Conversations of the Mind

“No, you can´t keep doing this, Tom,” Sarah exclaimed seriously.

But her brother only shook his head, he looked at her for a second and then continued pacing around the living room in silence. As it was costume lately, he had his head filled with through, each as different as the next one and another as similar as the previous one. But it was impossible for him to organize them, they were so many and so varied that he didn’t even know what he wanted from his current life.

“You don’t understand, Sarah, things are not so simple.”

She moved closer to him trying to make him stop pacing impatiently. “No, I understand perfectly. But you need to realize the way you´re handling things is not the right one.”

“Then which one is the right one?” he exclaimed raising his voice without being able to stop himself. “Please, tell me, because I never thought I would have a daughter who doesn’t even know how to articulate a word and who has the same happy curiosity every time she sees something new. This was not a part of my plan and I don’t know what to do, so if you know something please tell me, I am open to all kind of suggestions.”

Sarah shook her head, she was aware that everything that was happening with his family had her brother uneasy in the most absolute way. But she could allow that to be an excuse of all the things he had been doing. “No, I don’t know either what to do about it, but I do know that you can´t keep her locked up in her room all the time. For Christ´s sake, Tom, it has been well over two weeks and the only place Lex is allowed to go is the backyard. It seemed as though you´ve forgotten she´s a twenty-year-old girl, not an eight month baby.”

That was the last comment Thomas needed for his anger to break lose. “And it seems as though you´ve forgotten Alexis had an accident that left her in a coma more than six months and she woke up as a week old baby!” When he spoke his arms moved in the air rapidly from side to side as if that made it easier for her to understand what he was saying. “Lex doesn’t know what´s she´d doing, she doesn’t even know how to speak if something were to happen to her. I am not about to let her wander around the city as if she was a girl of her own age.”

Sarah didn’t answer right away. She was standing in the middle of the Reed´s family home and the yells that had been going on for over an hour crashed against the walls and filtered through the door letting every habitat know about the argument the two siblings were having in the living room.

But according to Thomas, it didn’t matter how much Alexis meant to Sarah, she would never be able to feel what he was feeling at the moment and what he had been feeling for over two weeks. Alexis was not her daughter, she was her niece, and it might seem as though there was no difference, that difference was very easy to see to him. Because at the end of the day he had always been the bad guy when he had to deny Alexis something she wanted, something Sarah would give her behind his back.

He knew his sister worried a lot about his daughter, no one could deny that. But he couldn’t risk a thing, the wellbeing of Alexis came before everything else, and the simple thought of letting his daughter into the city where anyone could take advantage of her state made his stomach turn into knots and his blood boil.

“I am not asking you to let her be by herself at a random place, I am telling you to let me take her with me,” she clarified trying to calm him down. “You know nothing will happen to her if she´s with me.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want her to leave the house.”

“But I´m not taking her anywhere but my bookstore, that is a perfectly safe place for her,” said Sarah taking a step ahead, she knew that if she could make him she what she was talking about he would let her take Alexis. “Almost no one goes there and the ones that do only buy a book and leave, I´m always there and I would let her out of my sight. She won´t get out of the store but she won´t be cooped up here.”

For the past two weeks Alexis had been limited to staying at her house, but she spent most of her time in the backyard for it seemed it was impossible for her to stay inside her room. Tom knew his daughter was going crazy little by little, but he didn’t want to take that step. The step in which he accepted Alexis wouldn’t get better and would have to continue with the life she now had. He refused to believe that and he held on to any hope that one day his daughter would get better.

“Tom,” Sarah called him moving closer to him, “you more than anyone should know that what you´re doing to Alexis is not healthy. You can´t keep her locked up forever, at one point you´ll have to let her go out and I promise you I won´t let anything happen to her.”

Thomas took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh, and with that simple action Sarah knew her brother was defeated. The brown-greenish eyes of the doctor showed nothing but sadness and a deep warning. “You can take her with you, but I want you to know that if anything at all happens to her, Alexis will come back home and you will lose any right to ask me to let her leave the house again.” Tom stated seriously, it was clear in his eyes that the warning was not an empty one and he planned in fulfilling it if it was necessary.

But the smile that took over Sarah´s lips was large enough to make him think he was doing the right thing. Without waiting for anything else to be said, the woman walked to the stairs and climbed with rapidly, if she didn’t hurry she would be late for work. She opened the door to Alexis´s room only to find out the girl was not there, she didn’t doubt to walk to the balcony and she saw her sitting in the highest step of the stairs that led to the garden.

Hearing the sound of the door opening, Lex turned her head over her shoulder to see her aunt, she smiled widely making the woman wonder how much her niece actually understood about what happened around her. But for Alexis the action of smiling to her aunt was not something that required a large thought process, she noticed quickly which were the people that deserved a smile and which didn’t. The way they spoke to her said more than they could ever imagine.

