I know I will be safe to drive, so I shake my head. He jerks his shoulders and says, “Someone will come by to take your statement later, Mr. Arrendale. Maybe me, maybe someone else.” Then he walks off. Gradually the crowd scatters.
The grocery cart is on its side; sacks are split, the food scattered and battered on the ground. It looks ugly and my stomach turns for a moment. I cannot leave this mess here. I still need groceries; these are spoiled. I cannot remember which are in the car, and safe, and which I will need to replace. The thought of going back into the noisy store again is too much.
I should pick up the mess. I reach down; it is disgusting, the bread smashed and trodden into the dirty pavement, the splattered juice, the dented cans. I do not have to like it; I only have to do it. I reach, lift, carry, trying to touch things as little as possible. It is a waste of food and wasting food is wrong, but I cannot eat dirty bread or spilled juice.
“Are you all right?” someone asks. I jump, and he says, “Sorry… you just didn’t look well.”
The police cars are gone. I do not know when they left, but it is dark now. I do not know how to explain what happened.
“I am all right,” I say. “The groceries aren’t.”
“Want some help?” he asks. He is a big man, going bald, with curly hair around the bald spot. He has on gray slacks and a black T-shirt. I do not know if I should let him help or not. I do not know what is appropriate in this situation. It is not something we were taught in school. He has already picked up two dented cans, one of tomato sauce and one of baked beans. “These are okay,” he says. “Just dented.” He reaches out to me, holding them.
“Thank you,” I say. It is always appropriate to say thank you when someone hands you something. I do not want the dented cans, but it does not matter if you want the present; you must say thank you.
He picks up the flattened box that should have had rice in it and drops it in the waste container. When everything we can pick up easily is in the waste container or my car, he waves and walks off. I do not know his name.
When I get home, it is not even 7:00 p.m. yet. I do not know when a policeman will come. I call Tom to tell him what happened because he knows Don and I do not know any other person to call. He says he will come to my apartment. I do not need him to come, but he wants to come.
When he arrives, he looks upset. His eyebrows are pulled together and there are wrinkles on his forehead. “Lou, are you all right?”
“I am fine,” I say.
“Don really attacked you?” He does not wait for me to answer; he rushes on. “I can’t believe—we told that policeman about him—”
“You told Mr. Stacy about Don?”
“After the bomb thing. It was obvious, Lou, that it had to be someone from our group. I tried to tell you—”
I remember the time Lucia interrupted us.
“We could see it,” Tom went on. “He was jealous of you with Marjory.”
“He blames me about his job, too,” I say. “He said I was a freak, that it was my fault he didn’t have the job he wanted, that people like me should not have normal women like Marjory for friends.”
“Jealousy is one thing; breaking things and hurting people is something else,” Tom says. “I’m sorry you had to go through this. I thought he was angry with me.”
“I am fine,” I say again. “He did not hurt me. I knew he did not like me, so it was not as bad as it could have been.”
“Lou, you’re… amazing. I still think it was partly my fault.”
I do not understand this. Don did it. Tom did not tell Don to do it. How could it be Tom’s fault, even a little bit?
“If I had seen it coming, if I had handled Don better—”
“Don is a person, not a thing,” I say. “No one can completely control someone else and it is wrong to try.”
His face relaxes. “Lou, sometimes I think you are the wisest of all of us. All right. It wasn’t my fault. I’m still sorry you had to go through all that. And the trial, too—that’s not going to be easy for you. It’s hard on anyone involved in a trial.”
“Trial? Why do I need to be on trial?”
“You don’t, but you’ll have to be a witness at Don’s trial, I’m sure. Didn’t they tell you?”
“No.” I do not know what a witness at a trial does. I have never wanted to watch shows about trials on TV.
“Well, it won’t happen anytime soon, and we can talk about it. Right now—is there anything Lucia and I can do for you?”
“No. I am fine. I will come to fencing tomorrow.”
“I’m glad of that. I wouldn’t want you to stay away because you were afraid someone else in the group would start acting like Don.”
“I did not think that,” I say. It seems a silly thought, but then I wonder if the group needed a Don and someone else would have to step into that role. Still, if someone who is normal like Don can hide that kind of anger and violence, maybe all normal people have that potential. I do not think I have it.
“Good. If you have the slightest concern about it, though—about anyone—please let me know right away. Groups are funny. I’ve been in groups where when someone that everybody disliked left we immediately found someone else to dislike and they became the outcast.”
“So that is a pattern in groups?”
“It’s one pattern.” He sighs. “I hope it’s not in this group, and I’ll be watching for it. Somehow we missed the problem with Don.”
The buzzer goes off. Tom looks around, then at me. “I think it will be a policeman,” I say. “Mr. Stacy said someone would come to take my statement.”
“I’ll go on, then,” Tom says.
The policeman, Mr. Stacy, sits on my couch. He is wearing tan slacks and a checked shirt with short sleeves. His shoes are brown, with a pebbly surface. When he came in he looked around and I could tell that he was seeing everything. Danny looks at things the same way, assessing.
“I have the reports on the earlier vandalism, Mr. Arrendale,” he says. “So if you’ll just tell me about what happened this evening…” This is silly. He was there. He asked me at the time and I told him then, and he put things in his pocket set. I do not understand why he is here again.
“It is my day to go grocery shopping,” I say. “I always go grocery shopping at the same store because it is easier to find things in a store when someone has been there every week.”
“Do you go at the same time every week?” he asks.
“Yes. I go after work and before fixing supper.”
“And do you make a list?”
“Yes.” I think, Of course, but maybe Mr. Stacy doesn’t think everyone makes a list. “I threw the list away when I got home, though.” I wonder if he wants me to get it from the trash.
“That’s all right. I just wondered how predictable your movements were.”
“Predictable is good,” I say. I am beginning to sweat. “It is important to have routines.”
“Yes, of course,” he says. “But having routines makes it easier for someone who wants to hurt you to find you. Remember I warned you about that last week.”
I had not thought of it like that.
“But go on—I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Tell me everything.”
It feels strange to have someone listening so intently to such unimportant things as the order in which I buy groceries. But he said to tell him everything. I do not know what this has to do with the attack, but I tell him anyway, how I organized my shopping and did not have to retrace my steps.
“Then I walked outside,” I say. “It was dusk, not completely dark, but the lights in the parking lot were bright. I had parked in the left-hand row, eleven spaces out.” I like it when I can park in prime numbers, but I did not tell him that. “I had the keys in my hand and unlocked the car. I took the sacks of groceries out of the basket and put them in the car.” I do not think he wants to hear about putting heavy things on the floor and light things on the seat. “I heard the basket move behind me and turned around. That is when Don spoke to me.”
I pause, trying to remember the exact words he used and the order. “He sounded very angry,” I say. “His voice was hoarse. He said, ‘It’s all your fault. It’s your fault Tom kicked me out.’” I pause again. He said a lot of words very fast, and I am not sure I remember all of them in the right order. It would not be right to say it wrong.
Mr. Stacy waits, looking at me.
“I am not sure I remember everything exactly right,” I say.
“That’s okay,” he says. “Just tell me what you do remember.”
“He said, ‘It’s your fault Marjory told me to go away.’” Tom is the person who organized the fencing group. “Marjory is… I told you about Marjory last week. She was never Don’s girlfriend.” I am uncomfortable talking about Marjory. She should speak for herself. “Marjory likes me, in a way, but—” I cannot say this. I do not know how Marjory likes me, whether it is as acquaintance or friend or… or more. If I say “not as a lover” will that make it true? I do not want that to be true.
“He said, ‘Freaks should mate with freaks, if they have to mate at all.’ He was very angry. He said it is my fault there is a depression and he does not have a good job.”
“Um.” Mr. Stacy just makes that faint sound and sits there.
“He told me to get in the car. He moved the weapon toward me. It is not good to get in the car with an attacker; that was on a news program last year.”
“It’s on the news every year,” Mr. Stacy says. “But some people do it anyway. I’m glad you didn’t.”
“I could see his pattern,” I say. “So I moved—parried his weapon hand and hit him in the stomach. I know it is wrong to hit someone, but he wanted to hurt me.”
“Saw his pattern?” Mr. Stacy says. “What is that?”
“We have been in the same fencing group for years,” I say. “When he swings his right arm forward to thrust, he always moves his right foot with it, and then his left to the side, and then he swings his elbow out and his next thrust is around far to the right. That is how I knew that if I parried wide and then thrust in the middle, I would have a chance to hit him before he hurt me.”
“If he’s been fencing you for years, how come he didn’t see that coming?” Mr. Stacy asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But I am good at seeing patterns in how other people move. It is how I fence. He is not as good at that. I think maybe because I did not have a blade, he did not think I would use the same countermove as in fencing.”
