Special Topics in Calamity Physics

by Marisha Pessl

  "Senorita," he said. "I missed ya."

  "Hi," I said, hurrying to the window.

  "What's goin' on? How come ya haven't come seen me? Ya been breakin' my corazon." String Bean surveyed me skeptically, licking salt off her fingers. "How's high school?" he asked. "All right," I said. He nodded and held up an open book, Learning the Spanish Language

  (Berlitz, 2000). "Been doin' some studyin' myself. Came up with a plan to break into the film industry. You stay here, you gotta do it from the ground up, too many people. Go to a foreign country? You can be a big fish in a little pond. I decided on Spain. I hear they need actors—"

  "I need your help/' I blurted. "I-I was wondering if I could borrow your truck again. I promise to have it back in three or four hours. It's an emergency and — "

  "Typical chica. Only comes to see ya when she wants somethin'. Can't ask yer pops cuz things are rough with him—you don't have to tell me. I pick up on the simbolos. The signs."

  "It's not about my father. It's something that happened at school. Did you hear about the teacher who died? Hannah Schneider?"

  "Killed herself," said String Bean through shards of potato chips.

  "Sure," said Larson, nodding. "Been thinkin' 'bout that. I was wonderin' how yer pops was. The male species mourns different from women. Before he left, my pops was datin' Tina who worked at Hair Fantasy, took her out only a week after my stepma died of brain cancer. I had a fit. But he sat me down, told me people show their loss different, is all. Got to respect the mournin' process. So if yer pops starts datin' again, can't hold it against him. I'm sure he's upset. A lot of people come through here, all different kinds, an' I can spot real love like I kin spot an actor who's not in the moment, just readin' lines—"

  "Who are you talking about?"

  He smiled. "Yer pops."

  "My pops."

  "Figure he's pretty broken up."

  I stared at him. "Why?"

  "Well, yer girl ups and dies on ya—"

  "His girl?"

  "Sure."

  "Hannah Schneider?"

  He stared at me.

  "But they barely knew each other." As soon as I said it, the sentence sounded absurdly frail. It curled, began to fall apart like an empty straw wrapper when a drop of water falls on it.

  Larson didn't continue. He looked uncertain; sensing he'd stumbled into the wrong stairwell, he couldn't decide if he should keep going down or back the way he came.

  "What made you think they were a couple?" I asked.

  "Way they looked at each other," he said after a moment, leaning forward so his freckled forehead was an inch from the glass. "She came in here while he waited in the car once. Smiled at me. Bought Turns. The other time they paid for gas with a credit card. Didn't get out of the car. But I saw her. Next thing I know her picture's in the paper. Her face was so pretty, it gets etched in yer mind."

  "Are you positive? It wasn't a-a woman with yellow-orange hair?"

  "Oh, yeah, I saw her. Crazy blue eyes. No. This one was the one in the newspaper. Dark hair. Looked like she wasn't from around here." "How many times did you see them?" "Two. Maybe three." "I can't—I have to"—my voice was scary, coming out in clumps —

  "Excuse me," I managed to say. And then, all at once, the convenience store became highly inconvenient. I whirled around, because I couldn't look at Larson's face anymore, and the whole place looked smeared, out of focus (or else all gravitational fields had gone limp). As I turned, my left arm smacked the display of greeting cards, and then I crashed into String Bean who'd left her position by the batteries to go get a cup of scalding coffee the size of a small child. It erupted all over us (String Bean screaming, wailing about her burnt legs), but I didn't stop or apologize; I lurched forward, my foot hit the rack of beaded eyeglass chains and angel air fresheners, the door dinged and finally, the night jammed into my face. I think Larson might have shouted something, "Make sure yer ready fer the truth," in his chainsaw accent—but maybe it was the screeches of the cars as they honked to avoid hitting me, or my own words as they skidded through my head.

  33

  The Trial

  I found Dad in the library.

  He wasn't surprised to see me—but then, I can't remember a time when Dad was ever surprised, except when he leaned down to pet June Bug Phyllis Mixer's chocolate Standard Poodle and the thing leaped into the air in an attempt to bite his face, missing it by half an inch.

  I stood in the doorway for a minute, staring at him, unable to speak. He put his reading glasses in their case with the air of a woman handling pearls.

