Brain Child

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

On the morning of Martha Lewis’s funeral, Ellen Lonsdale woke early. She lay in bed staring out the window at the cloudless California sky. It was not, she decided, the right kind of day for a funeral. On this, of all mornings, the coastal fog should have been hanging over the hills above La Paloma, reaching with damp fingers down into the village below. Beside her, Marsh stirred, then opened one eye.
“You don’t have to get up yet,” Ellen told him. “It’s still early, but I couldn’t sleep.”
Marsh came fully awake, and propped himself up on one elbow. He reached out a tentative finger to touch the flesh of Ellen’s arm, but she shrank away from him, threw back the covers, and got out of bed.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, though he knew full well that she didn’t. If she wanted to talk to anybody, it would be Raymond Torres. Increasingly he was feeling more and more cut off from both his wife and his son.
As Marsh had expected, Ellen shook her head. “I’m just not sure how much more I can cope with,” she said, then forced a smile. “But I will,” she went on.
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Marsh suggested. “Maybe you and I should just take off for a while, and see if we can find each other again.”
Ellen stopped dressing to face Marsh with incredulous eyes. “Go away? How on earth can we do that? What about Alex? What about Kate Lewis? Who’s going to take care of them?”
Marsh shrugged; then he, too, got out of bed. “Valerie Benson’s been taking care of Kate, and she can go right on doing it. Hell, at least it gives her something better to do than whine about how she never should have gotten a divorce.”
“That’s a cruel thing to say—”
“It’s not cruel, honey,” Marsh interrupted. “It’s true, and you know it. As for Alex, he’s quite capable of taking care of himself, even if he isn’t like he used to be. But you and I are having a problem, whether we want to face it or not.” For a split second Marsh wondered why it was all going to come out now, and if he should try to hold his feelings in. But he knew he couldn’t. “Did you know you don’t talk to me anymore? For three days now, you’ve barely said a word, and before that, all you were doing was telling me what Raymond Torres had to say about how we should run our lives. Not just Alex’s life, but ours too.”
“There’s no difference,” Ellen said. “Right now, Alex’s life is our life, and Raymond knows what’s best.”
“Raymond Torres is a brain surgeon, and a damned fine one. But he’s not a shrink or a minister—or even God Almighty—even though he’s trying to act as though he is.”
“He saved Alex’s life—”
“Did he?” Marsh asked. He shook his head sadly. “Sometimes I wonder if he saved Alex, or if he stole him. Can’t you see what’s happening, Ellen? Alex isn’t ours anymore, and neither are you. You both belong to Raymond Torres now, and I’m not sure that isn’t exactly what he wants.”
Ellen sank onto the foot of the bed and put her hands over her ears, as if by shutting out the sound of Marsh’s voice she could shut out the words he’d spoken as well. She looked up at him beseechingly. “Don’t do this to me, Marsh,” she pleaded. “I have to do what I think is best, don’t I?”
She looked so close to tears, so defeated, that Marsh felt his bitterness drain away. He knelt beside his wife and took her hands, cold and limp, in his own. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what any of us has to do anymore. All I know is that I love you, and I love Alex, and I want us to be a family again.”
Ellen was silent for a moment, then slowly nodded. “I know,” she said at last. “But I just keep wondering what’s coming next.”
“Nothing’s next,” Marsh replied. “There’s no connection between Alex and Marty Lewis. What happened to Alex was an accident. Marty Lewis was murdered, and unless Alan can come up with something better than ‘I don’t remember anything,’ I’d say he’s going to be tried for it, and found guilty.”
Ellen nodded glumly. “But I keep having a feeling that there’s more to it than that. I keep getting this strange feeling that there’s some kind of curse hanging over us.”
“That,” Marsh told her, “is the silliest thing I’ve heard in months. There’s no such thing as curses, Ellen. What’s happening to us is life. It’s as simple as that.”
But it’s not, Ellen thought as she finished dressing, then went downstairs to begin fixing breakfast. In life, you raise your family and enjoy your friends. Everything is ordinary. But Alex isn’t ordinary, and someone killing Marty isn’t ordinary, and getting up every morning and wondering if you’re going to get through the day isn’t ordinary.
