GRAY MATTER (29 page)

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Authors: Gary Braver

BOOK: GRAY MATTER
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Vanessa let out a gasp. Julian’s right hand was a bight red mess of pinpricks from his knuckles up to his elbow. He was stippling the portrait with his own blood.
“What are you doing?” she screamed.
“Ms. Fuller says that I should work in different mediums.” And he took his point and jabbed it into the back of his wrist.
“Stop that!”
But he continued stabbing himself with the point so that beads of blood rose up. He then dipped in the pen tip and began tapping away on the picture.
“I said to stop that!”
But he continued.
“STOP THIS MINUTE!”
Slowly Julian turned his face up toward hers. And in a scraping whisper he said, “I can’t.”
A bright shock froze Vanessa in place.
“Because of what you did to me, Mother.”
“What? What do you mean what I did to you?”
“What you let them do to my head.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“My head, Mother. They did something to my head. My brain.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about or why the hell you’re doing that to yourself. But I want you to stop. Do you understand me, Julian? It’s goddamn sick, and you’re going to give yourself blood poisoning.” It crossed her mind to tell him not to drip on the wall-to-wall carpet she had spent a fortune on.
Julian laid down the pen and raised his bloody hands to his head and parted a section of hair above his hairline. Then he stuck his head under the lamp. “Look. Look at the scars, Mother.”
Vanessa felt as if she were suddenly treading on barbed wire. “What about them?”
“Where did they come from?”
“You know perfectly well. I told you that you fell off your stepstool in the bathroom and hit your head on the radiator when you were two.”
“These are little spots, not a regular scar,” he said. “You’re lying, because I remember. Besides, how could I fall from a six-inch stool and land on the top of my head?” His eyes fixed her.
“You don’t remember anything.”
“I remember going to a hospital and having some kind of operation. I remember being bandaged up and seeing things. And taking tests and stuff. And other kids.” Then his voice became a bizarre falsetto:
“‘Mr. Nisha wants you to be happy. Just relax and watch the video. For Mr. Nisha.’”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You took tests to see if there was any brain damage. And, thank goodness, there wasn’t,” she added, feigning motherly relief.
“But there was, and it wasn’t because I hit my head. It’s because you had me fixed.”
“Julian, I’m in no mood for your crap, okay? This conversation is over.”
As she started to leave, Julian shot to his feet. Because he was still small for his age, Vanessa towered over him by a foot.
“What if I did that to your head, huh? What if I operated on your head to make you smarter? Huh?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I remember being tested. Aptitude tests—intelligence tests. Three years straight of tests. I’m still taking them. And why? Well, I put it all together. I wasn’t supposed to remember, but I did. How would you like it if I did that to you?”
She did not respond.
“I asked you a question, Vanessa?” he said, in perfect mimicry of her. “I’m
speaking
to you. Answer me. Count back from twenty, Vanessa!”
She turned. He was standing there with one of his pens in his hand, the point aimed at her. “Don’t you threaten me, you little—” But she stopped short.
“What? Say it. ‘Little creep,’ right? Is that the expression you’re searching for, huh?
LITTLE CREEP
. That’s what they all say. ‘Julian the little creep.’ Why should you be any different?” He took a step toward her. “How would you like it if I operated on your head because I didn’t like how your brain worked? Huh? How would you like it if I cut you up to make you smarter? HOW WOULD YOU LIKE IT IF I MADE YOU A FUCKING LITTLE CREEP?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her voice like acid. “And don’t you speak to me that way. Not after what I’ve put myself through for you.”
“You know what I’m talking about. You had me fixed because I wasn’t good enough for you and your fancy friends at the club and university. You wanted a little superstar to parade around. Well, you got him, Vanessa! You got yourself your little genius, and his teeth are all ground down, and he’s taking five different medications because he’s a little GENIUS.”
As he screamed at her, his tongue flashed against the row of yellow stumps in bright red gums and spittle shot from his mouth. His face filled with blood and his eyes bulged like hens’ eggs. He looked positively grotesque. “How would you like a little brain surgery, Mother? Then you’d know what a miserable hell it is to be me—what it’s like to be possessed. What it’s like to hate you the way I do.”
As he approached, his face filled her vision. “HOW WOULD YOU LIKE THAT, MOTHER?”
As if to the snap of her own mind, Vanessa felt herself lurch forward.
