by Lydia Netzer
A small dark-haired woman rose from her seat at the head table and went to the podium. She shook hands graciously with Dr. Bryant. He bent down, removed a small block of wood from inside the podium and set it there for her on the floor, and she took a step up on it to stand behind the microphone. She faced her audience, politely smiling. George strained to see better. This woman was the one who’d taken his office and his assistant.
They were probably fifty feet away from each other. How far is fifty feet? To the top of the tallest tree? From one lip of a volcano to the other? As far as a man can go in ten seconds, striding briskly? As far as a man can go in five seconds, falling over himself in enthusiasm? Irene Sparks surveyed the room with a wide smile on her face, as if public speaking classes had encouraged her to make eye contact with the audience.
When she looked at him, George felt himself rising, involuntarily, from his seat. She did not continue showing her friendly smile to the room. She looked straight at him and she halted. From behind the columns painted to the walls, the naiads pointed their fingers. From the cherubs pulling eagerly on vines in the rug, from the gargoyles flocked against the ceiling, all the demigodly fingers were pointing, as if in a giant circle radiating inward, and telling him: her.
It’s not like time stopped for George, or like the stars suddenly shone brighter. It’s not like there were fireworks, or avalanches, or that the woodpecker drilling a hole in the side of his head paused to say, “Wow, she’s a looker.” It’s more like every electron in every atom in the universe paused, breathed in deeply, assessed the situation, and then reversed its course, spinning backward, or the other way, which was the right way all along. And afterward, the universe was exactly the same, but infinitely more right.
“It’s you,” said George. And his mother, next to him, grabbed him by the back of the pants and pulled him down into his seat.
Irene’s jaw dropped. He saw her falter. He felt the moments ticking by, moments where she wasn’t saying anything.
“It’s her, Mom,” said George, pushing his mother’s arm away. “She’s right there.” He said it loudly enough for the room to hear.
“George, sit down, and take some medicine,” said Sally, reaching in her bag for a prescription bottle. “Here, have a pain pill.”
For George it was as though a seed that had been sitting in his brain for twenty years had now opened, sprouted, and flowered in a moment. As though his ears had just popped or he’d just been plunged into water and a whole new layer of sound and feeling was available to him.
He looked at Irene on the podium, blinking stupidly. She obviously couldn’t remember what she was going to say. George beamed stupidly back at her. He felt she knew him. He felt she heard him say, “I missed you. I’m so glad you’re here.”
Everyone else assumed it was stage fright. Irene picked up the water glass and took an indelicate chug. She pressed her lips together.
“Thank you,” she said. George heard her make the words with her mouth. He took in the way she made the words, the way she moved her mouth, the way her hand went up to poke at her hair, the way one foot went sideways, scraping the side of her heel against the podium. It was all so admirable. He admired it.
“Thank you,” she said again. “I want to thank my new colleagues at the institute for choosing me to receive this position.”
The people in the room nodded at each other. It was alright. She was going to be OK.
Irene took a couple of deep breaths and looked up at the ceiling. Look at me, thought George. Look at me, I’m right here. I want you to look at ME.
“You know, when I told my boyfriend I was going to create a black hole in my laboratory, he was like, ‘Wow, I hope you have a really excellent copper casing and a very accurate calibrator for your magnetic containment field!’”
Boyfriend, thought George. But the word didn’t really mean anything. She laughed nervously. The rest of the room was silent. “No, actually he didn’t say that. But, obviously, since the earth and all matter didn’t collapse into my work space, I must have had the thing calibrated pretty well.”
Irene glanced around the room. It seemed like she was purposefully avoiding looking at George. The cherubs laughed. The naiads slapped their naked thighs. The gargoyles were pulling the petals out of the ornamental daisies on the stone decorations. She loves him. She loves him not.
