“Chin up, Fegley,” Herman says. “It can’t be that bad.”
Mead spins around. Herman is standing at the bottom of the stairs.
“Go away,” Mead says. “I’m not in the mood to deal with you right now.”
“It’s good to see you too.”
“I mean it. Get lost,” Mead says and swings his arm through the air as if to dismiss his vision of Herman once and for all, but instead he hits flesh and bone. “Shit,” Mead says and cradles his not-yet-fully-healed right hand in his left hand.
“Ouch, Fegley,” Herman says, “that hurt. I think I deserve an apology.”
Which just makes Mead even angrier. He drops his hand and says, “Listen, Weinstein, I don’t know what little scheme you and my mother are cooking up together to try and make me go back to school, and frankly I don’t care, so why don’t you just sneak back up the stairs as quietly as you snuck down and go tell my mother that I’m not going along with it. I’ve had it with the both of you.”
“You’ve got me all wrong, Fegley.”
“No, I don’t. I’ve got you just right. You use people, Weinstein. You used Dr. Kustrup and when that didn’t turn out so great you decided you’d use me. I must have looked like some damned easy target to you. Fresh off the hay truck. A naïve, young kid with brains but no social skills who spent every Saturday night sitting alone in the library reading math books, easy pickings for a sophisticated prep school kid like yourself who doesn’t think twice about breaking the law because he knows he’ll get away with it. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Weinstein, but I guess it turns out that I’m not as much of a sad sack as you first thought. I happen to know what real friendship is because I once had a real friend. He built this maze right here for me and never asked for a thing in return. So screw you, Weinstein. Now get the hell out of my basement.”
“Your mother didn’t invite me here, Fegley.”
“So you invited yourself. Big surprise. Now leave.”
“I think you better shut up and start listening. Are you listening?”
And then Mead hears it. His mother is still talking to someone in the living room. But if she isn’t entertaining Herman then who the hell is she entertaining?
“What do you say we get out of here and go for a ride,” Herman says. “We don’t have to go back to Chicago, we can go anywhere you’d like: California, Florida, Mexico. We don’t even have to pick a destination, let’s just take off. Two buddies on a road trip together. Like Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady.”
“They were unemployed bums with no future.”
“Exactly. It’ll be fun.”
It has its appeal, it really does. It’s even better than a cello player who couldn’t cut it with the local garage band. Mead could work for cash and sleep in the back of a car. It doesn’t get more anonymous than that.
“That was you in the cemetery, wasn’t it?” Mead says. “I wasn’t seeing things. You’ve been here all week stalking me.”
“I don’t like that word, Fegley. Stalking. It sounds so psychotic.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Well, I was hardly going to hang around campus. My father came this close to throwing me back into that mental institution after you made your big declaration of independence to him in my dorm room. This close,” he says and holds his thumb and forefinger within inches of Mead’s face. “I could have talked him out of it, though. I could have convinced him that you were wigging out from the pain pills and the pressure and all, but then you had to go and take off. You’re a lousy friend, Fegley, but I forgive you. I forgive you because I know you didn’t do it deliberately, you did it because you were oblivious to the consequences. That’s why I’m here now. I’m here to give you a second chance. To make things right. I’m here to tell you that I’m willing to put that little incident behind us. I’m here to work on rebuilding our friendship. Because that’s what friends do, they forgive each other their shortcomings.”
“What’re you, deaf? We are not friends, Weinstein. Got it? You and me: not friends. And how dare you stand there and talk to me about second chances. I didn’t screw you over, I simply told the truth. You screwed me. If anyone owes anybody an apology around here, you owe me.”
“You’re right.”
“Damned straight I’m right.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
“Now you apologize to me.”
“For what?”
“I can’t go back there empty-handed, Fegley. You gotta give me something.”
And even though Mead doesn’t think he owes Herman a goddamned thing, he feels like doing the guy a favor anyway. Maybe because he knows his father is a dick. Maybe because he never thanked Percy for the maze. Maybe because, despite being so screwed up in the head, Herman did do Mead a huge kindness by flying him out east and getting him access to the supercomputer. And even if he did it for the wrong reason, at least he’s willing to stand here now and admit it. And so Mead says, “I’ll make things right with your father. I’ll tell him you were helping me out and got carried away in your enthusiasm.”
“So the road trip is on?”
“I’ll get my suitcase and we can go.”
Mead gets to the top of the steps before he realizes he’s still holding the blue folder. He sets it down on the breakfast table —he’ll deal with that later —and heads for his room. Herman follows, standing in the doorway like a prison guard as Mead drags his suitcase out of the closet and tosses in a clean pair of socks, an undershirt, and some boxers, then shadows Mead back down the hall. They are just entering the kitchen when they hear Mead’s mother say, “The bathroom is through that door and down the hall to your left.” And a second later the kitchen door swings open and Dr. Alexander steps through it. At first Mead does not react, unsure of whether it is the actual professor standing in front of him or just another one of Mead’s many hallucinations, so he says, “Is that really you, Dr. Alexander?”
