This scenario made him feel better. He’d been shocked when Natalie hadn’t remembered Michael’s name the night of the pizza disaster. Was the callousness a shield? Was she spending her days trying to block him out because of the overwhelming pain? Lying to be alone and suffer privately with her grief?
“I might’ve mentioned to you,” he said. “But I have Michael’s urn on the shelf in our living room. I haven’t put a plaque on it yet. I wanted her to have input on the inscription.”
“Yes, you told me that, but have you told her?”
“We had an argument after dinner the other night and I did.”
“But before that?”
“No, I guess I assumed she knew what it was. You’ve seen it, it looks like an urn.”
“Urns have inscriptions.” Shelly put her hand on his leg. “Rob, what if she’s been spending the last weeks trying to find him? Going from cemetery to cemetery looking for him?”
Robert felt enveloped with guilt. This was his fault, his doing. He should have been more persistent in getting Natalie to talk about her grief. He should’ve discussed a plaque for the urn with her immediately.
Instead you’ve been wandering. Too depressed to reach out for help. Searching for our—
“But wait,” Robert said. “I told her where Michael was two days ago. She still went out yesterday and the day before. So that doesn’t fit.”
“After doing it for so long you don’t think she’d get into a pattern? Finding out where his ashes are doesn’t fix everything either. If she’s been that occupied with locating him, what’s going to fill her time? More sadness.” Shelly pulled a tissue from a half empty box on the table. “Poor Natty. And the rest makes sense too.”
“What rest?”
“I’ve known her for sixteen years. She’d never cut her hair. She’d never wear that ugly stuff she does now. She’s trying to be someone else. Trying to get as far away from being Michael’s mother as she can so it can’t be her fault—”
“She’s acting like a man. Men can’t have children and if she’s a man, she couldn’t have had Michael and can’t be responsible for him dying,” Robert interrupted. He felt a flush of energy at having found the answer. And, yes, it did make sense. She was traumatized by the death of their son – more troubled than he even thought possible.
“And this man persona can’t feel the pain. The horrible pain of losing a baby.” Shelly grabbed more tissues from the box and pressed them to her face. “Oh, Natty.”
He reached over and touched her shaking shoulder. “It’s okay, Shell.”
“But what are we going to do? She’s going to ruin herself and she won’t talk to us. I’m losing my best friend all over.”
And I’m losing my wife. What are we going to do?
He could return to CryoLife for assistance. His meetings with Zuniga still happened; his next session was at the end of the week, but they’d said he could call in case of emergency.
Their answer for everything is meds though. And the damn pills don’t work. She doesn’t need pills.
What else was there? Something with more impact than additional ineffective—
“Mama.” Carter stood in the kitchen doorway, a dump truck dangling from one hand. “Is you alwight?”
Shelly was crying too heavily to respond, so Robert turned to the child and smiled. “Mama’s fine, Carter. She saw something sad on the TV.”
“I saw a pig on the TV. I told Mama I wanted the pig, but she said no and got me this twuck.” He waved the toy in his mother’s direction. “Twucks and pigs awe diffwent. This isn’t a pig.”
Shelly hiccupped and took several breaths before she could reply. “I don’t want a pig in this house, Carter.”
“Pigs is useful. They gwow bacon. Twucks gwow …” The boy stopped. “Nothing. Think about the pig, Mama.”
And he trotted off.
No wonder you blew up at him. Every child must remind you of our boys. Of Michael. And you’re probably just as angry as you are sad sometimes.
“This pig nonsense.” Shelly removed another tissue and dabbed at her eyes. She sniffled, yet smiled. “Where he gets—”
“Shell, you said you felt the same way after your miscarriage, right?”
“Not exactly the same. My depression didn’t get this far.”
“What stopped it? What helped you get over it?”
She tipped her head from side to side, and he could see her chew the inside of her cheek as she thought.
