“Normal’s a dryer setting,” Bailey says.
“Normal is other people.” Cameron’s arm twitches and he shrugs violently; sometimes that stops it. “This—this stupid arm… I’m tired of trying to hide what’s wrong. I want it to be right.” His voice has gotten loud, and I do not know if he will be angrier if I ask him to be quieter. I wish I had not brought them here. “Anyway,” Cameron says, slightly softer, “I’m going to do it, and you can’t stop me.”
“I am not trying to stop you,” I say.
“Are you going to?” he asks. He looks at each of us in turn.
“I do not know. I am not ready to say.”
“Linda won’t,” Bailey says. “She says she will quit her job.”
“I do not know why the patterns would be the same,” Eric says. He is looking at the book. “It does not make sense.”
“A familiar face is a familiar face?”
“The task is finding familiar in different. The activation pattern should be more similar to finding a familiar nonface in different unfaces. Do they have that picture in this book?”
“It is on the next page,” I say. “It says the activation pattern is the same except that the face task activates the facial recognition area.”
“They care more about facial recognition,” Eric says.
“Normal people care about normal people,” Cameron says. “That is why I want to be normal.”
“Autistic people care about autistic people,” Eric says.
“Not the same,” Cameron says. He looks around the group. “Look at us. Eric is making patterns with his finger. Bailey is chewing on his lip, Lou is trying so hard to sit still that he looks like a piece of wood, and I’m bouncing whether I want to or not. You accept it that I bounce, you accept it that I have dice in my pocket, but you do not care about me. When I had flu last spring, you did not call or bring food.”
I do not say anything. There is nothing to say. I did not call or bring food because I did not know Cameron wanted me to do that. I think it is unfair of him to complain now. I am not sure that normal people always call and bring food when someone is sick. I glance at the others. They are all looking away from Cameron, as I am. I like Cameron; I am used to Cameron. What is the difference between liking and being used to? I am not sure. I do not like not being sure.
“You don’t, either,” Eric says finally. “You have not been to any meetings of the society in over a year.”
“I guess not,” Cameron’s voice is soft now. “I kept seeing—I can’t say it—the older ones, worse than we are. No young ones; they’re all cured at birth or before. When I was twenty it was a lot of help. But now… we are the only ones like us. The older autistics, the ones who didn’t get the good early training—I do not like to be around them. They make me afraid that I could go back to that, being like them. And there is no one for us to help, because there are no young ones.“
“Tony,” Bailey says, looking at his knees.
“Tony is the youngest and he is… what, twenty-seven? He’s the only one under thirty. All the rest of the younger people at the Center are… different.”
“Emmy likes Lou,” Eric says. I look at him; I do not know what he means by that.
“If I’m normal, I will never have to go to a psychiatrist again,” Cameron says. I think of Dr. Fornum and think that not seeing her is almost enough reason to risk the treatment. “I can marry without a certificate of stability. Have children.”
“You want to get married,” Bailey says.
“Yes,” Cameron says. His voice is louder again, but only a little louder, and his face is red. “I want to get married. I want to have children. I want to live in an ordinary house in an ordinary neighborhood and take the ordinary public transportation and live the rest of my life as a normal person.”
“Even if you aren’t the same person?” Eric asks.
“Of course I’ll be the same person,” Cameron says. “Just normal.”
I am not sure this is possible. When I think of the ways in which I am not normal, I cannot imagine being normal and being the same person. The whole point of this is to change us, make us something else, and surely that involves the personality, the self, as well.
“I will do it by myself if no one else will,” Cameron says.
“It is your decision,” Chuy says, in his quoting voice.
“Yes.” Cameron’s voice drops. “Yes.”
“I will miss you,” Bailey says.
“You could come, too,” Cameron says.
“No. Not yet, anyway. I want to know more.”
“I am going home,” Cameron says. “I will tell them tomorrow.” He stands up, and I can see his hand in his pocket, jiggling the dice, up and down, up and down.
We do not say good-bye. We do not need to do that with each other. Cameron walks out and shuts the door quietly behind him. The others look at me and then away.
“Some people do not like who they are,” Bailey says.
“Some people are different than other people think,” Chuy says.
“Cameron was in love with a woman who did not love him,” Eric says. “She said it would never work. It was when he was in college.” I wonder how Eric knows that.
“Emmy says Lou is in love with a normal woman who is going to ruin his life,” Chuy says.
“Emmy does not know what she is talking about,” I say. “Emmy should mind her own business.”
“Does Cameron think this woman will love him if he is normal?” Bailey asks.
“She married someone else,” Eric says. “He thinks he might love someone who would love him back. I think that is why he wants the treatment.”
“I would not do it for a woman,” Bailey says. “If I do it, I need a reason for me.” I wonder what he would say if he knew Marjory. If I knew it would make Marjory love me, would I do it? It is an uncomfortable thought; I put it aside.
“I do not know what normal would feel like. Normal people do not all look happy. Maybe it feels bad to be normal, as bad as being autistic.” Chuy’s head is twisting up and around, back and down.
“I would like to try it,” Eric says. “But I would like to be able to get back to this self if it didn’t work.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I say. “Remember what Dr. Ransome said to Linda? Once the connections are formed between neurons, they stay formed unless an accident or something breaks the connection.”
“Is that what they will do, make new connections?”
“What about the old ones? Won’t there be”—Bailey waves his arms—“like when things collide? Confusion? Static? Chaos?”
“I do not know,” I say. All at once I feel swallowed by my ignorance, so vast an unknowing. Out of that vastness so many bad things might come. Then an image of a photograph taken by one of the space-based telescopes comes to mind: that vast darkness lit by stars. Beauty, too, may be in that unknown.
“I would think they would have to turn off the circuits that are working now, build new circuits, and then turn on the new ones. That way only the good connections would be working.”
“That is not what they told us,” Chuy says.
“No one would agree to having their brain destroyed to build a new one,” Eric says.
“Cameron—” Chuy says.
“He does not think that is what will happen,” Eric says. “If he knew…” He pauses, his eyes closed, and we wait. “He might do it anyway if he is unhappy enough. It is no worse than suicide. Better, if he comes back the person he wants to be.”
“What about memories?” Chuy asks. “Would they remove the memories?”
“How?” Bailey asks.
“Memories are stored in the brain. If they turn everything off, the memories will go away.”
“Maybe not. I have not read the chapters on memory yet,” I say. “I will read them; they are next.” Some parts of memory have already been discussed in the book, but I do not understand all of it yet and I do not want to talk about it. “Besides,” I say, “when you turn off a computer not all the memory is lost.”
“People are not conscious in surgery, but they do not lose all their memories,” Eric says.
“But they do not remember the surgery, and there are those drugs that interfere with memory formation,” Chuy says. “If they can interfere with memory formation, maybe they can remove old memories.”
“That is something we can look up on-line,” Eric says. “I will do that.”
“Moving connections and making new ones is like hardware,” Bailey says. “Learning to use the new connections is like software. It was hard enough to learn language the first time; I do not want to go through that again.”
“Normal kids learn it faster,” Eric says.
“It still takes years,” Bailey says. “They’re talking about six to eight weeks of rehab. Maybe that’s enough for a chimpanzee, but chimps don’t talk.”
“It is not like they never made mistakes before,” Chuy says. “They used to think all sorts of wrong things about us. This could be wrong, too.”
“More is known about brain functions,” I say. “But not everything.”
“I do not like doing something without knowing what will happen,” Bailey says.
Chuy and Eric say nothing: they agree. I agree, too. It is important to know the consequences before acting. Sometimes the consequences are not obvious.
The consequences of not acting are also not obvious. If I do not take the treatment, things will still not stay the same. Don proved that, in his attacks on my car and then on me. No matter what I do, no matter how predictable I try to make my life, it will not be any more predictable than the rest of the world. Which is chaotic.
“I am thirsty,” Eric says suddenly. He stands up. I stand up, too, and go to the kitchen. I get out a glass and fill it with water. He makes a face when he tastes the water; I remember then that he drinks bottled water. I do not have the brand he likes.
“I am thirsty, too,” Chuy says. Bailey says nothing.
“Do you want water?” I ask. “It is all I have except one bottle of fruit drink.” I hope he will not ask for the fruit drink. It is what I like for breakfast.
“I want water,” he says. Bailey puts his hand up. I fill two more glasses with water and bring them into the living room. At Tom and Lucia’s house, they ask if I want something to drink even when I don’t. It makes more sense to wait until people say they want something, but probably normal people ask first.
It feels very strange to have people here in my apartment. The space seems smaller. The air seems thicker. The colors change a little because of the colors they are wearing and the colors they are. They take up space and breathe.
