Becoming Duchess Goldblatt

by Duchess Goldblatt

After we’d worked together for a while, he started saying, “Yeah, you’re smart, all right. I can’t deny it, but boy, only in certain areas, right?” “I don’t know what you mean,” I’d say. (I knew what he meant.) After another six months or so of working together, Bill started sighing at me and rolling his eyes. He’d shake his head and say, “No question that in some ways you’re brilliant. But wow, there are definitely gaps. We have to acknowledge there are gaps.” “We don’t have to acknowledge any such gaps. I acknowledge no gaps.” “But how do you account for it?” he asked me, his eyes wide. “I mean, has there ever been an actual diagnosis?” “A diagnosis of what?” He waved his fingers in a fluttering motion near my head. “Whatever it is you have. Your brain coupled with the rest of it. I mean, I guess you’d call it—what? Would you call yourself an idiot savant?” “No, I would not call myself an idiot savant,” I said to him, my voice as cold as I could make it, but then I had to start laughing. He was a good egg. It’s his voice I hear whenever people tell Duchess she’s a genius. Would you call yourself an idiot savant?