“But I can’t just dump Alex,” Lisa protested.
“I’m not saying you should,” Carol replied. “All I’m saying is that you have to make certain decisions based on what’s best for you. If it’s too difficult for you to go on spending so much time with Alex, then you shouldn’t do it. And you shouldn’t feel badly about it, either.”
Lisa’s eyes filled with tears. “But I do feel bad,” she said. “And I don’t even know why. I don’t know if I don’t like him anymore, or if I’m just hurt because I’m not sure he still likes me. And I don’t know if I’m getting tired of having to defend him all the time, or if I’m mad at everybody else for not understanding him. Mom, I just don’t know what to do!”
“Then don’t do anything,” Carol told her. “Just take it all day by day, and see what happens. In time, it will all work out.”
Lisa nodded, then got up from the bed and went to the stereo, where she changed the record. Then, with her back to her mother, she said, “What if it doesn’t work out, Mom? What if Alex never changes? What’s going to happen to him?”
Carol rose to her feet and pulled her daughter close. “I don’t know,” she said. “But in the end, it really isn’t your problem, is it? It’s Alex’s problem, and his parents’ problem. It’s only yours if you make it yours, and you don’t have to. Do you understand that?”
Lisa nodded. “I guess so,” she said. She wiped her eyes, and forced a smile. “And I’ll be all right,” she said. “I guess I was just feeling sorry for myself.”
“And for Alex,” Carol added. “I know how much you want to help him and how bad it feels not to be able to.” She started toward the door. “But there is one thing you can do,” she added before she left the room. “Turn that awful music down, so at least your sister can get some sleep. Good night.”
“ ’Night, Mom.” As the door closed, Lisa plugged in her headset, and the room fell silent as the music from the stereo poured directly into her ears.
Alex lay awake late into the night, pondering what had happened at Jake’s Place and on the way home afterward. He knew he’d made a mistake, but he still couldn’t quite figure it out.
Lisa had wanted to hold hands with him, and even though he didn’t understand why, he should have gone ahead and done it anyway. And she had been mad at him, which was another thing he didn’t understand.
There was so much that just didn’t make any sense.
At the beginning of the week, there had been the strange memories, and the odd pain that had gone through his head when he’d first seen María Torres.
And beyond those things, which he was sure he would eventually figure out, there were the other things, the concepts he was beginning to feel certain he would never understand.
Love.
That was something he couldn’t get any kind of grasp on. His mother was always telling him that she loved him, and he didn’t really doubt that she did.
The trouble was, he didn’t understand what love was. He’d looked it up, and read that it was a feeling of affection.
But, as he had slowly come to understand as he read more, apparently he didn’t have feelings.
It was something he was only beginning to be aware of, and he didn’t know whether he should talk to Dr. Torres about it or not. All he knew so far was that things seemed to happen to other people that didn’t happen to him.
Things like anger.
He knew Lisa had been angry at him this afternoon, and he knew it was a feeling that she got when he did something she didn’t approve of.
But what did it feel like?
He thought, from what he’d read, that it must be like pain, only it affected the mind instead of the body. But what was it like?
He was beginning to suspect he’d never know, for every day he was becoming more and more aware that something had, indeed, gone wrong, and that he was no longer like other people.
But he was supposed to be like other people. That was the whole idea of Dr. Torres’s operation — to make him the way he’d been before.
The problem was that he couldn’t remember how he’d been before. If he could remember, it would be easy. He could act as though he was the same, and then people wouldn’t know he was different.
He was already doing some of it.
He’d learned to hug his mother, and kiss her, and whenever he did that, she seemed to like it.
He’d decided not to act on any of the things he seemed to remember until he’d determined if his memory of them was correct.
And after this afternoon, he’d remember to hold Lisa’s hand when they were walking together, and to pay a check if Bob Carey asked him to.
But what about other people? Were there other people he used to borrow money from and loan money to?
Tomorrow, when he saw Lisa, he’d ask her.
No, he decided, he wouldn’t ask her. He couldn’t keep asking everybody questions all the time.
He’d seen the look on Bob Carey’s face when he’d asked Lisa what city she was talking about, and he knew what it meant, even though it hadn’t bothered him.
Still, Bob Carey thought he was stupid, even though he wasn’t. In fact, after the tests on Monday, he knew he was just the opposite. If anything, he was a lot smarter than everybody else.
He got out of bed and went to the family room. In the bookcase next to the fireplace, there was an Encyclopaedia Britannica. He switched on a lamp, then pulled Volume VIII of the Micropaedia off the shelf. A few minutes later, he began reading every article in the encyclopedia that referred to San Francisco.
By the time they got there, he would be able to tell them more about the city than they knew themselves. And, he decided, he would know his way around.
Tomorrow — Friday — he would find a map of San Francisco, and memorize it by the next morning.
Memorizing things was easy.
Figuring out what was expected of him, and then doing it, was not so easy.
But he would do it.
He didn’t know how long it would take, but he knew that if he watched carefully, and remembered everything he saw, sooner or later he would be able to act just like everybody else.
But he still wouldn’t feel anything.
And that, he decided, was all right. If he could learn to act as though he felt things, it would be good enough.
Already he’d learned that it didn’t matter what he was or wasn’t.
The only thing that really mattered was what people thought you were.
He closed the book and put it back on the shelf, then turned around to see his father standing in the doorway.
“Alex? Are you all right?”
“I was just looking something up,” Alex replied.
“Do you know what time it is?”
Alex glanced at the big clock in the corner. “Three-thirty.”
“How come you’re not asleep?”
“I just got to thinking about something, so I decided to look it up. I’ll go back to bed now.” He started out of the room, but his father stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Is something bothering you, son?”
Alex hesitated, wondering if maybe he should try to explain to his father how different he was from other people, and that he thought something might be wrong with his brain, then decided against it. If anyone would understand, it would be Dr. Torres. “I’m fine, Dad. Really.”
Marsh dropped into his favorite chair, and looked at Alex critically. Certainly the boy looked fine, except for his too-bland expression. “Then I think maybe you and I ought to talk about your future, before Torres decides it for us,” he suggested.