“He said nothing could be done.”
“And you didn’t believe him.”
“I’m seeking a second opinion.”
“Surely your pediatrician consulted neurologists for an evaluation.”
“I wasn’t satisfied.”
Malenko listened intently, his bright eye training on her as if it were some kind of laser mind-scan. “Does your husband know about this?”
“No, he doesn’t know, but why is that so important?”
Malenko leaned forward. “Mrs. Whitman, if we are going to work with Dylan, then we cannot have misunderstandings regarding the medical condition of a prospective student. If we are going to set for ourselves expectations and objectives, candidness is essential.”
Rachel nodded.
“Good. Then am I correct in assuming that your husband does not know about the MRI scan or the dysmorphic abnormalities in your son’s brain?”
She felt as if he had stripped her naked. “Yes.”
“I see. Then may I ask what you are hiding?”
“Hiding?”
“Mrs. Whitman, you have an MRI done on your son’s brain, you discover an anomalous formation, then two weeks later you come in here for consultation—and your husband knows nothing. I find that unusual, unless you are in the throes of separation or divorce. Are you?”
There was no equivocating with this man, Rachel thought. She struggled with the urge to tell him that it was none of his damn business, but she stopped herself. If she showed offense at his persistence, he might dismiss her. “No, we’re not.”
Malenko looked at her with a bemused expression. Then he picked up the film scans and clipped them to the display board on the wall. “This disparity between the hemispheres of Dylan’s brain could be the result of many different causes, including infant trauma.” He glanced down at her.
“It could also be chemical, genetic, oxygen starvation in
For a prickly moment his eyes gauged Rachel’s face.
“Did you smoke or take any unusual medications while carrying your son?’
“No.”
“Any medical emergencies during pregnancy—emergency room visits? Hospitalization? Any intravenal medications?”
All this was on the questionnaire. He was testing her. “No.”
“Another possibility is alcohol. Did you drink while carrying your son?”
“No.”
Malenko handed her a box of Kleenex without comment.
Rachel wiped her eyes, feeling that any moment she would break down.
“MRI scans can only give us gross anatomical pictures, not minor neurocomponents. But the left temporal horn is dilated. Given your son’s test results, my guess is that the cortical regions have been short-circuited to the hippocampus, which is involved with recurrent memories and might explain his linguistic deficiencies.”
There was no reason to dissemble with this man. “I took some bad drugs in college. Something called TNT. The chemical name is trimethoxy-4-methyl-triphetamine.”
Malenko’s eyes flared. “‘TNT for dynamite sex. Get off with a bang.’”
“And I suppose your husband doesn’t know that either—which is why you’re here.”
Rachel knew that under ordinary circumstances she would have dismissed Malenko’s unctuously manipulative manner and got up and left. But she suddenly felt a preternatural numbness from all the grief and guilt that had wracked her soul for the last weeks and just didn’t care about his obtuseness. Perhaps it was just the relief of getting it all out—like lancing a boil. “I’ve mentally crippled my son,” she said softly. “I just don’t want him to suffer. I don’t want him to go through life feeling inadequate and inferior.”
“And that is why you’ve not told him.”
She nodded.
“Probably a good reason.” Malenko moved back to his desk chair and sat down. “I’d like to meet your husband.”
“I don’t want him to know.”
“Telling him is your business, not mine, Mrs. Whitman. But I think we all should meet again to weigh the options.”
She looked up. “Are you saying there’s something that can be done?”
“I’m saying simply that we should meet again.” He glanced at his watch then closed Dylan’s folder and dropped it on a pile of others with a conclusive snap. “What kind of work is your husband in?” The discussion was over.
If he had some experimental procedure in mind, he wasn’t talking. Yet Rachel felt a flicker of promise. “Recruitment. Martin’s in the recruitment business.”
“Ah, you mean a head hunter.”
“Yes, for the high-tech industry.”
Malenko nodded in approval. “So he matches up eggheads with egghead companies.”
“Something like that.”
“Very good. Is it his own business?”
“Yes.”
“And business is good, no doubt?”
She nodded. She felt emotionally drained. “Mmmm.”
Malenko smiled, probably because it suggested that they could afford their pricey services. Then he picked up Dylan’s folder. “I will look these over more closely,” he said. “Let me suggest we meet next week, and with your husband. About the MRI, I will explain that you came in here on referral from a local friend, and we had a scan done as a matter of protocol.”
He was saying that she could lie, and he’d swear to it. “Thank you.”
“You can make an appointment with Marie. Good day.”
Rachel left the building, torn between renewed hope and the overpowering desire to drive home and fall into a long dreamless sleep.
Through the window, Lucius Malenko watched Mrs. Rachel Whitman cross the parking lot to her car, a gold Nissan Maxima. Not a Jaguar or BMW, but also not a Ford Escort. He watched her pull out to the road that would lead back to her perfect little seaview home on the perfect little hill surrounded by perfectly nurtured horticulture.
He had seen her likes by the dozens over the years: yuppies, suburbies, and middle-aged country-club parents of different ethnicities and races—all driven by guilt and vanity and all devotees of the new American religion of self-improvement. From birth and even before, they were obsessed with rearing the supertot. They put toy computers in their children’s cribs. They sent them to bed with Mozart and bilingual CDs. They muscled their
