GRAY MATTER (17 page)

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Authors: Gary Braver

BOOK: GRAY MATTER
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Mommy’s so sorry for what she did to you, my darling.
T
hat night Brendan woke himself up with a scream.
He looked around his bedroom. Everything was still. The green digital readout on his clock radio said 3:17.
He had had that dream again. The one with the blue elephants. They were circling him. Taunting him. Insane-looking creatures with wide grins and big floppy trunks and all the grabbing arms. Like the demon pachyderms in Disney’s
Fantasia
, dancing maniacally around him, screaming at him to
be a
good boy
, grabbing at him, poking him, pulling his hair while he cowered under bright white lights.
One of them came over to him and bent down.
How many marbles does Mr. Nisha have if I take away seven? Tell me. TELL ME!
When Brendan didn’t answer, the creature pulled out a large sword and cut off his own head.
That’s when Brendan woke up.
His shirt was damp with perspiration. His bed was a mess from kicking around.
Time to dance. Time to dance.
He went to the toilet and peed in the bowl.
Time to eat your soup.
He flushed the toilet. In the dim light from the street he looked in the mirror.
Count backward from twenty.
“I can’t,” he whispered.
Time to fix you up.
Which glass has more water?
The tall one.
Nope!
Time to fix you up. Time to fix you up.
Brendan lit a cigarette and went to the window. He looked across the front yard, the dark street, the field of scrub and landfill on the other side. A fat white moon had risen above the horizon and whitewashed the scene.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another!
The Matthew Arnold lines jetted up from nowhere, as usual.
for the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So carious, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light
He thought about Richard in wheezy sleep in the next room. He wondered how many nights the old man had. He wondered what would happen if he didn’t wake up the next morning—if Brendan went in there and found him cold and blue. He wondered if he went in there and did something about it.
Would he be horrified? Would he cry?
He thought about Nicole. He wondered what nightmares she dreamed. He wondered if she cried.
Mr. Nisha wants you to be happy.
He raised his eyes and let the white light flood his mind.
A huge crystalline moon sat in the sky over Rachel and Martin like a piece of jewelry.
“There’s something I want to tell you,” she said.
“I hope it’s how madly in love you are with me, and that you’re finally over your PMS, which I thought was surely terminal.”
He was making light of the moment, but she really couldn’t blame him. They were sitting on the balcony of the Blue Heron overlooking Magnolia
Harbor. The reflection of the moon made a rippling carpet all the way out to the horizon. Above was a cloudless black velvet vault dappled with stars. They had just eaten a sumptuous meal—Martin, the
frutti di mare,
and she, the Chilean sea bass—which they washed down with a bottle of Hermitage La Chappelle 1988.
“Martin, I think we should talk.”
“Uh-oh. Is this the big thorn you’ve been sitting on for the last month?”
“It’s a problem I have … we have.”
Martin’s face hardened. “Rachel, if you’re going to tell me that you’ve found somebody else, I’m not sure I can take it.”
“It’s nothing like that.”
“And you’re not sick.”
“No.”
Martin nodded, as if to say that the high horribles had been eliminated. “Okay, hit me.”
“It’s Dylan.”
“What about him?”
“He has brain damage, and it’s because in college I took some dope, something called TNT, which some guy I know made in a chemistry lab. In any case, I read a report saying the stuff damaged female reproductive cells, resulting in chromosomal defects of their children. I had him tested, and the left hemisphere of Dylan’s brain is underdeveloped, and it probably was caused by the TNT.” Rachel was amazed at her glibness. That was totally unexpected.
She couldn’t tell if it was the flickering light from the small glass kerosene lantern that sat between them, but Martin’s face seemed to shift several times as he struggled to process her words.
“You’re telling me that my son has brain damage because you took a lot of bad dope?” His voice was a strange hissy whisper.
“Yes. His IQ is eighty-three, which is the low side of average.” Again, she could not believe the smoothness of her confession—but, of course, she had rehearsed it so many times over the last several days that she had managed to strip the words down to their phonetic bones.
