The look of disgust on his mother's face sets him trembling. For a short while he had forgotten how bad he is, how he makes his parents suffer. He doesn't know how, but it frightens him when she says he makes her suffer, and when she cries and screams at him, he turns his face to the wall and moans softly to himself.
"Now don't upset him, Mrs. Gordon, and don't worry. Bring him to me on Tuesday and Thursday each week at the same time."
"But will this really do any good?" asks Matt. "Ten dollars is a lot of—"
"Matt!" she clutches at his sleeve. "Is that anything to talk about at a time like this? Your own flesh and blood, and maybe Dr. Guarino can make him like other children, with the Lord's help, and you talk about money!"
Matt Gordon starts to defend himself, but then, thinking better of it, he pulls out his wallet.
"Please…" sighs Guarino, as if embarrassed at the sight of money. "My assistant at the front desk will take care of all the financial arrangements. Thank you." He half bows to Rose, shakes Matt's hand and pats Charlie on the back "Nice boy. Very nice." Then, smiling again, he disappears behind the door to the inner office.
They argue all the way home, Matt complaining that barber supply sales have fallen off, and that their savings are dwindling, Rose screeching back that making Charlie normal is more important than anything else.
Frightened by their quarreling, Charlie whimpers. The sound of anger in their voices is painful to him. As soon as they enter the apartment, he pulls away and runs to the corner of the kitchen, behind the door and stands with his forehead pressed against the tile wall, trembling and moaning.
They pay no attention to him. They have forgotten that he has to be cleaned and changed.
"I'm not hysterical. I'm just sick of you complaining every time I try to do something for your son. You don't care. You just don't care."
"That's not true! But I realize there's nothing we can do. When you've got a child like him it's a cross, and you bear it, and love it. Well, I can bear him, but I can't stand your foolish ways. You've spent almost all our savings on quacks and phonies—money I could have used to set me up in a nice business of my own. Yes. Don't look at me
that way. For all the money you've thrown down the sewer to do something that can't be done, I could have had a barbershop of my own instead of eating my heart out selling for ten hours a day. My own place with people working for me!"
"Stop shouting. Look at him, he's frightened." "The hell with you. Now I know who's the dope around here. Me! For putting up with you." He storms out, slamming the door behind him.
"Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but we're going to be landing in a few minutes. You'll have to fasten your seat belt again… Oh, you have it on, sir. You've had it on all the way from New York. Close to two hours…"
"I forgot all about it. I'll just leave it on until we land. It doesn't seem to bother me any more."
Now I can see where I got the unusual motivation for becoming smart that so amazed everyone at first. It was something Rose Gordon lived with day and night. Her fear, her guilt, her shame that Charlie was a moron. Her dream that something could be done. The urgent question always: whose fault was it, hers or Matt's? Only after Norma proved to her that she was capable of having normal children, and that I was a freak, did she stop trying to make me over. But I guess I never stopped wanting to be the smart boy she wanted me to be, so that she would love me.
A funny thing about Guarino. I should resent him for what he did to me, and for taking advantage of Rose and Matt, but somehow I can't. After that first day, he was always pleasant to me. There was always the pat on the shoulder, the smile, the encouraging word that came my way so rarely.
He treated me—even then—as a human being.
It may sound like ingratitude, but that is one of the things that I resent here—the attitude that I am a guinea pig. Nemur's constant references to having made me what I am, or that someday there will be others like me who will become real human beings.
How can I make him understand that he did not create me?
He makes the same mistake as the others when they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don't understand there are human feelings involved. He doesn't realize that I was a person before I came here.
I am learning to control my resentment, not to be so impatient, to wait for things. I guess I'm growing up. Each day I learn more and more about myself, and the memories that began as ripples now wash over me in high-breaking waves….
The confusion began from the moment we arrived at the Chalmers Hotel in Chicago and discovered that by error our rooms would not be vacant until the next night and until then we would have to stay at the nearby Independence Hotel. Nemur was furious. He took it as a personal affront and quarrelled with everyone in the line of hotel command from the bellhop to the manager. We waited in the lobby as each hotel official went off in search of his superior to see what could be done.
In the midst of all the confusion—luggage drifting in and piling up all around the lobby, bellboys hustling back and forth with their little baggage carts, members who hadn't seen each other in a year, recognizing and greeting each other—we stood there feeling increasingly embarrassed as Nemur tried to collar officials connected with the International Psychological Association.
Finally, when it became apparent that nothing could be done about it, he accepted the fact that we would have to spend our first night in Chicago at the Independence.
As it turned out, most of the younger psychologists were staying at the Independence, and that was where the big first-night parties were. Here, people had heard about the experiment, and most of them knew who I was. Wherever we went, someone came up and asked my opinions on everything from the effects of the new tax to the latest archaeological discoveries in Finland. It was challenging, and my storehouse of general knowledge made it easy for me to talk about almost anything. But after a while I could see that Nemur was annoyed at all the attention I was getting.
When an attractive young clinician from Falmouth College asked me if I could explain some of the causes of my own retardation, I told her that Professor Nemur was the man to answer that.
It was the chance he had been waiting for to show his authority, and for the first time since we'd known each other he put his hand on my shoulder. "We don't know exactly what causes the type of phenylketonuria that Charlie was suffering from as a child—some unusual biochemical or genetic situation, possibly ionizing radiation or natural radiation or even a virus attack on the fetus—whatever it was resulted in a defective gene which produces a, shall we say, 'maverick enzyme' that creates defective biochemical reactions. And, of course, newly produced amino acids compete with the normal enzymes causing brain damage."
The girl frowned. She had not expected a lecture, but Nemur had seized the floor and he went on in the same vein. "I call it competitive inhibition of enzymes. Let me give you an example of how it works. Think of the enzyme produced by the defective gene as a wrong key which fits into the chemical lock of the central nervous system—but won't turn. Because it's there, the true key—the right enzyme—can't even enter the lock It's blocked. Result? Irreversible destruction of proteins in the brain tissue."
"But if it is irreversible," intruded one of the other psychologists who had joined the little audience, "how is it possible that Mr. Gordon here is no longer retarded?"