by Dan Chaon
“So,” Troy says, after the silence has extended for a while. “You’re from Chicago, right?”
“Yes,” Jonah says.
“Is that where you’re from originally?”
“Um,” Jonah says. “Sort of. More or less.” He shifts a little, regarding his sandwich. “Actually,” he says, “I spent part of my childhood in South Dakota. Just a little small town.”
“Ah,” Troy says. “So you’re used to this kind of small-town shit.”
“Kind of, I guess.”
“It’s not that bad, I suppose,” Troy says. “You get used to people, and it’s comfortable. Not as hectic as Chicago, I imagine. Personally, I’ve never been east of Omaha.”
“Oh, really,” Jonah says, and Troy notices how his expression seems to tighten, focusing. “Didn’t you—” he says. “Did you ever want to? Travel around or anything?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Troy says. “Maybe at one point, I guess. But, you know. I had a kid, and all my family is from around here, and all that. And now . . . well, you’ve heard the story from Crystal. I would’ve liked to go to college, I think.”
Jonah gives him another sharpened look. “Oh, really?” he says. “To do what?”
“I don’t know,” Troy says. He shrugs bashfully, thinking of his conversation with Ray, months ago, the skeptical look on Ray’s face. “I thought about something like . . . commercial art? I didn’t get very far into considering it, to be honest.” He clears his throat. “But I guess you’ve been to college, yourself. That’s what Crystal the busybody says, anyway.”
Jonah wrinkles his nose. “Oh,” he says. “Not really. I just, I took a few classes, here and there. You know. Just basic liberal arts stuff—American lit, history, math. Nothing very . . . focused.”
“Uh-huh,” Troy says. He’s impressed by the way Jonah says “liberal arts,” so easily—as if they both understand exactly what that means. “Lit” means “literature,” Troy thinks, and he likes the sound of it. American lit. Liberal arts. He tries to picture what it would be like to go to college in Chicago, but all he can think of is a postcard one of his former customers had sent him of the John Hancock Building, with the antennae sticking up from its roof like two horns.
“So,” Troy says. “Do you think you’ll ever go back?”
“To Chicago?”
“To college.”
“Probably not,” Jonah says. He looks down at his hand, and Troy watches as he traces the pad of a fingertip along the upraised furrow of a scar, a rivulet that runs from wrist to knuckle. “I don’t think I really have the . . . aptitude for it. I like the learning part of it. It’s just . . . you know, the tests, and going to classes all the time, and that stuff. And besides, the things I’m interested in aren’t actually going to be worth anything. Prehistoric civilizations? Or film appreciation? Or theories of mathematics? That’s the kind of stuff I liked, and it’s not going to be something to put on a résumé.”
“Yeah,” Troy says. “But then again, who cares, so long as it’s interesting to you? If you like learning about it, isn’t that all that matters?”
“Well . . . it does cost a lot of money.”
Troy sighs. He’s curious, he guesses; there’s something foreign and vaguely romantic about the idea of a classroom full of students and an old professor expounding on something like “film appreciation,” or “prehistoric civilizations.” He can imagine great, arcane swaths of knowledge that he’s never even heard about. “Okay,” he says. “Tell me one piece of totally useless information that you learned.” He smiles, and when Jonah rolls his shoulders sheepishly, he reaches over and pours him a little more beer. “Come on,” he says, “take a drink and tell me something, college guy. I’m interested.”
“All right,” Jonah says. He draws on the beer, and for a moment it seems that there is a glint in Jonah’s gray, flickery eyes that makes Troy feel as if they met a long time ago. “Okay,” he says, at last. “Here’s one,” and he intones as if reciting. “The Swedish mathematician Helge von Koch hypothesized that an infinitely long line surrounded a finite area.”
“Huh,” Troy says, and he chuckles a little, because it is totally incomprehensible. “Do you understand what you just said?”