“Huh. I’d like to see you fence,” Mr. Stacy says. “I always thought of it as a sissy excuse for a sport, all that white suit and wires stuff, but you make it sound interesting. So—he threatened you with the weapon, you knocked it aside and hit him in the stomach, and then what?”
“Then lots of people started yelling and people jumped on him. I guess it was policemen, but I had not seen them before.” I stop. Anything else he can find out from the police who were there, I think.
“Okay. Let’s just go back over a few things…” He leads me through it again and again, and each time I remember another detail. I worry about that—am I really remembering all this, or am I filling in the blanks to make him happy? I read about this in the book. It feels real to me, but sometimes that is a lie. Lying is wrong. I do not want to lie.
He asks me again and again about the fencing group: who liked me and who didn’t. Which ones I liked and didn’t. I thought I liked everyone; I thought they liked me, or at least tolerated me, until Don. Mr. Stacy seems to want Marjory to be my girlfriend or lover; he keeps asking if we’re seeing each other. I am getting very sweaty talking about Marjory. I keep telling the truth, which is that I like her a lot and think about her, but we are not going out.
Finally he stands up. “Thank you, Mr. Arrendale; that’s all for now. I’ll have it written up; you’ll need to come down to the station and sign it, and then we’ll be in touch when this comes up for trial.”
“Trial?” I ask.
“Yes. As the victim of this assault, you’ll be a witness for the prosecution. Any problem with that?”
“Mr. Crenshaw will be angry if I take too much time off work,” I say. That is true if I still have a job by then. What if I do not?
“I’m sure he’ll understand,” Mr. Stacy says.
I am sure he will not, because he will not want to understand.
“There’s a chance that Poiteau’s lawyer will deal with the DA,” Mr. Stacy says. “Take a reduced sentence in return for not risking worse in a trial. We’ll let you know.” He walks to the door. “Take care, Mr. Arrendale. I’m glad we caught this guy and that you weren’t hurt.”
“Thank you for your help,” I say.
When he has gone, I smooth the couch where he sat and put the pillow back where it was. I feel unsettled. I do not want to think about Don and the attack anymore. I want to forget it. I want it not to have happened at all.
I fix my supper quickly, boiled noodles and vegetables, and eat it, then wash the bowl and pot. It is already 8:00 P.M. I pick up the book and start chapter 17, “Integrating Memory and Attention Control: The Lessons of PTSD and ADHD.”
By now I am finding the long sentences and complicated syntax much easier to understand. They are not linear but stacked or radial. I wish someone had taught me that in the first place.
The information the authors want to convey is organized logically. It reads like something I might have written. It is strange to think that someone like me might write a chapter in a book on brain functionality. Do I sound like a textbook when I talk? Is that what Dr. Fornum means by “stilted language”? I always imagined performers in gaudy costumes on stilts dancing above the crowd when she said that. It did not seem reasonable; I am not tall and gaudy. If she meant I sounded like a textbook, she could have said so.
By now I know that PTSD is “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” and that it produces strange alterations in memory function. It is a matter of complex control and feedback mechanisms, inhibition and disinhibition of signal transmission.
It occurs to me that I am now post-traumatic myself, that being attacked by someone who wants to kill me is what they mean by trauma, though I do not feel very stressed or excited. Maybe normal people do not sit down to read a textbook a few hours after nearly being killed, but I find it comforting. The facts are still there, still arranged in logical order, set down by someone who took care to make them clear. Just as my parents told me the stars shone on, undiminished and undamaged by anything that happened to us on this planet. I like it that order exists somewhere even if it shatters near me.
What would a normal person feel? I remember a science experiment from middle school, when we planted seeds in pots set at angles. The plants grew upward to the light, no matter which way their stems had to turn. I remember wondering if someone had planted me in a sideways pot, but my teacher said it wasn’t the same thing at all.
It still feels the same. I am sideways to the world, feeling happy when other people think I should feel devastated. My brain is trying to grow toward the light, but it can’t straighten back up when its pot is tipped.
If I understand the textbook, I remember things like what percentage of cars in the parking lot are blue because I pay attention to color and number more than most people. They don’t notice, so they don’t care. I wonder what they do notice when they look at a parking lot. What else is there to see besides the rows of vehicles, so many blue and so many tan and so many red? What am I missing, as they miss seeing the beautiful numeric relationships?
I remember color and number and pattern and ascending and descending series: that is what came most easily through the filter my sensory processing put between me and the world. These then became the parameters of my brain’s growth, so that I saw everything—from the manufacturing processes for pharmaceuticals to the moves of an opposing fencer—in the same way, as expressions of one kind of reality.
I glance around my apartment and think of my own reactions, my need for regularity, my fascination with repeating phenomena, with series and patterns. Everyone needs some regularity; everyone enjoys series and patterns to some degree. I have known that for years, but now I understand it better. We autistics are on one end of an arc of human behavior and preference, but we are connected. My feeling for Marjory is a normal feeling, not a weird feeling. Maybe I am more aware of the different colors in her hair or her eyes than someone else would be, but the desire to be close to her is a normal desire.
It is almost time for bed. When I step in the shower, I look at my perfectly ordinary body—normal skin, normal hair, normal fingernails and toenails, normal genitals. Surely there are other people who prefer unscented soap, who like the same water temperature, the same texture of washcloth.
I finish the shower, brush my teeth, and rinse out the basin. My face in the mirror looks like my face—it is the face I know best. The light rushes into the pupil of my eye, carrying with it the information that is within range of my vision, carrying with it the world, but what I see when I look at where the light goes in is blackness, deep and velvety. Light goes in and darkness looks back at me. The image is in my eye and in my brain, as well as in the mirror.
I turn off the light in the bathroom and go to bed, turning off the light beside the bed after I am sitting down. The afterimage of light burns in the darkness. I close my eyes and see the opposites balanced in space, floating across from each other. First the words, and then the images replacing the words.
Light is the opposite of dark. Heavy is the opposite of light. Memory is the opposite of forgetting. Attending is the opposite of absence. They are not quite the same: the word for the kind of light that is opposite of heavy seems lighter than the shiny balloon that comes as an image. Light gleams on the shiny sphere as it rises, recedes, vanishes…
I asked my mother once how I could have light in my dreams when my eyes were closed in sleep. Why were dreams not all dark, I asked. She did not know. The book told me a lot about visual processing in the brain, but it did not tell me that.
I wonder why. Surely someone else has asked why dreams can be full of light even in the dark. The brain generates images, yes, but where does it come from, the light in them? In deep blindness people no longer see light—or it is not thought they do, and the brain scans indicate different patterns. So is the light in dreams a memory of light or something else?
I remember someone saying, of another child, “He likes baseball so much that if you opened his head there’d be a ball field inside…” That was before I knew that much of what people said did not mean what the words meant. I wondered what would be inside my head if someone opened it. I asked my mother and she said, “Your brain, dear,” and showed me a picture of a gray wrinkled thing. I cried because I knew I did not like it enough for it to fill my head. I was sure no one else had something that ugly inside their head. They would have baseball fields or ice cream or picnics.
I know now that everybody does have a gray wrinkled brain inside their head, not ball fields or swimming pools or the people they love. Whatever is in the mind does not show in the brain. But at the time it seemed proof that I was made wrong.
What I have in my head is light and dark and gravity and space and swords and groceries and colors and numbers and people and patterns so beautiful I get shivers all over. I still do not know why I have those patterns and not others.
The book answers questions other people have thought of. I have thought of questions they have not answered. I always thought my questions were wrong questions because no one else asked them. Maybe no one thought of them. Maybe darkness got there first. Maybe I am the first light touching a gulf of ignorance.
Maybe my questions matter.
Chapter Fifteen
The grocery cart is on its side; sacks are split, the food scattered and battered on the ground. It looks ugly and my stomach turns for a moment. I cannot leave this mess here. I still need groceries; these are spoiled. I cannot remember which are in the car, and safe, and which I will need to replace. The thought of going back into the noisy store again is too much.
I should pick up the mess. I reach down; it is disgusting, the bread smashed and trodden into the dirty pavement, the splattered juice, the dented cans. I do not have to like it; I only have to do it. I reach, lift, carry, trying to touch things as little as possible. It is a waste of food and wasting food is wrong, but I cannot eat dirty bread or spilled juice.
“Are you all right?” someone asks. I jump, and he says, “Sorry… you just didn’t look well.”
The police cars are gone. I do not know when they left, but it is dark now. I do not know how to explain what happened.
“I am all right,” I say. “The groceries aren’t.”
“Want some help?” he asks. He is a big man, going bald, with curly hair around the bald spot. He has on gray slacks and a black T-shirt. I do not know if I should let him help or not. I do not know what is appropriate in this situation. It is not something we were taught in school. He has already picked up two dented cans, one of tomato sauce and one of baked beans. “These are okay,” he says. “Just dented.” He reaches out to me, holding them.
“Thank you,” I say. It is always appropriate to say thank you when someone hands you something. I do not want the dented cans, but it does not matter if you want the present; you must say thank you.