She glanced at the clock. In another five minutes Marsh would be down, and a few minutes later, Alex, too, would appear. That, at least, was ordinary, and she would concentrate on that. In her mind, she began to make a list of things she could do that would make her life seem as unexceptional and routine as it once had been, but by the time Marsh and Alex appeared, she had come up with nothing. She poured them each a cup of coffee, and kissed Alex on the cheek.
He made no response, and, as always, a pang of disappointment twisted at her stomach.
She mixed up a can of frozen orange juice and poured a glass for her husband and one for her son. It was then that she noticed that Alex was dressed for school, not for Marty Lewis’s funeral.
“Honey, you’re going to have to change your clothes. You can’t wear those to the funeral.”
“I decided I’m not going,” Alex said, draining his glass of orange juice in one long gulp.
Marsh glanced up from the front page of the paper. “Of course you’re going,” he said.
“Alex, you have to go,” Ellen protested. “Marty was one of my best friends, and Kate’s always been a friend of yours.”
“But it’s stupid. I didn’t even know Kate’s mother. Why should I go to her funeral? It doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Ellen, too stunned by Alex’s words to respond, slid the muffins under the broiler, and reminded herself of what Raymond Torres had told her over and over again: Don’t get upset. Deal with Alex on his own level, a level that has nothing to do with feelings. She searched her mind, trying to find something that would reach him.
There was so little, now.
More and more, she was realizing that relationships—Alex’s as well as her own and everyone else’s—were based on feelings: on love, on anger, on pity, on all the emotions that she’d always taken for granted, and that Alex no longer had. And slowly, all his relationships were disappearing. But how could she stop it? Her thoughts were interrupted by Marsh’s voice. She turned to see him staring angrily at Alex.
“Does it make any difference that we’d like you to go?” she heard him ask. “That it would mean a lot to us for you to be there with us?” He sat back, his arms folded across his chest, and Ellen knew he was going to say no more until Alex came up with some kind of answer to his question.
Alex sat still at the table, analyzing what his father had just said.
He’d made a mistake, just as he’d made a mistake with Lisa the other night. He could see from the look on his father’s face that he was angry, and now he had to figure out why.
And yet, in his mind, he knew why.
He’d hurt his mothers feelings, so his father was angry.
He was starting to understand feelings, ever since the dream he’d had about Mrs. Lewis. He could still remember how he’d felt in the dream, even though he’d felt nothing since. At least he now had the memory of a feeling. It was a beginning.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, knowing the words were what his father wanted to hear. “I guess I wasn’t thinking.”
“I guess you weren’t,” his father agreed. “Now, I suggest you get yourself upstairs and into your suit, and when you go to that funeral—which you will do—I will expect you to act as if you care about what happened to Marty Lewis. Clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Alex said. He rose from the table and left the kitchen. But as he started up the stairs, he could hear his parents’ raised voices, and though the words were indistinct, he knew what they were talking about.
They were talking about him, about how strange he was.
That, he knew, was what a lot of people talked about now.
He knew what happened when he came into a room.
People who had been talking suddenly stopped, and their eyes fixed on him.
Other people simply looked away.
Not, of course, that it bothered him. The only thing that bothered him was the dream he’d had, but he still hadn’t figured out what it meant, except that it seemed that if he had feelings in his dreams, he should, sooner or later, have them when he was awake, too. And when he did, he’d be like everyone else.
Unless, of course, he really had killed Mrs. Lewis.
Maybe, after all, there was a reason to go to the funeral. Maybe if he actually saw her body, he’d remember whether or not he had killed her.
Alex stepped through the gate of the little cemetery, and immediately knew that something was wrong.
It was happening again.
He had a clear memory of this place, and now it no longer looked as it should have.
The walls were old and worn, and the lawn—the soft grass that the priests always tended so well—was gone. In its place was barren earth, covered only in small patches by tiny clumps of crabgrass.
