She had knelt and shaken him by his shoulders. Zach, she said, it is never, ever, okay to hurt another child. You know that! You’re not allowed to hit anyone. So how could you think it was all right to set someone on fire? To burn him? You know what you did is very, very wrong. Don’t you?
Zach stared stonily ahead and refused to speak.
She told him she knew he wouldn’t have threatened to hurt another kid if he hadn’t thought he had a good reason. So what was going on? Why did he threaten to set that other child on fire? Even saying the words had made her sick. How could she imply he had a reason?
“They were hurting us!” Zach burst out. “Every day, the bigger boys make us be afraid. They won’t let us do anything. And they hurt the girls. I mean, they really hurt them! And they hit some of the smaller boys. Especially Norm. I’m not as big or strong as they are. There was nothing I could do.”
She asked why he hadn’t told the teacher.
But he had told the teacher. And Mrs. Barnard said they needed to figure out how to get along. She told the bigger boys to be nice to the younger children. But the older boys got even madder at Zach for tattling. So Zach called a meeting and said the younger kids needed a weapon. So they could protect themselves. Norm made slingshots, but those didn’t work. So Zach got the idea one of them should take matches from their house. He knew they weren’t allowed to light matches. But they could say they would light the matches. They could use the matches to scare the bigger boys. Zach wouldn’t really have set Benny on fire, he told his mother. He didn’t even know how to light a match! He practiced in the boys’ room, and he couldn’t get the match to work. All that happened was he got a little smoke out of one match, and he made sure there wasn’t any paper in the can before he threw it in. In the end, Zach held out an unlit match and told Benny he would burn him. Benny started to cry, and he ran to tell Mrs. Barnard. “I wouldn’t really have burned him!” Zach had sobbed. “But no one was protecting us!”
Maybe she had been wrong, but she told Zach that even though what he had done was very wrong, she understood he had been trying to protect the other kids. When they got home, she confined him to his room. But she ended up bringing him dinner in bed, so it seemed more like a picnic than a punishment. The next morning, she went back to see the principal. Of course, she said, Zach had been wrong to steal those matches, let alone practice lighting them in the restroom. And he certainly had been wrong to hold out a match and threaten to burn another boy. But he hadn’t intended to carry through his threat. And why hadn’t the teacher done more to protect the smaller, weaker children from the bigger bullies?
The principal threw her out. “You’re fooling yourself,” he had warned. In all his years as an administrator, he had never heard of a kindergartener coming up with such a disturbing plan. “Your son has very serious problems! If you cannot recognize that he needs psychological help, then you have problems, too!”
She might have been shamed into taking Zach to a psychiatrist. But Sam wouldn’t hear of it. How dare the principal fault their son for standing up to bullies! Were they raising a child who was afraid to protect the weaker members of his community? Zach was six. How could he be expected to understand the true consequences of setting another child on fire? The threat was like saying, “I’m so angry I want to kill you!”
Sam had gone in to talk to the principal. But Sam ended up angering him even more. The other boy’s parents threatened to sue the school if Zach wasn’t suspended. Which the principal was only too glad to do.
Maxine waits to see which side Rosa will take. Will she say, “They blamed Zach? They threatened to put a six-year-old in jail?” Or will she hint Sam and Maxine were blind that their son was headed down a dangerous path, albeit in the name of righting the world’s inequities?
“Listen,” Rosa says. “I never met this Thaddy Rapawhosit. I have no way of knowing if he’s the lunatic who wrote that gobbledygook in the newspaper, or if you are making too much of some garbled clichés anyone might spout. But I do know your son. I watched him grow up. I do not need special powers to know he has a good heart. And I do not mean a heart so good it tips over into blowing people up. You are his mother! How can you not have as much faith in your son as I do?”
Maxine feels nauseated she even suspected her son of being in cahoots with the crazy bomber. What if Zach finds out his own mother believes him capable of committing such terrible crimes?
The kettle shrieks, which makes Maxine jump up from her chair.
