Betsy Eliot - The Brain and The Beauty

She’d been intently watching his proceedings, but now she looked away, appearing faintly embarrassed. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Her actions and words declared otherwise. She looked at him and saw the freak, the mutant. Her next comment confirmed it.

“I would think that someone who’s lived through the kind of experiences you have would want to give something back instead of just wasting that knowledge.”

Control snapped like the leash on a monster. He dropped the spoon which sank beneath the mixture and ripped the goggles from his eyes to stare at her. “What do you know about it? You couldn’t understand what it’s like!”

She didn’t jump back. Or run screaming from his home. Instead she looked straight at him for the first time since they’d entered the house. He saw satisfaction, not revulsion, in those startling eyes.

“That’s exactly my point,” she said. “How could I? My childhood was filled with dolls and dress-up, not mathematic calculations. It’s impossible for me to understand what it’s like for my son—or for you. That’s why I need your help.”

It took an amazingly long time for Jeremy to realize he’d been conned. She’d been leading him to this conclusion all along. He had to respect the ingenuity. It was a sign of gifted intelligence to look at problems with originality and resourcefulness. Perhaps her son wasn’t as different from her as she thought.

Because she was beginning to intrigue him, he filled his voice with firmness and finality. “I can’t help you.”

To his amazement, she looked shocked at his answer, as if she’d really expected him to change his mind. “Can’t or won’t?” she challenged.

“Can’t and won’t. I can suggest someone, a counselor,” he said when she finally took a breath. “Maybe the two of you can see him together.”

“I don’t want a counselor,” she insisted. “I want you.”

Even knowing what she meant, her words lanced through him. “You don’t understand what you’re asking. Didn’t you hear that I eat small children for breakfast?”

“That’s not what some of your former students said.”

He couldn’t believe it. She’d shocked him again. “You contacted my students? What right do you have to…?”

“The rights of a mother. Do you think I would come all this way if I hadn’t checked you out? My son’s future is at stake!”

“Look, let’s get this thing settled once and for all. I am not going to teach your son or any other child.”

Abby frowned and Jeremy wondered if he had finally gotten through to her.

“I didn’t ask you to,” she responded. “I want you to teach me.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked. “You’re not a genius.”

Abby felt the heat rise on her face as he bluntly stated the obvious. “That’s the point.”

“What’s the point?” he asked, obviously confused. “I thought you wanted me to enroll Robbie in my program?”

“That was never my intent. I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not sure you’d be a good influence on him.” The last thing Robbie needed in his life right now was a twisted and scarred recluse as a role model.

He appeared stunned. “Then what do you want?”

“As I said, I want you to work with me.” Although it galled her to confess it to this man, she knew he would accept nothing less than the truth. “I’m not smart enough to do this myself.”

“To do what?”

“Decide Robbie’s future. He can’t attend a normal elementary school and the higher level schools won’t take him. Obviously you’ll agree that home schooling is not an option. How can I know what’s best for my son? I don’t have a Ph.D. or any of those other letters you have tacked on behind your name. I never even went to college, for heaven’s sake.”

“What has college got to do with anything?”

He sounded truly perplexed and she couldn’t help wondering if it was a new experience for him. Join the club. “I didn’t pay much attention in school,” she admitted. “I was always too busy going to parties or hanging around with my friends to bother with anything as boring as studying.”

“Do you think that if you’d paid attention in algebra, you’d have been prepared for someone with Robbie’s intellect?”

She shrugged. “Maybe not, but I’d be a step closer. I was so sure that there’d be plenty of time to get serious.” She took a deep breath and continued, determined to get it all out. “I met Robbie’s father when I was only sixteen. He was older than me, already finishing college with top grades and expectations for a fast track to success. When he said we looked good together, I thought he meant we belonged together. We were married when I was just eighteen.”

Jeremy listened to her story without expression. She wasn’t even sure if he was actually listening, or if his mind had wandered off the way Robbie’s sometimes did, until he responded. “Didn’t your parents have anything to say about that?”

“We eloped. My parents were killed in an accident when I was young. I lived with my grandmother. Ted convinced me he had everything figured out and I believed him. Turns out, I was wrong.”

“You were young. It’s called immaturity. Most kids are like that.”

The fact that he was defending her made her feel worse. “Were you?”

He shook his head. “Hardly.”

Of course not. She tried to picture him skipping classes to go to the beach or spending his time studying the fine art of flirting, but she failed.

His eyes focused on a spot beyond her head and she could tell he was looking into the past. It didn’t appear to be a comfortable place. “I’d have given just about anything to be able to have a normal, carefree childhood.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he appeared shocked to have said them.