“Little did I know the attention my experiment would receive. I’m just so humbled, and grateful, to be here. With all of you…”
Irene’s eyes locked onto George’s again, and he felt the sensation of being plunged underwater, feeling lighter, looser, more fishlike.
“I haven’t been able to understand exactly why I was a scientist,” said Irene to George, “until now. Have I? Have I been able to?”
George nodded his head vigorously. He had not been listening to the words she was saying, but he felt sure any question she asked must be answered with “Yes.”
“But now I do,” she said. “Thank you.”
Dr. Bryant stood up and began to applaud, gesturing to the audience to do the same. He took Irene by the arm and gently led her to her seat. She shook her head. She seemed to be still talking. But the audience was enthusiastic. They clapped and clapped.
*
I’m having a heart attack, thought Irene. I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying. This is it.
Death does have an event horizon, she realized in that moment. Surely this must explain why she could still hear the reception going on around her, still smell the lobster ravioli on the plate next to her, still hear the band, a couple of Bolivians with acoustic guitars and a Latin drum kit crooning. Maybe she would remember everything that happened before the fire. Maybe her life would parade before her eyes as her heart clutched and cramped, her brain failed from oxygen deficiency, her eyes closed. To everyone around her, it would seem that she fell straight to the floor. But to her, a lifetime of movement and memory would pass between the heart attack and the death. Time to think of everything. She waited for the slideshow to begin.
Some of the astronomers and their rich enablers were taking a spin around the dance floor, trying to samba or just shake it.
“I need a drink,” said Irene aloud to no one in particular, and she stood up. With her legs under her, her heart raced and skipped, but she was able to walk. She wasn’t looking for the man at the table with Belion. But there he was, beside her, at the table where drinks were being served. She asked for a ginger ale. He was so familiar and so attractive, but she had never met him before. She wanted to say, How are you? How have you been?
A past life maybe, said her mother’s dreamy voice in her ear. In a past life, you were lovers.
“Who are you?” she said. “Do I know you?”
“I’m George,” he said. “George Dermont.”
He was tall, smiling. He looked so glad to see her. She felt she might put her arms back around him, press her face into his ribs. I missed you, she might say. Or some stupid thing that one of her mother’s clients would come up with. We were Scottish lords and ladies together. We were locked in a pyramid together. We were climbing the Andes together. Whatever. Where have you been?
“Oh, right, Dermont.” She felt a twinge of surprise that this man and the man she’d taken her office from would be the same. “You’re sort of … religious, is that right? And I’ve got your lab and assistant now. How you must hate me.”
“No, no!” he said, grinning. He seemed incapable of controlling his hands, switching his drink from one to the other, leaning on the table, fussing with his collar. She could not help but imagine those hands touching her hair, pulling at it, lodging themselves in it. There was some force pulling her ribs to his, her internal organs to his. As if she could never be warm again, without the warmth in his torso, without her face in his neck.
“I really like you,” he said. “I mean, I’m not religious. You’ll see, once you get to know me.”
“I think you dabbled with one of my friends
at the University of Toledo, years ago,” said Irene. She felt herself scrabbling backward from him and this attraction, like she was cutting off tentacles of herself as they reached out for him, freezing them off, cauterizing the stumps.
“Probably not,” he said. “Well, was she an astronomer? I—”
Irene picked up the ginger ale that the man in the jacket had set down for her.
“And you believe the stars are God’s daisy chain or something like that … I actually read your abstract for that piece in the Dark Star Review.”
Irene wanted to leave and go back to the dais and safety, but she could not. She was looking at his face, his pink cheeks, the dark curve of his brow, his square chin. There was something about her body that was saying to her brain that he was already hers. She recognized him, and she couldn’t turn away from him. She wanted to go toward him, to slip her hand inside the button placket of his shirt, and touch his skin, and feel his heartbeat with her hand. It was a palpable want. She felt that if possible she should be very mean to him. As a precaution.
“You read that?” said George.
