“He sent them to me too,” Mead says. “Postcards.” He looks out over the lake then back at Hayley. “Do you know, by any chance, why he drove up to Chicago?”
She nods.
“Why?”
She looks down at her feet. “I loved Percy. Still do. He’s stubborn and proud and I would’ve married him in an instant if he’d asked.” She shakes her head again. “He had so much life in him. But he had other plans. He’d decided to become a sportswriter. That’s why he drove up to Chicago, Theodore. He had an interview with this guy at the Tribune, someone he met while he was playing in the minors. He called me afterwards. He said —” She chokes up as if she’s going to start crying, takes a deep breath, and exhales, starts again. “He said it had gone really well. He called me from a bar. He’d been celebrating and sounded kind of drunk and so I told him not to drive home, to stay up there overnight and sleep it off.” She looks up at Mead, tears rolling down her face. “That’s when he mentioned you. He told me he was going to crash with you for the night. At the dorm.”
“So it was my fault.”
“No,” she says and swipes her hand across her wet cheek. “It was his fault, his choice to get back behind that wheel. Not yours, Theodore, his.” But it doesn’t sound like something that even she herself believes, it sounds like something she is trying to talk herself into believing.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this before, Hayley?”
“I don’t know. Because he told me not to tell anyone. And because talking about it makes it real and I’m not ready for real yet. I keep telling myself that he’s still up there. In Chicago. That he got the job. That he’s living in some cockroach-infested apartment that looks out onto an airshaft and that he’ll be coming back to get me any day now. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next month. When he’s making enough money to get us a nice place.” She looks at Mead. “It sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”
A bloodcurdling scream pierces the air as a boy jumps off Dead Man’s Leap, his body plunging into the lake like a rock. Like dead weight.
“It’s not stupid,” Mead says.
“Yes, it is. He’s not coming back. I’m stuck is what it is. I’m stuck and I don’t know how to get unstuck.”
Mead kneels down and takes hold of Hayley’s hand. Squeezes it. “Percy isn’t coming back, but I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
Hayley squeezes his hand back. “Your eyes say different.”
“Would you stop with the eyes already? The sun’s in them. I’m squinting. All my eyes are saying is will someone please make the goddamned sun set already.”
“If you really believe that, Theodore, then you’re in more denial than I am.”
Mead pulls his hand away. Why is she being like this? Why is she being so mean when he’s sitting here trying to be nice? She’s really starting to piss him off. “Stop calling me Theodore,” he says. “My name is Mead now. Not Theodore, not Teddy. Mead.”
“My point exactly.”
“Point? What point? No, don’t tell me. I’ve heard enough. More than enough.” Mead’s chest feels tight, as if it’s going to explode. How dare she act as if she knows him better than he knows himself. The girl doesn’t know a goddamned thing about him. Or about Herman. Especially not about Herman. If she did know about Herman, then she would know that Mead had no other choice but to do what he did. Namely, leave.
Another scream pierces the air, echoing off the walls of the quarry.
“So do it,” Hayley says.
“Do what?”
“Prove to me that you can change: Jump off the cliff.”
“Oh, changing my name doesn’t prove a thing, but jumping off a cliff will?”
“Yes, I can see it in your eyes.” And she says it real serious-like.
“No,” Mead says, stands up, and stomps back to his bike. He’s had enough.
“Theodore, come back. I’m sorry. You don’t have to jump off the cliff, okay?”
But Mead is too mad to go back. Instead he hops on his bike and pedals out of the parking lot, spraying gravel in his wake. And as he pedals furiously back into town, he wonders why it is that the people who claim to care the most about you are the ones who always inflict the most pain.
