The Memory Artists - Jeffrey Moore [67]
“I’m afraid she does.”
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry, Noel, I … That must be so hard—on both of you. To see your mom change before your eyes.”
“Yeah, she … she’s not the same person.”
JJ put his hand to his cheek, like a bad actor. “Like in Total Recall. You remember?”
Noel said that he did.
“The psychic mutant baby, covered with slimy mucus? Who asks Arnold Schwarzenegger what he wants? The same thing everybody wants, says Arnold. To remember.”
“I recall the scene.” And those aren’t the right words.
“Why? says the mutant. To return to who I was, says Arnold.”
“Right.” JJ’s German accent, thought Noel, sounded oddly Jamaican.
“So you said your mom’s getting better, becoming more herself?”
“Well, she got a bit of lucidity last night. She remembered something important—and fairly complex. I’d given her something new in the morning.”
“What’d you give her?”
“Oh, you know, the brain-booster-of-the-month. A real witch’s brew.”
“That you made yourself? Really? What’d you put in it?”
Noel shut his eyes. “Choline bitartrate, dimethylglycine, dimethylaminoethanol, phosphatidyl choline, phosphatidyl serine, acetyl-L-carnitine, L-phenylalanine, alphalipoic acid, dehydroepiandrosterone, theobromine. Plus compounds of boron, manganese, zinc, copper, silicon—the standard brain-power elements.”
“Hmm. No herbs?”
“A bit of black bryony, that’s it.”
JJ squinted, made a steeple with his fingers. “Black bryony. European yam, am I right? To improve blood circulation in the brain?”
“Right.”
“So it worked?”
“Seemed to. I mean, to some extent. Except she’s been peeing from morning to night.”
“Right. Next batch, take out the bryony, replace it with a bit of brahmi and butcher’s broom. They do the same thing. Increase blood flow in the brain. But no side-effects.”
Noel nodded. “Brahmi, butcher’s broom. OK.”
“Even better is qian ceng ta, also known as Hyperzine A. It’s a Chinese herbal extract that balances abnormal chemistry. And restores acetyl … whatever.”
“Acetylcholine.”
“Right. I can get everything off the Net, cheap. Couriered the next day or it’s free. And don’t forget balm and sage, which are colisterine inhibitors.”
“Cholinesterase.”
“Right. And in your next brew, throw in some milk thistle extract. Very good for the old grey matter. Oh, and a pinch of yerba maté, which fights ageing and wakes up the mind. Round it all off with a bit of gingko biloba and you’re sailing. Keep your mom in fine fettle.”
Noel laughed. “OK.”
“I mean, you’ve tried inorganics, right? They’ve not worked, so let’s go natural.”
“But some of them have worked. It’s just that some of the compounds have killer side-effects …”
“Like peeing.”
“Worse than that.”
“Anal leakage? Premature evacuation?”
“And nausea, cramps, vomiting. And the new ones I want aren’t approved yet—like Memantine, which is only available in Europe—or else need special equipment to make, or the ingredients are ridiculously expensive—”
“I might be able to help you out there. Have you tried tincture of rosemary? I once tried rosemary, puffer powder and salmon oil before a memory test and got a perfect score. And once Dr. Vorta gave me some …”29
But Noel was distracted. When he was tired his mind could wander badly; a single word could propel him into another time, into the back pages of his youth. With the word rosemary, Noel’s cortex lit up like a Christmas tree. After mad Ophelia (“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance”) came The Three Musketeers:
On the following morning, at five o’clock, d’Artagnan arose, and, descending to the kitchen without help, asked for some oil, wine and rosemary, among other ingredients, the list of which has not come down to us. With his mother’s recipe in his hand, he composed