SUMMER 2005
Alice sat in a big, comfortable, white chair and puzzled over the clock on the wall. It was the kind with hands and numbers, which was much harder to read than the kind with just numbers. Five maybe?
“What time is it?” she asked the man sitting in the other big, white chair.
He looked at his wrist.
“Almost three thirty.”
“I think it’s time for me to go home.”
“You are home. This is your home on the Cape.”
She looked around the room—the white furniture, the pictures of lighthouses and beaches on the walls, the giant windows, the spindly little trees outside the windows.
“No, this isn’t my house. I don’t live here. I want to go home now.”
“We’re going back to Cambridge in a couple of weeks. We’re here on vacation. You like it here.”
The man in the chair continued reading his book and drinking his drink. The book was thick and the drink was yellowish brown, like the color of her eyes, with ice in it. He was enjoying and absorbed in both, the book and the drink.
The white furniture, the pictures of lighthouses and beaches on the walls, the giant windows, and the spindly little trees outside the windows didn’t look at all familiar to her. The sounds here weren’t familiar to her either. She heard birds, the kinds that live at the ocean, the sound of the ice swirling and clinking in the glass when the man in the chair drank his drink, the sound of the man breathing through his nose as he read his book, and the ticking of the clock.
“I think I’ve been here long enough. I’d like to go home now.”
“You are home. This is your vacation home. This is where we come to relax and unwind.”
This place didn’t look like her home or sound like her home, and she didn’t feel relaxed. The man reading and drinking in the big, white chair didn’t know what he was talking about. Maybe he was drunk.
The man breathed and read and drank, and the clock ticked. Alice sat in the big, white chair and listened to the time go by, wishing someone would take her home.
SHE SAT IN ONE OF the white, wooden chairs on a deck drinking iced tea and listening to the shrill cross talk of unseen frogs and twilight bugs.
“Hey, Alice, I found your butterfly necklace,” said the man who owned the house.
He dangled a jeweled butterfly by a silver chain in front of her.
“That’s not my necklace, that’s my mother’s. And it’s special, so you’d better put it back, we’re not supposed to play with it.”
“I talked to your mom, and she said that you could have it. She’s giving it to you.”
She studied his eyes and mouth and body language, looking for some sign that would give away his motive. But before she could get a proper read on his sincerity, the beauty of the sparkling blue butterfly seduced her, overriding her rule-abiding concerns.
“She said I could have it?”
“Uh-huh.”
He leaned over her from behind and fastened it around her neck. She ran her fingers over the blue gems on the wings, the silver body, and the diamond-studded antennae. She felt a smug thrill rush through her. Anne’s going to be so jealous.
SHE SAT ON THE FLOOR in front of the full-length mirror in the bedroom she slept in and examined her reflection. The girl in the mirror had sunken, darkened circles under her eyes. Her skin looked loose and spotty all over and wrinkled at the corners of her eyes and along her forehead. Her thick, scraggly eyebrows needed to be tweezed. Her curly hair was mostly black, but it was also noticeably gray. The girl in the mirror looked ugly and old.
She ran her fingers over her cheeks and forehead, feeling her face on her fingers and her fingers on her face. That can’t be me. What’s wrong with my face? The girl in the mirror sickened her.
She found the bathroom and flicked on the light. She met the same image in the mirror over the sink. There were her golden brown eyes, her serious nose, her heart-shaped lips, but everything else, the composition around her features, was grotesquely wrong. She ran her fingers over the smooth, cool glass. What’s wrong with these mirrors?
The bathroom didn’t smell right either. Two shiny, white step stools, a brush, and a bucket sat on sheets of newspaper on the floor behind her. She squatted down and breathed in through her serious nose. She pried the lid off the bucket, dipped the brush in, and watched creamy white paint dribble down.
She started with the ones she knew were defective, the one in the bathroom and the one in the bedroom she slept in. She found four more before she was finished and painted them all white.
SHE SAT IN A BIG, white chair, and the man who owned the house sat in the other one. The man who owned the house was reading a book and drinking a drink. The book was thick and the drink was yellowish brown with ice in it.
She picked up an even thicker book than the one the man was reading from the coffee table and thumbed through it. Her eyes paused on diagrams of words and letters connected to other words and letters by arrows, dashes, and little lollipops. She landed on individual words as she browsed through the pages—disinhibition, phosphorylation, genes, acetylcholine, priming, transience, demons, morphemes, phonological.
“I think I’ve read this book before,” said Alice.
The man looked over at the book she held and then at her.
“You’ve done more than that. You wrote it. You and I wrote that book together.”
Hesitant to take him at his word, she closed the book and read the shiny blue cover. From Molecules to Mind by John Howland, Ph.D. and Alice Howland, Ph.D. She looked up at the man in the chair. He’s John. She flipped to the front pages. “Table of Contents. Mood and Emotion, Motivation, Arousal and Attention, Memory, Language.” Language.
She opened the book to somewhere near the end. “An infinite possibility of expression, learned yet instinctive, semanticity, syntax, case grammar, irregular verbs, effortless and automatic, universal.” The words she read seemed to push past the choking weeds and sludge in her mind to a place that was pristine and still intact, hanging on.
“John,” she said.
“Yes.”
He put his book down and sat up straight at the edge of his big, white chair.
“I wrote this book with you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I remember. I remember you. I remember I used to be very smart.”
“Yes, you were, you were the smartest person I’ve ever known.”
This thick book with the shiny blue cover represented so much of what she used to be. I used to know how the mind handled language, and I could communicate what I knew. I used to be someone who knew a lot. No one asks for my opinion or advice anymore. I miss that. I used to be curious and independent and confident. I miss being sure of things. There’s no peace in being unsure of everything all the time. I miss doing everything easily. I miss being a part of what’s happening. I miss feeling wanted. I miss my life and my family. I loved my life and family.
She wanted to tell him everything she remembered and thought, but she couldn’t send all those memories and thoughts, composed of so many words, phrases, and sentences, past the choking weeds and sludge into audible sound. She boiled it down and put all her effort into what was most essential. The rest would have to remain in the pristine place, hanging on.
“I miss myself.”
“I miss you, too, Ali, so much.”
“I never planned to get like this.”
“I know.”