American Innovations: Stories

by Rivka Galchen

  “But you understand, at least, that in situations approaching grandfather paradoxes very strange things can become the norm. Just as if someone running begins to approach the speed of light, he grows unfathomably heavy.” He paused. “Didn’t you find it odd that you found yourself lounging so much with me and Ilan? Didn’t it seem to beg explanation, how happy the three of us—”

  “It wasn’t strange,” I insisted. I was right almost by definition. It wasn’t strange because it had already happened and so it was conceivable. Or maybe that was wrong. “I think he loved us both,” I said, confused for no reason. “And we both loved him.”

  Jacob sighed. “Yes, OK. I hope you’ll appreciate the elaborate calculations I’ve done in order to set up these demonstrations of extraordinarily unlikely events. Come over here. Please. You’ll see that we’re in a region of, well, not exactly a region of unlikeness, that would be a cheap association—very Ilan-like, though, a fitting tribute—but we’ll enter a region where things seem not to behave as themselves. In other words, a zone where events, teetering toward interfering”—I briefly felt that I was a child again, falling asleep on our scratchy blue sofa while my coughing father watched reruns of Twilight Zone—“with a fixed future, are pressured into revealing their hidden essences.”

  I felt years or miles away.

  Then this happened, which is not the crux of the story, or even the center of what was strange to me: Jacob tapped one of the silver balls and it rolled up the inclined plane; he set a flask of water on the Bunsen burner and marked the rising level of the fluid; a balloon distended unevenly; a magnet under sandpaper moved iron filings so as to spell the word “egregious.”

  Jacob turned to me, raised his eyebrows. “Astonishing, no?”

  I felt like I’d seen him wearing a dress or going to the bathroom. What he had shown me were children’s magic tricks.

  “I remember those science magic shows from childhood,” I said gently. I wasn’t not afraid. “I always loved those spooky caves they advertised on highway billboards.” Cousin or no cousin, Ilan had clearly run away from Jacob, not from me.

  “I can see you’re resistant,” Jacob said. “Which I understand, and even respect. Maybe I scared you, with that killing me talk, which you weren’t ready for. We’ll return to it. I’ll order us in some food. We’ll eat, we’ll drink, we’ll talk, and I’ll let you absorb the news slowly. You’re an engineer, for God’s sake. You’ll put the pieces together. Sometimes sleep helps, sometimes spearmint—just little ways of sharpening a mind’s ability to synthesize. You take your time.”

  * * *

  Jacob transferred greasy Chinese food into marginally clean bowls, “for a more homey feel.” There at the table, that shabby impromptu lab, I found myself eating slowly. Jacob seemed to need something from me, something more, even, than just a modicum of belief. He had paid for the takeout. Halfway through a bowl of wide beef-flavored noodles—we had actually been comfortable in the quiet, at ease—Jacob said, “Didn’t you find Ilan’s ideas uncannily fashionable? Always a nose ahead? Even how he started wearing pink before everyone else?”

  “He was fashionable in all sorts of ways,” I agreed, surprised by my appetite for the slippery and unpleasant food. “Not that it ever got him very far, always running after the next new thing. Sometimes I’d copy what he said, and it would sound dumb coming out of my mouth, so maybe it was dumb in the first place. Just said with charm.” Never before had I spoken aloud anything unkind about Ilan.

  “You don’t understand,” Jacob said. “I guess I should tell you that Ilan is my as yet unborn son, who visited me—us—from the future.” He took a metal ball between two greasy fingers, dropped it twice, and then once again demonstrated it rolling up the inclined plane. “The two of us, Ilan and I, we collaborate.” Jacob explained that part of what Ilan had established in his travels, which were repeated and varied, was that contrary to popular movies, travel into the past didn’t alter the future, or, rather, that the future was already altered, or, rather, that it was all far more complicated than that. “I, too, was reluctant to believe,” Jacob insisted. “Extremely reluctant. And he’s my son. A pain in the ass, but also my beloved child.” Jacob ate a dumpling in one bite. “A bit too much of a moralist, though. Not a good business partner, in that sense.”

