An Elegant Theory

by Noah Milligan

  The next time Marcus lay with Dianne was the next morning. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel any guilt at all.

  DR. BRINKMAN AND I HEADED TOWARD THE MIT Sailing Pavilion to take his skiff out for a spin. Unseasonably warm for September, undergraduates assembled in Killian Court. They enjoyed lunch and spread out their study materials over quilts. A few boys sporting backward hats and gym shorts threw around a Frisbee, trying to impress girls reciting Sylvia Plath underneath an oak tree. They all seemed so relaxed, carefree even. They were months away from the stresses of final exams. They didn’t have nervous tension built up in their shoulder blades, making it impossible to turn their necks. They were joyous. They frolicked and laughed and showed off. They were, undeniably, happy.

  I couldn’t help but feel a strong contrast to their sentiments, as if I represented some sort of polarized dichotomy, an opposite charge to bring balance to the ecosystem. Dr. Brinkman had scheduled our meeting to discuss my research progress. The problem was that I hadn’t made any progress. The model was built, sure, but I had not stumbled upon any findings. Not one manifold had been able to satisfy a single subset of matrix parameters, not to mention the needed 118 to be remotely passable. I felt like a fraud. I had no idea what I was doing, or what I was going to do. Dr. Brinkman hadn’t broached the subject as of yet, though, commenting instead on the Red Sox’s run in the playoffs. They were playing inter-divisional foe, the Tampa Bay Rays, for a spot in the AL playoffs. Going into the last game of the series, they had identical records, the winner almost guaranteed a date with the dreaded Yankees come October. They played that night at Fenway, and Dr. Brinkman had tickets.

  “You and Sara should join us,” he said. “We have two extra, and I’d much rather hang out with you than Dr. Cardoza.” He made a face like he’d just bitten into a sour pickle. “Eeeeck.”

  “That sounds like fun.” It really didn’t. It’d be humid at the game, crowded, loud, and Sara would still be pregnant, aching from being squashed into a tiny plastic chair and having only eaten a greasy hotdog doused in relish and sauerkraut. She’d complain because the insides of her thighs would be drenched in sweat, and I’d feel guilty for not staying home and attempting to alter my approach to my research. Not to mention the lucid daydream I’d experienced—that borderline hallucination still haunted me, and I couldn’t summon the courage to take the pills prescribed to me by Dr. White. I did not, for the life of me, wish to expedite more of those nightmares. “I’ll have to see if Sara is up for it, though.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she will be. It’ll be good for you both,” Dr. Brinkman said. “The late summer night. The joyous feeling of camaraderie. Josh Beckett throwing hundred mile-per-hour heat.”

  “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be too much fun. I don’t even know who that is.”

  “You have to be kidding me. How long have you lived in Boston?”

  “I’ve just never been a fan of baseball.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re a soccer guy.”

  “I’ve never really been interested in sports in general.”

  “You’ve always been a science geek, huh?”

  He had this pejorative tone that made me feel like I was in high school again. It wasn’t that I’d been an unpopular kid or disliked or an outcast. I had friends. Some played sports, the proverbial jocks, I supposed. Greg Adams, a neighbor kid who I’d tag along with to keg parties, wrestled and had even won state his junior year. Granted, I did tutor him and got him academically eligible so he could qualify to attend Oklahoma State. When we’d hung out, I always felt like I had to impress him somehow, so I overcompensated. I oftentimes lied to make myself seem cooler, weaving tales of exploits with girls and small-scale larceny. I’d boast and brag and hope they never found out the truth. I thought I’d gotten over this phase of yearning to be accepted, but here I was again, desperate for Dr. Brinkman to like me, not to respect me, not to find merit in my work, but to find me cool.

  “I did storm chase with my dad, remember?”

  “Yeah, of course. But that’s still science-related. Or maybe science-adjacent. Whatever. Did you act or write poetry?”

  “No.”

  “Hike in the woods?”

  “No.”

  “Blow things up with firecrackers?”

  “No.”

  “Get in fights just for the hell of it?”

  “No.”

  “Manage your father’s investment portfolio? Anything.”

  “No. None of those.”

  “God, you have lived a very boring life, Coulter. Today, we’re going to live a little. Carpe diem and such. What do you say?”

  “I do have a lot of work to do.”

  “This will help with work. Trust me.”

  The Sailing Pavilion wasn’t very impressive, a small little shack with a dock and a few sailboats harbored there. Despite the new coat of white paint, it still seemed duller than its surroundings, its wooden frame sad in comparison to the majestic architecture of campus, a scorned little brother, separated from the campus by the bustle of Memorial Drive.

  Dr. Brinkman’s boat, aptly named “Black Hole,” was a tiny thing, a Sunfish, Dr. Brinkman said, that barely had enough room to fit two. I didn’t see any life preservers either. It wasn’t that I could not swim; I’d prided myself on being a strong swimmer in my youth, but that had been years ago, and the Charles stretched wide and far and deep. Then again, my fear didn’t so much stem from me falling in and drowning. I probably could still manage myself in the water. Instead, I feared I might jump in, relax my body, and drift toward the bottom. Perhaps I’d even count to see how long it took me to fall asleep. I’d heard drowning, after the initial panic of course, was one of the most comfortable ways to die. I’d pass out from lack of oxygen, then fall into the most relaxing REM sleep I’d ever had.