“You have to relax,” Rosa tells her. “There’s nothing you can do, at least not this early in the morning.” She fixes Maxine a cup of tea and slices her some homemade oat-and-walnut bread. “Come on,” she urges. “I know you’re dying to ask how long Mick and I have been carrying on.”
Maxine knows Rosa is only trying to divert her from worrying about Zach. And it does feel good to stop, if only for a minute. “You must hate me for saying all the horrible things I’ve said about Mick. He’s actually a very good man.”
Rosa laughs. “When he isn’t being a pompous old fool.” She crosses her arms across her breasts, as if she only now realizes her tattoo is exposed. “We were going to tell you. Mick doesn’t directly supervise me, so I doubted the administration would object. But I hate everyone thinking I’m just some secretary trying to get ahead by sucking a professor’s dick.”
Maxine is afraid the image of Rosa putting John Sebastian Mickelthwaite’s penis in her mouth might make her ill. But the idea of her two friends lying in bed pleasuring each other pleases her, too.
“We haven’t been together very long,” Rosa says. The relationship started when Mick began asking Rosa for advice about his granddaughter. The girl had been living with his dead daughter’s lover. But the man was arrested for selling heroin, so Mick will be adopting the girl and caring for her on his own.
“I couldn’t help it,” Rosa says. “I saw a side of him none of us has ever seen. And—stop me if this is too much information—one thing led to another. I saw parts of him none of us had ever seen.” Rosa puts her hand to her mouth. “I’m going to be a grandmother!” The child’s name is Risa, which means “laughter” in Spanish. “Don’t you just love it? ‘Rosa, meet Risa. Risa, meet your new abuela, Rosa.’ How can I pass that up?”
That her friend has found companionship fills Maxine with joy. But her happiness for her friend fails to calm her panic for her son. “If I don’t go to the police right away,” she tells Rosa, “Thaddy might kill another victim. But if I do go, how can I keep Zach from getting mixed up in this mess?”
“Listen to me,” Rosa says. “You do not know this student is the bomber, let alone that your kind, sweet, beautiful son has heard from the guy since he was, what, fourteen? It would be irresponsible of you to go to the FBI with nothing but your suspicions. You need to go straight home and hire a lawyer. Well, first you need to take a shower. After that, you need to find a lawyer.”
A lawyer! Maxine doesn’t know any lawyers. Except the one who helped her settle Sam’s estate. “I guess I could use the university’s legal department. If I’m right about Thaddy, they’re going to end up getting involved anyway.”
“No,” Rosa says. “If it comes down to the university covering their ass, their lawyers won’t hesitate to throw you to the wolves.”
Maxine doesn’t care about herself. Even if Thaddy is the bomber, she can’t be sent to prison for having taught him. But she doesn’t want to hire a lawyer who won’t put her son’s best interests first. She can just see Zach hobbling down a prison corridor in an orange jumpsuit. As tall as he is, Zach has always walked with a hunch, as if he feels guilty for taking up too much space. Guilty for growing up white, male, straight, middle-class. Maybe prison is where he has always wanted to be. Hobbled. Restrained. Her son will find a way to be useful to the other prisoners. Helping them fight their legal battles. Teaching them to read and
write. But he will stand up to the guards. If not on his own behalf then someone else’s. Even if he gets out in one piece, the remainder of his life will be in tatters.
“Don’t worry,” Rosa says “Mick plays golf with the attorney general. He’ll find you the best criminal lawyer in Michigan.”
“Really?” Maxine says. “He would do that for me?”
“Of course he would!” Rosa says. “There’s nothing Mick loves more than doing favors that prove he still has connections to people in high places.” Rosa glances at the clock—it’s after six, and Maxine knows Rosa needs to get ready for work. Maxine herself has a seven-thirty appointment to meet the provost. And she needs to show up at the nursing home by eight-forty-five to take her mother to get her hair done.
