ISAAC REALLY WANTED TO TELL GRANDPA about this box with a mirror, but how could he? Grandpa lived in his own world. Mostly he stayed in his room. At first, Isaac had felt sorry for him, especially right after Gram died. Before she died, he had been so full of life-a brilliant physiologist who had done important research on the heart muscle. Isaac's interest in illusions and puzzles was because of Grandpa, who had helped him start his collection. But slowly Grandpa had slipped into another world. He could no longer do anything by himself. He had become a slob. At first, Isaac was just bored and annoyed with him. But after his father died and Grandpa moved in with them, his presence became so unbearable that Isaac tried to avoid him as much as possible. His disdain pushed Grandpa further into his other world.
Isaac took the box to his room, dusted it off, and carefully put it on his bed. Then he went to the computer and logged on to Google. He typed in "box with a mirror" and read down the list of selections until he came to the one that said "mirror box." He clicked on it.
There were two pictures. Near the top was a man looking to his right, with two hands in front of him, each hand a different shade of gray. Near the bottom was a drawing of a mirror box, exactly like the one Isaac had just found. The text explained that a doctor named V. S. Ramachandran had invented the mirror box as a way of helping people who had had a limb amputated.
Obviously, some past tenant was an amputee. Then Isaac felt a chill. Had the teenage boy who died in the hospital been the amputee?
Isaac continued reading. The article reported that a very large percentage of amputees have what is called "phantom limb pain," which means that they feel pain-often excruciating pain-in the limb that has been cut off. Frequently, it feels as if the limb is bent into an uncomfortable position. Often, when an arm has been amputated, for example, the amputee feels that the missing hand is clenched-that the fingers and fingernails are pressing into the palm much harder than could ever happen with a real hand-and the pain of it is unbearable. Medications didn't help. Hypnosis didn't help. People had to live for years and years with this phantom pain-phantom, because the limb wasn't there. But the pain itself was very real.
Then this neurologist, Dr. Ramachandran, had the idea of making a mirror box. Let's say the person had a complete right arm and hand but his left arm had been amputated below the elbow. If he put his whole right arm into the right hole of the mirror box and then put his left arm, with the stump, into the left hole, and if he then looked down into the right side of the mirror, the reflection would show a complete arm and hand. Because a mirror image is reversed, the mirror showed a left arm and hand. It looked as if the amputated limb had somehow grown back. The amputee could move his complete arm and hand, and it would look as though his missing arm and hand were doing the same movements. So if he felt that his left hand was painfully clenched, he could unclench it by unclenching his right hand.
And when he did that, the pain went away.
It seemed unreal, like magic. But with patient after patient, the mirror box made the pain disappear. It was the only thing that worked.
Isaac was enthralled. Here was an optical illusion that wasn't just a game. It had a real function-as he had suspected-and it really helped people. He felt a macabre excitement.
Isaac clicked on more of the "mirror box" sites. He found an article that talked about bizarre sensations that two people could create with the mirror box. He spent so much time reading about the mirror box that, before he knew it, it was time for dinner-at least for Grandpa, who liked to eat early. Resentfully, Isaac left the box and went down to the kitchen.
Their old house had had a large dining room. The dinner parties there had been full of stimulating conversation and laughter, which Isaac used to hear from his room. His father was always telling humorous and fascinating stories about his travels, entertaining everybody. He had been a primatologist, and every summer the three of them had gone to Africa and lived in the jungle so his father could study chimpanzees. Isaac wished his father were here now so he could share the mirror box with him.
His mother had often played the piano at their parties, and the guests had listened intently. The food she cooked was always wonderful.
Before checking into the hospital, Vera had cooked and frozen some of her best meals, so that there would be food available that Isaac could prepare quickly and easily for him and his grandfather. He pushed things around in the freezer until he found the chili, his favorite. He needed comfort food tonight, after the bad week at school and his fascination with-and confusion about-the mirror box.