The tombstones, too, didn’t look right. There were too many of them, and they, like the walls, seemed to have worn away so he could barely read the names on them. Nor were there flowers on the graves, as there always had been before.
He gazed at the faces of the people around him. None of them were familiar.
All of them were strangers, and none of them belonged here.
Then the now-familiar pain slashed through his brain, and the voices started, whispering in his ears.
“Ladrones … asesinos …”
Suddenly he had an urge to turn around and run away. Run from the pain in his head, and the voices, and the memories.
He felt a hand on his arm, and tried to pull away, but the grip tightened, and the touch of strong fingers gouging into his flesh suddenly cut through the voices.
“Alex,” he heard his father whisper. “Alex, what’s wrong?”
Alex shook his head, and glanced around. His mother was looking at him worriedly. A few feet away he recognized Lisa Cochran with her parents. He scanned the rest of the crowd: Kate Lewis stood next to the flower-covered coffin, with Valerie Benson at her side. Over by the wall, he recognized the Evanses.
“Alex?” he heard his father say again.
“Nothing, Dad,” Alex whispered back. “I’m okay.”
“You’re sure?”
Alex nodded. “I just … I just thought I remembered something, that’s all. But it’s gone now.”
His father’s grip relaxed, and once more Alex let his eyes wander over the cemetery.
The voices were silent now, and the cemetery suddenly seemed right again.
And why had he thought about priests?
He gazed up at the village hall that had once been a mission, and wondered how long it had been since there had been priests here. Certainly there hadn’t been any since he was born.
Then why had he remembered priests tending the cemetery?
And why had all the faces of the people looked strange to him?
The words that had been whispered in the depths of his mind came back to him.
“Thieves … murderers …”
The words from his dream. All that was happening was that he was remembering the words from his dream. But deep in his mind, he knew that it was more. The words had meaning, and the dream had meaning, and all of it was more than dreams and false memories.
All of it, some way, was real, but he couldn’t think about it now. There were too many people here, and he could feel them watching him. He had to act as if nothing was wrong.
He forced himself to concentrate on the funeral then, focusing on the coffin next to the grave.
And then, once more, he heard his father’s voice.
“What the hell is that son of a bitch doing here?”
He followed his father’s eyes. A few yards away, standing alone, he saw Raymond Torres.
He nodded, and Torres nodded back.
He’s watching me, Alex suddenly thought. He didn’t come here for the funeral at all. He came here to watch me.
Deep in his mind, at the very edges of his consciousness, Alex felt a sudden flicker of emotion.
It was so quick, and so unfamiliar, that he almost didn’t recognize it. But it was there, and it wasn’t a dream. Something deep inside him was coming alive again—and it was fear.
“How are you, Alex?” Raymond Torres’s hand extended. Alex took it, as he knew he was expected to. The funeral had ended an hour ago, and most of the people who had been there were gathered in Valerie Benson’s patio, talking quietly, and searching for the right words to say to Kate. Alex had been sitting alone, staring at a small fishpond and the waterfall that fed it, when Torres had approached.
“Okay,” he said, feeling the doctor’s sharp eyes on him.
“Something happened at the cemetery, didn’t it?”
Alex hesitated, then nodded. “It … well, it was sort of like what happened up in San Francisco.”
Torres nodded. “I see. And something happened here, too.” A statement, not a question.
Alex hesitated, then nodded. “The same thing. I came in, and for a minute I thought I recognized the house, but it’s different than I remember it. It’s the fishpond. The whole patio looked familiar, except the fishpond. I just don’t remember it at all.”
“Maybe it’s new.”
“It doesn’t look new,” Alex replied. “Besides, I asked Mrs. Benson about it, and she said it’s always been here.”
Again Torres nodded. “I think you’d better come down tomorrow, and we’ll talk about it.”
Suddenly his father appeared at his side. Alex felt his father’s arm fall over his shoulders, but made no move to pull away. “He’ll be going to school tomorrow,” he heard his father say.
Torres shrugged. “After school’s fine.”
