Life After Genius

by M. Ann Jacoby

  If Herman were a girl, Mead would be in love right now for they appear to speak the same language, at least when it comes to music. What a surprise. Perhaps Mead has been too quick to judge. Perhaps he misread Herman when he first met the guy freshman year. Mead tucks his feet up under his thighs, in imitation of Herman, and closes his eyes. The first overture ends and the second one begins. The music washes over Mead and transports him to another time and place, to the court of the Duke of Celle where dancers swirl around him. At the end of the performance, an announcement will be made. Mead will be knighted by the duke for having deduced —by the changing pattern of the stars in the sky —that the earth is round. His discovery will be revered by all and his name will go down in history, far outlasting his short stay here on earth.

  Mead opens his eyes and sees Herman looking at him. The guy does not get embarrassed and pull his eyes away as most people would but continues to stare until Mead gets uncomfortable and drops his eyes. The music ends and the room turns cold and hollow again. Cynthia opens her eyes and says, “Oh my god, that was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.” She slides her hand into Herman’s and he squeezes it. With her other hand, she presses his cheek to her lips and kisses him. And the whole time Herman keeps looking at Mead.

  “I should be going now,” Mead says, and this time Herman does not object. Cynthia turns his face to her and kisses him full on the lips, as if Mead has already left. But when he tries to get up, he realizes that his legs have fallen asleep and he has to shake them out before he can walk, further delaying his departure. Mead then goes to retrieve his CD from the player, which happens to be on the shelf over Herman’s bed, but when he reaches for it, he has to pull his arm back fast so Herman won’t run into it as he lies back on the bed with Cynthia on top of him. “That’s all right,” Mead says. “You can give it back to me later.” And realizes that he is in no particular rush to get it back since he himself has nothing on which to play it.

  ON MONDAY, MEAD SKIPS his between-classes hideout in the men’s room, goes directly to his Function Theory class, and takes his usual seat in the front row. Herman comes in a few minutes later, sees him sitting there, and waves. Mead smiles and waves back, expecting Herman to sit down next to him. But he doesn’t. He sits three rows back and all the way over on the other side of the room, and for some reason this bothers Mead. Because he thought things were different now. He thought they were friends. Embarrassed, Mead tucks his chin to his chest, opens his textbook, and stares at the printed pages, feigning an interest in the equations written there. Pretending he doesn’t care that nothing has changed while at the same time he’s feeling angry at himself that he does care. At the very least, he expected Herman to give him back his CD. Unless he thinks it was a gift, which it most certainly was not. Mead paid for it and Mead should be able to keep it even if he doesn’t have any way to play it on his own.

  By the end of class, however, Mead has decided to give Herman another chance. Instead of bolting out of his chair and down the hall —as he normally would —Mead sits tight and pretends to review his class notes. But again Herman walks past him without saying a word. Goes up to the professor and asks him a question in a voice too soft for Mead to hear. Dr. Kustrup answers him then turns away to erase his class notes from the blackboard. Herman leaves while the professor is still erasing and still he does not say anything to Mead. When Dr. Kustrup turns back around and sees that Mead is still sitting there, he says, “May I help you with something, Mr. Fegley?”

  “No, thank you,” Mead says, angrily scoops up his books, and heads out of the classroom and then out of the building. In his haste, however, he does not look where he is going and bumps into some student crossing campus from another direction, a student drinking a cup of coffee. The hot liquid swooshes up out of the cup and splashes all over Mead’s notebook and left sleeve. Instead of apologizing, the guy says, “Hey, watch where you’re going, buddy,” and stomps off with a scowl on his face. Hoping to salvage his notes, Mead turns around, runs back into the building, and down the hall to the men’s room. It reeks of Dr. Kustrup’s cologne. Mead runs cold water over the sleeve of his shirt and then reaches for a paper towel to dry off his notes. Only the dispenser is empty. “Shit,” he says and ducks into one of the stalls to get some toilet paper. And that’s when he sees them: two pairs of shoes facing each other in the next stall. And as he is looking, one of the pairs of shoes lifts up into the air and disappears.

