She feels frozen to the chair.
“For now, we just want to talk to your son. There are innocent victims out there, and the bomber is planning to do them harm. You will just need to trust me. Okay? Can you do that? Professor?” He hands Maxine his phone.
She imagines Zach and Angelina at the center of a circle of FBI agents with their guns drawn and pointed. Are the neighbors staring out their windows? Are the agents wearing jackets that identify them as FBI? No, Ortega and Markham said they walk around incognito. Or is that only when they’re off duty? Oh, who cares what the neighbors think! Zach must be terrified. And poor Angelina! Maxine ought to make the agents obtain a warrant. She needs to call Rosa and make sure Mick found Zach a lawyer. But that could take all night. She and Zach have nothing to hide. If she doesn’t give permission for the search, they might take Zach somewhere more upsetting than the Federal Building in Ann Arbor.
“Zach,” she says. “Sweetheart. Are you there? Do what they tell you. Okay? Tell them whatever they want to know.”
She waits to hear her son’s voice. Instead, she hears a man say, “Ma’am? Ma’am? If you would please put Agent Shauntz back on the line?”
Shauntz takes his phone. After a while, he hangs up. “Everybody’s fine. Your son unlocked the house. He and his girlfriend are safe. You did a nice job, professor.”
He moves from behind his desk. Takes Maxine’s hand. The contact is less sexual than governmental. Still, she wants to close her eyes and rest in those burly, suited arms.
“So,” Shauntz says. “What would you die for?”
“Excuse me?”
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” Although she guesses he intended to do just that. “It’s something a profiler wonders. What would a person die for? This Rapaczynski character, given the pains he takes to keep his distance from his crimes, the answer seems to be not much. But the rest of us …” He opens his arms to indicate everyone in the building. “Any of us agents would die to defend our country. To uphold its laws. As individual human beings, we would die to protect our families. So, I’m asking you. What do you hold so dear that you would put your personal safety in jeopardy to protect it?”
For the first thirty-one years of her life, Maxine would have answered: Nothing. She was so scared of dying, she would have given up zero minutes of her life to stand up for a principle. Then she gave birth to Zach.
“My son,” she says. “I would die for my son.”
“And you thought he was mixed up in all this, didn’t you.”
She mustn’t answer without a lawyer. But for Zach’s sake, she tries to remain cooperative. “I’m sorry. I’m so tired and hungry, I can’t think clearly.”
Appalled at his lack of gallantry, he offers to bring her sandwiches. “Or look. It’s going to be a long night. Your son is absolutely safe. Why don’t the two of us get some dinner? There’s this place nearby that makes incredible barbecue. Slows. A Detroit institution. I don’t know how you feel about brisket or ribs, but for a Kentucky boy like me …”
She knows this is a setup. But would anything be so wrong if she allowed Supervisory Special Agent Shauntz to take her out for dinner and a drink?
“We aren’t your enemy,” Shauntz says. “You might even consider coming to work for us.” Recently, the agency hired a female futurist. “This woman—Meyer, Breyer, something like that—she analyzes whatever statistics the data-heads collect. Then she uses it to predict any crime trends that might be coming at us down the pike. More and more, the bureau needs futurists to head off attacks from groups that aren’t yet on our radar. Me? I think the future might be too big for just one person. Maybe you and Meyer, Breyer, the two of you could head up a new division. You’ve already got a great start, helping us solve one of the most notorious serial bombings in history.”
The job seems even more thankless than directing an institute that attempts to predict the effects of technological change on human society. If you accurately predict a terrorist attack and the government heads it off, how will you get the credit for heading off an attack that never happened?
“So, what about that dinner?”
She is saved from declining his proposal by the return of the agent who reminds her of her old music teacher. Burdock lays out duplicates of Thaddy’s essays, so perfectly copied she can’t distinguish the Xeroxes from the originals. Somehow, this upsets her. She wants to hang on to the papers Thaddy touched. The ones with the comments she penciled in the margins. The ones with the rusty echo of the paper clip, not a Xeroxed echo of the echo.
