“What was the problem?”
He hesitated. “I could spin you some yarn about poor motivation, being bored in class, never finding her niche. But the truth is she simply wasn’t very intelligent. An IQ of eighty-seven. Not retarded, but the low end of the normal range.
“When did you have her tested?”
“At age seven. I did it myself.”
“
“That’s correct.”
“Using what test?” I said, expecting some sort of quick-and-easy questionnaire lifted from a self-help book.
“The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. It’s the test of choice, isn’t it? The most extensively validated?”
“The Wechsler’s an excellent test, Mr. Burden, but it requires quite a bit of training in order to administer and score it properly.”
“Not to worry,” he said, with sudden cheer. “I trained myself. Read the manual carefully and boned up on a number of related articles in psychology journals. Then I practiced on Howard- he took to it like a duck to water. Scored one forty-nine, top tenth of a percent, I believe.”
“The Wechsler’s not supposed to be sold to laymen. How’d you get hold of it?”
Sly smile. “Not thinking of filing a complaint, are you, Doctor?”
I crossed my legs casually, returned the smile, and shook my head. “You must be pretty resourceful.”
“Actually,” he said, “it was painfully simple. I filled out an order blank at the back of one of the psychology journals, sent in my money, put a Ph.D. after my name, enclosed a card from my business at the time-‘Demographics, Incorporated. Applied Social Research.’ It must have sounded sufficiently psychological to the company, because a week later the test came, parcel post.”
Flaunting his duplicity. But then, why would someone who made his living hawking Tibetan Harmony Bells and personal power pills shy away from a bit of self-serving subterfuge?
“I did a fine job of testing,” he said. “More thorough than any school psychologist would have been. And I took the trouble to retest her twice. At ages nine and eleven. The results were almost identical- eighty-seven and eighty-five. No outstanding deficits or marked strengths, no imbalance between Verbal and Performance scores. Just a general dullness. My theory is that she experienced some sort of intrauterine trauma that affected her central nervous system. Perhaps due to her mother’s advanced age- Betty was thirty-nine when she conceived. In any event, there had to be some kind of brain damage, didn’t there? It might have been worse but for our unique situation.”
“What do you mean?”
“Given
I said, “Do you have her testing profile?”
“No. I threw it all out years ago. What would have been the point?”
“Did you ever consult a specialist about her learning problems?”
“In the beginning I gave the school a chance to come up with something- saw the usual assortment of civil service flunkies. Counselors, special education teachers, whatnot. Holly didn’t fit into any of their classification groups- too smart for Educable Mentally Retarded, too dull for a normal classroom, no discipline or management problems that would have qualified her for Educationally Handicapped. They had conferences- those types love to have conferences. Sat there and talked down to me with their jargon-thought they could hide behind jargon because I didn’t have a degree after my name.”
“Would there be any records of those conferences?”
“No. I demanded they destroy them. I’m in the information business. I know how records can come back to haunt. They tried to protest- some stupid regulation- but I prevailed. Sheer force of personality. They were such a weak-willed bunch, so dull themselves. Endless talk, no action. I realized early on that I was on my own; any meaningful remediation would have to take place at home. So I washed my hands of them. It’s the same way I feel about that policeman Frisk. That’s why I took the initiative to call you. I know you’re different.”
The second negative reference he’d made to the school. I said, “Did you discuss your feelings about the school with Holly?”
He gave me a long stare. Searching. Illuminated by unwelcome insight.
“Doctor, are you trying to say I planted hatred in her mind?”
“I’m trying to get a picture of how she felt about the school.”
“She hated it. She must have. It represented failure to her. All those years of incompetence and insensitivity. How else could she have felt? But she wasn’t about to kill anyone because of that.”
He gave a derisive laugh.
I said, “What kinds of remedial things did you do?”
“Gave her my personal attention- when she’d accept it. Sat down with her every evening after dinner and walked her through her homework. Tried to get her to concentrate, tried to bribe her- what you’d call operant conditioning. That didn’t work, because she really didn’t want anything. Eventually I did get her reading skills and math levels to a point where she could function in the real world- simple instructions and computations, road signs. She wasn’t interested in- or capable of- any higher abstractions.”
“How was her attention span?”
“Just fine for things she was interested in- cleaning and straightening, listening to pop music on her radio and dancing to it when she thought no one was looking. Non
“Dancing,” I said, trying to picture it. “So her physical coordination was okay?”
“Adequate. Which is all anyone needs for the dances they do today.” He flapped his arms and made a grotesque face. “Betty and I used to dance seriously. Long-forgotten baroque and classical terpsichore- gavottes, minuets. Steps that really required virtuosity. We were quite a pair.”
Drifting back, inevitably, to self-congratulation. Feeling as if I needed a thick rope to tug things back to Holly, I said, “Did you ever consider medication- Ritalin or something similar?”
“Not after I read up on the effects of long-term amphetamine usage. Stunted growth. Anorexia. Possible brain damage. The last thing Holly needed was
“Did she have periods of emotional depression?”
He dismissed that with a wave. “Her mood was fine. She just lacked energy. At first I thought it might be nutritional- something to do with blood sugar or her thyroid. But all her blood tests were normal.”
Blood tests. Half-expecting him to answer that he’d punctured her vein himself, I said, “Did your family doctor have any suggestions when he gave you the results?”
“Never had a family doctor. Never needed one. I took both of them, Howard and Holly, to the Public Health Service for their blood work. For their immunizations too. Told the civil servants there that I suspected some kind of contagious infection. It’s their responsibility to check that kind of thing, so they were forced to do it. I figured I might as well get something back for my tax dollars.”
Genuine glee at dissembling. How much of what he told me about anything could be believed?
“Who managed their childhood diseases? Where did you take them when they had fevers and needed antibiotics?”
“They were very healthy children, rarely ran high fevers. The few times they did, I brought it down with aspirin, fluids- exactly what a doctor would tell me to do. The couple of times they needed penicillin, they got it from the Health Service. Measles passed them by. Chicken pox and mumps I managed according to the books- genuine medical books. The
“Self-sufficiency,” I said.
“Exactly. In some quarters, that’s still considered worth-while.”
Trumpeting his achievements had made his Mr. Peepers persona fade completely. He looked belligerent, flushed, somehow bigger, huskier. A bantam cock swelling as he scanned the barnyard for rivals.
