The Exceptions

by David Cristofano

  And math.

  I stare at the billboard on the edge of Charles Street, the one advertising the variety of programs available at Johns Hopkins, and dial the number listed at the bottom, my ear pressed tightly against the phone for any sign of an incoming call. Three transfers later I’m connected with the math department. I ask one question (barely understand the answer) and hang up.

  I drop a handful of coins in the meter and make my way past the café tables and the bicycle racks, keep my cell in my hand as I enter the bookstore. I walk around the display tables holding the phone in front of me, verifying signal strength with every step. It looks like I’m checking for an explosive device hidden in the stacks.

  I follow the signs for the textbook section, walk aisles filled with knowledge I could never acquire, pass books on theory that would never lead me to discovery. I have fallen so far out of my depth, I’m outside looking in.

  I slip behind a young girl carrying a pile of books nearly half her size and ask, “Does anyone here know much about math texts?”

  She slows and turns to me a little, but her face is covered by the books. From behind them she says, “Let me get Diane, she’s a graduate engineering student. Wait here.”

  She walks away, wobbling side to side. As she makes a ninety-degree turn between rows of racks, the top three nearly slide off. I turn and look at the textbooks at my side, organized by subject for their respective courses.

  Physiological Fluid Mechanics

  Bioelectromagnetic Phenomena

  Theoretical Neuroscience

  I do not belong here. People tell their kids they can be anything they want to be in life; the optimism is warm but the truth is cold. I couldn’t become a mathematician any more than I could become a Chinaman. I may long to be something else, something other than a mobster, but I have no illusions that I should be something more. Melody, though… it would be hard for her to be much less. She belongs here, would’ve been here had I not forced her into a biannual escape. And that’s why I’m in this store, in this section. I want to understand her, to know who she was born to be. Through her music I heard her speak; through her study I hope to interpret.

  Diane walks my way, has a clipboard in her hand and wears a headset with the microphone aimed at her lips. She’s a pretty but oddly petite, small-featured gal, like a nine-year-old who one morning woke up twenty-seven.

  She stares at me from a foot below and shines a smile so full of perfect teeth the orthodontist should have signed his work.

  “I’m looking for a math text,” I say.

  She moves the microphone down an inch. “Do you have the course name or number?”

  “No. I spoke with dean of the department of applied something-or-other. Told him I was looking for a textbook for someone who had a full understanding of differential equations. He suggested a list of books—stochastical something and combinatorial yada yada. The only thing that stuck was something, like, string theory.”

  “Which professor’s teaching the course?”

  “No, it’s not for a class. It’s a gift. For a friend.”

  She studies me. “Odd,” she says, “but okay. This way.” She tries to yank her headset off but the wire gets tangled in her hair. She grunts as we walk to the math textbooks.

  “We have a few on string theory, but take it from someone who completed the course here a year ago that this one’s undeniably the best.” She hands me an eighty-dollar, seven-hundred-page, four-pound monster: A First Course in String Theory by Barton Zwiebach. “This wasn’t the book required for the course at the time, but I can tell you I’d have never passed if I hadn’t bought it. If your friend is trying to understand string theory all on his or her own, this is the one.”

  I fold my phone and slip it in my pocket, open the cover and hear the binding crackle. As I carefully turn the smooth pages I glance at the writing. The thing might as well have been written in Cyrillic.

  “You have friends who like to explore the world of mathematical physics in their spare time?”

  Tommy Fingers once explained how to get all the air out of a guy’s lungs—displacing the air with fluid—so he’ll sink to the bottom of whatever body of water he’s being dumped in. I’m guessing this is not what Diane means. Theory is not important in the Bovaro household; success resides in the application.

  “I’m trying to make new friends, you might say.”

  Diane shrugs and smiles. “Enjoy.”

  I tuck the text under my arm and check my cell as I make my way to the counter.

