Chapter Nine

On Fridays I do my laundry, so that I have the weekend free. I have two laundry baskets, one for light and one for dark. I take the sheets off the bed and the pillowcase off the pillow and put them in the light basket. The towels go in the dark basket. My mother used two pale-blue plastic baskets for sorted clothes; she called one dark and one light, and that bothered me. I found a dark-green wicker basket and use it for dark clothes; my basket for light clothes is plain wicker, a sort of honey color. I like the woven pattern of the wicker, and I like the word wicker. The strands go out around the uprights like the wih sound of wicker and then comes the sharp k, like the stick the strands bend around, and the soft er sound as they bend back into the shadow.

I take the exact right change out of my change box, plus one extra coin in case one of them won’t work in the machines. It used to make me angry when a perfectly round coin would not make the machine go. My mother taught me to take an extra coin. She said it is not good to stay angry. Sometimes a coin will work in the soft drink machine when it does not work in the washing machine or dryer, and sometimes one that will not work in the soft drink machine will work in the washing machine. This does not make sense, but it is how the world is.

I put the coins in my pocket, tuck the packet of detergent in the light basket, and set the light basket on top of the dark one. Light should go on top of dark. That balances.

I can just see over them to walk down the hall. I fix the Chopin prelude in my mind and head for the laundry room. As usual on Friday nights, only Miss Kimberly is there. She is old, with fuzzy gray hair, but not as old as Miss Watson. I wonder if she thinks about the life extension treatments or if she is too old. Miss Kimberly is wearing light-green knit slacks and a flowered top. She usually wears this on Fridays when it is warm. I think about what she wears instead of the smell in the laundry room. It is a harsh, sharp smell that I do not like.

“Good evening, Lou,” she says now. She has already done her wash and is putting her things into the left-hand dryer. She always uses the left-hand dryer.

“Good evening, Miss Kimberly,” I say. I do not look at her washing; it is rude to look at women’s washing because it may have underwear in it. Some women do not want men looking at their underwear. Some do and that makes it confusing, but Miss Kimberly is old and I do not think she wants me to see the pink puckery things in among the sheets and towels. I do not want to see them anyway.

“Did you have a good week?” she asks. She always asks this. I do not think she really cares whether I had a good week or not.

“My tires were slashed,” I say.

She stops putting things in the dryer and looks at me. “Someone slashed your tires? Here? Or at work?”

I do not know why that makes a difference. “Here,” I say. “I came out Thursday morning and they were all flat.”

She looks upset. “Right here in this parking lot? I thought it was safe here!”

“It was very inconvenient,” I say. “I was late to work.”

“But… vandals! Here!” Her face makes a shape I have never seen on it before. It is something like fear and something like disgust. Then she looks angry, staring right at me as if I had done something wrong. I look away. “I’ll have to move,” she says.

I do not understand: why does she have to move because my tires were slashed? No one could slash her tires, because she has no tires. She does not have a car.

“Did you see who did it?” she asks. She has left part of her wash hanging over the edge of the machine; it looks very messy and unpleasant, like food hanging over the edge of a plate.

“No,” I say. I take the light things out of the light basket and put them in the right-hand washing machine. I add the detergent, measuring carefully because it is wasteful to use too much and things will not be clean if I do not use enough. I put the coins in the slot, close the door, set the machine for warm wash, cool rinse, regular cycle, and push the Start button. Inside the machine, something goes thunk and water hisses through the valves.

“It’s terrible,” Miss Kimberly says. She is scooping the rest of her wash into the dryer, the movements of her hands jerky. Something puckery and pink falls to the floor; I turn away and lift clothes out of the dark basket. I put them into the middle washer. “It’s all right for people like you,” she says.

“What is all right for people like me?” I ask. She has never talked this way before.

“You’re young,” she says. “And a man. You don’t have to worry.”

I do not understand. I am not young, according to Mr. Crenshaw. I am old enough to know better. I am a man, but I do not see why this means it is all right for my tires to be slashed.

