Gray Matter

by Gary Braver

  “You can’t m-m-make a s-s-special order?”

  “No, we can’t.”

  The kid dropped his face into the menu pretending to find an alternative, but it was clear there was nothing else he was interested in.

  “You want more time?”

  He shook his head. “I r-r-really wanted p-pancakes.”

  Martin began to feel bad for the kid. Not only was he getting the cold shoulder from the proprietor, but also he was a stutterer. Martin had stuttered painfully in grade school.

  “Then come back in the morning.” She yanked the menu out of his hand. “We open at s-s-six.” She winked at the fireman at the counter and started away.

  “What’s the big deal?” he asked good-naturedly. “Cup of mix, some milk, and a pan. It’s not like he asked for a turkey dinner from scratch.”

  “Freddie, do I tell you how to put out fires? Huh? Right! So don’t tell me how to run my diner.”

  “Take you two minutes, Angie. Give the kid a break,” Freddie said in a low voice.

  Then he added, “Looks like he just woke up anyway.”

  Angie glowered at Freddie, then appeared to soften. She turned to the kid. “It’s gonna have to be plain,” she hollered. “No blues or strawberries. They’re back in the freezer.”

  “That’s f-fine,” the kid said in a thin voice, and returned to the cartoons.

  Martin watched the kid. The book was a large hardbound tome of Walt Disney animations, and he was flipping through the pages rapidly as if trying to find something.

  A few minutes later, Angie delivered the pancakes and a small rack of syrups. Out of the corner of his eye, Martin noticed the kid remove the tops of the syrups and sniff each one. He was not casually taking in the aromas but deeply inhaling and processing the scents like a professional perfume tester. Dissatisfied, he then poured a little of each into his coffee spoon and continued smelling then testing each with his tongue. It was bizarre.

  This went on until Angie took notice and marched up to the kid’s booth, her large red face preceding her like a fire truck. “You got a problem here?”

  The kid looked up, startled. “Oh, no. N-no problem.”

  “So what are you doing with the syrups?”

  “Well, I’m just trying to find the … I’m just w-w-wondering if … Do you have any others … other syrups?”

  “You got five different syrups right there. What else do you want, tartar sauce?”

  “Do you have any ma-ma-ma-maple syrup?”

  She pulled one out of the rack and turned the top toward him. “Whaddya think this is?”

  “Well, I meant, you know … real maple syrup?” He sniffed the small carafe. “This is actually corn syrup with water and artificial f-f-flavors. Also, c-caramel coloring. I mean real m-maple syrup, one h-hundred percent, no additives.”

  Angie took a deep breath and let it out very slowly, working to steady herself, aware that the whole place was watching and wondering if she were going to blow. “No, I’m sorry, sir,” she said in a mock-apologetic whine. “We don’t have real m-m-maple syrup, so I’m afraid you’re gonna have to settle for the cheap imitation shit.” She spun around and huffed away.

  The kid looked around to notice everybody staring at him. He put his hand to his brow and began nibbling on his pancakes, pretending to lose himself in the cartoons. He only ate a mouthful, occasionally sniffing the different syrups when Angie wasn’t looking.

  He was clearly disturbed, Martin told himself, and operating on another level of reality. Every so often he would snap his head around as if picking up a stray scent like an animal. When he got up to go to the toilet, Martin could see that he was a tall overweight kid with a boyish face and a confused lumbering manner. He loped his way as Angie stood behind the counter wiping coffee mugs and watching him with that flat red face. On his return, he rounded the far end of the counter when something stopped him in his tracks: Blondie’s half-eaten cake in the next booth. In disbelief, Martin watched the kid slip onto the seat and lower his face to the dish, sniffing like a dog screening leftovers on the dinner table.

  “Shit!” Angie muttered as she rolled past Martin toward the kid. “You gonna eat my garbage now, huh?”