“You little bastard!” she heard herself scream. “Because of you I’m ruined. They did this to me. They set me up. Because of you. Yes, because you’re such a fucking monster. BECAUSE OF YOU!”
Her hand shot to the jar of tools and pulled up a long sharp metal ice-picklike thing. The next instant, she buried it in the crown of Julian’s head.
Instantly blood geysered out of the boy’s skull as he let out a faint cry.
For a telescoped moment, she watched in numbed horror as Julian jerked about and rose in place on his toes as if trying to follow his own blood, his eyes widening in utter dismay, his mouth slack-jawed and moving wordlessly like a marionette’s trying to form a question. An involuntary pocket of air bubbled out of his throat as blood streamed down his face and onto his shirt. Then just as he seemed about to gain stature, his mouth spread into a hideous grin, and he collapsed backward onto his tilt board, the long instrument still stuck in place. Because of the internal pressure, blood shot out across the self-portrait picture, bedewing the paper in a postimpressionist spray.
Panting uncontrollably, Vanessa tried to comprehend what her hand had done. She did not cry out nor did she touch her son. She just stood there gasping for air and watched him die.
When she heard the deep-throated gurgle, she turned. Without deliberation, she removed a razor knife from the scattered implements.
They did this to me,
she told herself.
She didn’t know how they knew about Blake’s paper, but she knew they had set her up tonight, contacted the prick and arranged for that video. It was their doing. Because she had wanted her son back. Because she had insisted they undo what they’d done to him. Because she threatened to blow the whistle when they refused to even try, filling him full of useless chemicals that made him even worse.
“When dealing with the human mind, there’s no way to predict collateral effects.”
Such bullshit. Collateral effects! He was a freak. She had threatened to take him elsewhere, so they brought her down in public. On her night of nights.
She moved to Julian’s bed and sat against the bolster. She glanced once across the room at her son dead on his tilt board, his blood streaming onto the carpet.
For a second, the image of him nursing at her breast flitted across her mind. She let out a long pathetic groan.
Then she slashed her wrists.
For the next several minutes, with her knees clutched to her chest, and her wrists bleeding into a pillow, she whimpered softly and rocked herself to death.
B
rendan had been in the kitchen cleaning up when the video exposure of Vanessa Watts was going on. He had only learned about it from another waiter on his way out.
Around eleven-thirty, he parked the pickup down the street from the DaFoe house so it wouldn’t be noticed. The only car in the garage was a Lexus SUV. It was green, the color of money, which Nicole’s parents had in abundance.
Unlike the simple little six-room Cape that he shared with his grandfather, Nicole’s home was a big white Colonial with a sweeping lawn, fancy shrubbery, and that European beech elm where he had spent several nights watching her undress, and one having sex with her history teacher.
Nicole let him in the back door. She had changed into green jeans and a yellow top. She looked like a daffodil. She was holding a glass of orange juice.
“You stink,” she said as if announcing the sky was black.
“From the g-g-garlic in the crab cakes’ dip. Carlos always adds too m-much. I’ll w-w-wash up.”
“And work on that stutter while you’re at it.” She led him upstairs to her bathroom.
He said nothing, inured to her bluntness. On one level, it fascinated him that she was so lacking in social cues. He at least had some residual instinct. She waited by the door as he washed up. “You missed quite a scene.” He told her about the plagiarism charge. “That’s not going to go over big with the administration at Middlesex U.”
Nicole shrugged. “I didn’t like her anyway. And her son’s a dweeb.”
Brendan opened his backpack. “By the way, c-close your eyes.”
“You’ve got a surprise for me?”
“Not that kind of surprise—I mean g-g-giftwise. Just keep your eyes closed, and inhale and tell me w-what comes to mind.”
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“No.”
She closed her eyes and faced him, and he placed the bottle under her nose. “Okay, inhale and tell me if the odor reminds you of anything.”
She sniffed and snapped her head back. “Smells like …” She opened her eyes and snatched at the small glass container. “Extract of almond.” She glared at him.
“Well? Does it remind you of anything?”
“No.”
“But you didn’t even try.”
“I smelled it,” she snapped.
“No associations, no recollections, no images come to mind?”
“No.”
“Think hard.” And he held it to her nose again.
She pushed it away. “I said
no
. It reminds me of nothing.”
He stared at her for a moment then screwed the cap back on and stuffed it in his pocket. “How about Mr. Nisha?”
