Life After Genius

by M. Ann Jacoby

MARTIN AND LENNY DROP MEAD OFF at the house so he can change out of his coffee-stained pants before going to the store. But instead of heading inside, Mead stands on the curb until his uncle’s truck drops out of sight, then walks over to the local department store. He’s searching through a rack of khaki trousers that look virtually identical to all the pairs of pants already hanging in his closet when he decides that he needs to make a change in his life. Beginning with his pants. He steps over to a table stacked with blue jeans, selects a pair, and ducks into the fitting room. Mead has never before owned a pair of blue jeans. His mother would never buy any for him. Only farmers and rednecks wear jeans, that’s what she always said when he asked.

  It hurts like hell pulling them on over his lobster-colored legs but the physical pain serves as a welcome distraction from all his other troubles. They fit more snugly than trousers, giving shape to parts of Mead’s anatomy that heretofore had always remained hidden beneath loose folds of double-worsted gabardine. Mead checks out his backside. It looks sort of like a James Dean ass, the sort of ass with which girls fall in love. Girls like Hayley Sammons, for example.

  Mead leaves them on and steps out of the dressing room. And almost runs smack-dab into Mr. Colgan. Shit. First his mother invites his junior high school principal over for supper and now this. His high school principal. In the men’s department of Melnick’s Department Store, checking out button-down shirts. It has to be a conspiracy, his mother working in concert with God or something. Mead turns to go in the opposite direction, to make a quick getaway, and trips over a display of sunglasses, almost knocking it down. Grabbing the first pair he touches, he slides them on over his prescription glasses and sidles along a wall of suits, feigning an interest in double-breasted tweed jackets as he makes his way toward the checkout counter. But there’s a line. And a chatty girl working the register. Mead glances over his shoulder, looking for Mr. Colgan, but the man is nowhere in sight. He probably ducked into the fitting room or strolled off to another department. “Hurry up,” Mead mumbles under his breath at the checkout girl, “before he reappears.” Finally, it’s his turn. Mead rips the price tag off his jeans and hands it to her along with the sunglasses.

  “Teddy?” she says. “Teddy Fegley? Is that you?”

  Oh shit, here we go again. Must be another classmate. “No,” he says, “I get that a lot but I’m not him. I’m from out of town.”

  For a second it looks as if she is going to buy it, then her expression changes and she leans forward over the counter. “What’s the capital of South Dakota?”

  “Pierre.”

  “I knew it. I knew it was you. I’m Donna, Donna Eubanks. We were in the same class in second grade. With Mrs. Salter. You sat in the front row. That’s the one state capital I could never get to stick in my head. Pierre. So wow, what’re you doing now? What’re you doing here?”

  “I’m part of a traveling exhibit,” Mead says. “Me and Stephen Hawking are doing a whirlwind tour of the states. And after that, we’re off to Paris.”

  Donna looks confused. “Who’s Stephen Hawking?”

  “One of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century,” Mr. Colgan says.

  Shit, so much for escaping sight unseen. Mead should’ve just stolen the pants.

  “Mr. Colgan, sir, what a pleasant and unexpected surprise.”

  “Likewise,” the principal says. “I was just reading about you in the local newspaper. Congratulations on your recent graduation. And on the presentation. Very impressive. But then I always knew you would amount to something. So where’re you off to next?”

  “Paris,” Donna says. “He’s going to Paris with that Stephen guy.”

  “And then I’m taking some time off,” Mead says. “I thought I’d come back here for a while, take a break from school, you know, to gain some life experience.”

  Mr. Colgan’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline like two cockroaches running from the light of day. “Time off? Life isn’t a vacation, Theodore. One doesn’t take time off to experience it.”

  “I know, sir, I didn’t mean it like that.” Mead hands his father’s credit card to Donna. “If you don’t mind, I’m kind of in a hurry here.” She takes it and rings up his purchase but not fast enough. It’s as if he is back in high school, sitting in the principal’s office, talking over all his options for college, back when he believed that it would lead him to a better life. Back when he believed every word that came out of Principal Colgan’s mouth about the opportunities that awaited him there. But they were just more lies. Because now he knows that those opportunities come at a price. One he is not willing to pay.

  “I gotta go,” Mead says and bolts for the exit.

  “Teddy,” Donna says. “Wait. You forgot your card.”