“Mr. Fegley,” the professor says. “How would you apply the basic prime finding process to all real numbers up to 701,000?”
“With a pen, a pad of paper, and a list of primes up to 829.”
The professor then proceeds to pull something from his back pocket. “I believe this belongs to you,” he says and hands him the periodical Mead found in the bookshop off campus. “The dean asked me to return it to you.”
Mead sets down his suitcase and takes the pamphlet from Dr. Alexander. A note is paper-clipped to it. “My door is always open,” it says. And it’s signed Dean Falconia. “Ohmygod,” Mead says. “It is you. You’re really here. But what are you doing in High Grove?” Mead looks down at the professor’s cast. “And how did you get here?”
“Your mother picked me up at the train station in Alton a few hours ago.”
“My mother?”
And as if on cue, the door swings open again and she steps through it.
“Teddy,” she says. “When did you get home?”
Mead looks at his mother all neat and prim and perfect standing next to the rumpled professor and says to her, “But you wouldn’t even shake his hand. In Chicago.”
“I’ve already apologized to your professor for that, Teddy. And he graciously accepted my apology. I can only hope that you will do the same.”
The last time Mead’s mother apologized to him was at Mr. Cheese’s funeral. It didn’t seem like enough back then, so is it enough now? But then it has to be, doesn’t it? Because she cannot take back what she did any more than Mead can take back what he did. Shit. He ditched his presentation. He wasn’t thinking about anyone but himself. Not the dean, not all those visiting professors, just himself. If Mead cannot find it in himself to accept his mother’s apology, then how in hell can he expect the dean to accept his?
Mead’s mother looks at Herman, as surprised by his appearance in her kitchen as Mead is by Dr. Alexander’s, and says, “What is he doing here?” As if Herman is trying to steal her thunder. As if she s
uddenly suspects that the rich boy from Princeton is not the good friend she first thought he was to her son.
“Herman’s taking me back to school, Mother. We were just leaving.”
“Now?” she says. “In the middle of the night? When did you make these arrangements, Teddy? How come you didn’t tell me?”
These are all good questions, none of which he has any good answers to. But he does have a few questions of his own. Mead picks up the blue folder and says, “You found this in the trash, didn’t you? And you found the shoebox in my closet. You knew my original science report got destroyed and yet you still punished me for getting that C. Why? Why did you take me to Wessman’s if you knew the whole time?”
“Because,” she says in a tone that suggests that she has rehearsed the answer to this question a million times over the past eight years, “I was afraid of the consequences if I didn’t.”
“Consequences? What consequences?”
Mead’s mother looks from Dr. Alexander to Herman to Mead. “When you were a toddler I used to take you over to your aunt and uncle’s house to play with your cousin. Percy was always yanking whatever toy you were playing with out of your hand. It made me so mad. But what made me even madder was that you never cried or complained about it, you just let him take whatever he wanted, and I thought: Throughout his whole life, people are going to take advantage of my son.” She shifts her eyes to the blue folder. “When I saw you burying that in the trash, I knew something was up and searched your room looking for an explanation. I didn’t know who did it, only that it had happened. Who wasn’t important. I wasn’t going to be able to follow you around for the rest of your life and protect you.” She looks back up at Mead. “You weren’t a physically strong boy, Teddy, but you were exceptionally smart. I had to make sure that you would utilize that god-given talent to its fullest extent. And if taking you to Wessman’s that day meant you might end up hating me for the rest of your life, it was a gamble I was willing to take in order to ensure my son the best possible life.”
Mead sets the blue folder back down on the table. “I’m a grown man now, Mother. You’re going to have to trust me to take care of things in my own way.” And then he picks up his suitcase and steps out the back door.
“You handled yourself admirably back there, Fegley,” Herman says as they walk toward the strange car parked in front of the house. “I almost believed it myself, you know, that you’ve suddenly grown up. I hope it’s really true.”
It’s a nondescript rental sedan. The car. The kind gangsters drive in movies. And it gives Mead a moment of pause. He thinks about turning around and going back into the house but pride won’t let him. Instead he tosses his suitcase onto the backseat, crawls into the front, and slams the door. To let Herman know that he doesn’t appreciate the comment. Only when Herman has crawled in behind the wheel and started up the car does Mead bother to utter his own sarcastic response. “I’d give you directions to the highway,” he says, “but I don’t suppose you need them.”
“You’re right,” Herman says. “I don’t.” And pulls away from the curb, winding his way through the streets of High Grove as if he’s been living here his whole life. He’s not in a big rush the way he was out east, the aura of tension around him gone. He’s like a farmer waiting for the corn to grow. And it makes Mead uneasy.
Herman makes a right and a left and then another right and passes by the cemetery on his way out of town. The streetlights drop away and the surrounding homes and trees fall into darkness, the headlights of the sedan carving a tunnel through the night. Then Herman makes another left.
“Where are you going?” Mead says. “The highway is straight ahead. I thought we were heading back to Chicago.”
“I never said anything about Chicago, Fegley.”
“It was implied. In our agreement.”
“Was it?”
