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The number taunts him.
Never mind the usefulness of competition, the determination not to be bested by his younger brother that led him to Harvard, to medical school, to success. Never mind the professional awareness of the limitations of intelligence tests, never mind the intellectual awareness of sense versus cleverness.
Frasier has spent over forty years believing himself more intelligent than his brother. Better, smarter, wiser; the leader rather than the follower.
He takes out his father's box again and finds the scores, finds the letters, finds out which test it was. There is no scale printed anywhere but he knows how to interpret the results anyway.
129 does not even make the cut-off point for gifted. 129 falls into the category of above average. 130 would be something. 130, he knows, is the average IQ score of a doctoral candidate, and he is not even that. He has a Doctor in front of his name and he barely deserves that, it seems.
He thinks about Frederick's aptitude test results, translates the percentile into an IQ score. 137.
He calls Lilith in the middle of the night to ask if she knows what her IQ is. She says yes, pedantically waits for him to actually ask what it is, and gives it to him.
145. Lilith, like Niles, falls into that elusive exceptionally gifted category, what most people consider the same as genius. Clinically speaking, it's not, but he knows that when even the educated and cultured speak of geniuses, his brother and his ex-wife would be included in that grouping.
He recalls the morning he walked in on Lilith and Niles together, and reflects now that perhaps there was more to it than a simple need for comfort and reassurance on both their parts. Perhaps it was their mutual desire for someone on their level, both of them well aware – on an unconscious level, of course – of his own failure to meet their high standards.
He has always thought Freddie, with his brains, took after his old man. He has always considered he and Lilith as equals, perhaps even that he was smarter than she was – something he never would have voiced aloud, of course, but a thought at the back of his head throughout their marriage all the same.
Frasier Crane has always considered himself successful, certainly more so than his father, his brother, his ex-wife.
Tonight, tossing and turning, with his black-and-white 129, Frasier Crane feels a failure.