I wonder suddenly how it would be if Marjory and I lived together—how it would be to have her taking up space here in the living room, in the bathroom, in the bedroom. I did not like the group home I used to live in, when I first left home. The bathroom smelled of other people, even though we cleaned it every day. Five different toothpastes. Five different preferences in shampoo and soap and deodorant.
“Lou! Are you all right?” Bailey looks concerned.
“I was thinking about… something,” I say. I do not want to think about not liking Marjory in my apartment, that it might not be good, that it might feel crowded or noisy or smelly.
Cameron is not at work. Cameron is wherever they told him to go to start the procedure. Linda is not at work. I do not know where she is. I would rather wonder where Linda is than think about what is happening to Cameron. I know Cameron the way he is now—the way he was two days ago. Will I know the person with Cameron’s face who comes out of this?
The more I think about it, the more it seems like those science fiction films where someone’s brain is transplanted into another person or another personality is inserted in the same brain. The same face, but not the same person. It is scary. Who would live behind my face? Would he like fencing? Would he like good music? Would he like Marjory? Would she like him?
Today they’re tellirg us more about the procedure.
“The baseline PET scans let us map your individual brain function,” the doctor says. “We’ll have tasks for you to do during the scans that identify how your brain processes information. When we compare that to the normal brain, then we’ll know how to modify yours—”
“Not all normal brains are exactly alike,” I say.
“Close enough,” he says. “The differences between yours and the average of several normal brains are what we want to modify.”
“What effect will this have on my basic intelligence?” I ask.
“Shouldn’t have any, really. That whole notion of a central IQ was pretty much exploded last century with the discovery of the modularity of processing—it’s what makes generalization so difficult—and it’s you people, autistic people, who sort of proved that it’s possible to be very intelligent in math, say, and way below the curve in expressive language.”
Shouldn’t have any is not the same thing as won’t have any. I do not really know what my intelligence is—they would not give us our own IQ scores, and I’ve never bothered to take any of the publicly available ones—but I know I am not stupid, and I do not want to be.
“If you’re concerned about your pattern-analysis skills,” he says, “that’s not the part of the brain that the treatment will affect. It’s more like giving that part of your brain access to new data—socially important data—without your having to struggle for it.”
“Like facial expressions,” I say.
“Yes, that sort of thing. Facial recognition, facial expressions, tonal nuance in language—a little tweak to the attention control area so it’s easier for you to notice them and it’s pleasurable to do so.”
“Pleasure—you’re tying this to the intrinsic endorphin releasers?”
He turns red suddenly. “If you mean are you going to get high on being around people, certainly not. But autistics do not find social interaction rewarding, and this will make it at least less threatening.” I am not good at interpreting tonal nuances, but I know he is not telling the whole truth.
If they can control the amount of pleasure we get from social interaction, then they could control the amount normal people get from it. I think of teachers in school, being able to control the pleasure students get from other students… making them all autistic to the extent that they would rather study than talk. I think of Mr. Crenshaw, with a section full of workers who ignore everything but work.
My stomach is knotted; a sour taste comes into my mouth. If I say that I see these possibilities, what will happen to me? Two months ago, I would have blurted out what I saw, what I worried about; now I am more cautious. Mr. Crenshaw and Don have given me that wisdom.
“You mustn’t get paranoid, Lou,” the doctor says. “It’s a constant temptation to anyone outside the social mainstream to think people are plotting something dire, but it’s not a healthy way to think.”
I say nothing. I am thinking about Dr. Fornum and Mr. Crenshaw and Don. These people do not like me or people like me. Sometimes people who do not like me or people like me may try to do me real harm. Would it have been paranoia if I had suspected from the first that Don slashed my tires? I do not think so. I would have correctly identified a danger. Correctly identifying danger is not paranoia.
“You must trust us, Lou, for this to work. I can give you something to calm you—”
“I am not upset,” I say. I am not upset. I am pleased with myself for thinking through what he is saying and finding the hidden meaning, but I am not upset, even though that hidden meaning is that he is manipulating me. If I know it, then it is not really manipulation. “I am trying to understand, but I am not upset.”
He relaxes. The muscles in his face release a little, especially around his eyes and in his forehead. “You know, Lou, this is a very complicated subject. You’re an intelligent man, but it’s not really your field. It takes years of study to really understand it all. Just a short lecture and maybe looking at a few sites on the ’net aren’t enough to bring you up to speed. You’ll only confuse and worry yourself if you try. Just as I wouldn’t be able to do what you do. Why not just let us do our work and you do yours.”
Because it is my brain and my self that you are changing. Because you have not told the whole truth and I am not sure you have my best interest—or even my interest at all—in mind.
“Who I am is important to me,” I say.
“You mean you like being autistic?” Scorn edges his voice; he cannot imagine anyone wanting to be like me.
“I like being me,” I say. “Autism is part of who I am; it is not the whole thing.” I hope that is true, that I am more than my diagnosis.
“So—if we get rid of the autism, you’ll be the same person, only not autistic.”
He hopes this is true; he may think he thinks it is true; he does not believe absolutely that it is true. His fear that it is not true wafts from him like the sour stink of physical fear. His face crinkles into an expression that is supposed to convince me he believes it, but false sincerity is an expression I know from childhood. Every therapist, every teacher, every counselor has had that expression in their repertoire, the worried/caring look.
What frightens me most is that they may—surely they will—tinker with memory, not just current connections. They must know as well as I do that my entire past experience is from this autistic perspective. Changing the connections will not change that, and that has made me who I am. Yet if I lose the memory of what this is like, who I am, then I will have lost everything I’ve worked on for thirty-five years. I do not want to lose that. I do not want to remember things only the way I remember what I read in books; I do not want Marjory to be like someone seen on a video screen. I want to keep the feelings that go with the memories.
Chapter Eighteen
“Normal is other people.” Cameron’s arm twitches and he shrugs violently; sometimes that stops it. “This—this stupid arm… I’m tired of trying to hide what’s wrong. I want it to be right.” His voice has gotten loud, and I do not know if he will be angrier if I ask him to be quieter. I wish I had not brought them here. “Anyway,” Cameron says, slightly softer, “I’m going to do it, and you can’t stop me.”
“I am not trying to stop you,” I say.
“Are you going to?” he asks. He looks at each of us in turn.
“I do not know. I am not ready to say.”
“Linda won’t,” Bailey says. “She says she will quit her job.”
“I do not know why the patterns would be the same,” Eric says. He is looking at the book. “It does not make sense.”
“A familiar face is a familiar face?”
“The task is finding familiar in different. The activation pattern should be more similar to finding a familiar nonface in different unfaces. Do they have that picture in this book?”
“It is on the next page,” I say. “It says the activation pattern is the same except that the face task activates the facial recognition area.”
“They care more about facial recognition,” Eric says.
“Normal people care about normal people,” Cameron says. “That is why I want to be normal.”
“Autistic people care about autistic people,” Eric says.
“Not the same,” Cameron says. He looks around the group. “Look at us. Eric is making patterns with his finger. Bailey is chewing on his lip, Lou is trying so hard to sit still that he looks like a piece of wood, and I’m bouncing whether I want to or not. You accept it that I bounce, you accept it that I have dice in my pocket, but you do not care about me. When I had flu last spring, you did not call or bring food.”
I do not say anything. There is nothing to say. I did not call or bring food because I did not know Cameron wanted me to do that. I think it is unfair of him to complain now. I am not sure that normal people always call and bring food when someone is sick. I glance at the others. They are all looking away from Cameron, as I am. I like Cameron; I am used to Cameron. What is the difference between liking and being used to? I am not sure. I do not like not being sure.
“You don’t, either,” Eric says finally. “You have not been to any meetings of the society in over a year.”
“I guess not,” Cameron’s voice is soft now. “I kept seeing—I can’t say it—the older ones, worse than we are. No young ones; they’re all cured at birth or before. When I was twenty it was a lot of help. But now… we are the only ones like us. The older autistics, the ones who didn’t get the good early training—I do not like to be around them. They make me afraid that I could go back to that, being like them. And there is no one for us to help, because there are no young ones.“
“Tony,” Bailey says, looking at his knees.
“Tony is the youngest and he is… what, twenty-seven? He’s the only one under thirty. All the rest of the younger people at the Center are… different.”
“Emmy likes Lou,” Eric says. I look at him; I do not know what he means by that.
“If I’m normal, I will never have to go to a psychiatrist again,” Cameron says. I think of Dr. Fornum and think that not seeing her is almost enough reason to risk the treatment. “I can marry without a certificate of stability. Have children.”
“You want to get married,” Bailey says.