Don’t say something stupid like “time.” I waited sixteen months to get her back. I’m sick of waiting. I’m tired of my son being away from me. Of having a broken family. This needs to end, and it needs to end—
“I don’t think I felt better until Carter.” Shelly looked toward the door where the boy had been. “I blamed myself and felt like a failure. I didn’t reach the level of creating some alter identity to deal with the pain, but who knows what may have happened?”
Again, a thought he’d had originally and that Zuniga hadn’t disagreed with. To move on and heal from the loss of Michael, she needed to direct her attention away from the pain and into another baby.
“But you’ve got to be careful, Rob. You have to show her you understand what she’s going through and be sweet to her. But not evasive. I was so upset it was the last thing I wanted. I wasn’t thinking clearly, but neither is Natty.”
Sweet, but not evasive. What did that mean? Empathize, but press the issue? Be forceful? Would it make her feel desirable, more like a woman if he took her passionately in his arms? He could do that, sure.
But Shelly was also right – it wasn’t only sex. There was an emotional struggle going on as well. Before he took the physical steps, he had to convey his understanding of her pain, or else what would he be but a well-intentioned rapist?
“How did Clark show you he understood?”
“He found me walking alone one day. And he walked with me.” Shelly smiled. “He didn’t have to say anything. He just stayed beside me. That was enough.”
Yes, he could do that as well. Shelly and Natalie were so similar, that would work. He’d follow her tomorrow and “stay beside her.” What an excellent idea. His only regret was not having spoken with Shelly sooner.
Chapter 36
For approximately the past ten years, Oz had only spent time in his basement to tend his marijuana plants. Twelve racks of flats in various growth phases were organized under HID lamps, and two high-powered fans pushed the lamp-generated heat from the foliage. It was always hot and muggy, but the atmosphere wasn’t his sole purpose for not remaining long.
Pushed behind the water heater sat a shelf full of books that he tried to forget but hadn’t the heart to destroy. When he didn’t leave the basement quick enough, his eyes strayed to the shelf and he’d feel those prickles down his spine.
You should’ve tossed the books in too.
The only brutal act Oz had ever committed was to pry the dry erase board in his basement from the wall. Equations had still been written on it when he’d marched it into the backyard. He’d thrown it repeatedly until the board was broken in pieces. Then he’d lit the fragments on fire.
Ah, if I’d had Tinks’s C4 then. That would’ve been better than fire. And maybe I would’ve included the books. I could’ve hugged them to my chest, hit the ignition switch and – no more pain.
They were still there though – covered in dust and waiting.
What are you doing? Why are you doing this?
He pulled a large volume from the shelf and brought it to an empty rack.
Mathematics hadn’t been discussed since he’d originally told Andrew about his past life, but earlier in the day, the topic had resurfaced between them.
Andrew had spent the afternoon in Oz’s pharmacy. He’d sat on the empty chair in his office and gone on and on about a single painting that Rothko had completed in 1970. It’d been the first time Oz had been alone with him since the pizza party incident, and it was nice to have Andr
ew to himself. He loved to listen to him talk.
Andrew could talk for hours about art the way Oz wished he was still able to elaborate on mathematics. How he spoke of Gorky, Rothko, and Picasso was how Oz thought of topology, and if Andrew got excited enough about it, Oz felt the electricity that sizzled on the surface of his skin leap over. He’d forget he ever died, and that he was missing what had once been an instrumental part of himself.
That morning the voltage had been crackling in the pharmacy. Oz was focused on his every word, although trying not to appear like he was. Until Andrew stopped mid-sentence.
“I’m sorry. I’m boring you.”
“What gave you that idea?”
“Who wouldn’t be bored?”
“I wouldn’t. Look.”
Oz pulled down the collar of his shirt. He pointed to an upside-down “U” symbol in the equation engraved on his skin.
“This is set-theoretic intersection. And I could’ve given you an eight-hour dissertation on it. Eight hours on one symbol. If you didn’t interrupt me, or ask questions.” He released his collar and smiled. “So you’re quite fortunate that I’m no longer able to tell you anything but its name.”
