The Speed of Dark

CHAPTER THREE

My messager is blinking when I get home. It’s Lars’s code; he wants me to come on-line. It’s late. I don’t want to oversleep and be late tomorrow. But Lars knows I fence on Wednesdays, and he doesn’t usually try to contact me then. It must be important.

I sign on and find his message. He has clipped a journal article for me, research on reversal of autistic-like symptoms in adult primates. I skim it, my heart thudding. Reversing genetic autism in the infant or brain damage that resulted in autisticlike syndromes in the small child has now become common, but I had been told it was too late for me. If this is real, it is not too late. In the last sentence, the article’s author makes that connection, speculating that the research might be applicable to humans and suggesting further research.

As I read, other icons pop up on my screen. The logo of our local autistic society. Cameron’s logo and Dale’s. So they’ve heard about it, too. I ignore them for the time being and go on reading. Even though it is about brains like mine, this is not my field and I cannot quite understand how the treatment is supposed to work. The authors keep referring to other articles in which the procedures were spelled out. Those articles aren’t accessible — not to me, not tonight. I don’t know what “Ho and Delgracia’s method” is. I don’t know what all the words mean, either, and my dictionary doesn’t have them.

When I look at the clock, it is long after midnight. Bed. I must sleep. I turn everything off, set the alarm, and go to bed. In my mind, photons chase darkness but never catch up.

At work the next morning, we all stand in the hall, not quite meeting one anothers’ eyes. Everybody knows.

“I think it’s a fake,” Linda says. “It can’t possibly work.”

“But if it does,” Cameron says. “If it does, we can be normal.”

“I don’t want to be normal,” Linda says. “I am who I am. I’m happy.” She does not look happy. She looks fierce and determined.

“Me, too,” Dale says. “What if it works for monkeys — what does that mean? They’re not people; they’re simpler than we are. Monkeys don’t talk.” His eyelid twitches more than usual.

“We already communicate better than monkeys,” Linda says.

When we are together like this, just us, we can talk better than any other time. We laugh about that, about how normal people must be putting out a field that inhibits our abilities. We know that’s not true, and we know the others would think we were paranoid if we told that joke around them. They would think we were crazy in a bad way; they would not understand that it is a joke. When we do not recognize a joke, they say it is because we are literal-minded, but we know that we cannot say that about them.

“I would like to not have to see a psychiatrist every quarter,” Cameron says.

I think of not having to see Dr. Fornum. I would be much happier if I did not have to see Dr. Fornum. Would she be happy not to have to see me?

“Lou, what about you?” Linda asks. “You’re already living partly in their world.”

We all are, by working here, by living independently. But Linda doesn’t like doing anything with people who are not autistic, and she has said before she thinks I shouldn’t hang around with Tom and Lucia’s fencing group or the people at my church. If she knew how I really felt about Marjory she would say mean things.

“I get along… I don’t see why change.” I hear my voice, harsher than usual and wish it didn’t do that when I get upset. I’m not angry; I don’t want to sound angry.

“See?” Linda looks at Cameron, who looks away.

“I need to work,” I say, and head for my office, where I turn on the little fan and watch the twinkles of light. I need to bounce, but I don’t want to go in the gym, in case Mr. Crenshaw comes in. I feel like something is squeezing me. It is hard to get into the problem I’m working on.

I wonder what it would be like to be normal. I made myself quit thinking about that when I left school. When it comes up, I push the thought away. But now… what would it be like to not be worried that people think I’m crazy when I stutter or when I can’t answer at all and have to write on my little pad? What would it be like to not carry that card in my pocket? To be able to see and hear everywhere? To know what people are thinking just by looking at their faces?

The block of symbols I’m working on suddenly looks densely meaningless, as meaningless as voices used to sound.

Is that it? Is this why normal people don’t do the kind of work we do? Do I have to choose between this work I know how to do, this work I’m good at, and being normal? I look around the office. The spin spirals suddenly annoy me. All they do is turn around, the same pattern, over and over and over. I reach to turn the fan off. If this is normal, I don’t like it.

The symbols come alive again, rich with meaning, and I dive into them, submerging my mind in them so I don’t have to see the sky overhead.