  “Let me guess,” Dr. Brinkman said. “You’ve never been sailing before.”

  I admitted I had not.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “You just sit back and relax.”

  We pushed out onto the river. A brisk wind came from the northwest; it would be turning cold soon. I hated the winters in Boston. They transformed the landscape into a dreary gray, the ground covered with snow so that when the wind blew it looked like salt mines. My sinuses bled, and everything tasted of copper. I hadn’t brought a jacket and soon I was tense and achy. Dr. Brinkman did all the work, manning the sails and the steering. Not that I would’ve known what to do, but I couldn’t help but feel like a child.

  The water chopped against the sides of the boat, and we lurched forward, tilted at an angle so that I had to hold onto the rail.

  “How was your meeting with Dr. White?” he asked. “Did it help?”

  “It did,” I lied, not wanting to admit it had not, that I was still suffering from lucid daydreams and that she, in her professional opinion, thought it best to expedite them, not to make them go away.

  “Good,” he said. “It’s good to get some help every once in a while. Stabilize your focus.”

  I nodded.

  “Not that it’s any of my business, but why did you need to see her? No trouble at home, I hope.”

  “No, no. Nothing like that.”

  “Good,” he said. “Family is what is important. And with the baby on the way…” he trailed off. “Work then?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s nothing serious. Just needed perspective. That’s all.”

  He nodded, tied a rope into a knot around the mast. “I understand completely. Been there myself, actually.” He stepped down from the mast and grabbed the wheel of the craft, steered us toward the middle of the river. “How is your work coming?” Dr. Brinkman yelled over the wind, finally broaching the subject we had convened to discuss in the first place. “Well, I hope.”

  “It is. Yes.” I lied again.

  “You have pages for me then?”

  “I’m tweaking it.”

  “Tweaking it?”

  “The model isn’t quite right. My parameters a
re boundless. I have too many possibilities to reject.”

  “What?” he yelled over the wind.

  “I need to narrow my focus.”

  “Meaning, you have nothing.”

  “I’m not worried. A few more edits, and it’ll be in your hands.”

  Dr. Brinkman turned the wheel, and the ship veered right so that we were now parallel with the riverbanks. I sat so that I looked at him in the rear of the ship, part of his face blocked by the flapping sail, the water and city in the distance seemingly travelling away from me. If it wasn’t for our velocity pushing against my back, it would appear the world was moving and I was sitting still, an odd phenomenon when you think about it: the relativity of perception.

  “Have you thought any more about changing your dissertation?” he asked.

  I didn’t respond.

  “You should really look into the duality of light and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. You have a great grasp of the concepts, and I think you could elucidate new insights into complementarity pairs. Perhaps we could know more about future trajectories, speed, et cetera than our current understanding instructs.”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “I can tell by your tone you’re not going to.”

  “I have thought about it.”

  “But you’re not going to change.”

  “No. Probably not.”

  “I think you’re making a grave mistake, Coulter. Your dissertation, while ambitious, insightful even, is impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible.”

  “Improbable then. As the chair of your dissertation committee, I must advise you change the focus of your research.”

  “I wouldn’t have time. Not if I wanted to graduate on time.”

  “You wouldn’t graduate at all without a completed dissertation.”

  Ominous clouds moved away from us in the northeast, large cumulonimbus, the color of recently poured blacktop, sporadically brightened with lightning. As a child I had been deathly afraid of lightning, holing up underneath several blankets, a weak plastic flashlight my only company. Dad would be gone, chasing the storms with Dianne, and Mom would be God-knows-where. With each crack, I watched the lightning illuminate the dark sky, feel the reverb of the explosion up my spine. I always expected the initial explosion to continue, to strike our house, and for me to burn to death. To alleviate my fears, Dad had explained to me how lightning worked, the water cycle, how heat evaporated water from the ground so that it turned to vapor, how the vapor rose into the atmosphere, and how, as it cooled, it turned back into water. These molecules would collide, causing electrons to charge; the positive would rise to the top of the system, the negative to the bottom. Air ionization would cause a conductor, and the electrical current would flow to the ground in the form of lightning. Despite the explanation, I was still afraid. It didn’t matter the cause, the results were always the same. I was convinced I would, at some point in time, burst into flames.

  “We should probably be heading back to the dock!” I yelled over the wind.

  “You just have to relax. Quit putting so much pressure on yourself, and the answers will come. You’ll find what you’re looking for.”

  Dr. Brinkman thought I was still discussing my dissertation. “No! The storm. The mast will be a lightning rod.”

  The lightning intensified. It was one of those rare moments where sunshine still beat down on us from the west and above, yet I could feel sprinkles from the storm off in the distance. An odd feeling accompanies such moments, torn between the rapture of a warm, fall day and the fear of an oncoming storm. The slightest move can alter your fate. A slip of the hand and the warm embrace of the sun envelops you, too much force on the jig and your sail will catch the winds and you’ll succumb to tumultuous forces of nature. You’re acutely aware of how little control you have at such times, that the slightest derailment could cause you to be lost forever.