“What makes you so sure you could never do math again?”
“I do math all the time. I punch numbers into a calculator. I divide by twos and threes to mix medication. I play Keno.”
“But art. With mathematics. Like what you love. Have you tried?”
Oz had swiveled his chair to look at the computer. “Yes, I have. So drop it.” He laced his fingers and bent his wrists to relieve the stiffness before moving the mouse. He typed random numbers into the open spreadsheet. “Tell me more about your paintings. Talk about that.”
Several seconds of silence and the input of more fake data later, Andrew spoke. “I think you should try. Maybe not with something as complicated as the Hodge conjecture. Start small. But try again.”
“Tell me more about your paintings. Talk about that,” Oz repeated.
Andrew’s prodding had nagged him the rest of the day. Oz had tried, and he’d failed. Seeing the expressions, the phrases, the equations empty – being faced with the wide expanse of nothingness, prime for the genesis of order and meaning, and having no ideas, just a blank mind. A stupid mind. It’d been devastating.
You need to prove to yourself and to him that it’s over. I can’t tolerate goading to fix an unfixable problem.
Oz opened Theorems of Finite Abelian Groups to a random page and stared at the symbols.
At first sight, it’d been another language. But he persisted in keeping his eyes glued to the pages. He turned to another section and another. He rifled through the entire book, looking for anything he could comprehend. He used to understand. In the past, this, and not grade school math on the calculator had bored him.
But after an hour of searching, the contents of the book degenerated from another language to squiggles on a page – cave drawings. He closed the cover and folded his arms across it.
There, he’d tried and failed. Again.
The part of his brain where the sublime knowledge and natural ability lived, was gone. It was as if Brigman had taken a wood burning pen to it. His father had used a nine hundred degree soldering tip to burn away Oz’s talent, and it’d never grow back. Brain cells didn’t regenerate. It was wicked mockery that he retained the passion. Retribution for everything horrible he’d done in both his lives. His beautiful art …
What was the purpose of anything? Sure, he helped his friends in various ways and that gave him some kind of meaning, but it wasn’t much of one. He’d been wild for mathematics. Passionate, and absolutely intoxicated as he’d never been for anything else before, or since. It’d been the reason he lived.
He pictured Andrew, briefly sensing that feeling of being wanted and holding him close. Had he ever been so fulfilled that he couldn’t expand a fraction more without bursting?
It was as artificial as everything else though. Never real. Nothing was ever tangible, so that’s what he ended with – nothing.
But tangible. Capable of touch. That’s art. It’s alive. It’s something you do. You don’t sit around and fucking read about it. You do it.
Oz opened his eyes.
A fat black marker rested on a shelf upstairs. He retrieved it.
He returned to the basement, uncapped the marker, and went to the empty wall space where his dry erase board had been.
“Start small.”
He wrote:
V – E + F = 2
And he stared at it.
He stared at it for what felt like an hour, trying to wrap his mind around the humble concept.
Then he uncapped his marker again. He shook out his hands and put the chisel tip to the wall beside the equation. He began to draw.
Oz drew a three-dimensional cube. A soccer ball. A triangular pyramid. What appeared to be a diamond. And a shape similar to the soccer ball, but with twenty triangle faces.
He stood back to look at the graffiti.
“Explain it to me.”
Oz turned his head, and Andrew was at the top of the basement stairs. Standing there, and for who knew how long. His hand rested on the railing and the HID light gave his blond hair a golden shimmer. Oz blinked a few times to ensure the figure wasn’t a mirage.
And then Andrew was beside him, and they looked at the wall.
“Explain it to me,” he repeated.
Oz’s words caught in his throat, and when they came out they sounded hoarse. “They’re spheres.”
“They don’t look like spheres.”
It didn’t matter if the words were a dig toward his sketching abilities. He was an artist of ideas, not line drawings.
