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Egghead  by Paul Pekin

 "Come along now," Mr. Wiley said. "There is no disputing the obvious. It's another year gone by, another year wasted. Eh?"

     Mrs. Graham did not like the word wasted, certainly not applied to something so precious as a year. "Not entirely wasted!"

    "Oh, yes, wasted. Passing grades mean nothing when we know, as we do know, that the boy has not applied himself. B's. C's. Is this the kind of academic record that will eventually lead to college, to success in life? I think not. And you think not too."
The Institute For Motivational Enhancement, such a cold small place, curtained plate glass windows, plain beige walls, patternless rug, expressionless music playing on secret speakers. Peter hated it, hated Mr. Wiley. Big egg shaped man. White shell-like face. Tiny wicked eyes. How had his mother learned of such a creature and such a place?

    Mr. Wiley smiled. "Let me tell you how it is, Mother. He started well. A few A's. A few decent reports from his teachers. And then, the same old thing. He "forgets" his assignments. He hands them in late, if at all. He can't concentrate for tests. Instead of study, you find him listening to rock music. Staring out the window. Oh, mother! I simply don't like that subject! Or that teacher. And, of course, Teacher does not like me. A bright boy, but he doesn't even try. Mrs. Graham, what you have is an underachiever."

    Peter imagined a large stone striking Mr. Wiley's shell-like face. Would he crack and ooze yellow yolk? Would he collapse into a lovely heap of bones?
"And that," Mr. Wiley went on, "is what the Institute for Motivational Enhancement is all about. To turn your underachiever into a productive motivated young man with a real future. "

    "Oh," sighed Mrs. Graham. "A young man already. And only eleven."
You won't do it, Peter thought. You won't turn me into anything.
Others had tried. The nuns. Colonel Breton and his military school. Dr. Able. Peter himself had tried. Whatever good came of it?

    Mr. Wiley produced a printed form and real fountain pen that wrote with real wet ink. "Our standard contract. Please sign."

    That evening Peter watched his mother dress. A date. Always, there were dates. Peter liked none of them, and this most recent one least of all. The new man's name was Mr. Cain; he was tall; he was dark; he had wicked white teeth that seemed to reflect light. When he turned his smile on your mother you wanted to weep.
She was a beautiful mother. A boy of eleven begins to understand certain things--that his mother is yet a young woman, that her hair, blonde, luxuriant, smooth, is something seldom seen on common streets, that her body, thin but rounded, graceful in movement, sensuous in repose, possesses secrets too magical to deny, that she is greatly desired by others whose claims, unworthy as they might be, override his own. A boy and his mother, together in this apartment with its carpeted floors and matched furnishings, windows looking toward the distant expressway over which incoming aircraft, landing gear and flaps lowered, pass, relentlessly and regularly and shockingly close.

    "Remember," she said, attaching an earring, "There is school tomorrow and you should be in bed by ten. You haven't started your homework yet?"
"I will. I'll do it all. I'm going to work hard. I promise. You won't have to send me to that man."

"How I wish I could believe that. But we both know better, don't we, Peter." She said this without anger; never was there anger between them. She stepped into the bedroom. He found his eyes immediately drawn to the television which waited blank and confident.

Mr. Cain, wearing a black topcoat with a long white scarf loose at the neck, arrived, his hair dark as ink, his eyes darker yet, but glittering, like polished metal held close to flames. He was successful man whose company did business with the office where Peter's mother worked. Never, in one lifetime or two, would a man like Mr. Cain need motivational enhancement. He walked into the apartment and claimed a chair. "Take your time, Elaine," he said, she moving from bedroom to bathroom and back with quick high heeled steps. Take your time, but he did not remove his coat.
Mr. Cain and Peter regarded each other. There seemed to be not so much a smile on Mr. Cain's lips, but a threat that they would part and reveal his wicked white teeth. Then he discovered Peter's arithmetic book.

"Long division. You'll have to study hard now."

"Yes, sir."

"Your mother wants you to succeed. That's what I call a good mother."

Then she was out of the bedroom and Mr. Cain was helping her into her coat. Kissing her son, she smelled of fine perfume. "To bed by ten," she warned. "And don't forget that homework."

"I won't. You won't have to send me to that man."

Now Mr. Cain did smile. White white wicked teeth.

As soon as the door closed, Peter pressed his ear against the panel. He could hear them talking in the hall.

"So you took him

?" "But Nick, I don't know. That man . . . . he seems so . . . "

" You have to stick with it, Elaine. You said so yourself, nothing yet has worked."

The voices grew muffled, secretive, and then he heard the elevator with its sliding steel doors. A moment later, looking down from the bedroom window, he saw them in the parking lot, entering Mr. Cain's gleaming black car.

