go down the stairs. The hall outside the laundry room looks the same as usual. I do not see anyone looking in from outside. I am early this week, and no one else is in the laundry room. I put the dark clothes in the right-hand washing machine and the light clothes in the one next to them. When no one is here to watch me, I can put the money in both boxes and start both machines at the same time. I have to stretch my arms to do it, but it sounds better that way.
I have brought Cego and Clinton, and I sit in one of the plastic chairs by the folding table. I would like to take it out into the hall, but there is a sign that says: RESIDENTS ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN TO TAKE CHAIRS OUT OF LAUNDRY AREA.
I do not like this chair—it is a strange ugly shade of blue-green—but when I am sitting in it I do not have to see it. It still feels bad, but it is better than no chair.
I have read eight pages when old Miss Kimberly comes in with her laundry. I do not look up. I do not want to talk. I will say hello if she speaks to me.
“Hello, Lou,” she says. “Reading?”
“Hello,” I say. I do not answer the question, because she can see that I am reading.
“What’s that?” she says, coming closer. I close the book with my finger in my place, so that she can see the cover.
“My, my,” she says. “That’s a thick book. I didn’t know you liked to read, Lou.”
I do not understand the rules about interrupting. It is always impolite for me to interrupt other people, but other people do not seem to think it is impolite for them to interrupt me in circumstances when I should not interrupt them.
“Yes, sometimes,” I say. I do not look up from the book because I hope she will understand that I want to read.
“Are you upset with me about something?” she asks.
I am upset now because she will not let me read in peace, but she is an older woman and it would not be polite to say so.
“Usually you’re friendly, but you brought in that big fat book; you can’t really be reading it—”
“I am,” I say, stung. “I borrowed it from a friend Wednesday night.”
“But it’s—it looks like a very difficult book,” she says. “Are you really understanding it?”
She is like Dr. Fornum ; she does not think I can really do much.
“Yes,” I say. “I do understand it. I am reading about how the visual processing parts of the brain integrate intermittent input, as on a TV monitor, to create a stable image.”
“Intermittent input?” she says. “You mean when it flickers?”
“In a way,” I say. “Researchers have identified the area of the brain where the flickering images are made smooth.”
“Well, I don’t see the practical use of it,” she says. She takes her clothes out of the basket and begins stuffing them into a machine. “I’m quite happy to let my insides work without watching them while they do it.” She measures out detergent, pours it in, inserts the money, and pauses before pushing START.
“Lou, I don’t think it’s healthy, too much concern with how the brain works. People can go crazy that way, you know.”
I did not know. It never occurred to me that knowing too much about the way my brain worked could make me insane. I do not think that is a true statement. She pushes the button and the water whooshes into that machine. She comes over to the folding table.
“Everybody knows psychiatrists’ and psychologists’ children are crazier than average,” she says. “Back in the twentieth century, there was a famous psychiatrist who put his own child in a box and kept it there and it went crazy.”
I know that is not true. I do not think she will believe me if I tell her it is not true. I do not want to explain anything, so I open the book again. She makes a sharp blowing sound and I hear her shoes click on the floor as she walks away.
When I was in school, they taught us that the brain is like a computer but not so efficient. Computers do not make mistakes if they are correctly built and programmed, but brains do. From this I got the idea that any brain—even a normal brain, let alone mine—was an inferior sort of computer.