Miracle Man

by William R. Leibowitz

  Uhlman, Vanderslice and Verjee were extremely pleased. With Joe’s guidance, Bobby had not only recovered but was thriving emotionally, and intellectually his powers were continuing to increase.

  One day when they were eating dinner in Joe’s favorite Chinatown restaurant, Bobby asked, “So, when you’re not showing me the good life, what exactly do you do with your time?”

  Joe laughed. “A variety of things. I read a lot. I tinker with my antique cars and I’m quite active in charitable pursuits.”

  “Oh, like trying to make me into a real person?” said Bobby, as he drummed his chopsticks noisily on the table.

  “And other things,” replied Joe as he signaled for the drumming to cease. “I try to be philanthropic financially, but I don’t think it’s enough to just write checks. I’m fortunate to have the time—so I like to spend it trying to do some good.”

  “Doing what?”

  Joe reached for a fortune cookie and broke it open. “Why don’t I take you along so you can see for yourself?”

  “I’d like that,” said Bobby as he lined up the paper strips from six cookies and flipped them over repeatedly, comparing the Chinese writing with the English.

  The next Saturday, Joe picked Bobby up at the Institute. He drove them to the Boston Children’s Hospital. Opening the trunk of his car, he removed four large plastic shopping bags which were overstuffed with toys and games. Joe handed two of the bags to Bobby.

  “Now let’s spread a little happiness,” said Joe.

  The elevator door opened on the fourth floor. The sign read, Oncology. They began their rounds. Bobby wasn’t prepared for this. He had never been exposed to the suffering of people afflicted with debilitating diseases, nevertheless children with cancer. As they moved from bed to bed giving out toys, Joe effortlessly kidded around with the patients, but Bobby had trouble holding back his emotions. Joe put his arm around him and took him aside. “Look Bobby. These kids know how sick they are. They don’t need to see that in your face. We’re here to help them feel better—not make them feel worse. So snap out of it. They want you to be happy so you can make them happy. Can you do that?”

  Bobby nodded. “I’m going to borrow a pad and some pencils from the nurses’ station.” When Bobby re-entered the ward, he announced loudly, “Who likes comics?”

  For the next hour, he went from bed to bed quickly drawing the patients’ favorite characters, and also throwing in caricatures of himself, Joe and the kids. Up till then, Joe wasn’t aware of Bobby’s artistic abilities.

  These hospital visits became one of Bobby and Joe’s frequent activities and gradually, Bobby became comfortable with them.

  “I wish I could do more,” he said to Joe as they were getting back into the car after a visit.

  “Well, you can. You’re in a unique position to do more, a lot more. You have an extraordinary gift. I know you said it freaks you out because you don’t know where it came from, and you feel it possesses you rather than you possessing it—but the bottom-line is that you have it and no one else does.”

  “So, what are you saying?” asked Bobby.

  “What I’m saying is – it’s not important where your intelligence came from—what’s important is what you do with it.”

  Bobby slumped into the passenger seat and stared at the car’s ceiling as he frowned. “Joe—I’m going to wake up one day and it’ll be gone—or I’ll be crazy. I’ll go into one of my trances and never come out.”

  Joe grasped Bobby’s forearm and gave it a hard squeeze. Bobby looked at him, his eyes watery. “That’s ridiculous, Bobby. But if you really believe that, it’s all the more reason why you need to make some important decisions sooner rather than later.”

  16

  By age twelve, Bobby had been awarded both bachelor of science and master’s degrees, suma cum laude from MIT, through the Institute’s special interface with the university. At age fourteen, he received a Ph.D in mathematics from Harvard for his ground breaking doctoral thesis on automorphic forms, and at age sixteen, a Ph.D from MIT in astro-physics with a thesis on cosmic neutrinos that stunned the scientific community and started tongues wagging about it being Nobel prize worthy. The role reversal pattern of Bobby’s interaction with his teachers got more pronounced as time went on. His Ph.D oral examinations predictably landed-up with Bobby at the blackboard solving for the examining professors the problems they had been grappling with unsuccessfully for years.

  Joe and Bobby’s relationship was life altering for them both. Bobby was the son that Joe had always wanted. He poured his time, affection and wisdom into Bobby who absorbed it all gratefully and returned his love. Though Director Varneys was wary of Joe and referred to him disparagingly as “the hippie,” Uhlman’s selection of Manzini proved to be messianic.

  To celebrate Bobby’s seventeenth birthday, Joe had a special surprise in store for Bobby—-a three week sail on Dreamweaver from Boston to St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It wasn’t easy for Joe to get permission. Uhlman broached the subject to Varneys.

  “Are you nuts?” Varneys asked. “You think it’s okay for the hippie to take Austin in treacherous waters on his dinky little boat for three weeks?”

  “He’s an expert yachtsman and the water is calm this time of the year.”

  The veins in Varney’s right temple began to pulsate as he glared at Uhlman. “Calm my ass. We have a huge investment in this kid and a lot riding on him. Three weeks alone with the love guru could ruin everything. It doesn’t sit right with me.”