  "I gather you didn't watch Gone with the Wind" he said.

  "How long did you date Hannah Schneider?" I asked.

  "Date?" He frowned.

  "Don't lie. People saw you with her." I opened my mouth to say more, but couldn't.

  "Sweet?" He leaned forward slightly in his reading chair, as if to better observe me, as if I was an interesting principle of Conflict Resolution scrawled across a blackboard.

  "I hate you," I said in a quivering voice.

  "Excuse me?"

  "I hate you!"

  "My God," he said with a smile. "I—this is an interesting turn of events. Rather ridiculous."

  "I'm not ridiculous! You're ridiculous!" I lurched around, yanked a random book from the bookshelf behind me and hurled it at him, hard. He deflected it with his arm. It was Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Joyce, 1916) and it fell open at his feet. Instantly, I grabbed another, Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States (Bicentennial ed. 1989).

  Dad stared at me. "For God's sake, get a hold of yourself." "You're a liar! You're an ape!" I screamed, throwing it at him. "I hate you!" He deflected that one too. "The use of the phrase, I hate you," he said

  calmly, "is not only untrue, it's— "

  I threw A Tale of TwoCities (Dickens, 1859) at his head. He deflected it, so I grabbed more, as many as I could hold in my arms like some mad, starving woman ordered to grab as much food as she could from a cafeteria buffet. There was The Strenuous Life (Roosevelt, 1900), Leaves of Grass (Whitman, 1891), This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald, 1920), a very heavy, green hardback— A Description of Elizabethan England (Harrison, 1577), I believe. I launched all of them at him, rapid fire. He repelled most, though Elizabethan England hit him on the right knee.

  "You're a sick, sick liar! You're evil!" I threw Lolita (Nabokov, 1955). "I hope you die a slow death riddled with unbearable pain!" Although deflecting the books with his arms, and sometimes legs, Dad didn't stand up or try to restrain me in any way. He remained in his reading chair. "Get a hold of yourself," he said. "Stop being so melodramatic. This isn't a miniseries on AB —" I hurled The Heart of the Matter (Greene, 1948) at his stomach, Common

  Sense (Paine, 1776) at his face. "Is this necessary?" I threw Four Textson Socrates (West, 1998). I picked up ParadiseLost (Milton, 1667). "That's a rare edition," Dad said.

  "Let it be the blow to kill you then!"

  Dad sighed and shielded his face. He caught the book in his hands and closed it, placing it neatly on the side table. Immediately, I hurled Rip Van Winkle & the Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Irving, 1819), hitting him in the side.

  "If you would collect yourself and behave as a rational person, I might be inclined to tell you how I came to know the supremely unhinged Miss Schneider."

  Discourse on Inequality (Rousseau, 1754) struck his left shoulder. "Blue, really. If you would simply calm down. You're inflicting more harm on yourself than me. Look at yourself—" A large-fonted Ulysses (Joyce, 1922), thrown over my head backhandedly after tossing The King James Bible as a decoy, managed to avert his dodge, knocking him on the side of his face, close to his left eye. He touched where the spine of the book hit him and looked at his hand.

  "Are you finished bombarding your father with the Western canon?" "Why did you lie?" My voice was hoarse. "Why do I always find out you lie to me?"

  "Sit down." He moved toward me but I aimed a batte
red edition of How the Other Half Lives (Riis, 1890) at his head. "If you could calm down, you might spare yourself the stress of getting so hysterical." He took the book from me. That soft part just under a person's eye— I don't know what it's called —it was bleeding. A beadlike drop of blood glistened there. "Now calm down — "

  "Don't change the subject," I said.

  He returned to his chair.

  "Are you going to be reasonable?"

  "You should be reasonable," I said loudly, though not as loud as before because my throat hurt. "I understand what you must think right now—" "Every time I go somewhere I find out something from other people. Things you didn't tell me."

  Dad nodded. "I understand completely. Who were you with tonight?"

  "I don't reveal my sources."

  He sighed and put his hands in perfect This-is-the-church-this-is-the-steeple architecture. "It's really quite simple. You introduced us again on the occasion she drove you home. Sometime in October, wasn't it? You remember?"

  I nodded.