  MEAD RINGS THE FRONT DOORBELL AND WAITS. He should have brought along the swimming trunks as an explanation for his unexpected appearance. He could have said he dropped by to return them, but that would have required stopping by his house first.

  As he waits he hears a terrible racket coming from the garage, like someone is playing a warped vinyl album on a cheapo turntable at the wrong speed. It reminds Mead of the music his dormmates were fond of listening to on Saturday night when they got stoned. He couldn’t blame them, really. It would have been intolerable to listen to in any other state of mind.

  He rings the bell again, and is about to give up, when the door opens. Mrs. Sammons pulls a wad of cotton out of each ear and says, “Theodore. I’m sorry. I didn’t hear the door chime.” Then, on taking in his burnt skin, “My lord in heaven, what happened to you? You look awful.”

  “Is Hayley around?”

  “I’m afraid not. She never stays in the house when her brother is practicing. Don’t you think you should go to the hospital or something?”

  “I’m fine, Mrs. Sammons. Just tell her I dropped by.”

  Mead walks back to the street and turns to leave, then changes his mind and turns back. Standing at the end of the Sammonses’ driveway, he peers into the garage, where a set of drums sits next to a lawnmower, a ladder, and a couple of garbage cans. A pudgy teenage boy is perched behind the drums, whacking away at them as if he were beating up on his little brother. A second teenager is standing a few feet in front of him, strumming an electric guitar and screaming into a microphone. Mead waits, his red arms hanging at his sides radiating heat, until the song ends.

  “Well,” the guitar player says, “whadaya think?”

  “Which one of you is Hayley’s brother, Eric?” Mead asks.

  “I am. Who wants to know?”

  Mead studies Eric’s frame. “What’s your shirt size?”

  “None of your business, creep.”

  “I’ll bet you’re a medium, just like me.”

  “Listen, if you don’t leave right now I’m gonna call the cops, got it, pervert?”

  “No problem,” Mead says. “I’m leaving.”

  But fifteen minutes later he’s back. He stands at the end of the driveway until Eric finishes his song. “What do you want now, pervert?”

  “Your band appears to be missing a bass player,” Mead says.

  “Yeah? So?”

  “So I thought I’d offer my services.”

  Eric looks at his drummer and then back at Mead, who is holding in his arms an instrument that is as tall as he is. “That’s not a bass guitar, you idiot, it’s a cello.”

  “Same difference,” Mead says and draws a bow across the strings of his cello so Eric and his sidekick can hear what it sounds like. “I played for three years in the high school band. I’m pretty good. And I read music too.”

  As they lock heads to discuss the matter, Mead glances up at the house and sees Mrs. Sammons looking back through the kitchen window. She waves and he waves back. Hayley has got to come home sooner or later and when she does Mead will be here waiting for her. He hopes she comes home with her boyfriend because Mead would like to meet him. Oh, yeah. She has one all right. Mead is sure of it now. Because the clo
thes in that duffel bag, they no more fit her brother than they do Mead. Oh yeah, she’s got a boyfriend, all right.

  “Okay,” Eric says. “You’re in.”

  AN HOUR LATER ERIC DECIDES TO CALL IT A DAY. And all Mead has to show for his effort is a throbbing headache to go along with his throbbing arms and legs. No Hayley. No boyfriend. Nothing.

  “We’ll meet back here tomorrow at ten,” Eric says. “Nelson’ll need your help loading his drums into the van.”

  Mead looks at the pudgy boy. “Why? Is he going somewhere?”

  “Yes,” Eric says. “Grange Hall. We’ve got a gig there tomorrow at noon.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A gig. A live performance.”

  A HORN HONKS BUT MEAD DOESN’T LOOK UP, he just shoves the sunglasses up the bridge of his nose and keeps pushing his cello along the sidewalk toward home. It’s probably another classmate, another mini-reunion in the making, and Mead has had more than his fair share of those lately. If he keeps walking, maybe whoever it is will give up and drive away. Only they don’t. They honk again. And only then does it dawn on Mead that it may actually be someone he wants to see —like Hayley —so he lifts his eyes. But it isn’t Hayley; it’s Dr. Alexander. Driving a black Buick sedan circa 1940.

  Mead steps over to the car as the professor rolls down the window.

