We've needed someone. I'm so tired…."
I had dreamed of a time like this, but now that it was here, what good was it?
I couldn't tell her what was going to happen to me.
And yet, could I accept her affection on false pretenses? Why kid myself?
If I had still been the old, feeble-minded, dependent Charlie, she wouldn't have spoken to me the same way. So what right did I have to it now?
My mask would soon be ripped away.
"Don't cry, Norma. Everything will work out all right." I heard myself speaking in reassuring platitudes.
"I'll try to take care of you both.
I have a little money saved, and with what the Foundation has been paying me, I'll be able to send you some money regularly—for a while anyway."
"But you're not going away!
You've got to stay with us now—"
"I've got to do some traveling, some research, make a few speeches, but I'll try to come back to visit you.
Take care of her. She's been through a lot.
I'll help you for as long as I can."
"Charlie! No, don't go!"
She clung to me.
"I'm frightened!"
The role I had always wanted to play—the big brother.
At that moment, I sensed that Rose, who had been sitting in the corner quietly, was staring at us.
Something in her face had changed. Her eyes were wide, and she leaned forward on the edge of her seat.
All I could think of was a hawk ready to swoop down.
I pushed Norma away from me, but before I could say anything, Rose was on her feet. She had taken the kitchen knife from the table and was pointing at me.
"What are you doing to her?
Get away from her!
I told you what I'd do to you if I ever caught you touching your sister again!
Dirty mind!
You don't belong with normal people!"
"We both jumped back, and for some insane reason, I felt guilty, as if I had been caught doing something wrong, and I knew Norma felt the same way.
It was as if my mother's accusation had made it true, that we were doing something obscene.
Norma screamed at her:
"Mother!
Put down that knife!"
Seeing Rose standing there with the knife brought back the picture of that night she had forced Matt to take me away.
She was reliving that now.
I couldn't speak or move.
The nausea swept over me, the choking tension, the buzzing in my ears, my stomach knotting and stretching as if it wanted to tear itself out of my body.
She had a knife, and Alice had a knife, and my father had a knife, and Dr. Strauss had a knife…,
Fortunately, Norma had the presence of mind to take it away from her, but she couldn't erase the fear in Rose's eyes as she screamed at me.
"Get him out of here!
He's got no right to look at his sister with sex in his mind!"
Rose screamed and sank back into the chair, weeping.
I didn't know what to say, and neither did Norma.
We were both embarrassed.
Now she knew why I had been sent away.
I wondered if I had ever done anything to justify my mother's fear.
There were no such memories, but how could I be sure there weren't horrible thoughts repressed behind the barriers of my tortured conscience? In the sealed-off passageways, beyond blind alleys, that I would never see.
Possibly I will never know. "Whatever the truth is, I must not hate Rose for protecting Norma.
I must understand the way she saw it. Unless I forgive her, I will have nothing.
Norma was trembling.
"Take it easy," I said.