The War for Gloria

by Atticus Lish

  “Okay.”

  “You type in a search term…”

  “Okay.”

  “And you hit Enter.”

  “Okay. I will. I just thought there was more to it.”

  “What more to it do you think there could be?”

  “I don’t know. I just thought you’d know something special.”

  “I do know something special: It’s that if you want to learn something, you learn it.”

  “Okay.”

  “You could put me next to someone from an elite school—a Harvard, an MIT—and if I’m doing the work, then I’m the one who’s developing knowledge of the discipline. The pampered kid could just be sitting on his ass. Science doesn’t care about your family tree. That’s the beauty of it. The greatest mind of the twentieth century was a working-class kid from Far Rockaway. A Jew. He didn’t have any advantages. He didn’t have affirmative action. But he beat everyone.”

  “That gives me a sense of power.”

  “Science was his elevator to the elite level. He gets up there, and who does he meet? Newton, Aristotle. You can’t deny him. That’s what’s beautiful.”

  “That is beautiful,” Corey conceded. But he continued to press Leonard on ALS.

  Leonard declared that Gloria could halt the progression of her disease by consuming large amounts of dark leafy vegetables for their antioxidant effects.

  “She was trying that.”

  “Maybe she should keep going. It would be interesting to see if I’m right.”

  “Is yoga like an antioxidant, because you hold your breath? She was doing that as well.”

  “Yoga reduces stress, and stress breaks down antioxidants, but holding your breath isn’t the same as an antioxidant.”

  “But they’re related.”

  “Maybe if you insist. At the high school level.”

  Corey laughed, flattered to be made fun of.

  “Is pot bad for her?”

  “Pot’s good for practically every medical condition,” Leonard said. “Pot’s the least of her worries. It’s way better for her than plenty of things she could be doing. Like taking Rilutek. Don’t let her give her money to GlaxoSmithKline. That’s the one responsibility I’ll charge you with. Don’t enrich GlaxoSmithKline.”

  “Why not? Isn’t that the only drug for what she’s got?”

  “It extends survival. That’s all it does.”

  “Isn’t that good?”

  “All it does is keep you alive.”

  “You mean, when she may not want to be?”

  “Exactly. It’s an example of a bad drug. Like chemotherapy for stomach cancer. There’re lots of drugs like that. You sell them to people if you’re amoral. They’re worse than crack. Did you hear about the kids at MIT who fell asleep and never woke up?”

  “No, what happened to them?”

  “They thought they were taking Ecstasy. Something else was in it, and they died.”

  “What was in it?”

  “How should I know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The only person who would know that is whoever gave it to them.”

  “Did you catch whoever did it?”

  “If you were to ask me, do I know who the drug dealers are on campus, I have my sources.”

  “So, you know?”

  “We have a lot of rules in our legal system, probable cause, and so on. So maybe I know who’s a problem. That doesn’t mean I can go and crack heads. If these were moolies, as we used to call them, I could deprioritize their civil rights. But these are rich kids, so maybe I ‘know,’ but I have to pretend I don’t know.”

  “So you actually know?”

  “Oh yeah. Twenty years in law enforcement, they’re not hiding shit from me. You’d have to get up pretty early.”

  “It’d bother me to know that they’d gotten away with doing something that bad, though. Haven’t you ever wanted to take the law into your own hands?”

  “I have to uphold my vows as a peace officer.”

  “Isn’t that frustrating?”

  “I have to uphold my vows as a peace officer.”

  “Are you telling me something?”

  “Listen to how I’m saying it: I have to uphold my vows as a police officer.”

  “So you might have done some head-cracking?”

  “I would deny that in court.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “I would never do anything in my official capacity to violate my legally mandated duties as a peace officer in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Official capacity. Listen to the words. Official. Capacity.”

  “But in your unofficial capacity…”

  Leonard deadpan-stared at Corey.

  “I really respect that.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leonard said.

  “You must have stories…”

  “Who knows?”

  “But you can’t tell me.”

  “Every relationship is a proof, you understand?”

  “Uh…not really.”

  “A proof. A mathematical proof. You want to prove a theorem, you have to demonstrate it. If A then B. A relationship’s the same.”

  “You have to prove yourself to another person. I have to prove to you that you can trust me.”

  “He catches on quick.”

  “I would never tell on you to anyone. You’re making the world a better place. If you fucked up a drug dealer who was hurting kids, why would I tell anyone?”

  “Corey?”

  “What?”

  “Relax.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  “Little by little. When you are ready. Have you ever fucked a girl?”

  “Uh…”

  “That’s an eloquent answer. I take it the answer’s ‘no.’ Well, it’s like fucking a girl. It’s when she’s ready.”

  “Okay. Good metaphor.”

  “And don’t try so hard.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To impress me. Just calm down.”

  “All right. I’m calm.” Corey reddened and laughed at himself. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “About what?”

  “About ALS.”