“Yes,” Cameron says. His voice is louder again, but only a little louder, and his face is red. “I want to get married. I want to have children. I want to live in an ordinary house in an ordinary neighborhood and take the ordinary public transportation and live the rest of my life as a normal person.”
“Even if you aren’t the same person?” Eric asks.
“Of course I’ll be the same person,” Cameron says. “Just normal.”
I am not sure this is possible. When I think of the ways in which I am not normal, I cannot imagine being normal and being the same person. The whole point of this is to change us, make us something else, and surely that involves the personality, the self, as well.
“I will do it by myself if no one else will,” Cameron says.
“It is your decision,” Chuy says, in his quoting voice.
“Yes.” Cameron’s voice drops. “Yes.”
“I will miss you,” Bailey says.
“You could come, too,” Cameron says.
“No. Not yet, anyway. I want to know more.”
“I am going home,” Cameron says. “I will tell them tomorrow.” He stands up, and I can see his hand in his pocket, jiggling the dice, up and down, up and down.
We do not say good-bye. We do not need to do that with each other. Cameron walks out and shuts the door quietly behind him. The others look at me and then away.
“Some people do not like who they are,” Bailey says.
“Some people are different than other people think,” Chuy says.
“Cameron was in love with a woman who did not love him,” Eric says. “She said it would never work. It was when he was in college.” I wonder how Eric knows that.
“Emmy says Lou is in love with a normal woman who is going to ruin his life,” Chuy says.
“Emmy does not know what she is talking about,” I say. “Emmy should mind her own business.”
“Does Cameron think this woman will love him if he is normal?” Bailey asks.
“She married someone else,” Eric says. “He thinks he might love someone who would love him back. I think that is why he wants the treatment.”
“I would not do it for a woman,” Bailey says. “If I do it, I need a reason for me.” I wonder what he would say if he knew Marjory. If I knew it would make Marjory love me, would I do it? It is an uncomfortable thought; I put it aside.
“I do not know what normal would feel like. Normal people do not all look happy. Maybe it feels bad to be normal, as bad as being autistic.” Chuy’s head is twisting up and around, back and down.
“I would like to try it,” Eric says. “But I would like to be able to get back to this self if it didn’t work.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I say. “Remember what Dr. Ransome said to Linda? Once the connections are formed between neurons, they stay formed unless an accident or something breaks the connection.”
“Is that what they will do, make new connections?”
“What about the old ones? Won’t there be”—Bailey waves his arms—“like when things collide? Confusion? Static? Chaos?”
“I do not know,” I say. All at once I feel swallowed by my ignorance, so vast an unknowing. Out of that vastness so many bad things might come. Then an image of a photograph taken by one of the space-based telescopes comes to mind: that vast darkness lit by stars. Beauty, too, may be in that unknown.
“I would think they would have to turn off the circuits that are working now, build new circuits, and then turn on the new ones. That way only the good connections would be working.”
“That is not what they told us,” Chuy says.
“No one would agree to having their brain destroyed to build a new one,” Eric says.
“Cameron—” Chuy says.
“He does not think that is what will happen,” Eric says. “If he knew…” He pauses, his eyes closed, and we wait. “He might do it anyway if he is unhappy enough. It is no worse than suicide. Better, if he comes back the person he wants to be.”
“What about memories?” Chuy asks. “Would they remove the memories?”
“How?” Bailey asks.
“Memories are stored in the brain. If they turn everything off, the memories will go away.”
“Maybe not. I have not read the chapters on memory yet,” I say. “I will read them; they are next.” Some parts of memory have already been discussed in the book, but I do not understand all of it yet and I do not want to talk about it. “Besides,” I say, “when you turn off a computer not all the memory is lost.”
“People are not conscious in surgery, but they do not lose all their memories,” Eric says.
“But they do not remember the surgery, and there are those drugs that interfere with memory formation,” Chuy says. “If they can interfere with memory formation, maybe they can remove old memories.”
“That is something we can look up on-line,” Eric says. “I will do that.”
“Moving connections and making new ones is like hardware,” Bailey says. “Learning to use the new connections is like software. It was hard enough to learn language the first time; I do not want to go through that again.”
“Normal kids learn it faster,” Eric says.
“It still takes years,” Bailey says. “They’re talking about six to eight weeks of rehab. Maybe that’s enough for a chimpanzee, but chimps don’t talk.”
“It is not like they never made mistakes before,” Chuy says. “They used to think all sorts of wrong things about us. This could be wrong, too.”
“More is known about brain functions,” I say. “But not everything.”
“I do not like doing something without knowing what will happen,” Bailey says.
Chuy and Eric say nothing: they agree. I agree, too. It is important to know the consequences before acting. Sometimes the consequences are not obvious.
The consequences of not acting are also not obvious. If I do not take the treatment, things will still not stay the same. Don proved that, in his attacks on my car and then on me. No matter what I do, no matter how predictable I try to make my life, it will not be any more predictable than the rest of the world. Which is chaotic.
“I am thirsty,” Eric says suddenly. He stands up. I stand up, too, and go to the kitchen. I get out a glass and fill it with water. He makes a face when he tastes the water; I remember then that he drinks bottled water. I do not have the brand he likes.
“I am thirsty, too,” Chuy says. Bailey says nothing.
“Do you want water?” I ask. “It is all I have except one bottle of fruit drink.” I hope he will not ask for the fruit drink. It is what I like for breakfast.
“I want water,” he says. Bailey puts his hand up. I fill two more glasses with water and bring them into the living room. At Tom and Lucia’s house, they ask if I want something to drink even when I don’t. It makes more sense to wait until people say they want something, but probably normal people ask first.
It feels very strange to have people here in my apartment. The space seems smaller. The air seems thicker. The colors change a little because of the colors they are wearing and the colors they are. They take up space and breathe.
I wonder suddenly how it would be if Marjory and I lived together—how it would be to have her taking up space here in the living room, in the bathroom, in the bedroom. I did not like the group home I used to live in, when I first left home. The bathroom smelled of other people, even though we cleaned it every day. Five different toothpastes. Five different preferences in shampoo and soap and deodorant.
“Lou! Are you all right?” Bailey looks concerned.
“I was thinking about… something,” I say. I do not want to think about not liking Marjory in my apartment, that it might not be good, that it might feel crowded or noisy or smelly.
Cameron is not at work. Cameron is wherever they told him to go to start the procedure. Linda is not at work. I do not know where she is. I would rather wonder where Linda is than think about what is happening to Cameron. I know Cameron the way he is now—the way he was two days ago. Will I know the person with Cameron’s face who comes out of this?
The more I think about it, the more it seems like those science fiction films where someone’s brain is transplanted into another person or another personality is inserted in the same brain. The same face, but not the same person. It is scary. Who would live behind my face? Would he like fencing? Would he like good music? Would he like Marjory? Would she like him?
Today they’re tellirg us more about the procedure.
“The baseline PET scans let us map your individual brain function,” the doctor says. “We’ll have tasks for you to do during the scans that identify how your brain processes information. When we compare that to the normal brain, then we’ll know how to modify yours—”
“Not all normal brains are exactly alike,” I say.
“Close enough,” he says. “The differences between yours and the average of several normal brains are what we want to modify.”
“What effect will this have on my basic intelligence?” I ask.
“Shouldn’t have any, really. That whole notion of a central IQ was pretty much exploded last century with the discovery of the modularity of processing—it’s what makes generalization so difficult—and it’s you people, autistic people, who sort of proved that it’s possible to be very intelligent in math, say, and way below the curve in expressive language.”
Shouldn’t have any is not the same thing as won’t have any. I do not really know what my intelligence is—they would not give us our own IQ scores, and I’ve never bothered to take any of the publicly available ones—but I know I am not stupid, and I do not want to be.
“If you’re concerned about your pattern-analysis skills,” he says, “that’s not the part of the brain that the treatment will affect. It’s more like giving that part of your brain access to new data—socially important data—without your having to struggle for it.”
“Like facial expressions,” I say.
“Yes, that sort of thing. Facial recognition, facial expressions, tonal nuance in language—a little tweak to the attention control area so it’s easier for you to notice them and it’s pleasurable to do so.”
“Pleasure—you’re tying this to the intrinsic endorphin releasers?”
He turns red suddenly. “If you mean are you going to get high on being around people, certainly not. But autistics do not find social interaction rewarding, and this will make it at least less threatening.” I am not good at interpreting tonal nuances, but I know he is not telling the whole truth.
If they can control the amount of pleasure we get from social interaction, then they could control the amount normal people get from it. I think of teachers in school, being able to control the pleasure students get from other students… making them all autistic to the extent that they would rather study than talk. I think of Mr. Crenshaw, with a section full of workers who ignore everything but work.
