Success.
Success.
Success.
A manifold had passed a matrix, then two, then three, then four. With each matrix it passed, I could feel my blood pressure increase, the slow secretion of endorphins, the neurotransmitters in my brain firing joy through my nerve endings. In total, it passed 745 matrices, enough to quantitatively confirm the veracity of the model’s findings. I had succeeded where Susskind and Kaku and Feynman and Einstein had failed. I had, beyond a reasonable doubt, discovered the actual shape of the universe.
For years, I had dreamt about this moment. I’d imagined it would be akin to a religious experience. There’d be an epiphany, like Archimedes with water displacement, and I’d be overcome with joy and exuberance and streak through campus shouting at the top of my lungs that I had done it, I had done it, I had finally done it. Others would stare at me strangely, students and faculty casting worried glances, wondering if they should intervene or call security before I hurt someone, but I wouldn’t care. It would feel like my blood vessels might burst through my skin. I’d somehow become aware on a cellular level, new proteins created and synapses strengthened to encode this moment into my genetics, right down into my RNA, so that I could at anytime revisit the pride and ecstasy of my discovery again and again and again, reliving it always in some perpetual euphoric induced hallucination, but it wasn’t like that.
There was joy, of course. But there was also worry. There was anxiety. There was this burning in the pit of my stomach, and my muscles cramped up. I was overtaken by a sense of responsibility and burden. I was beholden by it. I now owed a duty to myself, to MIT, to Dr. Brinkman, and the entire scientific community. This very well could change the world in a very practical, and good, way. Quantum computing, the storage of energy, air and space travel, almost every industry imaginable could be impacted by such a discovery. Understanding the true shape of the universe could very well change the world, and I was the only one who knew the answer.
To be clear, this did not change how I felt about Sara. The desire to confess my crime was still present, and I still felt inclined to turn myself in, to plead guilty, to go to jail, to be punished. But I also had an obligation to share my findings with the scientific community—they were quite possibly the greatest discoveries since Einstein had published his theory of relativity. To not publish, to not share this with the scientific community, would be almost as great of a crime as I’d already committed, and I thought maybe, just maybe, it would dip the scales somewhat in my favor. Not condone what I’d done to my family, but maybe right my wrong in the slightest way possible. I knew it to be crazy, but I thought it anyway. I clung to it, in fact.
So I made a new plan. First publish, then confession. In the end, timing hardly mattered—the consequences would be the same. In order to accomplish this, though, I had to buy myself some time. When I left the lab, I didn’t celebrate as I’d imagined. I simply downloaded my findings onto a flash drive, backed it up in my office, went home, and formulated a plan with my mother, a story we could tell.
After twenty-four hours had passed, I filed a missing persons report. The precinct in the Dot appeared much like those clichés in movies: detectives crammed into a small bullpen, desks littered with paperwork and faded pictures of children, loose ties, and the smell of burnt coffee. It made my lies a little easier to tell. I could pretend I was an actor in a silly primetime procedural. I played the worried and frightened husband, and the detective would be non-committal and detached, having heard this same sob story day in, day out for his entire fourteen-year career. He’d say he empathized but that there wasn’t much for him to do. Most times, he’d say, the missing just turned back up in a day or two. If they didn’t, then they didn’t want to be found. Simple as that. He just had too little resources to go out and look for every single one of them.
I’d never been much of a liar, though. Growing up, my father and teachers had easily seen through my fabrications. They weren’t big lies by any means. They tended to be simple fibs. I like English class, I’d tell Dad, and I’m looking forward to writing my essay on Tess of the d’Ubervilles. I made a ton of friends and I think a girl named Kiley likes me. I climbed the rope all the way to the ceiling in gym class. I’d tell my teachers my mother travelled a lot for work. She was an attorney for the justice department and worked closely with the FBI, catching bank robbers and members of hate groups. That was why she didn’t come to parent teacher conferences or the annual science fair. Of course, my father told them the truth, but they never corrected my lies. That wasn’t their job. They were to teach me to read and write and do long division and then send me up another grade so I was someone else’s problem.