“Eighty-three. EIGHTY-THREE. My son is going to grow up dumb because you took some sex drug?”
“Martin, you’re shouting.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I read about that TNT shit. It was for sex thrills. SEX THRILLS.”
The people at other tables were glaring at them in astonishment.
“You goddamn idiot! You ruined my son. You ruined my only
child
.”
“Martin, keep your voice down.”
“No, I won’t keep my voice down. That means he’ll be handicapped forever, just because you wanted good orgasms.”
The other diners were now muttering to each other and scowling at Rachel. Suddenly she recognized neighbors, acquaintances, and other members of the Dells. Even the minister from the Hawthorne Unitarian Church and her husband, the choirmaster. “How could you?” someone said. “Shame!” cried another. “Pigs like her shouldn’t be allowed to have children.”
“I didn’t know,” she said to Martin. Then to the others. “Really, I didn’t know. I was young.”
The entire balcony was glowering at her, their large rubbery mouths jabbering condemnations.
“You didn’t know because you’re
stupid,”
Martin growled. “He was going to grow up to take over the business.” Then he made that bitter mocking face she had come to hate. “Maybe he can head up the cleaning crew. President and CEO of latrines. The world’s leading expert on SageSearch’s urinal camphor. Can plunge a toilet and change the paper lickety-split.” His eyes were huge and red and his teeth flashed as his mouth spit out the venom.
“I’m sorry. I’M SORRY. I’m SORRY …”
“Sorry? SORRY? You bet you’re sorry,” he said and picked up the kerosene lantern with the burning wick and smashed it on her head.
Even before the cutting pain registered, her head was engulfed in flames, burning hair dripping onto her dress and sizzling her eyes.
“SORREEEEEE!”
It was her own scream that woke her, and she bolted upright gasping to catch her breath.
It was Lindsay. Greg could not recollect the details of the dream, but he woke filled with the sense of her.
But as much as he tried, he could not recapture the scenario—just the afterglow of her presence, like the fast-fading image of a TV. He sat at the edge of the bed, wishing he could put the moment on rewind. He had had
dreams of her in the past, lots of them—odd, disjointed scraps, floating images—sometimes of her alive and vibrant, sometimes of her on Joe Steiner’s table. Once he had dreamt of her and their son—but not as a baby, but a little boy.
As he sat there thinking about the day, he felt the old sadness spread its way through his soul like root hairs. He knew if he let himself loosen a bit he’d dissolve into deep wracking sobs—the kind that had left him reamed out and barely functional. He had had enough of those and fought back the urge, telling himself that he didn’t want to be one of those widowers who went through the rest of his life embracing his grief like a mistress.
A photo of Lindsay smiled at him from his bureau. It was taken in Jamaica on their honeymoon six years ago. She was dressed in white with a large red hibiscus behind her ear and smiling brightly at the camera in a tangerine setting sun. With her shiny black hair and large brown eyes and honey skin, she looked like a vision in amber. They had been crazy in love.
Greg got up.
It was nearly eleven, and the sun was pouring through the window. Although he had slept for nearly six hours, he felt fatigued. It had been four days since they put him on night shift, and he still could not get used to sleeping in the daytime. Most of the time he felt low and out of focus, as if he were suffering permanent jet lag. But it was worse when he was drinking. He had stopped fifteen months ago. He had been disciplined then, too, because he had showed up late for work and was nearly useless on the job. After a second verbal warning, he quit the booze cold turkey—a victory of which he was proud, telling himself that he had done it for Lindsay. The only strategy that worked. But there were nights when the craving made his body hum.
He pushed himself off the bed and headed into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of orange juice. He put on a pot of coffee, thinking how the caffeine would pick him up, maybe even shock the fur off his brain.
He wasn’t sure how he’d spend the rest of the day. He knew he should check out some leads on the high school break-in, but he had done very little on the Sagamore Boy case over the last week beyond scanning the latest missing-children reports. No leads, as usual. The boy had been missing for over three years, and all that came in were bulletins of recent disappearances. The Dixon case had iced over also. He had nothing but faint hunches and colleagues who thought he was nuts.