He picks up the flattened box that should have had rice in it and drops it in the waste container. When everything we can pick up easily is in the waste container or my car, he waves and walks off. I do not know his name.
When I get home, it is not even 7:00 p.m. yet. I do not know when a policeman will come. I call Tom to tell him what happened because he knows Don and I do not know any other person to call. He says he will come to my apartment. I do not need him to come, but he wants to come.
When he arrives, he looks upset. His eyebrows are pulled together and there are wrinkles on his forehead. “Lou, are you all right?”
“I am fine,” I say.
“Don really attacked you?” He does not wait for me to answer; he rushes on. “I can’t believe—we told that policeman about him—”
“You told Mr. Stacy about Don?”
“After the bomb thing. It was obvious, Lou, that it had to be someone from our group. I tried to tell you—”
I remember the time Lucia interrupted us.
“We could see it,” Tom went on. “He was jealous of you with Marjory.”
“He blames me about his job, too,” I say. “He said I was a freak, that it was my fault he didn’t have the job he wanted, that people like me should not have normal women like Marjory for friends.”
“Jealousy is one thing; breaking things and hurting people is something else,” Tom says. “I’m sorry you had to go through this. I thought he was angry with me.”
“I am fine,” I say again. “He did not hurt me. I knew he did not like me, so it was not as bad as it could have been.”
“Lou, you’re… amazing. I still think it was partly my fault.”
I do not understand this. Don did it. Tom did not tell Don to do it. How could it be Tom’s fault, even a little bit?
“If I had seen it coming, if I had handled Don better—”
“Don is a person, not a thing,” I say. “No one can completely control someone else and it is wrong to try.”
His face relaxes. “Lou, sometimes I think you are the wisest of all of us. All right. It wasn’t my fault. I’m still sorry you had to go through all that. And the trial, too—that’s not going to be easy for you. It’s hard on anyone involved in a trial.”
“Trial? Why do I need to be on trial?”
“You don’t, but you’ll have to be a witness at Don’s trial, I’m sure. Didn’t they tell you?”
“No.” I do not know what a witness at a trial does. I have never wanted to watch shows about trials on TV.
“Well, it won’t happen anytime soon, and we can talk about it. Right now—is there anything Lucia and I can do for you?”
“No. I am fine. I will come to fencing tomorrow.”
“I’m glad of that. I wouldn’t want you to stay away because you were afraid someone else in the group would start acting like Don.”
“I did not think that,” I say. It seems a silly thought, but then I wonder if the group needed a Don and someone else would have to step into that role. Still, if someone who is normal like Don can hide that kind of anger and violence, maybe all normal people have that potential. I do not think I have it.
“Good. If you have the slightest concern about it, though—about anyone—please let me know right away. Groups are funny. I’ve been in groups where when someone that everybody disliked left we immediately found someone else to dislike and they became the outcast.”
“So that is a pattern in groups?”
“It’s one pattern.” He sighs. “I hope it’s not in this group, and I’ll be watching for it. Somehow we missed the problem with Don.”
The buzzer goes off. Tom looks around, then at me. “I think it will be a policeman,” I say. “Mr. Stacy said someone would come to take my statement.”
“I’ll go on, then,” Tom says.
The policeman, Mr. Stacy, sits on my couch. He is wearing tan slacks and a checked shirt with short sleeves. His shoes are brown, with a pebbly surface. When he came in he looked around and I could tell that he was seeing everything. Danny looks at things the same way, assessing.
“I have the reports on the earlier vandalism, Mr. Arrendale,” he says. “So if you’ll just tell me about what happened this evening…” This is silly. He was there. He asked me at the time and I told him then, and he put things in his pocket set. I do not understand why he is here again.
“It is my day to go grocery shopping,” I say. “I always go grocery shopping at the same store because it is easier to find things in a store when someone has been there every week.”
“Do you go at the same time every week?” he asks.
“Yes. I go after work and before fixing supper.”
“And do you make a list?”
“Yes.” I think, Of course, but maybe Mr. Stacy doesn’t think everyone makes a list. “I threw the list away when I got home, though.” I wonder if he wants me to get it from the trash.
“That’s all right. I just wondered how predictable your movements were.”
“Predictable is good,” I say. I am beginning to sweat. “It is important to have routines.”
“Yes, of course,” he says. “But having routines makes it easier for someone who wants to hurt you to find you. Remember I warned you about that last week.”
I had not thought of it like that.
“But go on—I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Tell me everything.”
It feels strange to have someone listening so intently to such unimportant things as the order in which I buy groceries. But he said to tell him everything. I do not know what this has to do with the attack, but I tell him anyway, how I organized my shopping and did not have to retrace my steps.
“Then I walked outside,” I say. “It was dusk, not completely dark, but the lights in the parking lot were bright. I had parked in the left-hand row, eleven spaces out.” I like it when I can park in prime numbers, but I did not tell him that. “I had the keys in my hand and unlocked the car. I took the sacks of groceries out of the basket and put them in the car.” I do not think he wants to hear about putting heavy things on the floor and light things on the seat. “I heard the basket move behind me and turned around. That is when Don spoke to me.”
I pause, trying to remember the exact words he used and the order. “He sounded very angry,” I say. “His voice was hoarse. He said, ‘It’s all your fault. It’s your fault Tom kicked me out.’” I pause again. He said a lot of words very fast, and I am not sure I remember all of them in the right order. It would not be right to say it wrong.
Mr. Stacy waits, looking at me.
“I am not sure I remember everything exactly right,” I say.
“That’s okay,” he says. “Just tell me what you do remember.”
“He said, ‘It’s your fault Marjory told me to go away.’” Tom is the person who organized the fencing group. “Marjory is… I told you about Marjory last week. She was never Don’s girlfriend.” I am uncomfortable talking about Marjory. She should speak for herself. “Marjory likes me, in a way, but—” I cannot say this. I do not know how Marjory likes me, whether it is as acquaintance or friend or… or more. If I say “not as a lover” will that make it true? I do not want that to be true.
“He said, ‘Freaks should mate with freaks, if they have to mate at all.’ He was very angry. He said it is my fault there is a depression and he does not have a good job.”
“Um.” Mr. Stacy just makes that faint sound and sits there.
“He told me to get in the car. He moved the weapon toward me. It is not good to get in the car with an attacker; that was on a news program last year.”
“It’s on the news every year,” Mr. Stacy says. “But some people do it anyway. I’m glad you didn’t.”
“I could see his pattern,” I say. “So I moved—parried his weapon hand and hit him in the stomach. I know it is wrong to hit someone, but he wanted to hurt me.”
“Saw his pattern?” Mr. Stacy says. “What is that?”
“We have been in the same fencing group for years,” I say. “When he swings his right arm forward to thrust, he always moves his right foot with it, and then his left to the side, and then he swings his elbow out and his next thrust is around far to the right. That is how I knew that if I parried wide and then thrust in the middle, I would have a chance to hit him before he hurt me.”
“If he’s been fencing you for years, how come he didn’t see that coming?” Mr. Stacy asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But I am good at seeing patterns in how other people move. It is how I fence. He is not as good at that. I think maybe because I did not have a blade, he did not think I would use the same countermove as in fencing.”
“Huh. I’d like to see you fence,” Mr. Stacy says. “I always thought of it as a sissy excuse for a sport, all that white suit and wires stuff, but you make it sound interesting. So—he threatened you with the weapon, you knocked it aside and hit him in the stomach, and then what?”
“Then lots of people started yelling and people jumped on him. I guess it was policemen, but I had not seen them before.” I stop. Anything else he can find out from the police who were there, I think.
“Okay. Let’s just go back over a few things…” He leads me through it again and again, and each time I remember another detail. I worry about that—am I really remembering all this, or am I filling in the blanks to make him happy? I read about this in the book. It feels real to me, but sometimes that is a lie. Lying is wrong. I do not want to lie.
He asks me again and again about the fencing group: who liked me and who didn’t. Which ones I liked and didn’t. I thought I liked everyone; I thought they liked me, or at least tolerated me, until Don. Mr. Stacy seems to want Marjory to be my girlfriend or lover; he keeps asking if we’re seeing each other. I am getting very sweaty talking about Marjory. I keep telling the truth, which is that I like her a lot and think about her, but we are not going out.
Finally he stands up. “Thank you, Mr. Arrendale; that’s all for now. I’ll have it written up; you’ll need to come down to the station and sign it, and then we’ll be in touch when this comes up for trial.”
“Trial?” I ask.
“Yes. As the victim of this assault, you’ll be a witness for the prosecution. Any problem with that?”
“Mr. Crenshaw will be angry if I take too much time off work,” I say. That is true if I still have a job by then. What if I do not?
“I’m sure he’ll understand,” Mr. Stacy says.
I am sure he will not, because he will not want to understand.