  “Orin, it’s a special seventeenth birthday present for Robert. He’s done everything you could hope for. He has two Ph.Ds already and he’s working on more. He has his heart set on this.”

  “ Manzini already told him before getting permission? Brillant, just brilliant!” exclaimed Varneys.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get it back in spades. Robert will come home so rejuvenated, he’ll be more productive than we can imagine.”

  Sitting down behind his desk, Varneys leaned forward and thumped the folders in front of him. “Here are the conditions, John. I want the charts for the route, and I’m having a cutter follow that boat just five miles away for the whole trip. Don’t tell them that — but that’s how it’s going down. I’m not having them get hijacked, sink, or let hippie-dip decide to skip and start a new life with the kid in Ghana. Jesus. I can’t believe I’m going along with this craziness.”

  Joe loaded Dreamweaver up with three weeks of food, wine, volumes of books for them both to read, a hundred DVDs, a satellite-connected sixty- inch TV, and lots of sunblock. Bobby was so excited about the trip and wanting to make sure that there was no last minute problem of unfinished work assignments, that he burned through the quantum physics problems he was analyzing at a speed that was startling even for him.

  “Are you ready for the greatest adventure of your life, my able first mate?” Joe asked.

  “Yes I am Captain. I’m more than ready,” said Bobby, beaming as he stood at attention like a navy sailor.

  And so they were off. Within forty minutes, Dreamweaver cleared the Back Bay and Boston Harbor and entered the endless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Over the last few years, Bobby had become a proficient sailor, and he and Joe worked together instinctively to guide the boat. Joe took off his wristwatch and asked Bobby for his. “We don’t need these now,” said Joe as he threw them into the water.

  “Are you crazy?” said Bobby.

  “We can always buy new watches. But these days come only once. Anyway, I put a cheap one on because I knew I was going to do that.” Bobby grinned.

  One day melded into another and Joe was right. Time became irrelevant. The wind cooled them, the spray from the waves salted their skin and hair, and the sun purified them. Within a week at sea they both looked like deeply tanned beach bums and were proud of it.

>   There were long periods of contented silence as the ocean’s solitude embraced them. But there was plenty of lively discourse and aimless banter. Joe took note of how Bobby had grown. No longer a pale gawky boy, Bobby had become a handsome young man. Already six feet tall, he had a lean physique, dark brown hair with a natural auburn tint, strikingly clear light blue eyes, aquiline nose, high cheek bones, full lips and a strong chin. But despite his sculpted features and the eerie iciness which would at times project in his gaze, there was a vulnerability in his personae which was easy to discern.

  “So Bobby. What’s happening on the girl front?”

  “Well, it’s been a little slow. I’ve never had the opportunity to be with girls my age when it counted. By the time I was interested in them, I was out of the Institute and over at the universities. And there I was the freaky little kid from outer space.”

  “Is that what they called you?”

  “Worse than that,” Bobby said, shaking his head.

  “So what about the university girls now?”

  “I’ve been in grad classes or one-on-ones with professors, so it’s hard to meet anyone anywhere near my age. They’re so much older than me, they don’t take me seriously.”

  “Sounds to me like you have to double-back. You’re a grad student, but you’re just about the age of incoming freshmen, so start hanging out where they do.”

  Bobby smiled and nodded.

  After ten days at sea, Dreamweaver cruised past Great Thatch Island, Jost Van Dyke, and Tortola, and anchored a quarter mile offshore of St. John, an under-developed and unspoiled oasis in the Caribbean Sea, with U.S. National Park status to preserve its beauty. Joe taught Bobby how to snorkel off the side of the boat. And then into the dinghy they would go, pulling up on the soft beach sands of Trunk Bay, Cinnamon Bay, Cruz Bay, Turtle Bay and Caneel Bay. Each day, Bobby would select which beach to hang out on by how good the girls looked and how small or non-existent their bathing suits were. Joe’s criteria was that there also had to be an outdoor bar and preferably a band playing. For dinner on their third night at St. John, they ate at Asolare, a two-story restaurant on Great Cruz Bay beach, featuring freshly caught seafood, a terrific calypso band and the kind of island cocktails that taste like juice but leave you seriously impaired. At the bar waiting for a table to become available, Joe, always a convivial magnetic presence, started to chat up an attractive middle-aged blonde tourist. Her daughter, tanned dark as a local, stood next to her wearing a simple white summer dress that appeared to be transparent. Bobby was mesmerized. After awkwardly shifting on his feet and looking around the room for a few minutes, he got up the nerve to address the girl.

  “Excuse me. Were you on Trunk Bay beach yesterday? I think I saw you there,” Bobby said. Kate stood five feet six inches tall, long silky dark brown hair that glistened as if coconut oil had just been applied to it, almond shaped light green eyes, pouty full lips, and teeth that looked amazingly white in contrast to her dark skin. Bobby could easily discern a shapely athletic figure under the gauzy dress. He tried not to stare.