Long division. Sixty-five into two hundred and twenty. Was it twice? Three times? Erase. Figure. Erase again. Erase until the paper gives way.

Like an egg. That was Mr. Wiley, loathsome and round and filled with something yellow. Motivational Enhancement. How was it done? Did he fix electrodes to your head, pull down a switch on the wall, shoot you full of electricity, turn you into a robot?
There were cookies on the shelf, chocolate milk in the refrigerator, a movie on television. Peter had seen it before. The scientist had created a monster and the monster had cracked the scientist's great bald head. Tomorrow morning was soon enough for long division.

The answer came later in a dream that brought him into a place both vague and familiar, a place bare and colorless and cold. He was naked. They had taken his clothes and made him sit before the desk. Behind it, round and white, Mr. Wiley spread a sheet of stiff paper beneath his stubby fingers.
"I mean not to waste our time, Peter. I mean that we shall understand each other at once. A contract has been signed, the ink permanent. What happens now is entirely up to you. You have a wonderful mother, beautiful, loving. It matters nothing to me if you choose not to work. It matters to.her More than she knows. You will see. When you fail, it will be she who is hurt, when you do wrong, it will be she who feels the pain. This has always been so. But now . . . " Mr. Wiley tapped the sheet of paper, "You see I am being quite clear. What happens to her is entirely up to you. And you, I believe, already have neglected your homework . . . "
Then the rustle of velvet, of silk, invisible, present everywhere. The room suddenly filled with perfume, suddenly, invisibly filled with her; he could feel her love, her beauty, her urgent need, more urgent than he had ever imagined, and oh! there was something else too, something fresh, something raw, something newly coined, something cold and white and deadly, something rushing at him, howling like the evilwind, it was behind him, it was before him, it was within him, it was of him, it was so horrible it could not be given a name and he began to scream, open mouthed, noiseless, until the sound he could not make became the sound he was hearing, a sound calling him out of this world, out of this sleep, out of this dream.
It was the telephone, a room away, crying out in pain.
"Darling? I don't want to frighten you, I'm all right, do you hear? But there's been an accident."
And that was when he really awoke and found himself standing in the hallway, naked, holding the empty phone to his ear. There was a light in the bathroom. The door swung open. She was home, already in her nightgown. "Peter? What on earth . . . ?"
You must never tell dreams, lest they become true. "Your face," he sobbed. "Your face!"

"What of my face?" she said, lightly touching her fingers to it. And he dared not tell her it was covered with blood.

This too had seemed real. In school the next day Mrs. Ebel stood at the board, diagramming sentences, subject, predicate, indirect object, and just as that hazy drowse began to pull his attention away, he saw it again, the blood that had not been there, and he knew he must force himself back lest the thing really happen, the thing that would somehow be caused by him.

The following Saturday Mr. Wiley was waiting in his office, the same cold bare place, the same featureless walls. No frills needed here! "You may just leave him with me, Mother. Take an hour. Do some shopping. We'll get along just fine."
Peter watched his mother obey this man. It seemed impossible she would, a mother so bright, so smart, so attractive. He watched her through the door, her slim legs flashing. Then she was gone.

"I mean not to waste our time," Mr. Wiley said. "I believe we already understand each other." He began opening the mail on his desk, slitting each envelope with a sharp white handled knife. On the wall, a digital clock slowly marked time. Peter watched a dozen minutes slip silently away. It seemed perfectly clear, perfectly logical, that the whole hour would so slip by. Yes, he understood Mr. Wiley.

"The only problem," Mr. Wiley eventually said--he had begun reading a magazine, did not look up from the pages, "is that you might forget that you love her. Ahhhhh. That would be serious."

At three she picked him up. They stopped for ice cream at Bresslers, a fine custom related to earlier visits with doctors and dentists and people who cut your hair. Peter ordered chocolate ripple, an old favorite, and could not taste a bite.

What had happened? You could see she wanted to know. "Am I permitted to ask? Or is it a secret?"

How could he possible tell her that he and Mr. Wiley had spoken exactly twice in the hour, that it had all been said several nights ago? "I'll work hard. You'll never have to worry about me again."

Boys make promises men could not keep. Weeks go by, and more weeks, but imagine the classroom, all that dry chalk, those dense empty books, teacher's droning voice. Imagine the clock that moves so slowly, the agony of each stupefying second. One promises and one tries but the hours take their toll and finally, inevitably, the test lies before you and the answers do not. Mrs. Ebel collects the papers, this tall kind woman who could be a mother herself, and at that very moment, even as she glances down at the empty pages, it happens--

Something cold, something white, something invisible. You feel it rise up out of you, out of you, out of you and go howling on its way. Kind Mrs. Ebel sadly shakes her head. "Peter, Peter. What will your mother think?"

