“CAN I GIVE YOU ANOTHER REFILL on that, honey?” the waitress standing over Mead asks.
“Yes, thank you,” he says and she refills his glass with milk.
Mead has been coming to this off-campus coffee shop for breakfast every day —ever since Cynthia blew him off —to cut back on the probability of running into her again. He fills up on pancakes and eggs and bacon and then skips lunch, going to the cafeteria only for dinner, showing up right before it closes, when the place is nearly deserted. The food is better here at the coffee shop anyway. And it doesn’t cost much. He fed himself for two weeks on the money his mother sent him for a new shirt. This weekend he will call home and tell her he needs a new coat. That ought to get him through to the summer. The view is better too. Mead likes it when the waitress leans over the table to refill his glass, likes the scenery her low-cut blouse provides.
“You must be really smart,” she says, standing over him now, looking at the books Mead has spread across the table. She smiles when she says this and Mead wonders if she is flirting with him, if all these books make Mead look older than his sixteen years. “Do you go to school around here?” she asks.
“I’m a matriculate of Chicago University.”
“A what?”
Who is he fooling. Mead could never date a girl who doesn’t speak the same language he speaks. He picks up his milk and drains the entire glass in one gulp, sets it back down on the table.
“My, my,” the waitress says. “You are one thirsty young man.” And she leans over to refill his glass once more.
“THERE HAVE BEEN SOME exciting developments taking shape in the math department,” Dr. Kustrup says to Mead. “Changes of which you may not be aware since your head has been buried so deeply inside your books the past two quarters.” And he says this as if it is a bad thing, as if Mead should be spending less time studying in the library and more time skiing in the Alps in Switzerland.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Mead says, “but my father has poured a rather large portion of his life savings into my education and I’d like to see him get his money’s worth.”
Dr. Kustrup laughs. “Yes, I recently learned that you turned down a rather generous scholarship in favor of paying for your own college education.”
“My father turned it down, sir, not me. It’s his money, not mine.”
“And why, may I ask, would he do such a thing?”
“I don’t know, sir. Perhaps he felt the value of my education would be compromised if it were based upon a bribe.”
“A scholarship can hardly be considered a bribe, Mr. Fegley. Quite to the contrary, in fact. Most people would consider it high compliment.”
“My father is not most people, sir.”
Dr. Kustrup laughs again. “And I see that you take after him. Well, that’s a fine attitude, Mr. Fegley. Admirable even, but one that is a tad bit naïve. I’m not saying that your education isn’t important —it most certainly is —I’m just saying that there are other things that are equally important.”
“Such as?”
“Such as interaction with your colleagues. Do you realize, Mr. Fegley, that I see less of you than I do of any other student under my watch?”
“I’m a self-starter, Dr. Kustrup. I don’t need much supervision.”
The professor gets up from behind his desk and walks over to his window that looks out over the quad below. As usual, it is stiflingly hot in his office. Mead wishes Dr. Kustrup would fling open the window, would let in some fresh air. But he seems to like it this way, all stuffy and enclosed. He sits on the radiator under the window, looks at Mead, and says, “I’ve recently taken on some new responsibilities, Mr. Fegley. I’ve been elected by my fellow colleagues to take over the helm next year. You’re looking at the new chairman of the mathematics department.”
Mead wonders how this happened. Dr. Kustrup must have skills that outshine his teaching ability. Organizational skills, perhaps. People skills. Why else would he have been chosen to chair the department? But, more important, Mead wonders how this will affect him, if it might improve his chances of getting into that institute in Princeton.
“Congratulations, sir,” he says.
“Thank you, Mr. Fegley,” Dr. Kustrup says. “There are a few downsides, however. Next year I won’t have as much time to devote to my students. I’ll only be able to teach two classes per quarter instead of my usual load of four, what with all my added responsibilities as chairman of the department.”
“Of course,” Mead says, still wondering what the downsides are.
“Additionally,” Dr. Kustrup says. “I’ll only have time to mentor one of you.”
