“Where the blue starts, then up to Lucy.”
“Can you draw Lucy?”
She looks at me, astonished at my ignorance.
“Lucy can-not fit into our eyes.”
“But who is Lucy?”
“She is here because she is a diamond.”
“What kind of diamond is she?”
She wrinkles her nose at me and laughs.
“You know. Diamond that keeps our world inside it.”
She brushes wisps of hair from her eyes and inhales loudly through her nose, then out again. She still has a cold.
I sketch diamonds for a while in the margins of my calculations on a yellow legal pad. I make them three-dimensional cones whose adjoining bases form a circle. I begin to spin the diamonds, glittering, one by one down the right-hand margin. A log shifts suddenly in the grate, and sparks pop and sizzle upward, airborne; one lands on Ollie’s flying house and I reach over and smother it with my legal pad. She squeals, a combination of fear and delight:
“The fire grows trees inside my house. See?”
Later, after bedtime stories, when she’d finally drifted off to sleep, I moved quietly around her room, picking up toys, putting clothes in drawers. I filled the humidifier with cool water, lifting it, like a transparent suitcase, back into its cradle. I found a piece of paper on the floor on which Ollie had printed her name in huge letters, along with a series of numbers. I tacked these papers on the corkboard over her drawing table and adjusted the night light: a yodeling frog in spats.
I returned to the dying fire, poked at it a bit, threw on another log, then curled up in the old corduroy-covered chair I’d picked up at a rummage sale somewhere. I was exhausted. I thought about Lucy and diamonds for a while, then Ollie. I’d come to realize that the glimpses of the working public school I’d gotten the day I went to visit Gloria Walther at Sixth Street School were glimpses of a museum. They were all museums now, the public schools. Storehouses of artifacts of a lost past, along with statues of public citizens, bronze rolls of heroes’ names, names of parents who paid for public school along with water and roads. Now, forgotten kids, children of minorities and maids, and troubled and confused children, learned their lessons in a museum, stood up to recite in a museum.
I kept seeing the private schools’ splendorous campuses—computer banks, soccer meadows, stocked libraries. A poster on the wall: an open book at the end of the rainbow, READING MEANS A GOLDEN FUTURE. I had to find a new school for Ollie.
I jumped as the phone rang.
“It’s Jay.”
I glanced at the hearth: Ollie’s flying house, singed, a ragged bullet hole where the ember hit.
“Hello, Jay.”
“I’ve made a decision, Esme. I want to come by and pick up my stuff and move out.”
The fire popped.
“E-Esme?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m trying ... I’m t-telling you that I’m moving out.”
“OK.”
“Jesus Christ. Is that all you’ve g-got to say? OK?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Jesus!”
“OK. Where are you? Who are you with?”
“I’m in W-West L.A at Paloma’s.”
I looked across the room to the hallway that led to our bedroom. I laughed. “Paloma.”
“Yeah, P-Paloma.”
“I don’t get it, Jay.”
“Of course you don’t get it! You would never g-get Paloma because she’s completely unlike you. She has f-feelings. Like, she took me in ...”
“To her bed.”
“Who says we’re s-sleeping together? And why are you p-pretending that that’s what’s bothering you? You don’t care who I sleep with. I know you still got the hots for whoever-the-fuck-he-was. Right? Paloma is a s-sweet ordinary woman, not a s-scientist or an int-tellectual. Just a good person.”
“Well that’s insightful. You can’t be a good person and a scientist. Everyone knows that.”
There was a long sigh.
“Esme, listen. When I’m with you I feel invisible—l-like I don’t exist.”
“Jesus, Jay, you have been invisible—you’re never home—you don’t talk to Ollie when you are.”
“I don’t know what to s-say to Ollie. She makes no sense to me.”
“Maybe you ought to try to make sense to her.”
Another long sigh. “I c-called to say two things: I’m m-moving out and I have some plans for Ollie.”
“Ollie?”
“I want to s-spend some time with her. M-maybe even, when things get more settled, have her c-come and live with me.”
“You want Ollie to live with you?”
Everything in the room seemed to recede: I watched the fire in the fireplace, the intricate, moving shadows of the miniature Moorish arches and columns of the hallway, the hanging plants, the bookshelves, all retreating. I was beginning to understand something enormous, something huge, a terrible shape the whole world might fit into.
“Jay? How would you take care of her? You’re at work twenty hours a day.”
“She’s my d-daughter, Esme. I can take c-care of her.”
“You’d hire a housekeeper? Tell me.”
“I said, I can t-take care of her. I want some time to spend with her. My time with her, un-p-poisoned by you. I want to get her some help.”
“Help?” Straight man: in the unfunniest routine he’d ever created.
“We’re talking about a child who is s-seriously disturbed, Esme.”
“Tell me what you’re planning to do for this seriously disturbed child?”
“I’m going to put her in a school for d-dysfunctional kids. I’m going to get professionals to work with her. You know, work on her speech, her p-powers of e-expression, her ... behavior.”