He stepped to the wall and put his cheek to the cube drawing. The coldness of the ground seeped through the concrete, and the pungent marker underscored the humidity and plant smells. He brought his hand up, and dug his nails into the diamond.
“But they used to be, and could be again. They’re the same sphere. The same fucking sphere!”
Oz pulled himself from the wall, tears rolling down his cheeks. He pointed at the equation.
“And if it becomes a platonic solid, it will always equal that. Always!” He drove his fist against the letters and sobbed. “V – E + F = 2! V – E + F = 2! V – E + F = 2! It’s always the same!”
He sank to his knees, his forehead on the concrete.
“It’s gorgeous. Fucking gorgeous.”
A hand touched his shoulder, the backs of the fingertips smoothing his neck. The contact made his stomach flutter and his heart race. He lifted his head, expecting to meet Andrew’s eyes. Possibly alarmed. Perhaps confused. Looking at him like he was crazy. And he’d understand why. He felt partially insane, which was a part of the process. But Andrew’s eyes weren’t on Oz. They were on the wall.
He knelt in front of it too, looking at the elegant equation. And Andrew appeared to admire the shapes and Euler’s formula as if they were a genuine Rothko painting – which is what Oz felt they were.
“Yes. It is gorgeous. Fucking gorgeous.”
As he did more often than not, he’d said exactly what Oz wanted to hear. Nothing more. Nothing less. Perfect.
Andrew was perfect. Oz knew he still felt bad about himself, but that would improve when he was free and could do more to change the body. Not that how he looked mattered to Oz. He was Andrew. The man who made Oz’s hands shake, and who he found himself being softer with. Who he thought about in the middle of the night. Who he foolishly, juvenilely pined for.
Oz hadn’t felt more turmoil within himself than right then. Kneeling together, with Andrew’s fingertips on his neck and his dark eyes patiently waiting and letting Oz make the moment into whatever he needed.
But Oz had never cared about what anyone else thought. He did what he wanted. He shot his mouth off. He smoked. He drank. He both dealt and enjoyed the occasional recreational drug. Most of his actions were largely motivated by the desire to spite s
omeone. He routinely buried feelings of friendship and quieted the voice that told him to stop. He plunged forward and did whatever he wanted to. He was after all, the coolest motherfucker there’d ever been.
Yet with Andrew, Oz felt he’d lost a part of himself. He couldn’t forget how deeply he cared for him. He believed Andrew capable of unparalleled compassion. Maybe not for everyone, and not for him at first, but now, Oz wondered how far the limits extended. If Andrew knew him so well, maybe he’d be able to understand and forgive him. Once again, he couldn’t control himself.
Oz realized he’d stuffed his hands in his pockets as he looked at Andrew. When he drew them out, they were eerily steady. He watched Andrew’s eyes, vigilant for that frightened animal look he sometimes had when others encroached on his space.
But the look didn’t come. Even when Oz curved his hands around Andrew’s cheeks. Even when he leaned his head in and pressed his lips against his. Even when he scrunched closer and ran his hands through Andrew’s hair as he kissed him again. And again. And again. The hand stayed where it had been on his neck, and Andrew didn’t pull away.
When Oz drew back an inch or two to see his eyes, they held no fear.
He remained motionless, trying to riddle out Andrew’s thoughts. He considered apologizing. Or kissing him again. Or he could tell Andrew that he loved him. That he was crazy about him. That he wanted him, needed him.
He was on the verge of doing it, until he remembered what Andrew had said when he’d initially hinted at having feelings for Oz:
“You don’t suffocate me. You’re independent, and don’t desperately need me.”
He caressed Andrew’s cheek. But I do need you. Like everything else I do, I’m out of control.
“I’m sorry,” he said and waited for a response.
“You do taste like cigarette smoke and pine trees.”
“I may drink and smoke too much. A couple of my many faults. Relatively small flaws in comparison to my lack of inhibition. For which I again, apologize.”
Assimilation Page 29