Issue date:
JUNE 12-14,1998

Pinkie

A paralyzed teenager and his troubled sister discover the healing power of sibling love.

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By Dean Koontz

y first name is Ishmael. My middle name is Ahab. My mother and father love literature, especially Moby Dick. They're outrageously smart but have no common sense. Ishmael Ahab Potts. Makes you want to puke, doesn't it?

From the age of 9, I refused to answer to Ishmael, Ishy or Ahab. I insisted on being called "Mo," because the Three Stooges made my oh-so-intellectual parents shudder with loathing. Subsequently, I preferred "Fred," as in Fred Flintstone. Then I became "Danielle" in a calculated attempt to make my parents think I was suffering gender confusion or even multiple-personality syndrome.

Lately, I'm known as "Bob." No reason. Bob Potts. It's a solid friendly name. I've considered legally changing my name to Slash. At university parties, how wonderful to hear my genteel, refined mater and pater introduce their son, Slash, to their phony academic friends.

Chronologically, I am 13. Intellectually, I'm older. I'm a raving genius. The last time I was given a battery of IQ tests, I scored so high that the psychologists were uneasy around me.

To be honest, they were not awed by my vastly superior intellect. It was my tongue that scared them. When in a mood, I'm a sarcastic, smart-mouthed twerp with rapier wit -- and proud of it.

Although often obnoxious and rude, I've never been punished, seldom scolded. Few people have the courage to reprimand a kid in a wheelchair. My parents are gutless about disciplining me. My useless legs are a license to be dreadful.

I don't have many friends. I don't care. People do and say such stupid things. They're so absurd. I'm happiest by myself, reading or playing the piano.

I'm a piano prodigy. I can perform the Goldberg Variations with such skill and emotion that Bach enthusiasts weep with pleasure.

My only friend is my sister, Thelonia Wilhelmina Potts, who will sit at my side for hours while I play the piano or read or build model ships. We call her Pinkie, because her name is as dumb as mine but also because she once was the pinkest baby anyone had ever seen.

Two years before Thelonia Wilhelmina was born, on the morning of July 15, my spine was severed in a car crash. We were on our way to the beach. My father was driving. He suffered only a bloody nose. My mother was unhurt. I was 4 years old. I don't remember the collision -- just my mother screaming and streaked with blood. I was afraid she was dying. But she was stained with my blood, not her own.

During my sister's first year -- her pink phase -- I hated her. I thought my parents just wanted a healthy child for whom they could have all the hopes that they weren't able to sustain for a crippled kid like me. It's not easy being precocious. Too much thinking, brooding, instead of just playing with Star Wars action figures.

Anyway, before Pinkie turned 3, we knew she was ... different. She never learned to speak. Most of the time, she stared through you, as if looking into another world. Autism, the doctors said, but then changed their minds. Finally, they called it "a singular form of psychological withdrawal." Pinkie Syndrome.

She wasn't troublesome or bratty. She had a sweet temperament. Cheerful. Often humming happy tunes. Quick to smile. She could feed and dress herself, though sometimes she became so fascinated with her green beans that she took two hours to eat them.

Mostly, there was no way to know what Pinkie was thinking -- but she did communicate with hugs. She was the huggingest kid you'd ever seen. She liked to cuddle -- with mater and pater, even with me. She had a gift for love.

ometimes, when being a genius and piano prodigy wasn't enough, when I was feeling like a pile of cat barf, I'd suddenly realize that Pinkie had taken my hand. If I tried to push her away, she wouldn't go. She would hold my hand for hours, until I felt better.

Pinkie rarely made eye contact. When you did catch her looking at you ... well, you knew you weren't good enough for anyone ever to look at you with all that love, so you turned away from her.

In seven years, Pinkie had never spoken a word -- but she'd said more than anyone in our family.

Once I overheard my parents discussing what plans to make for Pinkie's care after they were dead. My mother said she had no doubt I would succeed in life, even from a wheelchair. "Yes," my father said, "but we can't expect him to look after Pinkie." Though they never put their fear into words, I knew what they meant: Such a sarcastic, smart-mouthed twerp -- such a self-centered loner -- is never going to take care of his afflicted sister.

I wheeled into the room, surprising them, furious, spluttering, close to tears. "I'll take care of her," I said, "of course I will, and better than you ever could."

"Oh," my mother said, "I'm sorry you heard that, Mo."