“Excuse me?” Mead says.
Dr. Kustrup steps back over to his desk. He sits down, leans forward on his elbow patches, and says, “I’m sorry, Mr. Fegley, but I had to make a choice and I’ve decided that it will be in everyone’s best interest if I work exclusively with Mr. Weinstein next year. Don’t take this personally. You have a lot of potential, Mr. Fegley, but you’re younger, almost three years younger than Mr. Weinstein. You have a great future ahead of you but I feel that you will need more time to mature into the mathematician I know you can one day be. I think the smartest thing you could do right now is slow down. Go home for the summer. Relax. Take up a hobby. Diversify your interests. You’ll get there, Mr. Fegley, don’t worry. I just won’t be the one helping you make it happen.”
Mead hears it. He actually hears the saw cutting its way through the floor, sees its nose moving up and down, sees the curve of the line it is cutting around his chair. Any minute now the floor will give way and Mead will fall through it.
“Don’t look so forlorn, Mr. Fegley. I’m not going to leave you high and dry. I’ve reassigned you to Professor Alexander. He’s going to be your new faculty advisor. He’s a brilliant mathematician. I’d introduce you to him right now only he’s away on sabbatical working on some top-secret project. He’s been working on it for decades, won’t let anyone here at the university in on what it is. Anyway, as soon as you return in the fall, I’ll make all the necessary introductions.”
Mead stands up. “May I go now?”
“Don’t leave angry, Mr. Fegley. You just wait and see. You’ll do fine without me.” He stands up too, and extends his hand across the desk. “It’s been a pleasure.”
Mead refuses to shake the hand of a traitor. He turns and storms out of the professor’s office, leaving the man’s hand hanging in midair.
HE IS STILL FUMING ABOUT DR. KUSTRUP when he sees Cynthia Broussard. She’s walking across campus holding his hand. Her boyfriend’s hand. The guy she chose over Mead. Cynthia does not see Mead but her boyfriend does. The guy looks right at him and then looks away. Then they disappear around the corner of Epps Hall. The two of them. Still holding hands. Cynthia Broussard and Herman Weinstein. WITH ONE SWEEP OF HIS ARM, Mead knocks every book on his shelf to the floor. Damn him! Damn that sonofabitch Herman Weinstein! It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that Herman should get Cynthia, that he should get Dr. Kustrup. What is the point? What is the point of studying hard and working your ass off if some lucky sonofabitch who just happens to be rich and good looking and three years older can just walk off with all the prizes? Isn’t being a good person worth anything anymore? Doesn’t hard work account for something? Has it gotten to the point where the only way to get ahead in this world is to spend your free time skiing in the Alps?
Mead glances at the floor and sees Percy in the form of a snapshot looking back. It must have fallen out of Mead’s math book. His cousin is laughing. In the photograph. Mocking Mead. Telling him that he will never have what the Percys and Hermans of this world have: the adoration of everyone they meet. Mead picks up the photograph and rips it in half, then rips it again, and again, letting the pieces flutter to the floor.
5
97.6°F
High Grove
Six Days Before Graduation
A FIGHT IS TAKING PLACE IN THE HALL , two people arguing over who kno
ws what. A broken stereo. Stolen weed. A girl. Mead folds his pillow over his ears to try and block out the noise but it doesn’t help; their voices penetrate like a pounding drum. It’s one of the things he hates most about living in the dorms: the noise of all those other people interrupting his thoughts. There’s nothing he can do about it but get up and head to the library for some peace and quiet. Mead rolls over to grab his alarm clock, to see what time it is, and grabs air instead. Because he isn’t in the dorm. He’s at home.
Sitting up makes him feel dizzy. He has a boulder on his neck where he once had a head. But it’s all coming back to him now. The Lodge last night. The beer. His uncle. Dry-mouthed and heavy-lidded, Mead drags himself out of bed and into the hall. The door to his parent’s bedroom is closed but he can hear what they’re saying nonetheless, loud and clear.
