1957- Reason

Beverly wakes to the sound of breaking glass. She shares a bed with two of her older sisters but she immediately seeks out her older brother, Floyd. He is a mature twelve-year-old and she is only eight. She relies on him to explain the world as her parents have proved themselves to be poor sources of information.

Floyd is already awake and lifts his covers for Beverly to crawl into his bed.

"It's no big deal, Bevy. They're just having a fight. People fight."

"It's not right to fight. I'll never fight," argues Beverly as she strains to understand what her father is yelling at her mother. She never understands their arguments and that makes them all the more frightening.

"Everybody fights now go to sleep."

"Jesus doesn't fight."

"Sometimes Jesus fights when it's about something important. Now go to sleep."

Beverly tries to imagine what would make Jesus fight if he didn't fight against being nailed to a tree but she doesn't question the truth of the statement. Floyd has never led her astray and he is a full four years older than she.

2009- Reflection

After Floyd's suicide, Leonard seems disturbingly far away. There's an evolutionary imperative to protect one's young and, thanks to the invention of society, this imperative has been twisted into Beverly's bizarre belief that physical proximity will somehow protect her children from threats such as alcoholism and suicide. Normally she would dismiss the impulse but, as she is grieving, she opts for self-indulgence. Edwin understands and supports her foolish whim. Leonard resists allowing her to stay with him but she won't take no for an answer. She has yet to meet his roommate and friends or see his apartment or workplace. She has been relegated to luncheons despite travelling across the country for their visits. Grief, maternal instinct and a vague fear that she is becoming too old to be relevant combine to turn her will into chilled steel and Leonard relents.

The apartment building is unremarkable apart from the broken elevator. She recalls Leonard speaking vaguely of the elevator being non-functional several years ago. While she is not surprised that Leonard has been content to climb four flights of stairs for the past six or so years, she is surprised his roommate has allowed the landlord to be remiss in his duties. She has always received the impression that Sheldon is, as her mother would say, persnickety.

When she first meets Penny, she instinctually sizes her up as a potential mate for Leonard. She is a pretty, blond actress/waitress with father issues and Beverly has reduced her to tears by the fourth floor. Rarely does a person meet Beverly's demanding standards as a potential parent of her grandchildren but Penny fails fantastically across the board. There is no doubt in Beverly's mind that Leonard must be infatuated with the woman.

She does what any mother would do to try and save her son from a relationship that has no potential to enhance his life in any way. She tells him how to go about seducing the simple girl. She can't imagine she'll continue to hold fascination once she becomes a known factor.

xxx

Sheldon is nothing short of a revelation. It is difficult to have him held up to her like a fun house mirror. His physical discomfort around others, his lapses into a thick Texan drawl, his inability to 'connect' even with close friends are all so familiar she should be repelled but, instead, she is intrigued. She feels an ease around the awkward young man that she hasn't experienced since meeting Edwin. Her husband becomes more of a stranger every year but there was a time, long ago, when Beverly felt as though Edwin understood her. She feels this understanding radiating from Sheldon. Leonard is like a warm pressure system, pleasant and non-threatening but with the ever present potential to turn into a tornado. Sheldon is a flat and quiet field that might be disrupted by the occasional natural disaster but remains relatively unchanged by nature's fury. She tries to spend quality time with her son but part of her is grateful when he starts to avoid her. It would be good for her relationship with Leonard if she simply sat him down and explained her emotional turmoil but she can't. It's all too close to the surface and it's been too long since she's wept in front of another human being. Clearly, Leonard is feeling very ambivalent towards her. Even when he prepares her tea, as he's done for many years, he brings it to her cold. Sheldon blames Leonard's over-active libido but Leonard had been able to make tea properly for Beverly when he was a teenager. In those early days of his adult sexuality, Leonard had spent more time abusing himself than sleeping and Beverly had worried about him developing a repetitive stress injury. She can still remember his horrified response when she made him aware of her concerns.

Beverly would have loved it if her parents had been able to discuss sexuality with her in a frank and open manner, leaving her less afraid and deluded on the subject. Leonard, on the other hand, seemed to want to treat his sexuality as a foreign thing to be spoken about in hushed tones. She clearly remembers her seventeen-year-old genius covering his ears like a child and begging her to stop using phrases such as self-stimulation.

When she tells Leonard his favorite uncle is dead, she imagines her pain as a concrete thing she has left in Louisiana with the Spanish moss, the magnolias and Louis Armstrong's heart. Perhaps her tone is colder than she intends and even she admits 'his heart stopped beating' is a poor answer to Leonard's question (she should have used the technical but equally meaningless 'cardiac arrest') but she is glad she got through the exchange without falling to pieces.

She can't talk about Floyd, she can't talk about her marriage disintegrating, she can't talk about feeling like a ghost. She can't explain why she feels insubstantial.

xxx

Beverly is pleased to have a scan of Sheldon's brain for her research. Her own children have become more and more reluctant over the years to assist her with her work. How ironic that she gave them life, fostered their intellect and pushed them to achieve their maximum potential and yet they all describe their brains as 'mine' and insist on denying Beverly access. Her mother warned her that her children would one day 'stomp all over her heart' but it is still a surprise each time she is rejected.