My stomach is knotted; a sour taste comes into my mouth. If I say that I see these possibilities, what will happen to me? Two months ago, I would have blurted out what I saw, what I worried about; now I am more cautious. Mr. Crenshaw and Don have given me that wisdom.
“You mustn’t get paranoid, Lou,” the doctor says. “It’s a constant temptation to anyone outside the social mainstream to think people are plotting something dire, but it’s not a healthy way to think.”
I say nothing. I am thinking about Dr. Fornum and Mr. Crenshaw and Don. These people do not like me or people like me. Sometimes people who do not like me or people like me may try to do me real harm. Would it have been paranoia if I had suspected from the first that Don slashed my tires? I do not think so. I would have correctly identified a danger. Correctly identifying danger is not paranoia.
“You must trust us, Lou, for this to work. I can give you something to calm you—”
“I am not upset,” I say. I am not upset. I am pleased with myself for thinking through what he is saying and finding the hidden meaning, but I am not upset, even though that hidden meaning is that he is manipulating me. If I know it, then it is not really manipulation. “I am trying to understand, but I am not upset.”
He relaxes. The muscles in his face release a little, especially around his eyes and in his forehead. “You know, Lou, this is a very complicated subject. You’re an intelligent man, but it’s not really your field. It takes years of study to really understand it all. Just a short lecture and maybe looking at a few sites on the ’net aren’t enough to bring you up to speed. You’ll only confuse and worry yourself if you try. Just as I wouldn’t be able to do what you do. Why not just let us do our work and you do yours.”
Because it is my brain and my self that you are changing. Because you have not told the whole truth and I am not sure you have my best interest—or even my interest at all—in mind.
“Who I am is important to me,” I say.
“You mean you like being autistic?” Scorn edges his voice; he cannot imagine anyone wanting to be like me.
“I like being me,” I say. “Autism is part of who I am; it is not the whole thing.” I hope that is true, that I am more than my diagnosis.
“So—if we get rid of the autism, you’ll be the same person, only not autistic.”
He hopes this is true; he may think he thinks it is true; he does not believe absolutely that it is true. His fear that it is not true wafts from him like the sour stink of physical fear. His face crinkles into an expression that is supposed to convince me he believes it, but false sincerity is an expression I know from childhood. Every therapist, every teacher, every counselor has had that expression in their repertoire, the worried/caring look.
What frightens me most is that they may—surely they will—tinker with memory, not just current connections. They must know as well as I do that my entire past experience is from this autistic perspective. Changing the connections will not change that, and that has made me who I am. Yet if I lose the memory of what this is like, who I am, then I will have lost everything I’ve worked on for thirty-five years. I do not want to lose that. I do not want to remember things only the way I remember what I read in books; I do not want Marjory to be like someone seen on a video screen. I want to keep the feelings that go with the memories.
Chapter Eighteen
On Sundays, the public transportation does not run on the usual workday schedule, even though Sunday is a holy day for only a minority of people. If I do not drive to church, then I get there either very early or a little late. It is rude to be late, and being rude to God is ruder than other kinds of rude.
It is very quiet when I arrive. The church I go to has a very early service, with no music, and a 10:30 service, with music. I like to come early and sit in the dim quiet, watching the light move through the colored glass of the windows. Now once more I sit in the dim quiet of the church and think about Don and Marjory.
I am not supposed to think about Don and Marjory but about God. Fix your mind on God, said a priest who used to be here, and you will not go far wrong. It is hard to fix your mind on God when the image in my mind is that of the open end of the barrel of Don’s gun. Round and dark like a black hole. I could feel the attraction of it, the pull as if the hole, the opening, had mass that wanted to pull me into itself, into permanent blackness. Death. Nothingness.
I do not know what comes after death. Scripture tells me one thing here and another there. Some people emphasize that all the virtuous will be saved and go to heaven, and others say that you have to be Elect. I do not imagine it is anything we can describe. When I try to think of it, up to now, it always looks like a pattern of light, intricate and beautiful, like the pictures astronomers take or create from space-telescope images, each color for a different wavelength.
But now, in the aftermath of Don’s attack, I see dark, faster than light, racing out of the barrel of the gun to draw me into it, beyond the speed of light, forever.
Yet I am here, in this seat, in this church, still alive. Light pours in through the old stained-glass window over the altar, rich glowing color that stains the altar linens, the wood itself, the carpet. This early, the light reaches farther into the church than during the service, angling to the left because of the season.
I take a breath, smelling candle wax and the faintest hint of smoke from the early service, the smell of books—our church still uses paper prayer books and hymnals—and the cleaning compounds used on wood and fabric and floor.
I am alive. I am in the light. The darkness was not, this time, faster than the light. But I feel unsettled, as if it were chasing me, coming nearer and nearer behind me, where I can’t see.
I am sitting at the back of the church, but behind me is an open space, more unknown. Usually it does not bother me, but today I wish there were a wall there.
I try to focus on the light, on the slow movement of the colored bars down and across as the sun rises higher. In an hour, the light moves a distance that anyone could see, but it is not the light moving: it is the planet moving. I forget that and use the common phrasing just like everyone else and get that shock of joy each time I remember, again, that the earth does move.
We are always spinning into the light and out of it again. It is our speed, not the light’s speed or the dark’s speed, that makes our days and nights. Was it my speed, and not Don’s speed, that brought us into the dark space where he wanted to hurt me? Was it my speed that saved me?
I try again to concentrate on God, and the light recedes enough to pick out the brass cross on its wooden stand. The glint of yellow metal against the purple shadows behind it is so striking that my breath catches for a moment.
In this place, light is always faster than dark; the speed of dark does not matter.
“Here you are, Lou!”
The voice startles me. I flinch but manage not to say anything, and even smile at the gray-haired woman holding out a service leaflet. Usually I am more aware of the time passing, people arriving, so that I am not surprised. She is smiling.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she says.
“It’s all right,” I say. “I was just thinking.”
She nods and goes back to greet other arrivals without saying anything more. She has a name tag on, Cynthia Kressman. I see her every third week handing out service leaflets, and on other Sundays she usually sits across the center aisle and four rows ahead of me.
I am alert now and notice people coming in. The old man with two canes, who totters down the aisle to the very front. He used to come with his wife, but she died four years ago. The three old women who always come in together except when one is sick and sit in the third row on the left. One and two and three, four and two and one and one, people trickle in. I see the organist’s head lift over the top of the organ console and drop back down. Then a soft “mmph” and the music begins.
My mother said it was wrong to go to church just for the music. That is not the only reason I go to church. I go to church to learn how to be a better person. But the music is one reason I go to this church. Today it is Bach again—our organist likes Bach—and my mind effortlessly picks up the many strands of the pattern and follows them as she plays them.
Hearing music like this, all around in real life, is different from hearing a recording. It makes me more aware of the space I am in; I can hear the sound bouncing off the walls, forming harmonies unique to this place. I have heard Bach in other churches, and somehow it always makes harmonies, not disharmonies. This is a great mystery.
The music stops. I can hear a soft murmur behind me as the choir and clergy line up. I pick up the hymnal and find the number for the processional hymn. The organ starts again, playing the melody once, and then behind me the loud voices ring out. Someone is a little flat and slides up to each pitch a moment behind the others. It is easy to pick out who it is, but it would be rude to say anything about it. I bow my head as the crucifer leads the procession, and then the choir comes past me. They walk by, in their dark-red robes with the white cottas over them, the women first and then the men, and I hear each individual voice. I read the words and sing as best I can. I like it best when the last two men come by; they both have very deep voices, and the sound they make trembles in my chest.
After the hymn, there is a prayer, which we all say together. I know the words by heart. I have known the words by heart since I was a boy. Another reason besides the music that I go to this church is the predictable order of service. I can say the familiar words without stumbling over them. I can be ready to sit or stand or kneel, speak or sing or listen, and do not feel clumsy and slow. When I visit other churches I am more worried about whether I am doing the right thing at the right time than about God. Here the routines make it easier to listen to what God wants me to do.
Today, Cynthia Kressman is one of the readers. She reads the Old Testament lesson. I read along in the service leaflet. It is hard to understand everything just listening or just reading; both together work better. At home I read the lessons ahead of time, from the calendar the church hands out every year. That also helps me know what is coming. I enjoy it when we read the Psalm responsively; it makes a pattern like a conversation.
When I look past the lessons and the Psalm to the Gospel reading, it is not what I expect. Instead of a reading from Matthew, it is a reading from John. I read intently as the priest reads aloud. It is the story of the man lying by the pool of Siloam, who wanted healing but had no one to lower him into the pool. Jesus asked him if he really wanted to be healed.
