Gray Matter

“Dylan.”

“What about Dylan?”

“His problems.”

“What problems? What are you talking about?”

Suddenly she was sharply alert. “What do you mean, what problems?” she snapped. “His learning problems. His disabilities. His dyslexia. His … impairment.”

Impairment. She had rummaged for the right word and came up with impairment. Such a clinical term, he thought. According to specialists Dylan had a language-processing problem. But that didn’t make him impaired.

“Rachel, we’ve been through all this. He hasn’t got polio, for God’s sake. He’s dyslexic, like millions of other kids in this country. We’ll get learning specialists, whatever it takes.”

“But they can’t perform miracles.”

“No, but they can help reverse the problem.”

“It’s not like having his feet straightened.”

Martin wasn’t sure what she meant. “It will take time. But we’ll do the best we can and get beyond this. It’s not the end of the world. Dyslexia can be dealt with.”

“I’m thinking of taking him out of DellKids.”

“How come? What happened?” They had waited a long time and pulled strings to get him into the program, applying months before they actually had moved to town. If it weren’t for Sheila MacPhearson, they wouldn’t have succeeded.

“It’s more than dyslexia. He’s just not in the same league as the other kids, and they’re beginning to make fun of him.”

“Make fun of him?” Rachel was like a mother bear. One of the kids must have mouthed off, Martin decided.

“Maybe if you spent a little more time with him you’d notice.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that you’re so damn absorbed with your work,” she said. Then she added, “And so damn self- congratulatory.”

He felt as if he’d been slapped. “Self-congratulatory?”

“You know what the hell I mean. Working in Cambridge in ‘the brainiest mail zone on the planet.’” Her voice had shifted to a mocking singsong.

Why the hell was she throwing his words back in his face? Of course he loved being in Cambridge and out of that garret behind the Hanover Mall. He now had a five-room suite on the seventh floor of an office building near the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Memorial Drive and a view of Boston that would make a hermit ache. In addition to the extra floor space and easier commute, he was thrilled to spend most of his day surrounded by MIT, and not just because it was his alma mater. With Harvard at one end and MIT at the other end, Mass Ave was like a giant filament blazing with the greatest concentration of mind power in the world. In those other buildings were people who prepared manned missions to Mars, spliced genes, designed robotic intelligence and nanomachines, and searched for quarks, quasars, and extraterrestrial life. Yes, 02141 glowed with the greatest cerebral wattage anywhere, and SageSearch sat at ground zero. Martin felt smarter just being here. “So, what’s your point?”

“That you’re never around long enough to realize your son’s got serious language problems.”

“But he’s younger than the others, and young for his age,” Martin protested. “Besides, wasn’t the idea to put him in there where he can learn from other kids—something about a mentoring theory?”

“Maybe you should take a few hours off some afternoon and observe them. If that’s mentoring, it’s not working.”

Martin saw that coming, but let it go. “Well, if you think it’s not working, then maybe we should find another day-care place.”

Rachel didn’t respond. She seemed too preoccupied, too on the fringes. He watched her open her night table drawer, pull out the vial of sleeping tablets, and toss a couple into her mouth, washing them down with a glass of water. “There are things we can do for him, tutors, special ed teachers,” he said, trying to make her feel better. “Even special schools if need be. We can deal with it.”

Still Rachel didn’t respond. Instead she slipped her pajamas on and got back into bed. “I wish we were back in Rockville.”

“Are you kidding? We’re living in one of the best towns on the North Shore. You should be counting your blessings. Our blessings.”

Without a word, she flicked off the light.

So that was it! he thought. Christ! He hated when she clammed up like this. “Guess it’s good night.” He hated another night going by without sex. It had been three weeks.

“G’night.” Her voice was barely audible. Then he heard her mutter something else. In a few minutes the sleeping pills would kick in and she’d be out.

As Martin went to the bathroom, he realized what she had said: I’m sorry. But by the time he returned to ask what she meant, she was asleep.

For a long moment, he stood there watching her slip deeper into her Xanax oblivion. While her breathing became more peaceful, it occurred to him that no matter how much you think you know the person you love, even after ten years, there are always those damn little black holes in their makeup from where no light ever escapes. And yet, like the ubiquitous X-ray presence around collapsed stars that astronomers talk about, what Martin detected were the subtle signatures—those microsigns in Rachel’s expression that told him she was holding something back. While she could control her wording and body language, she could not disguise that slightly askew cast of her eyes. It was there again tonight while they spoke. That look that said something was festering just beneath the skin of things.

10

Around eleven, the black Mercedes pulled into an abandoned lot about six miles west of Jacksonville.

Phillip was waiting for him. Oliver had ditched the dark blue Chevy that had doubled as an unmarked police car in the woods, then walked half a mile to the rendezvous site.

They drove another six miles to a dirt road that led to Lake Chino just below the Georgia border where they had left their DeHavilland Beaver floatplane in a black little cove.

Travis was still asleep under his blanket, and he would probably remain so for another couple hours. When he woke up, they would feed him because he probably hadn’t eaten since breakfast. On the floor under the boy sat a large Igloo filled with sandwiches and drinks. They were still cool in spite of the hours the plane had baked in the sun.

Using a self-inflating raft, they floated him to the plane in the dark and loaded him into a seat in the rear, then strapped him in securely and covered him with a blanket. The night air was cool and the plane’s heater was faulty.

Oliver, an experienced pilot, got behind the controls while Phillip took the passenger seat.

A little before midnight, in clear cloudless skies, the Beaver lifted off the black water, then banked to the right, heading northeast which would take them through Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, and, eventually, all the way up the coast to New England. It was not the kind of long haul Oliver liked to fly, especially at night. At a cruising speed of 110 knots, the flight would take about twelve hours with two stops for refueling. He had preselected small airports where you could roll up to a fuel pump and pay with a credit card like that Amoco station back there. And he had a fake credit card so he wouldn’t be tracked. Because he was flying on visual, he did not have to maintain contact with regional operations as he would were this an instrument flight. Which meant no