  Mead mops up the pages of his notebook, throws the soiled tissue into the toilet bowl, flushes, and then gets the hell out of there as fast as he can. By the end of the day, he has convinced himself that he did not see what he thought he saw. By the next day, however, he finds himself checking out everyone’s shoes as he walks from class to class. Dozens upon dozens of people are wearing brown shoes just like the ones in that bathroom stall —people like Dr. Kustrup —but no one else smells of the same cologne.

  Well past midnight, there is a knock on Mead’s door. Forsbeck is asleep so he doesn’t respond. Mead stares at the shadow of two feet in the crack of light under the door but makes no move to open it. When they don’t go away, he knows who it is and debates whether or not to answer the door. Wonders how long Herman is willing to stand out there before he gives up and leaves. One minute. Ten. Twenty.

  After just two minutes, Mead gets up and pulls open the door. “You’re going to wake up my roommate.”

  “I bought you a present,” Herman says and hands Mead a Marshall Field’s bag.

  He takes it and says, “Why?”

  “Because I’m a nice guy, that’s why,” and pushes past Mead into the room, flopping down on his bed. “Go ahead, open it. I want to see the expression of delight on your face when you see what it is.”

  Mead opens the bag and lifts out a CD, the one he left in Herman’s room last week. “This isn’t a present, Weinstein, it’s mine.”

  “Keep going,” he says. “It gets better.”

  The other item in the bag is a cardboard box with a model number printed on the side of it. Mead pulls out the box and stares at it, blank-faced.

  “Hmm,” Herman says, “not exactly the expression I was hoping for.” He gets up off the bed and takes the box out of Mead’s hand, then starts rummaging through his desk drawers until he finds a pair of scissors. He cuts away the packing tape and says, “It’s small, but it works just as well as the one I have in my room. Plus, it’s portable.” He plugs various wires into various sockets then plugs the player into the wall and places the headset over Mead’s ears. “It’s the newest technological gizmo on the market: a portable CD player. You’ll be the envy of all your friends.” He then takes the CD out of Mead’s hand, pops it into the player, and hits the PLAY button. Trumpets blare loudly into Mead’s ears, startling him, then the violins start up. He looks over at Forsbeck, afraid the music might wake him, but his roommate is deaf to the orchestra playing at full volume in Mead’s ears.

  Herman keeps talking, his lips flapping up and down, but Mead cannot hear him. The guy is smiling, obviously pleased with himself. He pats Mead on the arm, waves goodbye, and shows himself out the door. Mead steps out into the hall and watches as Herman walks away. Glances down at the guy’s shoes and sees a pair of olive green suede loafers. One-of-a-kind. And that’s when Mead knows that he wasn’t seeing things, that there were two pairs of shoes in that bathroom stall.

  3

  THE LIFE OF A RIVER

  High Grove

  Eight Years Before Graduation

  MEAD PERCHES ON THE STEPS just outside the junior high school, like a bird ready to take flight at the first sign of danger, his eyes darting left and then right as he scans the grounds, as he mentally records the various activities of his fellow classmates. He sips through a straw the chocolate milk he keeps tucked inside his coat pocket and sneaks bites from the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich he has hidden up his sleeve. He always eats his lunch like this, on the sly while the other kids are preoccupied wit
h playing, and not in the school cafeteria. He gave up on the cafeteria years ago when he got tired of finding caterpillars hidden in his macaroni-and-cheese and grasshoppers buried in his mashed potatoes. He prefers to spend his lunchtime in the boys’ room behind the closed door of a stall accompanied by the whoopee cushion he purchased with his allowance at the five-and-dime. In case anyone should come looking for trouble. As a result of this predilection, he has a new nickname: Windy Teddy. But at least now his food pyramid no longer includes a subcategory for arthropods.

  As the front door to the school squeaks open behind Mead, he tucks the milk carton back into his pocket, the sandwich up his sleeve, and sits with his arms crossed over his chest. As a precaution. But it’s just Percy, Mead’s cousin. The last time they attended the same school Mead was in second grade and his cousin was in fifth, back before Mead started skipping grades, before the label of “genius” got slapped on his forehead. Next year Percy will be across town in the high school, but for now they are once again roaming the same halls.