“I did not want my tires slashed,” I say, speaking slowly because I do not know what she will do.

“Well, of course you didn’t,” she says, all in a rush. Usually her skin looks pale and yellowish in the lights of the laundry room, but now peach-colored patches glow on her cheeks. “But you don’t have to worry about people jumping on you. Men.”

I look at Miss Kimberly and cannot imagine anyone jumping on her. Her hair is gray and her pink scalp shows through it on top; her skin is wrinkled and she has brown spots on her arms. I want to ask if she is serious, but I know she is serious. She does not laugh, even at me when I drop something.

“I am sorry you are worried,” I say, shaking detergent into the washer full of dark things. I put the coins into the slot. The dryer door bangs shut; I had forgotten about the dryer, trying to understand Miss Kimberly, and my hand jerks. One of the coins misses the slot and falls into the wash. I will have to take everything out to find it, and the detergent will spill off the clothes onto the washer. I feel a buzzing in my head.

“Thank you, Lou,” Miss Kimberly says. Her voice is calmer, warmer. I am surprised. I did not expect to say the right thing. “What’s wrong?” she asks as I start lifting out the clothes, shaking them so most of the detergent falls back into the washing machine.

“I dropped a coin in,” I say.

She is coming closer. I do not want her to come closer. She wears a strong perfume, very sweet-smelling.

“Just use another. That one’ll be really clean when you take the clothes out,” she says.

I stand still a moment, the clothes in my hand. Can I leave that coin in? I have the spare in my pocket. I drop the clothes and reach for the coin in my pocket. It is the right size. I put it in the slot, close the door, set the machine, and push Start. Again the thunk, the hiss of water. I feel strange inside. I thought I understood Miss Kimberly before, when she was the predictable old lady who washed her clothes on Friday night, as I do. I thought I understood her a few minutes ago, at least to understand that she was upset about something. But she thought of a solution so fast, while I was thinking she was still upset. How did she do that? Is that something normal people can do all the time?

“It’s easier than taking the clothes out,” she says. “This way you don’t get stuff on the machine and have to clean it up. I always bring some extra coins just in case.” She laughs, a little dry laugh. “As I get older, my hands shake sometimes.” She pauses, looking at me. I am still wondering how she did that, but I realize she is waiting for something from me. It is always appropriate to say thank you, even when you aren’t sure why.

“Thank you,” I say.

It was the right thing to say again; she smiles.

“You’re a nice man, Lou; I’m sorry about your tires,” she says. She looks at her watch. “I need to go make some phone calls; are you going to be here? To watch the dryer?”

“I will be downstairs,” I say. “Not in this room; it is too noisy.” I have said this before when she has asked me to keep an eye on her clothes. I always think of taking out an eye and putting it on the clothes, but I do not tell her that is what I think. I know what the expression means socially, but it is a silly meaning. She nods and smiles and goes out. I check again that the setting on both washers is correct and then go out into the hall.

The floor in the laundry room is ugly gray concrete, sloping down slightly to a big drain under the washing machines. I know the drain is there because two years ago I brought my washing down and workmen were there. They had moved the machines out and had the cover off the drain. It smelled very bad, sour and sick.

The floor in the hall is tile, each tile streaked with two shades of green on beige. The tiles are twelve-inch squares; the hall is five squares wide and forty-five and a half squares long. The person who laid the tiles laid them so that the streaks are crosswise to each other—each tile is laid so that the streaks are facing ninety degrees to the tile next to it. Most of the tiles are laid in one of two ways, but eight of them are laid upside down to the other tiles in the same orientation.

I like to look at this hall and think about those eight tiles. What pattern could be completed by having those eight tiles laid in reverse? So far I have come up with three possible patterns. I tried to tell Tom about it once, but he was not able to see the patterns in his head the way I can. I drew them all out on a sheet of paper, but soon I could tell that he was bored. It is not polite to bore people. I never tried to talk to him about it again.