“Jay, you don’t spend enough time with her to know if she’s dysfunctional.”
“Esme. Your d-daughter is not a normal kid—it’s obvious to everyone but you. She needs h-help. And, frankly, Esme, s-so do you.”
“And you? Do you need help?”
He took a breath. “P-Paloma’s giving me all the h-help I need.”
After we’d hung up on each other, I sat down again and stared at the cage of neon embers in the grate. The fire still sputtered and popped—it had a life and it was not eager to relinquish it. I sat for a long time; the fire went out and it got cold in the room. And still I sat.
Chapter 15
DONALD BRANDEMAN WAS waiting outside the door of my lab. I saw him as I came in the main entrance, and I had to walk the entire length of the hall, my heels echoing, staring at him.
He slumped against the doorframe. He was wearing sunglasses; he was trying to look like some actor or other, one of those bandanna-headed, one-earring types with dead eyes and a two-day growth of beard. He was even smoking a cigarette. I’d have found all this drag hilarious if he hadn’t looked quite so malevolent.
“Good morning, Donald.” I tried to brush by him. He straightened up and blocked the door. I smelled something—liquor? I stared into the black lenses: something twitched behind them. He wasn’t exactly drunk, but maybe bolstered a little—a few beers?
“I need to know my goddam grade.”
He pushed a printed form in my face. I took it from him: “Midterm Grade Report.”
“I gave all my profs a copy of this—two, no, maybe three weeks ago. And they all filled it out, every one of them, and returned it. Except you.”
“God—academics are anal, don’t you think?”
Something twitched again behind the shades. When he spoke again his voice sounded hoarse, as if he might begin to cry.
“Maybe I need to break this down for you, Professor. I’m on the swim team, OK? Mid-semester the athletics department sends out grade requests to all my course instructors to see if I’m keeping up my average. This form is important to me. And it’s important to my coach. Obviously, it’s not important to you. You never gave any of us back our tests,
you never gave out midterm grades. You don’t even bother to show up for lab these days.”
“Those are really neat sunglasses, Donald, did I mention that at all? I used to have a maiden aunt—Twissy was her name, Aunt Twiss? She had a pair just like yours. In fact, she was wearing them the day she died—did I ever tell you how Twiss died? No? Well, she aspirated a Bac-O. You know those little sprinkly buggers on salads? She’d been trying to sniff the lettuce to see if it was fresh and she snorked one right up her nostril and it got in her lung. She started choking, making weird noises like this: ‘Snaaagh, snaaagh!’—and suddenly a big fat guy came racing over from just behind the pie rack, screaming ‘Heimlich! Heimlich!’ and he started hugging her like a giant vise. He cracked all her ribs and cut off her air supply. He killed her dead, Donald, that big fat guy. By trying to save her life, don’t you see. Apparently he’d only seen the Heimlich maneuver performed once in a movie and he didn’t realize he was suffocating her. Too bad for Twiss, huh? But she kept those shades on the whole time, Donald. Laid out there at HoJo’s by the pie twirler, wearing those chic babies. Like yours, Donald, as I said. It’s amazing. Your nose is kind of shaped like hers too, now that I see it close up. Stay away from Bac-Os, Donald. That’s my advice to you.”
“You are deranged, Professor.”
“I hope so, Donald. I hope so. It’s a state I’ve worked hard to achieve. Now, if you’ll excuse me ...”
I lunged for the door. He blocked me again.
“What about my grade, Professor?”
“Which grade? The A-plus you think you deserve—or the F I intend to give you?”
“F? Why would I get an F? My lab grades have been in the high eighties. What are you talking about?”
“I know very well what your lab grades have been, Donald, but you see, I grade on attitude as much as accomplishment and I think your attitude has been that of a really jolly serial killer. I just don’t like you, Donald.”
“Wait a minute! You’re telling me that you’re flunking me because you don’t like me?”
“Donald, you’re fast. But not fast enough.”
I winked and slipped around him. He pulled back; his face was white.
“When will I get this ... grade? So I can begin taking action?”
“I’ll just go look at your file now, Donald. This could take some time.”
I winked again. And shut the door.
I sat in the lab for a while grading lab tests. Donald Brandeman’s average was, as he’d said, a B and I wrote that letter after his name, after some lengthy and blasphemous hesitation.
I finished the other grades; then I heard Rocky coming in. She stood in the doorway, staring at me. She looked distraught.
“Hi, Rock,” I called. Then I dropped some things. My grade book, my keys, a whole rack of tubes came crashing down.
“Jesus, how did I do that?”
She rushed over to help me pick up. Her face close up was panicked.
“Prof, what’s wrong with you?”
“Rocky, what’s the big deal? I dropped my keys and a couple of tubes. Stop looking at me like I’m ready for the psych ward, OK?”
She started to cry. Her hair fell over her face and her thin shoulders shook.
“I just saw that guy, that blond guy? Donald Brandeman? In the hall. He was on his way to Faber’s office. He said he had a fight with you and then he said some ... real terrible shit ... about you.”