12
BREAK A LEG
Chicago
Two Weeks Before Graduation
MEAD TAKES SHIRLEY TANAPAT TO THE COVE , an eatery in the student center where your meal ticket buys you a hamburger and a Coke. Or, in this instance, two cups of coffee and a slice of carrot cake. It is their fourth such date in as many weeks. “I love carrot cake,” Shirley says when she sees it listed on the mimeographed menu, so Mead orders it for her. The girl working the counter places two forks on the tray along with the slice of cake and Mead carries the whole thing to an empty table near the back. The rest of the tables are occupied by other students boycotting the college cafeteria although Mead suspects that both eateries get their food from the same wholesale distributor.
“Why aren’t you having any cake?” Shirley asks. “It’s delicious.”
“I don’t like carrot cake,” Mead says. “Too sweet.”
Shirley frowns. It’s not a real frown, it’s the fake kind people put on to let you know they feel bad about what just happened or what was just said, but not that bad. “You should’ve said something. We could’ve ordered something else.”
“It’s all right. I’m not hungry. I had a big lunch today. In Baylor Hall.”
“Baylor Hall? Where the elite meet to eat? I’m impressed.”
“I didn’t bring it up to impress you, just to explain why I’m not hungry.”
Shirley looks at Mead’s hands, which causes him to look at them too. The left one is wrapped around his mug of coffee, the right one stirring a spoon round and round inside of it, betraying his nervousness. Mead lets go of the spoon and the mug and tucks both hands under his legs and out of sight.
“You don’t like coffee either, do you?”
“No. Too bitter.”
Shirley crosses her legs and her right foot bumps into Mead’s suitcase. His lunch with the dean ran late. A review of his outline turning into a dress rehearsal of his presentation. It wasn’t supposed to, it’s just that once Mead gets started talking about the Riemann Hypothesis, he can’t stop. Mead moves his suitcase over a few inches to give Shirley more room. “I’ve never met anyone quite like you before,” she says. “You must have very interesting parents.”
“Not really,” Mead says, “I’m much more interesting than my parents.”
Shirley smiles. But whether she is reacting to the piece of cake she just put in her mouth or Mead, it is impossible for him to know.
THE BIKE RACK IN FRONT OF EPPS HALL IS EMPTY. Mead checks his watch, thinking that he is early, but he is right on time. He shakes out his umbrella in the vestibule and heads up to Dr. Alexander’s office to wait. But the door is cracked open so he must be here. Mead peeks his head inside. The professor’s chair is empty. And on his desk is a rough draft of Mead’s presentation, the one he dropped off a couple days ago for the professor to read over.
“Dr. Alexander? Hello? It’s me, Mead.”
He waits for the professor’s gray crown to rise up over the edge of the desk, like a moon over the horizon, but it doesn’t. Mead glances at the blackboard. Several 4x4 matrices have been drawn on it, along with their characteristic polynomials and traces, and then the whole thing partially erased. As if the person doing the erasing was interrupted by a ringing phone or some other urgent matter. “Dr. Alexander?”
Mead steps into the office and around the desk, expecting to find the professor stretched out on the floor, eyes closed, a pair of headphones clamped over his ears. But no one is there.
A real and an imaginary axis has been drawn below the matrices, the resulting graph a series of dots that looks utterly random. Like birds on a telephone wire. Or rather, several telephone wires. But the Riemann Hypothesis says they are not random, despite their appearance. That their
position can be predicted. But how? Maybe that is what Dr. Alexander was thinking about when he was rudely interrupted.
“Oh good, you’re still here,” a voice says. “I was afraid you might’ve already come and gone.”
Mead turns around. Dr. Kustrup is standing in the doorway.
“There’s been a change in plans,” he says. “I’m going to be working with you from now on, Mr. Fegley, instead of Dr. Alexander.”
“Why? Where is he?”
“I’m afraid he’s been in a bit of an accident. Someone sideswiped his bicycle with a car. Don’t worry, though, he’s going to be fine.”
“Who hit him? You?”