  With no hope of finding Melody on my own—I’m relying completely on Gardner; what a frightening thought that is—I come to the realization that the best position to place myself is on the edge of an interstate. Being in the center of a large city is like being in a cage.

  I drive westward to the perfect location, the point where I-70 intersects with the Baltimore Beltway; I can equally go north, south, or west, and all while safely sitting still. Waiting. I park at the border of the park-and-ride, aim my car down the empty interstate like a rock pulled back in a slingshot.

  Melody is likely in motion toward a destination with the sole characteristic of being somewhere far away; this is one large friggin’ country. She has got to be tired of running. At least as much as I’m tired of following.

  I plug my cell phone into the car charger and wait. I open the text on string theory and understand pretty much everything on the copyright page. Beyond that, not a clue. The book gives me more insight into Melody than I’d originally imagined, though; intelligence is a sensual thing. The fact that she understands all this stuff, that she could understand what Motivating the AdS/CFT correspondence means, that these formulas and Greek letters and strange shapes can be brought together to make sense and be applied to life sends a wave of warmth through me. It’s like she knows how to speak another language, except this language can only be understood by very few. Capacity for knowledge is as innate and uncontrollable as eye color, and Melody’s radiates.

  I sit and hope for the call—ninety minutes pass—and as my ability to control the situation drops to zero, my anxiety climbs. Here I am at that rock-bottom moment that has me finally turning to God. I’ve come to the realization that I’m never going to do this on my own, that I have no means left to rescue Melody, that someone needs to help. And so I bow my head and pray to God, the One whose wrath seemed so sweet and glorious all those Sundays in Mass. I now pathetically ask Him to throw down a soft blanket of grace upon me, one of the least deserving souls on this earth. Though I can recall so many biblical instances of destruction put down upon the unrepentant, I try to recall the lessons of mercy and come up dry. I just keep seeing Job, poor slob. I rest my head on my steering wheel, whisper out my needs and a final amen.

  Within ninety seconds my cell rings.

  I grab for it so quickly I send it across the passenger seat.

  “Go,” I say.

  “Your update,” Gardner says, “is no update.”

  I pound my stick with my fist. “Nothing, no activity at all?”

  “No update means no update.”

  I flip my phone shut and stare down the empty highway.

  How I would love to testify that God gave me exactly what I asked the moment I requested it. But I have to remember He really did answer my prayer; He just said No.

  Had I known I would spend so much time sleeping in my car, I would have bought a Lincoln Navigator, an expansive touring machine with bucket seats the size of La-Z-Boys. I can attest to the firm ride my car boasts. I wake up to the sun shining in my rearview, reflecting back against my face. The clock reads just after eight o’clock, which means Gardner is overdue for an update. The gap between his phone calls increased by roughly forty-five minutes each time, until he’d extended an every-four-hour update to every six hours.

  I get out of the car and stretch, run my fingers through my hair, and have a Marlboro for breakfast. Cars drift into the park-and-ride with regularity and people pull in th
e spaces around me, men and women in suits and dresses. In the distance I see the massive building for the Social Security Administration. Of the thousands who work in that facility, I imagine there’s at least one clerk or accountant or customer service representative who was deposited there by the feds, at least one person who goes by a name not on his or her original birth certificate. I am starting to see the ghosts everywhere.

  I hop back in my car, drive out to find somewhere to grab a quick bite while I wait for Gardner to call. The air is weighed heavy with a humidity found only in urban centers; I put the top down and my sunglasses on. And just as I exit northward onto the beltway, my phone rings.

  “Go.”

  I hear my own voice echo quietly on the phone, then: “Guess who?”

  I pull my foot off the accelerator. “I don’t know.” I check my phone to read the incoming number. “Someone calling from the Mountaineer Coffee Mill?” I’ve slowed down to forty-five miles per hour. Cars zoom by so fast my car shimmies with each passing vehicle.

