Flowers for Algernon

was nearly unconscious. Do you remember it? Did it really happen that way?'

Norma was fascinated by my description of the mem­ory, as if it awakened sleeping images. 'It's all so vague. You know, I thought that was my dream. I remember us wear­ing the lampshades, and jumping up and down on the mattresses.' She stared out of the window. 'I hated you be­cause they fussed over you all the time. They never spanked you for not doing your homework right, or for not bring­ing home the best marks. You skipped classes most of the time and played games, and I had to go to the hard classes in school. Oh, how I hated you. In school the other chil­dren scribbled pictures on the blackboard, a boy with a duncecap on his head, and they wrote Norma's Brother under it. And they scribbled things on the sidewalk in the schoolyard—Moron's Sister and Dummy Gordon Family.

And then one day when I wasn't invited to Emily Raskin's birthday party, I knew it was because of you. And when we were playing there in the basement with those lampshades on our heads, I had to get even.' She started to cry. 'So I lied and said you hurt me. Oh, Charlie, what a fool I was—what a spoiled brat. I'm so ashamed—'

'Don't blame yourself. It must have been hard to face the other kids. For me, this kitchen was my world—and that room there. The rest of it didn't matter as long as this was safe. You had to face the rest of the world.'

'Why did they send you away, Charlie? Why couldn't you have stayed here and lived with us? I always wondered about that. Every time I asked her, she always said it was for your own good.'

'In a way she was right.'

She shook her head. 'She sent you away because of me, didn't she? Oh, Charlie, why did it have to be? Why did all this happen to us?'

I didn't know what to tell her. I wished I could say that like the House of Atreus or Cadmus we were suffering for the sins of our forefathers, or fulfilling an ancient Greek oracle. But I had no answers for her, or for myself.

'It's past,' I said. 'I'm glad I met you again. It makes it a little easier.'

She grabbed my arm suddenly. 'Charlie, you don't know what I've been through all these years with her. The apartment, this street, my job. It's all been a nightmare, coming home each day, wondering if she's still here, if she's harmed herself, guilty for thinking about things like that.'

I stood up and let her rest against my shoulder, and she wept. 'Oh, Charlie. I'm glad you're back now. We've needed someone. I'm so tired….'

I had dreamed of a time like this, but now that it was here, what good was it? I couldn't tell her what was going to happen to me. And yet, could I accept her affection on false pretenses? Why kid myself? If I had still been the old, feeble-minded, dependent Charlie, she wouldn't have spo­ken to me the same way. So what right did I have to it now? My mask would soon be ripped away.

'Don't cry, Norma. Everything will work out all right.' I heard myself speaking in reassuring platitudes. 'I'll try to take care of you both. I have a little money saved, and with what the Foundation has been paying me, I'll be able to send you some money regularly—for a while anyway.'

'But you're not going away! You've got to stay with us now—'

'I've got to do some traveling, some research, make a few speeches, but I'll try to come back to visit you. Take care of her. She's been through a lot. I'll help you for as long as I can.'

'Charlie! No, don't go!' She clung to me. 'I'm frightened!'

The role I had always wanted to play—the big brother.

At that moment, I sensed that Rose, who had been sit­ting in the corner quietly, was staring at us. Something in her face had changed. Her eyes were wide, and she leaned forward on the edge of her seat. All I could think of was a hawk ready to swoop down.

I pushed Norma away from me, but before I could say anything, Rose was on her feet. She had taken the kitchen knife from the table and was pointing at me.

'What are you doing to her? Get away from her! I told you what I'd do to you if I ever caught you touching your sister again! Dirty mind! You don't belong with normal people!'

'We both jumped back, and for some insane reason, I felt guilty, as if I had been caught doing something wrong, and I knew Norma felt the same way. It was as if my mother's accusation had made it true, that we were doing something obscene.

Norma screamed at her: 'Mother! Put down that knife!'

Seeing Rose standing there with the knife brought back the picture of that night she had forced Matt to take me away. She was reliving that now. I couldn't speak or move. The nausea swept over me, the choking tension, the buzzing in my ears, my stomach knotting and stretching as if it wanted to tear itself out of my body.

She had a knife, and Alice had a knife, and my father had a knife, and Dr. Strauss had a knife…,

Fortunately, Norma had the presence of mind to take it away from her, but she couldn't erase the fear in Rose's eyes as she screamed at me. 'Get him out of here! He's got no right to look at his sister with sex in his mind!'

Rose screamed and sank back into the chair, weeping.

I didn't know what to say, and neither did Norma. We were both embarrassed. Now she knew why I had been sent away.

I wondered if I had ever done anything to justify my mother's fear. There were no such memories, but how could I be sure there weren't horrible thoughts repressed behind the barriers of my tortured conscience? In the sealed-off passageways, beyond blind alleys, that I would never see. Possibly I will never know. 'Whatever the truth is, I must not hate Rose for protecting Norma. I must understand the way she saw it. Unless I forgive her, I will have nothing.

Norma was trembling.

'Take it easy,' I said. 'She doesn't know what she's doing. It wasn't me she was raving at. It was the old Char­lie. She was afraid of what he might do to you. I can't blame her for wanting to protect you. But we don't have to think about it now, because he's gone forever isn't he?'

She wasn't listening to me. There was a dreamy ex­pression on her face. 'I've just had one of those strange ex­periences where something happens, and you have the feeling you know it's going to happen, as if it all took place before, the exact same way, and you watch it unfold again….'

'A very common experience.'

She shook her head. 'Just now, when I saw her with that knife, it was like a dream I had a long time ago.'

'What was the use of telling her she had undoubtedly been awake that night as a child, and had seen the whole thing from her room—that it had been repressed and twisted until she imagined it as a fantasy. No reason for burdening her with the truth. She would have enough sad­ness with my mother in the days to come. I would gladly have taken the burden and the pain off her hands, but there was no sense in starting something I couldn't finish. I would have my own suffering to live with. There was no way to stop the sands of knowledge from slipping through the hourglass of my mind.

'I've got to go now,' I said. 'Take care of yourself, and of her.' I squeezed her hand. As I went out, Napoleon barked at me.

I held it in for as long as I could, but when I reached the street it was impossible. It's hard to write it down, but people turned to look at me as I walked back to the car, crying like a child. I couldn't help myself, and I didn't care.

As I walked, the ridiculous words drummed them­selves into my head over and over again, rising to the rhythm of a buzzing noise:

Three blind mice… three blind mice, See how they run! See how they run! They all run after the farmer's wife, She cut off their tails with a carving knife, Did you ever see such a sight in your life, As three… blind… mice?

I tried to shut it out of my ears, but I couldn't, and once when I turned to look back at the house and the porch, I saw the face of a boy, staring at me, his cheek pressed against the window pane.

PROGRESS REPORT 17

October 3