“I guess so,” Jonah says, and he gives a little shrug, shy but proud. There’s that glint in his eye again, which makes Troy think of the way Loomis looks when he knows an answer to a hard question. “I mean,” Jonah says, “it’s easier if you see it on paper. It’s kind of like, you know how in grade school you made those snowflakes out of construction paper? You fold the paper up into a four, or an eight, and then you start to make jagged edges around it. You can keep making it lacier and lacier, and if you had the right tools, microscopic tools or whatever, you could go on making it more and more intricate. It could go on forever, that’s the thing, because things can get smaller into infinity. Like you cut down to a molecule. And then you cut that down into an atom. And then you cut the atom into the particles that are smaller than an atom. And so on. So if you stretch out the edges around the snowflake into a straight line, it would potentially go on into infinity. Therefore.”
“I get it,” Troy says, pleased. “An infinitely long line surrounds a finite area. I can see that, sort of. It’s kind of like one of those puzzles. Like one of those mind benders. Optical illusions. Right?”
“A little,” Jonah says. And then he’s silent. “I mean, it’s abstract. You can’t actually see something that’s infinite, so it’s just a puzzle in your mind.” There’s something in his solemn, calmly satisfied expression that makes Troy think of Loomis again. “It’s interesting, though,” he says. “To me.”
——
Troy can’t help but feel empathy for the guy. Jonah’s life could have been something different, he thinks, if it hadn’t been for that car accident. He can picture Jonah’s wife: She wouldn’t have been very attractive, Troy imagines, probably fat, but sharp and serious in her thoughts, the total opposite of Carla, and he thinks that they would have had a girl, a beautiful child. And Jonah would have finished college, and even if there weren’t specific, practical applications to what he studied, the degree itself would have taken him somewhere. Something with computers, maybe, or a job at a library. And they would have had a happy life. He can imagine them all living in Chicago—in an apartment of some kind, with a coffee shop nearby, and they would push their daughter’s stroller through some large city park, while Jonah talked about film, or math, or something else like that, and his plump long-haired wife looked at him with gentle admiration.
All of this comes vividly into his mind as they sit there, he and Jonah. He peers down, tenderly, upon his image of Jonah’s happy family—and then his thoughts alight briefly on his own childhood, on his own mother and father and him at the lake, and finally on the life he should have provided for Loomis, if he and Carla had been different people, if they’d been able to overcome themselves.
“So, Jonah,” he says at last, and tries to pinch off this last image. “Be honest with me, man. What are you doing in St. Bonaventure? I mean really?”
He is surprised, even a bit taken aback, by how quickly Jonah looks up at this question. Jonah’s mouth tightens, and something behind his eyes seems to flash.
“What do you mean?” he says.
“I don’t mean anything negative,” Troy says. “It’s just, what are you? Twenty-three years old?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Same difference,” Troy says. “All I’m saying is that you’re not going to want to work as a cook at the Stumble Inn for the rest of your life, right?” Troy pauses, purses his lips. “Don’t you think you could do better for yourself?”
“I don’t know,” Jonah says, and his voice is a little brittle. “I like cooking for the Stumble Inn.” He glances toward the dirty dishes in the sink, toward the black itinerary open on the counter. “Do you think you could do better for yourself?” he says, softly.
“Ha,” Troy says. “No
t anymore, man. Maybe if I was twenty-five again, I would do things differently.”
——
He’s quiet then, embarrassed by his own self-pity. Because, of course, why should it be any harder for Troy to start his life over? Jonah has just lost his pregnant wife, his face is a mess of scars, his parents, according to Crystal, are dead. If anything, Troy thinks, Jonah’s life has been harder than his own, and he feels a guilt settle over him. For some reason he thinks of his mother in her coffin, the way her stiff hands had come undone, his stupid, stoned efforts to put them back into place. He grimaces.
“I’m sorry,” he says, after a moment. “You should do whatever makes you happy. I mean, if cooking at the good old Stumble University is what you want to do, more power to you.”
Jonah looks at him inscrutably. His fingers touch the crust of uneaten sandwich, and Troy is surprised to see that the guy’s hands are trembling.