“There’s a chance that Poiteau’s lawyer will deal with the DA,” Mr. Stacy says. “Take a reduced sentence in return for not risking worse in a trial. We’ll let you know.” He walks to the door. “Take care, Mr. Arrendale. I’m glad we caught this guy and that you weren’t hurt.”
“Thank you for your help,” I say.
When he has gone, I smooth the couch where he sat and put the pillow back where it was. I feel unsettled. I do not want to think about Don and the attack anymore. I want to forget it. I want it not to have happened at all.
I fix my supper quickly, boiled noodles and vegetables, and eat it, then wash the bowl and pot. It is already 8:00 P.M. I pick up the book and start chapter 17, “Integrating Memory and Attention Control: The Lessons of PTSD and ADHD.”
By now I am finding the long sentences and complicated syntax much easier to understand. They are not linear but stacked or radial. I wish someone had taught me that in the first place.
The information the authors want to convey is organized logically. It reads like something I might have written. It is strange to think that someone like me might write a chapter in a book on brain functionality. Do I sound like a textbook when I talk? Is that what Dr. Fornum means by “stilted language”? I always imagined performers in gaudy costumes on stilts dancing above the crowd when she said that. It did not seem reasonable; I am not tall and gaudy. If she meant I sounded like a textbook, she could have said so.
By now I know that PTSD is “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” and that it produces strange alterations in memory function. It is a matter of complex control and feedback mechanisms, inhibition and disinhibition of signal transmission.
It occurs to me that I am now post-traumatic myself, that being attacked by someone who wants to kill me is what they mean by trauma, though I do not feel very stressed or excited. Maybe normal people do not sit down to read a textbook a few hours after nearly being killed, but I find it comforting. The facts are still there, still arranged in logical order, set down by someone who took care to make them clear. Just as my parents told me the stars shone on, undiminished and undamaged by anything that happened to us on this planet. I like it that order exists somewhere even if it shatters near me.
What would a normal person feel? I remember a science experiment from middle school, when we planted seeds in pots set at angles. The plants grew upward to the light, no matter which way their stems had to turn. I remember wondering if someone had planted me in a sideways pot, but my teacher said it wasn’t the same thing at all.
It still feels the same. I am sideways to the world, feeling happy when other people think I should feel devastated. My brain is trying to grow toward the light, but it can’t straighten back up when its pot is tipped.
If I understand the textbook, I remember things like what percentage of cars in the parking lot are blue because I pay attention to color and number more than most people. They don’t notice, so they don’t care. I wonder what they do notice when they look at a parking lot. What else is there to see besides the rows of vehicles, so many blue and so many tan and so many red? What am I missing, as they miss seeing the beautiful numeric relationships?
I remember color and number and pattern and ascending and descending series: that is what came most easily through the filter my sensory processing put between me and the world. These then became the parameters of my brain’s growth, so that I saw everything—from the manufacturing processes for pharmaceuticals to the moves of an opposing fencer—in the same way, as expressions of one kind of reality.
I glance around my apartment and think of my own reactions, my need for regularity, my fascination with repeating phenomena, with series and patterns. Everyone needs some regularity; everyone enjoys series and patterns to some degree. I have known that for years, but now I understand it better. We autistics are on one end of an arc of human behavior and preference, but we are connected. My feeling for Marjory is a normal feeling, not a weird feeling. Maybe I am more aware of the different colors in her hair or her eyes than someone else would be, but the desire to be close to her is a normal desire.
It is almost time for bed. When I step in the shower, I look at my perfectly ordinary body—normal skin, normal hair, normal fingernails and toenails, normal genitals. Surely there are other people who prefer unscented soap, who like the same water temperature, the same texture of washcloth.
I finish the shower, brush my teeth, and rinse out the basin. My face in the mirror looks like my face—it is the face I know best. The light rushes into the pupil of my eye, carrying with it the information that is within range of my vision, carrying with it the world, but what I see when I look at where the light goes in is blackness, deep and velvety. Light goes in and darkness looks back at me. The image is in my eye and in my brain, as well as in the mirror.
I turn off the light in the bathroom and go to bed, turning off the light beside the bed after I am sitting down. The afterimage of light burns in the darkness. I close my eyes and see the opposites balanced in space, floating across from each other. First the words, and then the images replacing the words.
Light is the opposite of dark. Heavy is the opposite of light. Memory is the opposite of forgetting. Attending is the opposite of absence. They are not quite the same: the word for the kind of light that is opposite of heavy seems lighter than the shiny balloon that comes as an image. Light gleams on the shiny sphere as it rises, recedes, vanishes…
I asked my mother once how I could have light in my dreams when my eyes were closed in sleep. Why were dreams not all dark, I asked. She did not know. The book told me a lot about visual processing in the brain, but it did not tell me that.
I wonder why. Surely someone else has asked why dreams can be full of light even in the dark. The brain generates images, yes, but where does it come from, the light in them? In deep blindness people no longer see light—or it is not thought they do, and the brain scans indicate different patterns. So is the light in dreams a memory of light or something else?
I remember someone saying, of another child, “He likes baseball so much that if you opened his head there’d be a ball field inside…” That was before I knew that much of what people said did not mean what the words meant. I wondered what would be inside my head if someone opened it. I asked my mother and she said, “Your brain, dear,” and showed me a picture of a gray wrinkled thing. I cried because I knew I did not like it enough for it to fill my head. I was sure no one else had something that ugly inside their head. They would have baseball fields or ice cream or picnics.
I know now that everybody does have a gray wrinkled brain inside their head, not ball fields or swimming pools or the people they love. Whatever is in the mind does not show in the brain. But at the time it seemed proof that I was made wrong.
What I have in my head is light and dark and gravity and space and swords and groceries and colors and numbers and people and patterns so beautiful I get shivers all over. I still do not know why I have those patterns and not others.
The book answers questions other people have thought of. I have thought of questions they have not answered. I always thought my questions were wrong questions because no one else asked them. Maybe no one thought of them. Maybe darkness got there first. Maybe I am the first light touching a gulf of ignorance.
Maybe my questions matter.
Chapter Fifteen
Light. Morning light. I remember strange dreams, but not what they were about, only that they were strange. It is a bright, crisp day; when I touch the window glass it feels cold.
In the cooler air, I feel wide-awake, almost bouncy. The cereal flakes in the bowl have a crisp, ruffled texture; I feel them in my mouth, crunchy and then smooth.
When I come outside, the bright sun glints off pebbles in the parking lot pavement. It is a day for bright, brisk music. Possibilities surge through my mind; I settle on Bizet. I touch my car gingerly, noticing that even though Don is in jail my body is remembering that it might be dangerous. Nothing happens. The four new tires still smell new. The car starts. On the way to work, the music plays in my head, bright as the sunlight. I think of going out to the country to look at stars tonight; I should be able to see the space stations, too. Then I remember that it is Wednesday and I will go to fencing. I have not forgotten that in a long time. Did I mark the calendar this morning? I am not sure.
At work, I pull into my usual parking space. Mr. Aldrin is there standing just inside the door as if he were waiting for me.
“Lou, I saw it on the news—are you all right?”
“Yes,” I say. I think it should be obvious just from looking at me.
“If you don’t feel well, you can take the day off,” he says.
“I am fine,” I say. “I can work.”
“Well… if you’re sure.” He pauses, as if he expects me to say something, but I cannot think of anything to say. “The newscast said you disarmed the attacker, Lou—I didn’t know you knew how to do that.”
“I just did what I do in fencing,” I say. “Even though I didn’t have a blade.”
“Fencing!” His eyes widen; his brows lift up. “You do fencing? Like… with swords and things?”
“Yes. I go to fencing class once a week,” I say. I do not know how much to tell him.
“I never knew that,” he says. “I don’t know anything about fencing, except they wear those white suits and have those wires trailing behind them.”
We do not wear the white suits or use electric scoring, but I do not feel like explaining it to Mr. Aldrin. I want to get back to my project, and this afternoon we have another meeting with the medical team. Then I remember what Mr. Stacy said.
“I may have to go to the police station and sign a statement,” I say.
“That’s fine,” Mr. Aldrin says. “Whatever you need. I’m sure this must have been a terrible shock.”
My phone rings. I think it is going to be Mr. Crenshaw, so I do not hurry to answer it, but I do answer it.
“Mr. Arrendale?… This is Detective Stacy. Look, can you come down to the station this morning?”
I do not think this is a real question. I think it is like when my father said, “You pick up that end, okay?” when he meant “Pick up that end.” It may be more polite to give commands by asking questions, but it is also more confusing, because sometimes they are questions. “I will have to ask my boss,” I say.
“Police business,” Mr. Stacy says. “We need you to sign your statement, some other paperwork. Just tell them that.”
“I will call Mr. Aldrin,” I say. “I should call you back?”