  Percy places his hand on Mead’s head and messes up his hair. “Hey, lazybones, get up off your sorry ass and join me on the ballfield. I’ll pitch you a few easy ones.”

  “I’d love to,” Mead says, “but I haven’t lifted anything heavier than a pencil in five years and if I strain my wrist I won’t be able to write and then I’ll flunk all my tests and my mother will kill me and it’ll all be your fault.”

  “Blah, blah, blah. Listen, you might be able to fool other people with your genius brand of double talk but I’m not other people, I’m your cousin. No one’s gonna laugh at you. I promise. At least give it a try.”

  “Maybe tomorrow; there’s something else I need to do today.” And Mead holds up his spiral notebook and a twelve-inch ruler as proof.

  “Come on. One lousy pitch, that’s all I’m asking.”

  “Tomorrow,” Mead says and again holds up his notebook and ruler.

  “You always say that.”

  “I know, but today it’s true.”

  “Okay, cousin, have it your way,” Percy says and trots down the steps and across the asphalt playground toward the ballfield. When the other kids see him coming, they part like the Red Sea to let him pass and someone tosses Mead’s cousin a baseball. As Percy warms up his pitching arm, the boys fight over the batting order.

  They couldn’t be more different, Mead and his cousin. Like night and day. Brains versus brawn. Intellectual geek versus sports hero. But it won’t always be like this. Or at least this is what Mead tells himself, that his cousin’s stature as most popular kid will be short-lived, his moment in the spotlight extinguishing with the end of grade school, his days of glory forever moored in the past. Mead tells himself that his own best days still lie ahead, that his god-given skill set will grow in popularity when he sheds the skin of childhood and emerges anew as a grownup, that one day he will be as beseeched by his peers as Percy is today. Only Mead’s popularity will stay with him all the way through the end of his life. He just has to be patient, to hold out for a few more years. Mead cannot wait to get out of grade school, go off to college, and start his life for real. It can’t happen soon enough. But it can happen sooner than usual if he continues to excel at school, if he continues to skip grades. Mead doesn’t have time to waste on sports. He has more important things to do, like working on his science report. And so he gobbles down the rest of his sandwich, slurps up the last of his chocolate milk, and heads out across the schoolyard with his notebook and ruler tucked under his arm.

  Percy is standing center stage in a circle of mud that is High Grove Junior High’s best imitation of a pitcher’s mound. His sleeves are rolled up and a Cardinals baseball cap is pulled down low over his eyes as he coils his long, lanky body into a tight spring and then tosses off his signature pitch: a curveball that sails over home plate so fast that the kid at bat cannot send it back. Someone yells, “Strike!” and the defeated hitter hands the bat off to the next kid in line, who makes several warm-up swings before stepping to the plate, before Percy sends another ball speeding through the air so fast that Mead cannot keep his eyes on it. The baseball smacks into the catcher’s mitt with enough force to knock the poor guy on his ass. Several kids clap their hands and chant, “Feg-lee! Feg-lee! Feg-lee!” as the next victim steps up to the plate.

  One kid in the crowd sees Mead, nudges his buddy, and calls out, “Hey, do you still wet your bed, Ted?” The buddy laughs and Mead takes his cue to exit, ducks his head, and starts walking away. Then the buddy says, “You gotta be really smart to make an A+ fart.” And they both laugh. Mead walks a little faster.

  “Hey,” Percy says, steps off the pitcher’s mound, and walks toward the two boys who are taunting Mead. “You two got something you want to say to my cousin?” And every kid on the ballfield turns to see what all the fuss is about. Every last kid there turns and looks at Mead, who tucks his chin to his chest and walks even faster. He wishes his cousin wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t draw attention to Mead’s humiliation. “You got something to say to him,” Percy says, “you’re gonna have to run it by me first.”

  “We were just kidding around,” the kid who started it says.

  “Apologize,” Percy says.

  “Sorry,” the buddy says.

  “Not to me, to him,” Percy says and points at Mead.

  “Sorry,” the first kid calls out to Mead’s retreating back.

  “Yeah, sorry,” his buddy says but with very little feeling behind it.