When I emerge again, it is past lunchtime. I have a headache from sitting too long in one place and not eating lunch. I get up, walk around my office, trying not to think about what Lars told me. I can’t help it. I am not hungry, but I know I should eat. I go to the kitchenette in our building and get my plastic box from the refrigerator. None of us like the smell of the plastic, but it does keep our food separate, so that I don’t have to smell Linda’s tuna fish sandwich and she doesn’t have to smell my jerky and fruit.

I eat an apple and a few grapes, then nibble on the jerky. My stomach feels unsettled; I think about going into the gym, but when I check, Linda and Chuy are in there. Linda is bouncing high, her face set in a scowl; Chuy is sitting on the floor, watching colored streamers blow from the fan. Linda catches sight of me and turns around on the trampoline. She does not want to talk. I do not want to talk, either.

The afternoon seems to last forever. I leave right on time, striding out to my car in its spot. The music is all wrong, loud and pounding in my head. When I open the door of my car, superheated air puffs out. I stand by the car, wishing for autumn and cooler weather. I see the others come out, all showing tension in one way or another, and avoid their gaze. No one speaks. We get in our cars; I leave first because I came out first.

It is hard to drive safely in the hot afternoon, with the wrong music in my head. Light flashes off windshields, bumpers, trim; there are too many flashing lights. By the time I get home, my head hurts and I’m shaking. I take the pillows off my couch into the bedroom, closing all the shades tightly and then the door. I lie down, piling the pillows on top of me, then turn off the light.

This is something else I never tell Dr. Fornum about. She would make notes in my record about this; I know it. As I lie there in the dark, the gentle, soft pressure gradually eases my tension, and the wrong music in my mind empties out. I float in a soft, dark silence… at rest, at peace, uninvaded by the fast-moving photons.

Eventually I am ready to think and feel again. I am sad. I am not supposed to be sad. I tell myself what Dr. Fornum would tell me. I am healthy. I have a job that pays pretty well. I have a place to live and clothes to wear. I have a rare high-status permit for a private automobile so that I do not have to ride with anyone else or take the noisy, crowded public transit. I am lucky.

I am sad anyway. I try so hard, and it is still not working. I wear the same clothes as the others. I say the same words at the same times: good morning, hi, how are you, I’m fine, good night, please, thank you, you’re welcome, no thank you, not right now. I obey the traffic laws; I obey the rules. I have ordinary furniture in my apartment, and I play my unusual music very softly or use headphones. But it is not enough. Even as hard as I try, the real people still want me to change, to be like them.

They do not know how hard it is. They do not care. They want me to change. They want to put things in my head, to change my brain. They would say they don’t, but they do.

I thought I was safe, living independently, living like anyone else. But I wasn’t.

Under the pillows, I’m starting to shake again. I don’t want to cry; crying might be too loud and my neighbors might notice. I am hearing the labels crowding in on me, the labels they put in my record when I was a child. Primary diagnosis Autistic Spectrum Disorder/autism. Sensory integration deficit. Auditory processing deficit. Visual processing deficit. Tactile defensiveness.

I hate the labels; they make me feel sticky, where they are stuck to me with professional glue I can’t pry off.

All babies are born autistic, one of our group said once. We laughed nervously. We agreed, but it was dangerous to say so.

It takes a neurologically normal infant years to learn to integrate the incoming sensory data into a coherent concept of the world. While it took me much longer — and I readily admit that my sensory processing is not normal even now — I went at the task much the same way as any other infant. First flooded by ungated, unedited sensory input, protecting myself from sensory overload with sleep and inattention.

You might think, reading the literature, that only neurologically damaged children do this, but in fact all infants control their exposure — by closing their eyes, averting their gaze, or simply falling asleep when the world is too much. Over time, as they make sense of this data chunk and then that, they learn what patterns of retinal excitation signal what events in the visible world, what patterns of auditory excitation signal a human voice — and then a human voice speaking their native tongue.

For me — for any autistic individual — this took much longer. My parents explained it to me, when I was old enough to understand: for some reason, my infant nerves needed a stimulus to persist longer before it would bridge the gap. They — and I — were lucky that techniques were available to provide my neurons this needed duration of signal. Instead of being labeled with an “attention deficit” (which used to be quite common), I was simply given stimuli to which I could attend.