  “I could tell you a lot about it if I wanted to.” Leonard basketed his hands behind his head and looked up at their low ceiling. “The question is, what are you capable of understanding? There’s no diagnosis for ALS. You can’t see it in the body until someone’s dead. All we have is a name floating around until you’re lying on a table in the morgue. A long time ago, a French scientist did an autopsy on a patient and found these hardened neurons in the spine, and gave it a name. His sole contribution is a name. To me, that’s not science; that’s taking a nature walk. It’s like if I went out and pointed up at the night sky and named a star. As a result, he got his name in the history of medicine. Ironically I can’t remember who he was. Thanks to this, now we have all these different models of the disease: glutamate toxicity, autoimmune disease, protein misfolding, or the genetic explanation. We know the pharmaceutical companies are developing drugs for each one. I see a corruption of the scientific method, because of the profit motive. As a physicist, I feel there has to be a single cause, ultimately, if there’s a single disease. Otherwise it’s not a single disease; it’s bulbar palsy or prion disease or radium poisoning or dot dot dot. My personal feeling is that it’s going to be the genetic explanation. It’s not going to be autoimmune or prions; when they get to the bottom of it, it’s going to be the gene, the most elegant explanation. A nucleic acid that should have been right-handed is going to be left-handed. We have all these chiralities out there, and they determine what happens in the universe. It’s quantum logic: right hand, left hand. On or off, sick or well, friend or foe. This is w
hat’s telling the body what to do, basically. Just this.”

  Leonard held up his hand and turned it palm out, palm in—and Corey watched it turning.

  9

  Springer-Verlag

  That weekend, Corey found a building site a half mile from home, on the broad hill that came up from the water via the wide asphalt causeway with its steadily curving centerline. The site was chaos—workmen everywhere, saws screaming, wood falling and clattering, the muddy lot chockablock with trucks.

  The man running the show had a stern, rugged face: big bones, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, a Joseph Stalin mustache. In turtleneck sweater and boots, he looked like a woodsman who cut down trees all day with an axe. His pale skin was healthily lit from within, and he had an active man’s impatience with chitchat. In a Slavic voice, he told Corey, “You’re too young. I can’t use you. If you cut your thumb off, what am I going to do? Sew it back on?”

  They were standing in a hallway from which it was possible to see through several doorways at once, as if into the multiple chambers of a heart—a busy crossroads point. Construction workers in heavily loaded tool belts were tramping by on the creaking plywood which served as decking underfoot. One doorway let into a gutted kitchen, where only the cabinetry remained. Two men in kneepads crawled on the floor, laying tile. In the adjacent chamber, sheets of drywall leaned on a cart with swivel wheels.

  One fellow passing in the hall had a lighter step than the others: He wasn’t wearing a tool belt. He had a drill gun in his hand and a drywall screw in his mouth like a toothpick and traipsed past as if he were headed to the bar to spear another olive for his drink. Corey recognized him from Darragh’s roofing crew. His name was Dave Dunbar, and Tom had dismissed him as a joker.

  “Hey, Dave! It’s Corey. You remember me from the summer?”

  “Hey, chief, what’s crack-a-lackin’?”

  “Can you vouch for me with him? I’m trying to get a job.”

  “Yeah. Hire this kid. He’s good.”

  “What can he do?”

  “He can do everything. He’s a mad-dog killer.”

  “Okay,” Blecic said. “Come.” He led Corey to the kitchen. “The ceiling. You see it’s black? You’re going to clean it. Take the spray.”

  “Thank you!” Corey said.

  The boss returned to the crossroads from which he could see everyone.

  From the other room, Dunbar called, “Yo, Blecic, you better hire him.”

  “Don’t give me any more bullshit today.”

  “I’m not giving you any bullshit,” Dunbar said innocently. He resumed chatting with a buddy, tacking up drywall. Blecic watched obliquely, using a line of sight that, if it had been a bullet trajectory, would have made them duck for cover.

  Corey went up a ladder with a bottle of degreaser and a roll of paper towels and spent the day spraying and wiping holes in the grime on the kitchen ceiling.

  An hour into the job, Dave rolled through beneath him with the drywall cart, felt his head and looked up.

  “Sorry. I think it dripped on you.”

  “What’re you doing up there, washing it? What’s he making you do that for? They’re going to tear that whole thing out anyway. Don’t do that.”

  “I’ve got to do it. He’s giving me a job.”

  “No, you don’t. Tell him he’s a snapper head. You could be chilling with us, throwing up drywall.”

  It was quitting time at three. The men began gathering their tools. Corey came down the ladder and set down the emptied spray bottle. Blecic paid him from a roll of cash and told him to come back.

  Corey walked out with the other workmen, leaving the smell of plywood and concrete, amid shouts and laughter, the rattle and bang of toolboxes slamming into truck beds, the crunch of tires as they rolled out, stereos kicking on, engines revving as they peeled away. It was a relief to not be craning his neck after several hours. The fresh air was cold and the sun touched the shingled roofs of modest houses among the wintry trees. He followed the road with its white centerline down to the ocean.

  When he got home, he showed his mother the cash and told her he’d gotten a job.

  “Corey, you’re a take-charge guy.”

  He hugged his mom, then asked where Leonard was so he could tell him too.