The red light on his answering machine flashed.
It was probably Steve Powers calling to see if the kids he interviewed the other night had given him anything on the school break-in. Unfortunately, the security cameras in the damaged area weren’t functioning. All he had was names, some with prior records. He hit the button.
“Detective Zakarian, this is Adrian Budd, radiologist from Essex Medical. I’m not sure if this is significant, but after we talked the other day, it dawned on me why those holes kept bothering me. They just didn’t seem random, nor did they look like all the needle-bore nuclear seedings of tumors I’d seen. Also, the number threw me. So I checked with some neurospecialists here at the center, and they confirmed my suspicions.
“Those skull holes—like the perforation scars of the patient you came about—form a neurotopographical pattern. They seem to trace out the surface area of the sulci folds of the cortex. And there are so many because the cortex folds in on itself, with deeper pockets of surface tissue—which is why cortex folds exist in the first place: to have a broad surface area. Otherwise we’d all be Coneheads.
“The long and the short of it is that the holes appear to trace the sulci of the cortical surface known as the Wernicke’s Brain.
“I don’t know what it means, but that’s the area associated with memory and intelligence.
“I can’t tell you the patient’s name, and I’m not even supposed to divulge this, but the individual whose X ray you saw apparently has a remarkable memory. Nurse Porter thinks he may be a savant. Hope that helps.”
And he clicked off.
A
shiny red Porsche Carrera with New Hampshire plates sat in the slot reserved for L. Malenko. A sticker on the rear window read CASCO BAY YACHT CLUB.
The man is doing well,
thought Rachel as she headed inside the Nova Children’s Center.
It was the following Thursday, and she was here for her eleven o’clock appointment. She had to wait only a few minutes before the receptionist led her down the hall to a corner office.
Lucius Malenko was not wearing a physician’s smock as Rachel had expected, but casual whites—shoes, pants, and cotton pullover—all but for a lavender polo shirt whose collar stuck up around the back of his neck like a flower. He looked as if he’d dressed for a day of yachting or golf. Maybe the “casual Friday” trend was full-time here, a way of being less intimidating.
“Please, come in,” he said pleasantly. He had a surprisingly small sharp hand, probably an asset in neurosurgery. The office was a bright open room with windows on two sides overlooking the greenery of the building’s rear. “Where is Mr. Whitman?” he asked, peering down the hall.
“I’m sorry, but he couldn’t make it.”
“No?” Malenko closed the door. “I’m sure Dr. Samson explained to you that we like to involve both parents where possible—right from the beginning.” He spoke in an accent that sounded eastern European—perhaps Slavic or Russian.
Dr. Samson had explained that. “I’m sorry, but there was a last-minute conflict.” That was the best she could do, hoping that the subject would be dropped. Rachel looked away, pretending to take in the office decor.
Malenko took his chair behind his desk, fixing her with his stare. “May I be so bold as to ask if Mr. Whitman knows you’re here?”
“Well,” she began, thinking how she didn’t want to begin with a lie. She chuckled nervously. “Is it really that important?”
“Only because we’ll be discussing matters that concern his son, too, no?” His manner was pleasant, although she was beginning to feel uncomfortable.
“Actually, he doesn’t know. This is a kind of a reconnaissance mission. Maybe if things work out, I’ll bring him next time.”
He looked puzzled, but said nothing and affixed a pair of half-glasses to his nose and thumbed through a folder of Dylan’s test results.
Adding to his immaculate appearance was his nearly pure white hair, which was combed back, emphasizing a broad aggressive forehead. In spite of the hair, he had dark, thick eyebrows and a smooth, boyish face that belied his age. He was a big man who might have been an athlete at one time. His eyes were heavy lidded and intensely watchful. But there was something disconcerting about his gaze—something she had vaguely registered the moment they had met. And only now did Rachel realize what it was: His eyes didn’t match. One was reef-water blue, but the other looked black. On closer inspection Rachel noticed that one iris was all pupil, giving him a disorienting appearance—one eye icy cool, the other darkly alluring.
