But I still have to decide what to do.
Tell Donner that his trusted employee has been stealing from him all these years?
Gimpy would deny it, and I could never prove it was true.
And what would it do to Mr. Donner?
I don't know what to do.
May 9
I can't sleep. This has gotten to me.
I owe Mr. Donner too much to stand by and see him robbed this way.
I'd be as guilty as Gimpy by my silence.
And yet, is it my place to inform on him?
The thing that bothers me most is that when he sent me on deliveries he used me to help him steal from Donner.
Not knowing about it, I was outside it—not to blame. But now that I know, by my silence I am as guilty as he is.
Yet, Gimpy is a co-worker.
Three children.
What will he do if Donner fires him?
He might not be able to get another job—especially with his club foot.
Is that my worry? "What's right?
Ironic that all my intelligence doesn't help me solve a problem like this.
May 10
I asked Professor Nemur about it, and he insists that I'm an innocent bystander and there's no reason for me to become involved in what would be an unpleasant situation.
The fact that I've been used as a go-between doesn't seem to bother him at all.
If I didn't understand what was happening at the time, he says, then it doesn't matter.
I'm no more to blame than the knife is to blame in a stabbing, or the car in a collision.
"But I'm not an inanimate object," I argued.
I'm a person."
He looked confused for a moment and then laughed.
"Of course, Charlie.
But I wasn't referring to now. I meant before the operation."
Smug, pompous—I felt like hitting him too.
"I was a person before the operation.
In case you forgot—"
"Yes, of course, Charlie.
Don't misunderstand. But it was different…" And then he remembered that he had to check some charts in the lab.
Dr. Strauss doesn't talk much during our psychotherapy sessions, but today when I brought it up, he said that I was morally obligated to tell Mr. Donner.
But the more I thought about it the less simple it became.
I had to have someone else to break the tie, and the only one I could drink of was Alice.
Finally, at ten thirty I couldn't hold out any longer.
I dialed three times, broke off in the middle each time, but on the fourth try, I managed to hold on until her voice.
At first she didn't think she should see me, but I begged her to meet me at the cafeteria where we had dinner together.
"I respect you—you've always given me good advice."
And when she still wavered, I insisted. "You have to help me.
You're partly responsible. You said so yourself.
If not for you I would never have gone into this in the first place.
You just can't shrug me off now."
She must have sensed the urgency because she agreed to meet me.
I hung up and stared at the phone.
Why was it so important for me to know what she thought, how she felt?
For more than a year at the Adult Center the only thing that mattered was pleasing her.
Was that why I had agreed to the operation in the first place?
I paced up and back in front of the cafeteria until the policeman began to eye me suspiciously.