The people who lived on the second floor—our landlord and landlady, the Meyers—had always been kind to me. They gave me sweets and let me come to sit in their kitchen and play with their dog. I wanted to see them, but without being told I knew they were gone and dead and that strangers lived upstairs. That path was now closed to me forever.
At the end of the hallway, the door through which Rose had fled was locked, and for a moment I stood— undecided.
"Open the door."
The answer was the high-pitched yapping of a small dog. It took me by surprise.
"All right," I said. "I don't intend to hurt you or anything, but I've come a long way, and I'm not leaving without talking to you. If you don't open the door, I'm going to break it down."
I heard her saying: "Shhhh, Nappie… Here, into the bedroom you go." A moment later I heard the click of the lock. The door opened and she stood there staring at me.
"Ma," I whispered, "I'm not going to do anything. I just want to talk to you. You've got to understand, I'm not the same as I was. I've changed. I'm normal now. Don't you understand? I'm not retarded any more. I'm not a moron. I'm just like anyone else. I'm normal—just like you and Matt and Norma."
I tried to keep talking, babbling so she wouldn't close the door. I tried to tell her the whole thing, all at once. "They changed me, performed an operation on me and made me different, the way you always wanted me to be. Didn't you read about it in the newspapers? A new scientific experiment that changes your capacity for intelligence, and I'm the first one they tried it on. Can't you understand? Why are you looking at me that way? I'm smart now, smarter than Norma, or Uncle Herman, or Matt. I know things even college professors don't know. Talk to me! You can be proud of me now and tell all the neighbors. You don't have to hide me in the cellar when company comes. Just talk to me. Tell me about things, the way it was when I was a little boy, that's all I want. I won't hurt you. I don't hate you. But I've got to know about myself, to understand myself before it's too late. Dont you see, I can't be a complete person unless I can understand myself, and you're the only one in the world who can help me now. Let me come in and sit down for a little while."
It was the way I spoke rather than what I said that hypnotized her. She stood there in the doorway and stared at me. Without thinking, I pulled my bloody hand out of my pocket and clenched it in my pleading. When she saw it her expression softened.
"You hurt yourself…" She didn't necessarily feel sorry for me. It was the sort of thing she might have felt for a dog that had torn its paw, or a cat that had been gashed in a fight. It wasn't because I was her Charlie, but in spite of it.
"Come in and wash it. I've got some bandage and iodine."
I followed her to the cracked sink with the corrugated drainboard at which she had so often washed my face and hands after I came in from the back yard, or when I was ready to eat or go to sleep. She watched me roll up my sleeves. "You shouldn't have broke the window. The landlord's gonna be sore, and I don't have enough money to pay for it." Then, as if impatient with the way I was doing it, she took the soap from me and washed my hand. As she did it, she concentrated so hard that I kept silent, afraid of breaking the spell. Occasionally she clucked her tongue, or sighed, "Charlie, Charlie, always getting yourself into a mess. When are you going to learn to take care of yourself ?" She was back twenty-five years earlier when I was her little Charlie and she was willing to fight for my place in the world.
When the blood was washed off and she had dried my hands with paper toweling, she looked up into my face and her eyes went round with fright. "Oh, my God!" she gasped, and backed away.
I started talking again, softly, persuasively to convince her that nothing was wrong and I meant no harm. But as I spoke I could tell her mind was wandering. She looked around vaguely, put her hand to her mouth and groaned as she looked at me again. "The house is such a mess," she said. "I wasn't expecting company. Look at those windows, and that woodwork over there."
"That's all right, Ma. Don't worry about it."
"I've got to wax those floors again. It's got to be clean." She noticed some fingermarks on the door and taking up her washrag she scrubbed them away. When she looked up and saw me watching her, she frowned. "Have you come about the electric bill?"
Before I could say no, she wagged her finger, scolding, "I intend to send a check out the first of the month, but my husband is out of town on business. I told them all they don't have to worry about the money, because my daughter gets paid this week, and we'll be able to take care of all our bills. So there's no need bothering me for money."
"Is she your only child? Don't you have any other children?"
She started, and then her eyes looked far away. "I had a boy. So brilliant that all the other mothers were jealous of him. And they put the evil eye on him. They called it the I.Q. but it was the evil I.Q. He would have been a great man, if not for that. He was really very bright—exceptional, they said. He could have been a genius…"
She picked up a scrub brush. "Excuse me now. I've got to get things ready. My daughter has a young man coming for dinner, and I've got to get this place clean." She got down on her knees and started to scrub the already shining floor. She didn't look up again.
She was muttering to herself now, and I sat down at the kitchen table. I would wait until she came out of it, until she recognized me and understood who I was. I couldn't leave until she knew that I was her Charlie. Somebody had to understand.
She had started humming sadly to herself, but she stopped, her rag poised midway between the bucket and the floor, as if suddenly aware of my presence behind her.
She turned, her face tired and her eyes glistening, and cocked her head. "How could it be? I don't understand. They told me you could never be changed."
"They performed an operation on me, and that changed me. I'm famous now. They've heard of me all over
the world. I'm intelligent now, Mom. I can read and write, and I can—"
"Thank God," she whispered. "My prayers—all these years I thought He didn't hear me, but He was listening all the time, just waiting His own good time to do His will."
She wiped her face in her apron, and when I put my arm around her, she wept freely on my shoulder. All the pain was washed away, and I was glad I had come.
"I've got to tell everyone," she said, smiling, "all those teachers at the school. Oh, wait till you see their faces when I tell them. And the neighbors. And Uncle Herman—I've got to tell Uncle Herman. He'll be so pleased. And wait until your father comes home, and your sister! Oh, she'll be so happy to see you. You have no idea."
She hugged me, talking excitedly, making plans for the new life we were going to have together. I hadn't the heart to remind her that most of my childhood teachers were gone from this school, that the neighbors had long moved away, that Uncle Herman had died many years ago, and that my father had left her. The nightmare of all those years had been pain enough. I wanted to see her smiling and know I had been the one to make her happy. For the first time in my life, I had brought a smile to her lips.
Then after a while, she paused thoughtfully as if remembering something. I had the feeling her mind was going to wander. "No!" I shouted, startling her back to reality, "Wait, Ma! There's something else. Something I want you to have before I go."
"Go? You can't go away now."
"I have to go, Ma. I have things to do. But I'll write to you, and I'll send you money."
"But when will you come back?"
"I don't know—yet. But before I go, I want you to have this."
"A magazine?"