The policeman who took my report wasn’t much older than me, perhaps in his early thirties. I’d expected him to be exhausted, unshaven, his whiskers growing in like graphite, to be overworked and tired and smoke two packs a day and drink ten cups of coffee. He’d be overweight and smelling of deodorant and hand sanitizer. But he didn’t. He seemed peppy. He seemed genuinely excited to be doing his job, like he enjoyed his work. His name was Detective Landsmen, and he had pictures of two small children on his desk, the boy’s teeth gapped, the girl with ribbons in her hair. Neither one could’ve been older than five. They were smiling and holding hands and playing with dandelions and sunflowers. These were staged photographs, for sure. He and his wife had paid a professional photographer and they drove to a park and posed for pictures. They had to have. Nobody was this happy without preparation.
When we shook hands, his palms were a little greasy, like he’d just eaten a cheeseburger. He asked me to sit and offered me a drink. “Warm tea?” he asked. “Sometimes I feel warm tea helps me relax.”
“No, thank you,” I said.
“Are you sure? I know it’s a cop station, but it’s actually pretty good.”
“I’m fine.”
“Bagel?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“Donut? Soda? Anything you want.”
“Really,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Okay,” he said like he wasn’t convinced, and sat down behind his desk. “Tell me what’s going on.”
I told him my story, the one my mother and I had come up with. It started right after the baby shower since that was the last time anyone had seen Sara. Parts of it contained truth. I told him we’d fought. We’d fought about the party. She accused me of purposely leaving her alone in there. We fought about my work, my hours spent at the lab. My absenteeism. My mother. She confessed her fear that she would be raising the baby alone, that even if I didn’t leave that I wouldn’t be present. All true. I told him we’d yelled at each other. She broke a lamp. She threw it at me but missed, and it shattered in the bathroom.
“In the bathroom?” he asked. “What was a lamp doing in the bathroom?”
“It wasn’t before. It was in the bedroom. She threw it at me as I stood in the bathroom.”
“I see.”
She’d cried and cleaned up the mess, and I’d said some things I regretted. She didn’t apologize and neither did I. I told her I thought she was holding me back. I blamed her for my failures as a scientist, that I might not be awarded my PhD. I told her that because of her I would end up a high school teacher, having to deal with sarcastic and stupid children all day. I blamed her for things that hadn’t even happened yet and despite immediately regretting these things I still didn’t apologize.
“You go to Harvard?”
“MIT.”
“Good school.”
“Yes.”
Sara and I yelled at each other until we couldn’t yell anymore. We’d run out of things to accuse one another of. We both began to realize how ridiculous we sounded. That’s what I thought anyways. We still didn’t apologize to each other, but it felt like we would in the morning. We just needed time to cool down; that was all. I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. Sara stayed awake. I could hear the television on in the other room. It was tuned to infomercials
mostly, she changing the channel every couple of minutes. Most of them had to do with weight loss. There would be one for a home gym, another for a miracle diet based on protein shakes. She must’ve filled her water glass six or seven times.
“How long did she watch television?”
“An hour. Maybe longer.”
Then she stuck her head through the door. “I’m taking a walk,” she said. Usually, I would’ve argued with her. She was seven months pregnant, and it was past ten in a pretty rough neighborhood. But I was mad and tired and I didn’t. I didn’t even raise my head or close my eyes. I couldn’t tell if she looked angry still or if she had the look of resignation. Her voice had been monotone. “I’m taking a walk.” It was like she was telling me she’d bought a new toothbrush. She didn’t have any sort of feelings toward the idea. It was just “I’m taking a walk.”
“And you haven’t seen her since?”
“No.”
“Phone call? Email? Text Message? Facebook update?”
“Nothing.”
“Has anything like this ever happened before? You two fight, she disappears for a couple days, goes to her sister’s place or something?”
“No. Never.”