“No—just come on down when you can. I’ll be here all morning.” In other words, he expects me to come down no matter what Mr. Aldrin says. It was not a real question.
I call Mr. Aldrin’s office.
“Yes, Lou,” he says. “How are you?” It is silly; he has already asked me that this morning.
“The police want me to go to the station and sign my statement and some other paperwork,” I say. “They said come now.”
“But are you all right? Do you need someone to go with you?”
“I am fine,” I say. “But I need to go to the police station.”
“Of course. Take the whole day.”
Outside, I wonder what the guard thinks as I drive out past the checkpoint after driving in just a short time ago. I cannot tell anything from his face.
It is noisy in the police station. At a long, high counter, rows of people stand in line. I stand in line, but then Mr. Stacy comes out and sees me. “Come on,” he says. He leads me to another noisy room with five desks all covered with stuff. His desk—I think it is his desk—has a docking station for his handcomp and a large display.
“Home sweet home,” he says, waving me to a chair beside the desk.
The chair is gray metal with a thin green plastic cushion on the seat. I can feel the frame through the cushion. I smell stale coffee, cheap candy bars, chips, paper, the fried-ink smell of printers and copiers.
“Here’s the hard copy of your statement last night,” he says. “Read through it, see if there are any errors, and, if not, sign it.”
The stacked ifs slow me down, but I work through them. I read the statement quickly, though it takes me a while to grasp that “complainant” is me and “assailant” is Don. Also, I do not know why Don and I are referred to as “males” and not “men” and Marjory as a “female” and not a “woman.” I think it is rude to, say, call her “a female known to both males in a social context.” There are no actual errors, so I sign it.
Then Mr. Stacy tells me I must sign a complaint against Don. I do not know why. It is against the law to do the things Don did, and there is evidence he did them. It should not matter whether I sign or not. If that is what the law requires, though, then I will do it.
“What will happen to Don if he is found guilty?” I ask.
“Serial escalating vandalism ending in a violent assault? He’s not getting out without custodial rehab,” Mr. Stacy says. “A PPD—a programmable personality determinant brain chip. That’s when they put in a control chip—”
“I know,” I say. It makes me feel squirmy inside; at least I do not have to contemplate having a chip inserted in my brain.
“It’s not like it is on the shows,” Mr. Stacy says. “No sparks, no lightning flashes—he just won’t be able to do certain things.”
What I heard—what we heard at the Center—is that the PPD overrides the original personality and prevents the rehabilitant, the term they like, from doing anything but what he is told.
“Couldn’t he just pay for my tires and windshield?” I ask.
“Recidivism,” Mr. Stacy says, pawing through a pile of hard copies. “They do it again. It’s been proved. Just like you can’t stop being you, the person who is autistic, he can’t stop being him, the person who is jealous and violent. If it’d been found when he was an infant, well, then… here we are.” He pulls out one particular sheet. “This is the form. Read it carefully, sign on the bottom where the X is, and date it.”
I read the form, which has the city’s seal at the top. It says that I, Lou Arrendale, make a complaint of a lot of things I never even thought of. I thought it would be simple: Don tried to scare me and then tried to hurt me. Instead the form says I am complaining of malicious destruction of property, theft of property valued at more than $250, manufacturing an explosive device, placing an explosive device, assault with intent to murder with an explosive device—“That could have killed me?” I ask. “It says here ‘assault with a deadly weapon.’”
“Explosives are a deadly weapon. It’s true that the way he had it wired up, it didn’t go off when it was supposed to, and the amount is marginal: you might have lost only part of your hands and your face. But it counts under the law.”
“I did not know that one act, like taking out the battery and putting in the jack-in-the-box, could break more than one law,” I say.
“Neither do a lot of criminals,” Mr. Stacy says. “But it’s quite common. Say a perp breaks into a house while the owners are gone and steals stuff. There’s a law about unlawful entry and another law about theft.”
I did not really complain about Don manufacturing an explosive device because I did not know he was doing it. I look at Mr. Stacy; it is clear he has an answer for everything and it will not do any good to argue. It does not seem fair that so many complaints could come out of one act, but I have heard people talk about other things like this, too.
The form goes on to list what Don did in less formal language: the tires, the windshield, the theft of a vehicle battery worth $262.37, the placing of the explosive device under the hood, and the assault in the parking lot. With it all laid out in order, it looks obvious that Don did it all, that he seriously intended to hurt me, that the very first incident was a clear warning sign.
It is still hard to grasp. I know what he said, the words he used, but they do not make much sense. He is a normal man. He could talk to Marjory easily; he did talk to Marjory. Nothing stopped him from becoming friends with her, nothing but himself. It is not my fault that she liked me. It is not my fault that she met me at the fencing group; I was there first and did not know her until she came.
“I do not know why,” I say.
“What?” Mr. Stacy says.
“I do not know why he got so angry with me,” I say.
He tips his head to one side. “He told you,” he says. “And you told me what he said.”
“Yes, but it does not make sense,” I say. “I like Marjory a lot, but she is not my girlfriend. I have never taken her out. She has never taken me out. I have never done anything to hurt Don.” I do not tell Mr. Stacy that I would like to take Marjory out, because he might ask why I haven’t and I do not want to answer.
“Maybe it doesn’t make sense to you,” he says, “but it makes sense to me. We see lots of this kind of thing, jealousy souring into rage. You didn’t have to do anything; it was all about him, all about his insides.”
“He is normal inside,” I say.
“He’s not formally disabled, Lou, but he is not normal. Normal people do not wire explosive devices into someone’s car.”
“Do you mean he is insane?”
“That’s for a court to decide,” Mr. Stacy says. He shakes his head. “Lou, why are you trying to excuse him?”
“I’m not… I agree what he did is wrong, but having a chip put in his brain to make him someone else—”
He rolls his eyes. “Lou, I wish you people—I mean people who aren’t in criminal justice—would understand about the PPD. It is not making him into someone else. It is making him Don without the compulsion to harm people who annoy him in any way. That way we don’t have to keep him locked up for years because he’s likely to do it again—he just won’t do it again. To anyone. It’s a lot more humane than what we used to do, lock people like this up for years with other vicious men in an environment that only made them worse. This doesn’t hurt; it doesn’t make him into a robot; he can live a normal life… He just can’t commit violent crimes. It’s the only thing we’ve found that works, other than the death penalty, which I will agree is a bit extreme for what he did to you.”
“I still don’t like it,” I say. “I would not want anyone putting a chip in my brain.”
“There are legitimate medical uses,” he says. I know that; I know about people with intractable seizures or Parkinsonism or spinal cord injuries: specific chips and bypasses have been developed for them, and that is a good thing. But this I am not sure of.
Still, it is the law. There is nothing in the form that is untrue. Don did these things. I called the police about them, except the last one, which they witnessed. There is a line at the bottom of the form, between the body of the text and the line for my signature, and there is a line of text that says that I swear everything in the statement is true. It is true as far as I know, and that will have to be enough. I sign on the line, date it, and hand it to the police officer.
“Thanks, Lou,” he says. “Now the DA wants to meet you and she will explain what happens next.”
The district attorney is a middle-aged woman with frizzy black hair mixed with gray. The nameplate on her desk says:
She has skin the color of gingerbread. Her office is bigger than mine at work and has shelves all around it with books. They are old, tan with black and red squares on the spines. They do not look as if anyone ever read them, and I wonder if they are real. There is a data plate on her desktop, and the light from it makes the underside of her chin a funny color, even though from my side the desktop looks plain black.
“I’m glad you’re alive, Mr. Arrendale,” she says. “You were quite lucky. I understand you’ve signed the complaint against Mr. Donald Poiteau, is that right?”
Yes, I say.
“Well, let me explain what happens next. The law says that Mr. Poiteau is entitled to a jury trial if he wants one. We have ample evidence that he is the person involved in all the incidents, and we are sure that evidence will stand up in court. But most likely his legal adviser will tell him to accept a plea. Do you know what that means?”
“No,” I say. I know she wants to tell me.
“If he does not use up state resources by demanding a trial, it will reduce the amount of time he must serve, down to that required for implantation and adaptation of the PPD, the chip. Otherwise, if convicted, he would face a minimum of five years in detention. In the meantime, he’ll be finding out what detention is like, and I suspect he’ll agree to the plea.”
“But he might not be convicted,” I say.
The DA smiles at me. “That doesn’t happen anymore,” she says. “Not with the kind of evidence we’ve got. You don’t have to worry; he’s not going to be able to hurt you anymore.”
I am not worried. Or I was not worried until she said that. Once Don was in custody, I did not worry more about him. If he escapes, I will worry again. I am not worried now.
“If it does not come to trial, if his attorney accepts a plea bargain, then we will not need to call you in again,” she says. “We will know that in a few days. If he does demand a trial, then you will appear as a witness for the prosecution. This will mean spending time with me or someone in my office preparing your testimony and then time in court. Do you understand that?”
