Flowers for Algernon

shining floor. She didn't look up again.

She was muttering to herself now, and I sat down at the kitchen table. I would wait until she came out of it, until she recognized me and understood who I was. I couldn't leave until she knew that I was her Charlie. Some­ body had to understand.

She had started humming sadly to herself, but she stopped, her rag poised midway between the bucket and the floor, as if suddenly aware of my presence behind her.

She turned, her face tired and her eyes glistening, and cocked her head. 'How could it be? I don't understand. They told me you could never be changed.'

'They performed an operation on me, and that changed me. I'm famous now. They've heard of me all over

the world. I'm intelligent now, Mom. I can read and write, and I can—'

'Thank God,' she whispered. 'My prayers—all these years I thought He didn't hear me, but He was listening all the time, just waiting His own good time to do His will.'

She wiped her face in her apron, and when I put my arm around her, she wept freely on my shoulder. All the pain was washed away, and I was glad I had come.

'I've got to tell everyone,' she said, smiling, 'all those teachers at the school. Oh, wait till you see their faces when I tell them. And the neighbors. And Uncle Her­man—I've got to tell Uncle Herman. He'll be so pleased. And wait until your father comes home, and your sister! Oh, she'll be so happy to see you. You have no idea.'

She hugged me, talking excitedly, making plans for the new life we were going to have together. I hadn't the heart to remind her that most of my childhood teachers were gone from this school, that the neighbors had long moved away, that Uncle Herman had died many years ago, and that my father had left her. The nightmare of all those years had been pain enough. I wanted to see her smiling and know I had been the one to make her happy. For the first time in my life, I had brought a smile to her lips.

Then after a while, she paused thoughtfully as if re­membering something. I had the feeling her mind was going to wander. 'No!' I shouted, startling her back to re­ality, 'Wait, Ma! There's something else. Something I want you to have before I go.'

'Go? You can't go away now.'

'I have to go, Ma. I have things to do. But I'll write to you, and I'll send you money.'

'But when will you come back?'

'I don't know—yet. But before I go, I want you to have this.'

'A magazine?'

'Not exactly. It's a scientific report I wrote. Very tech­nical. Look, it's called The Algernon- Gordon Effect. Some­thing I discovered, and it's named partly after me. I want you to keep a copy of the report so that you can show people that your son turned out to be more than a dummy after all.'

She took it and looked at it in awe. 'It's… it's your name. I knew it would happen. I always said it would hap­pen someday. I tried everything I could. You were too young to remember, but I tried. I told them all that you'd go to college and become a professional man and make your mark in the world. They laughed, but I told them.'

She smiled at me through tears, and then a moment later she wasn't looking at me any more. She picked up her rag and began to wash the woodwork around the kitchen door, humming—more happily, I thought—as if in a dream.

The dog started barking again. The front door opened and closed and a voice called: 'Okay, Nappie. Okay, it's me.' The dog was jumping excitedly against the bedroom door.

I was furious at being trapped here. I didn't want to see Norma. We had nothing to say to each other, and I didn't want my visit spoiled. There was no back door. The only way would be to climb out the window into the back yard and go over the fence. But someone might mistake me for a burglar.

As I heard her key in the door, I whispered to my mother—I don't know why— 'Norma's home.' I touched her arm, but she didn't hear me. She was too busy hum­ming to herself as she washed the woodwork.

The door opened. Norma saw me and frowned. She didn't recognize me at first—it was dim, the lights hadn't been turned on. Putting down the shopping bag she was carrying, she switched on the light. 'Who are you?…' But before I could answer, her hand went over her mouth, and she slumped back against the door.

'Charlie!' She said it the same way my mother had, gasping. And she looked the way my mother used to look—thin, sharp features, birdlike, pretty. 'Charlie! My God, what a shock! You might have gotten in touch and warned me. You should have called. I don't know what to say…' She looked at my mother, sitting on the floor near the sink. 'Is she all right? You didn't shock her or anything…'

'She came out of it for a while. 'We had a little talk'

'I'm glad. She doesn't remember much these days. It's old age—senility. Dr. Portman wants me to put her into a nursing home, but I can't do it. I can't stand to think of her in one of those institutions.' She opened the bedroom door to let the dog out, and when he jumped and whined joyously, she picked him up and hugged him. 'I just can't do that to my own mother.' Then she smiled at me uncer­tainly. 'Well, what a surprise. I never dreamed. Let me look at you. I never would have recognized you. I'd have passed you by in the street. So different.' She sighed. 'I'm glad to see you, Charlie.'

'Are you? I didn't think you'd want to see me again.'

'Oh, Charlie!' She took my hands in hers. 'Don't say that. I am glad to see you. I've been expecting you. I didn't know when, but I knew someday you'd come back. Ever since I read that you had run away in Chicago.' She pulled back to look up at me. 'You don't know how I've thought about you and wondered where you were and what you were doing. Until that professor came here last—when was it? last March? just seven months ago?—I had no idea you were still alive. She told me you died in Warren. I be­lieved it all these years. When they told me you were alive and they needed you for the experiment, I didn't know what to do. Professor… Nemur?—is that his name?— wouldn't let me see you. He was afraid to upset you before the operation. But when I saw in the papers that it worked and you had become a genius —oh, my!—you don't know what it felt like to read about that.

'I told all the people in my office, and the girls at my bridge club. I showed them your picture in the paper, and I told them you'd be coming back here to see us one day. And you have. You really have. You didn't forget us.'

She hugged me again. 'Oh, Charlie. Charlie… it's so wonderful to find all of a sudden I've got a big brother. You have no idea. Sit down—let me make you something to eat. You've got to tell me all about it and what your plans are. I… I don't know where to start asking questions. I must sound ridiculous—like a girl who has just found out her brother is a hero, or a movie star, or something.'

I was confused. I had not expected a greeting like this from Norma. It had never occurred to me that all these years alone with my mother might change her. And yet it was inevitable. She was no longer the spoiled brat of my memories. She had grown up, had become warm and sym­pathetic and affectionate.

We talked. Ironic to sit there with my sister, the two of us talking about my mother—right there in the room with us—as if she wasn't there. Whenever Norma would refer to their life together, I'd look to see if Rose was listening, but she was deep in her own world, as if she didn't under­stand our language, as if none of it concerned her any more. She drifted around the kitchen like a ghost, picking things up, putting things away, without ever getting in the way. It was frightening.

I watched Norma feed her dog. 'So you finally got him. Nappie—short for Napoleon, isn't it?'

She straightened up and frowned. 'How did you know?'

I explained about my memory: the time she had brought home her test paper hoping to get the dog, and how Matt had forbidden it. As I told it, the frown became deeper.

'I don't remember any of it. Oh, Charlie, was I so mean to you?'

'There's one memory I'm curious about. I'm not really sure if it's a memory, or a dream, or if I just made it all up. It was the last time we played together as friends. We were in the basement, and we were playing a game with the lamp shades on our heads, pretending we were Chinese coolies—jumping up and down on an old mat­ tress. You were seven or eight, I think, and I was about thirteen. And, as I recall, you bounced off the mattress and hit your head against the wall. It wasn't very hard—just a bump—but Mom and Dad came running down because you were screaming, and you said I was trying to kill you.

'She blamed Matt for not watching me, for leaving us alone together, and she beat me with a strap until I