On the walls hung a few framed plaques—from the American College of Neurological Medicine, the International Society of Skull Base Surgeons, the American Board of Neurosurgery. Also, a Kiwanis Club award for outstanding contribution. Clustered on the opposite walls were photos of him with groups of students from Bloomfield Prep and with people at black-tie functions. The only other form of decoration was a bronze sculpture of the Indian elephant-head god on the windowsill. It had four arms, and each hand held something different. Only one she could make out. It was an axe.
“His name is Ganesha,” Malenko said, his face still in the folder. “He’s the elephant-faced deity, sacred to Hindus the world over.”
“It’s rather charming,” she said. The figure had a large potbelly spilling over his lower garment, and his eyes were large and his smile broad under his trunk.
“Yes. Indians revere him as a god of intellectual strength. Was your son named after Bob Dylan?”
“No, the poet Dylan Thomas.”
“Ah, yes, the great Irish bard. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night.’ Wonderful stuff. Are you a literature person?”
“I like to read.”
“A former textbook editor, of course.”
Rachel wondered how he knew that, because she hadn’t put that in the questionnaire. Perhaps it was in Dylan’s medical records.
“Reading is the highest intellectual activity of the human experience,” Malenko continued. “More sectors of the brain are active than in any other endeavor including mathematics or flying an airplane. It’s the most totally interactive processing of information, even with children reading Mother Goose.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, now you do.” He smiled and displayed a row of small but perfect white teeth in a sugar-pink mouth. “So, what can I do for you?”
The baldness of the question threw her. Dylan’s records and test results sat under his nose. “Well, you can see from his folder that he has serious learning disabilities.”
Malenko removed his half-glasses. “Yes, he’s functionally dyslexic, which means that the Wernicke’s area and the angular gyri—those areas of the brain involved in deciphering words—are underactive. As Dr. Samson clearly explained, we have here some of the best LD people in the country who could construct a personalized curriculum for your son.” He tapped his fingers impatiently as he spoke, as if to say,
Why are you
wasting
my time?
“It’s just that I wanted to explore other approaches.”
“Other approaches?”
Clearly Sheila had not told him about her. She probably did not even know the man, just his reputation. “Well, you’re a neurophysician, correct?”
“I also can be found baking cookies.”
She smiled in relief that his manner had softened. “I’m just wondering if there was anything you could do medically to help him.”
“Medically?”
“You know … some special procedures …”
“Everything we do is a special procedure. We tailor our programs to each child, according to his and her individual needs. I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”
“It’s just that I heard you had some kind of enhancement procedures.”
Malenko’s eyebrows arched up.
“Enhancement
procedures?” He pronounced the word as if for the first time.
“To repair the damaged areas. Maybe something experimental—some electrical stimulation thing.”
He looked at her for a long moment that reprimanded her in its silence. Then he glanced inside the folder again. “I see that you were recommended by Sheila MacPhearson, the real estate lady.”
“Yes.”
“And what exactly did she say, Mrs. Whitman?”
“Well, that you had some special procedures that can enhance children’s cognitive abilities.”
“Like cripples at Lourdes.”
“Beg pardon?”
“We get some child to improve significantly on a math test or the SATs, and the word gets out that we’re miracle workers.” He chuckled to himself. “Mrs. Whitman, let me explain that we
do
perform miracles here, in a sense. We even improve a child’s ability to take tests so that scores go up a few points. But that’s incidental to our objective, which is to maximize a child’s potential. I’m not sure what you are looking for, but this is not Prodigies R Us.”
Rachel felt a little foolish. She had been caught in Sheila’s exaggerated promise. Martin was right. “You’ve seen the MRI scans, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Well, they’re not normal. There’s some kind of anomaly. I was just wondering if—you know—if anything could be done about that? I mean, with all the breakthroughs in medical science, aren’t there any
corrective
measures that could be taken—some kind of neurostimulation procedure or something … ?” She trailed off, hearing Dr. Stanley Chu’s response:
“It’s
like wanting to regenerate an amputated finger. It can’t be done.