  I no longer felt intimidated by Jacob. How could I? He had looped the loop. “If Ilan was from the future, that means he could tell you about your future,” I said.

  “Sure, yes. A little.” Jacob blushed like a schoolgirl. “It’s not important. But certain things he did know. Yes. Being my son and all.”

  “Ah, so.” I, too, ate a dumpling whole. Which isn’t the kind of thing I normally do. “What about my future? Did he know anything about my future?”

  Jacob shook his head. I couldn’t tell if he was answering my question or just disapproving of it. “Right now we have my career to save,” he said. I saw that he was sweating, even along his exposed collarbone. “Can I tell you what I’m thinking? What I’m thinking is that we perform the impossibility of my dying before fathering Ilan. A little stunt show of sorts, but for real. With real guns and rope and poison and maybe some blindfolded throwing of knives. Real life. And this can drum up a bit of publicity for my work.” I felt myself getting sleepy during this speech of his, getting sleepy and thinking of circuses and of childhood trips to Las Vegas and of Ilan’s mattress and of the time a small binder clip landed on my head when I was walking outside. “I mean, it’s a bit lowbrow, but lowbrow is the new highbrow, of course, or maybe the old highbrow. It’ll be fantastic. Maybe we can go on Letterman. I bet we’ll make loads of money in addition to getting me my job back. Let’s be careful, though. Just because I can’t die doesn’t mean I can’t be pretty seriously injured. But I’ve been doing some calculations and we’ve got some real showstoppers—”

  “I’m not much of a showgirl,” I said, suppressing a yawn. “You can find someone better than me for the job.”

  Jacob looked at me intently. “We’re meant to have this future together,” he said. “My wife—she really will want to kill me when she finds out the situation I’m in. She won’t cooperate.”

  “I know people who can help you, Jacob,” I said, in the monotone of the half-asleep. “But I can’t help you. I like you, though. I really do.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Have you ever seen a marble roll up like that? I mean, these are just little anomalies, I didn’t want to frighten you, but there are many others. Right here in this room even. We have the symptoms of leaning up against time here.”

  I thought of Jacob’s blathering on about Augustine and meaningful motion and yearning. I also felt convinced I’d been drugged. Not just because of my fatigue but because I was beginning to find Jacob vaguely attractive. His sweaty collarbone was pretty. The room around me—the futon, the Chinese food, the porcelain teacup, the rusty laboratory, the piles of papers, Ilan’s note in my back pocket, Jacob’s cheap dress socks, the dust, Jacob’s ringed hand on his knee—these all seemed like players in a life of mine that had not yet become real, a life I was coursing toward. “Do you think,” I found myself asking, maybe because I’d had this feeling just once before in my life, “that Ilan was a rare and tragic genius?”

  Jacob laughed.

  I shrugged. I leaned my sleepy head against his shoulder. I put my hand to his collarbone.

  “I can tell you this about your future,” Jacob said quietly. “I didn’t not hear that question. So let me soothsay this. You’ll never get over Ilan. And that will one day horrify you. But soon enough you’ll settle on a replacement object for all that love of yours, which does you about as much good as a life jacket in a train wreck. Your present, if you’ll excuse my saying so, is a pretty sorry one. But your future looks great. Your work will amount to nothing. But you’ll have a brilliant child. And a brilliant husband. And great love.”

  He was saying we would be together. He was saying we would be in love. I understood.
I had solved the puzzle. I knew who I, who we were meant to be.

  * * *

  I woke up alone on Jacob’s futon. At first I couldn’t locate Jacob, but then I saw he was sleeping in his daughter’s loft. His mouth was open; he looked awful. The room smelled of MSG. I felt at once furious and small. I left the apartment, vowing never to go to the coffee shop—or anywhere else I might see Jacob—again. I spent my day grading student exams. That evening I went to the video store and almost rented Wuthering Heights, then switched to The Man Who Wasn’t There, then, feeling haunted in a dumb way, ended up renting nothing at all.

