“So how come you ended up in Chicago? Why didn’t you just go to Princeton University?”
“Because I wanted to get as far away from all this as I possibly could.”
Mead studies Herman and tries to decide whether or not the guy is being serious. Decides that he isn’t and concocts his own personal history for Herman. That he was indeed accepted into Princeton. That he spent his freshman year there cutting classes, getting drunk, and jumping out second-story windows until the school was left with no other option but to expel him, at which point his rich grandfather —the bottle king —bought Herman his way into Chicago University. Mead has to think this, otherwise he might have to feel some compassion for Herman, might have to see how someone with an ounce of humanity in his blood might want to escape all this.
Someone knocks. Mead looks up and sees a young man standing in the bedroom doorway. A frail, pasty-complexioned teenaged kid who looks as if he knows firsthand what it’s like to get his head flushed down the toilet. “Hi, Herman,” he says. “Mom told me you were here.” He looks at Mead and smiles. “Hi, I’m Neil. Herman’s little brother. I just got home from my piano lesson.” He offers his hand to Mead to shake. He has a surprisingly confident and firm grip for such a slight boy, but not too firm. He looks like the kid in class with all the right answers, the one the teacher calls on in a pinch, the kid Mead would have wanted to be his partner in science class. Mead likes him right off.
Neil turns toward Herman. He seems to be waiting for his brother to get up off the bed and greet him with either a hug or a handshake. But Herman doesn’t get up. He just looks at Neil and says, “So how’s the young Mozart doing these days?”
“I’m fine. You know, considering.” He turns back to Mead. “I have a busy schedule: two hours of piano practice every afternoon and six on Saturday and Sunday. I barely have time to get my homework done. It can be a bit stressful sometimes.”
“Oh, don’t listen to him,” Herman says and rolls clear to the other side of the bed —away from Neil —to get up. “He’s just showing off. My kid brother loves playing the piano, been doing it since he was three. He’s got the gift, you know? Juilliard has been chomping at the bit to get their hands on him for years but my parents are making them wait. They want little Neil here to complete his high school education before going to the big city. Or at least that’s the story they give because it makes them come off as protective parents. But what they’re really doing is trying to create an atmosphere of demand for the little guy. It’s very smart. Very savvy, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I’m not that little anymore,” Neil says. “I’ve grown two inches in the past six months alone. I’m almost as tall as you now, see?” And he runs around the bed to stand next to his big brother, places his hand on top of his head and brings it across until it touches Herman in the middle of his forehead. “I’ve just a couple more inches to go to catch up.”
His hand is still touching Herman’s forehead when Mrs. Weinstein appears in the doorway. “Mr. Weinstein just got home,” she says, “so dinner will be served in a few minutes. Neil, why don’t you go get washed up.”
He drops his hand and rolls his eyes, like a typical teenager. “Okay, Mom,” he says, appearing reluctant to leave the presence of his big brother, looking as if he still wants that hug. “See you downstairs,” he says to Herman and heads out of the room. As he passes Mrs. Weinstein, she places her hand on his head and ruffles his hair. A very unportraitlike thing to do. It surprises Mead. She didn’t show Herman any of that same affection. After she leaves, Mead turns to Herman and says, “I had no idea you have a brother.”
“You say that as if it were an impossibility.”
“It’s just that you always struck me as an only child.”
“What’re you trying to say, Fegley, that you think I’m self-centered? Would a self-centered person have flown his classmate all the way out east just so he could sit in the same room as some computer for a few days?”
“You don’t look like brothers.”
“Which leads you to believe what? That my mother slept around?”
“What? No. I wasn’t thinking that at all,” Mead says and blushes. He doesn’t really need to know the ins and outs of the Weinsteins’ personal life. Why does Herman do that? Why does he have to turn every conversation into a confrontation of some sort?
A bell tinkles, putting their conversation to a thankful end.
“Dinner is served,” Herman says and motions to the open door. “Shall we?”