I understand what she is saying. What she is not saying and maybe does not know is that Mr. Crenshaw will be very angry if I miss time from work. I hope that Don and his lawyer do not insist on a trial.
“Yes,” I say.
“Good. The whole procedure’s changed in the past ten years, with the availability of the PPD chip; it’s a lot more straightforward. Fewer cases going to trial. Not so much time lost by the victims and the witnesses. We’ll be in touch, Mr. Arrendale.”
The morning is almost over when I finally leave the Justice Center. Mr. Aldrin said I did not have to come in at all today, but I do not want Mr. Crenshaw to have any reason to be angry with me, so I go back to the office for the afternoon. We have another test, one of those where we are supposed to match patterns on a computer screen. We are all very fast at this and finish quickly. The other tests are easy, too, but boring. I do not work the time I missed this morning, because that was not my fault.
Before I leave for fencing, I watch the science news on TV because it is a program on space. A consortium of companies is building another space station. I see a logo I recognize; I did not know that the company I work for had an interest in space-based operations. The announcer is talking about the billions it will cost and the commitment of the various partners.
Maybe this is one reason Mr. Crenshaw insists he needs to cut costs. I think it is good that the company wants to invest in space, and I wish I had a chance to go out there. Maybe if I were not autistic, I could have been an astronaut or space scientist. But even if I change now, with the treatment, it would be too late to retrain for that career.
Maybe this is why some people want the LifeTime treatment to extend their lives, so they can train for a career they could not have before. It is very expensive, though. Not many people can afford it yet.
Three other cars are parked in front of Tom and Lucia’s when I arrive. Marjory’s car is there. My heart is thumping faster. I feel out of breath, but I have not been running.
A chill wind blows down the street. When it is cool, it is easier to fence, but it is harder to sit out in the back and talk.
Inside, Lucia, Susan, and Marjory are talking. They stop when I come in.
“How are you doing, Lou?” Lucia asks.
“I am fine,” I say. My tongue feels too big.
“I’m so sorry about what Don did,” Marjory says.
“You did not tell him to do it,” I say. “It is not your fault.” She should know this.
“I didn’t mean that,” she says. “I just—it’s too bad for you.”
“I am fine,” I say again. “I am here and not—” It is hard to say. “Not in detention,” I say, avoiding not dead. “It is hard—they say they will put a chip in his brain.”
“I should hope so,” Lucia says. Her face is twisted into a scowl. Susan nods and mutters something I can’t quite hear.
“Lou, you look like you don’t want that to happen to him,” Marjory says.
“I think it is very scary,” I say. “He did something wrong, but it is scary that they will turn him into someone else.”
“It’s not like that,” Lucia says. She is staring at me now. She should understand if anyone can; she knows about the experimental treatment; she knows why it would bother me that Don will be compelled to be someone else. “He did something wrong—something very bad. He could have killed you, Lou. Would have, if he hadn’t been stopped. If they turned him into a bowl of pudding it would be fair, but all the chip does is make him unable to do anyone harm.”
It is not that simple. Just as a word can mean one thing in one sentence and something else in another or change meaning with a tone, so an act can be helpful or harmful depending on the circumstance. The PPD chip doesn’t give people better judgment about what is harmful and what is not; it removes the volition, the initiative, to perform acts that are more often harmful than not. That means it also prevents Don from doing good things sometimes. Even I know that and I am sure Lucia knows it, too, but she is ignoring it for some reason.
“To think I trusted him in the group so long!” she says. “I never thought he would do anything like this. That scum-sucking viper: I could rip his face off myself.”
In one of those inside flashes, I know that Lucia is thinking more about her feelings than mine right now. She is hurt because Don fooled her; she feels he made her seem stupid and she does not want to be stupid. She is proud of being intelligent. She wants him punished because he damaged her—at least her feelings about herself.
It is not a very nice way to be, and I did not know Lucia could be like this. Should I have known about her, the way she thinks she should have known about Don? If normal people expect to know all about one another, all the hidden things, how can they stand it? Doesn’t it make them dizzy?
“You can’t read minds, Lucia,” Marjory says.
“I know that!” Lucia moves in little jerky movements, tossing her hair, flicking her fingers. “It’s just—damn, I hate to be made a fool of, and that’s what I feel he did.” She looks up at me. “Sorry, Lou, I’m being selfish here. What really matters is you and how you’re doing.”
It is like watching a crystal forming in a supersaturated solution to see her normal personality—her usual personality—return from the angry person she was a moment ago. I feel better that she has understood what she was doing and is not going to do it again. It is slower than the way she analyzes other people. I wonder if it takes normal people longer to look inside themselves and see what is really happening than it does autistic people or if our brains work at the same speed there. I wonder if she needed what Marjory said to make her capable of that self-analysis.
I wonder what Marjory really thinks of me. She is looking at Lucia now, with quick glances back at me. Her hair is so beautiful… I find myself analyzing the color, the ratio of the different colors of hairs, and then the way the light shifts along them as she moves.
I sit on the floor and begin my stretches. After a moment, the women also start stretching out. I am a little stiff; it takes me several tries before I can touch my forehead to my knees. Marjory still can’t do it; her hair falls forward, brushing her knees, but her forehead doesn’t come within four inches.
When I have stretched, I get up and go to the equipment room for my gear. Tom is outside with Max and Simon, the referee from the tournament. The ring of lights makes a bright area in the middle of the dark yard, with strong shadows everywhere else.
“Hey, buddy,” Max says. He calls all the men buddy when they first arrive. It is a silly thing to do, but it is how he is. “How are you?”
“I am fine,” I say.
“I hear you used a fencing move on him,” Max says. “Wish I’d seen it.”
I think Max would not have wanted to be there in real life, whatever he thinks now.
“Lou, Simon was wondering if he could fence with you,” Tom says. I am glad that he does not ask how I am.
“Yes,” I say. “I will put my mask on.”
Simon is not quite as tall as Tom and thinner. He is wearing an old padded fencing jacket, just like the white jackets that are used in formal competition fencing, but it is a streaky green instead. “Thanks,” he says. And then, as if he knew that I was looking at the color of his jacket, he says, “My sister wanted a green one for a costume once—and she knew more about fencing than dyeing clothes. It looked worse when it had just been done; it’s faded out now.”
“I never saw a green one,” I say.
“Neither had anyone else,” he says. His mask is an ordinary white one that has yellowed with age and use. His gloves are brown. I put on my mask.
“What weapons?” I ask.
“What’s your favorite?” he asks.
I do not have a favorite; each weapon and combination has its own patterns of skill.
“Try épée and dagger,” Tom says. “That’ll be fun to watch.”
I pick up my épée and dagger and shift them in my hands until they are comfortable—I can hardly feel them, which is right. Simon’s épée has a big bell guard, but his dagger has a simple ring. If he is not very good with his parries, I may be able to get a hit on his hand. I wonder if he will call hits or not. He is a referee: surely he will be honest.
He stands relaxed, knees bent, someone who has fenced enough to be comfortable with it. We salute; his blade whines through the air on the downstroke of the salute. I feel my stomach tighten. I do not know what he will do next. Before I can imagine anything, he lunges toward me, something we almost never do in this yard, his arm fully extended and his back leg straight. I twist away, flicking my dagger down and out for the parry and aiming a thrust over his dagger—but he is fast, as fast as Tom, and he has that arm up, ready to parry. He recovers from the lunge so quickly I cannot take advantage of that momentary lack of mobility and gives me a nod as he returns to the neutral guard position. “Good parry,” he says.
In the cooler air, I feel wide-awake, almost bouncy. The cereal flakes in the bowl have a crisp, ruffled texture; I feel them in my mouth, crunchy and then smooth.
When I come outside, the bright sun glints off pebbles in the parking lot pavement. It is a day for bright, brisk music. Possibilities surge through my mind; I settle on Bizet. I touch my car gingerly, noticing that even though Don is in jail my body is remembering that it might be dangerous. Nothing happens. The four new tires still smell new. The car starts. On the way to work, the music plays in my head, bright as the sunlight. I think of going out to the country to look at stars tonight; I should be able to see the space stations, too. Then I remember that it is Wednesday and I will go to fencing. I have not forgotten that in a long time. Did I mark the calendar this morning? I am not sure.
At work, I pull into my usual parking space. Mr. Aldrin is there standing just inside the door as if he were waiting for me.
“Lou, I saw it on the news—are you all right?”
“Yes,” I say. I think it should be obvious just from looking at me.
“If you don’t feel well, you can take the day off,” he says.
“I am fine,” I say. “I can work.”
“Well… if you’re sure.” He pauses, as if he expects me to say something, but I cannot think of anything to say. “The newscast said you disarmed the attacker, Lou—I didn’t know you knew how to do that.”
“I just did what I do in fencing,” I say. “Even though I didn’t have a blade.”