It always seemed a silly question to me. Why would the man be by the healing pool if he did not want to be healed? Why would he complain about not having someone to lower him into the water if he did not want to be healed?
God does not ask silly questions. It must not be a silly question, but if it is not silly, what does it mean? It would be silly if I said it or if a doctor said it when I went to get medicine for an illness, but what does it mean here?
Our priest begins the sermon. I am still trying to puzzle out how a seemingly silly question could be meaningful when his voice echoes my thought.
“Why does Jesus ask the man if he wants to be healed? Isn’t that kind of silly? He’s lying there waiting for his chance at healing… Surely he wants to be healed.”
Exactly, I think.
“If God isn’t playing games with us, being silly, what then does this question mean, Do you want to be healed? Look at where we find this man: by the pool known for its healing powers, where ‘an angel comes and stirs the water at intervals…’ and the sick have to get into the water while it’s seething. Where, in other words, the sick are patient patients, waiting for the cure to appear. They know—they’ve been told—that the way to be cured is to get in the water while it seethes. They aren’t looking for anything else… They are in that place, at that time, looking for not just healing, but healing by that particular method.
“In today’s world, we might say they are like the person who believes that one particular doctor—one world-famous specialist—can cure him of his cancer. He goes to the hospital where that doctor is, he wants to see that doctor and no one else, because he is sure that only that method will restore him to health.
“So the paralyzed man focuses on the healing pool, sure that the help he needs is someone to carry him into the water at the right time.
“Jesus’s question, then, challenges him to consider whether he wants to be well or he wants that particular experience, of being in the pool. If he can be healed without it, will he accept that healing?
“Some preachers have discussed this story as an example of self-inflicted paralysis, hysterical paralysis—if the man wants to stay paralyzed, he will. It’s about mental illness, not physical illness. But I think the question Jesus asks has to do with a cognitive problem, not an emotional problem. Can the man see outside the box? Can he accept healing that is not what he’s used to? That will go beyond fixing his legs and back and start working on him from the inside out, from the spirit to the mind to the body?”
I wonder what the man would say if he were not paralyzed but autistic. Would he even go to the pool for healing? Cameron would. I close my eyes and see Cameron lowering himself into bubbling water, in a shimmer of light. Then he disappears. Linda insists we do not need healing, that there is nothing wrong with us the way we are, just something wrong with others for not accepting us. I can imagine Linda pushing her way through the crowd, headed away from the pool.
I do not think I need to be healed, not of autism. Other people want me to be healed, not me myself. I wonder if the man had a family, a family tired of carrying him around on his litter. I wonder if he had parents who said, “The least you could do is try to be healed,” or a wife who said, “Go on, try it; it can’t hurt,” or children teased by other children because their father couldn’t work. I wonder if some of the people who came did not come because they wanted to be healed, themselves, but because other people wanted them to do it, to be less of a burden.
Since my parents died, I am not anyone’s burden. Mr. Crenshaw thinks I am a burden to the company, but I do not believe this is true. I am not lying beside a pool begging people to carry me into it. I am trying to keep them from throwing me into it. I do not believe it is a healing pool anyway.
“… so the question for us today is, Do we want the power of the Holy Spirit in our own lives, or are we just pretending?” The priest has said a lot I have not heard. This I hear, and I shiver.
“Are we sitting here beside the pool, waiting for an angel to come trouble the water, waiting patiently but passively, while beside us the living God stands ready to give us life everlasting, abundant life, if only we will open our hands and hearts and take that gift?
“I believe many of us are. I believe all of us are like that at one time or another, but right now, still, many of us sit and wait and lament that there is no one to lower us into the water when the angel comes.” He pauses and looks around the church; I see people flinch and others relax when his gaze touches them. “Look around you, every day, in every place, into the eyes of everyone you meet. Important as this church may be in your life, God should be greater—and He is everywhere, every-when, in everyone and everything. Ask yourself, ‘Do I want to be healed?’ and—if you can’t answer yes—start asking why not. For I am sure that He stands beside each of you, asking that question in the depths of your soul, ready to heal you of all things as soon as you are ready to be healed.”
I stare at him and almost forget to stand up and say the words of the Nicene Creed, which is what comes next.
I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth and of all things seen and unseen. I believe God is important and does not make mistakes. My mother used to joke about God making mistakes, but I do not think if He is God He makes mistakes. So it is not a silly question.
Do I want to be healed? And of what?
The only self I know is this self, the person I am now, the autistic bioinformatics specialist fencer lover of Marjory.
And I believe in his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, who actually in the flesh asked that question of the man by the pool. The man who perhaps—the story does not say—had gone there because people were tired of him being sick and disabled, who perhaps had been content to lie down all day, but he got in the way.
What would Jesus have done if the man had said, “No, I don’t want to be healed; I am quite content as I am”? If he had said, “There is nothing wrong with me, but my relatives and neighbors insisted I come”?
I say the words automatically, smoothly, while my mind wrestles with the reading, the sermon, the words. I remember another student, back in my hometown, who found out I went to church and asked, “Do you really believe that stuff or is it just a habit?”
If it is just habit, like going to the healing pool when you are sick, does that mean there is no belief? If the man had told Jesus that he didn’t really want to be healed, but his relatives insisted, Jesus might still think the man needed to be able to get up and walk.
Maybe God thinks I would be better if I weren’t autistic. Maybe God wants me to take the treatment.
I am cold suddenly. Here I have felt accepted—accepted by God, accepted by the priest and the people, or most of them. God does not spurn the blind, the deaf, the paralyzed, the crazy. That is what I have been taught and what I believe. What if I was wrong? What if God wants me to be something other than I am?
I sit through the rest of the service. I do not go up for Communion. One of the ushers asks if I am all right, and I nod. He looks worried but lets me alone. After the recessional, I wait where I am until the others have left, and then I go out the door. The priest is still standing there, chatting with one of the ushers. He smiles at me.
“Hello, Lou. How are you?” He gives my hand one firm, quick shake, because he knows that I do not like long handshakes.
“I do not know if I want to be healed,” I say.
His face contracts into a worried look. “Lou, I wasn’t talking about you—about people like you. I’m sorry if you think that—I was talking about spiritual healing. You know we accept you as you are—”
“You do,” I say, “but God?”
“God loves you as you are and as you will become,” the priest says. “I’m sorry if something I said hurt you—”
“I am not hurt,” I say. “I just do not know—”
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.
“Not now,” I say. I do not know what I think yet, so I will not ask until I am sure.
“You did not come up for Communion,” he says. I am surprised; I did not expect him to notice. “Please, Lou—don’t let anything I said get between you and God.”
“It won’t,” I say. “It is just—I need to think.” I turn away and he lets me go. This is another good thing about my church. It is there, but it is not always grabbing. For a while when I was in school I went to a church where everyone wanted to be in everyone’s life all the time. If I had a cold and missed a service, someone would call to find out why. They said they were concerned and caring, but I felt smothered. They said I was cold and needed to develop a fiery spirituality; they did not understand about me, and they would not listen.
I turn back to the priest; his eyebrows go up, but he waits for me to speak.
“I do not know why you talked about that Scripture this week,” I say. “It is not on the schedule.”
“Ah,” he says. His face relaxes. “Did you know that the Gospel of John is not ever on the schedule? It’s like a kind of secret weapon we priests can pull out when we think a congregation needs it.”
I had noticed that, but I had never asked why.
“I chose that Scripture for this particular day because—Lou, how involved are you in parish business?”
When someone starts an answer and then turns it into something else it is hard to understand, but I try. “I go to church,” I say. “Almost every Sunday—”
“Do you have other friends in the congregation?” he asks. “I mean, people you spend time with outside of church and maybe talk with about how the church is getting along?”
“No,” I say. Ever since that one church, I have not wanted to get too close to the people in church.
“Well, then, you may not be aware that there’s been a lot of argument about some things. We’ve had a lot of new people join—most of them have come from another church where there was a big fight, and they left.”
“A fight in church?” I can feel my stomach tighten; it would be very wrong to fight in church.
“These people were angry and upset when they came,” the priest says. “I knew it would take time for them to settle down and heal from that injury. I gave them time. But they are still angry and still arguing—with the people at their old church, and here they’ve started arguments with people who have always gotten along.” He is looking at me over the top of his glasses. Most people have surgery when their eyes start to go bad, but he wears old-fashioned glasses.
I puzzle through what he has said. “So… you talked about wanting to be healed because they are still angry?”
“Yes. They needed the challenge, I thought. I want them to realize that sticking in the same rut, having the same old arguments, staying angry with the people they left behind, is not the way to let God work in their lives for healing.” He shakes his head, looks down for a moment and then back at me. “Lou, you look a little upset still. Are you sure that you can’t tell me what it is?”