  Did I, in the following weeks and months, think of Jacob often? Did I worry for or care about him? I couldn’t tell if I did or didn’t. Can I even say I’m sure that Jacob was delusional? When King Laius abandons baby Oedipus in the mountains, from fear of the prophecy that his son will murder him, Laius’s attempt to evade his destiny becomes its engine. They call this a predestination paradox. It’s a variant of the grandfather paradox. At its heart is inescapable fate.

  The general theory of relativity is compatible with the existence of space-times in which travel to the past or remote future is possible; we are told by those who would know that the logician Kurt Gödel proved this in the late 1940s. But whether or not a person, in our very particular space-time, can in fact travel to the past—no one knows. Maybe. Surely our world obeys rules still alien to our imaginations. Maybe Jacob is my destiny. Regardless, I continue to avoid him.

  STICKER SHOCK

  Gross income for the daughter in 2007 was $18,150. Gross income for the mother in 2007 was $68,742. Gross income for the daughter in 2008 was $23,450; in 2009, it was $232,476; in 2010, $140,702; and in 2011, $37,853. The mother’s gross income for the years 2008 to 2011 inclusive has not been ascertained. But it is believed to have been, in each of those years, not more than $99,999 and not less than $40,000. Income averaging has not been allowed under the federal tax code since 1986.

  From 2007 to 2011, the daughter put $170,000 into savings: $25,000 went into a SEP-IRA, $9,000 went into a Roth IRA, and the remainder was placed in a money market fund. Other money went, as the mother might put it, into the hands of petty charlatans who didn’t make it into law or medical school and whose parents, with their values, never taught them anything, poor things, actually, poor things. Or it went, as others might put it, into the hands of venders of artisanal chocolates and $90 T-shirts.

  In 1997, while the mother was employed as a technical consultant at a corporation then of good financial standing—though it should be noted that within seven years the corporation then of good financial standing had downsized to 32 percent of its 1997 size and the mother was among those who had not retained their positions, and though she had received a variety of severance package, it was not a variety worth describing and so it will not be described, and the option that the mother had thought she had to retain her health insurance at the same corporate rate had, despite many phone calls, not materialized; instead, the rate offered was more than three times what it had been previously. To return: While holding this position, in which she was consistently earning upward of $90,000 per year, plus respectable benefits, the mother made a down payment of $65,000 toward the purchase of a modest one-bedroom apartment in a condominium building in good standing on the far but not too far east side of Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Fungibility precludes saying where the money for the down payment came from—whether from contemporary earnings or from preexisting savings. It was what it was. Money was spent. Or, rather, was converted into an asset.

  The mother purchased the apartment not for herself but for her daughter. It was not intended, however, that the daughter live in the apartment. The daughter did not live in, or even very near, the city of New York. The apartment was, rather, an investment gift. An informal living trust. Both the mother’s and the daughter’s names were put on the mortgage. Both the mother’s and the daughter’s names were put on the title. The daughter was specified as 99 percent owner, and the mother was specified as 1 percent owner. This arrangement was superior for tax purposes and in the case of unexpected death. The mother intended that the asset/apartment could be rented for a sum that would cover the combined mortgage and maintenance payments, and this, more or less, happened.

  Although not really: the asset/apartment was “rented” for free to the mother’s son—the daughter’s brother—until such time as he and his new and approved-of and soon-to-be-pregnant wife felt more financially stable. During this time of intrafamilial “renting,” the mother covered the monthly mortgage and maintenance payments herself. A substantial portion of the mortgage payment, being interest rather than principal, was tax deductible, she (the mother) notes. So it wasn’t really such a draining gift, the mother says. The reason the mother had purchased the asset/apartment in behalf of her daughter, as opposed to in behalf of her wed and soon-to-procreate son, was that the mother had, a number of years earlier, made an investment of similar size in behalf of her son, and so the mother felt that this second gift, to her second offspring, was only fair. The first offspring would live there, but the asset part of the asset/apartment would all the while offer a measure of financial security to the second offspring. It is true that, in general, the mother greatly preferred men to women—the daughter similarly greatly preferred men to women—but the mother nevertheless, most likely, loved her children equally, inasmuch as it is not nonsensical to make equating statements about nonfungibles such as love.