  “Yes, we were there,” she responded.

  Bobby’s photographic memory instantly started to flash vivid images as his mind sorted through them like a high-speed collater. It was her—-that girl in the tiny faded blue string bikini, he recollected.

  “I thought you looked familiar. Great beach, huh?” he said.

  “Fantastic. Are you staying here on the Island?”

  “Sort of. We’re on our sailboat anchored just offshore. We sailed here from Boston”.

  “That’s so cool. Must have been awesome.”

  “Oh yeah, it was beyond belief,” he replied.

  “Is that man your dad?” she asked as she motioned to Joe.

  Bobby paused before he answered, “Yes.”

  “Is that your mom?”

  “That’s her. I think she’s had like three of those drinks already,” she said as she laughed. “By the way, my name’s Kate.”

  “Mine’s Bobby.”

  “How long are you guys down here for?” Bobby asked.

  “Another two days.”

  Joe said to Kim, Kate’s mother, “Perhaps you both would like to join us for dinner? I think it’s easier to get a table for four here than for two.”

  As Kim laughed and leaned into him, she said, “That would be fun, Joe, but we’re actually meeting a group of friends here for dinner.” Bobby’s heart sank.

  “I have a great idea,” countered Joe. How would you ladies like to go sailing with us tomorrow? Kim cast a glance at her daughter whose sheer dress was gently being blown by the island breeze. Kate smiled back at her. “That sounds fantastic,” said Kim.

  “Great. We’ll pick you up in our dinghy at 10:30 in the morning right on this beach. Don’t forget to bring a bathing suit,” Joe said.

  The restaurant hostess came up to Joe to announce that the table was ready. Joe and Bobby bid good night to Kim and Kate.

  As soon as Bobby sat down, he said to Joe, “You’re a genius. And you’re so smooth. Do you know who she is? She’s that girl I was looking at yesterday on the boat with my binoculars. The one in that tiny faded bikini. You know, the reason we picked that beach”.

  “Well, how fortuitous.”

  “I think she may like me, Joe,” Bobby said.

  “Why shouldn’t she? Just relax and be yourself.”

  For Bobby, the rest of the evening was a magical blur. The din of the music from the beach band, the smell of the bougainvillea in the humid night as it wafted its way through the open air dining room, the sweet pungent taste of the island food. As Joe and Bobby walked to the dinghy, Bobby looked heavenwards. The stars shined as brightly as those in the Institute’s planetarium, but they were real. Bobby sat back in the dinghy as Joe followed the moonlight path on the water that led back to Dreamweaver.

  Ten thirty the next morning couldn’t come quickly enough. As the dinghy neared the shore, Joe waved and Kate and Kim left the shade of the sea grape trees and walked toward the water. Kate was wearing very tight white shorts and a bikini top covered by a thin light pink camisole. Her hair was tied back in a pony tail. It took all of Bobby’s mental stamina to keep from gawking at her long tanned legs. Once on board, Joe gave them a tour of Dreamweaver, and then with all of the flair of a sommelier in a five star restaurant, he opened a bottle of Dom Perignon that had been chilling in a silver ice bucket, and prepared mimosas for everyone. As he held his champagne flute up to the sun, he said, “I toast—- today. It comes but once.”

  Joe and Bobby sailed the boat thru the Sir Francis Drake Passage on toward Tortola. The mountainous islands, azure blue water and dazzling sun were breathtaking. Bobby asked Kate to assist him with the sails, which she gladly did. He could feel her body pressing up against his own as she stood close to him and they bent to the task of hauling the sail ropes. After about ninety minutes of sailing, Dreamweaver anchored a few hundred feet from a pristine deserted beach on the easterly side of Virgin Gorda. Bobby and Kate went snorkeling for awhile, while Joe and Kim continued to drink Dom as Sarah Vaughn serenaded them.

  “Joe—-Kate and I are going to swim to the beach. Do you guys want to come?”

  “No, I think we’re content to relax here on the boat.” Bobby looked at Joe with gratitude. Kate and he swam into the beach and began to walk its soft powdery sand. Toward the far end of the crescent shaped shore, they climbed some giant rock formations and sat down high above the water looking out to the open ocean.

  “God, this is magnificent,” said Bobby.

  “Beyond beautiful,” Kate replied.

  Bobby’s hand found hers. “Are you in school?” he asked.

  “First year at the Fashion Institute in San Diego. What about you?” she asked.

  “I’m in school in Boston. I’m a sci
ence and math major.”

  “Where?”

  “A combined program of MIT and Harvard.”

  Kate laughed. “Oh, excuse me. A big brain here, I see.”

  They chatted on as they climbed some more rocks, Bobby doing his best to keep his hand glued to hers. “I’m getting really hot. Let’s take a swim,” Kate said, wiping her forehead.

  They walked down to the edge of the water. “Don’t you hate tan lines?” Kate removed her bikini top, threw it on to the sand and glided into the aqua sea, cocking her head to signal Bobby to join her.