But I find it endlessly interesting. When I get tired of the floor—but I never do get tired of the floor—I can look at the walls. All the walls in the hall are painted, but on one wall there was tile-patterned wallboard before. Those pretend tiles were four inches on a side, but unlike the floor tiles, the pretend wall tiles had a space for pretend grout. So the real pattern size is four and a half inches. If it were four inches, then three wall tiles would make one floor tile.

I look for the places where the line between the tiles can go up the wall and over the ceiling and back around without stopping. There is one place in this hall where the line almost makes it, but not quite. I used to think if the hall were twice as long there would be two places, but that’s not how it works. When I really look at it, I can tell that the hall would have to be five and a third times as long for all the lines to match exactly twice.

Hearing one washing machine whine down from spin, I go back into the laundry room. I know that it takes me exactly that long to arrive at the machine just as the drum stops turning. It is a kind of game, to take that last step when the machine takes its last turn. The left-hand dryer is still mumbling and bumbling; I take my wet clothes and put them in the empty right-hand dryer. By the time I have them all in and have checked to be sure nothing is left in the washer, the second washer comes spinning down. Once last year I worked out the relationship between the frictional force slowing the rotation and the frequency of the sound it makes. I did it by myself, without a computer, which made it more fun.

I take my clothes from the second machine, and there at the bottom is the missing coin, shiny and clean and smooth in my fingers. I put it in my pocket, put the clothes into the dryer, insert the coins, and start it up. Long ago, I used to watch the tumbling clothes and try to figure out what the pattern was—why this time the arm of a red sweatshirt was in front of the blue robe, falling down and around, and next time the same red arm was between the yellow sweatpants and the pillowcase instead. My mother didn’t like it when I mumbled while watching the clothes rise and fall, so I learned to do it all in my head.

Miss Kimberly comes back just as the dryer with her clothes in it stops. She smiles at me. She has a plate with some cookies on it. “Thanks, Lou,” she says. She holds out the plate. “Have a cookie. I know boys—I mean young men—like cookies.”

She brings cookies almost every week. I do not always like the kind of cookie she brings, but it is not polite to say so. This week it is lemon crisps. I like them a lot. I take three. She puts the plate on the folding table and takes her things out of the dryer. She puts them in her basket; she does not fold her clothes down here. “Just bring the plate up when you’re done, Lou,” she says. This is the same as last week.

“Thank you, Miss Kimberly,” I say.

“You’re quite welcome,” she says, as she always does.

I finish the cookies, dust the crumbs into the trash basket, and fold my laundry before going upstairs. I hand her the plate and go on to my apartment.

On Saturday mornings, I go to the center. One of the counselors is available from 8:30 to 12:00, and once a month there’s a special program. Today there is no program, but Maxine, one of the counselors, is walking toward the conference room when I arrive. Bailey did not say if she was the counselor they talked to last week. Maxine wears orange lipstick and purple eye shadow; I never ask her anything. I think about asking her anyway, but someone else goes in before I make up my mind.

The counselors know how to find us legal assistance or an apartment, but I do not know if they will understand the problem we face now. They always encourage us to do everything to become more normal. I think they will say we should want this treatment even if they think it is too dangerous to try while it is still experimental. Eventually I will have to talk to someone here, but I am glad someone is ahead of me. I do not have to do it right now.

I am looking at the bulletin board with its notices of AA meetings and other support group meetings (single parents, parents of teens, job seekers) and interest group meetings (funkdance, bowling, technology assistance) when Emmy comes up to me. “Well, how’s your girlfriend?”

“I do not have a girlfriend,” I say.

“I saw her,” Emmy says. “You know I did. Don’t lie about it.”

“You saw my friend,” I say. “Not my girlfriend. A girlfriend is someone who agrees to be your girlfriend and she has not agreed.” I am not being honest and that is wrong, but I still do not want to talk to Emmy, or listen to Emmy, about Marjory.

“You asked her?” Emmy says.

“I do not want to talk to you about her,” I say, and turn away.