She uses Rosa’s bathroom to clean up. Hugs Rosa. Thanks her. Then gets back in her car and drives to campus, where she steers her mother’s giant old Buick into the garage behind the institute. Up and up she drives, maneuvering the LeSabre along each narrow ramp. This is why she usually walks or bikes to work. There are never enough spaces. Employees like Rosa who live too far to walk or bike need to waste hours searching for a parking space or waiting for the bus. Why is she studying immortality? The quality of most people’s lives is determined by their ability to get to work on time, with a minimum of frustration.
She emerges from the dark, dank garage into a Michigan morning so humid she might as well be living inside one of Zach’s terrariums. Since when does April in Michigan feel so tropical?
When she pushes through the frosted doors to the institute, the first thing she notices is the stack of packages. Ordinarily, Deidre, the receptionist, would have sorted the previous day’s deliveries. But Deidre is still on maternity leave, and Rosa left early to price venues for the fundraiser. (Pairing Rosa and Mick on the fundraising team had been Maxine’s idea, hadn’t it? Mick would provide the contacts, Rosa the know-how. Unless they came up with the idea themselves?) Even before she notices her name on the top package, she recognizes Zach’s name in the upper-left-hand corner, followed by his address in Oakland. The wrapping is fashioned from a grocery bag, the way Sam taught Zach to cover his schoolbooks. They even used grocery bags to wrap presents, except for the year Zach’s class sold wrapping paper to raise money to replace the pirate ship.
She touches the box, lightly, with her fingertips. Was it only the day before that Mick warned her not to open any suspicious packages? She lowers her palm, pressing it to the address. How can she not open a package from her son?
Then again, if Zach wanted to send a package, why wouldn’t he send it to their house? Why a package and not a call? Maybe the contents are so valuable he doesn’t want the gift to sit on their porch. But how can he afford to buy a gift if he asked Norm to steal those savings bonds?
The package—the size of a cigar box—lies sandwiched between her hands. She shakes it—carefully. If a box this small explodes, how badly might she be hurt?
She carries it to her office. She should call the police. But this package is from her son. According to the return address, he is back in Oakland. Maybe he mailed her a gift to make up for all the worry he has put her through.
She slits the wrapping. The grocery bag came from a Trader Joe’s. But which Trader Joe’s? When she visited Zach, was there a Trader Joe’s in his neighborhood?
The box, which has been crafted from a lightweight wood, like balsa, is fastened with a clasp. As she nudges the hook, she knows she will find nothing inside but a gift from Zach. Even as she knows the contents will blow up in her face.
She falls back, hands flailing at her eyes. Her head radiates pain where she cracked it against the coat rack. Her face stings. But when she puts her hands to her cheeks, she doesn’t feel anything raw or wet. In the windowless room, powder hovers in the air. Anthrax? She stops breathing. Then again, if it is anthrax, she already is good as dead.
Sprawled there, entangled in the coat rack, she pats herself for injuries. The gray carpet seems unstained by anything except the orangey smudge where, weeks ago, she dropped a meatball sandwich. Beneath the desk lies one of the objects that must have exploded in her face. She fishes it out—a spring, narrower than a soup can, which someone meticulously stitched inside a gray felt cover. That same person must have compressed the spring, then set it in the box and closed the hasp. Maxine discovers two other snakes beside the bookcase. The white dust sifts to her desk, coating her stapler, her papers, the collection of wind-up robots her students have given her. She sniffs more deeply—if she isn’t already poisoned, she will be now—and is transported to her mother’s bedroom in Fenstead, where, as a little girl, Maxine loved to inhale the Jean Naté talcum powder her mother dusted beneath her arms to keep from sweating. Who would have gone to such elaborate lengths to pull a prank? She might have been blinded by a spring. Even as she forms these thoughts, she can hear Sam shouting these same questions to their son. A package had arrived at Sam’s office; when he opened it, snakes sprang from the box, frightening him half to death. When Zach came home, Sam was waiting for him in their living room.
“We didn’t mean to hurt you!” Zach had cried.
“‘We’?” Sam echoed. “Who is this ‘we’? Don’t go blaming Norm. Norm might have the smarts to rig up a contraption like this, but he would never say boo unless you put him up to it.”