”
Malenko stared at her intently as he considered her appeal, then he opened the folder and removed the MRI scans. “It seems to me, Mrs. Whitman, that you are confusing some magical medical fix with behavioral programs. I’ve looked these over, and I see no signs of hemorrhaging or lesions or tumors that might be impinging on your son’s intellectual development or performance. If there were, then something possibly could be corrected by surgery or radiation.”
“But the left hemisphere is smaller than the right.”
“Mrs. Whitman, let me ask you why you had the MRI scan done.”
Suddenly she felt as if she were entering a minefield. “Because I was worried that he had a tumor or some other problem.”
“But what made you suspect a tumor or some other problem?”
“It was simply … I don’t know … precautionary. His memory retention isn’t normal.”
“Had you consulted your pediatrician for possible psychiatric counseling or medications? Sometimes a child’s memory problems are the results of environment issues or chemical imbalances.”
“Yes, we went through all of that.”
“And was it your pediatrician who referred you for the MRI?”
“Yes.”
“And what was his evaluation?”
“That the ventricles in the left hemisphere of his brain were larger than normal, indicating some kind of underdevelopment in the thalamus.”
“And what did the doctor recommend in terms of medical treatment?”
“He said nothing could be done.”
“And you didn’t believe him.”
“I’m seeking a second opinion.”
“Surely your pediatrician consulted neurologists for an evaluation.”
“I wasn’t satisfied.”
Malenko listened intently, his bright eye training on her as if it were some kind of laser mind-scan. “Does your husband know about this?”
“No, he doesn’t know, but why is that so important?”
Malenko leaned forward. “Mrs. Whitman, if we are going to work with Dylan, then we cannot have misunderstandings regarding the medical condition of a prospective student. If we are going to set for ourselves expectations and objectives, candidness is essential.”
Rachel nodded.
“Good. Then am I correct in assuming that your husband does not know about the MRI scan or the dysmorphic abnormalities in your son’s brain?”
She felt as if he had stripped her naked. “Yes.”
“I see. Then may I ask what you are hiding?”
“Hiding?”
“Mrs. Whitman, you have an MRI done on your son’s brain, you discover an anomalous formation, then two weeks later you come in here for consultation—and your husband knows nothing. I find that unusual, unless you are in the throes of separation or divorce. Are you?”
There was no equivocating with this man, Rachel thought. She struggled with the urge to tell him that it was none of his damn business, but she
stopped herself. If she showed offense at his persistence, he might dismiss her. “No, we’re not.”
Malenko looked at her with a bemused expression. Then he picked up the film scans and clipped them to the display board on the wall. “This disparity between the hemispheres of Dylan’s brain could be the result of many different causes, including infant trauma.” He glanced down at her.
Christ! Now
he’s
wondering if
I had
battered my own baby.
“It could also be chemical, genetic, oxygen starvation in
utero …
a number of possibilities. Sometimes these structural deformities can occur as the result of chromosomal damage, usually from the mother’s side.”
For a prickly moment his eyes gauged Rachel’s face.
chromosomal damage
from the
mother’s
side
He suspects,
she told herself.
He is a neurologist so he surely knows about the
Chu
study and recognizes the TNT
signature
damage.
“Did you smoke or take any unusual medications while carrying your son?’
“No.”
“Any medical emergencies during pregnancy—emergency room visits? Hospitalization? Any intravenal medications?”
All this was on the questionnaire. He was testing her. “No.”
“Another possibility is alcohol. Did you drink while carrying your son?”
“No.”
Malenko handed her a box of Kleenex without comment.
Rachel wiped her eyes, feeling that any moment she would break down.
“MRI scans can only give us gross anatomical pictures, not minor neurocomponents. But the left temporal horn is dilated. Given your son’s test results, my guess is that the cortical regions have been short-circuited to the hippocampus, which is involved with recurrent memories and might explain his linguistic deficiencies.”
There was no reason to dissemble with this man. “I took some bad drugs in college. Something called TNT. The chemical name is trimethoxy-4-methyl-triphetamine.”

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