for me to read and write and think, and because I should know better than to drug my mind with this dishonest stuff that's aimed at the child in me. Especially me, because the child in me is reclaiming my mind.
I know all this, but when Alice tells me I shouldn't waste my time, I get angry and tell her to leave me alone.
I have a feeling I'm watching because it's important for me not to think, not to remember about the bakery, and my mother and father, and Norma. I don't want to remember any more of the past.
I had a terrible shock today. Picked up a copy of an article I had used in my research, Krueger's Über Psychische Ganzheit, to see if it would help me understand the paper I wrote and what I had done in it. First I thought there was something wrong with my eyes. Then I realized I could no longer read German. Tested myself in other languages. All gone.
October 21—Alice is gone. Let's see if I can remember. It started when she said we couldn't live like this with the torn books and papers and records all over the floor and the place in such a mess.
"Leave everything the way it is," I warned her.
"Why do you want to live this way?"
"I want everything where I put it. I want to see it all out here. You don't know what it's like to have something happening inside you, that you can't see and can't control, and know it's all slipping through your fingers."
"You're right. I never said I could understand the things that were happening to you. Not when you became too intelligent for me, and not now. But I'll tell you one thing. Before you had the operation, you weren't like this. You didn't wallow in your own filth and self-pity, you didn't pollute your own mind by sitting in front of the TV set all day and night, you didn't snarl and snap at people. There was something about you that made us respect you—yes, even as you were. You had something I had never seen in a retarded person before."
"I don't regret the experiment."
"Neither do I, but you've lost something you had before. You had a smile..."
"An empty, stupid smile."
"No, a warm, real smile, because you wanted people to like you."
"And they played tricks on me, and laughed at me."
"Yes, but even though you didn't understand why they were laughing, you sensed that if they could laugh at you they would like you. And you wanted them to like you. You acted like a child and you even laughed at yourself along with them."
"I don't feel like laughing at myself right now, if you don't mind."
She was trying to keep from crying. I think I wanted to make her cry. "Maybe that's why it was so important for me to learn. I thought it would make people like me. I thought I would have friends. That's something to laugh at, isn't it?"
"There's more to it than just having a high I.Q."
That made me angry. Probably because I didn't really understand what she was driving at. More and more these days she didn't come right out and say what she meant. She hinted at things. She talked around them and expected me to know what she was thinking. And I listened, pretending I understood but inside I was afraid she would see that I missed the point completely.
"I think it's time for you to leave."
Her face turned red. "Not yet, Charlie. It's not time yet. Don't send me away."
"You're making it harder for me. You keep pretending I can do things and understand things that are far beyond me now. You're pushing me. Just like my mother..."
"That's not true!"
"Everything you do says it. The way you pick up and clean up after me, the way you leave books around that you think will get me interested in reading again, the way you talk to me about the news to get me thinking. You say it doesn't matter, but everything you do shows how much it matters. Always the schoolteacher. I don't want to go to concerts or museums or foreign films or do anything that's going to make me struggle to think about life or about myself."
"Charlie—"
"Just leave me alone. I'm not myself. I'm falling apart, and I don't want you here."
That made her cry. This afternoon she packed her bags and left. The apartment feels quiet and empty now.
October