I do not want to talk to him about the treatment right now, but it is worse not to tell the truth here in church than anywhere else.
“Yes,” I say. “You said God loved us, accepted us, as we are. But then you said people should change, should accept healing. Only, if we are accepted as we are, then maybe that is what we should be. And if we should change, then it would be wrong to be accepted as we are.”
He nods. I do not know if that means he agrees that I said it correctly or that we should change. “I truly did not aim that arrow at you, Lou, and I’m sorry it hit you. I always thought of you as someone who had adapted very well—who was content within the limits God had put on his life.”
“I don’t think it was God,” I say. “My parents said it was an accident, that some people are just born that way. But if it was God, it would be wrong to change, wouldn’t it?”
He looks surprised.
“But everyone has always wanted me to change as much as I could, be as normal as I could, and if that is a correct demand, then they cannot believe that the limits—the autism—come from God. That is what I cannot figure out. I need to know which it is.”
“Hmmm…” He rocks back and forth, heel to toe, looking past me for a long moment. “I never thought of it that way, Lou. Indeed, if people think of disabilities as literally God-given, then waiting by the pool is the only reasonable response. You don’t throw away something God gives you. But actually—I agree with you. I can’t really see God wanting people born with disabilities.”
“So I should want to be cured of it, even if there is no cure?”
“I think what we are supposed to want is what God wants, and the tricky thing is that much of the time we don’t know what that is,” he says.
“You know,” I say.
“I know part of it. God wants us to be honest, kind, helpful to one another. But whether God wants us to pursue every hint of a cure of conditions we have or acquire… I don’t know that. Only if it doesn’t interfere with who we are as God’s children, I suppose. And some things are beyond human power to cure, so we must do the best we can to cope with them. Good heavens, Lou, you come up with difficult ideas!” He is smiling at me, and it looks like a real smile, eyes and mouth and whole face. “You’d have made a very interesting seminary student.”
“I could not go to seminary,” I say. “I could not ever learn the languages.”
“I’m not so sure,” he says. “I’ll be thinking more about what you said, Lou. If you ever want to talk…”
It is a signal that he does not want to talk more now. I do not know why normal people cannot just say, “I do not want to talk more now,” and go. I say, “Good-bye,” quickly and turn away. I know some of the signals, but I wish they were more reasonable.
The after-church bus is late, so I have not missed it. I stand on the corner waiting, thinking about the sermon. Few people ride the bus on Sunday, so I find a seat by myself, and look out at the trees, all bronze and coppery in the autumn light. When I was little, the trees still turned red and gold, but those trees all died from the heat, and now the trees that turn color at all are duller.
At the apartment, I start reading. I would like to finish Cego and Clinton by the morning. I am sure that they will summon me to talk about the treatment and make a decision. I am not ready to make a decision.
“Pete,” the voice said. Aldrin didn’t recognize it. “This is John Slazik.” Aldrin’s mind froze; his heart stumbled and then raced. Gen. John L. Slazik, USAF, Ret. Currently CEO of the company.
Aldrin gulped, then steadied his voice. “Yes, Mr. Slazik.” A second later, he thought maybe he should have said, “Yes, General,” but it was too late. He didn’t know, anyway, if retired generals used their rank in civilian settings.
“Listen, I’m just wondering what you can tell me about this little project of Gene Crenshaw’s.” Slazik’s voice was deep, warm, smooth as good brandy, and about as potent.
Aldrin could feel the fire creeping along his veins. “Yes, sir.” He tried to organize his thoughts. He had not expected a call from the CEO himself. He rattled off an explanation that included the research, the autistic unit, the need to cut costs, his concern that Crenshaw’s plan would have negative consequences for the company as well as the autistic employees.
“I see,” Slazik said. Aldrin held his breath. “You know, Pete,” Slazik said, in the same relaxed drawl, “I’m a little concerned that you didn’t come to me in the first place. Granted, I’m new around here, but I really like to know what’s going on before the hot potato hits me in the face.”
“Sorry, sir,” Aldrin said. “I didn’t know. I was trying to work within the chain of command—”
“Um.” A long and obvious indrawn breath. “Well, now, I see your point, but the thing is, there’s a time—rare, but it exists—when you’ve tried going up and got stymied and you need to know how to hop a link. And this was one of the times it sure would’ve been helpful—to me.”
“Sorry, sir,” Aldrin said again. His heart was pounding.
“Well, I think we caught it in time,” Slazik said. “So far it’s not out in the media, at least. I was pleased to hear that you had a concern for your people, as well as the company. I hope you realize, Pete, that I would not condone any illegal or unethical actions taken toward our employees or any research subjects. I am more than a little surprised and disappointed that one of my subordinates tried to screw around that way.” For the length of that last sentence the drawl hardened into something more like saw-edged steel; Aldrin shivered involuntarily.
Then the drawl returned. “But that’s not your problem. Pete, we’ve got a situation with those people of yours. They’ve been promised a treatment and threatened with loss of their jobs, and you’re going to have to straighten that out. Legal is going to send someone to explain the situation, but I want you to prepare them.”
“What—what is the situation now, sir?” Aldrin asked.
“Obviously their jobs are safe, if they want to keep them,” Slazik said. “We don’t coerce volunteers; this isn’t the military, and I understand that even if… someone doesn’t. They have rights. They don’t have to agree to the treatment. On the other hand, if they want to volunteer, that’s fine; they’ve already been through the preliminary tests. Full pay, no loss of seniority—it’s a special case.”
Aldrin wanted to ask what would happen to Crenshaw and himself, but he was afraid that asking would make whatever it was worse.
“I’m going to be calling Mr. Crenshaw in for an interview,” Slazik said. “Don’t talk about this, except to reassure your people that they’re not in jeopardy. Can I trust you for that?”
It is very quiet when I arrive. The church I go to has a very early service, with no music, and a 10:30 service, with music. I like to come early and sit in the dim quiet, watching the light move through the colored glass of the windows. Now once more I sit in the dim quiet of the church and think about Don and Marjory.
I am not supposed to think about Don and Marjory but about God. Fix your mind on God, said a priest who used to be here, and you will not go far wrong. It is hard to fix your mind on God when the image in my mind is that of the open end of the barrel of Don’s gun. Round and dark like a black hole. I could feel the attraction of it, the pull as if the hole, the opening, had mass that wanted to pull me into itself, into permanent blackness. Death. Nothingness.
I do not know what comes after death. Scripture tells me one thing here and another there. Some people emphasize that all the virtuous will be saved and go to heaven, and others say that you have to be Elect. I do not imagine it is anything we can describe. When I try to think of it, up to now, it always looks like a pattern of light, intricate and beautiful, like the pictures astronomers take or create from space-telescope images, each color for a different wavelength.
But now, in the aftermath of Don’s attack, I see dark, faster than light, racing out of the barrel of the gun to draw me into it, beyond the speed of light, forever.
Yet I am here, in this seat, in this church, still alive. Light pours in through the old stained-glass window over the altar, rich glowing color that stains the altar linens, the wood itself, the carpet. This early, the light reaches farther into the church than during the service, angling to the left because of the season.
I take a breath, smelling candle wax and the faintest hint of smoke from the early service, the smell of books—our church still uses paper prayer books and hymnals—and the cleaning compounds used on wood and fabric and floor.
I am alive. I am in the light. The darkness was not, this time, faster than the light. But I feel unsettled, as if it were chasing me, coming nearer and nearer behind me, where I can’t see.
I am sitting at the back of the church, but behind me is an open space, more unknown. Usually it does not bother me, but today I wish there were a wall there.
I try to focus on the light, on the slow movement of the colored bars down and across as the sun rises higher. In an hour, the light moves a distance that anyone could see, but it is not the light moving: it is the planet moving. I forget that and use the common phrasing just like everyone else and get that shock of joy each time I remember, again, that the earth does move.
We are always spinning into the light and out of it again. It is our speed, not the light’s speed or the dark’s speed, that makes our days and nights. Was it my speed, and not Don’s speed, that brought us into the dark space where he wanted to hurt me? Was it my speed that saved me?
I try again to concentrate on God, and the light recedes enough to pick out the brass cross on its wooden stand. The glint of yellow metal against the purple shadows behind it is so striking that my breath catches for a moment.
In this place, light is always faster than dark; the speed of dark does not matter.
“Here you are, Lou!”
The voice startles me. I flinch but manage not to say anything, and even smile at the gray-haired woman holding out a service leaflet. Usually I am more aware of the time passing, people arriving, so that I am not surprised. She is smiling.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she says.