“You know it was, Weinstein, now turn around. I thought you said you knew your way around here. This is a dead-end road. There’s nothing out this way but Snell’s Quarry.”
“I know,” Herman says and keeps driving.
A prickly sensation creeps over Mead’s scalp. This is not good. This was not part of the plan. At least it wasn’t part of Mead’s plan but maybe it’s what Herman has had in mind all along. To get Mead out on a deserted road. In the middle of the night. Alone.
The sedan rolls off the pavement, its tires crackling over gravel. Herman slows to a stop a few feet shy of the water and shifts the car into PARK but doesn’t turn off the engine. The headlights illuminate a path of light that dances across the surface of the lake and then stops up short against a sheer face of rock. Against Dead Man’s Leap.
Herman pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket and shakes one free then pushes in the lighter on the dashboard and waits for the coil to heat up, as if the whole reason he drove out here was to sit by the lake, have a smoke, and look up at the full moon that is just now lifting itself over the horizon. But Mead isn’t buying it. He thinks Herman has something else in mind altogether. And unless the guy has brought with him an affidavit for Mead to sign swearing that Mr. Herman Weinstein is in fact the coauthor of Mead’s paper on the zeros of the zeta function, then Mead is in serious trouble. Panic rises up in his chest, making it hard for him to breathe. He cannot believe he did it again: suspended his better judgment and trusted Herman. He should have stayed at the house with his mother and Dr. Alexander. What the hell is wrong with him? Mead rolls down the window for fresh air but it doesn’t help. He considers bolting from the car but knows that Herman would only come after him. Running isn’t working anymore. Mead needs to try a new tactic and so he says, “Why did you pretend to be surprised that Cynthia and I knew each other?”
“What’re you talking about, Fegley?”
“The first time I came up to visit you in your room, Cynthia was there. You started to introduce us and when she said we already knew each other you acted all surprised and jealous. But you weren’t surprised, Weinstein. You were stalking me even back then. You knew I liked her and so you went after her.”
“I suppose that is what attracted me to her: the fact that she could like a guy like you. That she could see below the surface; that she could see the value of the person inside.” Herman looks over at Mead. “She liked you too, you know. I even think she would’ve gone out with you if I hadn’t come along. She couldn’t stop talking about you after you dropped by that night. I think maybe she was having second thoughts.”
“Is that why you hit her?”
Herman looks surprised. This is news to him, that Mead knows.
“And is that why you fucked Dr. Kustrup? Because he liked me better than he liked you?”
“You seem to have me all figured out, Fegley. I’m curious, if you knew all those things about me, though, why you never turned me in.”
Because I’m an idiot, Mead says to himself. Because I thought it would be easier to keep my mouth shut. Because I thought I could graduate and slip out of town without causing any waves. But obviously I was wrong. “I don’t have you figured out, Weinstein. I may know who and what you have done stupid shit to but I am utterly clueless as to why. I mean I get it: You hate your brother and you’re taking it out on me because I remind you of him. I get it. What I don’t get is how you could possibly think that forcing me to make you my coauthor or killing me or whatever other crazy shit you have in mind to do is going to change any of that. I hate to be the one to break it to you, Weinstein, but it isn’t. You’ll still be a lousy excuse for a human being and your father will probably still despise you.”
“I know.”
“You know. You know? Then what the hell are we doing out here? I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to drive to Chicago or California or Mexico or wherever the hell else it is you think I agreed to go. Take me back to the house.”
Herman places the unlit cigarette between his lips, shifts the car into reverse, and starts to turn around. Only he does not head back out to the ma
in road, instead Herman starts driving around the lake, the sedan lurching about as its tires try to find their footing on the uneven rock, scrub brush scraping against the sides and along the undercarriage of the car. And the prickly sensation returns to Mead’s scalp.
“What are you doing, Weinstein?” he says, but Herman does not respond.
The full moon has risen completely above the treetops now, the landscape bright enough for Mead to get his bearings. And he can see where Herman is headed. Up the hill to Dead Man’s Leap. Mead’s window starts rolling up on its own. The lock on his door thunks into place. Shit, Herman is going to kill him.
“You can’t drive back here, Weinstein. It’s illegal.”
“The law doesn’t much concern me right now, Fegley. It’s like you just said: I can’t do anything to change who I am or what my father thinks of me so what’s the point in even trying?”
“That’s not what I meant. You can do something, just not something stupid. And I don’t think I have to tell you that whatever it is you have planned to do right now most definitely falls under the category of stupid.”
The headlights of the sedan light upon a sign that reads: DANGER. DO NOT GO BEYOND THIS POINT. Herman drives right over it.
“I’ll help you write another paper,” Mead says. “One for which you really are my coauthor. How about that?”
“I don’t want your charity, Fegley. I’m a Weinstein. We help those in need, not the other way around.”
“It’s not charity if you work for it, Weinstein.”
“But it’d feel like charity, Fegley.”
The top of the cliff is within sight now, the moon hanging directly over it. The tires of the car hit a patch of loose rock and the sedan skids sideways. Mead almost shits in his pants.
Life After Genius Page 36