Dr. Kustrup gets all huffy-looking. “That’s not very amusing, Mr. Fegley.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
The chairman of the math department glances around the office as if for help but none is forthcoming. He looks back at Mead. “This attitude of yours is going to have to change, Mr. Fegley. You have a very important presentation coming up. All eyes are going to be on you, not to mention this university, so it is imperative that we make a good impression. As a team. That’s what I’m here for. To help. As a member of the team. I understand that you and Dr. Alexander have been working together and I think that’s great. But we can’t stop playing simply because one man got knocked out of the game. That’s why I’m here, Mr. Fegley, to take up the professor’s position on the field. So please, if we could just proceed.” And he picks up an eraser and wipes the board clean, wipes away all evidence of Dr. Alexander, then he sits down in his chair, folds his hands together behind his head, and flashes a smile that would make the sleaziest snake-oil salesman look sincere. “Why don’t you start by giving me a dry run-through of your presentation and I’ll tell you whether or not I see any errors in your logic.”
“Where is he?” Mead says.
Dr. Kustrup pretends he hasn’t heard and waits for Mead to begin.
“I said, where is he?”
Dr. Kustrup sighs. “He’s at home, Mr. Fegley, resting peacefully. He fractured his right fibula and will probably be confined to a bed for the rest of the quarter. Now, show me the number fields you used to plot these zeros on the function plane.”
Mead snatches his presentation off Dr. Alexander’s desk and hugs the papers to his chest. “I’ll be happy to show them to you, Dr. Kustrup, at my presentation.” And he heads for the door.
The professor leaps out of the chair, bracing his arm against the doorjamb to block Mead’s exit. “Don’t leave,” he says. “I must advise you, for your own benefit, to stay. Do not resist me, Mr. Fegley. This is for the best. This way everyone wins.”
“Are you threatening me, Dr. Kustrup?” Mead says, then looks down at the chairman’s brown shoes and sees again the two pairs of shoes in the bathroom stall. “Or are you propositioning me?”
“What? No,” he says and drops his arm.
“You had your chance to work with me, Dr. Kustrup, and you gave it up.”
“That wasn’t my choice, Mr. Fegley, my hands were tied.”
“No? Then whose choice was it, Mr. Chairman-of-the-Department?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Fegley. I made a mistake. What else can I say?”
“Excuse me. I have to go,” Mead says and pushes past the professor cum chairman and out the door.
MEAD HAS TO TRANSFER BUSES TWICE to get to Dr. Alexander’s house. The rusting VW Rabbit is parked in the driveway just as before, the professor’s bicycle leaning against the side of the house in its usual spot. Only now the front wheel is crumpled, bent into the shape of a pretzel. Mead steps past it to the front door and rings the bell.
“You’re soaked through to the bone,” Mrs. Alexander says.
“I forgot my umbrella.”
“As bad as my husband,” she says as she steps back to let him inside. “He won’t use one either.” She gets Mead a towel and a dry shirt. A new one still in its original packaging. “I can’t accept this,” he says. “I’ll just take an old shirt.”
“This is old,” Mrs. Alexander says. “It’s been in my husband’s dresser drawer for nearly ten years. A gift from one of his students. He’ll never wear it, though.”
“Why not?”
“It has long sleeves. He hates long sleeves.”
So Mead peels off his wet shirt and puts on the dry one. And it’s a perfect fit.
The professor is in the living room, propped up on a chaise longue that has been outfitted with bed pillows and sheets and blankets. The cats are nowhere in sight, having been displaced from their favorite napping spot. Dr. Alexander’s right leg is in a plaster cast that extends from his toes all the way up to his knee. His gray hair has been freed from its rubber band and fans out over the pillows, giving him the appearance of a cartoon character with his finger stuck in an electrical outlet. A gash on his forehead has been covered with a bandage. A scratch on his cheek has not.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” the professor says. “It’s worse.”
Mead sets his presentation on the coffee table next to a pitcher of water and a prescription bottle of painkillers. Some of the pages are wet, but all are still legible. “You forgot this,” Mead says, “in your hurry out the door.”
The professor raises his eyebrows. “How did you know I was in a hurry?”