The visit is uneventful but satisfying. She shares a moment of bonhomie with Leonard as she teases his friends, Raj and Howard, about their ersatz homosexual marriage. She observes Leonard's discomfort as they discuss the careers of his siblings and is pleased with her ability to deflect the tension. In her scrupulous efforts not to take credit for the successes of her children (at sixty years of age, she is still rebelling against her mother) she has perhaps gone too far the other direction. Leonard, Cassandra and Michael project judgment and disappointment into her every comment about their careers. On the other hand, that is hardly an atypical response for high-achieving persons. They are never satisfied with their accomplishments and therefore expect others to be unsatisfied as well. Beverly knows this all to well. She is a very high-achieving person.

xxx

Beverly hasn't sung since her children were very young (not that the caterwauling of rock and roll is really singing in her opionion) and is surprised by how much she enjoys herself with Sheldon. His enthusiasm and lack of coordination remind her of her husband when they first met. He had been so full of energy in those days. She finds herself feeling an uncomfortable twinge of attraction for her son's roommate. It is utterly inappropriate but she enjoys the warmth in her chest and cheeks as Sheldon eagerly seeks her approval. She has no delusions about his feelings for her. The young man is completely alienated from his own sexuality. He speaks with surprising candor about his parents' troubled marriage and assorted traumatic experiences from his youth.

"My roommate and his girlfriend would wake me up in the middle of the night making a racket but when I asked what they were doing, they would say they were studying. It didn't sound like they were studying to me. It sounded more like they were wrestling or... You know, now that I think about it, I think they were engaging in sexual intercourse while I was sleeping."

"Sometimes Dad would bring his friend, Brenda, fishing with us and he and his friend would disappear into the woods to dig for worms and leave me alone. Fishing! Hardly a sport in my book... Actually, Dad did end up moving in with his friend after Mom kicked him out... and they never managed to find any worms in the woods."

If only her clients were so open in therapy.

Of course, Sheldon isn't her patient, he is her son's friend and she is under no obligation to help him. She can just sit back and enjoy his eccentric tales, like a dime store novel.

Although it was her need for physical proximity to Leonard that brought her to Pasadena, she feels as awkward as ever when she hugs him goodbye. She has fond memories of her mother's perfume infused, suffocating embraces and her father's rough, almost painful, bear hugs but once she moved away from Louisiana, she started to avoid unnecessary physical contact. Before her marriage, she had intentionally avoiding getting close (in every sense of the term) to others. Edwin wasn't much for physical contact outside of the rare acts of sexual intercourse and Cassandra would only tolerate the briefest displays of affection. By the time Leonard came along, with his constant clinging, she was out of the habit of hugging. Leonard would wrap his tiny arms in a death grip around her neck during every waking moment if allowed and Michael followed his big brother's example. She spent years literally pushing away their tiny but suffocating arms. She thought they had both moved past their clinginess by the time they went to school, then Leonard created his 'hugging machine' for a science fair. In retrospect, she had taken it all too personally but it is still a painful memory. Standing next to the 'hugging machine', listening to parents and teachers drone on about her brilliant children, she'd felt humiliated. The hugging machine was more that a triumph of pre-adolescent engineering, it was an accusation, a public indictment of her skills as a mother. As a psychiatrist, well-versed in child development theory, she realizes Leonard's behaviors were simply a normal part of developing his sense of self. A life of being a misfit had inured Beverly to the judgment of others but she has left a small part of herself vulnerable to her children and husband. Leonard's little foot could trample her heart at any given moment just as she inadvertently caused him pain on a near daily basis. During the hugging machine incident, she still hadn't recovered from the science fair two years ago when Leonard's first place win resulted in a mini-breakdown and a series of regressive behaviors (including bed-wetting). While chatting with his teachers, Beverly mentioned Michael had done a very similar experiment at science camp. The teachers and fellow parents had laughed as Beverly spoke.

"Michael blasted rock music, if you can call it music, until the lima beans apparently lost their will to live. Leonard, on the other hand, grew beautiful lima beans with Mozart and Puccini. I hope they remember the results of their respective studies when they become teenagers..."

She had played up her mundane concerns in order to create a convivial atmosphere. She'd been rather proud of herself until Leonard burst into tears and handed back his blue ribbon. She asked Leonard what was wrong and he said, "I hate you!" She never brought it up again. Two decades later, Beverly (a trained psychiatrist) continued to let these issues simmer rather than revisit the painful memories. She hated to re-open old wounds, no matter how poorly they had healed.

1986- Assimilation

Before she can say, "Hold Mommy's hand," Leonard's tiny hand is gripping her's. Michael follows suit but with less enthusiasm. Cassandra takes the lead, eager to be done with clothes shopping so she can return to her mysterious world of being a pre-teen.

Leonard gives a running commentary as the enter the store. She monitors his growth obsessively, always looking for a sign that he is permanently debilitated by her one instance of carelessness when he was a toddler. Occasionally, Leonard will ask for details about the time he 'died' but he is young enough to be distracted away from the topic. Beverly wonders if she'll ever be able to discuss what happened. He is small for his age, he and Michael look like twins, and he has numerous food sensitivities but these are traits that may have been passed down from his father's side of the family. At five, he already needs glasses but poor eyesight runs in both families.