I can remember the time before I was exposed to the computer-assisted primary language-learning program… when the sounds that came from people’s mouths seemed as random — no, more random — than a cow mooing and moaning in the field. I couldn’t hear many consonants — they didn’t last long enough. Therapy helped — a computer stretched the sounds out until I could hear them, and gradually my brain learned to capture briefer signals. But not all of them. To this day, a fast-talking speaker can lose me, no matter how I concentrate.

It used to be much worse. Before the computer-assisted language-learning programs, children like me might never learn language at all. Back in the mid-twentieth century, therapists thought autism was a mental illness, like schizophrenia. My mother had read a book by a woman who had been told she had made her child crazy. The idea that autistic people are, or become, mentally ill persisted right through the end of the twentieth century, and I even saw an article about that in a magazine a few years ago. That is why I have to visit Dr. Fornum, so that she can be sure I am not developing a mental illness.

I wonder if Mr. Crenshaw thinks I am crazy. Is that why his face gets shiny when he talks to me? Is he frightened? I don’t think Mr. Aldrin is frightened of me — of any of us. He talks to us as if we were real. But Mr. Crenshaw talks to me as if I were a stubborn animal, one he had a right to train. I am often scared, but now, after the rest under the pillows, I am not.

What I wish is that I could go out and look up at the stars. My parents took me camping in the Southwest; I remember lying there and seeing all the beautiful patterns, patterns that went on and on forever. I would like to see the stars again. They made me feel calm when I was a child; they showed me an ordered universe, a patterned universe, in which I could be a small part of a large pattern. When my parents told me how long the light had traveled to reach my eyes — hundreds, thousands, of years — I felt comforted though I could not say why.

I cannot see the stars from here. The safety lights in the parking lot next to our building are sodium vapor lights emitting a pinkish yellow light. They make the air seem fuzzy, and the stars can’t show through the blurry black lid of sky. Only the moon and a few bright stars and planets show at all.

Sometimes I used to go out in the country and try to find a spot to look at the stars. It is hard. If I park on a country road and turn off the lights of the car, someone could run into me because he can’t see me. I have tried parking beside the road or in some unused lane that leads to a barn, but someone who lives nearby may notice and call the police. Then the police will come and want to know why I’m parked there late at night. They do not understand wanting to see the stars. They say that is just an excuse. I don’t do this anymore. Instead, I try to save up enough money that I can take my vacations where there are stars.

It’s funny about the police. Some of us have more trouble than others. Jorge, who grew up in San Antonio, told me if you are anything but rich, white, and normal they think you are a criminal. He had been stopped many times when he was growing up; he didn’t learn to talk until he was twelve and even then couldn’t talk very well. They always thought he was drunk or on drugs, he said. Even when he wore a bracelet that explained who he was and that he couldn’t talk, they’d wait until they’d taken him to the station to look at it. Then they’d try to find a parent to take him home, rather than taking him back across town themselves. Both his parents worked, so he usually had to sit there for three or four hours.

That didn’t happen to me, but sometimes I’ve been stopped for no reason I can understand, like with the security man at the airport. I get very scared when someone speaks harshly to me and sometimes I have trouble answering. I practiced saying, “My name is Lou Arrendale; I am autistic; I have trouble answering questions,” in front of a mirror until I could say it no matter how scared I am. My voice sounds harsh and strained when I do it. They ask, “Do you have identification?” I know I’m supposed to say, “In my pocket.” If I try to get my own wallet out, they may be scared enough to kill me. Miss Sevier in high school told us the police think we have knives or guns in our pockets and that they have killed people who were just trying to get out their IDs.

I think that is wrong, but I read where the court decided it was all right if the police were really scared. Yet if anybody else is really scared of the police it’s not all right for the scared person to kill a policeman.

This does not make sense. There is no symmetry.

The policeman who visited our class in high school said the police were there to help us and that only people who had done wrong would be scared of them. Jen Brouchard said what I was thinking, that it was hard not to be scared of people who yelled at you and threatened you and could make you lie facedown on the ground. That even if you hadn’t done anything, having a big man waving a gun at you would scare anyone. The policeman got red in the face and said that attitude didn’t help. Neither did his, I thought, but I knew better than to say so.

