I smiled and offered him a seat. The office was small, and the options were limited. There was a musty, moth-eaten green couch of Freudian vintage on the other side of the desk and a scarred steel-framed chair perpendicular to it. He chose the couch, sitting next to his book bag and hugging it as if it were a lover. I took the chair and straddled it backwards.
'What can I do for you, Jamey?'
His eyes took off in flight, scanning every detail of the room, finally settling on the tables and graphs crowding the desk top.
'Data analysis?'
'That's right.'
'Anything interesting?'
'Just numbers at this point. It'll be a while before patterns emerge - if there are any.'
'Kind of reductionistic, don't you think?' he asked.
'In what way?'
He fidgeted with one of the straps on the book bag. 'You know - testing us all the time, reducing us to numbers, and pretending the numbers tell the truth.'
He leaned forward earnestly, suddenly intense. I didn't yet know why he'd come but was certain it hadn't been to discuss research design. A great deal of courage building had preceded the knock on my door, and no doubt, a rush of ambivalence had followed. For him the world of ideas
was a safe place, a fortress against intrusive and disturbing feelings. I made no attempt to storm the fortress.
'How so, Jamey?'
He kept one hand on the book bag. The other waved like a pennant in a storm.
'Take IQ tests, for example. You pretend that the scores mean something, that they define genius or whatever it is we're supposed to be. Even the name of the study is reductionistic. 'Project 160'. Like anyone who doesn't score a hundred sixty on a Stanford-Binet can't be a genius? That's pretty lame! All the tests do is predict how well someone will do in school. They're unreliable, culturally biased and according to my reading, aren't even that good at predicting - thirty, maybe forty percent accuracy. Would you put your money on a horse that came in a third of the time? Might as well use a Ouija board!'
'You've been doing some research,' I said, suppressing a smile.
He nodded gravely.
'When people do things to me, I like to understand what it is they're doing. I spent a few hours in the psych library.' He looked at me challengingly. 'Psychology's not much of a science, is it?'
'Some aspects are less scientific than others.'
'You know what I think? Psychologists - ones like Dr. Flowers - like to translate ideas into numbers in order to look more scientific and impress people. But when you do that, you lose the essence, the' - he hugged at his bangs and searched for the right word - 'the soul of what it is you're trying to understand.'
'It's a good point,' I said. 'Psychologists themselves have been arguing about it for a long time.'
He didn't seem to hear me and continued expounding in a high, child's voice.
'I mean, what about art - or poetry? How can you quantify poetry? By the number of verses? The metre? How many words end with e? Would that define or explain Chatterton or Shelley or Keats? That would be stupid. But psychologists think they can do the same kind of thing to
people and come up with something meaningful.'
He stopped, caught his breath, then went on.
'It seems to me that Dr. Flowers has a fetish for numbers. And machines. She loves her computers and her tachisto-scopes. Probably wishes we were mechanical, too. More predictable.' He worried a cuticle. 'Maybe it's because she herself needs contraptions to live a normal life. What do you think?'
'It's a theory.'
His smile was mirthless.
'Yeah, I forgot. The two of you are partners in this. You have to defend her.'
'Nope. When you guys talk to me, it's confidential. Test data - the numbers - go into the computer, but anything else stays out. If you're angry at Dr. Flowers and want to talk about it, go ahead.'
He took his time digesting that.
'Nah, I'm not angry at her. I just think she's a sad lady. Didn't she used to be an athelete or something?'
'She was a figure skater. Won a gold medal at the 'sixty-four Olympics.'
He was silently pensive, and I knew he was struggling to visualise the transformation of Sarita Flowers from champion to cripple. When he spoke again, his eyes were wet.
'I guess that was a cruel thing to say - about her needing machines and all that.'
'She's open about her disabilities,' I said. 'She wouldn't expect you to pretend they don't exist.'
'But jeez, there I was going on about reductionism, and I went and did the same thing to her - pigeonholed her as a gadget freak because she walks with braces!'
He dug the nails of one hand into the palm of the other.
'Don't be too hard on yourself,' I said gently. 'Looking for simple answers is just one way we try to make sense out of a complicated world. You're a critical thinker, and you'll be all right. It's people who don't think who sink into bigotry.'
That seemed to provide some comfort. His fingers relaxed and spread on whitened denim knees.
'That's an excellent point, Dr. Delaware.' 'Thank you, Jamey.'
'Uh, could I ask you one more thing about Dr. Flowers?' 'Sure.'
'I don't understand her situation - her physical condition. Sometimes she seems pretty strong, almost normal. Last week I actually saw her take a couple of steps by herself But a few months ago she looked really bad. lake she'd aged years overnight and had no strength at all.'
'Multiple sclerosis is a very unpredictable disease,' I explained. 'The symptoms can come and go.'
'Is there any treatment for it?'
'No. Not yet.'
'So she could get worse?'
'Yes. Or better. There's no way to know.'
'That's hideous,' he said. 'Like living with a time bomb inside you.'
I nodded. 'She copes with it by doing work she loves.' The water in the blue-grey eyes had pooled. A single tear rolled down one soft cheek. He grew self-conscious, wiped it away quickly with his sleeve, and turned to stare at a faded ochre wall.
He remained silent for a few moments, then sprang up, grabbing the book bag and hefting it over his shoulder.
'Was there anything else you wanted to talk about, Jamey?'
'No,' he said, too quickly. 'Nothing.'
He walked to the door. I followed and placed a hand on his skinny shoulder. He was quivering like a pup whisked from the litter.
'I'm glad you came by,' I said. 'Please feel free to do it again. Anytime.'
'Sure. Thanks. He flung the door open and scurried away, footsteps echoing faintly down the high, arched corridor.
Three Fridays went by before he showed up again. The book bag was gone. In its place he lugged a graduate-level abnormal psychology text that he'd tagged in a dozen places with shreds of tissue paper.
Plopping down on the couch, he began flipping pages until he came to a frayed scrap of tissue.
'First,' he announced, 'I want to ask you about John Watson. From what I can gather the man was a total fascist.'
We discussed behaviourism for an hour and a half. When I grew hungry, I asked him if he wanted something to eat, and he nodded. We left the office and walked across campus to the Coop. Between mouthfuls of cheeseburger and gulps of Dr. Pepper, he kept the dialectic going, moving sequentially from topic to topic, attacking each one as if it were an enemy to be vanquished. His mind was awesome, astounding in its ability to mine slag heaps of data and emerge with essential nuggets. It was as if his intellect had assumed an identity of its own,