  One was trying to account for things. To appreciate was to estimate justly.

  Regarding the relations between men and women generally, the mother had, early and often, instructed the daughter that: A Woman Should Always Be Financially Independent. On the point of financial independence, the daughter agreed with the mother. And still agrees. However, the daughter’s accord with the postulate, which was during childhood like a faith in the gnostic cult of numbers of Pythagoras, later became a variety of realpolitik. (The mother’s realpolitik outlook was like a faith in a gnostic cult of numbers.) Regardless of any kind of regarding of the relations among men, women, and finance, the aforementioned asset/apartment, between 1998 and 2006, appreciated in value by approximately $512,000. It was then sold, which left, after all expenses, kind of a lot of money. All of which was put into a bank account somewhere. The daughter did not know where. The mother did. Later this led to a dispute.

  * * *

  In 1994, the daughter had moved from the family home to a dorm room at a sufficiently prestigious university. The usual education loans were applied for, approved, and taken. The loans were taken under the daughter’s name. The daughter held a number of on-campus jobs. The daughter was relatively frugal in those years. But it would be fair to say that the mother paid for most everything. Also in 1994, the mother was widowed, to the gain of no pension or Social Security; the nongain was due to technical problems, problems that probably could have been overcome, but there was just so much to do, it seemed.

  During the first year of mother-daughter residential separation, a year that also witnessed the trial of O. J. Simpson, the mother mailed the daughter various photographs of the prosecutor Marcia Clark. The mother greatly admired Marcia Clark’s outfits. She hoped the trial lawyer’s style might positively influence, perhaps even inspire, the daughter, who did not dress like Marcia Clark, and who did not seem to be on track to becoming anything like Marcia Clark. The daughter did not appear to be en route to becoming any variety of Financially Independent Woman with which the mother was familiar. One might even say—one being alternately the mother and the daughter—that this was the mother’s fault: the mother had packed so many lunches, had paid for so many lessons, had so often put towels and clean clothes in the dryer for five minutes so they’d be warm for the daughter after a bath, that she, the daughter, had understandably developed a misimpression of what life was like. Now the daughter needed guidance. At the end of 1995, the mother moved to the same town to which the daughter had
moved. Also at the end of 1995, the daughter began a relationship with a young man; after that relationship had begun, the daughter’s ability to register anything about any situation save the young man’s presence or absence in it declined precipitately. The daughter and the young man later married. The mother said she was glad for this. This was one of the few decisions made by the daughter of which the mother approved. The mother paid for the wedding.

  In the spring of 2010, the daughter and the man broke up. The reasons for the marriage’s end are not clear, though there are theories. The main cause of the rapid appreciation in the value of real estate in that time has also not been satisfactorily determined, though there are, again, theories; one, again, tries to account for things. Regardless, the daughter wanted to use the money from the sale of the asset/apartment to buy herself an apartment/asset—an apartment/asset to live in as a home. The mother did not agree with or to this. The mother would not specify the location of what had previously been described as the daughter’s money, because the daughter was “not the daughter that I know because the daughter that I know is not a cruel person,” the mother said. She further said that the current daughter, the unknown one, could not be trusted, not with her own money, not with her own reproductive potential, not with anything, really. The daughter needed to go back home. To her husband’s apartment. To where she belonged. Whatever unhappiness and fears were keeping the couple apart were pure childishness. The mother said that the daughter had always done exactly as she (the daughter) wanted, that the daughter was lazy, and that women who don’t have babies become alcoholics, which ruins their figures. The daughter was thirty-three.

