Chapter Twenty

Mr. Aldrin comes by to tell us that the company will not agree to provide LifeTime treatments at this time, though they may—he emphasizes that it is only a possibility—assist those of us who want to have LifeTime treatments after the other treatment, if it is successful. “It is too dangerous to do them together,” he says. “It increases the risk, and then if something does go wrong it would last longer.”

I think he should say it plainly: if the treatment causes more damage, we would be worse off and the company would have to support us for longer. But I know that normal people do not say things plainly.

We do not talk among ourselves after he leaves. The others all look at me, but they do not say anything. I hope Linda takes the treatment anyway. I want to talk to her more about stars and gravity and the speed of light and dark.

In my own office, I call Ms. Beasley at Legal Aid and tell her that I have decided to agree to the treatment. She asks me if I am sure. I am not sure, but I am sure enough. Then I call Mr. Aldrin and tell him. He also asks if I am sure. “Yes,” I say, and then I ask, “Is your brother going to do it?” I have been wondering about his brother.

“Jeremy?” He sounds surprised that I asked. I think it is a reasonable question. “I don’t know, Lou. It depends on the size of the group. If they open it up to outsiders, I’ll consider asking him. If he could live on his own, if he could be happier…”

“He is not happy?” I ask.

Mr. Aldrin sighs. “I… don’t talk about him much,” he says. I wait. Not talking about something much does not mean someone doesn’t want to talk about it. Mr. Aldrin clears his throat and then goes on. “No, Lou, he’s not happy. He’s… very impaired. The doctors then… my parents… he’s on a lot of medication, and he never learned to talk very well.” I think I understand what he is not saying. His brother was born too early, before the treatments that helped me and the others. Maybe he didn’t get the best treatment, even of those available at the time. I think of the descriptions in the books; I imagine Jeremy being stuck where I was as a young child.

“I hope the new treatment works,” I say. “I hope it works for him, too.”

Mr. Aldrin makes a sound I do not understand; his voice is hoarse when he speaks again. “Thank you, Lou,” he says. “You’re—you’re a good man.”

I am not a good man. I am just a man, like he is, but I like it that he thinks I am good.

Tom and Lucia and Marjory are all in the living room when I arrive. They are talking about the next tournament. Tom looks up at me.

“Lou—have you decided?”

“Yes,” I say. “I will do it.”

“Good. You’ll need to fill out this entry form—”

“Not that,” I say. I realize that he would not know I meant something else. “I will not fight in this tournament—” Will I ever fight in another tournament? Will the future me want to fence? Can you fence in space? I think it would be very hard in free fall.

“But you said,” Lucia says; then her face changes, seems to flatten out with surprise. “Oh—you mean… you’re going through with the treatment?”

“Yes,” I say. I glance at Marjory. She is looking at Lucia, and then at me, and then back. I do not remember if I talked to Marjory about the treatment.

“When?” asks Lucia before I have time to think about how to explain to Marjory.

“It will start Monday,” I say. “I have a lot to do. I have to move into the clinic.”

“Are you sick?” Marjory says; her face is pale now. “Is something wrong?”

“I am not sick,” I say to Marjory. “There is an experimental treatment that may make me normal.”

“Normal! But, Lou, you’re fine the way you are. I like the way you are. You don’t have to be like everybody else. Who has been telling you that?” She sounds angry. I do not know if she is angry with me or with someone she thinks told me I needed to change. I do not know if I should tell her the whole story or part of it. I will tell her everything.

“It started because Mr. Crenshaw at work wanted to eliminate our unit,” I say. “He knew about this treatment. He said it will save money.”

“But that’s—that’s coercion. It’s wrong. It’s against the law. He can’t do that—”

She is really angry now, the color coming and going on her cheeks. It makes me want to grab her and hug her. That is not appropriate.