We’d fought in the past, of course. We fought about moving out here away from her friends and family. We fought about the baby. She’d broached the subject of having one first. I hesitated. But it wasn’t because I didn’t want children. I had the suspicion she was trying to fill a void in her life. She was lonely in Massachusetts and our landlord wouldn’t allow dogs. She said she hated me for saying something like that. But she didn’t leave.
“Have you spoken with any of her family members? Parents? Sister?”
“I came to you first. They don’t know. Only my mother.”
He smiled a practiced, warm smile. “I see,” he said. “That might be smart. The sooner we get started the better chance we have finding the missing person. And I want to assure you that we will do all that we can to help find your wife.”
“Thank you.”
“So what do you think happened?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Do you think she left you? Do you think maybe something bad has happened to her? Do you think she might’ve hurt herself?”
“I think she’s just scared. I scared her. We’re about to be parents, and I, well, I haven’t lived up to my part of the bargain.”
“I see.” He scribbled a few notes down onto a yellow legal pad. I couldn’t see what they said, the words illegible, upside down. “Did she have any enemies?”
“No. She was abrupt with people. Profane at times. But no enemies. People loved her.”
“So no one, in your opinion, would want to hurt her?”
“Of course not. Do you think something bad has happened?”
“I have to ask these questions. I have no opinion right now. It’s too early to tell anything.”
“I understand.”
“You should call your in-laws. More than likely, if she’s scared, she’s tried contacting them. They’ll probably know where she is. She might already be in their living room. You never know.”
“I will. I’ll let you know what they say.”
“In the meantime, it would help if we could get access to cell phone records. Financial records. That sort of thing. If she uses her debit card, we’ll be able to see which way she’s heading.”
“Of course.”
“And I’d like to speak with your mother. Natalie, is it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Sure. I’ll have her call, when she’s available.”
“She’s too busy to make a statement?”
“No, no. That’s not it.” I thought about telling him about her mental illness, her institutionalization, her abandonment, her history of suicide attempts, but I decided against it—it might arouse too much suspicion. “She just hasn’t been feeling well. That’s why she’s been staying with us.”
He smiled, warmly, like he completely understood, and we shook hands, and he told me he would be in touch. It was odd, but I felt better after speaking with him. He had a comforting presence, much like Dr. White, the psychiatrist Dr. Brinkman had recommended to me. He had reassured me. He made me feel like he would find Sara and everything would turn out okay. This was irrational, of course. I knew everything would not be okay, but it was nice to think it might, even if it was for a short amount of time. I thanked him and said I looked forward to his call.
Telling Sara’s parents wouldn’t be easy. I thought about when Sara and I had told them we’d be moving to Boston. We’d gone out to dinner that night at a comedy club, The Looney Bin, in downtown Oklahoma City. The comedian was a young guy, overweight, and covered in acne scars. A portion of his routine involved heckling his audience, pointing out their flaws and idiosyncrasies, one of those guilty pleasures people enjoy, laughing at others’ insecurities. One of his victims had been my father-in-law, Gary. Not a man’s man by any stretch of the imagination, he was thin and pale and reticent, much like myself actually. The focus of the comedian’s onslaught that night was Gary’s red hair. Ginger was what he called Gary. Hey, Ginger, he said, I’ve always wondered, does the carpet always match the drapes? Huh, Fire Crotch? Gary’d chuckled like a good sport, but I could tell he was hurt by the comic’s jokes.
Later that night, when he and his wife dropped Sara and I off at our apartment, close to the university, he’d asked to speak to me privately. We sat outside as Sara and her mother went inside to have a nightcap. It was a dark night. The clouds hung so low they reflected the orange glow of the city.
“You know, I’m going to hear it from my wife now,” he said as we stood on the patio, overlooking the street. College kids roamed about, talking loudly as they strolled to the next party on their agenda. Bass beats could be heard a few apartments down. Laughter from up above. “She’s going to be grilling me to move to Boston.”
“I hope you don’t think we’re trying to run away or anything like that.”
