Flowers for Algernon

She looked at me with new respect. “Well, that’s fine.” Still nothing. And that in itself was curious. How far could I go without being overwhelmed by symptoms of panic? When we were alone in the room? When she undressed? When I saw her body? When we were lying together? Suddenly, it was important to know if I could be like other men, if I could ever ask a woman to share a life with me. Having intelligence and knowledge wasn’t enough. I wanted this, too. The sense of release and looseness was strong now with the feeling that it was possible. The excitement that came over me when I kissed her again communicated itself, and I was sure I could be normal with her. She was different from Alice. She was the kind of woman who had been around.

Then her voice changed, uncertain. “Before we go..

Just one thing…” She stood up and took a step toward me in the spray of lamplight, opening her coat, and I could see the shape of her body as I had not imagined it all the time we were sitting next to each other in the shadows. “Only the fifth month,” she said. “It doesn’t make any difference. You don’t mind, do you?”

Standing there with her coat open, she was superimposed as a double exposure on the picture of the middle-aged woman just out of the bathtub, holding open her bathrobe for Charlie to see. And I waited, as a blasphemer waits for lightning. I looked away. It was the last thing I had expected, but the coat wrapped tightly around her on such a hot night should have warned me that something was wrong.

“It’s not my husband’s,” she assured me. “I wasn’t lying to you about what I said before. I haven’t seen him for years. It was a salesman I met about eight months ago. I was living with him. I’m not going to see him any more, but I’m going to keep the baby. We’ve just got to be careful-not rough or anything like that. But otherwise you don’t have to worry.” Her voice ran down when she saw my anger. “That’s filthy!” I shouted. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” 90 She drew away, wrapping her coat quickly around her to protect what lay within.

As she made that protective gesture, I saw the second double image: my mother, heavy with my sister, in the days when she was holding me less, warming me less with her voice and touch, protecting me less against anyone who dared to say I was subnormal.

I think I grabbed her shoulder-I’m not sure, but then she was screaming, and I was sharply back to reality with the sense of danger. I wanted to tell her I had meant no harm-1 would never hurt her or anyone. “Please, don’t screaml” But she was screaming, and I heard the running footsteps on the darkened path. This was something no one would understand. I ran into the darkness, to find an exit from the park, zig-tagging across one path and down another. I didn’t know the park, and suddenly I crashed into something that threw me backwards. A wire-mesh fence — a dead end. Then I saw the swings and slides and realized it was a children’s playground locked up for the night. I followed the fence, and kept going, half-running, stumbling over twisted roots. At the lake that curved around near the playground, I doubled back, found another path, went over the small footbridge and then around and under it. No exit.

“What is it? What happened, lady?”

“A maniac?”

“You all right?”

“Which way did he go?”

I had circled back to where I had started from. I slipped behind the huge outcropping of a rock and a screen of bramble and dropped flat on my stomach. “Get a cop. There’s never a cop when you need one.”

“What happened?”

“A degenerate tried to rape her.”

“Hey, some guy down there is chasing him. There he goesl”

“Come on] Get the bastard before he gets outta the parkl”

“Careful. He’s got a knife and a gun… ”

It was obvious that the shouting had flushed out the night crawlers because the cry of “there he goes!” was echoed from behind me, and looking out from behind the 91 rock I could see a lone runner being chased down the lamplit path into the darkness. Seconds later, another one passed in front of the rock and disappeared into the shadows. I pictured myself being caught by this eager mob and beaten and torn by them. I deserved it. I almost wanted it.

I stood up, brushed the leaves and dirt from my clothing and walked slowly down the path in the direction from which I had come. I expected every second to be grabbed from behind and pulled down into the dirt and darkness, but soon I saw the bright lights of Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, and I came out of the park.

Thinking about it now, in the security of my room, I am shaken with the rawness that touched me. Remembering how my mother looked before she gave birth to my sister is frightening. But even more frightening is the feeling that I wanted them to catch me and beat me. Why did I want to be punished? Shadows out of the past clutch at my legs and drag me down. I open my mouth to scream, but I am voiceless. My hands are trembling, I feel cold, and there is a distant humming in my ears.