  Mead almost breaks into a run.

  “Hey, cousin,” Percy yells. “Come on. Take a swing at bat. Just pretend the ball is one of these guy’s heads and knock it out of the park.”

  Mead keeps going.

  “You’ll feel a lot better afterwards.”

  And keeps going.

  “Okay, well, maybe tomorrow then,” Percy calls out, then turns and heads back to the pitcher’s mound. All eyes follow him and Mead sighs with relief.

  THE LIFE OF A RIVER. That is the name Mr. Belknap has given this science project. An eight-week study of a six-foot-by-six-foot plot of land that includes some section of the creek that runs along the base of the hill behind the school. Every Wednesday morning the seventh-grade science teacher escorts his class across the asphalt school grounds, past the ballfield, and down the hill to draw diagrams and make notes on how their section of the creek has changed. But Mead did not find the allotted thirty minutes of class time enough to record all the changes he saw today so —with his ruler in one hand and his spiral notebook in the other —he is taking it upon himself to return to the creek and finish up what he started in class.

  Mead is halfway down the hill before he sees them and stops. Four boys in his grade, the kind of boys who would rather use their hands to make rude noises than ask questions in class. High Grove Junior High’s latest crop of juvenile delinquents. And they are not here for the same reason that Mead is. They are standing at the bottom of the hill with their backs turned to Mead, holding their dicks and peeing into the creek. And the one on the far end is peeing into Mead’s six-foot-by-six-foot science project. Deciding that maybe now is not the best time to take those measurements after all, Mead turns to leave and steps on a twig, snapping it. The tallest one looks around. Freddy is his name. Freddy Waseleski, the kid who holds the record for most-missed-days-from-school in all of High Grove. He has probably been held back as many times as Mead has been promoted. “Hey, weirdo,” he says. “What’re you looking at?”

  “Nothing,” Mead says. “I was just going to take some measurements.” And he holds up his twelve-inch ruler as proof.

  “Measurements of what?” Freddy says and his dimwit friends all laugh.

  “Hey, I know who you are,” says the one who just peed into Mead’s plot as he puts himself away, as they all put themselves away and zip up. “You’re that freak kid from the elementary school. The genius.”

  “How old are you, freak?” another one of the boys says. “Eight?”
<
br />   “No, I’m ten.”

  “Give me your ruler, freak,” Freddy says. “I got something I wanna measure with it.” And more laughter ensues, the kind that usually precedes the flushing of someone’s head down the toilet. So Mead does as he is told, walks the rest of the way down the hill, and hands his ruler to Freddy. The tall boy snatches it out of his hand and says, “Drop them.”

  “Drop what?” Mead asks.

  “Your pants, freak, so we can see your dick. You saw ours, so now we get to see yours. Drop your pants or I’ll drop them for you.”

  Mead glances back over his shoulder. The kids on the ballfield are chanting “Feg-LEE, Feg-LEE.” Percy must be on the mound waiting for the next kid to step up to the plate. Perhaps he is looking around for his cousin right now, checking to make sure he is all right, but Mead is nowhere to be found. Percy probably assumes that he went back inside, that he’s hiding out in the boys’ room, and returns his attention to the business at hand. Winds up and sends another curveball whizzing over the plate.

  Freddy pokes Mead with the ruler. “Hey, freak. I said drop them. Now!”

  Hands shaking, Mead reaches for his zipper. “I wasn’t watching you.”

  “Faster.”

  Mead’s pants drop to his ankles. His whole body trembles as he tugs down his Carter’s and the boys start to laugh, making their all-too-expected comments about the diminutive size of his preadolescent genitals. Mead closes his eyes and waits for them to get their fill of fun and leave, only they don’t leave. Freddy pokes him in the stomach with the ruler and says, “Now hand over your report.”

  Mead opens his eyes. “What?”

  Freddy pokes him again. “I thought you were a genius, freak. You know what I’m talking about, your science report. Hand it over. I always wanted to get an A in science. My old man’ll be so proud.”

  “No,” Mead says and hugs the spiral notebook to his chest.

  Freddy looks at his friends. “No? Did he just say no?”