Yet the policeman who lives in our building has always been pleasant to me. His name is Daniel Bryce, but he says to call him Danny. He says good morning and good evening when he sees me, and I say good morning and good evening. He complimented me on how clean I keep my car. We both helped Miss Watson move when she had to go to Assisted Living; we each had one end of her coffee table carrying it downstairs. He offered to be the one to go backward. He doesn’t yell at anyone that I know of. I do not know what he thinks about me, except that he likes it that my car is clean. I do not know if he knows that I am autistic. I try not to be scared of him, because I have not done anything wrong, but I am, a little.

I would like to ask him if he thinks people are scared of him, but I do not want to make him angry. I do not want him to think I am doing something wrong, because I am still scared a little.

I tried watching some police shows on TV, but that scared me again. The police seemed tired and angry all the time, and the shows make it seem that this is all right. I am not supposed to act angry even when I am angry, but they can.

Yet I do not like to be judged by what others like me do, and I do not want to be unfair to Danny Bryce. He smiles at me, and I smile back. He says good morning and I say good morning back. I try to pretend that the gun he carries is a toy, so that I do not sweat too much when I am around him and make him think I am guilty of something I did not do.

Under the blankets and pillows, I am sweaty now as well as calm. I crawl out, replace the pillows, and take a shower. It is important not to smell bad. People who smell bad make other people angry or scared. I do not like the smell of the soap I use — it is an artificial scent, too strong — but I know it is an acceptable smell to other people.

It is late, after nine, when I get out of the shower and dress again. Usually I watch Cobalt 457 on Thursdays, but it is too late for that now. I am hungry; I put water on to boil and then drop some noodles into it.

The phone rings. I jump; no matter which of the choice of ringers I use, the phone always surprises me, and I always jump when I am surprised.

It is Mr. Aldrin. My throat tightens; I cannot speak for a long moment, but he does not go on talking. He waits. He understands.

I do not understand. He belongs at the office; he is part of the office cast. He has never called me at home before. Now he wants to meet with me. I feel trapped. He is my boss. He can tell me what to do, but only at work. It feels wrong to hear his voice on the phone at home.

“I — I did not expect you to call,” I say.

“I know,” he says. “I called you at home because I needed to talk to you away from the office.”

My stomach feels tight. “For what reason?” I ask.

“Lou, you need to know before Mr. Crenshaw calls you all in. There’s an experimental treatment that may reverse adult autism.”

“I know,” I say. “I heard about it. They have tried it on apes.”

“Yes. But what’s in the journal is over a year old; there’s been… progress. Our company bought out the research. Crenshaw wants all of you to try the new treatment. I don’t agree with him. I think it is too early, and I think he is wrong to ask you. At least it should be your choice; no one should pressure you. But he is my boss, and I can’t keep him from talking to you about it.”

If he cannot help, why is he calling? Is this one of those maneuvers I have read about normal people doing when they want sympathy for doing wrong because they could not help it?

“I want to help you,” he says. I remember my parents saying that wanting to do something was not the same thing as doing… that trying was not the same thing as doing. Why doesn’t he say, “I will help you,” instead?

“I think you need an advocate,” he says. “Someone to help you negotiate with Crenshaw. Someone better than me. I can find that person for you.”

I think he does not want to be our advocate. I think he is afraid Crenshaw will fire him. This is reasonable. Crenshaw could fire any of us. I struggle with my stubborn tongue to get the words out. “Shouldn’t… wouldn’t it… I think… I think I — we — should find our own person.”

“Can you?” he asks. I hear the doubt in his voice. Once I would have heard only something other than happiness and I would have been afraid he was angry with me. I am glad not to be like that anymore. I wonder why he has that doubt, since he knows the kind of work we can do and knows I live independently.

“I can go to the Center,” I say.

“Maybe that would be better,” he says. A noise starts at his end of the telephone; his voice speaks, but I think it is not for me. “Turn that down; I’m on the phone.” I hear another voice, an unhappy voice, but I can’t hear the words clearly. Then Mr. Aldrin’s voice, louder, in my ear: “Lou, if you have any trouble finding someone… if you want me to help, please let me know. I want the best for you; you know that.”