  “Right,” the female voice says. “Now, who do you know who could be so unfortunate to be calling from a coffeehouse in Morgantown, West Virginia?”

  I’ve spoken with Melody so little, yet I recognize the sarcastic downturn in her voice, as true and unique as a fingerprint. “Well, that certainly narrows it down.” My nerves are sparking. I do not want this call to get dropped. “How are you, Melody?”

  She sighs as though she’s trying to hide it from me. “I’m cold, dirty. Exhausted and broke. I’m at the end, Jonathan.” Another sigh, louder. Then she whispers, “I didn’t leave you. I want you to know I didn’t leave you.”

  Thirty-five miles per hour and falling. “I know,” I say, but a more honest voice would have confessed, I hoped.

  “I was taken. Stolen. Lifted right off the ground and tossed in the backseat, then raced away. Next thing I know, I’m”—long delay as if she’s examining her surroundings—“here.”

  A guy in a commercial plumbing truck pulls up next to me, blows his horn, and yells out the passenger window, “Hey, Granny! The other pedal! Press the other pedal!”

  I turn and answer, “Hey, up yours, you fug-g-gantastic driver.”

  “Always the gentleman,” she says.

  I try to get my car moving, except I’m moving so slowly that sixth gear has been rendered useless; I keep the phone to my ear, press my knee against the steering wheel, and shift down to third, punch the accelerator, and three seconds later I pass the truck like it’s a tree in the median.

  Then it occurs to me how odd it is that her opinion of me—whether in jest or not—would be that I’m some form of a gentleman, that some sheath of honorableness covers the real me. How could a man with so much blood on his hands ever be categorized this way? Her perception of me is only what I’ve displayed. Why did I not curb my tongue in front of the women I’d dated? Why could I never put aside a cigarette for the girls who detested the habit? My goal is to improve—to fix—her life, but the unpredicted by-product is that she makes me want to be a better man.

  Melody makes me want to be that something else.

  I speak what I’m thinking, speak without thinking: “You have an unexpected positive effect on my life, Melody.”

  I regret the words as soon as they pass my lips. The sentiment had to be from the adrenaline-fueled rush of finding her, of knowing she is okay, of knowing she wants me to rescue her and free her once and for all. That the emotion running through me is composed of something more than excitement, that some percentage of this experience is dedicated to sentiment, alarms me. Except…

  “And for some reason you have the only positive effect on mine,” she says, “which is why I want you to know that I didn’t leave you. I was taken away.”

  With her words, my guard drops, falls to the ground and shatters to pieces. I’m afraid to look in the rearview for fear of seeing a dopey smile in its reflection.

  “It seems no one wants me to have you,” I say. “Not the good guys or the bad guys. It’s just one big”—apparently I had a backup guard, because it rises in front of me—“hey, how’d you get my number?”

  My instant fear: I’m being set up, that the feds wore Melody down or somehow extorted her, and they’re collectively preparing some trap.

  Except Melody quickly answers, “Your dad gave it to me.”

  “No, really.”

  “Does 718-555-4369 sound familiar?”

  “That’s… impossible.”

  “You mean that was dear old dad? The Disemboweler of Brooklyn?”

  “The better question is where did you get that number? That’s the private line for his office in Brooklyn. Not many people have it.”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Wait, no. My father would’ve never handed out my cell phone number.”

  “I’ll tell you lay-ter. Where are you? I’m a damsel in distress here.”

  “Distress?”

  “West Virginia, Jonathan, West Virginia.”

  “I’m still in Baltimore.”

  I hear her slowly inhale over the line, then she asks in the sweetest voice, with a subtle surrender that no man could ever deny: “Will you come find me?”

  A wave crashes over me; I swim to the surface, to the light, to the air, struggle to remain afloat. I try to formulate the proper response, but no matter what actually comes out of my mouth, the answer could only be of course I will.

  I bring moisture to my lips, eventually say, “Are you sure, Melody?”