She inserts the copies in her backpack. Thanks Shauntz for the dinner invitation. Asks when she will be allowed to get back in her house.
“My guess is this,” Shauntz says. “Your son is in for a long night. And your house is going to be filled with agents. Maybe you have a friend you can stay with? Or you could check into a motel. By morning, if everything is as you described it, your son and his lady will be home and eager for a home-cooked breakfast. Here is my direct line and cell phone number. Feel free to use it—any time, for anything.”
She had been hoping Shauntz would be the one to escort her back down to the waiting room. But Burdock fulfills that role. The man with the fedora and the woman with magenta hair are gone. In their places sit a woman in a hijab and a dark-skinned teenager in a gold tracksuit. Are they here to inform on their neighbors, or on their families?
Burdock leads Maxine to the security booth, where the guard returns her phone.
“The system,” Burdock says, “it works. We know things you can’t imagine we know. Shauntz is … You have no idea what kind of man Roland Shauntz is.”
Burdock says this as if he is in love with his superior. Which, why not, of course he could be. Maxine gets the idea Burdock pledges his fealty more to Roland Shauntz than to the agency. She is less certain why Burdock sees her as a threat to this allegiance.
“The guy is a genius,” Burdock says. “He would have figured out the identity of this individual. If the agency had given us the resources he asked for, we would have brought in this Rapaczynski years ago, on our own.”
… Watches History Repeat Itself
The Buick is the only car in the lot. The guard has abandoned his booth. But Maxine sits in the dark, using her newly restored phone to call Rosa. Zach hasn’t committed any crimes. Unless getting his girlfriend pregnant is illegal. But she was right to suspect her former student has become a terrorist. And Zach quite possibly knows where the man is hiding. The FBI is questioning him now. The agents will be holding him overnight.
“Jesus,” Rosa says. “You must be going out of your mind. Try to stay calm. Mick found you the legal equivalent of Muhammad Ali. You remember Stuart Greenglass? He defended everybody from the White Panthers and the Chicago Seven to Angela Davis and Daniel Ellsberg.”
Maxine reminds Rosa her son isn’t exactly Abbie Hoffman. The FBI might associate this Stuart Greenglass—and therefore Zach—with those earlier and more notorious radicals. But the idea of such a prominent lawyer working on her son’s behalf silences her objections. Rosa gives her the lawyer’s number. “Thanks,” Maxine says. “I feel so alone in all this.” She starts to tear up—from gratitude, from exhaustion.
“By the way,” Rosa says, “congratulations on becoming a grandmother. Isn’t that something? You and I are both going to be raising grandkids. That should give us something to look forward to, don’t you think?”
To be honest, this is nothing Maxine feels cause to celebrate. She sees herself pushing a swaddled, faceless lump in one of those swings that resembles a rubberized diaper. She will be caring for her grandchild so her son and his wife can get on with their future. Her own future will be in the past.
She doesn’t say any of this to Rosa. She thanks her again for arranging the meeting with Stuart Greenglass. She hates to ask, but while the government is searching
her house, can she spend the night at Rosa’s? When Rosa says yes, of course, Maxine hangs up and calls the lawyer. He sounds distant. Gruff. No doubt she interrupted his dinner. But once he understands the case involves the serial bomber whose manifesto was printed in The New York Times, he says, “Yes! I see!” And his voice becomes the voice of a man hanging on her every word. He will get right down to the FBI’s offices in Ann Arbor. If all goes well, he may have Zach out in a few hours. Depends on what Zach is telling them. If they want, the agency can just keep moving the kid around until Greenglass manages to get to a judge. Unless Zach invokes his right to counsel, in which case Greenglass will sit there with him all night while he’s being questioned. “I’ll keep you apprised of the situation,” Greenglass promises, and then, when she hears him disconnect, Maxine hangs up, reluctantly, because now she has nothing to do but worry.