  "Well, the woman called me shortly thereafter. Said she was worried about you. You and I weren't on the best of terms, if you recall, so naturally, I was concerned and accepted her invitation to meet for dinner. She chose a rather inappropriately ornate restaurant, Hyacinth something, and over the course of the seven-course meal proceeded to inform me it was a swell idea for you to start seeing a child psychiatrist to work out some issues you had with your deceased mother. Naturally, I was livid. The sheer gall of the woman! But then, when I came home, saw you—saw your hair, the natural color of feldspar—I began to worry if perhaps she was right. Yes, it was an idiotic, insulting assumption on my part, but all the same, I've always been nervous, raising you without your mother. You could say it's been my Achilles' heel. And so I had dinner with her two more times, in order to discuss the possibility of your seeing someone, at the end of which I realized, not only did you not need help, she needed help. And rather urgently." Dad sighed. "I know you liked her, but she was not the most stable of people. She called my office a few times after that. I told her you and I had managed to work things out, that we were fine. And she accepted it. Shortly thereafter, we flew to Paris. I hadn't talked to or heard anything about her since. Until she committed suicide. Tragic, certainly, but I can't say I was surprised."

  "When did you send her the barbaresco orientals?"

  "I—the what?"

  "Obviously you didn't buy them for Janet Finnsbroke who dates back to the Paleozoic Period. You bought them for Hannah Schneider."

  He stared at me. "Yes. I—well, I didn't want you to — "

  "Then you were madly in love with her," I interrupted. "Don't lie. Say it—" Dad laughed. "Hardly." "No one buys barbaresco orientals for someone they're not in love with."

  "Then call Guinness. I am the first, my dear." He shook his head. "I told you. I thought she was rather sad. I sent her flowers after one of our dinners, after I told her, rather harshly, what I thought of her—that she was one of those despairing people who concoct madcap theories about others—and doubtlessly for herself—purely for entertainment as their own lives are so dull. Such people wish to be bigger than they actually are. And naturally, when one speaks one's mind—tells someone the truth, or one's personal version of it—it never goes over well. Someone always ends up crying. Remember what I've always said about truth, standing in a long black dress in the corner, feet together, head down?"

  "She's the loneliest girl in the room."

  "Precisely. Contrary to popular belief, no one wants anything to do with her. She's too depressing to be around. Trust me, everyone prefers to dance with something a little sexier, a little more comforting. And so I sent flowers. I didn't know what kind they were. I asked the florist to pick something—"

  "They were barbaresco oriental lilies."

  Dad smiled. "Well, now I know."

  I didn't say anything. The position at which Dad was sitting, turned away from the lamplight, made his face old. The wrinkles on his face textured him. Lines cut toward his eyes and along his face, in his hands, tiny tears all over him.

  "So it was you calling that night," I said.

  He looked at me. "What?"

  "The night I ran away to her house. You called her."

  "Who?"

  "Hannah Schneider. I was there when the phone rang. She said it was Jade, but it wasn't Jade. It was you." "Yes," he said softly, nodding. "Maybe that's right. I did call her." "See? You-you have an entire relationship with her and you— " "Why do you think I calledher?" Dad shouted. "That nut job was my only lead! I didn't know the names or telephone numbers of any of those other pieces of fuzz you'd befriended. And when she told me you'd just materialized on her doorstep, immediately I wanted to come get you, but again, she proposed one of her squishy psychoanalytic ideas and I, being something of a fool when it comes to my daughter as we've well established this evening, I went along with it. 'Leave her alone. We need to talk. Just us girls.' Dear God. If there's one supremely puffed-up concept in all of Western Culture, it's the talk. Doesn't anyone remember that cute little phrase, which I happen to find rather illuminating? Talk is cheap?"

  "Why didn't you say something?"

  "I suppose I was embarrassed." Dad gazed at the floor, the landfill of books. "After all, you were completing your application to Harvard. I didn't wish to upset you."

  "Maybe I wouldn't have been upset. Maybe I'm more upset now."