“Because you know I’m right,” Emmy says. She moves around me quickly, standing in front of me again. “She is one of those—call themselves normal—using us like lab rats. You’re always hanging around with that kind, Lou, and it’s not right.”

“I do not know what you mean,” I say. I see Marjory only once a week—twice the week of the grocery store—so how can that be “hanging around” with her? If I come to the Center every week and Emmy is there, does this mean I am hanging around with Emmy? I do not like that thought.

“You haven’t come to any of the special events in months,” she says. “You’re spending time with your normal friends.” She makes normal into a curse word by her tone.

I have not come to the special events because they do not interest me. A lecture on parenting skills? I have no children. A dance? The music they were going to have is not the kind I like. A pottery demo and class? I do not want to make things out of clay. Thinking about it, I realize that very little in the Center now interests me. It is an easy way to run into other autistics, but they are not all like me and I can find more people who share my interests on-line or at the office. Cameron, Bailey, Eric, Linda… we all go to the Center to meet one another before going somewhere else, but it is just a habit. We do not really need the Center, except maybe to talk to the counselors now and then.

“If you’re going to look for girlfriends, you should start with your own kind,” Emmy says.

I look at her face, with the physical signs of anger all over it—the flushed skin, the bright eyes between tense lids, the square-shaped mouth, the teeth almost together. I do not know why she is angry with me this time. I do not know why it matters to her how much time I spend at the Center. I do not think she is my kind anyway. Emmy is not autistic. I do not know her diagnosis; I do not care about her diagnosis.

“I am not looking for girlfriends,” I say.

“So, she came looking for you?”

“I said I do not want to talk about this to you,” I say. I look around. I do not see anyone else I know. I thought Bailey might be in this morning, but maybe he has figured out what I just realized. Maybe he isn’t coming because he knows he does not need the Center. I do not want to stand here and wait for Maxine to be free.

I turn to go, aware of Emmy behind me, radiating dark feelings faster than I can get away. Linda and Eric come in. Before I can say anything, Emmy blurts out, “Lou’s been seeing that girl again, that researcher.”

Linda looks down and away; she does not want to hear. She does not like to get involved in arguments anyway. Eric’s gaze brushes across my face and finds the pattern on the floor tiles. He is listening but not asking.

“I told him she was a researcher, just out to use him, but he won’t listen,” Emmy says. “I saw her myself and she’s not even pretty.”

I feel my neck getting hot. It is not fair of Emmy to say that about Marjory. She does not even know Marjory. I think Marjory is prettier than Emmy, but pretty is not the reason I like her.

“Is she trying to get you to take the treatment, Lou?” Eric asks.

“No,” I say. “We do not talk about that.”

“I do not know her,” Eric says, and turns away. Linda is already out of sight.

“You don’t want to know her,” Emmy says.

Eric turns back. “If she is Lou’s friend, you should not say bad things about her,” he says. Then he walks on, after Linda.

I think about following them, but I do not want to stay here. Emmy might follow me. She might talk more. She would talk more. It would upset Linda and Eric.

I turn to leave, and Emmy does say more. “Where are you going?” she asks. “You just got here. Don’t think you can run away from your problems, Lou!”

I can run away from her, I think. I cannot run away from work or Dr. Fornum, but I can run from Emmy. I smile, thinking that, and she turns even redder.

“What are you smiling about?”

“I am thinking about music,” I say. That is always safe. I do not want to look at her; her face is red and shiny and angry. She circles me, trying to make me face her. I look at the floor instead. “I think about music when people are angry with me,” I say. That is sometimes true.

“Oh, you’re impossible!” she says, and storms off down the hall. I wonder if she has any friends at all. I never see her with other people. That is sad, but it is not something I can fix.

Outside it feels much quieter, even though the Center is on a busy street. I do not have plans now. If I am not spending Saturday morning at the Center, I am not sure what to do. I did my laundry. My apartment is clean. The books say that we do not cope well with uncertainty or changes in schedule. Usually it does not bother me, but this morning I feel shaky inside. I do not want to think of Marjory being what Emmy says she is. What if Emmy is right? What if Marjory is lying to me? It does not feel right, but my feelings can be wrong.