"I think it's important I choose clothing that will help me to fit in with my peer group. I really struggled to adapt to kindergarten and I don't want to have the same problem in first grade. These years are integral to my social development and being an outcast might set me up to be a perpetual outsider..."

Beverly only half listens to Leonard's chatter but passersby are stopping to watch in confusion. Leonard's language skills often draw the attention of strangers and Beverly has grown accustomed to the stares. He began speaking in full sentences at a year old ("Mommy no sleepy" being a favorite at that age) and by two he was parroting the language of his parents with surprising accuracy. All three of her children are highly gifted but only Leonard's language skills are obvious to the casual observer. Being small for his age only adds to what Cassandra refers to as Leonard's 'circus freak quality'.

Cassandra is currently struggling with her own freak factor. Her gift has always been problem-solving. As a toddler, she demonstrated this gift by solving puzzles well beyond her years. Upon entering school, she used her sharp mind to manipulate others. Even Beverly, no slouch in the logic department, is not immune to Cassandra's Machiavellian gift. Her daughter has an uncanny ability to anticipate every roadblock and is always prepared to offer, in honeyed tones, the logical arguments that make her every whim seem inscrutably logical.

The one obstacle to world domination that Cassandra did not anticipate was her quickly blossoming figure. There's no logical argument strong enough to fight the resentment of her female peers and the salacious tendencies of men. Her current strategy is to hide her figure and appear as plain as possible behind over-sized glasses and pigtails. Beverly's heart goes out to Cassandra and she watches the young woman fight against nature so as to never see the words 'Cassie is a slut' written on another bathroom wall. Beverly never read such slanderous words about herself growing up but she heard similar statements about her mother and her sister, Betty, on a regular basis.

Cassandra goes off on her own to find drab and shapeless clothing while Beverly tries to help Leonard chose the kind of clothing that will make him 'fit in'. There's no use telling Leonard it's a fool's errand. He has the intellect to understand the nature of being an outsider and the emotional maturity to be wounded by his outsider status but it will take time to understand that, at the tender age of five, he has already developed a character that he will never be able to change: He has no gift for pretense. His childish attempts at fibbing are typically accompanied with a breakout of hives and the opening statement, "I'm not lying!"

Michael takes a more anthropological approach to fitting in. Beverly watches her youngest child take in the actions of the other little boys in the department, mirroring their behavior until he dares to move among them. Soon he chatting is with the others and Beverly is being dragged into awkward small talk with their accompanying parents. It's simple mirroring and children do it all the time but there is an intention and awareness to Michael that makes the process impressive but somewhat disturbing. At five, Michael has already mastered the art of fitting in. Leonard watches his younger brother with undisguised resentment while Beverly feels only a hint of wistful envy.

2010- Calculation

"Do you recall when you were eight and very upset that your pet turtle, Sheldon, kept running away from you?"

Leonard looks annoyed, she takes that as an affirmative.

"I explained to you then that in order to hold something or someone close to you, you occasionally need to offer an illusion of freedom in order to foster a sense of dependence."

"You know, most moms go with the traditional Richard Bach quote. 'If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were.' They leave out the manipulation all together."

"The Bach quote is both untrue and ungrammatical. After repeatedly setting Sheldon 'free' in an inhospitable environment, what happened?"

"He started to be afraid of being away from me and his aquarium."

"Really, Leonard? You feel comfortable attributing an emotional response to an amphibian based on his behavior of staying near a food source?"

Leonard pushes his ostrich around his plate, "I was able to extinguish his unwanted behavior with a series of positive reinforcements for returning to his aquarium and negative punishment for walking away from his aquarium."

"Exactly."

"Mother, I was eight. I wanted my turtle to like me, not be afraid of dying if he walked away from me."

"Leonard. He was a turtle."

"Mother. I was eight."

Beverly know there was no point in pursuing the conversation. Once Leonard brings up his unresolved issues from childhood, reasonable conversation is a thing of the past.

"Does it seem weird to you that I had a pet named Sheldon and now I have a roommate named Sheldon?"

Sheldon sharing a name with Leonard's childhood pet is at the bottom of her list of 'Things that are strange about Leonard's relationship with his roommate'. Sheldon's dependence on Leonard is staggering. Beyond relying on Leonard for transportation and food delivery, Sheldon also expects Leonard to translate human interactions into a language he can understand.

"You have a roommate named Sheldon and as a child you had a pet turtle. As Sheldon is the third least original name one could give a turtle, it does not seem like an unlikely occurrence."

Leonard eats silently for at least ten minutes before he gives in and asks, "What are the other two least original turtle names?"

"Turtle, or some variation such as Mr. Turtle, and Shelly."

Leonard smiled for the first time since sitting down, "Sheldon's nickname is Shelly. That still would have been weird."

"If you were to name a pet turtle now, what name would you choose?"

Leonard thought for a while and shrugged, "Percy."

Typical.