THE TABLE IS LARGE ENOUGH to accommodate Mead’s entire high school graduation class. Mr. Weinstein sits at the head of it and motions for Mead to come sit next to him. The dean of all things possible and impossible, that’s how Dr. Kustrup described him to Mead. The way he said Herman described the man to him. But the Institute has no dean. The phrase is merely metaphoric, one that conjures up the image of a smart man. A discerning man. An intimidating man. But Mr. Weinstein is anything but intimidating, at least in appearance. He’s a slight man on the short side whose smile reminds Mead of a puppy. He seems genuinely pleased to meet him, kind of the way Neil comes across. Full of blind trust. He also happens to be one of the two men flanking Mrs. Weinstein in that living room portrait. The less handsome one. An average-looking guy who bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to Herman. If Mead were to run into Mr. Weinstein on the street, he would never guess the man came from money. Which he doesn’t, of course; he’s just married to it. All of which leaves Mead wondering who the other man in the painting is.
“I’ve heard great things about you,” Mr. Weinstein says as a maid in a black dress and white apron sets down a bowl of soup in front of Mead. And he says it really loud, as if Mead were sitting all the way at the other end of the table and not at his elbow. As if he is more used to addressing crowds than individuals. Or perhaps he’s a tad bit deaf. “It’s rare for Herman to gush about a classmate, or even mention one for that matter. He never talks about his friends at all and, quite frankly, I’m surprised to discover that he has one.” And he says it all serious-like.
Either Mr. Weinstein has the driest sense of humor of anyone Mead has ever met or the man is just plain mean. Mead chooses to go with the former explanation and waits for Herman’s father to start laughing. To explain that he’s just kidding. Only he doesn’t.
Uncomfortable with the awkward silence that has descended upon the table, Mead directs his attention to the mantel above the fireplace on the far side of the room. There appears to be a fireplace in almost every room of the house, including the room in which Mead is to spend the night, and upon each mantel are displays of framed photographs as well as various trophies and awards, a preponderance of which feature Neil. Mead just assumed, when he saw the mantel full of piano trophies in his room, that he had been put up in Neil’s bedroom for the night, but now it is starting to dawn on him that he may have jumped to the wrong conclusion and he wonders if Mr. Weinstein’s less-than-complimentary comment about Herman just now might in some way be connected to the dearth of awards and trophies associated with his elder son.
Mead lowers his eyes from the mantel to Neil, who is seated directly across from him at Mr. Weinstein’s other elbow. A definite similarity exists in body shape and maybe even a little in the face. It would not take a huge leap of the imagination to believe them father and son. Herman, on the other hand, is an anomaly. The prettiest one of the whole lot. A chromosomal fluke. What every pair of average-looking parents secretly hopes for: a beautiful progeny. It is becoming clear to Mead, however, that beauty does not hold much esteem in the Weinstein household. Or perhaps it is Herman’s very beauty that is at the heart of Mr. Weinstein’s hostility.
“I understand that you and Herman have been doing some statistical work on the spacings between the zeros of the zeta function,” Mr. Weinstein says, finally breaking the silence. “The Riemann Hypothesis. It’s a mathematician’s wet dream. The greatest unsolved puzzle of our time. I’m sure I don’t need
to tell you that the man who finally does solve it will go down in the history books.”
Mead shifts his gaze to Herman, who is seated on the other side of Neil. Why, Mead almost blurts out loud, is your father under the impression that you and I are working together? Did you tell him that? But he holds his tongue because sitting right above Herman, on the mantel, staring at Mead, is a photograph of Neil shaking Leonard Bernstein’s hand.
Herman doesn’t know Mead is looking at him. He’s too busy staring down into his soup. It’s the first time Mead has ever seen him not look someone straight in the eyes. The first time he has seen the guy even approach a state of obeisance. “My father,” Herman says, “spends his days surrounded by geniuses. Scientists, mathematicians, historians. All of them sitting around, thinking, pondering, waiting for something great to happen. It’s a vocational hazard, bringing those expectations home with him at night.”