“My mother sends me clippings sometimes … you know, she doesn’t know a lot about real astronomy. She’s an astrologer.”
“How strange. My mother used to be an astrologer, too.”
“Really,” said Irene. She took a deep pull of her ginger ale, suddenly feeling so dry.
“I mean, not a professional one. Just an amateur one.”
“Mmm,” she said. There was a flush creeping over his throat. His eyes kept darting back and forth from her to the rug. He seemed on edge, excited.
“I’m a—oh what can I say—”
“Are those your parents?” said Irene, pointing over to the table where George had been sitting.
“Yes,” said George. “Those are my parents. Right over there.”
“We should go over,” said Irene. “I think your parents are devouring my boyfriend by inches.”
“Is that your boyfriend? Well, I hope they came hungry,” said George quickly, and then his jaw dropped and he stared at her, stricken. “Did I just say that? I’m so sorry.”
“That was not kind,” she said to him. But she found she was smiling. And she recognized also, in that second, that her heart had slowed to a reasonable pace, and she was no longer dying. But she did not slip her hand into his. She did not nudge him with her shoulder. She was in control of her body.
“Sorry, it’s just—you’re so beautiful. I didn’t think he could be your boyfriend. I’m sorry, I’m sure he’s really … smart?”
Irene picked up her drink and walked off to the table, glancing backward to George in what she meant to be a reproving glare, before she sat down decisively on Belion’s lap. But had she winked at him instead? Had that happened to her face?
“Hello,” said the man George introduced as his father. “I’m Dean. So nice to meet you.”
“Dean,” said Irene. “I’m Irene. And this is my boyfriend, Belion.”
“Belion was just telling us about how he is an immortal in a role-playing game. That must be very exciting,” said the woman George introduced as his mother. “Being an immortal.”
“I don’t play,” said Irene.
“It is,” said Belion. “Very.”
“Reminds me of good old Uncle Ray,” said Dean. “He thought he was an immortal, too.”
“Uncle Ray!” said George, joining the table but standing awkwardly behind Kate Oakenshield’s chair. “Yes, in a way. He was perfectly immortal, right up until the time he shot himself playing Russian roulette.”
“Wow, really?” said Belion. “I didn’t even think that game was real.”
“It’s not necessary to go into all this,” said Sally.
“Uncle Ray!” Dean went on, entertaining the table. “Yes, he was the finest of uncles. He escaped from prison once on a cow.”
“What?” said Belion, profoundly interested.
“It was a low-security prison,” said George. “He used the cow to swim across a river. True story.”
“This is not appropriate,” Sally said. “I don’t think we need to talk about Uncle Ray anymore. You’re making him sound like Paul Bunyan or something.”
“Paul Bunyan,” said Belion with arch solemnity. “Was my father.”
Dean laughed long and loud. “I like you, Belion,” he said to Belion. “You are not so bad.”
“Belion,” said Irene. “I’m tired. I think we need to go. Goodnight, all. Goodnight, George.”
*
Outside the ballroom, locusts whirred in the branches of the maple trees, and the occasional breeze set the leaves stirring and rippling. Couples and groups meandered down the street or popped into cars the valets were bringing around. Irene and Belion had gone home, with Belion packed into her little car and Irene driving. George stood by himself on the sidewalk, just thinking about her, and wondering how soon he could get her into his orbit again.
There was a noise at his elbow and he looked over and it was Kate Oakenshield, the girl who was raised mute.
“Oh, hey,” he said. “There you are.”
She said, “I want to go home with Dad.”
“What, back to his house?” George asked. He saw her father coming close, and his own parents right behind.
“Yes, to my house,” said Kate. Her face was wounded, as if she knew she was no longer in the target position. George softened. Poor thing. She wasn’t Irene, but who could be Irene? No one. There was only one Irene.
“That’s not a good idea, Kate,” he said.
His mother interjected. “Let her go.”
“Yes, do,” said her father.
