And he remembered the evening after his mother's commitment was made definite. Jack had been home for several days, his presence helpful in the confusion, the curious desolation like and not like a death; Jack would be returning to college in the morning. Terence had gone to bed; Jack was about to, lazily delaying. "How honest shall we get, Terry? Are you, inside of you, relieved? I am." Half undressed, Jack stood over Terence's bed, smoking, in ever-observant kindness.
"I guess I am."
"Bad, the last few months?"
"Each day a bit stickier. The moods. No—no way of talking to her. Every remark turned upside down. Like trying to see a room in a twisty mirror.... Jack—"
"What, kid?"
"Does it mean we shouldn't marry?"
"No." His brother's quiet hand waved away smoke from between them, and the question too. "It's probably not hereditary. Anyway your children get half the endowment from their mother. Marry a mattress type, Terry, brains optional. No, come to think, you couldn't get along with a clothhead. Make it a mattress type with gray cells; they do exist. Might have to hunt around a little. Testing mattresses." Jack sat down and spread his left hand light and warm on Terence's chest, frowning off at the window, saying to it: "Got a kid brother with social conscience yet."
It was, at sixteen, the first time Terence had encountered the full revelation of love for another, seeing that other as a complete human being all the more beloved for his separateness. He said only: "Not hereditary—how can you be sure, Jack?"
"Nobody's sure—just the best educated guess. I saw this coming more than a year ago. Had to study into the thing for my own sake, Terry: books, talk with one of the Psycho faculty up there who seems to be able to tell his ass from a barrel of flour, useful accomplishment. I had to answer that question you asked, and others. Like for instance asking a character I saw in the mirror: How about you, Jack, you going that way too one of these days? Studying it seemed to be the only method of meeting it head on."
"That why you switched to premed courses this year?"