I do not know that. I know that Mr. Aldrin has been our manager and he has always been pleasant and patient with us and he has provided things for us that make our work easier, but I do not know that he wants the best for us. How would he know what that is? Would he want me to marry Marjory? What does he know of any of us outside work?

“Thank you,” I say, a safe conventional thing to say at almost any occasion. Dr. Fornum would be proud.

“Right, then,” he says. I try not to let my mind tangle on those words that have no meaning in themselves at this time. It is a conventional thing to say; he is coming to the end of the conversation. “Call me if you need any help. Let me give you my home number…” He rattles off a number; my phone system captures it, though I will not forget. Numbers are easy and this one is especially so, being a series of primes, though he probably has never noticed it. “Good-bye, Lou,” he says at the end. “Try not to worry.”

Trying is not doing. I say good-bye, hang up the phone, and return to my noodles, now slightly soggy. I do not mind soggy noodles; they are soft and soothing. Most people do not like peanut butter on noodles, but I do.

I think about Mr. Crenshaw wanting us to take the treatment. I do not think he can make us do that. There are laws about us and medical research. I do not know exactly what the laws say, but I do not think they would let him make us do it. Mr. Aldrin should know more about this than I do; he is a manager. So he must think Mr. Crenshaw can do it or will try to do it.

It is hard to go to sleep.

On Friday morning, Cameron tells me that Mr. Aldrin called him, too. He called everyone. Mr. Crenshaw has not said anything to any of us yet. I have that uncomfortable sick feeling in my stomach, like before a test that I do not expect to pass. It is a relief to get on the computer and go to work.

Nothing happens all day except that I finish the first half of the current project and the test runs all come out clean. After lunch, Cameron tells me that the local autism society has posted a meeting at the Center about the research paper. He is going. He thinks we should all go. I had not planned anything this Saturday other than cleaning my car, and I go to the Center almost every Saturday morning anyway.

On Saturday morning, I walk over to the Center. It is a long walk, but it is not hot this early in the morning and it makes my legs feel good. Besides, there is a brick sidewalk on the way, with two colors of brick — tan and red — laid in interesting patterns. I like to see it.

At the Center, I see not only people from my work group but also those who are dispersed elsewhere in the city. Some, mostly the older ones, are in adult day care or sheltered workshops with a lot of supervision and live in group homes. Stefan is a professor at the smaller university here; he does research in some area of biology. Mai is a professor at the larger university; her field is in some overlap of mathematics and biophysics. Neither of them comes to meetings often. I have noticed that the people who are most impaired come most often; the young people who are like Joe Lee almost never show up.

I chat with some of the others I know and like, some from work and some from elsewhere, like Murray, who works for a big accounting firm. Murray wants to hear about my fencing; he studies aikido and also hasn’t told his psychiatrist about it. I know that Murray has heard about the new treatment, or for what reason would he be here today, but I think he does not want to talk about it. He doesn’t work with us; he may not know it is near human trials. Maybe he wants it and wishes it were. I do not want to ask him that, not today.

The Center isn’t just for autistic people; we see a lot of people with various other disabilities, too, especially on weekends. I do not know what all of the disabilities are. I do not want to think about all the things that can be wrong with someone.

Some are friendly and speak to us, and some do not. Emmy comes right up to me today. She is nearly always there. She is shorter than I am, with straight dark hair and thick glasses. I do not know why she has not had eye surgery. It is not polite to ask. Emmy always seems angry. Her eyebrows bunch together, and she has tight little wads of muscle at the corners of her mouth, and her mouth turns down. “You have a girlfriend,” she says.

“No,” I say.

“Yes. Linda told me. She’s not one of us.”

“No,” I say again. Marjory isn’t my girlfriend — yet — and I do not want to talk about her to Emmy. Linda should not have told Emmy anything, and certainly not that. I did not tell Linda Marjory was my girlfriend because she is not. It was not right.

“Where you go to play with swords,” Emmy says. “There’s a girl—”

“She is not a girl,” I say. “She is a woman, and she is not my girlfriend.” Yet, I think. I feel heat on my neck, thinking of Marjory and the look on her face last week.

