyed feeling more than words, he knew. “And speaking of puzzles, remember I told you I had a magazine with some good puzzles in it?”

  Remember… He didn’t. But ‘magazine’ meant something. “I read Ranger Rick.”

  “That’s a good magazine,” Ohlmeyer said. “And here’s a new magazine for you.” He held it out. Simon accepted it with both hands and brought it to his lap. He flattened it out, pressing with both palms and ironing toward the sides, without letting his eyes settle upon it. His dry skin caressing the slick cover made a sound somewhere between a whine and a hiss. “When you get home you can look at the puzzles.”

  Home… Simon pulled the cuff of his left sleeve up and brought the watch on his wrist very close to his face. Big hand three ticks before the 12. Little hand on the 4. He saw many things in that, but he knew that one of them was the time, and it was almost at the time when his mother had told him he should get in the yellow bus. He let the cuff fall and tugged at the long edges of The Tinkery once before tucking it under his arm. He stood, the chair screeching as it slid backward. “Dr. Chazzz, my mother said I should go now.”

  Déjà vu was an easy thing to experience with autistics, Ohlmeyer knew. He’d had this same exchange with Simon each afternoon when it was time to head for the bus. “You’re right, Simon. It’s almost four o’clock. Carolyn is waiting down the hall for you. She’ll take you to the bus.”

  Simon reached toward his collar, then stopped. He seemed rapt in some thought.

  “Simon?” Ohlmeyer inquired.

  “Carolyn is my friend.”

  Ohlmeyer smiled, nodding. A small success. “Yes she is.”

  Simon stepped around the table and took two steps toward the door, then he stopped in front of Anne, his left shoulder to her. His head came up and twisted toward her for an instant. He resumed a head-down posture and said, “My mother is a pretty lady.”

  “I bet she is,” Anne said, accepting the roundabout compliment.

  “Okay, Simon.” Ohlmeyer placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You had better get moving.” He opened the door and guided Simon through it. He watched him until he was safely in Carolyn’s hands. When Ohlmeyer turned back, Anne was resting against the table in a half-sit. “You passed muster, I have to say.”

  “He’s—” She checked ‘nice’ before it came out. “—sweet.”

  “He’s special,” Ohlmeyer added not as a correction, but as a statement of additional fact. “Very special. If we can work with him, and get him to explore his abilities, we might pick something up in the process.” He crossed his arms, his face twisting into a teeth-gritted smile. “Something to help explain this damned disorder.”

  “Anything I can do, Chas, just put it to me.”

  “Talking to the parents might help. I want him here five days a week. He needs to be here five days.”

  A slow nod agreed…almost completely. “Just promise me something.”

  Some old friends never changed, Ohlmeyer recognized. “Anne…”

  She showed a cautionary palm to her friend. “Not you, Chas, but that young man does not need to be made into a lab rat for one of these eager young PhD candidates you’ve got lurking in the shadows. He has a life, he deserves a life. I won’t be party to his exploitation.”

  Ohlmeyer held four fingers up. “Scout’s honor.”

  “Wrong number, Chas,” Anne commented. “Well, this has been a rather pleasant ending to the day.”

  “And now you get to go home to your G-Man,” Ohlmeyer said with a smile. “So, tell me, is the Windy City keeping Art busy?”

  “Well, he has a saying: There’s bad guys wherever you go.”

  “Atrocious grammar,” Ohlmeyer said, then added soberly, “But true.”

  Anne nodded. “Very.”

  * * *

  The day was almost done when Art Jefferson swiveled his chair toward the window that, on a clear day, afforded him a partial view of Lake Michigan and pulled the folded note from his shirt pocket. He opened it and smiled at the five words.

  Love you. Tonight, my place?

  As if it were some tryst his new bride were planning. He tucked the note away and chuckled to himself, realizing that he felt somewhat like a twenty year old newlywed. Well, he was the latter, but he was thirty years and change past the former, on his second and last wife—knock wood—and at a place in his life he’d hardly dreamed possible three years ago.

  Recently divorced, number four in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Los Angeles Field Office, handling the biggest investigation of his career, and on the edge. What had come of that combination? A good agent—a friend—with a bullet in his neck, a heart attack, and a quasi-demotion from command to street duty. Two years of taking stock followed, case after case, some big, most not, just plodding along until the world began to spin his way again.

  Anne… he thought, feeling his warm cheeks rise. On a blind date of all things he had met her. A woman of impossibly meshed qualities. Fiercely strong and independent, vital, intelligent beyond his measure by far, and at heart she was a little girl who savored life. Tonight, my place?

  He could mark the instant in time when t
he change in his life took hold. It was the moment when he realized that he loved Anne. Truly loved her beyond anything he’d felt for his first wife, in fact so different from any emotion he could remember that he’d wondered if he ever really loved Lois. The feeling ushered in a newness to his life, relieved him of whatever demons had haunted him. Opened new paths. The job he held now, A-SAC (assistant special agent in charge) of the Chicago field office, had come not as an offer, but as a request. I want you as my number two, Art, Bob Lomax, the SAC, had said in the call some five months earlier. The two had worked as street agents together during Art’s posting to the Windy City more than a decade before.

  And so he was here…again. With all the pieces of his life in place, finally. Staring out his office window into the mist that shrouded Lake Michigan, his heart beating beneath Anne’s note, Art Jefferson felt content, warm, and completely at home for the first time in his life.