John Saul - Brain Child

“All right,” Alex said. “I want to see what happens to the rat if I cut as far into its brain as Dr. Torres had to cut into mine.”

“You mean you want to see if it dies,” Marsh replied. His son nodded. “Then I think we’d better go down to the Center, and I think you’d better let me help you.”

“You mean you will?” Alex asked.

“If I don’t, your rats won’t survive the first cut.”

When they came downstairs a few minutes later, Ellen glanced at them from her place at the kitchen sink, then, seeing the rat cage, smiled appreciatively. “Well, at least we agree that the house is no place for those things,” she offered, hoping to break the tension that had spoiled dinner.

“We’re taking them down to the lab,” Marsh told her. “And we may hang around awhile, if anything interesting’s going on.”

Ellen frowned. “Interesting? What could be interesting in the lab at this hour? There won’t even be anyone there.”

“Well be there,” Marsh replied. Then, while Ellen wondered what was going on, her husband and son disappeared into the patio. A moment later she heard the gate slam closed.

The fluorescent lamps over the lab table cast a shadowless light, and as Marsh prepared to inject the anesthesia into the rat’s vein, he suddenly wondered if the creature somehow knew what was about to happen. Its little eyes seemed wary, and he could feel it trembling in his hand. He glanced at Alex, who stood at the other side of the table, looking on impassively. “It won’t survive this, you know,” Marsh told his son.

“I know,” Alex replied in the emotionless voice Marsh knew he would never get used to. “Go ahead.”

Marsh slid the needle under the rat’s skin and pressed the plunger. The rat struggled for a few seconds, then gradually went limp, and Marsh began fastening it to the dissecting board. When he was done, he studied the illustration he’d found in one of the lab books, then deftly used a scalpel to cut the skin away from the rat’s skull, starting just behind the left eye and slicing neatly around to the opposite position behind the right eye, then folding the loose flap of skin forward. Then, using a tiny saw, he began removing the top of the skull itself. He worked slowly. When he was done, the rat’s brain lay exposed to the light, but its heartbeat and breathing were still unaffected.

“This probably isn’t going to work,” Marsh said. “We should have much smaller tools, and proportionally, much more of a rat’s brain than a human’s is used to keep its vital functions going.”

“Then let’s just cut away a little bit at a time, and see how deep we can go.”

Marsh hesitated, then nodded. Using the smallest scalpel he had been able to find, he began peeling away the cortex of the rat’s brain.

An hour later, all three of the rats were dead. In none of them had Marsh succeeded in reaching the inner structures of the brain before their heartbeats had ceased.

“But they didn’t have to die,” he pointed out. “I could have gone in with a probe, and destroyed part of the limbic system without doing much damage to anything else.”

Alex shook his head. “It wouldn’t have meant anything, Dad. When you cut away their brains the way Torres had to cut away mine, the rats died. So why didn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” Marsh confessed. “All I know is that you didn’t die.”

Alex was silent for a long time, staring at the three small corpses on the lab table. “Maybe I did,” he said at last. “Maybe I’m really dead.”

Valerie Benson looked up from her knitting. Across the room, Kate Lewis was curled up on the sofa, her eyes on the television set, but Valerie was almost sure she wasn’t watching the program.

“Want to talk about it?” she asked. Kate’s eyes remained on the television.

“Talk about what?”

“Everything that’s bothering you.”

“Nothing’s bothering me,” Kate replied. “I’m okay.”

“No,” Valerie replied, “you’re not okay.” She put her knitting aside, then got up and turned off the television set. “Are you planning to go back to school tomorrow?”

“I … I don’t know.”

I should have had children, Valerie thought. If I’d had children of my own, I’d know what to do. Or would she? Would she really know what to say to a teenage girl whose father had killed her mother? What was there to say? And yet, Kate couldn’t just go on sitting in front of the television set all day and all evening, moping.

“Well, I think it’s time you went back,” Valerie ventured. Then, sure she knew what was really going on in Kate’s mind, she went on: “What happened wasn’t your fault, Kate, and none of the kids are going to hold it against you.”

Kate turned to stare at Valerie. “Is that what you think?” she asked. “That I’m afraid of what the kids might think?”

“Isn’t it?”

Kate slowly shook her head. “Everybody knew all about Dad,” she said so quietly Valerie had to strain to hear her. “I always talked about what a drunk he is so no one else could do it first.”

Valerie went to the sofa and sat close to Kate. “That couldn’t have been easy.”

“It was better than having everybody gossip.” Her eyes met Valerie’s for the first time. “But he didn’t kill Mom,” she said. “I don’t care how it looks, and I don’t care if he doesn’t remember what happened after I left. All I know is they used to fight every time he got drunk, but he never hit her. He yelled at her, and sometimes he threatened her, but he never hit her. In the end, he always let her take him to the hospital.”

“Then you should be out with your friends, letting them know exactly what you think.”

Kate shook her head silently, and her eyes filled with tears. “I … I’m scared,” she whispered.

“Scared? Scared of what?”

“I’m afraid of what might happen if I leave. I’m afraid I might come back and find you … find you …” Unable to say the words, Kate began sobbing softly, and Valerie held her close.

“Oh, honey, you don’t have to worry about me. What on earth could happen to me?”

“But someone killed Mom,” Kate sobbed. “She was by herself, and someone came in and … and …”

Your father killed her, Valerie thought, but she knew she wouldn’t say it out loud. If Kate didn’t want to believe the evidence, she wouldn’t try to force her to, at least not yet. But after the trial, after Alan Lewis was convicted … She cut the thought off, telling herself that she should at least try to keep an open mind. “No one’s going to do anything to me,” she said. “I’ve been living by myself in this house for five years now, and there’s never been any trouble at all. And I’m not going to let you become a prisoner here.” She stood up briskly, went to pick up the telephone that sat on the table next to her chair, and brought it to the coffee table in front of the sofa. “Now you call Bob Carey and tell him you want to go out for a pizza or something.”

Kate hesitated. “I can’t do that—”

“Of course you can,” Valerie told her. “He comes by every day and drops off your homework, doesn’t he? So why wouldn’t he want to take you out?” She picked up the phone. “What’s his number?”

Kate blurted it out before she could think, and Valerie promptly punched the numbers. When Bob himself answered, she said only, “I have someone here who wants to talk to you,” and handed the phone to Kate. Kate sniffled, but took the phone.

Forty-five minutes later, Valerie stood at the front door. “And no matter what she says, I don’t want her back a minute before eleven,” she told Bob Carey. “She’s been cooped up too long, and she needs a good time.” When Bob’s car had disappeared down the hill, she closed the door, then went back to her knitting.