  She does not hesitate. “I’m sure.”

  I whisk across two lanes of traffic, go up the exit ramp for Liberty Road, zoom around two loops of the cloverleaf, and head south. “I’m getting on I-70 right now. What’s the address?”

  “Two-fifty-four Walnut Street, outside the university.”

  “Two-fifty-four Walnut. Got it.” I punch the accelerator and merge back onto the westward interstate. “Don’t move.”

  Our call ends and I pull in front of a crowd of cars. It takes only a few minutes before I have passed the exits for the roads leading to Ellicott City and Columbia; nearly all of the traffic goes with them. Heading directly away from the city, I have quickly broken free into the sprawling Maryland countryside.

  And as I traverse the hills and valleys of western Maryland, I recall my prayer at the park-and-ride. Like before, I’d love to testify God gave me exactly what I asked the moment I requested it. And though sometimes His answer to prayer is No, turns out this time His answer was Not yet.

  SEVEN

  If you travel across and out Maryland’s narrow western panhandle, cross the steep ranges of hills and mountains that make the ride far longer than it appears on a map, you will eventually come upon Morgantown, West Virginia, a small city that doubles in size during West Virginia University’s fall and spring semesters. The university brims with active students and a positive urgency—I see little difference from the atmosphere at Johns Hopkins—an unlikely observation considering the depressed status of its home state.

  During my journey, I completed three calls: one to Peter, assuring him things are fine on my end; one to Eddie Gravina, where I essentially gave the same information passed along to Peter an hour earlier; and one to Gardner: no update. For now, I’ll let Gardner think I’m still desperate for his information, that I still want to be notified should her information change. If her record updates while she’s with me, the appearance of a new and unused address for relocation, this could only indicate she’s working with the feds to bring me and my family down. The risk I’m taking is lessened only by a trust in her I can neither deny nor understand. Fools routinely die for inexplicable notions.

  Through my various pursuits of Melody, I’ve seen more of West Virginia than I could’ve ever imagined, and I can say that Morgantown is more attractive than the other Blue Ridge towns I’ve seen. Walnut serves as one of the main drags through the city, and finding the coffeehouse required no reading of address numbers, the silver letters
spelling out MOUNTAINEER COFFEE MILL visible from a half block away. The awning above the door is similar to Sylvia’s, reminds me of the work back home that I hope is being completed while I’m on this temporary journey.

  I pull in front of the café, enjoy the luxury of empty city streets in a place where so many walk. I get out and run my hands through my hair, grab a pullover from the backseat and slip it on to cut the chill in the air. The coffeehouse has good bones, had obviously once become a dump, renovated with care by some prior owner, then allowed to fall into partial decay by the current one. The exterior has been covered in a grass green paint that is chipping near the moldings, and the awning has faded on the sun-facing angles. The windows are fogged by seasons of dust. Through the window next to the door I see Melody. And when she sees me, she stands and wraps her hands up in the bottom of her shirt, walks toward me.

  I open the door and Melody collapses in my arms like a dying soldier. She trembles and shakes as though she’s detoxing from a drug. This moment tells me my instincts are right, that Melody is acting alone. If not, she’s one exceptional actress.

  “It’s okay,” I say, “it’s okay, I’ve got you.” I recall that recent daydream when I imagined her falling into my arms in almost the same way. It’s all right, everything’s gonna be all right, I wanted to tell her.

  The students and middle-aged hipsters in the café stare at us—her, really—and it pisses me off. I run my hand behind her neck and pull her face to my chest and gently kiss the top of her head. I return each and every stare with a look that implies, When I’m done here I’m going to go over and rip your throat out, until attention has been categorically diverted elsewhere.

  After Melody has regained her composure and gets back on her feet, we exit the coffeehouse. I open the door of my car and she drops down into the seat, stares forward like she’s trying to decipher the words AIR BAG on my dashboard, her hands in her lap, lifeless.