  In 2010, the mother was in some ways financially stable and in some ways not. (It depends, of course, on the comparison group.) The mother often reported that she did not feel financially stable. The mother also was often trying to lose weight. Sometimes the two anxieties, weight and money, joined together. For example, in the fall of 2010, the mother signed up with the Jenny Craig Weight Loss program. The program entailed paying in advance for prepared meals. On Wednesdays, when she went to the Jenny Craig Centre [sic] for her appointment with her Jenny Consultant—the consultant being another service that she paid for in advance—the mother picked up the prepaid meals. In addition to the meal and the consultant expenses, the mother also, at the Jenny Craig Centre, purchased, for $190, a specialized armband, enabled with Bluetooth wireless technology, that kept track of walking speed, heart rate, calories burned, calories in and out, metabolic something-or-other … it was all confusing. The armband was supposed to be able to monitor and communicate. Sometimes the armband seemed to know she was moving and sometimes it didn’t. It beeped unpredictably. Also it flashed. For a few days the armband would not light up at all. Then it unexpectedly revived. Then it alarmed hourly. The armband was a failure; the mother wanted a refund. But, as the mother explained to her daughter, the Jenny Consultant said that, while it was true that Jenny Craig did sell the armband on-site at the Centre, and that the consultant and the program did both believe that the armband could be a positive friend in any weight loss or weight maintenance regimen, still, the armband was not a Jenny Craig armband per se, and the Jenny Craig Centre did not represent the armband, or the armband makers, nor did the armband or its makers represent the Jenny Craig Centre, and the Jenny Craig Centre did not even formally endorse the armband’s makers, or vice versa—there was no real relation—and so the mother needed to address her inquiries or complaints not to the Jenny Craig Centre but to the armband company directly. Whose number the Jenny Consultant would be happy to look up for her. The mother called the company directly. Her calls were not returned. The daughter also rarely returned the mother’s calls. The mother e-mailed the company. The mother and the daughter arranged via e-mail to meet up for coffee, and it was during that coffee that the mother explained that three days after e-mailing the armband company, she received an e-mail response: a FAQ sheet with the phone number she had already called listed at the bottom, for any further questions. Eventually, the mother said, she got through on the phone to someone who represented the company that represented the armband that was failing her. This representative suggested that the mother return the armband, in its original packaging. The representative further specified that the armband would, if it showed no signs of wear and tear beyond that incurred in normal use, be serviced and returned to the mother within four to six weeks. Are you just trying to stall until you can get rid of me? the mother said she said to the representative. The mother said she said to the representative that he was representing a company of cheaters. The mother hung up the phone, she said. Later that day, the mother explained to the daughter, she told the Jenny Consultant that the armband company had not helped, of course, that she had been encouraged to buy an armband from a charlatan company, that she had been encouraged by these people right here, in this office, these Jenny Craig people, who, the mother said that she said to the Jenny Consultant, obviously didn’t care about their customers, who didn’t have an ethic of customer service, who were just squeezing people for money. The mother said she said, You took my hundred and ninety dollars for what you knew was junk and now you’re just sending me to hell. You know that’s where you’re sending me when you send me to contact the company directly. I work in service. I like working in service. I like to help people. I know what an ethic of customer service is, the mother said, and it isn’t this. (The mother, at the time, post-corporate-job, was working as a real estate broker in the city; the real estate market was considerably weaker than it had been during the years of the aforementioned rise in value of the asset/apartment.) The mother said to the daughter that she really shouted at them, the Jenny Craig people, that she felt a little bit bad about that, but that what they did was wrong and they should know that what they did was wrong. But, she explained to the daughter, she did not need the Jenny Craig program anymore. She did not need them. Though she had lost ten pounds since she started with the program. Could the daughter tell? It’s not the first ten pounds, the mother explained, that anyone notices. It would probably be the next ten pounds that people would be able to notice, the next ten, which would of course be more difficult to lose, but she now knew what Jenny Craig did and so she could do it without Jenny Craig. She had cracked it. You eat twelve hundred calories a day. You make sure to get twenty grams of protein. Your meals are around three hundred and fifty calories, and then there’s room for two fruits. She said, I’m doing it like this: I’m making lentil dishes that are high in protein and low in calories. For example, I made a vegetarian chopped liver dip. One cup dry lentils, two cups water, one tablespoon onion soup powder, two large stir-fried onions, two hard-boiled eggs—all blended together. It’s delicious. You should try it, the mother said. That’s what I wanted to tell you about.