Flowers for Algernon

She started inside and then she 1Qoked back at me, her voice shaky: “I’ll be here when you get back. I’m just 87 upset, that’s all, and I want both of us to have a chance to think this out while we’re a good distance apart.”

For the first time in many weeks she didn’t ask me inside. I stared at the closed door with the anger mounting inside me. I wanted to create a scene, to bang on the door, to break it down. I wanted my anger to consume the building.

But as I walked away I felt a kind of simmering, then cooling, and finally a relief. I walked so fast I was drifting along the streets, and the feeling that hit my cheek was a cool breeze out of the summer night. Suddenly free .1 realize now that my feeling for Alice had been moving backward against the current of my learning, from worship. to love, to fondness, to a feeling of gratitude and responsibility. My confused feeling for her had been holding me back, and I had clung to her out of my fear of being forced out on my own, and cut adrift.

But with the freedom came a sadness. I wanted to be in love with her. I wanted to overcome my emotional and sexual fears, to marry, have children, settle down.

Now it’s impossible. I am just as far away from Alice with an I. Q. of 185 as I was when I had an I. Q. of 70. And this time we both know it.

June 8 What drives me out of the apartment to prowl through the city? I wander through the streets alone-not the relaxing stroll of a summer night, but the tense hurry to get-where? Down alleyways, looking into doorways, peering into half-shuttered windows, wanting someone to talk to and yet afraid to meet anyone. Up one street, and down another, through the endless labyrinth, hurling myself against the neon cage of the city. Searching… for what?

I met a woman in Central Park. She was sitting on a bench near the lake, with a coat clutched around her despite the beat. She smiled and motioned for me to sit beside her. We looked at the bright skyline on Central Park South, the honeycomb of lighted cells against the blackness, and I wished I could absorb them all.

Yes, I told her, I was from New York. No, I had never been to Newport News, Virginia. That’s where she was from, and where she had married this sailor who was at sea now, and she hadn’t seen him in two and a half years .88 She twisted and knotted a handkerchief, using it from time to time to wipe the beaded sweat from her forehead. Even in the dim light reflected from the lake, I could see that she wore a great deal of make-up, but she looked attractive with her straight dark hair loose to her shoulders-except that her face was puffy and swollen as if she had just gotten up from sleep. She wanted to talk about herself, and I wanted to listen. Her father had given her a good home, an education, everything a wealthy shipbuilder could give his only daughter-but not forgiveness. He would never forgive her elopement with the sailor.

She took my hand as she spoke, and rested her head on my shoulder. “The night Gary and I were married,” she whispered, “I was a terrified virgin. And he just went crazy. First, he had to slap me and beat me. And then he took me with no love-making. That was the last time we were ever together. I never let him touch me again.”

She could probably tell by the trembling of my hand that I was startled. It was too violent and intimate for me. Feeling my hand stir, she gripped it tighter as if she had to finish her story before she could let me go. It was important to her, and I sat quietly as one sits before a bird that feeds from your palm.

“Not that I don’t like men,” she assured me with wide-eyed openness. “I’ve been with other men. Not him, but lots of others. Most men are gentle and tender with a woman. They make love slowly, with caresses and kisses first.” She looked at me meaningfully, and let her open palm brush back and forth against mine.

It was what I had heard about, read about, dreamed about. I didn’t know her name, and she didn’t ask mine. She just wanted me to take her someplace where we could be alone. I wondered what Alice would think. I caressed her awkwardly and kissed her still more hesitantly so that she looked up at me. “What’s the matter?” she whispered. “What are you thinking?”

“About you.”

“Do you have a place we can go?”

Each step forward was caution. At what point would the ground give way and plunge me into anxiety? Something kept me moving ahead to test my footing. “If you don’t have a place, the Mansion Hotel on Fifty-third doesn’t cost too much. And they don’t bother you about luggage if you pay in advance.”

“I have a room—”