He thawed the chili in the microwave and found the generic sauce for it in the fridge. He got it all ready and then went upstairs and knocked on Grandpa's door. He heard Grandpa get up. Isaac waited for him and then followed as he shuffled downstairs.
There was no dining room in this house. They ate their meals in the little breakfast alcove off the kitchen, called a nook, which had a built-in plastic table like a cheap diner and a small window in the corner. Isaac and Grandpa sat across from each other. Grandpa stared out the window, but it was clear from his blank expression that he wasn't really seeing anything. As usual, he hadn't shaved or combed his hair.
Isaac brought Vera's steaming chili out on warmed-up plates. Her chili was amazing. It didn't have ground beef; instead, the meat was in soft cubes, like a stew. There was a lot of garlic in it. Isaac missed the special sauce Vera used to put on it-pico de gallo, which had lots of real chili peppers, red onions, tomatoes, lime juice, cilantro, and fresh avocados. It was wonderfully spicy, but not too spicy. Just exactly right for Isaac's taste. He could never find anything like it in a restaurant.
Isaac dug in with gusto. Grandpa, as always, just picked at his food. He never seemed to notice what he was eating; clearly, it didn't make any difference to him.
Isaac would have liked to tell the former Grandpa about the mirror box and what it was for and how well it worked. Instead, he kept his discovery to himself and thought back to the young boy who used to live here. He must have had an arm amputated. Isaac wondered why.
Another of the online articles had mentioned a game of sorts that two people can play with a mirror box. Isaac wished there was someone he could try it with, but there was no one around.
He was almost finished with his dinner when he heard a loud noise. He looked over at Grandpa and saw that he had spilled his bowl of chili all over his lap.
"Damn it, Grandpa! Now you've really made a mess!" Isaac said angrily, as though speaking to an errant child. He sighed. Dinner was ruined.
He took Grandpa up to his room to change and then headed back to the kitchen.
When he had finished cleaning up the mess, he brought the mirror box down to the living room and put it on the coffee table. Grandpa had come down again in his clean clothes and was sitting on the couch. Isaac, feeling guilty for the way he had yelled at him, knelt on the floor next to the box and placed it so that Grandpa could reach it from the couch. He thought about how he had put one hand in and kept the other one out and about how weird it had felt. But putting both hands in was supposed to be even weirder. He hadn't tried it yet.
Grandpa was watching him.
Now Isaac slowly put both of his forearms into the box. He looked at the right side of the mirror and moved his right hand back and forth but kept his left hand still. He felt a jolt of surprise and couldn't keep from laughing nervously. "This feels so strange!" he said. "To see my left hand move-and to feel it not moving."
Then Isaac had to leave the room briefly to go to the bathroom. When he came back, Grandpa was doing the same thing Isaac had done with the mirror box. Isaac's sense of guilt disappeared. He didn't want anybody else to touch the box, especially Grandpa. "Get away from that!" he ordered.
Grandpa quickly put his hands in his lap.
When Isaac calmed down, he talked to himself, as though Grandpa were invisible. "Now I can try it the other way around." Again he put both arms into the box. Looking into the right side of the mirror, he moved his left hand but not his right. He felt an even more powerful jolt. "This is even weirder," he said. "To feel my left hand move and see that it's not moving. It's like I have a third hand-an invisible hand."
Grandpa didn't say anything, but he kept watching.
"The article said it's because the brain hates contradictions," Isaac said. "It can't make sense of seeing its body in different places." He paused. "OK-now this is supposed to be the weirdest of all." Isaac put his hands back into the box, once again looking into the right side of the mirror. He needed someone to help him, so he said, "Grandpa, could you take your finger and run it across my right hand?"
Acting as if they were playing Simon Says, Grandpa followed Isaac's instructions exactly. Isaac watched his left hand being touched, but the hand itself felt nothing. He shivered. "Jeez, it's like my left hand has no feeling in it at all-like it's a dead hand. This isn't just weird, it's creepy!"
Grandpa shook his head and left the room, but Isaac barely noticed. He was too preoccupied with his new find.