She gets on the highway to Ann Arbor. It is after rush hour, but there must have been some tie-up because no one is rushing anywhere. When the traffic on I-94 clogs to a halt, Maxine lays her forehead against the steering wheel and closes her eyes.
The car behind her honks. Has she been asleep? She opens the window and drives as fast as she can. When she makes it to Ypsilanti, she finds Rosa’s house, knocks, and collapses in Rosa’s arms. After dinner, she asks if she can take a bath, then strips off her wrinkled skirt, her fetid blouse, her disgusting underwear, and plunges gratefully into the hottest water her skin will tolerate. She scrubs every square inch. Lathers her scalp. Slides beneath the surface and holds her breath. When she comes up, she is as surprised by her breasts as if two soft, aquatic creatures had found their way into the tub. When was the last time she saw them? The last time she enjoyed an orgasm, even one she supplied herself? The skin on her chest is developing that wrinkly crepe that always made her think a woman was truly old. How little time is left before she is ashamed to take off her clothes? She remembers Sam going down on her, the whirlpool of thinning hair at the very top of his head, which she otherwise never saw. Then it is Thaddy between her legs, not for her own pleasure, but so she can instruct him on how to please a woman of his own. She replaces the image with Jackson Sparrow, who seems to be showing off, demonstrating that age can be not a liability but an advantage.
Maybe Jackson is right. If we survive to a trans-human age, won’t we mourn the loss of our organic bodies? Maybe our digitally enhanced skin will simulate such exquisite sensation our enjoyment of sex will be off the scale. But that only makes her more desperate to enjoy her body while she has it.
She puts on the sweatshirt and sweatpants Rosa left by the tub—her son Jamal’s castoffs. Rosa has made up the bed in Jamal’s old room. As worn out as she is, Maxine can’t believe she will be able to sleep. Not with Zach in custody. But when she is awakened by the chirping of her phone, it’s seven-thirty.
“I didn’t manage to see him,” Greenglass says. “But they agreed not to charge him.”
“Charge him! What would they charge him with!”
Greenglass calms her. Zach ought to be arriving home in another hour. He should have just enough time for a shower and a hot meal before he needs to return to Detroit for further questioning.
She hangs up, thanks Rosa, hurries home. The lock on the front door is intact—Zach used his key to let in the agents. And very little in the living room or kitchen has been disturbed; except for some muddy footprints, she barely would have noticed the intrusion. Upstairs is a different story. The ancient Dell PC from her bedroom is gone, as is the equally obsolete Gateway from Zach’s room. Good luck getting either machine to boot up. Her cabinets and drawers have been rifled through. There are gaping spaces on her son’s bookshelves; no doubt the agents confiscated his Howard Zinn, among other incendiary volumes. The video games and board games—some of them designed by Norm—have been thoroughly ransacked. But the disruption seems less severe than she expected.
She hears a commotion outside. From the upstairs window she can see Zach and Angelina climb from the back seat of a black Ford Bronco. A second black car pulls up behind the first.
Maxine runs down and opens the door. “Are you okay? They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
“Sorry, Mom,” Zach apologizes. “I didn’t mean to put you through all this,” as if she is the one who spent the night being questioned. He nods to the cars at the curb. “For our protection, they said. But it’s more like house arrest. One of the agents—that beefy guy with the black hair that comes to a point on his forehead?—he said he promised you he would have us home by morning. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure we would still be there.”
The “we” makes Maxine remember Angelina. Maxine helps carry their bags up to Zach’s bedroom. Following behind, she sees how badly Angelina wobbles—from the stress, the lack of sleep. She swings her left leg and left crutch to the side before she plants these on the step above. Then she repeats this with the other crutch and the other leg. Maxine hovers behind in case she misses her footing and tumbles backward. This must be how protective Sam felt toward Maxine, all those years ago, hovering behind her as she limped up the three flights to her apartment. But of course Angelina is an experienced stair-climber and doesn’t fall. Zach ushers his girlfriend into his boyhood room, with its slanted stucco ceiling and the childish paintings tacked to the walls with dried-out putty. His posters of Pokémon characters. The cartographer’s map of the world his father gave him so Zach could follow his travels.