Maxine remembers a change coming over Zach’s face, so subtle only a mother would have noticed it. “Yeah. Sorry. I shouldn’t try to blame Norm. It was only me.” Even then, Maxine suspected Thaddy had prodded Zach into carrying out the plot. What boy wouldn’t think it great fun to play a prank on his father? No one would get hurt—they would cover the springs to make sure they didn’t poke out his father’s eye. The “smoke” would be nothing but baking soda, harmless as the fuel Zach and Thaddy had used for the rockets they set off behind the house. Why hadn’t Maxine shared her suspicions with Sam? Because even then she knew Thaddy hated her husband. Hated him because he was bringing technology to people who would be better off in their primitive, authentic state. Hated him because he was married to a woman Thaddy fantasized about being married to himself. In sending that earlier package, Thaddy had been letting her know he could have found a way to kill her husband. He was sparing Sam, for her sake.
And now, what kind of message is Thaddy sending? Is he saying she mustn’t divulge what she knows or the next package won’t be so harmless? Please, she thinks. Let Thaddy have typed Zach’s name and return address because he knew I wouldn’t be able to resist opening any package with my son’s name and address in the upper-left-hand corner. Please let it mean Thaddy has no idea Zach has moved.
She leaves everything where it is. Finding no one in the corridor, she hurries to the ladies’ bathroom. Her face is pale, not only from shock but from the powder. She looks like a high-school thespian made up to play an elderly woman by the seventh-grader in charge of makeup.
She sneaks back to her office, gathers the three felt-covered bedsprings, the paper bag with the Trader Joe’s logo on one side and her name and address and her son’s name and address on the other side, then jams these inside her backpack, along with Thaddy’s portfolio, the Conrad novel, and her copy of the manifesto. She sets the cigar box atop her bookcase. She almost wishes it had contained a real bomb because the explosion would have destroyed the evidence. Even then, the bomber’s true identity might have been revealed by some telltale clue. In Conrad’s novel, Verloc’s wife sews their address into her brother Stevie’s coat so if he ever gets lost, the police will know where to bring him. Then Stevie blows himself up, and the police find the label among the shreds of flesh and bits of bone that remain of him.
The muggy day feels even more surreal than it did before. The temperature must be in the seventies. She crosses the street and takes the elevator up to the provost’s office.
“Provost Bell is finishing another meeting,” the re
ceptionist tells her. “If you would please take a seat?”
Maxine settles into one of the maize-and-blue Lucite chairs and stows her backpack beneath the maize-and-blue Lucite table. Mindlessly, she pages through a brochure that showcases the university’s most generous donors, nearly all of whom have given money to build the new center for entrepreneurial research or to renovate the sports facilities. Useless to think any of them might donate to her institute. Maybe if she could promise their grandchildren would never die. But a donation to the medical school would be more likely to achieve that aim.
Three men in suits emerge from the provost’s office. Maxine picks up her pack and swats a powder stain from her skirt.
“Maxine!” Provost Bell rises from her desk, upon which stands a large wooden statue of a wolverine. “So good to see you again!” She looks Maxine up and down. Her nostrils dilate as she sniffs the flowery scent. She motions Maxine to take a seat. “Have you given any more thought to the topic we discussed the last time we spoke?”
From where Maxine sits, she can see the screensaver on Perpetua’s computer—the Bell family in front of their cottage up north, five girls and two boys, plus Perpetua’s healthily tanned husband, his arms draped around his wife and children’s shoulders.
“Yes, Perpetua,” she says, “I have. And I have serious reservations about making our services available to outside industries. How can we remain objective if we know we can make more money by saying what the company funding our research wants us to say?”
The provost has the startled look of a woman who isn’t accustomed to being disagreed with. “Oh, no, no, no. The university would never put you in a position where you would be pressured to do anything unethical. Look at the medical school. The pharmaceutical sector does provide funding for basic research. But the faculty would never allow such funding to affect their findings.”
The Professor of Immortality Page 12