I wish I could see Marjory now. I wish we were going to do something together, something where I could look at her. Just look and listen to her talk to someone else. Would I know if she liked me? I think she does like me. I do not know if she likes me a lot or a little, though. I do not know if she likes me the way she likes other men or as a grownup likes a child. I do not know how to tell. If I were normal I would know. Normal people must know, or they could not ever get married.

Last week at this time I was at the tournament. I did enjoy it. I would rather be there than here. Even with the noise, with all the people, with all the smells. That is a place I belong; I do not belong here anymore. I am changing, or rather I have changed.

I decide to walk back to the apartment, even though it is a long way. It is cooler than it has been, and fall flowers show in some of the yards I walk past. The rhythm of walking eases my tension and makes it easier to hear the music I’ve chosen to walk with. I see other people with earphones on. They are listening to broadcast or recorded music; I wonder if the ones without earphones are listening to their own music or walking without music.

The smell of fresh bread stops me partway home. I turn aside into a small bakery and buy a loaf of warm bread. Next to the bakery is a flower shop with ranked masses of purples, yellows, blues, bronzes, deep reds. The colors carry more than wavelengths of light; they project joy, pride, sadness, comfort. It is almost too much to bear.

I store the colors and textures in my memory and take the bread home, breathing in that fragrance and combining it with the colors I pass. One house I pass has a late-blooming rose trained up a wall; even across the yard I can catch a hint of its sweetness.

It has been over a week, and Mr. Aldrin and Mr. Crenshaw have not said anything more about the treatment. We have had no more letters. I would like to think this means something has gone wrong with the process and they will forget about it, but I think they will not forget. Mr. Crenshaw always looks and sounds so angry. Angry people do not forget injuries; forgiveness dissolves anger. That is what the sermon this week was about. My mind should not wander during the sermon, but sometimes it is boring and I think of other things. Anger and Mr. Crenshaw seem connected.

On Monday, we all get a notice that we are to meet on Saturday. I do not want to give up my Saturday, but the notice does not include any reason for staying away. Now I wish I had waited to talk to Maxine at the Center, but it is too late.

“Do you think we have to go?” Chuy asks. “Will they fire us if we don’t?”

“I don’t know,” Bailey says. “I want to find out what they’re doing, so I would go anyway.”

“I will go,” Cameron says. I nod, and so do the others. Linda looks most unhappy, but she usually looks most unhappy.

“Look… er… Pete…” Crenshaw’s voice oozed false friendliness; Aldrin noticed his difficulty in remembering the name. “I know you think I’m a hard-hearted bastard, but the fact is the company’s struggling. The space-based production is necessary, but it’s eating up profits like you wouldn’t believe.”

Oh, wouldn’t I? Aldrin thought. It was stupid, in his opinion: the advantages to low—and zero-G facilities were far outweighed by their expense and the drawbacks. There were riches enough to be made down here, on the earth, and he would not have voted for the commitment to space if anyone had given him a vote.

“Your guys are fossils, Pete. Face it. The auties older than them were throwaways, nine out of ten. And don’t recite that woman, whatever her name was, that designed slaughterhouses or something—”

“Grandin,” Aldrin murmured, but Crenshaw ignored him.

“One in a million, and I have the highest respect for someone who pulls themselves up by their bootstraps the way she did. But she was the exception. Most of those poor bastards were hopeless. Not their fault, all right? But still, no good to themselves or anyone else, no matter how much money was spent on them. And if the damned shrinks had kept hold of the category, your guys would be just as bad. Lucky for them the neurologists and behaviorists got some influence. But still… they’re not normal, whatever you say.”

Aldrin said nothing. Crenshaw in full flow wouldn’t listen anyway. Crenshaw took that silence for consent and went on.

