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“ ‘But aren’t you proud of who you are?’ ” Bailey’s tone makes it clear he is quoting the slogan from the Center: We are proud of who we are.
“No,” Cameron says. “I pretended to be. But really — what is there to be proud of? I know what you’re going to say, Lou—” He looks at me. He is wrong. I was not going to say anything. “You’ll say that normal people do what we do, only in smaller amounts. Lots of people self-stim, but they don’t even realize it. They tap their feet or twirl their hair or touch their faces. Yes, but they’re normal and no one makes them stop. Other people don’t make good eye contact, but they’re normal and no one nags them to make eye contact. They have something else to make up for the tiny bit of themselves that acts autistic. That’s what I want. I want — I want not to have to try so hard to look normal. I just want to be normal.”
“ ‘Normal’ is a dryer setting,” Bailey says.
“Normal is other people.” Cameron’s arm twitches and he shrugs violently; sometimes that stops it. “This — this stupid arm… I’m tired of trying to hide what’s wrong. I want it to be right.” His voice has gotten loud, and I do not know if he will be angrier if I ask him to be quieter. I wish I had not brought them here. “Anyway,” Cameron says, slightly softer, “I’m going to do it, and you can’t stop me.”
“I am not trying to stop you,” I say.
“Are you going to?” he asks. He looks at each of us in turn.
“I do not know. I am not ready to say.”
“Linda won’t,” Bailey says. “She says she will quit her job.”
“I do not know why the patterns would be the same,” Eric says. He is looking at the book. “It does not make sense.”
“A familiar face is a familiar face?”
“The task is finding familiar in different. The activation pattern should be more similar to finding a familiar nonface in different unfaces. Do they have that picture in this book?”
“It is on the next page,” I say. “It says the activation pattern is the same except that the face task activates the facial recognition area.”
“They care more about facial recognition,” Eric says.
“Normal people care about normal people,” Cameron says. “That is why I want to be normal.”
“Autistic people care about autistic people,” Eric says.
“Not the same,” Cameron says. He looks around the group. “Look at us. Eric is making patterns with his finger. Bailey is chewing on his lip, Lou is trying so hard to sit still that he looks like a piece of wood, and I’m bouncing whether I want to or not. You accept it that I bounce, you accept it that I have dice in my pocket, but you do not care about me. When I had flu last spring, you did not call or bring food.”
I do not say anything. There is nothing to say. I did not call or bring food because I did not know Cameron wanted me to do that. I think it is unfair of him to complain now. I am not sure that normal people always call and bring food when someone is sick. I glance at the others. They are all looking away from Cameron, as I am. I like Cameron; I am used to Cameron. What is the difference between liking and being used to? I am not sure. I do not like not being sure.
“You don’t, either,” Eric says finally. “You have not been to any meetings of the society in over a year.”
“I guess not,” Cameron’s voice is soft now. “I kept seeing — I can’t say it — the older ones, worse than we are. No young ones; they’re all cured at birth or before. When I was twenty it was a lot of help. But now… we are the only ones like us. The older autistics, the ones who didn’t get the good early training — I do not like to be around them. They make me afraid that I could go back to that, being like them. And there is no one for us to help, because there are no young ones.“
“Tony,” Bailey says, looking at his knees.
“Tony is the youngest and he is… what, twenty-seven? He’s the only one under thirty. All the rest of the younger people at the Center are… different.”
“Emmy likes Lou,” Eric says. I look at him; I do not know what he means by that.
“If I’m normal, I will never have to go to a psychiatrist again,” Cameron says. I think of Dr. Fornum and think that not seeing her is almost enough reason to risk the treatment. “I can marry without a certificate of stability. Have children.”
“You want to get married,” Bailey says.
“Yes,” Cameron says. His voice is louder again, but only a little louder, and his face is red. “I want to get married. I want to have children. I want to live in an ordinary house in an ordinary neighborhood and take the ordinary public transportation and live the rest of my life as a normal person.”
“Even if you aren’t the same person?” Eric asks.
“Of course I’ll be the same person,” Cameron says. “Just normal.”
I am not sure this is possible. When I think of the ways in which I am not normal, I ca
“I will do it by myself if no one else will,” Cameron says.
“It is your decision,” Chuy says, in his quoting voice.
“Yes.” Cameron’s voice drops. “Yes.”
“I will miss you,” Bailey says.
“You could come, too,” Cameron says.
“No. Not yet, anyway. I want to know more.”
“I am going home,” Cameron says. “I will tell them tomorrow.” He stands up, and I can see his hand in his pocket, jiggling the dice, up and down, up and down.
We do not say good-bye. We do not need to do that with each other. Cameron walks out and shuts the door quietly behind him. The others look at me and then away.
“Some people do not like who they are,” Bailey says.
“Some people are different than other people think,” Chuy says.
“Cameron was in love with a woman who did not love him,” Eric says. “She said it would never work. It was when he was in college.” I wonder how Eric knows that.
“Emmy says Lou is in love with a normal woman who is going to ruin his life,” Chuy says.
“Emmy does not know what she is talking about,” I say. “Emmy should mind her own business.”
“Does Cameron think this woman will love him if he is normal?” Bailey asks.
“She married someone else,” Eric says. “He thinks he might love someone who would love him back. I think that is why he wants the treatment.”
“I would not do it for a woman,” Bailey says. “If I do it, I need a reason for me.” I wonder what he would say if he knew Marjory. If I knew it would make Marjory love me, would I do it? It is an uncomfortable thought; I put it aside.
“I do not know what normal would feel like. Normal people do not all look happy. Maybe it feels bad to be normal, as bad as being autistic.” Chuy’s head is twisting up and around, back and down.
“I would like to try it,” Eric says. “But I would like to be able to get back to this self if it didn’t work.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I say. “Remember what Dr. Ransome said to Linda? Once the co
“Is that what they will do, make new co
“What about the old ones? Won’t there be” — Bailey waves his arms — “like when things collide? Confusion? Static? Chaos?”
“I do not know,” I say. All at once I feel swallowed by my ignorance, so vast an unknowing. Out of that vastness so many bad things might come. Then an image of a photograph taken by one of the space-based telescopes comes to mind: that vast darkness lit by stars. Beauty, too, may be in that unknown.
“I would think they would have to turn off the circuits that are working now, build new circuits, and then turn on the new ones. That way only the good co
“That is not what they told us,” Chuy says.
“No one would agree to having their brain destroyed to build a new one,” Eric says.