“I told you I never heard of Mr. Nisha.”
“Okay, forget it.” Something about her reaction bothered him. She was too quick to reject it. “I just get some really weird vibes from the odor. So what’s up?”
“Your turn. Close your eyes.”
“What?” Hesitantly he closed his eyes, then heard her leave the room.
“Keep them closed,” she said from the other room. A few moments later he heard her return.
“Okay, open them.”
Brendan opened his eyes. Nicole was stark naked.
“W-w-w-what are you
doing
?”
Her eyes were small, no dilation in her pupils. No affect in her manner. No warmth in her response. “See if you can figure it out.”
All he could think was:
Why is she doing this
? But it came out: “W-w-w-w- … ?”
“Why do you think?”
Brendan suddenly wished he were home, that he had not agreed to come over. That this was not turning out well. “I d-d-dunno.”
“Is that the best you can do?”
He scanned her body. “You’re very p-p-pretty,” he said, hoping that she’d put her clothes back on.
“P-p-pretty?”
“Okay, b-beautiful.”
“So,” she said, spreading her legs slightly and leaning on a hip. “Is Mr. LaMotte still a virgin?”
She was a thousand Internet images—a thousand pixel pixies.
She wants something,
he told himself.
Nicole is hell-bent to succeed in life, so she wants something.
“Well?”
It was not a question he wanted to answer. Nor did she wait for one, no doubt assuming he was. She undid his belt and unzipped his fly. He stood there as if he had been shot with a stun gun. He wanted to stop her, and he wanted her to continue—not because he was getting aroused, but because he wasn’t.
She slipped her hand into his pants and rubbed his genitals. He could feel himself stir slightly, but he did not sprout an erection. In fact, the only erections he ever had resulted from unconscious friction with his bedding, but never from sexual musings, or sex magazines or Web porn sites. Naked women, men, children: nothing. Nada. His mojo wasn’t working. He couldn’t even properly masturbate if he wanted to; and the only orgasms were those in his sleep, unattended by raucous adolescent dreams—pure and simple biology: the press of backed-up sperm.
Not getting any reaction, Nicole pressed herself against his groin. He drew back because it hurt. “W-w-why are you doing this? I didn’t c-come here for this.”
“Because I f-f-felt like it.” She made a mirthless laugh. “I remember how you looked at me the other night in my room.”
That was a phony response—one reserved for the legions of normal heterosexual males whose hopeful glances told them she was “hot.” That was not his look. He did not have the hunger. Nor could he imagine that she liked him. They weren’t friends, nor had she ever shown him any interest except to make fun of his stuttering. In fact, whenever she addressed him he felt as if he were being razor-gashed. Besides, being the looker she was, Nicole should be
pursuing the alpha studs—those cool, smart jocky dudes everybody else looked up to. He was surely not one of those. Yes, he was smart and tall, but two hundred and sixty pounds of baby fat surmounted by a long shiny black ponytail, braces, facial blemishes, and enough tics to make the Top Ten Geek List. Nicole did not give herself away for nothing. No, it wasn’t how he had looked at her in the bedroom. It was what he had seen in there.
Suddenly she took his hand and put it on her crotch.
My God!
He thought.
The Mound of Venus. The Delta of Desire. Ad glorium pudendum.
And his mind flooded with lines from a dozen erotic poems.
It was the first time he had ever touched female genitalia, but he felt nothing inside—not a bloody damn flicker. He could have been fondling her kneecap.
She planted her mouth on his and pushed her tongue through his teeth, moving in deliberate cadence with the grinding motion against his hand.
“Orange juice,” he said. “You t-taste of orange juice.”
“Because I just had a glass, asshole.”
acetaldehyde
alpha terpineol
ethyl decanoate
“Did you know that orange juice contains over two hundred different chemical compounds?”
pentane diethal ether
myrcene
“No, and please don’t tell me,” she said, grinding her pubis against him.
valencene
methylene chloride
limonene
3-ethanoxy 1-propanol
He wished he had not mentioned the orange juice, because his mind was now ticking off a slew of hydrocarbons, alcohols, aldehydes, and esters.