“Hermie,” Mrs. Weinstein says. “We have a guest. Please don’t start.”
“Start what, Mother?” Herman says and looks up at her all innocent-like. “I didn’t start anything, you did. And as far as I know, you never stopped.”
“That’s enough,” Mr. Weinstein says.
Mrs. Weinstein signals the maid to clear off the table. Herman slouches in his chair. Neil starts plucking at his eyebrows. The Weinsteins make the Fegleys look blithely happy in comparison. In the silence that follows, broken only by the sound of dishes being cleared, Mead writes out a mathematical expression on his napkin. Only he doesn’t realize what he is doing, not until Mr. Weinstein says, “That’s the Riemann-Siegel formula, isn’t it?”
Mead looks up. “Excuse me?” Then looks down again and sees what he has written. All over a linen napkin. Shit. He looks across the table at Mrs. Weinstein, expecting to see a look of horror on her face akin to the look on his mother’s face the day he brought home that C on his science project. But she doesn’t look horrified at all. If anything, she looks amused. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t realize what I was doing. It’s a reflex.”
“That’s quite all right, Mead,” she says. “It’s just a napkin, we’ve plenty more in the buffet.” And Mead decides that perhaps he was a bit too quick in his assessment of the formidable woman.
“That’s right, Fegley,” Herman says. “Around here we tolerate odd quirks in behavior. The odder the better. It’s a sign of genius, you know. Oddity. Like my little brother over here. The young Mozart. Plucking the hairs out of his head as if he were preparing himself to be roasted for dinner.”
Mr. Weinstein slams his fist down on the table, causing the water in his crystal stemware to splash out onto the tablecloth. “That’s enough, I said. If you cannot be civil, Herman, then I am going to have to ask you to leave the table.”
Mead waits for Herman to stand up, say something like, “I thought you’d never ask,” and stalk off, but he doesn’t. Instead he turns to face Neil and says, “Sorry, little brother. That was a low blow. Hey, I love you, you know that, don’t you?”
Neil nods but does not look up from his lap, his fingers now tucked under his thighs where they won’t do any more damage.
“Of course you know it,” Herman says. “See, Dad? Everything’s cool.” Then he looks toward the kitchen door and yells, “All right, Selma, the coast is clear. You can bring in the next course now.” No one else says a word. A moment later the kitchen door swings open and Selma backs through it carrying a tray.
AFTER DINNER, UP in the boudoir, Herman sits on the window ledge and lets his legs dangle out over the courtyard. He is smoking a cigarette —something else Mead has never before seen him do —when he says, “I’m sorry you had to see that, Fegley. I’m sure my parents seem like nice people to you —too nice to have a sonofabitch son like me —but appearances can sometimes be deceiving.”
“They didn’t seem all that nice,” Mead says, and Herman turns to look at him as if to gauge whose side he might be on. But Mead is only on one side: his own. “Are you working on the Riemann Hypothesis with Dr. Kustrup?”
“What?”
“Your father seems to be under the impression that you are working on the theorem, and since I’m choosing to give you the benefit of the doubt in assuming that you didn’t tell him we were working on it together, I can only conclude that you’ve been working on it with Dr. Kustrup.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, Fegley, I really do, but no, I haven’t been working on it with Dr. Kustrup.”
“So why did he say that? Why does he think you’re working on it?”
Herman turns back to face the courtyard, draws deeply on his cigarette. “I don’t know. My father came up with that one on his own. He would love to die important, to have his name immortalized in the indexes of encyclopedias and history books. But since he himself has been unable to accomplish anything truly great, it has now fallen on the shoulders of his two sons to do it for him.”
“But you aren’t working on it. You should’ve set him straight.”
Herman is hunched forward on the sill like a gargoyle perched high up on a church steeple looking down on the people below. From a distance he might look menacing, but up close you can’t miss the wry grin on his face. “My father has big dreams, Fegley. He believes he can make anything happen just by wishing it so. Who am I to dissuade him from such lofty notions?”