  The kid straightened up, and the whole place held its breath. “What kind of cake is this?” His face was intense, his pupils dilated. The earlier deferential manner had hardened into some weird purpose.

  She pulled the dish away and walked around the counter and dumped it into a bin without a word.

  “I said, what kind of cake is that?” The kid rose from the booth. His eyes were fixed on the woman.

  The fireman at the counter sat straight up. Everybody in the place was now looking at the big bear-bodied boy pressing Angie for an answer. She seemed taken aback by his intensity. “Butter almond cake.”

  “Butter almond cake,” he said as if taking an oath. “Like real almonds?”

  “Yeah, real almonds and real almond extract,” she said sarcastically.

  “Do you have any more?”

  Angie looked over her shoulder. “Yeah, one piece.”

  The kid’s eye clapped on the display case where the cakes sat. “I’ll have it.”

  “What about your pancakes over there?”

  “I’m finished. I want some butter almond.”

  “You want it with a fork, or you gonna inhale it?”

  “A fork,” he said. “And a knife.”

  The kid returned to his booth, not taking his eyes off Angie as she got the cake, walked to his booth, and clanked the dish down in front of him with a fork and knife. Then she left, moving her mouth in wordless anger.

  Like rays in a magnifying class, all lines of awareness had focused on the kid, who appeared to be in a trance, looking at the cake as if it were a strange and wondrous specimen.

  Carefully he scraped off the white icing, then with the knife slit the cake down the middle and butterflied it open as if he were performing surgery. With a little gulping “ahhh” he lowered his face to the splayed-open piece until his nose appeared to disappear into it. From where he was sitting, Martin could hear the kid inhaling deeply and letting out little moans and gasps, then inhaling deeply again and again. Then, incredibly, he closed his eyes tightly and testing the cake with the tip of his tongue he whispered: “Almond, almond, almond …” Then with little gasps: “Almost … almost …”

  That was all Angie needed. “Aw, shit!” she cried and stomped the length of the counter and shot around to the kid’s table. “You’re outta here!” She grabbed the kid by the collar and yanked his head up.

  His eyes were wild. “Almond,” he said as if coming out of a dream. A piece of cake was stuck to his nose. “Almond!” he repeated, his eyes beaming as if he had just had a beatific vision.

  “Get the hell out of here!” She yanked him to his feet.

  Freddie got off his stool. “Okay, cool it,” he said.

  But the kid didn’t struggle as Angie pulled him bodily out of the booth.

  “Cool nothing,” Angie said. “He’s a friggin’ sicko!”

  The boy struggled against Angie’s arms to get his hand into his pants pocket, but she pushed him toward the door, probably fearing he had a knife or a gun.

  Freddie tried to separate them. “What do you have in there, son?”

  “I want to pay,” the kid said, suddenly snapped into the realization that she was throwing him out.

  “I don’t want your friggin’ money, and I don’t want you in my place again. Got that?” Her face huge and red, Angie pushed open the door with her foot, still holding on to his shirt. “I know who you are, kid. I know about you. And I’m telling you, I don’t want to see you in my place again, or I’ll call the cops. Now beat it!” And she shoved him through the inner door.

  But the wet from the outside made a slick floor, and the kid tripped over a newspaper dispenser and came down headfirst against the glass of the outer door.

  “Shit! Now the bastard broke my door.”
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  The kid’s head had hit the glass squarely, instantly splintering the panel in a starburst. He fell on his knees, holding his head as blood seeped through his fingers.

  “Nice going,” Freddie said to Angie and went to the kid’s aid.

  “He tripped,” she protested. “I didn’t push him.”

  Martin pulled a wad of napkins out of the dispenser and pushed his way to Freddie who was kneeling beside the kid with his arm on his shoulders. “I’ve got a first-aid kit in the car,” Martin said.

  “I’m all right,” the kid said. He looked at his hand and groaned at the blood.

  Freddie dabbed the kid’s head. “I’ll take him to the ER.”