2-methyl propanic acid
methal octanoate
He squeezed down to force the runoff into a rear-brain compartment, which he sealed off and bolted. Then he strained to get back to the moment. But that was the real problem, because although he could recite the most obscure facts, he did not know how to react to Nicole. He knew he was supposed
to “feel” things, to enjoy a flood of emotions, but he could not react accordingly.
ethyl butyrate
4-vinyl guaiacol
And, yet, he was fascinated by her performance. While she came on as sexually precocious, her moves seemed studied. Her lips, which were full and fleshy, opened and closed around his like a suckerfish in the throes of some mating ritual. Part of him liked the bizarre, almost nursing, sensation—something she had cultivated in her considerable experience. However, he was not sure he liked her tongue swabbing out his mouth. He could faintly detect the orange juice behind other tastes.
As he feared, his mind filled with biology-class videos of microbes teeming in human saliva. Then he became fixed on the disgusting white bacterial gunk that collects on the back of human tongues from the lack of oxygen and makes for sulfur-foul breath.
Then he saw her as one of those colored anatomy-book drawings of the digestive system—her insides a pack of shiny red organs and alimentary tubes leading from her mouth down through twenty feet of twisty yellow intestines partly full of feces.
He squeezed down on those images, pressed them into a small box, and stomped it with his heel. And for a blessed moment, the assault was over.
As Nicole moved against his hand and closed her eyes to groaning sounds, Brendan could not help but think that he was engaged in one of the highest fantasies of the male breed: fondling the sex of a gorgeous, compliant sixteen-year-old. He knew he should feel special, even privileged—for some men would kill for the opportunity. And while he watched Nicole writhe, he could not help but wonder at human sexuality—how in the zoological kingdom we were the only species that copulated face-to-face: An evolutionary marvel whose anatomy had evolved for the look of love-face-to-face, man to woman: passion
by design.
And he had none.
“Do you like that?”
No
, he thought. “Mmmm,” he mumbled.
“How ‘bout this?” And she then slipped to her knees and lowered his shorts.
God, this too?
His penis stuck out from his pubic hairs like an overgrown slug. It was mortifying. Here was Nicole DaFoe, the teenage equivalent to the Whore of Babylon, his own momentary Lolita on her knees performing the supreme male fantasy, and he couldn’t even summon a glandular twitch.
God, if you can hear me, PLEASE!
Nicole tried everything, rubbing her breasts against him, twiddling him, even kissing him. Still nothing, though he was straining with all he had to engorge himself with blood. But nothing. It was awful. Where were the
fires of spring?
The
eternal fever?
Andrew Marvell’s “rough strife”?
She did everything possible—humming, moaning and groaning. It was horrible—the ultimate curse, but for old men, like Richard, not a healthy adolescent who should be pulsing with magma heat.
As he pushed with all he had to stiffen himself, fighting the damning humiliation, a side-pocket awareness struck him: Not how experienced Nicole was, but how rote her movement. As he watched her head move below him, she appeared to him as a mechanical doll running through a naughty little program, not aroused, just studied. Robotic. Even her kissing lacked genuine heat. She didn’t even breathe heavily.
He was about to push her head away, when in the light his eyes caught something in her hair. He put his hands on her head pretending to caress her. As he spread her hair, he could see a cluster of small white nubbinlike scars barely visible about an inch behind her forehead hairline and running across the side of her head.
Suddenly Nicole froze. “What are you doing?” Instantly she was upright.
“Y-you’ve got the same scars I have.”
Nicole’s face shifted as if trying to land on the right expression. “What?”
He lowered his head and parted his hair where the nurse had shaved. “See?” he said, showing her in the mirror. Then he moved his hand to show her what he’d seen under her hair, but she pulled away. “Let me show you.”
“Get out,” she said. He could not tell if the blaze in her eyes meant that she was angry with him for the aborted sex, or scared.
“Let me show you. Th-they’re little white dots.”
“From chicken pox.”
“Chicken pox? No,” he insisted. “Ch-chicken pox scars would be r-r-random. These are bunched together. And they’re in the same place as mine.”
Nicole’s face hardened. “I told you I had chicken pox. I remember it was all over my face and head.”
Brendan shook his head. “Not chicken pox.”
“Then what are they?”
“Somebody did something to our heads when we were kids.”
“Shut up. Scars are long lines not little white dots.”
“I don’t know how, but somebody did something—to both of us. I have images and d-dreams of hospital rooms, of w-w-white lights and monitors, of people with surgical masks. And you’ve got the same scars and that t-t-tattoo I keep seeing. Elephants with hands grabbing at me.”

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