Brain Child Page 0,86
if you tried to do something, he could deal with you.”
Marsh felt dazed. “Deal with me? He actually said that?”
Ellen nodded, but said nothing.
“And that didn’t faze you at all, that as far as he’s concerned, I’m simply someone to be dealt with?”
Ellen was silent for several long seconds. “No,” she said at last. “In fact, it made me feel relieved.”
The words struck Marsh with the force of a physical blow. He sank back into his chair as Ellen rose and quietly left the room.
Alex had long since stopped listening to the argument that was going on downstairs, tuning out his parents’ voices as he immersed himself in the book he’d picked up at the library after he left Jake’s.
When he’d come in for the second time, Arlette Pringle had immediately turned to the locked case, but Alex had stopped her.
“I need some medical books,” he’d told her.
“Medical books? But doesn’t your father have any?”
“I need new ones,” Alex went on. “I need something about the brain.”
“The human brain?”
Alex nodded. “Do you have anything?”
Arlette Pringle removed her glasses and thoughtfully chewed on an earpiece while she ran over the library’s medical collection in her mind. “Not much that’s really technical,” she said at last. “But there’s one new one we just got in.” She rose from her desk and went to the small shelf labeled “Current Nonfiction.”
“Here it is. The Brain. Think that’s specialized enough for you?”
Alex thumbed through the book, nodding. “I think so,” he replied. “I’ll tell you tomorrow. Can I check this out?”
Arlette led him back to the desk and showed him the process of checking out a book. “If this doesn’t seem familiar,” she said dryly, “I can tell you why. You were never much of a one for books.”
“Then I guess that’s something different about me, too,” Alex replied, thinking: And maybe the reason why is in here.
Since dinner, while his parents had been arguing, he’d scanned the entire book, and reread Chapter 7, the chapter dealing with learning and memory, two more times. And the more he read, the more puzzled he became.
From what he’d read, what was happening to him seemed to be impossible.
He was about to begin the chapter for the third time, sure that he must have missed something, when there was a soft tap at the door. A second later his mother stuck her head in.
“Hi.”
“Hi, Mom.” He glanced up from the book. “You and Dad still fighting?”
Ellen studied her son carefully, searching for any sign that the angry words she and Marsh had just exchanged might have upset Alex, but his expression was as bland as always, and his question had been asked in the same tone he might have used had he been interested in the time of day. “No,” she said. “But it wasn’t really a fight, honey. We were just discussing Dr. Torres, that’s all.”
Alex frowned thoughtfully; then: “Dad doesn’t like him, does he?”
“No,” Ellen agreed, “he doesn’t. But it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you keep getting better.”
“But what if I’m not getting better?”
Ellen stepped into the room and closed Alex’s door behind her, then came to sit on the end of the bed. “But you are getting better.”
“Am I?”
“Of course you are. You’re starting to remember things, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Alex replied. “Sometimes I think I am, but the memories don’t always make sense. It’s like … I remember things that I couldn’t possibly remember.”
“What do you mean?”
Alex tried to explain some of the things that had happened, but carefully made no mention of the voices that sometimes whispered inside his head. He wouldn’t mention those until he understood them. Ellen listened carefully as he talked, and when he was done, she smiled reassuringly.
“But it’s all very simple. Obviously you saw the book before.”
“Miss Pringle says I didn’t.”
“Arlette Pringle’s memory isn’t as good as she likes people to think it is,” Ellen replied. “And anyway, even if you didn’t ever see that copy of the book, you certainly might have seen it somewhere else. At your grandparents’, for instance.”
“My grandparents? But I don’t even remember them. How could I remember something I saw at their house, without remembering them or their house either?”
“We’ll ask Dr. Torres. But it seems to me that your memory must be coming back, even if it’s just scraps. Instead of worrying about what you’re remembering, I think you ought to be trying to remember more.” For the first time her eyes fell on the