“What could you’ve been thinking, taking him to the Lodge, getting him drunk?”
“I didn’t get him drunk, Alayne.”
“You’re encouraging him, is what you’re doing. He needs to see the terrible mistake he’s making. We need to get him back up to the university. He’s throwing away his life, Lynn. Are you just going to sit back and let him do it?”
“He asked me to let him figure things out on his own so that’s what I’m doing.”
“No, what you’re doing is watching your son flush his life down the toilet, that’s what you’re doing.”
“Would it be so awful if he came back here, Alayne? If he worked in the store with me and his uncle? Would it really be the end of the world?”
“Yes!”
Mead goes into the bathroom, closes the door, and turns on the shower. To drown out their voices. Standing in front of the sink, he rummages through the medicine cabinet looking for something —anything —to put an end to his throbbing head and queasy stomach. Forsbeck used to wash down a handful of aspirin with a can of Coke before heading off to class after a night of rabble-rousing. He swore by it. But Mead’s mother doesn’t have any aspirin —she never gets headaches, she only gives them —so he grabs the next best thing: a package of Alka-Seltzer.
While the tablets effervesce, Mead grabs his stomach and tells it to hang in there for a couple more seconds. Tells himself that he isn’t going to throw up again. The only other time his stomach felt this bad was when Dean Falconia called Mead into his office to tell him the good news. “A great development,” was how he put it. “Exciting news.” “An event.” But Mead just felt sick to his stomach.
He steps under the spray of hot water and lets it pound against the back of his neck until he cannot feel it anymore. Only then does he unbutton his shirt —the one he wore to the Lodge last night and never took off —and let it drop, along with his sleep-pressed trousers and day-old underwear, to the bottom of the tub. By the time he steps back out of the shower and shuts off the water, the house has gone quiet. The argument is over. He wraps a towel around his waist and tiptoes back across the hall, leaving a trail of water droplets on the floor. The perfect foil. Because as soon as his mother sees them, she starts yelling again. At Mead, this time, for ruining her beautiful hardwood floor, for being so inconsiderate. And the yelling gets worse when she discovers his clothes in the tub. None of which bothers Mead. He’d rather she yell at him about clothes and water than about ruining his life. At least those are things about which she can do something. Not his life. There’s nothing she can do about that and neither can he. Thanks to Herman. Except, of course, what he is doing. Like working in the store. Like trying to make things right with his uncle.
Mead dresses quickly, throws open the window, and crawls through it, landing in the middle of his mother’s flowerbed. Something else about which she will be able to get mad and he will make right. He pulls on his shoes as he runs down the driveway, buttons his shirt as he hurries along the street. Only when the house is out of sight does he slow to a walk. He just needs to give her a few days to get used to the idea, to come to terms with the new reality. Next week things should begin to get better —after graduation has come and gone —because then there won’t be anything to fight about anymore. It will be a done deal. Until then, Mead intends to put as much distance as possible between himself and the six-legged creature.
A SHINY BLACK CADILLAC SITS IN THE LOT behind Fegley Brothers, parked next to an equally shiny black hearse, both of which have been washed and polished by Lenny for today’s big event: the funeral of Delia Winslow. Mead’s father will be acting as head of ceremonies, leading the parade (i.e., funeral procession) through the streets of High Grove to the cemetery, located just on the outskirts of town. An event that takes place on an average of once a week, putting food on the Fegley table and clothes on the Fegley back. It’s also what paid for Mead’s college education. Dead bodies. And all the pomp and circumstance that goes into bidding them a proper adieu. And Mead doesn’t want to have a thing to do with it. He decided a long time ago that he wants to be cremated. No casket. No flowers. No ride to the cemetery through the streets of town. He wants to go without the fuss. Put his ashes in an urn and stick him on a library shelf, that’s what he’d like: for his dust to mingle with the dust of great books. A thought he has never shared with his father out of fear that it might upset him. And what would be the point? Because by that time the old man will be long gone.
