“My goodness, Chas,” Anne commented in a hushed, almost reverent tone. She was no longer an observer — she was a spectator.
“Amazing, isn’t it.” Ohlmeyer glanced at his Rolex. Twenty-five seconds. Simon was a quarter of the way done, easily at the pace he’d set in previous sessions. More than two pieces a second. Dr. Chas Ohlmeyer, dean of the University of Chicago’s school of psychology and director of the Lewis Thayer Center for the Developmentally Disabled, smiled fully at the brilliance he was witnessing. Not a brilliance many would ever see, nor that anyone — including him — could fully explain, but brilliance all the same.
Anne nodded to the screen. ‘Amazing’ began to convey her assessment of the scene. “How many times have you done this with him?”
“The puzzle? In a test situation, three. It wasn’t something we planned. Simon just sort of happened.”
“Come again?” Anne asked, keeping her eyes on the screen. Half the pieces had been absorbed into a lopsided triangle of gray.
“When I say ‘just happened’ I mean more than just this talent you’re seeing,” Ohlmeyer explained. “He might never have come to us — or to anyone — if he hadn’t gotten a nasty viral infection. His parents had kept him pretty much sheltered since he was about one year old. By that time it was apparent to them, and to his doctor, that there were some serious deficiencies in his development. His parents thought one thing: retarded.” For a moment Ohlmeyer’s expression soured, adding years to his 55 year-old face. “So when they brought him to Uni for treatment of the infection a few months back, the attending — you know him: Larry Wollam — recognized the behavioral and developmental symptoms. He convinced Simon’s parents to bring him to Thayer for an assessment. When we gave them the results, they kind of shrugged; they’d never heard of autism.”
“You’re kidding,” Anne commented, glancing away from Simon’s progress for just a second. When she looked back three corners were complete.
“They’re simple people,” Ohlmeyer continued. “The father’s a mechanic, the mother’s a housewife, both in their late forties. I was the one that explained it all to them.” He paused briefly. “The mother understands it more than the father, I think. He still believes that he has a retarded son.”
“But he’s here,” Anne added as a reminder that begged more explanation.
“Yes, he is. His first day here one of the staff put a twenty five piecer in front of him. Real simple; a blue cow and a red pig, I don’t remember exactly. Simon never touched it. The next day he took a five hundred piecer from a shelf and, well…”
“On his own?”
“Entirely,” Ohlmeyer answered proudly. He felt pride in the progress of any patient, and in this instance it was like watching a flower blossom in the dead of winter. “The staff gave him a thousand piecer…nothing. Another five hundred...voila! He only does puzzles with five hundred pieces, and always after turning the pieces face down.”
“Any other abilities?” Anne inquired. The fourth and final corner was about to appear.
“Instant recognition and calculation, we’re certain. We gave him a five hundred piecer with one piece removed. He started to turn the pieces over, then stopped within seconds and started rocking nervously.”
“The uniform out of sorts,” Anne commented. “How soon were the symptoms noticed after he was born?”
“Within months,” Ohlmeyer replied with a nod. “Early infantile autism. And, yes, he can communicate verbally and has since about the age of two.”
The loose pieces dwindled until only one rectangle of gray paper, broken by the odd lines of a jigsaw cut, was left. Simon let a hand hover over it briefly, then returned it to his lap and started rocking easily again.
“The indications are that he’s a Kanner,” Anne said, confirming Ohlmeyer’s suspicion that Simon Lynch probably fell into a portion of the autistic population, numbering approximately 10 % of the total, known as the Kanner’s syndrome subgroup. These individuals exhibited similar advanced abilities in memory, computation, and insistence on sameness in their environment. Some exhibited remarkable abilities in math, art, or music. An even smaller percentage of the autistic population showed almost unbelievable talents in certain areas. Dr. Anne Jefferson, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, gazed wondrously at the monitor, watching a young man of remarkable — yes, she told herself, maybe even that—ability sway lazily back and forth. “Or more.”
Ohlmeyer nodded. “I didn’t want to predispose you.”
“Ever the scientist, Chas, aren’t you?” She switched off her laptop and closed the lid. “Have you done a right brain/left brain yet?”
“Cursory, but I think now we’re going to need to do that and a full protocol. Of course I have to convince his father to allow it. The mother’s on our side, but it was a major effort to get pops to let him come to Thayer three days a week. We had to work out transportation, arrange for the fees to be waived, yaditta-yaditta…” Ohlmeyer set his clipboard aside and took a magazine from the viewing room’s desk. He rolled it tight in one hand and pointed it in mock accusation at Anne. “You’re thinking it, aren’t you?”
“That he could be a savant? Aren’t you?”
Ohlmeyer demurred with a tilt of his head. “Would you like to meet Simon?” He held the magazine up. “I have to give him this before he goes home.”
Anne reached out, took the magazine, and uncurled it. “The Tinkery?” She noted the address label. “You are a member of the Tinker Society?”
“Is that impossible to believe?” Ohlmeyer asked with a grin. “My intelligence is up there, and has been for a very long time.”
She gave a friendly roll of her eyes in response and paged through the slick pages. The Tinker Society was a loose gathering of those with verifiable genius level IQ’s, and this was their bi-monthly publication, though a dated one she could tell from the cover. “Why are you giving this to him?”
“Simon doesn’t like only jigsaw puzzles, Anne. His mother told me that he’s been doing crosswords, word searches, sequences, all sorts of puzzles since his early teens. That’s when he found a fascination with them. Funny, though, she said he never had an overt fondness for jigsaws.” Ohlmeyer boosted his shoulders in wonder and stood, taking the magazine back from Anne. “Anyway, The Tinkery has a puzzle section at the back. I thought I’d let him have a look at one of mine that was gathering dust. A purely unscientific exercise, I will remind you.”
“Of course,” Anne said with a slow nod.
“Come.”
They left the viewing room and made the short trek to the observation room. Chas Ohlmeyer held Anne up there. “There’s one other minor thing you should know before meeting him.”
“Yes?”
“Until about a month ago he had a tendency to wet himself whenever he was around a…well…person of color.”
Anne’s eyes bulged.
“He grew up in a very…insulated environment, Anne. He’s white, his parents are white, his neighborhood is white. Anyone he’s seen in or near his home is likely white.”
“I see.”
“It hasn’t happened recently, but since you will be a new face to him, well, I wanted to prepare you.”
Anne giggled quietly.
“What?” Ohlmeyer inquired, his eyes narrowing.