“Fencing!” His eyes widen; his brows lift up. “You do fencing? Like… with swords and things?”
“Yes. I go to fencing class once a week,” I say. I do not know how much to tell him.
“I never knew that,” he says. “I don’t know anything about fencing, except they wear those white suits and have those wires trailing behind them.”
We do not wear the white suits or use electric scoring, but I do not feel like explaining it to Mr. Aldrin. I want to get back to my project, and this afternoon we have another meeting with the medical team. Then I remember what Mr. Stacy said.
“I may have to go to the police station and sign a statement,” I say.
“That’s fine,” Mr. Aldrin says. “Whatever you need. I’m sure this must have been a terrible shock.”
My phone rings. I think it is going to be Mr. Crenshaw, so I do not hurry to answer it, but I do answer it.
“Mr. Arrendale?… This is Detective Stacy. Look, can you come down to the station this morning?”
I do not think this is a real question. I think it is like when my father said, “You pick up that end, okay?” when he meant “Pick up that end.” It may be more polite to give commands by asking questions, but it is also more confusing, because sometimes they are questions. “I will have to ask my boss,” I say.
“Police business,” Mr. Stacy says. “We need you to sign your statement, some other paperwork. Just tell them that.”
“I will call Mr. Aldrin,” I say. “I should call you back?”
“No—just come on down when you can. I’ll be here all morning.” In other words, he expects me to come down no matter what Mr. Aldrin says. It was not a real question.
I call Mr. Aldrin’s office.
“Yes, Lou,” he says. “How are you?” It is silly; he has already asked me that this morning.
“The police want me to go to the station and sign my statement and some other paperwork,” I say. “They said come now.”
“But are you all right? Do you need someone to go with you?”
“I am fine,” I say. “But I need to go to the police station.”
“Of course. Take the whole day.”
Outside, I wonder what the guard thinks as I drive out past the checkpoint after driving in just a short time ago. I cannot tell anything from his face.
It is noisy in the police station. At a long, high counter, rows of people stand in line. I stand in line, but then Mr. Stacy comes out and sees me. “Come on,” he says. He leads me to another noisy room with five desks all covered with stuff. His desk—I think it is his desk—has a docking station for his handcomp and a large display.
“Home sweet home,” he says, waving me to a chair beside the desk.
The chair is gray metal with a thin green plastic cushion on the seat. I can feel the frame through the cushion. I smell stale coffee, cheap candy bars, chips, paper, the fried-ink smell of printers and copiers.
“Here’s the hard copy of your statement last night,” he says. “Read through it, see if there are any errors, and, if not, sign it.”
The stacked ifs slow me down, but I work through them. I read the statement quickly, though it takes me a while to grasp that “complainant” is me and “assailant” is Don. Also, I do not know why Don and I are referred to as “males” and not “men” and Marjory as a “female” and not a “woman.” I think it is rude to, say, call her “a female known to both males in a social context.” There are no actual errors, so I sign it.
Then Mr. Stacy tells me I must sign a complaint against Don. I do not know why. It is against the law to do the things Don did, and there is evidence he did them. It should not matter whether I sign or not. If that is what the law requires, though, then I will do it.
“What will happen to Don if he is found guilty?” I ask.
“Serial escalating vandalism ending in a violent assault? He’s not getting out without custodial rehab,” Mr. Stacy says. “A PPD—a programmable personality determinant brain chip. That’s when they put in a control chip—”
“I know,” I say. It makes me feel squirmy inside; at least I do not have to contemplate having a chip inserted in my brain.
“It’s not like it is on the shows,” Mr. Stacy says. “No sparks, no lightning flashes—he just won’t be able to do certain things.”
What I heard—what we heard at the Center—is that the PPD overrides the original personality and prevents the rehabilitant, the term they like, from doing anything but what he is told.
“Couldn’t he just pay for my tires and windshield?” I ask.
“Recidivism,” Mr. Stacy says, pawing through a pile of hard copies. “They do it again. It’s been proved. Just like you can’t stop being you, the person who is autistic, he can’t stop being him, the person who is jealous and violent. If it’d been found when he was an infant, well, then… here we are.” He pulls out one particular sheet. “This is the form. Read it carefully, sign on the bottom where the X is, and date it.”
I read the form, which has the city’s seal at the top. It says that I, Lou Arrendale, make a complaint of a lot of things I never even thought of. I thought it would be simple: Don tried to scare me and then tried to hurt me. Instead the form says I am complaining of malicious destruction of property, theft of property valued at more than $250, manufacturing an explosive device, placing an explosive device, assault with intent to murder with an explosive device—“That could have killed me?” I ask. “It says here ‘assault with a deadly weapon.’”
“Explosives are a deadly weapon. It’s true that the way he had it wired up, it didn’t go off when it was supposed to, and the amount is marginal: you might have lost only part of your hands and your face. But it counts under the law.”
“I did not know that one act, like taking out the battery and putting in the jack-in-the-box, could break more than one law,” I say.
“Neither do a lot of criminals,” Mr. Stacy says. “But it’s quite common. Say a perp breaks into a house while the owners are gone and steals stuff. There’s a law about unlawful entry and another law about theft.”
I did not really complain about Don manufacturing an explosive device because I did not know he was doing it. I look at Mr. Stacy; it is clear he has an answer for everything and it will not do any good to argue. It does not seem fair that so many complaints could come out of one act, but I have heard people talk about other things like this, too.
The form goes on to list what Don did in less formal language: the tires, the windshield, the theft of a vehicle battery worth $262.37, the placing of the explosive device under the hood, and the assault in the parking lot. With it all laid out in order, it looks obvious that Don did it all, that he seriously intended to hurt me, that the very first incident was a clear warning sign.
It is still hard to grasp. I know what he said, the words he used, but they do not make much sense. He is a normal man. He could talk to Marjory easily; he did talk to Marjory. Nothing stopped him from becoming friends with her, nothing but himself. It is not my fault that she liked me. It is not my fault that she met me at the fencing group; I was there first and did not know her until she came.
“I do not know why,” I say.
“What?” Mr. Stacy says.
“I do not know why he got so angry with me,” I say.
He tips his head to one side. “He told you,” he says. “And you told me what he said.”
“Yes, but it does not make sense,” I say. “I like Marjory a lot, but she is not my girlfriend. I have never taken her out. She has never taken me out. I have never done anything to hurt Don.” I do not tell Mr. Stacy that I would like to take Marjory out, because he might ask why I haven’t and I do not want to answer.
“Maybe it doesn’t make sense to you,” he says, “but it makes sense to me. We see lots of this kind of thing, jealousy souring into rage. You didn’t have to do anything; it was all about him, all about his insides.”
“He is normal inside,” I say.
“He’s not formally disabled, Lou, but he is not normal. Normal people do not wire explosive devices into someone’s car.”
“Do you mean he is insane?”
“That’s for a court to decide,” Mr. Stacy says. He shakes his head. “Lou, why are you trying to excuse him?”
“I’m not… I agree what he did is wrong, but having a chip put in his brain to make him someone else—”
He rolls his eyes. “Lou, I wish you people—I mean people who aren’t in criminal justice—would understand about the PPD. It is not making him into someone else. It is making him Don without the compulsion to harm people who annoy him in any way. That way we don’t have to keep him locked up for years because he’s likely to do it again—he just won’t do it again. To anyone. It’s a lot more humane than what we used to do, lock people like this up for years with other vicious men in an environment that only made them worse. This doesn’t hurt; it doesn’t make him into a robot; he can live a normal life… He just can’t commit violent crimes. It’s the only thing we’ve found that works, other than the death penalty, which I will agree is a bit extreme for what he did to you.”
“I still don’t like it,” I say. “I would not want anyone putting a chip in my brain.”
“There are legitimate medical uses,” he says. I know that; I know about people with intractable seizures or Parkinsonism or spinal cord injuries: specific chips and bypasses have been developed for them, and that is a good thing. But this I am not sure of.
Still, it is the law. There is nothing in the form that is untrue. Don did these things. I called the police about them, except the last one, which they witnessed. There is a line at the bottom of the form, between the body of the text and the line for my signature, and there is a line of text that says that I swear everything in the statement is true. It is true as far as I know, and that will have to be enough. I sign on the line, date it, and hand it to the police officer.
“Thanks, Lou,” he says. “Now the DA wants to meet you and she will explain what happens next.”
The district attorney is a middle-aged woman with frizzy black hair mixed with gray. The nameplate on her desk says:
Ass’t DA Beatrice Hunston
She has skin the color of gingerbread. Her office is bigger than mine at work and has shelves all around it with books. They are old, tan with black and red squares on the spines. They do not look as if anyone ever read them, and I wonder if they are real. There is a data plate on her desktop, and the light from it makes the underside of her chin a funny color, even though from my side the desktop looks plain black.