Hours later, the bell and the eight blocks home and an agonizing elevator that stops at every floor, and a mother not due home, already in her room, door closed, weeping. "Wait a bit, won't you, please? Peter, it's all right. Everything will be all right."
He had not heard her cry since Father left. Had that been his fault too?

After awhile she joined him in the kitchen. He sat by the table, eyes averted. "Oh, God, Oh, God," she whispered. I've done it this time. Peter, I've lost my job."
She was still in her severe office suit, the one she liked to wear to meetings because it had "power." "They shot down the presentation. Somebody got to Rogers. She was all for it, go ahead, Elaine, go ahead, all that work and somebody got to her. Oh, Peter, Peter, what made me do it? I never had to say what I did. People just don't say such things!" So it wasn't, at least this time, her face. Peter watched her extract a package of cigarettes from her purse. Her face was whole.

She told it over and over again, how she stood to Mrs. Rogers and let her exactly know what she had thought of her all these years, how she said the terrible things no one must ever say to any employer, present, past, or future, said them and destroyed her career--lighting another cigarette every time she came to this part--and there was really no way he could open up and tell the truth, that this was punishment, her punishment for his sloth, and next time it would be far worse.

After supper--she opened a can of soup, popped white bread into the toaster--Mr. Cain showed up.

"I heard what happened," he said, turning to Peter exactly as if it were Peter he was addressing and not his mother. She was still in her gray suit, had not even combed her hair. "It's not the money," she said. "I can always find work. Damn it, I know I'm good. It's just all those years, and then starting over again. Why did I do it?"

"Don't blame yourself," Mr. Cain said, keeping his eyes fixed upon the one who really was to blame. Oddly, he seemed pleased.

Not so easily did she find another job. A woman of her intelligence, ability, and background dared not settle for less than what she had, and that had been considerable, status, pride, and dignity and more. Weeks passed, with them the holidays which included Christmas at Grandmother's and much talk of how Peter was doing so much better in school now that he was visiting Mr. Wiley and his Institute of Motivational Enhancement. "I don't know what they do there. He simply doesn't talk about it." But what was there to say? That for one hour a week he and Mr. Wiley sat in silence, that it really all happened at night? Then Mr. Wiley could be quite specific, speaking in the safety of a dream.

"Now you see, Peter. How serious it could be. Your mother valued that job. Next time we will take something she values even more."

Always, now, in these dreams there would be another figure, shadowy, indistinct, just on the edge of Peter's vision, a figure that would not admit a closer look. Sometimes there would be a second dream, also shadowy and indistinct, difficult to recall, a dream of blood and terrible cries that left you only with the taste of shame and guilt. After dreams like these, you worked very hard in school. But--

February. A time when skies become slate, when the air in the classroom turns close and old, when steam radiators hiss suggestively, when windows fog and frost over, when teacher's voice becomes as monotonous as a clock. Add, subtract, multiply. Noun, verb, prepositional phrase. Could anyone stay alert?

The lapse was small, a moment lost, an assignment missed. He sat stunned one morning when Mrs. Ebel called for papers. "Nothing, Peter? Nothing?"

He could not answer. That cold terrible thing was coming free. He could feel it oozing out of him, invisible, inevitable, deadly. It was in no hurry this time. What more had it to prove? And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Two days went by. No more dreams. No further warnings. Only an odd and attentive look from Mr. Cain when he visited, as he did almost every night now. Mr. Cain was helping Peter's mother with her job search, bringing her addresses, telephone numbers, names. Sending her to interviews far across the city. "How is school, Peter?" He would smile as if to say that he already knew what was to be.

On the third day his car was parked outside the school, engine running, door open, ready. Peter entered, wondering if the world could hear his heart. Snow was slowly falling and they drove into it, the wipers steadily clearing their way. "Aren't you going to ask what happened?" Mr. Cain finally said.

"I know what happened."

At the hospital he was allowed to visit her room and see her with the bandages covering her face. "Oh, Peter," she whispered. It was all she could say.

A strange man had caught her on the street, There had been a knife or a razor and maybe teeth. Mr. Cain told the story, his white smile carefully hidden. "She's going to be all right, Peter. The doctor is going to fix her up just fine."

Peter bent to his mother and surrendered. With all her strength she held him close, pressing his face deep into her breasts where, eyes squeezed shut, he heard the toll of her heart, steady and powerful, and saw his life entire, a life of books, figures, sums, and sentences, of tasks, of never ending duty, of grueling responsibility, a life of rising early and working late and seldom taking ease, a life that would be his, and his, and his for as long as she lived, and beyond.

Motivational Enhancement. How easily it was done.

the end

This story was originally published in the MacGuffin. It is copyrighted and may not be reproduced without the permission of Paul Pekin.