“That is how it started,” I say. “But you are right; he could not do what he said he would do. Mr. Aldrin, our supervisor, found a way to stop him.” I am still surprised by this. I was sure Mr. Aldrin had changed his mind and would not help us. I still do not understand what Mr. Aldrin did that stopped Mr. Crenshaw and caused him to lose his job and be escorted out by security guards with his things in a box. I tell them what Mr. Aldrin said and then what the lawyers said in the meeting. “But now I want to change,” I say, at the end.

She takes a deep breath. I like to watch her take deep breaths; the front of her clothes pulls tight. “Why?” she asks in a quieter voice. “It isn’t because of… because of… us, is it? Me?”

“No,” I say. “It is not about you. It is about me.”

Her shoulders sag. I do not know if it is relief or sadness. “Then was it Don? Did he make you do this, convince you that you weren’t all right as you were?”

“It was not Don… not only Don…” It is obvious, I think, and I do not know why she cannot see it. She was there when the security man at the airport stopped me and my words stuck and she had to help me. She was there when I needed to talk to the police officer and my words stuck and Tom had to help me. I do not like being the one who always needs help. “It is about me,” I say again. “I want not to have problems at the airport and sometimes with other people when it is hard to talk and have people looking at me. I want to go places and learn things I did not know I could learn…”

Her faces changes again, smoothing out, and her voice loses some of its emotional tone. “What is the treatment like, Lou? What will happen?”

I open the packet I have brought. We are not supposed to discuss the treatment since it is proprietary and experimental, but I think this is a bad idea. If things go wrong, someone outside should know. I did not tell anyone I was taking my packet out, and they did not stop me.

I begin to read. Almost at once, Lucia stops me.

“Lou—do you understand this stuff now?”

“Yes. I think so. After Cego and Clinton, I could read the on-line journals pretty easily.”

“Why don’t you let me read that, then? I can understand it better if I see the words. Then we can talk about it.”

There is nothing to talk about, really. I am going to do it. But I hand Lucia the packet, because it is always easier to do what Lucia says. Marjory scoots closer to her and they both begin to read. I look at Tom. He raises his eyebrows and shakes his head.

“You’re a brave man, Lou. I knew that, but this—! I don’t know if I’d have the guts to let someone mess with my brain.”

“You don’t need to,” I say. “You are normal. You have a job with tenure. You have Lucia and this house.” I cannot say the rest that I think, that he is easy in his body, that he sees and hears and tastes and smells and feels what others do, so his reality matches theirs.

“Will you come back to us, do you think?” Tom asks. He looks sad.

“I do not know,” I say. “I hope that I will still like to fence, because it is fun, but I do not know.”

“Do you have time to stay tonight?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“Then let’s go on out.” He gets up and leads the way to the equipment room. Lucia and Marjory stay behind, reading. When we get to the equipment room, he turns to me. “Lou, are you sure you aren’t doing this because you’re in love with Marjory? Because you want to be a normal man for her? That would be a noble thing to do, but—”

I feel myself going hot all over. “It is not about her. I like her. I want to touch her and hold her and… things that are not appropriate. But this is…” I reach out and touch the upright end of the stand that holds the blades, because suddenly I am trembling and afraid I might fall. “Things do not stay the same,” I say. “I am not the same. I cannot not change. This is just… faster change. But I choose it.”

“Fear change, and it will destroy you; embrace change, and it will enlarge you,” Tom says, in the voice he uses for quotes. I do not know what he is quoting from. Then in his normal voice, with a little joking voice added, he says, “Choose your weapon, then: if you aren’t going to be here for a while, I want to be sure to get my licks in tonight.”

I take my blades and my mask and have put on my leather before I remember that I did not stretch. I sit down on the patio and begin the stretches. It is colder out here; the flagstones are hard and cold under me.

Tom sits across from me. “I’ve done mine, but more never hurts as I get older,” he says. I can see, when he bends to put his face on his knee, that the hair on the top of his head is thinning, and there is gray in it. He puts one arm over his head and pulls on it with the other arm. “What will you do when you’re through the treatment?”

“I would like to go into space,” I say.

“You—? Lou, you never cease to amaze me.” He puts the other arm on top of his head now and pulls on the elbow. “I didn’t know you wanted to go into space. When did that start?”