  “Dr. Alexander, what’re you doing here in High Grove? In this car?”

  “It’s a rental,” he says. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

  Mead peers inside the sedan. The professor appears to be driving with one leg in a cast. Which seems a virtual impossibility. And yet here he is. “Since when do they rent out fifty-year-old cars?”

  “Chaos,” Dr. Alexander says. “If it looks like chaos, you need to step back, Mead, and keep stepping back until a pattern emerges.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Riemann Hypothesis. I’ve been meditating on that stack of zeros you left in my office. The answer isn’t there, Mead. I’ve decided that number theory is a trail with a dead end. You were right to walk away, to blow off the dean. We have to go in another direction. Change our thinking altogether.”

  “That’s not why I left.”

  “It isn’t? Then why did you leave?”

  Mead glances up to make sure no horse-drawn carriages or gas streetlights have sprung up on the street. Reassured that he is still planted solidly in the present, he looks back at Dr. Alexander and says, “When you were over there in England, at King’s College in Cambridge, did you ever dream of solving the Riemann Hypothesis?”

  “Every night. Why?”

  “How far would you have gone to pull it off?”

  “You’ve been down in my basement, Mead. I think you already know the answer to that question.”

  “And how far is too far?”

  “Get in the car, Mead. We’ll talk about it on the way back to Chicago.”

  “No, I can’t go back. My father is expecting me at the store.”

  “Then I’ll give you a lift.”

  “No. Go away. Go back to Chicago,” Mead says and walks away from the car as fast as he can pushing an oversized musical instrument. But Dr. Alexander won’t leave him alone. The man follows close on Mead’s heels in the black sedan, tooting the horn several times. Mead reaches the corner and the black sedan pulls up beside him. Shit, why won’t the professor leave him be? Mead turns around to confront the professor one last time. “I said go away!” he yells. But it isn’t Dr. Alexander who is pursuing him; it’s his aunt and uncle in their brand-new Lincoln Continental. Jewel rolls down her window and sticks out her head. “Teddy, you’re red as a tomato. Are you all right? We’ve been honking at you for five minutes. Get in and we’ll drive you home. Your mother is worried sick about you and, frankly, so am I. We’re on the way over there for supper right now. Come on now, get in.”

  “Aunt Jewel, did you see an antique car drive by here just now? A 1940 Buick? An old guy would’ve been driving it. A guy with long gray hair.”

  Jewel places her hand on Mead’s forehead. “You’re burning up, Teddy.”

  “I’m fine, Aunt Jewel. You must have seen it. He drove right up this street.”

  Uncle Martin gets out and walks around the car. “This won’t fit in the backseat,” he says and takes the cello out of Mead’s hands. “I’ll have to put it in the trunk.”

  Mead does not ask his uncle if he saw the antique sedan, he just gets in the car and feels his forehead. And the thing is, his aunt is right; he is burning up.

  JEWEL STEPS FROM THE CAR wearing a simple blue dress and pumps. No bathrobe. No slippers. The only hint of the crazy woman Mead saw in the A & P yesterday is in her eyes, which point skyward as she walks across the lawn toward the front door, oblivious to the trail of words spilling from Uncle Martin’s mouth, focused on some distant spot in the universe. The expression on her face reminds Mead of a conversation he once had with her when he was in first grade. Jewel was snapping beans in the kitchen, watching through the back window as Uncle Martin pitched balls to their then-nine-year-old son, Percy. “When I was your age,” she said, “I used to dream about becoming a ballerina.” Mead pictured her twirling across a stage, wearing an apron instead of a tutu, with a spatula in one hand and an eggbeater in the other. “Then I hit puberty,” she continued, “and started busting out in all the wrong places. My hips were too wide, my thighs too thick. So I knew I had to come up with a new dream.” Mead expected her to say something like housewife or mother. Instead she said, “I dreamed about becoming an aviatrix and flying around the world. Like Amelia Earhart.”

  Mead’s mother opens the front door, surprised to find her son among the arriving guests. She looks at Mead and says, “You got another phone call. From Dr. Alexander. He wants you to call him back.” Mead’s father steps up behind her and says to Uncle Martin, “You’re thirty minutes late. I was beginning to get worried.”

  “The delay is my fault,” Aunt Jewel says. “I couldn’t decide what to wear. I’ve been such a recluse lately. I haven’t been out of the house in weeks.”