Angelina picks Zach’s yearbook off a shelf and begins to leaf through it. “Oh, Zach! Everyone else in this photo is laughing, and there you are, scowling. Didn’t you have any fun in high school? What about kindergarten? Are there photographs of you scowling in elementary school?”
Watching the two of them giggle and nudge each other, Maxine wonders if she should offer to let them stay in her room. Zach is six feet three inches tall. His fiancée is seven months pregnant. How will they both fit in Zach’s childhood bed? Thinking this, she can’t help but picture her slim, handsome son making love to his big-bellied, big-breasted fiancée. The image is so novel she allows it to linger longer than she should. Every child tries to keep from imagining his parents having sex. And every parent—at least the ones who aren’t monsters—tries equally hard not to imagine his or her child making love. Which means every generation misses out on imagining the people they love best at the moment they are the happiest.
She leaves them sitting on Zach’s bed, laughing at his yearbook, and goes downstairs to call Greenglass to update him. Later, she listens to make sure she won’t be interrupting anything, then summons Zach and Angelina down to eat. She allows Zach to set the table, then watches the two of them scarf down the English muffins and cheese omelets she has prepared—the calcium in the cheese will be good for the baby’s bones. She feels like Job, getting back, if not her original family, then a new one. Zach and Angelina and the baby will come to dinner often. Maxine will drive to Detroit to babysit. Her son and his wife will spend Christmas and Easter with Angelina’s parents. But Maxine will hold Thanksgiving and Passover in Ann Arbor. If everyone lived forever, would children experience the same incentive to spend holidays with their parents? Would they bother visiting their parents at all? She considers blogging this idea on www.professorofimmortality.com, then remembers she shut down the site.
As they fork up the last of the omelets, Zach talks about their plans for the day. Angelina will rest while he and Maxine drive to Detroit to talk to the FBI, which Zach thinks won’t take more than another few hours and Maxine hopes won’t consume the rest of their lives. They talk about Angelina’s plans to call her parents. Until now, the Ruizes have welcomed Zach as an upstanding young man who treats their daughter with respect. Now, he will need to convince them he isn’t a terrible person for getting her pregnant and dragging her into this mess. Hopefully, they will be pleased at the couple’s decision to get married, their plans to start a business Angelina’s father can unders
tand because, like his own, it involves growing and raising plants.
“Professor Sayers?” Angelina says. “You mustn’t think Zach is going to need to take care of me. I can do anything anyone else can do. If our plan doesn’t work out, I will help to support our family. You won’t ever need to be ashamed of having me for a daughter-in-law.”
“Ashamed!” That Angelina can even imagine such a possibility makes Maxine want to prostrate herself before her future daughter-in-law. Instead, she wraps her arms around Angelina’s bare shoulders—which feel much sturdier than they look. “Don’t even think such a thing! And please, if you can’t bring yourself to call me ‘Mom,’ could you at least try ‘Maxine’?”
Zach and Maxine drive to Detroit, followed by one of the two black sedans—the other remains behind, as if to protect Angelina, or make sure she doesn’t run off. They meet Greenglass in the lobby of the Federal Building. A compact man in his mid-seventies, with bright red reading glasses dangling from a leather cord around his neck, Greenglass is all business. He also is black, rather than the New York Jew Maxine expected from his name and flat, nasal intonations. (Later, she will learn Greenglass attended the Bronx High School of Science and CCNY before he moved to the Midwest to attend Wayne State Law School.) He shakes her hand, then shakes Zach’s hand, puts on his glasses, and inspects them both.
The Professor of Immortality Page 18