Kate warbled, “Broodle bree, deedoodle! Deeedoo!”
George wavered. On the one hand, there was the fact that Kate should not be in her father’s house. On the other hand, there was the fact that Irene said goodnight to him in such a charming way, almost as if to give him a secret signal that she was about to ditch Belion and swing back around to pick him up instead.
“OK,” said George. He bit his lip and put his hand protectively on Kate Oakenshield’s arm. “If you need anything, you call me. Or my mom. If I’m out. Or busy.”
“Push off, Dermont,” said her father, the heel of his shoe striking angrily against the sidewalk and echoing in the stillness against the other buildings.
Sally brandished her fist, “Hey, are you looking for more love, Padre?”
“You stay away from me,” said Father Oakenshield, shepherding Kate away from them. “You’re a monster.”
“You’re the monster,” jeered Sally. “Freak.”
Father Oakenshield and Kate, wrapped in her shawl, huddled off down the sidewalk toward the parking lot, tweeting and twittering at each other and producing rapid arpeggios. George turned to his mother and took her by the elbows.
“Mom,” he said. “Listen!”
“I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I get so excited. I sound like a twelve-year-old.”
George said, “No, I don’t even care about that.”
Sally pulled her wrap around her arms more firmly, and a valet popped up at George’s arm, ready to retrieve his car. George produced a ticket and handed it to the man.
“Really,” Sally said, “Hmm? What then, darling?”
“It’s that girl! The black hole girl.”
Sally frowned, her finger tapping on her cheek, “Hmm … Irene Sparks…”
“Come on, Mom, isn’t she gorgeous? She’s not even very, ah, scientific looking. More like, oh, I don’t know, Aphrodite? Helen of Troy?”
“George, my son, my son,” said his mother, as her face pulled into a wry smile. “Has your attention really been captured by that little black cloud in a dress?”
“I can’t stop thinking about her.”
“How interesting. I don’t see it happening, George,” she said coldly. “But it is so interesting.”
“Do we know her, Mother?” said George.
“What? No, of course we
don’t.”
“Because when I see her,” he went on, as if she hadn’t answered no, “I don’t miss anyone. I just feel happy that she’s near.”
“Speaking of near,” said his mother, “Where has your father wandered off to?”
They both recalled the existence of Dean, and looked around to discover that he had climbed a tree.
“Good grief,” said Sally, but with warmth and affection that made George happy. “I can’t take my eyes off him for a second.”
11
When Sally and Bernice were children, they were best friends. They met on a playground.
“Push me,” Sally had said to Bernice, who was just getting her own swing started. “Push me and then I’ll push you.”
Sally had long legs, and Bernice was smaller. Bernice was new to the school, but Sally had been there from kindergarten. They were in fifth grade, when the other girls were starting to say that swings were for babies. But Bernice had come to play on the swings because she saw Sally sitting there, ineffectually kicking those long legs around in the sand under her swing. Bernice hopped down and came to stand behind Sally. She put her hands on both sides of the hard rubber swing and pulled back, back, as far as she could go, scrambling for purchase with her heels on the scrubby grass beside the sandy pits. When she had lifted Sally as far as she could, she let go. Sally stuck her legs out and pumped, grabbing the swing chain hard and pulling against it. When she came back toward Bernice the smaller girl had to step out of the way fast as Sally’s big feet came toward her, clad in massive clogs. When she went whooshing forward again, Sally leaned back far, so her blond hair was streaming, and she laughed a big horsey laugh, her eyes squinched together, her body arcing and bucking with laughing.
“I love the swing!” said Sally.
“Me too,” said Bernice.
“I’m never giving it up!” Sally trumpeted.
“Okay,” said Bernice, although she was privately afraid of heights.
“I don’t give a FUCK what anyone says,” said Sally, her face turned deliberately toward a group of girls who were clustered around the monkey bars, their pleated skirts chastely clustered around their knees.