Flowers for Algernon

May 2S-So this is how a person can come to despise himself-knowing he’s doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop. Against my will I found myself drawn 75 to Alice’s apartment. She was surprised but she let me in. “You’re soaked. The water is streaming down your face.”

“It’s raining. Good for the flowers.”

“Come on in. Let me get you a towel. You’ll catch pneumonia.”

“You’re the only one I can talk to,” I said “Let me stay.”

“I’ve got a pot of fresh coffee on the stove. Go ahead and dry yourself and then we can talk.”

I looked around while she went to get the coffee. It was the first time I had ever been inside her apartment. I felt a sense of pleasure, but there was something disturbing about the room.

Everything was neat. The porcelain figurines were in a straight line on the window-ledge, all facing the same way. And the throw-pillows on the sofa hadn’t been thrown at all, but were regularly spaced on the clear plastic covers that protected the upholstery. Two of the end tables had magazines, neatly stacked so that the titles were clearly visible. On one table: The Reporter, The Saturday Review, The New Yorker; on the other: Mademoiselle, House Beautiful, and Reader’s Digest.

On the far wall, across from the sofa, hung an ornately framed reproduction of Picasso’s “Mother and Child,” and directly opposite, above the sofa, was a painting of a dashing Renaissance courtier, masked, sword in hand, protecting a frightened, pink-cheeked maiden. Taken all together, it was wrong. As if Alice couldn’t make up her mind who she was and which world she wanted to live in.

“You haven’t been to the lab for a few days,” she called from the kitchen. “Professor Nemur is worried about you.”

“I couldn’t face them,” I said. “I know there’s no reason for me to be ashamed, but it’s an empty feeling not going in to work every day-not seeing the shop, the ovens, the people. It’s too much. Last night and the night before, I had nightmares of drowning.”

She set the tray in the center of the coffee table-the napkins folded into triangles, and the cookies laid out in a circular display pattern. “You mustn’t take it so hard, Charlie. It has nothing to do with you.”

“It doesn’t help to tell myself that. Those people — for all these years-were my family. It was like being thrown out of my own home.”

“That’s just it,” she said. “This has become a symbolic repetition of experiences you had as a child. Being rejected by your parents… being sent away…”

“Oh, Christ! Never mind giving it a nice neat label. What matters is that before I got involved in this experiment I had friends, people who cared for me. Now I’m afraid—”

“You’ve still got friends.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Fear is a normal reaction.”

“It’s more than that. I’ve been afraid before. Afraid of being strapped for not giving in to Norma, afraid of passing Howells Street where the gang used to tease me and push the around. And I was afraid of the schoolteacher, Mrs. Libby, who tied my hands so I wouldn’t fidget with things on my desk. But those things were realsomething I was justified in being afraid of. This terror at being kicked out of the bakery is vague, a fear I don’t understand.”

“Get hold of yourself.”

“You don’t feel the panic.”

“But, Charlie, it’s to be expected. You’re a new swimmer forced off a diving raft and terrified of losing the solid wood under your feet. Mr. Donner was good to you, and you were sheltered all these years. Being driven out of the bakery this way is an even greater shock than you expected.”

“Knowing it intellectually doesn’t help. I can’t sit alone in my room any more. I wander into the streets at all hours of the day or night, not knowing what I’m looking for… walking until I’m lost… finding myself outside the bakery. Last night I walked all the way from Washington Square to Central Park, and I slept in the park. What the hell am I searching for?” The more I talked, the more upset she became. “What can I do to help you, Charlie?”

“I don’t know. I’m like an animal who’s been locked out of his nice, safe cage.”

She sat beside me on the couch. “They’re pushing you too fast. You’re confused. You want to be an adult, but there’s still a little boy inside you. Alone and frightened.” She put my head on her shoulder, trying to comfort me, 77 and as she stroked my hair I knew that she needed me the way I needed her. “Charlie,” she whispered after a while, “whatever you want… don’t be afraid of me.. “ I wanted to tell her I was waiting for the panic.

Once — during a bakery delivery — Charlie had nearly fainted when a middle-aged woman, just out of the bath, amused herself by opening her bathrobe and exposing herself. Had he ever seen a woman without clothes on? Did he know how to make love? His terror-his whining-must have frightened her because she clutched her robe together and gave him a quarter to forget what had happened. She was only testing him, she warned, to see if he was a good boy.