Marsh hesitated. Every instinct in him was telling him to inform Torres that he wouldn’t be bringing Alex to him at all anymore.
But not here. He nodded curtly, making a mental note to clear his schedule tomorrow so that he could take Alex to Palo Alto himself. “That will be fine.” And tomorrow afternoon, he added to himself, you and I will have our last conversation. Keeping his arm around Alex’s shoulder, he started to draw his son away from Torres, but Torres spoke again.
“Before you make any decisions, I’d like to suggest that you read the waiver you signed very carefully.” Then Torres himself turned and strode out of the patio. A moment later, a car engine roared to life, and tires squealed as Torres shot down the road.
As he drove out of La Paloma, Raymond Torres wondered if it had been a mistake to go to Martha Lewis’s funeral after all. He hadn’t really intended to go. It had been years since he was part of La Paloma, and he knew that he would be something of an intruder there.
And that, of course, was exactly what had happened. He’d arrived, and recognized many of the faces, but most of the people hadn’t even acknowledged his presence. It was just as his mother had told him it would be when he stopped to see her before going into the cemetery.
“Loco,” she had said. “You are my son, but you are loco. You think they want you there? Just because you have a fancy degree, and a fancy hospital all your own, you think they will accept you? Then go! Go let them treat you the way they always did. You think they’ve changed? Gringos never change. Oh, they won’t say anything! They’ll be polite. But see if any of them invite you to their homes.” Her eyes had flashed with fury, and her body had quivered with the pent-up anger of the years. “Their homes!” she had spit. “The homes they stole from our ancestors!”
“That was generations ago, Mama,” he had protested. “It’s all forgotten. None of these people had anything to do with what happened a hundred years ago. And I grew up with Marty.”
“Grew up with her,” the old woman had scoffed. “Sí, you grew up with her, and went to school with her. But did she ever speak to you? Did she ever treat you like a human being?” María Torres’s eyes had narrowed shrewdly. “It’s not for her you go to the funeral. It’s something else. What, Ramón?”
Under his mother’s penetrating gaze, Raymond Torres found his carefully maintained self-confidence slipping away. How did she know? How did she know that his interest in the funeral went beyond the mere paying of respects to the memory of someone he’d known long ago? Did she know that deep in his heart he wanted to see the pain in the eyes of Martha Lewis’s friends, see the bewilderment on Cynthia Evans’s face, see all of them suffering as he’d suffered so many years ago? No, he decided, she couldn’t know all that, and he would never admit it to her.
“It’s Alex,” he had finally told her. “I want to see what happens to him at the funeral.” He told her about Alex’s experience in San Francisco, and the old woman nodded knowingly.
“You don’t know whose grave that was?” she asked. “Don Roberto had a brother. His name was Fernando, and he was a priest.”
“Are you suggesting that Alex Lonsdale saw a ghost?” he asked, his voice betraying his disbelief in his mother’s faith.
The old woman’s eyes glittered. “Do not be so quick to scoff. There are legends about Don Roberto’s family.”
“Among our people, there are legends about everything,” Torres replied dryly. “In fact, that’s about all we’ve got left.”
“No,” María had replied. “We have something else. We have our pride, too. Except for you. For you, pride was never enough. You wanted more—you wanted what the gringos have, even if it meant becoming one of them to get it. And now you have tried, and you have failed. Look at you, with your fancy cars, and your fancy clothes, and gringo education. But do they accept you? No. And they never will.”
And so he had left the little house he had been born in. His mother had been right. He had felt out of place at the funeral, even though he knew almost everyone there.
But he was right to have gone.
Something had happened to Alex Lonsdale. For a few moments, before his father had grasped his arm, Alex’s whole demeanor had changed.
His eyes had come to life, and he had seemed to be listening to something.
But what?
Raymond Torres thought about it all the way back to Palo Alto. When he reached the Institute, he went directly to his office and began going over the records of Alex’s case once more.
Somewhere, something had gone wrong. Alex was showing more signs of emotional behavior.
If it went too far, it would destroy everything, including Alex himself.