“I’m looking for someone,” he says.
“Uh-huh,” Troy says, tentatively. “That’s good.” For a second he’s aware of some unplaceable buzz in the air. “That’s what you should be doing, man. You know, I know a lot of women. If you want, I could—”
“I mean,” Jonah says, and he makes a sort of squint. “I mean, someone specific.”
Troy watches Jonah’s expression shift. The unscarred side of his face shudders a little, like the hide of a horse that is trying to shiver away a fly. Jonah tilts his head, leaning forward, and his hands tighten and then resolve themselves.
“I think we’re brothers,” Jonah says.
“Ha,” Troy says. He tries to smile but an uncomfortable stiffness has settled over him. Jonah is shivering. His teeth actually chatter.
“I mean, really,” Jonah breathes. “Your mom. Your biological mom. She’s my mom, too.”
And Troy feels his uneasy smile slip away.
22
October 13, 1996
It was a Sunday when they first met. It was the week before Jonah got up the nerve to go to Troy’s house with the groceries. The weather was beginning to turn, and the wind ran in streams over everything, all day long. Tumbleweeds clogged the fences on the edges of town.
He’d found the street without any problem. Here it was, just a block away from the park. Foxglove Road. No doubt it was a pleasant place to live, Jonah thought, a quiet, curving little cul-de-sac with houses made to resemble English cottages, or so he imagined, each with bright-colored trim on the windows and eaves, with neat, yellowing lawns and fading flower beds, small statues of gnomes or fawns or the Virgin Mary. More tumbleweeds.
Jonah was sitting in his car when the boy and his grandmother came out, but they didn’t glance his way. They continued down the sidewalk, the grandmother carrying a book and an unopened umbrella, a heavy woman, moving slowly. The child ran along in front of her, dashing and then, after a while, skipping, though with a thoughtful and even serious look on his face, as if skipping was a means of meditation.
——
There were other children in the park but not many adults. Jonah settled down in the chilly grass near some bare bushes, out of notice, but not enough to seem like he was hiding. He put his hood up and pretended to be bored, pretended that one of the milling children was his, that he was just another dutiful father. No one paid any attention: A pair of mothers talked avidly, sitting on the swings; Loomis’s grandmother sat on a bench and bent her head toward her book.
As for Loomis, he was involved in some game of pretend. The other children held no interest for him, and he walked along the line of the play area, past the slides and bouncy horses and the monkey bars, his hands clasped behind his back, looking at the ground. He would occasionally say something to himself aloud. Jonah glanced over to where the grandmother was sitting. She wasn’t paying attention.
Loomis was small for his age, Jonah thought, not skinny but compact, broad-shouldered, like a miniature adult. His hair was dirty blond and straight, and he had a round, solemn face. Jonah watched as he bent down and picked up something from the wood-chip playground bed—a piece of plastic, a forgotten toy. The child examined it, frowning, mumbled to himself. Then he put it in his pocket. He was about thirty yards from where Jonah was sitting, but drawing closer.
Jonah felt in his own pockets. A throat drop, a crumpled receipt from the pharmacy, a nub of pencil. And then: Here was the little rubber ball he’d picked up in the grass behind Troy’s house, a bright Day-Glo orange superball that was made to bounce hard and high.
He looked over again toward the grandmother, at the mothers on the swings. And then, very carefully, he tossed the ball. It curved up, pinged against the trunk of a tree, and fell to the ground a few feet from Loomis.
The child’s head turned, alert. Jonah watched as Loomis’s eyes alit on the ball, watched as he walked cautiously toward it, as if it were a small strange animal that had fallen from a tree, stunned. Loomis stared at it, stroked his chin thoughtfully, then reached down to scoop it up.