“Linda says she is. She’s a spy, Lou.”

Emmy rarely uses people’s names; when she says my name it feels like a slap on the arm. “What do you mean, ‘spy’?”

“She works at the university. Where they do that project, you know.” She glares at me, as if I were doing the project. She means the research group on developmental disabilities. When I was a child, my parents took me there for evaluation and for three years I went to the special class. Then my parents decided that the group was more interested in doing research papers to get grant money than in helping children, so they put me in another program, at the regional clinic. It is the policy of our local society to require researchers to disclose their identity; we do not allow them to attend our meetings.

Emmy works at the university herself, as a custodian, and I suppose this is how she knows Marjory works there.

“Lots of people work at the university,” I say. “Not all are in the research group.”

“She is a spy, Lou,” Emmy says again. “She is only interested in your diagnosis, not in you as a person.”

I feel a hollow opening inside me; I am sure that Marjory is not a researcher, but not that sure.

“To her you are a freak,” Emmy says. “A subject.” She made subject sound obscene, if I understand obscene. Nasty. A mouse in a maze, a monkey in a cage. I think about the new treatment; the people who take it first will be subjects, just like the apes they tried it on first.

“That’s not true,” I say. I can feel the prickling of sweat under my arms, on my neck, and the faint tremor that comes when I feel threatened. “But anyway, she is not my girlfriend.”

“I’m glad you have that much sense,” Emmy says.

I go on to the meeting because if I left the Center Emmy would talk to the others about Marjory and me. It is hard to listen to the speaker, who is talking about the research protocol and its implications. I hear and do not hear what he says; I notice when he says something I have not heard before, but I do not pay much attention. I can read the posted speech on the Center Web site later. I was not thinking about Marjory until Emmy said that about her, but now I cannot stop thinking about Marjory.

Marjory likes me. I am sure she likes me. I am sure she likes me as myself, as Lou who fences with the group, as Lou she asked to come to the airport with her that Wednesday night. Lucia said Marjory liked me. Lucia does not lie.

But there is liking and liking. I like ham, as a food. I do not care what the ham thinks when I bite into it. I know that ham doesn’t think, so it does not bother me to bite into it. Some people will not eat meat because the animals it came from were once alive and maybe had feelings and thoughts, but this does not bother me once they are dead. Everything eaten was alive once, saving a few grams of minerals, and a tree might have thoughts and feelings if we knew how to access them.

What if Marjory likes me as Emmy says — as a thing, a subject, the equivalent of my bite of ham? What if she likes me more than some other research subject because I am quiet and friendly?

I do not feel quiet and friendly. I feel like hitting someone.

The counselor at the meeting does not say anything we have not already read on-line. He cannot explain the method; he does not know where someone would go to apply to be in the study. He does not say that the company I work for has bought up the research. Maybe he does not know. I do not say anything. I am not sure Mr. Aldrin is right about that.

After the meeting the others want to stay and talk about the new process, but I leave quickly. I want to go home and think about Marjory without Emmy around. I do not want to think about Marjory being a researcher; I want to think about her sitting beside me in the car. I want to think about her smell, and the lights in her hair, and even the way she fights with a rapier.

It is easier to think about Marjory while I am cleaning out my car. I untie the sheepskin seat pad and shake it out. No matter how careful I am, there are always things caught in it, dust and threads and — today — a paper clip. I do not know where that came from. I lay it on the front of the car and sweep the seats with a little brush, then vacuum the floor. The noise of the vacuum hurts my ears, but it is quicker than sweeping and less dust gets up my nose. I clean the inside of the windshield, being careful to go all the way into the corners, then clean the mirrors. Stores sell special cleaners for cars, but they all smell very bad and make me feel sick, so I just use a damp rag.

I put the sheepskin back on the seat and tie it snugly in place. Now my car is all clean for Sunday morning. Even though I take the bus to church, I like to think of my car sitting clean in its Sunday clothes on Sunday.

I take my shower quickly, not thinking about Marjory, and then I go to bed and think of her. She is moving, in my thoughts, always moving and yet always still. Her face expresses itself more clearly to me than most faces. The expressions stay long enough that I can interpret them. When I fall asleep, she is smiling.