"My name isn't Mo!"

"Fred."

"My name is Danielle," I said furiously, and wheeled out.

Later, despite all their education and brain power, my parents couldn't find the right words to make amends. Pinkie just hugged me tight and said nothing, which was perfect.

A year ago, in the spring, mater and pater brought home a golden retriever puppy, which they named Pegasus. They had read that a dog could be a beneficial socializing influence on autistic children, so maybe it would work with a kid who had Pinkie Syndrome.

Unexpressed was the hope that this canine therapist might even have a civilizing effect on a sarcastic twerp-loner-curmudgeon-cripple like me. Fat chance, I thought.

Retriever puppies, however, are irresistible. Floppy-eared puddles of fur. Natural-born comedians. Besides, I saw that Pinkie and Pegasus developed an immediate strange bond. Puppies are frisky, with no attention span -- yet this one would sit for half an hour, eye to eye with Pinkie, in trancelike communication.

For the first time in eight years, summer had a July. By Potts tradition, two weeks before the anniversary of the car crash and for two weeks after, my father unconsciously avoided me. He worked longer hours at the university and hid out in his study. When he did put in an appearance, he was almost as silent as Pinkie.

Each July, my mother faded into a gray depression. When the accident occurred, I had been on her lap, my back to the windshield. She thinks that the blow I took was meant for her and that she got out of the car untouched at my expense.

There is a black hole in every summer between June and August.

Last summer, however, even July was bright because of Pegasus. He couldn't fly like his namesake, but he was a marvel. He toilet-trained in a week. And during his first year, he acquired a circus dog's bag of tricks. He could stand on his hind feet and twirl, do a back flip, balance a ball on his nose. ... The miracle was that no one taught him these things. He seemed to be a born performer.

My parents were amazed, but I knew that Pinkie must somehow be training Pegasus during those eye-to-eye staring matches. Training him telepathically maybe, I don't know, but somehow teaching him. And as she taught Pegasus, she appeared to be learning about herself, about who she was and what she could do. She made eye contact with me more often. The tunes she hummed became more complicated, more beautiful. A few times, when I wheeled into a room where she was sitting alone, I was sure she had been talking aloud to herself.

And now, this morning -- Sunday, July 15, the ninth anniversary of the car crash, more than a year after the arrival of Pegasus -- Pinkie came to me as I sat reading on the back porch. Her gaze pierced me as never before, and then she glanced at the window of my father's study.

I was stunned by the anger that surged through me. "No," I told her. "I won't go to them. I can't walk, I can't walk -- but they can," and I was ashamed at the bitterness in my voice.

Pinkie gently put one hand to my face, and I felt something I had never felt before -- a cool, soothing light -- and also something I had felt before, though not in many years. She stepped back from my chair and held out her hands. I shook my head in denial. I closed my eyes and sat dead still, too frightened to move. I wasn't scared of Pinkie but of the fury I'd glimpsed in myself. And I was scared of what might happen next, of having no license to be dreadful.

Somehow I opened my eyes. With Pinkie following and Pegasus padding at her heels, I wheeled myself into the house.

My parents, John and Mary -- such ordinary names! -- were sitting at the big desk in the study, maybe planning for Pinkie's future care. There was no more need for that.

My mother's and father's gray smiles changed when I said, "Two things. Pinkie isn't psychologically detached. She's a whole lot more here than any of us. And she wants me to say I ... I love you."

Trembling, my mother rose to her feet. My father closed his eyes.

"I do," I said, voice wavering. "I love you. I always have. The only thing wrong with us is ... we've been more silent than Pinkie."

My mother sobbed and started around the desk toward me, but she halted when Pinkie said, "Now, Bob."

My father's eyes popped open at the sound of his daughter's voice, which he'd never heard before, and I rose from my chair. I took three steps. My legs were weak and shaky, but they worked.

Voice so thick that I didn't recognize it, I said, "Pinkie has a gift for love. But it's not the only gift she has. She heals."

We stood there, frozen by shock. Then slowly my father came out from behind his desk to take both me and my sister in his arms. My mother kissed me, and I didn't flinch from her.

Gazing at his daughter with awe and wonder, Dad said, "Where on earth do we go from here, Pinkie?"

"For pizza," she said, hopefully. "And if it's OK with you, I'd like to be called Heather from now on."

"Sounds reasonable," Mom said.