And suddenly Mead knows —or at least he thinks he knows —why Herman didn’t set his father straight. He sits down on the bed and says, “When I was in seventh grade, I got a C on a science report. I won’t go into all the gory details as to how that came about, just suffice it to say that my mother was none too pleased and decided to let me know exactly how she felt about my lackluster performance by taking me to meet the ghosts of my future should I decide to continue down said path. Should you ever be curious to check out the basement of a city morgue, let me forewarn you that, contrary to popular belief, there is no comfort in numbers.”
Herman turns to look at Mead, then back out the window. “Your mother sounds like a real bitch.”
“Your father sounds like a real sonofabitch.”
Herman laughs. “He started me on piano lessons when I was five. I’d been practicing every day for three years when one day the old man comes home and his ears perk up and he’s like, ‘Shit, that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.’ You should’ve seen his face. I’d never seen him smile like that before. Man, was he proud.”
“You weren’t playing, were you?” Mead says.
Herman inhales deeply on the cigarette. “Blindsided by a three-year-old. Can you believe it? He’d picked it all up by ear. Shit, I didn’t even know the little guy was listening.”
And so Mead lets the subject of the Riemann Hypothesis and who may or may not have been working on it pass.
IT TAKES MEAD FOREVER TO FALL ASLEEP. And when he finally does, it doesn’t stick. He wakes up two hours later with his mind racing, all hopped up on math, computing zeta zeros in his head using the Riemann-Siegel formula. He can hardly wait to meet this computer. He wonders what it looks like. How big it is. How fast it will work. But most of all, he wonders how on earth he is going to communicate with it, if there will be an interpreter, someone fluent in zeros and ones to translate for him. One week. The airline ticket Herman purchased for Mead has a return date of one week from today. Already Mead is anxious about the time and about the fact that there isn’t enough of it.
He throws back the covers, crawls out of bed, and paces about the room. It has begun to bother him again that Herman did not set his father straight on the Riemann Hypothesis. Did Mr. Weinstein really jump to the conclusion on his own that Herman and Mead are working together? Or did Herman lead his father to that conclusion? Mead would like to believe the former, would like to be able to take Herman at his word. But he cannot dismiss the notion that Herman might be snowing him. Trust in his fellow man does not come to Mead naturally; he has had a good many years of personal experience to build up a convincing ar
gument to the contrary. Especially when it comes to his peers. And so he decides that the only way to clear his mind of doubt, the only way to be certain that Herman is being honest with him, is to seek out Mr. Weinstein and set the record straight himself.
Mead paces over to the window and looks out and, as the gods would have it, sees standing below him in the courtyard none other than Mr. Weinstein, smoking a cigarette and pacing back and forth himself. Unable to refuse such an opportunity, Mead quickly steps into a pair of trousers, exits the bedroom, and makes his way along the hall. Hurrying down the stairs, he does his best not to make any noise. The last thing Mead wants to do is alert Herman to his intention. He feels the need to get to Mr. Weinstein and tell him the truth before Herman figures out what is going on, before the guy has a chance to make Mead feel guilty for not taking him at his word.
At the bottom of the stairs, however, Mead stops up short. He hears talking and thinks that perhaps Herman has already gotten to Mr. Weinstein. That perhaps he, too, was having trouble falling and staying asleep because of what may or may not have been said but obviously got misinterpreted. Perhaps he is clearing up the situation right now, making things right with Mr. Weinstein. Then Mead hears laughter —canned laughter —and realizes that the talking is not coming from the courtyard but from a television set. He rounds the bottom of the banister, peers into the study, and sees the backs of two heads. Hears a giggle and recognizes it as belonging to Neil. Recognizes the mop of black hair on the second television viewer as Herman. And for some reason it makes Mead mad that Herman is down here watching TV with the little brother he is supposed to hate when he is supposed to be clearing up an important matter that could adversely affect his budding friendship with yours truly.
Life After Genius Page 20