Mead’s dad steps out of the Cadillac dressed to the nines. Black suit, black tie, black shoes. The exact same outfit he was planning to wear to his son’s graduation next week. How appropriate it would have been had Mead taken Herman up on his offer. Unbeknownst to his father, he would have been attending a funeral of morals, so to speak. But Mead didn’t even consider Herman’s offer. Not for a second. And for that reason he gets to live another day with his head held high.
“You crawled out the window?” his father says.
The man looks tired, as if he spent his whole morning being yelled at. He’s probably wondering if maybe it wasn’t in his best interest to stand in solidarity next to a boy who thinks the best way to deal with his overwrought mother is to climb out a bedroom window, even if that boy is his beloved son. “Sorry, Dad.”
“The dean called again. He wants you to call him back.”
This is not what Mead wants to hear. “Yeah, well, we don’t always get what we want, now do we?”
His father stares at him. Mead can almost see the gears moving in his head, can see the words forming on his tongue. He wants to ask his son why he came home, why he won’t talk to the dean. Why he’s sitting here on the bench behind the store and not in the university library doing final edits on his senior paper. He wants to know so he will have something to say to his wife the next time she starts yelling at him. To defend his actions. To give him a reason to keep standing behind his son. But he doesn’t ask. Instead he says, “The wake is scheduled to begin at ten. Do me a favor and run over to the A & P. We’re low on everything: Kleenex, half-and-half, styrofoam cups. I made a list.” And he hands it to Mead along with a company credit card. “And don’t forget to buy something for yourself. For breakfast. You must be starved.”
Mead thinks to say thank you to his father. For standing up to Mead’s mother. For not prying. For trusting his son to do the right thing with his life. But before the words can find their way to his lips, his father turns and disappears inside the store.
A RED VAN COMES DOWN THE ALLEY next to Fegley Brothers. Mead waits for the van to pull into the parking lot and get out of his way so he can go to the A & P. It backs up to the rear door and a young man of about Mead’s age hops out. “Flower delivery,” he says, “for the Winslow funeral.” And he hands Mead a clipboard with a contract attached to it.
“I’m not authorized to sign this. You’ll have to ask my father. He’s inside.”
“Oh, all right.” The young man starts toward the door, then turns back and says, “Hey, you’re Teddy Fegley, aren’t you?”
Mead looks at the young man again. He has no idea who he is or why he thinks he knows Mead. Neither does
he care. So he turns and starts to walk off.
“Oh, come on. You must remember me. Simon McClod? Sixth grade? We were in the Audubon Society together. You were president and I was secretary.”
Oh, great. Another former classmate. This town is just crawling with them. Yes, he remembers, all right. He remembers the teacher deciding it would be fun to form a little club and elect officers. Mead was immediately nominated for president and his nominating committee was terrific. Very supportive. They flushed the head of anyone who dared oppose their chosen man down the toilet. And on the day Mead stood at the front of the room and lead the class through a recitation of the Audubon pledge, they showered him with their undivided support by pelting him with spitballs and rubber bands.
“Sorry,” Mead says. “You must have me confused with someone else.”
“No, it’s you, all right. The little genius. That’s what we used to call you. So, wow, what’re you doing here? Hey, have you invented anything yet? Something I might’ve heard of?”
“The VCR,” Mead says. “I invented the VCR.”
“Really?”
Mead contemplates walking off and leaving Mr. McClod to gather his eyeballs up off the ground and put them back in their sockets. You ask a ridiculous question, you get a ridiculous answer. But then he changes his mind, “I’m joking. The VCR’s been on the market for about a decade. I’d have had to’ve been eight when I invented it.”
But Simon remains skeptical. Mead can see it in his eyes. He still thinks it might be possible. Now he doesn’t know which version of the story to believe: the one that’s the truth or the one that will be more fun to tell all his friends down at the Lodge or the local pub or wherever it is the young Mr. McClod hangs out after work.
Life After Genius Page 11
