Flowers for Algernon

The evening started out well enough. The Mall at Central Park had filled up early, and Alice and I had to pick our way among the couples stretched out on the grass. Finally, far back from the path, we found an unused tree where—out of the range of lamplight—the only evidence of other couples was the protesting female laughter and the glow of lit cigarettes.

'This will be fine,' she said. 'No reason to be right on top of the orchestra.'

'What's that they're playing now?' I asked.

'Debussy's La Mer. Do you like it?'

I settled down beside her. 'I don't know much about this kind of music. I have to think about it.'

'Don't think about it,' she whispered. 'Feel it. Let it sweep over you like the sea without trying to understand.' She lay back on the grass and turned her face in the direc­tion of the music.

I had no way of knowing what she expected of me. This was far from the clear lines of problem-solving and the systematic acquisition of knowledge. I kept telling my­self that the sweating palms, the tightness in my chest, the desire to put my arms around her were merely biochemical reactions. I even traced the pattern of stimulus- and-reaction that caused my nervousness and excitement. Yet everything was fuzzy and uncertain. Should I put my arm around her or not? Was she waiting for me to do it? Would she get angry? I could tell I was still behaving like an ado­lescent and it angered me.

'Here,' I choked, 'why don't you make yourself more comfortable? Rest on my shoulder.' She let me put my arm around her, but she didn't look at me. She seemed to be too absorbed in the music to realize what I was doing. Did she want me to hold her that way, or was she merely tolerating it? As I slipped my arm down to her waist, I felt her tremble, but still she kept staring in the direction of the orchestra. She was pretending to be concentrating on the music so that she wouldn't have to respond to me. She didn't want to know what was happening. As long as she looked away and listened, she could pretend that my closeness, my arms around her, were without her knowl­ edge or consent. She wanted me to make love to her body while she kept her mind on higher things. I reached over roughly and turned her chin. 'Why don't you look at me? Are you pretending I don't exist?'

'No, Charlie,' she whispered. 'I'm pretending I don't exist.'

When I touched her shoulder she stiffened and trembled, but I pulled her toward me. Then it happened. It started as a hollow buzzing in my ears… an electric saw… far away. Then the cold: arms and legs prickly, and finger numbing. Suddenly, I had the feeling I was being watched.

A sharp switch in perception. I saw, from some point in the darkness behind a tree, the two of us lying in each other's arms.

I looked up to see a boy of fifteen or sixteen, crouch­ing nearby. 'Hey!' I shouted. As he stood up, I saw his trousers were open and he was exposed.

'What's the matter?' she gasped.

I jumped up, and he vanished into the darkness. 'Did you see him?'

'No,' she said, smoothing her skirt nervously. 'I didn't see anyone.'

'Standing right here. Watching us. Close enough to touch you.'

'Charlie, where are you going?'

'He couldn't have gotten very far.'

'Leave him alone, Charlie. It doesn't matter.'

But it mattered to me. I ran into the darkness, stumbling over startled couples, but there was no way to tell where he had gone.

The more I thought about him, the worse became the queasy feeling that comes before fainting. Lost and alone in a great wilderness. And then I caught hold of myself and found my way back to where Alice was sitting.

'Did you find him?'

'No, but he was there. I saw him.'

She looked at me strangely. 'Are you all right?'

'I will be… in a minute… Just that damned buzzing in my ears.'

'Maybe we'd better go.'

All the way back to her apartment, it was on my mind that the boy had been crouching there in the darkness, and for one second I had caught a glimpse of what he was see­ing—the two of us lying in each other's arms.

'Would you like to come in? I could make some coffee.'

I wanted to, but something warned me against it 'Better not. I've got a lot of work to do tonight.'

'Charlie, is it anything I said or did?'

'Of course not. Just that kid watching us upset me.'

She was standing close to me, waiting for me to kiss

her. I put my arm around her, but it happened again. If I didn't get away quickly, I would pass out.

'Charlie, you look sick.'

'Did you see him, Alice? The truth…'

She shook her head. 'No. It was too dark. But I'm sure—'

'I've got to go. I'll call you.' And before she could stop me, I pulled away. I had to get out of that building before everything caved in.

Thinking about it now, I'm certain it was a hallucina­tion. Dr. Strauss feels that emotionally I'm still in that ado­lescent state where being close to a woman, or thinking of sex, sets off anxiety, panic, even hallucinations. He feels that my rapid intellectual development has deceived me into thinking I could live a normal emotional life. But I've got to accept the fact that the fears and blocks triggered in these sexual situations reveal that emotionally I'm still an adolescent—sexually retarded. I guess he means I'm not ready for a relationship with a woman like Alice Kinnian. Not yet.

May 20

I've been fired from my job at the bakery. I know it was foolish of me to hang on to the past, but there was something about the place with its white brick walls browned by oven heat… It was home to me.

What did I do to make them hate me so?

I can't blame Donner. He's got to think of his busi­ness, and the other employees. And yet, he's been closer to me than a father.

He called me into his office, cleared the statements and bills off the solitary chair beside his roll-top desk, and without looking up at me, he said, 'I've been meaning to talk to you. Now is as good a time as any.'

It seems foolish now, but as I sat there staring at him—short, chubby, with the ragged light-brown mous­ tache comically drooping over his upper lip—it was as if both of me, the old Charlie and the new, were sitting on that chair, frightened at what Old Mr. Donner was going to say.

'Charlie, your Uncle Herman was a good friend of mine. I kept my promise to him to keep you on the job, good times and bad, so that you didn't ever want for a dol­lar in your pocket and a place to lay your head without being put away in that home.'

'The bakery is my home—'

'And I treated you like my own son who gave up his life for his country. And when Herman died—how old were you? seventeen? more like a six-year-old boy—I swore to myself… I said, Arthur Donner, as long as you got a bakery and a business over your head, you're going to look after Charlie. He is going to have a place to work, a bed to sleep in, and bread in his mouth. When they committed you to that Warren place, I told them how you would work for me, and I would take care of you. You didn't spend even one night in that place. I got you a room and I looked after you. Now, have I kept that solemn promise?'

I nodded, but I could see by the way he was folding and unfolding his bills that he was having trouble. And as much as I didn't want to know—I knew. 'I've tried my best to do a good job. I've worked hard...'

'I know, Charlie. Nothing's wrong with your work. But something happened to you, and I don't understand what it means. Not only me. Everyone has been talking about it. I've had them in here a dozen times in the last few weeks. They're all upset. Charlie, I got to let you go.'

I tried to stop him but he shook his head.

'There was a delegation in to see me last night. Char­lie, I got my business to hold together.'

He was staring at his hands, turning the paper over and over as if he hoped to find something on it that was not there before. 'I'm sorry, Charlie.'

'But where will I go?'