  "Granted, it wasn't the wisest decision, but it was a decision I thought best at the time. Anyway, this business with Hannah Schneider is finished. May she rest in peace. The school year's nearly over." Dad sighed. "It's one for the books, is it not? I think Stockton is certainly the most theatrical town in which we've lived. It has all the elements of a good piece of fiction. More passion than Peyton Place, more frustration than Yoknapatawpha County. And it's certainly up there with Macondo in terms of sheer elements of the bizarre. It has sex, sin and that most painful quality of all, youthful disillusionment. You're ready, sweet. You no longer need your old pa."

  My hands were cold. I walked over to the yellow couch in front of the windows and sat down. "It's not all finished with Hannah Schneider," I said. "You have blood here." I showed him.

  "You got me, huh," he said sheepishly, touching his face. "Was it the Bible or An American Tragedy? I'd like to know for symbolic purposes."

  "There's more about Hannah Schneider."

  "I might need stitches."

  "Her real name was Catherine Baker. She was an old member of The Nightwatchmen. She murdered a policeman."

  My words were like a ghost passing through Dad; not that I'd ever seen a ghost passing through a person, but his face drained of color—fell out of him like water poured from a bucket. He stared at me, expressionless.

  "I'm not kidding," I said. "And if you want to confess something about your own involvement, recruiting or-or murder or blowing up one of your capitalist Harvard colleagues, you'd better do it right now, because I'm going to know everything. I won't stop." The resolve in my voice surprised Dad, but especially me; it was as if my voice was stronger than I was. It threw itself onto the ground, leading the way like slabs of stone.

  Dad was squinting. He looked as if, suddenly, he had no idea who I was. "But they never existed," he said slowly. "Not for thirty years. They're a fairy tale."

  "Not necessarily. It's all over the Internet that—"

  "Oh, the Internet," Dad interrupted. "As powerful a source as they come. If we open that gate, we must also usher in Elvis, still alive and kicking, popup ads —I don't understand why you're bringing up The Nightwatchmen. You've been reading my old lectures, Federal Forum— ?"

  "The founder, George Gracey, is still alive. He lives in Paxos. A man named Smoke Harvey drowned in Hannah's swimming pool last fall and he'd tracked him down and—"

  "Of course," Dad nodded, "I remember her whining about it—obviously yet another reason why she went bananas." "No," I said. "She killed him. Beca
use he was researching a book about Gracey. He was going to expose him. All of them. The entire organization." Dad raised his eyebrows. "Well, you've obviously done quite a bit of work figuring this out. Go on."

  I hesitated; Burt Towelson wrote in Guerrilla Girls (1986) to preserve the purity of any investigation one had to be vigilant about whom one spoke to concerning the scary truths that had emerged; but then, if I couldn't trust Dad, I couldn't trust anyone. He was staring at me as he'd stared at me a thousand times before, whenever we moseyed through my thesis for an upcoming research paper (his expression interested but doubtful he'd be

  wowed) and so it seemed an inevitable thing to walk him through my theory, My Grand Scheme of Things. I began with Hannah plotting her own exit because of what Ada Harvey knew, how she left me L’Avventura, "The Flying Demoiselle," the costume party, a version of Connault Helig's elimination technique employed to murder Smoke, Hannah's history of the Bluebloods paralleling Catherine Baker's history, her preoccupation with Missing Persons and, finally, my telephone conversation with Ada Harvey. In the beginning, Dad stared at me as if I was a lunatic, but as I went on, he began to hang on my every word. In fact, I hadn't seen Dad this engrossed since he obtained a newsstand copy of the June 1999 issue oïThe New Republic, in which his lengthy satiric response to an article entitled, "Little Shop of Horrors: A History of Afghanistan," had been printed in the Letters section.

  When I finished, I expected him to hurl questions at me, but he remained thoughtfully silent for a minute, maybe two.

  He frowned. "So who killed poor Miss Schneider?"

  Naturally, Dad would have to ask the one question I had only a rickety-bridge answer to. Ada Harvey had said she thought Hannah had committed suicide, but since I’d heard that stranger bounding through the trees, I tended to think someone in Nachtlich had done it; Hannah had been a liability when she'd killed the State Trooper, and with Ada telephoning the FBI and the possibility of her capture, Gracey, the entire group's clandestine existence was at risk. But I didn't know any of this for certain, and as Dad said, one should never "dribble speculation like a leaky garbage bag."