  “The storm’s miles away, Coulter. We’re fine. Settle down.” He smiled and adjusted the Red Sox cap on his head, pulling it tighter around his forehead. “Come.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Come over here.” He waved me over like he wanted to introduce me to a colleague. “Take the wheel.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Sure you can. Come.”

  “I’d really rather not.”

  “Nothing bad will happen, Coulter. I promise.”

  Despite my misgivings, I took the wheel. Through the plastic and metal casing, I could feel the motion of the river underneath my fingertips. It was remarkable, even though it was the product of simple physics. Each action accompanied by an equal and opposite reaction. Wind acted upon the water. The water upon the hull. The hull upon the rudder. The rudder to the wheel. The wheel to my hand. However, despite that, there wasn’t much control. To test its function, I turned counterclockwise. The sails pivoted, but the angle and direction of the vessel lagged behind. Eventually it turned, but my control appeared to be limited. This distressed me a great deal. I could feel my chest tighten as my blood vessels and arteries constricted. It wasn’t so much I feared a collision—the river was wide and the other boats sparse—but it appeared the boat was more at the whim of the elements than my direction. An unexpected Atlantic jet stream shift could alter the wind, and the storm could be pushed ashore, sneaking up on us before we could safely return to the boathouse.

  “Relax, Coulter,” Dr. Brinkman said. “Pull on that rope there. Tighten the jig.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes. It’ll help you keep the boat more stable.”

  I let loose the rope in order to tighten it, but when I did, my grip slipped, and the rope pulled out of my hand. The sail dropped but snagged about halfway around the mast. It flapped violently in the wind and ballooned out to the right of us, turning the boat cross the current and waves. Dr. Brinkman jumped from his seat, but the deck was wet and his footing unsecure. He hit his head on the mast and fell overboard before I could reach out and grab him.

  There’s a prevailing misconception that panic speeds events up. This is erroneous. Time appears to slow down in such circumstances. At least for me. The waves lapped the boat less frequently. The sail beat with less force. Gravity didn’t pull down the water from Dr. Brinkman’s splash at 9.8 m/s2. It was like I had the time to analyze every conceivable course of action.

  Dr. Brinkman didn’t surface right away. The water where he fell in bubbled white from his splash. I remember thinking I should jump in and save him. I was a strong swimmer. I’d used to go noodling with my dad at Bluestem Lake. I could fight a twenty-pound catfish in his element and yank him out of the water with my bare hand. Because of its swimming power, it was like pulling a man out of the water. Harder actually. The Charles here was clear and clean, and Dr. Brinkman wouldn’t be fighting me.

  But then I reconsidered. If I didn’t save him, his death would buy me time. He would die and I’d be traumatized and I’d be granted an extension on my dissertation. A new chair would have to be found. There would be understanding and sympathy and an exception made in my case. I wouldn’t amount to a failure and have to drop out of the program. I’d be able to make the breakthrough I needed to land a job and provide for my wife and my son and we would be happy.

  I counted to ten, to twenty, to thirty. He didn’t surface. The bubbles from his splash soon dissipated, and the water went calm. He must have been holding his breath for otherwise some bubbles would remain, or, if he was deep enough, they would burst before they could reach the surface, the pressure becoming too much to bear. I looked around to see if any other boat had witnessed Dr. Brinkman going overboard, but none were in vicinity. There was a powerboat speeding away off in the distance, but it was much closer to shore, its engine a mere buzz drowned out by the water splashing against the hull. There would be no witnesses. I could come up with any story I wanted, that I had jumped in and tried to save him, that I dived and dived and dived, nearly drowning myself, but I couldn’t find him. No one w
ould be the wiser.

  But then he surfaced. He broke through the water and gasped for air, and I threw him a life preserver. Blood gushed from a gash in his forehead, and he flailed his arms around in panic. I bent down and reached out to grab his hand. He swam over, pulled himself back onto the skiff, and collapsed in the floor. Wheezing, he looked up at me and said, “Thank you. Thank you, Coulter. You saved my life.”

  He had everything he needed—he had double and triple checked, his laptop, the flash drive with his calculations, his dissertation, the four-hundred page manuscript he had slaved over for the past five years, all his research—he was ready to defend; he would after today be Dr. Coulter Zahn, and finally his real work could begin when Sara, dear sweet Sara, approached him with a look on her face like she was about to puke. “I think my water broke,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, I’m not sure.”

  Sara had her hands underneath her stomach. The inside of her thighs were wet. He thought he could smell ammonia.

  “Maybe you just peed yourself.”

  “Will you shut up?”

  “Well, how are you supposed to know?”

  She leaned against the dresser like she’d just run a marathon. Sweat drenched her brow. Her flesh had turned pale and thin looking. If he looked close enough, he thought he could see the blood course through her veins around her temples.

  “Google it,” she ordered.