“The chalkboard. It was only half-erased.”
Mrs. Alexander enters the room carrying a tray with two steaming cups of soup on it. “I hope you like cream of cauliflower,” she says as she places one of them in front of her husband and the other one in front of Mead.
“I hate it,” Dr. Alexander says.
“I wasn’t talking to you, dear,” she says. “I was speaking to our guest.” But she says it in a teasing way, not all hostile the way Mead’s mother would.
The professor winces as he lifts his maimed leg off the chaise longue and leans forward to pick up his cup of soup. “I lost track of time,” he says as he sips the soup. “I had an appointment to meet with the dean and the chairman of the math department to further discuss my retirement plans. I was running late.”
“I thought you didn’t want to retire,” Mead says.
“I don’t.” Dr. Alexander takes a second sip, slurping his soup like a child. “The car hit me on my way over there. I should’ve just walked.”
“I knew Dr. Kustrup was behind this,” Mead says. “He was in your office, you know, when I went up there to meet with you today. He offered to help me with my presentation.”
“Did you tell him to go to hell?”
“No, I accused him of attempted vehicular manslaughter.”
“Even better.”
The professor tries, rather painfully, to get his leg back up on the couch. Mead comes around the table to help him. “Easy there, Mead,” Dr. Alexander says. “I’ve still got a few good years left in that appendage.”
“Dr. Kustrup says you’re going to be laid up for the rest of the quarter.”
“Poppycock. I’ll be back next week. He’s not getting rid of me that easily.”
Mead is relieved to hear this. He sets down the professor’s leg and walks back to his side of the table. Sits. “Has anyone ever complained about him?”
“Dr. Kustrup? All the time. He’s a wretched teacher, as you well know.”
“No, I mean his behavior outside of class.”
“Outside of class? He’s a bull in a china shop. Crass. Obnoxious. Opportunistic.”
Mead shakes his head. “No, I mean I saw him in the men’s room. In one of the stalls with another man. A student, I think.”
“Are you talking about sexual harassment? No. There’s never been a complaint of that nature that I know of. The man is a leech, yes, but a predator? Unlikely. Are you sure it was him?”
“All I saw were shoes. I might be wrong.”
“Nonetheless, you should go to the dean and report what you saw.”
“But I’m two weeks away from graduation. I don’t want to make waves.”
“All right,” Mead says, then nods at his presentation. “So, what do you think?”
Dr. Alexander takes another sip from his cup of soup. “The work is thorough and fully comprehensible.”
“But?”
“I’m sure it’ll impress the socks off the dean’s distinguished guest list.”
“But?”
“It proves nothing.”
Mead slouches. “I know. Maybe I shouldn’t present it at all.”
“Poppycock,” Dr. Alexander says. “It’s a well-researched paper with impressive data. If you don’t present these findings, someone else will. Eventually. And take all the credit. It shows that you’re someone to be reckoned with. I say do it, Mead. Announce yourself to the mathematical community. Dazzle their socks off.”
HERMAN EMERGES FROM THE STUDENT CENTER and walks toward the dorm. In one arm he is holding a stack of books, in the other he cradles Cynthia Broussard. She seems to hang on his every word, gazing into his face as he yammers away. Mead watches from his second-story window until they disappear beneath the sill.
But how can this be? Why would Cynthia continue to go out with Herman after what he did to her? Unless, of course, it wasn’t Herman who caused those bruises. But Mead saw the scratches on his neck. Could they really have been caused by a staple? Mead abandons his post by the window and crosses his room to the door. Cracks it open and listens as footsteps come up the stairs. They get louder as they cross the landing on his floor, softer again as they ascend to the third floor. One pair, not two. Which means Cynthia is no longer with Herman. Mead waits for the second hand on his watch to make a full sweep around the dial. Waits to make sure Cynthia isn’t lagging behind. Then he steps out of his room, closes the door, and follows Herman up the stairs.
Life After Genius Page 29