  * * *

  —

  Thereafter for the entire day on Saturdays and half a day on Tuesdays, when his classes let out early, he worked for Blecic, and studied physiology in school. He was having intense conversations with his father almost every day. This period of close involvement would last approximately a month before it ended for all time. Later, Corey would realize he and his father had talked more during this brief period than they had in their entire lives. He was so captivated by Leonard during these early days of the year, he told his mother he felt as if the man was taking him on an amazing journey, which challenged everything he thought he knew.

  Gloria said she was glad they were connecting. “That’s good for you. I give thanks for that.”

  At the peak of his enthusiasm for Leonard, Corey defined him as an unsung hero of theoretical physics. “I see him as a tragic figure. He’s gotten cheated out of credit for his discoveries due to class bias. I want to fight for him in my own work!”

  She heard out his appraisal of his father without comment.

  * * *

  —

  So far, the subject of fathers had only come up once between Adrian and Corey, when Adrian asked what Corey had been doing at MIT on the night they met.

  “I was looking for my father. He works there.”

  “What’s he do? Is he like a professor or something?”

  “He’s a cop.”

  “A cop?”

  “He works for the campus police. Supposedly.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I think he does. I’ve never seen him at his job. But he’s been doing stuff at MIT since before I was born. He used to, like, go there.”

  “He did? What did he take?”

  “Physics.”

  “Physics? That’s really interesting. Does he have a degree?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said, I’m not that close to him. I didn’t grow up with him. My parents didn’t live together. I don’t call him ‘Dad.’ I call him by his name.”

  Adrian said he wasn’t close to his father either. When he was four or five, his father had divorced his mother and gone to live in Cincinnati. Mr. Reinhardt was in real estate. He was in superb physical shape. He’d been in the Air Force and now ran three-hour marathons and played a lot of tennis.

  For Adrian’s fourteenth birthday, Mr. Reinhardt had taken him on a hunting trip. On the way, they’d gone to a whorehouse to get him laid. The whorehouse was in a trailer outside the city limits. It was here that Adrian had lost his virginity. A few days later, he had started having trouble urinating.

  “It was like pissing razor blades. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. My father and his hunting buddy started going, ‘Adrian’s got the—’ ” Adrian clapped his hands.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “They were saying I had the clap.”

  “What’s that? Gonorrhea?”

  “Yeah. Unfortunately.”

  “And your dad was laughing?”

  “He can be a mean SOB.”

  When Mr. Reinhardt was in the Air Force, his unit had held regular boxing smokers behind the mess hall. If you didn’t like someone, you were encouraged to call them out and settle it with the whole platoon watching. Mr. Reinhardt had fought a lot of matches. Once, he fought a man he especially disliked. After whipping him, he picked him up, stuffed him in a trash can and rolled him down a hill. Years later, in a bar, Mr. Reinhardt heard another patron telling everyone how, in the service, he’d seen a man get beaten senseless and rolled down a hill in a trash can.
Mr. Reinhardt said, “I did that! That was me!” And the storyteller declared, “That was the meanest fucking thing I ever saw anybody do!” and bought him a drink.

  “What happened with the gonorrhea? Did you tell a doctor?”

  “Yeah, I had to see a doctor and that wasn’t too fun. She was this big mean psycho bitch who hated men. She gives me this look and goes, ‘Take off your clothes.’ Then she took a Q-tip and stuck it in my dick. It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt, and I could tell she enjoyed it. She was getting off on it. She was smiling.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I felt so violent, I could have ripped her head off,” Adrian whispered.

  Corey didn’t know what to think or say. He was troubled. “Why didn’t your dad tell you to wear a condom?”

  “My dad says there are some things you have to find out for yourself.”

  But he could be a great guy too. After they had bagged a deer, Adrian had wrestled the animal onto his back and posed with it draped victoriously over his shoulders. His father had taken a picture of him with the vanquished deer and Adrian had always kept it.

  * * *

  —

  In mid-January, Corey learned that Adrian had gotten into MIT. In fact, the early-action letters had gone out six weeks ago. Corey couldn’t imagine why his friend hadn’t told him sooner. He was thrilled for him! He congratulated him. He had an idea: He wanted to introduce the two men he most admired to each other, both of whom were now linked to the same university. He invited Adrian to Quincy.

  But tonight Adrian wanted to study. But Corey kept after him until he finally sighed and relented.

  “I’m happy you’re coming. You’re not annoyed, are you?”

  Adrian said he was used to tolerating his mother’s unreasonable requests.

  They boarded the train at Harvard Square. Adrian persisted in talking about his studies, as if to prove that, though Corey could take him away from his books, he couldn’t interfere with his intellectual development.

  As they traveled south, and especially after JFK/UMass, from which point on they moved along the open coast, Corey found himself overmastered by a grand sense of the voyage of their lives against the great map of the earth. He saw the earth from space, the arc of the coast, their movement along that arc from Cambridge down to Quincy, from port to port, as it were, and tried to express this idea to Adrian. “I can see us sailing down from Cambridge. We just as easily could be coming this same way in a boat. We’d be out there in the ocean.” He pointed out the window at the offshore blackness.