“When I was little,” I say. “But I knew I could not do it. I knew it was not appropriate.”

“When I think of the waste—!” Tom says, bending his head now to his other knee. “Lou, as much as I worried about this before, I think you’re right now. You have too much potential to be locked up in a diagnosis the rest of your life. Though it’s going to hurt Marjory when you grow away from her.”

“I do not want to hurt Marjory,” I say, “I do not think I will grow away from her.” It is a strange expression; I am sure it cannot be literal. If two things close to each other both grow, they will get closer together, not apart.

“I know that. You like her a lot—no, you love her. That’s clear. But, Lou—she’s a nice woman, but as you say, you’re about to make a big change. You won’t be the same person.”

“I will always like—love—her,” I say. I had not thought that becoming normal would make that harder or impossible. I do not understand why Tom thinks so. “I do not think she pretended to like me just to do research on me, whatever Emmy says.”

“Good heavens, who thought that up? Who’s Emmy?”

“Someone at the Center,” I say. I do not want to talk about Emmy, so I hurry through it. “Emmy said Marjory was a researcher and just talked to me as a subject, not a friend. Marjory told me that her research was on neuromuscular disorders, so I knew Emmy was wrong.”

Tom stands up, and I scramble up, too. “But for you—it’s a great opportunity.”

“I know,” I say. “I wanted—I thought once—I almost asked her out, but I don’t know how.”

“Do you think the treatment will help?”

“Maybe.” I put on my mask. “But if it does not help with that, it will help with other things, I think. And I will always like her.”

“I’m sure you will, but it won’t be the same. Can’t be. It’s like any system, Lou. If I lost a foot, I might still fence, but my patterns would be different, right?”

I do not like thinking of Tom losing a foot, but I can understand what he means. I nod.

“So if you make a big change in who you are, then you and Marjory will be in a different pattern. You may be closer, or you may be further apart.”

Now I know what I did not know a few minutes ago, that I had had a deep and hidden thought about Marjory and the treatment and me. I did think it would be easier. I did have a hope that if I were normal, we might be normal together, might marry and have children and a normal life.

“It won’t be the same, Lou,” Tom says again from behind his mask. I can see the glitter of his eyes. “It can’t be.”

Fencing is the same and it is not the same. Tom’s patterns are clearer now each time I fence with him, but my pattern slides in and out of focus. My attention wavers. Will Marjory come outside? Will she fence? What are she and Lucia saying about the consent packet? When I concentrate, I can make touches on him, but then I lose track of where he is in his pattern and he makes touches on me. It is three touches to five when Marjory and Lucia come out, and Tom and I have just stopped for breath. Even though it is a cool night, we are sweaty.

“Well,” Lucia says. I wait. She says nothing more.

“It looks dangerous to me,” Marjory says. “Mucking about with neural reabsorption and then regeneration. But I haven’t read the original research.”

“Too many places it can go wrong,” Lucia says. “Viral insertion of genetic material, that’s old hat, a proven technology. Nanotech cartilage repair, blood vessel maintenance, inflammation management, fine. Programmable chips for spinal cord injuries, okay. But tinkering with gene switches—they haven’t got all the bugs out of that yet. That mess with marrow in bone regeneration—of course that’s not nerves and it was in children, but still.”

I do not know what she is talking about, but I do not want another reason to be scared.

“What bothers me most is that it’s all in-house with your employer, an incestuous mess if ever I saw one. Anything goes wrong, you have no patient advocate to speak up for you. Your Legal Aid person doesn’t have the medical expertise… But it’s your decision.”

“Yes,” I say. I look at Marjory. I cannot help it.

“Lou…” Then she shakes her head, and I know she is not going to say what she was going to say. “Want to fence?” she asks.

I do not want to fence. I want to sit with her. I want to touch her. I want to eat dinner with her and lie in bed with her. But that is something I cannot do, not yet. I stand up and put on my mask.