She got a mental picture of a young Jeremy, with his awkward clothes and remarkable brain. Had no one seen beyond those things, to the person inside? Was that how Robbie felt? It made her even more determined to figure out what he needed to be happy.

“At first everything was fine,” she said. “Ted went to graduate school while I worked. He was smart and ambitious.” And he’d made it clear that she shouldn’t bother trying to understand the complicated life he’d mapped out for them. “Then Robbie came along and everything changed. We could see right from the beginning that he was different. At first Ted treated him like a trophy to be trotted out and placed on the mantel for friends to see, but then it started to become clear that Robbie’s abilities far outmeasured Ted’s and he began to see his own son as a threat. Ted just didn’t seem to know what to do with him.” It had been a shock to discover there wasn’t much substance behind her husband’s confident exterior.

“But you did?”

She laughed at the notion. “Sometimes I felt as helpless as if I was the infant, only there was no one to give me the answers or take care of me. I’ve been struggling to stay one step ahead of him ever since.” Without meaning to, she stepped closer. “He’s my own son and I can’t even understand what he’s saying half the time. I’ve got two months to figure out what’s best for his future and I’ll do whatever it takes to help him.”

“You must be desperate if you’ve decided to center your plan around me.”

“I am.” She didn’t think she’d realized just how much was at risk before she’d met him.

Abby had expected him to be different. But dealing with Robbie had made her believe that she could deal with different. She’d known she would be asking a lot of a man whose solitary life wasn’t exactly a secret, but for her son’s sake she’d been willing to try.

But this awareness of him had caught her completely by surprise. She told herself it was a result of her attempts to find out about the man behind the brain, but there seemed to be something more basic, more dangerous, about her reaction to him. And she was very much afraid it had nothing to do with his mind.

Abby might not know much, but she knew anything deeper between them was out of the question. She had enough problems without allowing another superhuman into a life that was already too far from ordinary. Besides, if her husband had thought she was stupid, she could only imagine what Jeremy would think of her.

He’d turned to tend the mysterious concoction he was brewing, remaining silent for a long stretch of time before responding. “For the sake of argument, let’s just say that your frivolous teen years did contribute, marginally, to the difficulties you’re facing now. Exactly what are you hoping to learn? Calculus for beginners? Quantum physics in twelve easy lessons?”

“I want to find out about you.”

His head bolted up. “You want to study me? What kind of aberration do you think I am?”

She stepped closer, only the counter separating them. “I think you’re a man who looks at a rainbow and sees sunlight reflecting through little drops of water.”

“Refracting,” he corrected.

Abby shrugged, conceding the point, believing her own had just been made. “I see a spray of reds and blues and greens floating across the sky. I wonder what I’d do with a pot full of gold.”

He looked bewildered by her response.

“I bet you fall asleep by adding columns of numbers in your head,” she challenged.

“If I’m lucky.”

Abby wondered what kinds of problems and anguish would keep a man like him awake. If they were anything like the nightmares that sometimes woke Robbie, they must be doozies. “You have experienced the kind of things Robbie is going through. You understand things I will never comprehend.”

Jeremy stared deep into the murky brown liquid in front of him, no longer seeing the mixture’s progress. Dear heaven, it was worse than he’d imagined. She did see him as a freak. Maybe they should put him in a cage and let children throw candy at his head.

Worse yet, when he looked across his kitchen at the stunningly beautiful woman observing him, his thoughts weren’t the least bit cerebral. Desire was strong and real, and completely unacceptable.

“So you’d like to make me into your own personal guinea pig?”

“Of course not. I just want to ask you some questions, see what makes you happy, what you would have done differently if you’d had the chance.”

She wanted to know what he would have done differently? He thought of the series of accidents and mistakes that had shaped his life. But the past didn’t matter. Not even the most brilliant minds in the world had figured out a way to turn back time.

However, the future still waited for Robbie and others like him. Jeremy had once thought he could make a difference. He’d been wrong.

She seemed to mistake his brooding silence as a sign to continue. “If I’m going to enroll Robbie in the fall, I haven’t got much time, so it wouldn’t require much of a commitment from you,” she explained, clearly having thought this out completely. “You wouldn’t have to do anything, really, just be yourself and tell me what it’s like.”

“Is that all?” he asked dryly.

“Well, I suppose it might be a bit of an inconvenience from time to time. I figured, with all I have to learn, that I might have to be here quite a bit.”

A bit of an inconvenience? He supposed that was one way of looking at things. “What possible reason would I have to agree to such an undertaking?”

“I understand that I’m asking a lot of you, but I’m not asking you to do it for free.”