Matthew Thomas - We Are Not Ourselves

The students seemed confused. Most had stopped writing. They were looking at each other and adding their hands to the gathering chorus in the air.

“The second tier of protection of the central nervous system is provided by bone. The brain is protected by the skull, while the spinal cord is protected by the vertebrae.”

Now most of the class had its hands raised. His father had said he didn’t want questions, but Connell was sure that if he knew how many hands were up, he would want to clear up the point so everyone could move along.

“The brain receives sensory input from the spinal cord as well as from its own nerves — which we will name and discuss later. It dedicates most of its capacity to processing sensory inputs and instigating motor outputs.”

He had to think of something. His father obviously couldn’t hear the grumbling that had overtaken the class. He was in some kind of zone. No one was taking notes anymore. Connell didn’t want to anger him, but he knew his father would thank him later if he helped him solve this problem now.

His fingers tingled as he stood and felt everyone turn to face him. All he wanted to do was get his father to look up from the page. He cleared his throat.

“Dad!” he said sharply.

His father must not have heard him, or if he did, he must not have understood the seriousness of the situation. Connell wanted to sit back down, but now he couldn’t. He felt short of breath.

“The spinal cord serves three main functions,” his father went on. “It conducts sensory information from the peripheral nervous system to the brain. It conducts motor information from the brain to various effectors. And it serves as a minor reflex center.”

“Dad!” he said again, this time more emphatically. “Dad!”

His father looked right at him. It felt as if they were the only two people in the room. All the hands in the air fell at once. His father looked around at the faces staring back at him. Everyone seemed to wait to see what would happen next. His father bent over the pad again. As he did so, hands shot up all over the room. Voices called out.

“Professor Leary!”

“Professor!”

But he didn’t hear them. “The second tier of protection of the central nervous system,” he said, to a round of groans, “is provided by bone.” One man hopped in his seat, as if he were about to run up and tackle him away from the lectern.

“The brain is protected by the skull…”

Connell knew he had heard this already.

“What is this shit?” the hopping man asked.

“Hello!” shouted a lady a few rows up. “You can’t just ignore us here.”

Connell had seen his father determined before. When he wanted to do something, when he really wanted to do it, he put his head down and got it done.

A growing outcry was filling the room, so that you could barely hear him reading.

“Dad!” Connell shouted. “ Dad! ”

His father stopped again. This time he backed away from the pad and the lectern. Connell saw the pages he’d folded under the bottom flip back onto the pad. His father looked at him again in that uncanny way, as if Connell was the only other person there. He backed up to his briefcase and squeezed the handle as though to keep it away from someone trying to snatch it from him. Then he seemed to recover a bit and approached the podium again. Connell sat down.

“Today we are going to begin our discussion of the central nervous system,” he said. He stopped talking and looked around at the room. They were eerily quiet. Connell was desperate for someone to say something. He knew he couldn’t do it himself.

After a few seconds, his father gestured to a woman in the front who had been taking notes through the chaos.

“Karen,” he said. “Karen? Is that right?”

“Yes, Professor Leary.”

“Karen, if you don’t mind, would you tell me where I left off?”

“You had just finished telling us that the spinal cord serves as a minor reflex center.”

“Okay,” he said. “That’s good. That’s good. Thank you. That’s exactly what I needed. The spinal cord as a reflex center.”

He flipped through the pad furiously. When he had gone through all the pages, he flipped back through them again so hard that it looked like he might rip them off.

“You see,” he said. “I’m tired. I’ve been working hard. And there’s a lot on my mind. In fact, there’s something specific on my mind that’s distracting me, and I hope you’ll forgive me for letting it get in the way today. If you’ll all turn and look, you’ll see my son at the back of the room.”

Connell could feel the blood rush to his cheeks.

“My son came along with me, as you can see,” his father said. “Today is an important day for him.” His father was looking directly at him. “Isn’t it, son?”

He was going to make him talk about the project.

“Yes,” Connell said.

“Today’s his birthday,” his father said.

Everyone was staring at him. It had been almost a month since his birthday. He could see it all: the metal bat, the batting gloves, the high-end tee, the netting, the boxes of balls, the bucket to keep them in; heading out into the cold and the whipping wind after dinner and setting up at the back of the driveway; under the moon, in the quiet of the evening, slamming balls into the net and delighting in the ping produced by a ball squarely struck.

The faces smiled. He heard a volley of clucking. One lady near him asked him how old he was.

“I’m fourteen,” he said.

“Fourteen today,” his father said. “And he’s been such a good kid, waiting for me. You see, we’re going to the Mets game right after this class. Opening Day. And I’ve had that in the back of my mind. I’ve been worried about the traffic. We’re going to be cutting it a little close. So I apologize for not being all here today. Really, if I’m being honest with myself, I should ask you all if you wouldn’t mind if we just ended class early and made up for it next week. I realize some of you have come from far away. Would you forgive me if we canceled today’s class and made it up next time?”

The students looked around at each other. Some grumbled; one man slapped his desk in frustration, yelled “Bullshit!” and walked out. Others shrugged.

“Good. Good. That’s great,” his father said. “Then we’ll end class now.”

They started packing up their stuff. “I’ll draw up a handout explaining in depth what I was going to go through today, and I’ll spend a little time at the beginning of next class taking you through it point by point.” He picked up the briefcase from the floor and began gathering his things. “Thank you all,” he said, over the rustle of bags and jackets. “This is kind of you. I apologize for imposing on your time like this.”

Some of them wished Connell a happy birthday as they left. His father waved them out the door. Connell remained seated until everyone had gone. He walked up to the front of the room. His father stood facing the blackboard, his hands on the chalkwell. Connell could see his shoulders rising and falling.

“I have to pee,” Connell said, though he didn’t really have to.

In the bathroom, he looked in the mirror. He lifted his shirt up, then took it off and flexed with both arms. There was more mass and definition. He brought his fists to his ears and squeezed his muscles like Hulk Hogan. He smiled a big, crazy smile with lots of teeth. He drew close to the mirror, leaned his forehead against it. His breath collected on it and evaporated. He slapped at the little bit of baby fat still on his stomach, hard enough to leave a red mark.

“Go away,” he said. “Go away!” Then he started to worry that someone would walk in on him.