“I’m glad you’re alive, Mr. Arrendale,” she says. “You were quite lucky. I understand you’ve signed the complaint against Mr. Donald Poiteau, is that right?”
Yes, I say.
“Well, let me explain what happens next. The law says that Mr. Poiteau is entitled to a jury trial if he wants one. We have ample evidence that he is the person involved in all the incidents, and we are sure that evidence will stand up in court. But most likely his legal adviser will tell him to accept a plea. Do you know what that means?”
“No,” I say. I know she wants to tell me.
“If he does not use up state resources by demanding a trial, it will reduce the amount of time he must serve, down to that required for implantation and adaptation of the PPD, the chip. Otherwise, if convicted, he would face a minimum of five years in detention. In the meantime, he’ll be finding out what detention is like, and I suspect he’ll agree to the plea.”
“But he might not be convicted,” I say.
The DA smiles at me. “That doesn’t happen anymore,” she says. “Not with the kind of evidence we’ve got. You don’t have to worry; he’s not going to be able to hurt you anymore.”
I am not worried. Or I was not worried until she said that. Once Don was in custody, I did not worry more about him. If he escapes, I will worry again. I am not worried now.
“If it does not come to trial, if his attorney accepts a plea bargain, then we will not need to call you in again,” she says. “We will know that in a few days. If he does demand a trial, then you will appear as a witness for the prosecution. This will mean spending time with me or someone in my office preparing your testimony and then time in court. Do you understand that?”
I understand what she is saying. What she is not saying and maybe does not know is that Mr. Crenshaw will be very angry if I miss time from work. I hope that Don and his lawyer do not insist on a trial.
“Yes,” I say.
“Good. The whole procedure’s changed in the past ten years, with the availability of the PPD chip; it’s a lot more straightforward. Fewer cases going to trial. Not so much time lost by the victims and the witnesses. We’ll be in touch, Mr. Arrendale.”
The morning is almost over when I finally leave the Justice Center. Mr. Aldrin said I did not have to come in at all today, but I do not want Mr. Crenshaw to have any reason to be angry with me, so I go back to the office for the afternoon. We have another test, one of those where we are supposed to match patterns on a computer screen. We are all very fast at this and finish quickly. The other tests are easy, too, but boring. I do not work the time I missed this morning, because that was not my fault.
Before I leave for fencing, I watch the science news on TV because it is a program on space. A consortium of companies is building another space station. I see a logo I recognize; I did not know that the company I work for had an interest in space-based operations. The announcer is talking about the billions it will cost and the commitment of the various partners.
Maybe this is one reason Mr. Crenshaw insists he needs to cut costs. I think it is good that the company wants to invest in space, and I wish I had a chance to go out there. Maybe if I were not autistic, I could have been an astronaut or space scientist. But even if I change now, with the treatment, it would be too late to retrain for that career.
Maybe this is why some people want the LifeTime treatment to extend their lives, so they can train for a career they could not have before. It is very expensive, though. Not many people can afford it yet.
Three other cars are parked in front of Tom and Lucia’s when I arrive. Marjory’s car is there. My heart is thumping faster. I feel out of breath, but I have not been running.
A chill wind blows down the street. When it is cool, it is easier to fence, but it is harder to sit out in the back and talk.
Inside, Lucia, Susan, and Marjory are talking. They stop when I come in.
“How are you doing, Lou?” Lucia asks.
“I am fine,” I say. My tongue feels too big.
“I’m so sorry about what Don did,” Marjory says.
“You did not tell him to do it,” I say. “It is not your fault.” She should know this.
“I didn’t mean that,” she says. “I just—it’s too bad for you.”
“I am fine,” I say again. “I am here and not—” It is hard to say. “Not in detention,” I say, avoiding not dead. “It is hard—they say they will put a chip in his brain.”
“I should hope so,” Lucia says. Her face is twisted into a scowl. Susan nods and mutters something I can’t quite hear.
“Lou, you look like you don’t want that to happen to him,” Marjory says.
“I think it is very scary,” I say. “He did something wrong, but it is scary that they will turn him into someone else.”
“It’s not like that,” Lucia says. She is staring at me now. She should understand if anyone can; she knows about the experimental treatment; she knows why it would bother me that Don will be compelled to be someone else. “He did something wrong—something very bad. He could have killed you, Lou. Would have, if he hadn’t been stopped. If they turned him into a bowl of pudding it would be fair, but all the chip does is make him unable to do anyone harm.”
It is not that simple. Just as a word can mean one thing in one sentence and something else in another or change meaning with a tone, so an act can be helpful or harmful depending on the circumstance. The PPD chip doesn’t give people better judgment about what is harmful and what is not; it removes the volition, the initiative, to perform acts that are more often harmful than not. That means it also prevents Don from doing good things sometimes. Even I know that and I am sure Lucia knows it, too, but she is ignoring it for some reason.
“To think I trusted him in the group so long!” she says. “I never thought he would do anything like this. That scum-sucking viper: I could rip his face off myself.”
In one of those inside flashes, I know that Lucia is thinking more about her feelings than mine right now. She is hurt because Don fooled her; she feels he made her seem stupid and she does not want to be stupid. She is proud of being intelligent. She wants him punished because he damaged her—at least her feelings about herself.
It is not a very nice way to be, and I did not know Lucia could be like this. Should I have known about her, the way she thinks she should have known about Don? If normal people expect to know all about one another, all the hidden things, how can they stand it? Doesn’t it make them dizzy?
“You can’t read minds, Lucia,” Marjory says.
“I know that!” Lucia moves in little jerky movements, tossing her hair, flicking her fingers. “It’s just—damn, I hate to be made a fool of, and that’s what I feel he did.” She looks up at me. “Sorry, Lou, I’m being selfish here. What really matters is you and how you’re doing.”
It is like watching a crystal forming in a supersaturated solution to see her normal personality—her usual personality—return from the angry person she was a moment ago. I feel better that she has understood what she was doing and is not going to do it again. It is slower than the way she analyzes other people. I wonder if it takes normal people longer to look inside themselves and see what is really happening than it does autistic people or if our brains work at the same speed there. I wonder if she needed what Marjory said to make her capable of that self-analysis.
I wonder what Marjory really thinks of me. She is looking at Lucia now, with quick glances back at me. Her hair is so beautiful… I find myself analyzing the color, the ratio of the different colors of hairs, and then the way the light shifts along them as she moves.
I sit on the floor and begin my stretches. After a moment, the women also start stretching out. I am a little stiff; it takes me several tries before I can touch my forehead to my knees. Marjory still can’t do it; her hair falls forward, brushing her knees, but her forehead doesn’t come within four inches.
When I have stretched, I get up and go to the equipment room for my gear. Tom is outside with Max and Simon, the referee from the tournament. The ring of lights makes a bright area in the middle of the dark yard, with strong shadows everywhere else.
“Hey, buddy,” Max says. He calls all the men buddy when they first arrive. It is a silly thing to do, but it is how he is. “How are you?”
“I am fine,” I say.
“I hear you used a fencing move on him,” Max says. “Wish I’d seen it.”
I think Max would not have wanted to be there in real life, whatever he thinks now.
“Lou, Simon was wondering if he could fence with you,” Tom says. I am glad that he does not ask how I am.
“Yes,” I say. “I will put my mask on.”
Simon is not quite as tall as Tom and thinner. He is wearing an old padded fencing jacket, just like the white jackets that are used in formal competition fencing, but it is a streaky green instead. “Thanks,” he says. And then, as if he knew that I was looking at the color of his jacket, he says, “My sister wanted a green one for a costume once—and she knew more about fencing than dyeing clothes. It looked worse when it had just been done; it’s faded out now.”
“I never saw a green one,” I say.
“Neither had anyone else,” he says. His mask is an ordinary white one that has yellowed with age and use. His gloves are brown. I put on my mask.
“What weapons?” I ask.
“What’s your favorite?” he asks.
I do not have a favorite; each weapon and combination has its own patterns of skill.
“Try épée and dagger,” Tom says. “That’ll be fun to watch.”
I pick up my épée and dagger and shift them in my hands until they are comfortable—I can hardly feel them, which is right. Simon’s épée has a big bell guard, but his dagger has a simple ring. If he is not very good with his parries, I may be able to get a hit on his hand. I wonder if he will call hits or not. He is a referee: surely he will be honest.
He stands relaxed, knees bent, someone who has fenced enough to be comfortable with it. We salute; his blade whines through the air on the downstroke of the salute. I feel my stomach tighten. I do not know what he will do next. Before I can imagine anything, he lunges toward me, something we almost never do in this yard, his arm fully extended and his back leg straight. I twist away, flicking my dagger down and out for the parry and aiming a thrust over his dagger—but he is fast, as fast as Tom, and he has that arm up, ready to parry. He recovers from the lunge so quickly I cannot take advantage of that momentary lack of mobility and gives me a nod as he returns to the neutral guard position. “Good parry,” he says.