What I feel when her blade touches mine I cannot describe. It is stronger than before. I feel my body tightening, reacting, in a way that is not appropriate but is wonderful. I want this to go on and I want to stop and grab her. I slow down, so that I do not make a touch too quickly, and so that this will last.

I could still ask her if she will have dinner with me. I could do it before or after treatment. Maybe.

Thursday morning. It is chilly, windy, with gray clouds scudding across the sky. I am hearing Beethoven’s Mass in C. The light looks heavy and slow, though the wind is moving fast. Dale, Bailey, and Eric are already here—or their cars are. Linda’s car is not in place yet; neither is Chuy’s. As I walk from the parking lot to the building, the wind blows my slacks against my legs; I can feel the rippling of the fabric against my skin; it feels like many little fingers. I remember begging my mother to cut the tags out of my T-shirts when I was little, until I was old enough to do it myself. Will I still notice that afterward?

I hear a car behind me and turn. It is Linda’s car. She parks in her usual place. She gets out without looking at me.

At the door, I insert my card, put my thumb on the plate, and the door lock clicks and clunks to release. I push the door open and wait for Linda. She has opened her car’s trunk and is taking out a box. It is like the box Mr. Crenshaw had, but it has no markings on the side.

I did not think to bring a box to put things in. I wonder if I can find a box during lunch hour. I wonder if Linda bringing a box means she has decided to take the treatment.

She holds the box under one arm. She walks fast, the wind blowing her hair back. She usually has it tied up; I did not know it would ripple like that in the wind. Her face looks different, uncluttered and spare, as if it were a carving without any fear or worry.

She walks past me holding the box and I follow her inside. I remember to touch the screen for two people entering on one card. Bailey is in the hall.

“You have a box,” he says to Linda.

“I thought someone might need it,” Linda says. “I brought it in case.”

“I will bring a box tomorrow,” Bailey says. “Lou, are you leaving today or tomorrow?”

“Today,” I say. Linda looks at me and holds the box. “I could use the box,” I say, and she hands it to me without meeting my eyes.

I go into my office. It looks strange already, like someone else’s office. If I left it alone, would it look strange like this when I come back afterward? But since it looks strange now, does that mean that already I am living partly in afterward?

I move the little fan that makes the spin spirals and whirligigs turn, and then I move it back. I sit in my chair and look again. It is the same office. I am not the same person.

I look in the drawers of my desk and see nothing but the same old stack of manuals. Down at the bottom—though I have not looked at it in a long time—is the Employees’ Manual. On top are the different system upgrade manuals. These are not supposed to be printed out, but it is still easier to read things on paper where the letters are absolutely still. Everyone uses my manuals. I do not want to leave these illicit copies here while I am in treatment. I pull them all out and turn the stack upside down so the Employees’ Manual is on top. I do not know what to do with them.

In the bottom drawer is an old mobile that I used to have hanging here until the biggest fish got bent. Now the shiny surface of the fishes has little black spots. I pull it out, wincing at the jingly noise it makes, and rub at one of the black spots. It doesn’t come off. It looks sick. I put it in the wastebasket, wincing again at the noise.

In the flat drawer above the kneehole I keep colored pens and a little plastic container with some change for the soda machine. I put the container in my pocket and put the pens on top of the desk. I look at the shelving. All that is project information, files, things the company owns. I do not have to clean off the shelves. I take down the spin spirals that are not my favorites first, the yellow and silver and the orange and red.

I hear Mr. Aldrin’s voice in the hall, speaking to someone. He opens my door.

“Lou—I forgot to remind everyone not to take any project work off-campus. If you want to store any project-related materials, you can stack them with a label explaining that they must go in secured storage.”

“Yes, Mr. Aldrin,” I say. I feel uneasy about those system update printouts in the box, but they are not project-related.

“Will you be on-campus at all tomorrow?”

“I do not think so,” I say. “I do not want to start something and leave it unfinished, and I will have everything cleared out today.”

“Fine. You did get my list of recommended preparations?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Good, then. I—” He looks back over his shoulder and then comes into my office and shuts the door. I feel myself tensing; my stomach churns. “Lou—” He hesitates, clears his throat, and looks away. “Lou, I—I want to tell you I’m sorry this all happened.”