“And then they figured out what it was that went wrong and started fixing it in babies… so your guys are fossils, Pete. Marooned between the bad old days and the bright new ones. Stuck. It’s not fair to them.”

Very little in life was fair, and Aldrin could not believe that Crenshaw had a clue about fairness.

“Now you say they have this unique talent and deserve the expensive extras we shower on them because they produce. That may’ve been true five years ago, Pete—maybe even two years ago—but the machines have caught up, as they always do.” He held out a printout. “I’ll bet you don’t keep up with the literature in artificial intelligence, do you?”

Aldrin took the printout without looking at it. “Machines have never been able to do what they do,” he said.

“Once upon a time, machines couldn’t add two and two,” Crenshaw said. “But you wouldn’t hire someone now to add up columns of figures with pencil and paper, would you?”

Only during a power outage: small businesses found it expedient to be sure the people who worked checkout registers could, in fact, add two and two with paper and pencil. But mentioning that would not work, he knew.

“You’re saying machines could replace them?” he asked.

“Easy as pie,” Crenshaw said. “Well… maybe not that easy. It’d take new computers and some pretty high-powered software… but then all it takes is the electricity. None of that silly stuff they’ve got.”

Electricity that had to be paid for constantly, whereas the supports for his people had been paid off long ago. Another thing Crenshaw wouldn’t listen to.

“Suppose they all took the treatment and it worked: would you still want to replace them with machines?”

“Bottom line, Pete, bottom line. Whatever comes out best for the company is what I want. If they can do the work as well and not cost as much as new machines, I’m not out to put anyone on unemployment. But we have to cut costs—have to. In this market, the only way to get investment income is to show efficiency. And that plush private lab and those offices—that’s not what any stockholder would call efficiency.”

The executive gym and dining room, Aldrin knew, were considered inefficiency by some stockholders, but this had never resulted in loss of executive privileges. Executives, it had been explained repeatedly, needed these perks to help them maintain peak performance. They had earned the privileges they used, and the privileges boosted their efficiency. It was said, but Aldrin didn’t believe it. He also didn’t say it.

“So, bottom line, Gene—” It was daring to use Crenshaw’s first name, but he was in the mood to be daring. “Either they agree to treatment, in which case you might consider letting them stay on, or you’ll find a way to force them out. Law or no law.”

“The law does not require a company to bankrupt itself,” Crenshaw said. “That notion went overboard early this century. We’d lose the tax break, but that’s such a tiny part of our budget that it’s worthless, really. Now if they’d agree to dispense with their so-called support measures and act like regular employees, I wouldn’t push the treatment—though why they wouldn’t want it I can’t fathom.”

“So you want me to do what?” Aldrin asked.

Crenshaw smiled. “Glad to see you’re coming onboard with this, Pete. I want you to make it clear to your people what the options are. One way or another, they have to quit being a drag on the company: give up their luxuries now, or take the treatment and give them up if it’s really the autism that makes them need that stuff, or…” He ran a finger across his throat. “They can’t hold the company hostage. There’s not a law in this land we can’t find a way around or get changed.” He sat back and folded his hands behind his head. “We have the resources.”

Aldrin felt sick. He had known this all his adult life, but he had never been at a level where anyone said it out loud. He had been able to hide it from himself.

“I’ll try to explain,” he said, his tongue stiff in his mouth.

“Pete, you’ve got to quit trying and start doing,” Crenshaw said. “You’re not stupid or lazy; I can tell that. But you just don’t have the… the push.”

Aldrin nodded and escaped from Crenshaw’s office. He went into the washroom and scrubbed his hands… He still felt soiled. He thought of quitting, of turning in his resignation. Mia had a good job, and they had chosen not to have children yet. They could coast a while on her salary if they had to.

But who would look after his people? Not Crenshaw. Aldrin shook his head at himself in the mirror. He was only fooling himself if he thought he could help. He had to try, but… who else in the family could pay his brother’s bills for residential treatment? What if he lost his job?