“God, how can you live so close to campus?” he said, pointing to the drunken kids, bumbling down the street. “Is it always like this?”
“Not always. Weekends.”
He peered out over the railing and then up, trying to locate the party upstairs. When he did, a beer spilled from a few floors up and nearly drenched him, cascading down only a few feet away. Gary pulled his head back. “No. Not running away per se. MIT is a great school. No one could blame you for that. But Boston? It’s so far from home. I guess I’m just being selfish.”
“There’ll be breaks in the school year. We’ll be able to fly back. You can come visit anytime you want.”
“You guys don’t party with these kids, do you?” He pointed at the passersby. They carried cases of beer under their arms or paper bags filled with plastic gallons of vodka. They were already drunk, zigzagging from sidewalk to lawn to street, and about to get drunker. That’s when bad things started to happen. Fights out in the street. A stolen car. A window busted in by a brick. “They look like they’re twelve for Christ’s sake. Doesn’t anyone say anything to them?”
“It’s college,” I said. “I think most of the time people just look the other way.”
He nodded, swatted at a fly buzzing around his head. “Just promise me you’ll be good to her. Promise me you won’t let her get lonely. Just promise me that, okay?”
“Of course,” I told him. “I would never do anything like that. I love Sara. With all my heart. She is the most important thing in my life. She is my life. She is.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “But you have to understand—she is mine, too.”
I called as soon as I got home from the police station. Gary answered on the third ring but didn’t say hello right away. I could hear Marissa in the background finishing up a story about a coworker who was getting a personal loan to get fake boobs. “Divorce does the craziest things to people.” After he said hello, I told him the lie about Sara, and all he said was, “I’m on my way.”
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“No, Gary. You should stay there. More than likely that’s where she’s heading.”
“She would’ve called us first. She would’ve told us she was coming, and we would know where she is. No. Something’s wrong, Coulter. I just know it is.”
“We don’t know anything yet.”
“We know that this isn’t like her. She wouldn’t disappear like this.”
“I just don’t want her to wind up there, and you be here. That’s all.”
“We’re coming, Coulter. We’ll see you later today.”
My mother had given me a pep talk before they arrived. She told me to buck up, to put on a brave and hopeful face. We can’t arouse any suspicions. She even picked out what I would wear, a baby blue sweater and chinos that needed to be ironed. “They’re going to ask you questions,” she said. “And you need to keep things simple. Tell them the same story you told the cop. Don’t add any detail, don’t take anything out. Word-for-word if you can.” The next few days will be the most important, she said. If you tell a consistent story, and they can’t find the body, then there will be no crime. Soon everyone will forget, and it’ll be like she never even existed at all. Then everything can return back to normal.
She could tell I was wavering. I felt guilty and ashamed. I wanted to hurt myself as punishment. I wanted to break the mirror and cut myself with the shattered shards. It was just too tempting. Take a bath and throw in the toaster. Jump from the window. It was only three stories. I probably wouldn’t die, though, just break my legs. My mother continued to coax me by appealing to my vanity. You are going to be a great man, Coulter. You have done what no one else could. You have achieved more than Newton and Einstein. You are too important to lose.
When Gary and Marissa arrived, they looked disheveled, frightened. They were scared, and they fought back tears and said they didn’t understand. They didn’t look as they did when we’d visited Oklahoma and told them we were pregnant. Then they’d been excited and upbeat. Marissa appeared to float as she walked, her feet barely grazing the ground. She served iced tea and tiny tuna sandwiches and beamed in a way only a soon-to-be grandmother can. She made plans to come to Boston more often to see us, at least once a month, any longer and she would just flat out die. Gary gloated. He offered up family names like party favors. Marshall after his great-uncle. Sara pointed out he’d never even met the man. James after his father. Sara pointed out she never even knew the man. Hal after his brother. Sara pointed out he was a drunk. “We’re thinking Isaac,” I said. “After Newton.”
An Elegant Theory Page 18
