to pay for lunch after warning them off the meatloaf and recommending the fish sandwich, which was what he got himself, along with an orange soda.
They selected a corner table, and Limongello asked about Bone and Mary, learning that Mary was a church secretary and Bone a college professor. He seemed interested in Bone’s opinions on grammar and was impressed that Bone had written a book. Soon they became so comfortable that Mary asked, “What kind of name is Limongello? Italian?”
“I’m only Italian on my father’s side,” Limongello said breezily. “On my mother’s side I’m Scotch-Irish.” Although he’d said nothing funny, he laughed, and his laugh was so easygoing and natural that Mary laughed, too, and there were good feelings all around.
“So, Doctor,” Bone asked, “what’s wrong with me? Am I cracking up?” Trying to match the doctor’s breeziness (and failing). “Cuckoo crazy?” He pointed a twirling index finger at his temple, the time-honored representation of broken gear-work inside.
“In a nutshell?” Limongello said. “I think you think too much.” Mary gave Bone a sardonic I-could-have-told-you-that look, but Limongello was as unsmiling as a head on Mount Rushmore. He lifted his breaded fish off the bun and, with the delicacy and precision of a surgeon, cut a bite with his spork and chewed thoughtfully before speaking again, looking at Bone with the gaze of an art critic considering a painting by a promising but flawed talent. “I think your problem is neurological. But then, you’d expect me to say that because I’m a neurologist. A priest would say it was spiritual. An accountant would say it was financial. Ha-ha. Each of us only sees what we’re prepared to see,” Limongello said with sudden seriousness.
“So what do you think is wrong?” Mary asked.
Limongello made a sound between a tch of concern and sucking a morsel of whitefish from his teeth. He took a tennis-ball-sized rubber brain from his pants pocket and, halving it like a pecan, pointed out the curve of a pale question mark inside. “We used to think the brain was a bank where you made deposits and withdrawals. Like this neuron is the memory of Aunt Sally, and here’s the part that knows the square of the hypotenuse, and down here is why you can’t stand rutabagas. But the truth’s a lot stranger. It’s more like a highway system.
“The brain sends messages to the body, and the body sends messages to the brain, and one part of the brain sends messages to the other parts, and around and around like that. Everything’s sending messages: neurons, glands, even blood cells. But there’s no place where the messages stop or start, no origin or destination. That’s the mystery. What we got at the end of the day is all these messages running around, but what no one’s ever been able to find is the self—who’s reading the messages? Who’s directing it all? We may never find it. We can find the messages for your emotions easy enough: dopamine and oxytocin to make you feel good, and noradrenaline and calcitonin to make you feel bad—‘Good, good, you’re happy now,’ or ‘Uh-oh, uh-oh, you’re getting tense,’ but we can’t locate the you that actually reads the messages, the self that feels happy or sad or whatever. Sure, we can go in with a big old scalpel, skriiik,” with an alarmingly vivid impression of slicing meat, Limongello swiped diagonally across the rubber brain, “and chop out a lobe, and after that you won’t hate rutabagas or remember Aunt Sally, but that’s not the same thing. We’d never know if we got rid of the memory, that piece of yourself, or just ripped out the pathway the message goes through. You might blow up the highway the farmer gets to town on, but that’s not the same thing as killing the farmer. You understand?”
Limongello didn’t wait to see if they understood. “Your problem is so specific, not a general motor deficit, only a problem with doors. Maybe your brain has one tiny road—a one-laner, a dirt road, an alley—for the message about getting through doors. Just that and nothing else. When you come to a door, the message about how to walk through has to travel down that one particular road. For some reason your brain, maybe even your self, can’t get the message, so you can’t go through the door.”
“But it wasn’t a door,” Mary said. “It was a bathtub.”
“The first time, yes,” Limongello conceded. “When I say doors, I really mean thresholds; I mean transitions. At times the message about doors doesn’t go through.”
“I don’t have a problem with doors,” Bone said. “There’s one right over there.”
Limongello said, “Logically, you know what a door is. You can define door. You can draw a door. The highways for those messages aren’t blocked, just the side road of going through doors. I’m not kidding when I say your problem stems from thinking too much.” Limongello leaned back and laced his fingers across his chest, tapping his thumbs. He cocked his head, viewing Bone at a forty-five-degree angle. “It’s been proven that thought, all by itself, alters the brain’s function. For example, if you’re having a pity party, being a Gloomy Gus, and you clap your hands and say out loud, ‘I feel terrific,’ your hypothalamus will give you a little boost of dopamine and you’ll actually feel a little better. Strangely enough, though, if in the middle of feeling really, really good about something, you think to yourself—even briefly—‘This is how I feel when I’m happy,’ or even ‘I’m happy now,’ you’ll get an immediate decrease of dopamine. And if your hormones are signaling embarrassment or fear, and you think ‘I’m angry,’ you may suddenly discover you’re furious. The message system is very complicated.”
“Is there a medication?” Mary asked.
Limongello’s lips twisted briefly in displeasure, and a sigh lifted and dropped his shoulders. “Why’s a pill always the first thing people want? Sorry, but I just don’t want to risk that. Not yet. We don’t know if this is a type of epilepsy, or Parkinson’s, or what. Giving the wrong medication could be disastrous. Disastrous. For example, that messenger I told you about, dopamine. When that messenger goes to one part of your brain, it says that things are copacetic. Life’s not so bad. But to another part of your brain, that same message, dopamine, is how to do a pirouette. So far, so good. But in another part of your brain, that same message tells you to start listening to the voices in your head, how your friends are out to get you, your wife is running around on you, the cable guy is working for the CIA, or your doctor is a loony using you for medical experiments.” Limongello waggled his fingers in a witch doctor’s booga-booga-boo gesture. “The exact same messages mean entirely different things at different times in different parts of the brain.”
“Like the alphabet,” Bone suggested.
“Yes,” Limongello said. “Like the alphabet. Sometimes A’s a letter and sometimes a blood type. Might be a grade on a paper or stand for ‘adultery.’ So we got to be careful before sticking any new messages in the brain. Even a harmless-looking message, if it winds up in the wrong part of the brain—well, blooey.” Limongello’s hands opened and spread, simulating a cloud of smoke and debris. “The brain’s an intricate mechanism. There are some tests I want to do.” He put away the rubber brain and produced a pad and pen. “I need your address and phone number so I can visit you at home. We can dispense with office visits from now on.”
Bone began writing and asked if Limongello couldn’t get this information from the receptionist, but the doctor said this way was simpler. Bone asked about insurance, but Limongello said, “Don’t worry about it. Like I said, your case really interests me. This may be the key to something major. Say I’m doing it pro bono. It won’t cost you a thing. Besides, you already bought me lunch. And the fish sandwich was delicious.”
“What do we do if it happens again?” Mary wanted to know. “The doorway thing.”
“He might try dancing.”
“What?”
“Music