  “I d-don’t want to go to the hospital.”

  “Just to make sure you don’t have a concussion. You also got some splinters that’ll have to come out,” Freddie said, inspecting the bloody scalp.

  The boy got to his feet, holding the napkins on his head. He looked around but he didn’t seem dizzy or confused. He looked at the glass door. “S-s-sorry …”

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” Freddie said and opened the door to take the kid to his car. Before he left, Freddie turned to Angie and gave her a damning look. “I should report you for this.”

  “For what? He slipped.”

  “For assault.”

  Angie was about to protest, but she thought twice. When Freddie left, she turned to the rest of the patrons staring at her in stunned silence. “He did that himself,” she said. “He threw himself into the glass because he’s a schizo creep, is all. Someone should put him in a nuthouse where he belongs. And now I got a freakin’ busted door.” And she clopped her way into the kitchen.

  Martin had no clue what the history was between Angie and the kid, nor what his problems were, but he was certain the kid had not been playacting to put down Angie, her cake, or her diner. Nor had he thrown himself into the door.

  It was getting late, and Martin had to find a florist. He laid some money on the counter and left, thinking how he and Rachel were worrying about Dylan’s reading problems. Here was a kid who was clearly disturbed, maybe psychotic. Probably had the crap beaten out of him as a kid and was now hopelessly messed up on drugs, living in a cartoon world, making love to cakes.

  Jesus! Life’s hard, but it’s harder when you’re stupid … or crazy, Martin thought. Always someone worse off. And he headed for his car, which started on the second try.

  3

  “The good news is that you’re going to live. The bad news is that we’re going to have to shave off some of your pretty hair.”

  Cindy Porter was just finishing her shift at the Essex Medical Center when Hawthorne off-duty fireman Freddie Wyman brought the kid in. The bleeding had stopped, but there were glass splinters in his scalp.

  The boy’s name was Brendan LaMotte, age eighteen, from Barton. He lived alone with his grandfather. Cindy called the man to say that Brendan was being treated for a head bruise, but that it didn’t look serious and that Brendan would most likely be home in a couple of hours after they took X rays. The accompanying firefighter had said that he had lost his footing and fallen headfirst into the storm door of a diner.

  “I don’t think you have a concussion, but we’re gonna send you to Radiology to make sure just how hard a head they gave you.”

  She tried to get the boy to smile. But he seemed distracted, not by the bruise but being in a hospital. Because the injury was on the top of his head, they had put him on a chair in one of the ER bed bays and drawn the curtain for privacy. But something about the space bothered him. He kept inspecting the oxygen nozzles in the wall, the X-ray plug, the sink, cabinet, box of surgical gloves, cotton swabs, containers of alcohol, et cetera. And he got up and sniffed everything like a drug dog.

  “But first we’re gonna clean you up, okay?” She spread the hairs above the cut with her gloved hand. The cut was not deep so he wouldn’t need stitches, but there were splinters that had to be removed. “Boy, that must have hurt.”

  “Wasn’t too bad,” he mumbled.

  “The bleeding stopped, and we got most of the dried blood cleaned up.”

  “‘The cold in clime are cold in blood, / Their love can scarce deserve the name.’”

  “What’s that?”

  The kid shook his head to say it was nothing.

  “Okay,” she continued. “What we’re going to do is just pick out the shrapnel, so sit tight, and I promise to do my best not to hurt. Okay?”

  “H-how much hair you gonna cut off?” he asked.

  “Maybe about an inch. I won’t shave on the cut itself, just around it to make sure we get it all.”

  Cindy was of the school that you keep a running commentary to distract patients from unpleasant matters, especially kids. Brendan wasn’t chatty, although he muttered to himself as if having a private conversation.

  She clipped the hair around the wound, which had crusted over. Unfortunately, the glass from the door was the standard fare, not the shatterproof stuff that came apart in chunks. So she had to use tweezers. All the time the kid sat perfectly still. Whatever he was muttering, she detected some kind of rhythm. “Is that some kind of rap you’re doing?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “So you’re not going to tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What you’re saying.”