“It’s all right,” I say. “I was just thinking.”
She nods and goes back to greet other arrivals without saying anything more. She has a name tag on, Cynthia Kressman. I see her every third week handing out service leaflets, and on other Sundays she usually sits across the center aisle and four rows ahead of me.
I am alert now and notice people coming in. The old man with two canes, who totters down the aisle to the very front. He used to come with his wife, but she died four years ago. The three old women who always come in together except when one is sick and sit in the third row on the left. One and two and three, four and two and one and one, people trickle in. I see the organist’s head lift over the top of the organ console and drop back down. Then a soft “mmph” and the music begins.
My mother said it was wrong to go to church just for the music. That is not the only reason I go to church. I go to church to learn how to be a better person. But the music is one reason I go to this church. Today it is Bach again—our organist likes Bach—and my mind effortlessly picks up the many strands of the pattern and follows them as she plays them.
Hearing music like this, all around in real life, is different from hearing a recording. It makes me more aware of the space I am in; I can hear the sound bouncing off the walls, forming harmonies unique to this place. I have heard Bach in other churches, and somehow it always makes harmonies, not disharmonies. This is a great mystery.
The music stops. I can hear a soft murmur behind me as the choir and clergy line up. I pick up the hymnal and find the number for the processional hymn. The organ starts again, playing the melody once, and then behind me the loud voices ring out. Someone is a little flat and slides up to each pitch a moment behind the others. It is easy to pick out who it is, but it would be rude to say anything about it. I bow my head as the crucifer leads the procession, and then the choir comes past me. They walk by, in their dark-red robes with the white cottas over them, the women first and then the men, and I hear each individual voice. I read the words and sing as best I can. I like it best when the last two men come by; they both have very deep voices, and the sound they make trembles in my chest.
After the hymn, there is a prayer, which we all say together. I know the words by heart. I have known the words by heart since I was a boy. Another reason besides the music that I go to this church is the predictable order of service. I can say the familiar words without stumbling over them. I can be ready to sit or stand or kneel, speak or sing or listen, and do not feel clumsy and slow. When I visit other churches I am more worried about whether I am doing the right thing at the right time than about God. Here the routines make it easier to listen to what God wants me to do.
Today, Cynthia Kressman is one of the readers. She reads the Old Testament lesson. I read along in the service leaflet. It is hard to understand everything just listening or just reading; both together work better. At home I read the lessons ahead of time, from the calendar the church hands out every year. That also helps me know what is coming. I enjoy it when we read the Psalm responsively; it makes a pattern like a conversation.
When I look past the lessons and the Psalm to the Gospel reading, it is not what I expect. Instead of a reading from Matthew, it is a reading from John. I read intently as the priest reads aloud. It is the story of the man lying by the pool of Siloam, who wanted healing but had no one to lower him into the pool. Jesus asked him if he really wanted to be healed.
It always seemed a silly question to me. Why would the man be by the healing pool if he did not want to be healed? Why would he complain about not having someone to lower him into the water if he did not want to be healed?
God does not ask silly questions. It must not be a silly question, but if it is not silly, what does it mean? It would be silly if I said it or if a doctor said it when I went to get medicine for an illness, but what does it mean here?
Our priest begins the sermon. I am still trying to puzzle out how a seemingly silly question could be meaningful when his voice echoes my thought.
“Why does Jesus ask the man if he wants to be healed? Isn’t that kind of silly? He’s lying there waiting for his chance at healing… Surely he wants to be healed.”
Exactly, I think.
“If God isn’t playing games with us, being silly, what then does this question mean, Do you want to be healed? Look at where we find this man: by the pool known for its healing powers, where ‘an angel comes and stirs the water at intervals…’ and the sick have to get into the water while it’s seething. Where, in other words, the sick are patient patients, waiting for the cure to appear. They know—they’ve been told—that the way to be cured is to get in the water while it seethes. They aren’t looking for anything else… They are in that place, at that time, looking for not just healing, but healing by that particular method.
“In today’s world, we might say they are like the person who believes that one particular doctor—one world-famous specialist—can cure him of his cancer. He goes to the hospital where that doctor is, he wants to see that doctor and no one else, because he is sure that only that method will restore him to health.
“So the paralyzed man focuses on the healing pool, sure that the help he needs is someone to carry him into the water at the right time.
“Jesus’s question, then, challenges him to consider whether he wants to be well or he wants that particular experience, of being in the pool. If he can be healed without it, will he accept that healing?
“Some preachers have discussed this story as an example of self-inflicted paralysis, hysterical paralysis—if the man wants to stay paralyzed, he will. It’s about mental illness, not physical illness. But I think the question Jesus asks has to do with a cognitive problem, not an emotional problem. Can the man see outside the box? Can he accept healing that is not what he’s used to? That will go beyond fixing his legs and back and start working on him from the inside out, from the spirit to the mind to the body?”
I wonder what the man would say if he were not paralyzed but autistic. Would he even go to the pool for healing? Cameron would. I close my eyes and see Cameron lowering himself into bubbling water, in a shimmer of light. Then he disappears. Linda insists we do not need healing, that there is nothing wrong with us the way we are, just something wrong with others for not accepting us. I can imagine Linda pushing her way through the crowd, headed away from the pool.
I do not think I need to be healed, not of autism. Other people want me to be healed, not me myself. I wonder if the man had a family, a family tired of carrying him around on his litter. I wonder if he had parents who said, “The least you could do is try to be healed,” or a wife who said, “Go on, try it; it can’t hurt,” or children teased by other children because their father couldn’t work. I wonder if some of the people who came did not come because they wanted to be healed, themselves, but because other people wanted them to do it, to be less of a burden.
Since my parents died, I am not anyone’s burden. Mr. Crenshaw thinks I am a burden to the company, but I do not believe this is true. I am not lying beside a pool begging people to carry me into it. I am trying to keep them from throwing me into it. I do not believe it is a healing pool anyway.
“… so the question for us today is, Do we want the power of the Holy Spirit in our own lives, or are we just pretending?” The priest has said a lot I have not heard. This I hear, and I shiver.
“Are we sitting here beside the pool, waiting for an angel to come trouble the water, waiting patiently but passively, while beside us the living God stands ready to give us life everlasting, abundant life, if only we will open our hands and hearts and take that gift?
“I believe many of us are. I believe all of us are like that at one time or another, but right now, still, many of us sit and wait and lament that there is no one to lower us into the water when the angel comes.” He pauses and looks around the church; I see people flinch and others relax when his gaze touches them. “Look around you, every day, in every place, into the eyes of everyone you meet. Important as this church may be in your life, God should be greater—and He is everywhere, every-when, in everyone and everything. Ask yourself, ‘Do I want to be healed?’ and—if you can’t answer yes—start asking why not. For I am sure that He stands beside each of you, asking that question in the depths of your soul, ready to heal you of all things as soon as you are ready to be healed.”
I stare at him and almost forget to stand up and say the words of the Nicene Creed, which is what comes next.
I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth and of all things seen and unseen. I believe God is important and does not make mistakes. My mother used to joke about God making mistakes, but I do not think if He is God He makes mistakes. So it is not a silly question.
Do I want to be healed? And of what?
The only self I know is this self, the person I am now, the autistic bioinformatics specialist fencer lover of Marjory.
And I believe in his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, who actually in the flesh asked that question of the man by the pool. The man who perhaps—the story does not say—had gone there because people were tired of him being sick and disabled, who perhaps had been content to lie down all day, but he got in the way.
What would Jesus have done if the man had said, “No, I don’t want to be healed; I am quite content as I am”? If he had said, “There is nothing wrong with me, but my relatives and neighbors insisted I come”?
I say the words automatically, smoothly, while my mind wrestles with the reading, the sermon, the words. I remember another student, back in my hometown, who found out I went to church and asked, “Do you really believe that stuff or is it just a habit?”
If it is just habit, like going to the healing pool when you are sick, does that mean there is no belief? If the man had told Jesus that he didn’t really want to be healed, but his relatives insisted, Jesus might still think the man needed to be able to get up and walk.
Maybe God thinks I would be better if I weren’t autistic. Maybe God wants me to take the treatment.
I am cold suddenly. Here I have felt accepted—accepted by God, accepted by the priest and the people, or most of them. God does not spurn the blind, the deaf, the paralyzed, the crazy. That is what I have been taught and what I believe. What if I was wrong? What if God wants me to be something other than I am?
I sit through the rest of the service. I do not go up for Communion. One of the ushers asks if I am all right, and I nod. He looks worried but lets me alone. After the recessional, I wait where I am until the others have left, and then I go out the door. The priest is still standing there, chatting with one of the ushers. He smiles at me.