Sarah didn’t know if she should speak to her or not, she was sure that no matter what she said Alexis would not understand her, so she decided to walk towards the girl and taking her by the hand. The girl did what her aunt told her and stood up, she followed her into her room; they crossed it and continued walking until they reached the living room where Thomas was waiting.

“Alexis, say good-bye to your father, we´re leaving for a while.”

“You´re letting her go out?” Lillian had walked down the stairs and was now standing in the entrance of the house. A disapproving expression and a furrowed brow were placed determinately in her face as she looked at her husband.

Tom nodded. “Yeah, Sarah´s right. Alexis cannot stay here forever locked up.”

The answer did not satisfy Lily and she moved towards him, stopping at his side. Her eyes were serious when she said, “But Lex is not well, she shouldn’t be alone.”

“She won´t be alone, Sarah will be with her.” As soon as those words escaped his lips, Tom shot his sister a meaningful look. She nodded with a smile and took Alexis once again by the hand and, without another word; she left the house where Mr. and Mrs. Reed were arguing about what was best for their daughter.

There could not be a single doubt what was right for Alexis when she stepped out of the house. Her face illuminated when she saw everything that awaited her outside those lifeless walls, there were so many things to see that the girl didn’t know which one to pay attention to first. But she didn’t have much time to distract herself because her aunt was already running late to open up the bookstore and she was walking at a very fast pace, she took her to her dark blue car and sat her in the copilot seat.

When she started to drive, Sarah turned on the radio and settled for an adequate volume, but Alexis´s head moved quickly towards the stereo of the car with a furrowed brow. Her hand moved towards the button of the volume and pressed it making the car to blow out with loud yet calm music. Sarah chuckled softly, watching her niece was somewhat funny to her and she also found adorable the way she behaved without caring even slightly what anyone thought.

It didn’t take them long to hit the downtown of the city where there was life pouring out of every movement. The city was so full of people walking down the sidewalks, men dressed in suits and ties as they called a cab, women walking with hurry with one kid on one hand and a cellphone pressed to her ear.

Sarah parked her car in one of the public parking spots of the city and walked quickly towards her job with Alexis still glued to her hand. When they were near, the woman could see the glass walls of the bookstore, on the superior part of the walls it was easy to see in a dark wood the word ‘Athena’, the name of the store. But most importantly, she could see the girl that was sitting in the ground with her back against the door.

“I am so sorry I´m late, Grayson,” said Sarah with an apologetic smile. “I took longer than I imagined at my brother´s house.”

The girl with blonde straight hair shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “Don´t worry, what matters is that this time you did manage to get him to let you borrow your niece,” Grayson told her. Sarah laughed just as she pushed the key in the doorknob, turning it around and opening the door to let everyone in.

Inside, the store was just as beautiful as from the outside. Right in front of the door, on the other side of the room, stood a large counter with a couple of registering machines. It didn’t matter which side you turned you, both sides of the store were covered in wooden shelves that reached the roof and every single space in them was occupied with a book. The place was like a labyrinth and its large size didn’t help in keeping you from getting lost, one aisle of book led to another and that one to another. There were a few wooden sliding ladders that moved along the shelves that helped get the higher books.

As the routine told her, Grayson walked to the counter and moved around it to stand on the other side, she crouched to put her things away in one of the drawers and pulled out a black loose blouse with the name of the store on the left breast. As her employee got changed, Sarah went into her office on the back of the store to pull out some paperwork she needed and when she walked back out she saw Grayson staring at a box of books.

“You want me to find the new books a place?” asked the girl turning one book around and examining the cover.

“Yes, please, Grace,” Sarah replied with a smile. “I´m gonna run to the coffee shop across the street to get Lex some breakfast, I need you to keep an eye on her and under no account let her leave the store.”

The girl nodded and was about to reply when she noticed Sarah had already walked out the store and was in the middle of crossing the street. Grayson stared at her boss´s niece and observed her for a while, if a stranger were to see her they would never consider that the girl didn’t know how to speak or that she didn’t understand a word anyone said to her. For Grace it was even harder to see her that way because she had a long time of knowing her and Alexis had always been a very intelligent and witty person, nothing ever slipped past her and it was impossible to fool her. But now it was as though she had been born again.

A lot of people could think that a book store was not a much visited place, but the one Sarah had was one of the best in the city. It had almost every book that was used in the university and most students went to buy them there since they were at a better price than the ones in their own school´s library. Besides that, the store had an enormous amount of literary book of every kind, both old and new.

