Brain Child Page 0,46
Monday after Labor Day was the kind of California September morning that belies any hint of a coming change of season. The morning fog had burned off by seven, and as Marsh Lonsdale dropped Alex off in front of the Cochrans’ house, the heat was already building.
“Sure you don’t want me to take you both to school?”
“I want to walk,” Alex replied. “Dr. Torres says I should walk as much as I can.”
“Dr. Torres says a lot about everything,” Marsh commented. “That doesn’t mean you have to do everything he says.”
Alex opened the car door and got out, then put his cane in the back seat. When he looked up, his father was watching him with disapproval. “Did Dr. Torres tell you not to use the cane anymore?”
Alex shook his head. “No. I just think it would be better if I stopped using it, that’s all.”
His father’s hard expression dissolved into a smile. “Good for you,” he said. Then: “You okay with going back to school?”
Alex nodded. “I think so.”
“It’s not too late to change your mind. If you want, we can get a tutor up from Stanford, at least for the first semester …”
“No,” Alex said. “I want to go to school. I might remember a lot, once I’m there.”
“You’re already remembering a lot,” Marsh replied. “I just don’t think you should push yourself too hard. You … well, you don’t have to remember everything that happened before the accident.”
“But I do,” Alex replied. “If I’m going to get really well, I have to remember everything.” He slammed the car door and started toward the Cochrans’ front porch, then turned to wave to his father, who waved back, then pulled away from the curb. Only when the car had disappeared around the corner did Alex start once again toward the house, idly wondering if his father knew he’d lied to him.
Since he’d come home, Alex had learned to lie a lot.
He pressed the doorbell, waited, then pressed it again. Even though the Cochrans had told him over and over again that he should simply let himself into their house as he used to, he hadn’t yet done it.
Nor did he have any memory of ever having let himself into their house.
Their house, like the one next door where he knew he’d spent most of his life, had rung no bells in his head, elicited no memories whatsoever. But he’d been careful not to say so. Instead, when he’d walked into the Cochrans’ house for the first time after leaving the Institute, he’d scanned the rooms carefully, trying to memorize everything in them. Then, when he was sure he had it all firmly fixed in his mind, he’d said that he thought he remembered a picture upstairs—one of himself and Lisa, when they were five or six years old.
Everyone had been pleased. And since then, after he’d relearned something he was sure he’d known before, and discovered as much as he could about its past, he would experiment with “remembering.”
It worked well. Last week, while looking for a pen in his parents’ desk, he had found a repair bill for the car. He’d studied it carefully, then, as they were driving to the Cochrans’ that evening, and passed the shop where the car had been fixed, he’d turned to his father.
“Didn’t they work on the car last year?” he’d asked.
“They sure did,” his father had replied. Then: “Do you remember what they did to it?”
Alex pretended to ponder the question. “Transmission?” he asked.
His father had sighed, then smiled at him in the rearview mirror. “Right. It’s coming back, isn’t it?”
“A little bit,” Alex had said. “Maybe a little bit.”
But, of course, it wasn’t.
The front door opened, and Lisa was smiling at him. He carefully returned the smile. “Ready?”
“Who’s ever ready for the first day of school?” Lisa replied. “Do I look all right?”
Alex took in her jeans and white blouse, and nodded gravely. “Did you always wear clothes like that to school?”
“Everybody does.” She called a good-bye over her shoulder, and a moment later the two of them set out toward La Paloma High.
As they walked through the town, Alex kept asking Lisa an endless series of questions about who lived in which house, the stores they passed, and the people who spoke to them. Lisa patiently answered his questions, then began testing his memory, even though she knew that Alex never seemed to forget anything she told him.
“Who lives in the blue house on Carmel Street?”
“The Jamesons.”
“What about the