  “Just a p-p-poem.”

  “Oh. What poem?”

  “S-Shakespeare. Sonnet Twenty-nine.”

  “How does it go?” When he shook his head, she nudged him. “Come on, this place could use a little poetry.”

  Finally he consented. “‘When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state …’” And he recited the whole poem.

  “Wow! How about that. Are you an English major?”

  “No.”

  “That’s right, you just turned eighteen so you’re still in high school. Wow! You must be a pretty good student.”

  Brendan did not respond.

  “Well, I used to like Shakespeare in school. My favorite is Romeo and Juliet.” And she recited a few lines. “‘But soft! What light through yonder window shines? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun …’”

  “Breaks. ‘What light through yonder window breaks?’”

  “Oops. That’s why I’m in here and not on stage,” she said. “By the way, did you get attacked by a porcupine or something?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She began inspecting his scalp. “You’ve got some funny little scars,” she said. She handed him a mirror. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you had some kind of hair implant.”

  He stared intensely into it but said nothing.

  “Whatever, we got all the glass out and cleaned you up.”

  The kid continued to study his scalp in the mirror as she pulled open the curtain and announced that Radiology was ready for him.

  “Sorry about the hair,” she said, walking him toward the waiting room. “But if you comb the other way nobody will notice. Wait a sec.” She went behind the reception desk and returned with a baseball cap. On the front it said ELIXIR. “Promo hats from one of the pharmaceutical vendors. We got a whole box of them.”

  “Thanks,” he said, still in a funny daze. He tucked the hat in his back pocket.

  She walked him down the hall to Radiology and stayed with him while the technician took several shots of his head from different angles. The kid obliged, turning this way and that when asked. When it was over Cindy led him back to his cubicle. “So, you don’t have any headaches?”

  “No.”

  “Dizziness, disorientation, confusion?”

  “No.”

  “Who’s the president of the United States?”

  Brendan looked up at her to see if she was joking.

  “Just checking.”

  He told her.

  “How about the last one?”

  “George W. Bush.”

  “Keep going.”

 
; “William Jefferson Clinton.”

  Then on a hunch she asked, “Do you know any more?”

  For a strange moment he locked eyes with her. Then he said simply, “All of them.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon …” He stopped for a moment, his eyes taking on an odd cast. “Nixon, Nixon, Nixon …”

  “That’s pretty good,” Cindy said to snap him back. Then he looked at her and shook his head as if trying to dispel something. And without a moment’s hesitation he began to recite: “Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman …” And he named presidents all the way back to George Washington.

  Cindy did not know all the names or proper order, but she had a strong suspicion that this wondrous teenage kid had them exactly right. “Holy cow!” she said in pure awe. “That’s amazing.” The kid’s a savant, she said to herself. She looked at the clipboard. Where it asked for occupation he had entered waiter, not student. “How come you’re not in school?”

  He shrugged. “It d-d-didn’t work out.”

  He looked at her with deep penetrating eyes that locked onto her own. He stared at her with such intensity that she had to look away. God, what a strange boy.

  “Can I go?” he asked.

  “Pretty soon. The doc has to check your films first.”

  A few minutes later, the resident physician, Dr. Adrian Budd, came by to say that he had read the scan and found no signs of a concussion. When he left, Cindy handed Brendan a couple sheets on head injuries. “If there’s any sign of swelling, pain, headaches, or dizziness, you give us a call. The number’s on the top of the page.”

  Just then, Freddie Wyman returned with an older man in baggy pants and an ill-fitting shirt. The fireman introduced him as Richard Berryman, Brendan’s grandfather.

  “He’s going to be fine,” Cindy told him.

  “Hard heads run in the family,” Mr. Berryman said and winked at her. Then he turned to Brendan. “How you doing, Brendy?”