“Hello, Lou. How are you?” He gives my hand one firm, quick shake, because he knows that I do not like long handshakes.
“I do not know if I want to be healed,” I say.
His face contracts into a worried look. “Lou, I wasn’t talking about you—about people like you. I’m sorry if you think that—I was talking about spiritual healing. You know we accept you as you are—”
“You do,” I say, “but God?”
“God loves you as you are and as you will become,” the priest says. “I’m sorry if something I said hurt you—”
“I am not hurt,” I say. “I just do not know—”
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.
“Not now,” I say. I do not know what I think yet, so I will not ask until I am sure.
“You did not come up for Communion,” he says. I am surprised; I did not expect him to notice. “Please, Lou—don’t let anything I said get between you and God.”
“It won’t,” I say. “It is just—I need to think.” I turn away and he lets me go. This is another good thing about my church. It is there, but it is not always grabbing. For a while when I was in school I went to a church where everyone wanted to be in everyone’s life all the time. If I had a cold and missed a service, someone would call to find out why. They said they were concerned and caring, but I felt smothered. They said I was cold and needed to develop a fiery spirituality; they did not understand about me, and they would not listen.
I turn back to the priest; his eyebrows go up, but he waits for me to speak.
“I do not know why you talked about that Scripture this week,” I say. “It is not on the schedule.”
“Ah,” he says. His face relaxes. “Did you know that the Gospel of John is not ever on the schedule? It’s like a kind of secret weapon we priests can pull out when we think a congregation needs it.”
I had noticed that, but I had never asked why.
“I chose that Scripture for this particular day because—Lou, how involved are you in parish business?”
When someone starts an answer and then turns it into something else it is hard to understand, but I try. “I go to church,” I say. “Almost every Sunday—”
“Do you have other friends in the congregation?” he asks. “I mean, people you spend time with outside of church and maybe talk with about how the church is getting along?”
“No,” I say. Ever since that one church, I have not wanted to get too close to the people in church.
“Well, then, you may not be aware that there’s been a lot of argument about some things. We’ve had a lot of new people join—most of them have come from another church where there was a big fight, and they left.”
“A fight in church?” I can feel my stomach tighten; it would be very wrong to fight in church.
“These people were angry and upset when they came,” the priest says. “I knew it would take time for them to settle down and heal from that injury. I gave them time. But they are still angry and still arguing—with the people at their old church, and here they’ve started arguments with people who have always gotten along.” He is looking at me over the top of his glasses. Most people have surgery when their eyes start to go bad, but he wears old-fashioned glasses.
I puzzle through what he has said. “So… you talked about wanting to be healed because they are still angry?”
“Yes. They needed the challenge, I thought. I want them to realize that sticking in the same rut, having the same old arguments, staying angry with the people they left behind, is not the way to let God work in their lives for healing.” He shakes his head, looks down for a moment and then back at me. “Lou, you look a little upset still. Are you sure that you can’t tell me what it is?”
I do not want to talk to him about the treatment right now, but it is worse not to tell the truth here in church than anywhere else.
“Yes,” I say. “You said God loved us, accepted us, as we are. But then you said people should change, should accept healing. Only, if we are accepted as we are, then maybe that is what we should be. And if we should change, then it would be wrong to be accepted as we are.”
He nods. I do not know if that means he agrees that I said it correctly or that we should change. “I truly did not aim that arrow at you, Lou, and I’m sorry it hit you. I always thought of you as someone who had adapted very well—who was content within the limits God had put on his life.”
“I don’t think it was God,” I say. “My parents said it was an accident, that some people are just born that way. But if it was God, it would be wrong to change, wouldn’t it?”
He looks surprised.
“But everyone has always wanted me to change as much as I could, be as normal as I could, and if that is a correct demand, then they cannot believe that the limits—the autism—come from God. That is what I cannot figure out. I need to know which it is.”
“Hmmm…” He rocks back and forth, heel to toe, looking past me for a long moment. “I never thought of it that way, Lou. Indeed, if people think of disabilities as literally God-given, then waiting by the pool is the only reasonable response. You don’t throw away something God gives you. But actually—I agree with you. I can’t really see God wanting people born with disabilities.”
“So I should want to be cured of it, even if there is no cure?”
“I think what we are supposed to want is what God wants, and the tricky thing is that much of the time we don’t know what that is,” he says.
“You know,” I say.
“I know part of it. God wants us to be honest, kind, helpful to one another. But whether God wants us to pursue every hint of a cure of conditions we have or acquire… I don’t know that. Only if it doesn’t interfere with who we are as God’s children, I suppose. And some things are beyond human power to cure, so we must do the best we can to cope with them. Good heavens, Lou, you come up with difficult ideas!” He is smiling at me, and it looks like a real smile, eyes and mouth and whole face. “You’d have made a very interesting seminary student.”
“I could not go to seminary,” I say. “I could not ever learn the languages.”
“I’m not so sure,” he says. “I’ll be thinking more about what you said, Lou. If you ever want to talk…”
It is a signal that he does not want to talk more now. I do not know why normal people cannot just say, “I do not want to talk more now,” and go. I say, “Good-bye,” quickly and turn away. I know some of the signals, but I wish they were more reasonable.
The after-church bus is late, so I have not missed it. I stand on the corner waiting, thinking about the sermon. Few people ride the bus on Sunday, so I find a seat by myself, and look out at the trees, all bronze and coppery in the autumn light. When I was little, the trees still turned red and gold, but those trees all died from the heat, and now the trees that turn color at all are duller.
At the apartment, I start reading. I would like to finish Cego and Clinton by the morning. I am sure that they will summon me to talk about the treatment and make a decision. I am not ready to make a decision.
“Pete,” the voice said. Aldrin didn’t recognize it. “This is John Slazik.” Aldrin’s mind froze; his heart stumbled and then raced. Gen. John L. Slazik, USAF, Ret. Currently CEO of the company.
Aldrin gulped, then steadied his voice. “Yes, Mr. Slazik.” A second later, he thought maybe he should have said, “Yes, General,” but it was too late. He didn’t know, anyway, if retired generals used their rank in civilian settings.
“Listen, I’m just wondering what you can tell me about this little project of Gene Crenshaw’s.” Slazik’s voice was deep, warm, smooth as good brandy, and about as potent.
Aldrin could feel the fire creeping along his veins. “Yes, sir.” He tried to organize his thoughts. He had not expected a call from the CEO himself. He rattled off an explanation that included the research, the autistic unit, the need to cut costs, his concern that Crenshaw’s plan would have negative consequences for the company as well as the autistic employees.
“I see,” Slazik said. Aldrin held his breath. “You know, Pete,” Slazik said, in the same relaxed drawl, “I’m a little concerned that you didn’t come to me in the first place. Granted, I’m new around here, but I really like to know what’s going on before the hot potato hits me in the face.”
“Sorry, sir,” Aldrin said. “I didn’t know. I was trying to work within the chain of command—”
“Um.” A long and obvious indrawn breath. “Well, now, I see your point, but the thing is, there’s a time—rare, but it exists—when you’ve tried going up and got stymied and you need to know how to hop a link. And this was one of the times it sure would’ve been helpful—to me.”
“Sorry, sir,” Aldrin said again. His heart was pounding.
“Well, I think we caught it in time,” Slazik said. “So far it’s not out in the media, at least. I was pleased to hear that you had a concern for your people, as well as the company. I hope you realize, Pete, that I would not condone any illegal or unethical actions taken toward our employees or any research subjects. I am more than a little surprised and disappointed that one of my subordinates tried to screw around that way.” For the length of that last sentence the drawl hardened into something more like saw-edged steel; Aldrin shivered involuntarily.
Then the drawl returned. “But that’s not your problem. Pete, we’ve got a situation with those people of yours. They’ve been promised a treatment and threatened with loss of their jobs, and you’re going to have to straighten that out. Legal is going to send someone to explain the situation, but I want you to prepare them.”
“What—what is the situation now, sir?” Aldrin asked.
“Obviously their jobs are safe, if they want to keep them,” Slazik said. “We don’t coerce volunteers; this isn’t the military, and I understand that even if… someone doesn’t. They have rights. They don’t have to agree to the treatment. On the other hand, if they want to volunteer, that’s fine; they’ve already been through the preliminary tests. Full pay, no loss of seniority—it’s a special case.”
Aldrin wanted to ask what would happen to Crenshaw and himself, but he was afraid that asking would make whatever it was worse.
“I’m going to be calling Mr. Crenshaw in for an interview,” Slazik said. “Don’t talk about this, except to reassure your people that they’re not in jeopardy. Can I trust you for that?”