Matt Gordon never knows how to react to his son's questions.
Rose appears in the doorway of her bedroom, adjusting the half-veil of her hat.
She is a birdlike woman, and her arms—up to her head, elbows out—look like wings.
"We're going to the doctor who is going to help you get smart."
The veil makes it look as if she were peering down at him through a wire screen.
He is always frightened when they dress up to go out this way, because he knows he will have to meet other people and his mother will become upset and angry.
He wants to run, but there is no place for him to go.
"Why do you have to tell him that?" said Matt.
"Because it's the truth.
Dr. Guarino can help him."
Matt paces the floor like a man who has given up hope but will make one last attempt to reason.
"How do you know?
What do you know about this man?
If there was anything that could be done, the doctors would have told us long ago."
"Don't say that," she screeches. "Don't tell me there's nothing they can do." She grabs Charlie and presses his head against her bosom.
"He's going to be normal, whatever we have to do, whatever it costs."
"It's not something money can buy."
"It's Charlie I'm talking about. Your son.. .your only child."
She rocks him from side to side, near hysteria now.
"I won't listen to that talk.
They don't know, so they say nothing can be done.
Dr. Guarino explained it all to me.
They won't sponsor his invention, he says, because it will prove they're wrong.
Like it was with those other scientists, Pasteur and Jennings, and the rest of them.
He told me all about your fine medical doctors afraid of progress."
Talking back to Matt this way, she becomes relaxed and sure of herself again.
When she lets go of Charlie, he goes to the corner and stands against the wall frightened and shivering.
"Look," she says, "you got him upset again."
"Me?"
"You always start these things in front of him."
"Oh, Christ!
Come on, let's get this damned thing over with."
All the way to Dr. Guarino's office they avoid speaking to each other.
Silence on the bus, and silence walking three blocks from the bus to the downtown office building. After about fifteen minutes, Dr. Guarino comes out to the waiting room to greet them.
He is fat and balding, and he looks as if he would pop through his white lab jacket.
Charlie is fascinated by the thick white eyebrows and white moustache that twitch from time to time.
Sometimes the moustache twitches first, followed by the raising of both eyebrows, but sometimes the brows go up first and the moustache twitch follows.
The large white room into which Guarino ushers them smells recently painted, and it is almost bare—two desks on one side of the room, and on the other, a huge machine with rows of dials and four long arms like dentist's drills.
Nearby is a black leather examination table with thick, webbed, restraining straps.
"Well, well, well," says Guarino, raising his eyebrows, "so this is Charlie." He grips the boy's shoulders firmly.
"We're going to be friends."
"Can you really do anything for him, Dr. Guarino?" says Matt.
"Have you ever treated this kind of thing before?
We don't have much money."
The eyebrows come down like shutters as Guarino frowns.
"Mr. Gordon, have I said anything yet about what I could do?
Don't I have to examine him first?
Maybe something can be done, maybe not.
First there will have to be physical and mental tests to determine the causes of the pathology.
There will be enough time later to talk of prognosis.