It hadn’t mattered how much time Alexis had spent in that place, her interest did not decrease. The only thing she needed as to not get bored was to sit in one of the tables and look carefully at the people moving on the other side of the glass wall. Each person that walked by was completely different than the next and each one had something that caught the girl´s attention. Even when it was time to eat lunch, Alexis couldn’t wait to go back to the store and continue observing people and looking at the books of which she didn’t understand a single word.

Sitting on the same table with a large pile of children book, Alexis Reed spent her first day out of her house since she woke up from the coma. With the calmness in which she returned to her house that night Sarah was able to prove to her brother that there was nothing wrong with letting the girl spent her days with her. And he was even more relieved than she was, because he had found a way to keep Lex occupied without her being in any danger.

&&

Alexis´s life had become a routine. Every day she would do the same things; she would wake up early in the morning and take a quick shower to go down the stairs to wait for her aunt sitting impatiently in a comfortable white couch. Once Sarah got there, they would both go to the library where Grayson would watch over Lex for a moment while her boss would get them breakfast, the tree of them would eat it together sitting in a table in the office while Sarah and Grace went over certain things about work. At lunchtime, Alexis would go back to her house to eat with her family or she simply when to a local restaurant with her father, on the afternoon she would be back at the store and to spend the rest of the day turning the pages of colorful books that she could not understand but that for some reason still made her smile.

Thomas Reed could not deny that the best thing his daughter could do was accompany her aunt to work, there she was calm and looked after but she was not at home alone where she didn’t seem able to spend more than two hours if she wasn’t sleeping. Now he could go to work without the slightest concern about his daughter current state, though the thoughts about Alexis did not leave his brain altogether.

Lex almost never tried to leave to bookstore and when she did there was always someone to stop her from doing it. It wasn’t until a week later that Sarah had to leave the library to take care of an order and Grayson was stocking books in the shelves while she was lost in the music blasting from the earpieces of her IPhone, the voice of a not so famous singer filling the aisles. It wasn’t until that day that Lex walked to the glass door and exited the store without a problem.

She walked without a hurry along the sidewalks of the city, the people that surrounded her that morning didn’t pay any attention to her because to them she was no more than another girl taking a walk through the city of Seattle. After walking three blocks, she found a large park on the other side of the street and, without looking to each side of the street so see if there were any cars approaching, she crossed it. The park stood in the center of an avenue and it was as large as four blocks of length and two of width and it was surrounded by all types of stores. Tall trees were scattered all across the park, which went higher and lower in small hills with zigzagging pavement paths.

Alexis stood in the middle of a path and continued walking along it, her eyes jumped from one thing to another so quickly that it was impossible to recognize a thing before she was looking at a different one. After walking for a long moment she reached a part of the park where there were a lot of people sitting in the grass and other near a playground. She decided to sit underneath a large tree and do what she loved doing most; observing people.

There were a lot of people in the park. There was a new family sitting near the sandbox, the woman had a baby in her arms and she move him higher in the air for a few moments before pulling him back to her chest and kissing him fondly on the forehead. Running down the pavement path was a young man, he had sport clothes on and a dog on his heels, the dog was so fat it seemed impossible that it was keeping up with the man´s speed. On the other side of the path that crossed the resting area were many people sitting, in the middle of the grass and without a tree to provide him any shadow, sat a young man; his head hung down low as his eyes moved across the pages of the large book that was resting on his crossed legs.

After a few moments of feeling watched, the guy straightened up and his eyes searched for the source of the stare. It didn’t take him long before his eyes rested in Alexis, but it didn’t last long, because after a few seconds of interchanging looks he turned his attention back to his book without giving the girl the slightest importance.

Not much time passed before Alexis was no longer along. Thirty five minutes after Lex had left the bookstore, Sarah was already walking anxiously down the streets of the city looking for her niece with the complete determination to fire Grayson if she didn’t find her. When she didn’t find any luck in the streets, she started looking for her in the park nearby, but it was too big and it took her a while to get to where Alexis was.

When she finally saw her, she ran towards her but stopped just before the girl could see her. How was it possible that the girl was so calm? Given the circumstances in which Alexis was and with the need she felt to explore and understand everything, wasn’t Lex supposed to be desperate to roam the whole city, or at least the park?

But now, she seemed completely satisfied with being in the middle of where life had more movement, where there were people running, singing, laughing, playing and doing every sort of stuff.

Sarah walked over to where her niece was and sat at her side, the girl turned to see her and smiled slightly before looked back around her. In was in that moment that Sarah realized that every idea her family had about Alexis was wrong, of course it was impossible for them to know what was going through the girl´s head, but even so they believed it was impossible to control her so they had to keep her locked up in one room or the other. But that wasn’t necessary, because Lex only wanted to learn thing, she just wanted to see life pass by and be a part of it.