I do not know what answer he expects. I do not say anything.

“I never wanted… if it had been up to me, things wouldn’t have changed—”

He is wrong. Things would have changed. Don would still have been angry with me. I would still have fallen in love with Marjory. I am not sure why he is saying this; he must know that things do change, whether people want them to or not. A man can lie beside the pool for weeks, for years, thinking about the angel coming down, before someone stops to ask him if he wants to be healed.

The look on Mr. Aldrin’s face reminds me of how I have felt so often. He is scared, I realize. He is usually scared of something. It hurts to be scared for a long time; I know that hurt. I wish he did not have that look, because it makes me feel I should do something about it and I do not know what to do.

“It is not your fault,” I say. His face relaxes. That was the right thing to say. It is too easy. I can say it, but does that make it true? Words can be wrong. Ideas can be wrong.

“I want to be sure you really are—you really do want the treatment,” he says. “There’s absolutely no pressure—”

He is wrong again, though he may be right that there is no pressure from the company right now. Now that I know change will come, now that I know this change is possible, the pressure grows in me, as air fills a balloon or light fills space. Light is not passive; light itself presses on whatever it touches.

“It is my decision,” I say. I mean, whether it is right or wrong, it is what I decided. I can be wrong, too.

“Thanks, Lou,” he says. “You—you all—you mean a lot to me.”

I do not know what “mean a lot” means. Literally it would mean that we have a lot of meaning in us, which he can take, and I do not think that is what Mr. Aldrin is saying. I do not ask. I am still uncomfortable when I think about the times he talked to us. I do not say anything. After 93 seconds, he nods and turns to go. “Take care,” he says. “Good luck.”

I understand “Be careful,” but I do not think “Take care” is as clear. Care is not something you can take and walk around with, like a box. I do not say that, either. Afterward I may not even think about that. I should start now to think what afterward is like.

I notice he does not say, “I hope you are cured.” I do not know if he is being tactful and polite or thinks it will not go well. I do not ask. His pocket tagger bleeps, and he backs out into the hall. He does not shut my door. It is wrong to listen to other people’s conversation, but it is not polite to shut the door on someone in authority. I cannot help hearing what he says, though I cannot hear what the other person says. “Yes, sir, I’ll be there.”

His footsteps move away. I relax, taking a deep breath. I take down my favorite spin spirals and take the whirligigs off their stands. The room looks bare, but my desk looks cluttered. I cannot tell if it will all fit in Linda’s box. Maybe I can find another box. Soon begun, soonest done. When I get into the hall, Chuy is at the door, struggling to hold it open and carry in several boxes. I hold the door wide for him.

“I brought one for everybody,” he says. “It will save time.”

“Linda brought a box I am using,” I say.

“Maybe someone will need two,” he says. He drops the boxes in the hall. “You can have one if you need one.”

“I need one,” I say. “Thanks.”

I pick up a box that is bigger than the one Linda brought and go back to my office. I put the manuals in the bottom because they are heavy. The colored pens fit between the manuals and the side of the box. I put the whirligigs and spin spirals on top and then remember the fan. I take them out and put the fan on top of the manuals. Now there will not be room for everything else. I look at the box. I do not need the Employees’ Manual, and no one will be angry with me for having a copy in my office. I take it out and leave it on the desk. I put the fan in, and then the spin spirals and whirligigs. They just fit. I think of the wind outside. They are lightweight and might blow out.

In the last drawer, I find the towel I use to dry off my head when it is raining and I have walked in from the car in the rain. That will fit on top of the spin spirals and whirligigs and keep them from blowing away. I fold the towel on top of the things in the box and pick up the box. Now I am doing what Mr. Crenshaw was doing, carrying a box of my things out of an office. Maybe I would look like Mr. Crenshaw to someone watching, except that no security guards stand beside me. We are not alike. This is my choice; I do not think his leaving was his choice. When I get near the door, Dale is coming out of his office; he opens the door for me.