“Loomis,” Jonah said, in a short, husky voice. He kept his eye on the grandmother, but she didn’t look up from her book. So he said it again, “Loomis,” and the boy lifted his head sharply. They saw each other: Loomis’s eyes fixed on him, wary and curious, and Jonah lifted his hand. He showed Loomis his palm, five fingers spread out. Then, deliberately, he got up and moved farther along the edge of the bushes, out of sight of the grandmother and the other adults, and the other children. And out of Loomis’s sight as well.
——
After a moment Jonah heard the crunch of leaves. He was sitting in the dirt, half-hidden under the branches of a square-cut evergreen, his head down, his face shadowed. Loomis rounded the corner and peered at him.
“Hello, Loomis,” Jonah said. He was very still, his sweatshirt hood pulled up, his hands resting on his knees—motionless, but prepared to hurry off if someone should notice him.
“How do you know my name?” Loomis said. He stood there, his eyebrows furrowed, nose wrinkled a little, his hands at his side like a cowboy about to draw pistols. Ready to run away.
“I just know.” He spoke as if he didn’t care whether Loomis came closer or not. “What are you doing? Are you solving a mystery?”
“I’m on a quest,” Loomis said. “I’m looking for fossils.”
“That’s interesting,” Jonah said. “Have you found any?”
“Not yet.” Loomis took a step forward, then hesitated. “Are you a friend of my dad’s?”
“Sort of,” Jonah said. He shrugged, holding very still. “I’m sort of on a quest myself, if you want to know the truth.”
Loomis considered this.
“What kind of quest?” Loomis said, angling himself so that he could get a look at Jonah’s face. His mouth grew smaller.
“I’m looking for my brother,” Jonah said at last. Why not? He dipped his hooded face, aware that Loomis was staring hard, uncertainly, at his scars. He brought his hands together, moving them with a slow, gentle, underwater drift, folding his palms together. “My mother had a baby before I was born,” he said softly. “But she had to give him away. And now I’m looking for him.”
Loomis frowned. “Why did she have to give the baby away?”
“She just had to,” Jonah said. “She didn’t have any choice.”
Loomis narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Hmm,” he said, at last, and Jonah took a quick glance to where the grandmother was still reading. “That sounds sort of like Moses,” Loomis said. “His mother put him in a basket and into the river. Doesn’t that sound dangerous?”
“A little,” Jonah said. Loomis was looking at him seriously, an odd, stern little boy, his body still not relaxed. “Everything is dangerous in a certain way. But, well . . .” He was trying to pay attention to all of the elements at once. Here was the grandmother; here were the other adults, the screaming children; the slide and swings and merry-go-round spinning on its turnstile; here were the cars passing on the road in the distance behind him; here were the erratic moveme
nts of autumn leaves and branches. He groped in his mind: “But . . .” he said, “sometimes you have to take a risk. She put the baby in the river because she didn’t have any other choice.”
“It just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me,” Loomis said. “Couldn’t you give the baby to a friend? Why would you put it in the river?”
“I don’t know,” Jonah said. He was struck by the image of his mother in the garb of the ancient Israelites, bending over the reedy, red-clay banks of a stream, the current drawing quivering lines in the water. “I guess people do things they regret.” He considered.
“I think your father is my brother,” he said.
He was surprised at how easily he was able to say this. After all the hand-wringing he’d done since he first came to St. Bonaventure, he found that it came out of his mouth without any of the doubts and second-guessing he’d been grappling with. It was just a fact.
“Do you know my dad?” Loomis said.
“Your dad is my brother,” Jonah said. “I’m your uncle.”
He expected, somehow, that this would have a greater impact than it did. Everything in his life had been leading to this moment. He pictured Loomis’s eyes widening, a sudden rush of emotion, but Loomis only blinked, looking at him skeptically.
“Do you know my uncle Ray?”
And Jonah was silent, his heart beating. “I can’t really tell you too much about it right now,” Jonah said. He paused, thoughtfully. “I’m not sure if I can trust you to keep a secret.”
“Oh,” Loomis said. He seemed briefly taken aback by this. Jonah said nothing, just looked, very seriously, into Loomis’s face.