  “Yes, you have,” Mead says. “I saw you in the A & P yesterday. Buying ice cream.” Jewel seems nonplused by this information and looks to Martin as if he might be able to clear up the confusion, a look similar to the one she gave the store clerk. But he just glares at Mead and says, “If my wife says she hasn’t been out of the house, then she hasn’t been out of the house.”

  “But I saw her,” Mead says. “At the A & P. I walked her home.”

  Martin looks at Mead’s dad. “Your son is a liar, did you know that? He admitted as much to me in the woods this morning.”

  Everyone turns to stare at Mead, waiting for an explanation. But he has none to offer. Okay, so he lied about Percy. He pretended he didn’t know where he was when he actually did. But he’d made a promise. Shit, if Mead had known his uncle was going to use his heartfelt confession against him, he would never have come clean. But fine. Whatever. No good deed goes unpunished. This time, however, Mead is telling the truth. And it’s driving him nuts that no one will believe him. Not that his track record has been good as of late. Not that anyone in this room has any reason whatsoever to believe him. Not even his father. Mr. Switzerland. Mr. Neutrality. Fine. If they want to believe he made up that whole story about seeing Jewel in the A & P, fine. They can believe what they want; he can’t stop them. But he did see her. He really did. But then again he also believes that he just saw Dr. Alexander in a 1940 Buick.

  “Oh. Right,” Jewel says. “I remember now. Teddy’s right. I did run to the store to get ice cream. It just slipped my mind is all.” And she squeezes his wrist in an affectionate way. But Mead gets the distinct impression that now she is lying.

  HIS MOTHER PULLS HIM ASIDE and hands him a scrap of paper with Dr. Alexander’s home phone number on it. “He sounded worried. Call him. He’s a friend of yours, is he not?”

  “I’m not lying about Jewel.”

  Since Mea
d won’t take the scrap of paper, his mother tucks it into his shirt pocket. “If you don’t want to talk to me or your old principal, fine, but at least talk to your professor.”

  “I’m worried about her. I think you should be too.”

  “Tonight. I want you to call him tonight.”

  THE ROAST SAT in the oven so long that the meat falls right off the bone. “Just the way I like it,” Martin says as Mead’s mother piles one and then two and then three slices onto his plate. “Say when,” she says but he doesn’t utter a word as she adds two more slices. You’d think the guy hadn’t eaten in weeks. But he wolfed down his dinner at the Lodge the other night, and snarfed up the sandwich Mead bought him for lunch, so the guy is hardly starving. “Why don’t you work on that for starters,” Mead’s mother says and moves on to Jewel. “Just one for me,” she says and waves the roast away, then stares at the slice on her plate as if it were a two-pound steak, cutting it up into tiny pieces and moving them around. Mead never sees her actually put any of it in her mouth.

  “So how have you been doing?” Mead’s mother asks Jewel. “I feel just awful because I’ve been meaning to drop by for a visit but something just always comes up.”

  Oh, but she’s got plenty of time now. That is the point she is oh-so-subtly trying to make, is it not? Now that she doesn’t have a graduation ceremony to attend. All the time in the world. Why doesn’t she just come right out and say it?

  “Oh, I’m fine,” Jewel says. “Just taking one day at a time.”

  “She’s been gardening,” Martin says. “We’ve got enough cucumbers and carrots and green beans in our backyard to feed the whole county.”

  “And tomatoes,” Jewel says. “Lots of big, red, plump tomatoes. They’ve always been Percy’s favorite, you know. When he was little, he used to eat ’em like apples. Sweet as candy, he’d say. I don’t know what I’m going to do with them all now, what with his being gone and all. I guess I’ll have to can them.”

  “Isn’t it a little early in the year for tomatoes?” Mead says, and his uncle throws him a dirty look but his parents don’t see it; they’re too busy staring at Jewel, waiting for her to start crying or something. But she doesn’t, instead she pushes back her chair and says, “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to visit the little girls’ room.” Martin stands too, as if he intends to escort her, but she shoos away his hand and goes by herself. Since he’s up anyway, Martin offers to refresh everyone’s drink and disappears into the kitchen. As soon as the door swings shut behind him, Mead’s mother leans across the table and says, “She seems perfectly fine to me.”