“Oh yeah? I hope you decked him.”
She looked up through her tears.
“Well, yeah, actually, man, I did.”
I backed out of the safety shower, where I’d been crawling after a rolling tube, and looked at her.
“You hit him?”
“I blind-sided him. He didn’t even see it coming. I dropped him.”
She grinned, her face, wet with tears.
“You know, one of these.” She mimed a lightning left to the jaw. “Blam! wham! Down he goes! Man, he’s a pussy, that guy, you know? He sits there like this, holding his jaw and whining that I broke it and that he can’t swim anymore this semester.”
“Jesus. Between you and me, we’ve nailed this poor sucker for the semester.”
I started to laugh and then she laughed too, a little halfheartedly. Then I grabbed her by the shoulders and we looked at each other, sitting there on the floor together, and we really started going off. We laughed so long and hard that I got the hiccups and she started weeping again.
I tried to hold my breath but my diaphragm would not stop convulsing.
“Wait. Lemme get some water.”
She got up and ran me a flask full of lukewarm tap. I drank it but my chest kept heaving and she sobbed as I hiccuped. Then we started laughing again. She blew her nose as I collapsed finally on the floor, my arms and legs outstretched like a kid making snow angels—my grade book and tubes around me, hiccuping and laughing.
Neither one of us heard the lab door open. It wasn’t until Faber actually stood over us that we noticed him.
“Professor Charbonneau, have you been drinking?”
Rocky and I bounced off the same wall, then looked up in slow motion at him. It was obvious that he didn’t often encounter faculty members lying on the floor.
“No. I’m not drunk. I was just discussing [heeeekk!] ah, midterm grades with my assistant [heeeekk!], Ms. Salinas, here ... and I had a little fall [heeek!].”
Rocky and I started off again. We couldn’t help it.
He started to say something, then thought better of it.
“Could I see you in my office, Professor? As soon as you ... gather yourself up?”
As soon as the door shut, we went off again. We just couldn’t stop.
I knocked and he called to me to come in. He was still a bit shaken from our encounter in the lab, trying to appear as if he hadn’t been waiting for me. He put down the phone receiver, looking distracted, pawed through some notes on his desk—then looked up and nodded, indicating the chair in front of his desk.
I sat, hiccuping a little into my collar. His wandering eye focused on me briefly, piercingly, then rolled off.
“Esme, I’m confused. I’d like to leap to what may seem like a radical conclusion here and state boldly that if you need professional help, if you have a drug or alcohol problem, there are programs that I can look into ...”
I tried to ambush a large hiccup in my throat and made a gurgling, strangling noise.
He started to get up from his chair and the thought of the fictitious Aunt Twiss and the Heimlich leapt to mind, which made me choke more. I held up a hand to stay him and gradually got control.
“I’m not an alcoholic. I’m not a drug user. I’m a scientist.”
“I’m sorry, I ...”
I gasped and another piercing hiccup followed this intake of breath. I swallowed carefully and continued.
“I’m a scientist. I know you think I’ve been irresponsible and I admit that I have been, in the matter of meeting my classes. I’ve been erratic in my schedule, yes. But I’ve been having visions, these last months. I feared them once but now I see—”
“I’m sorry. You’re not making sense, Esme.”
“I have a TOE, Dr. Faber. I know that you didn’t hire me to be a theoretician, but I’ve been working on questions of chirality in space. I’ve consulted Lorraine Atwater at USC. I’m on the right track here, in fact, as of the last week or so, I think I’m—”
“Esme. Please. What are you trying to say?”
I jumped up and approached his desk. He recoiled instinctively.
“Dr. Faber, I need some time. A little time to work this theory out.” I grabbed the edge of his desk and leaned across. “I have been given a gift.”
He shook his head. He crouched in his chair, ready to spring, staring at me with, for once, both eyes. Had I cured his optical problem?
“It’s like chinning yourself on the topmost rung of the ladder to heaven. You lift yourself up and just get this flash, a glimpse of the ang
els and the reaches of paradise, all making sense suddenly—a flash. And then your grip gives and you fall back down into the dark.”
He cleared his throat. “Please sit down, Esme. You’re very excited.”
I threw up my hands and sat down. “Of course I am. Of course I’m excited. I’ve seen it! The post-ambidextrous universe!”
I sat down, breathing heavily. I realized with relief that my hiccups were gone.
Faber cleared his throat again. He lifted a manila folder—a file?—from the papers on his desk. He peered inside it, then looked at me.
“Some weeks ago, as you know, Donald Brandeman made several rather serious allegations about your conduct in the laboratory. And we had the question about the ‘politics’ of your lectures. I was inclined at the time to dismiss all this, given your record at Harvard and your teaching reputation—but since then, Esme ... your strange behavior ...”
“What strange behavior?”
“You know as well as I do that you’ve been consistently late for classes and laboratories, often not showing up at lab at all. You have failed to provide substitute instructors to cover your absences. You did not register midterm grades. I was also informed by personnel that you took the highly irregular step of hiring an undergraduate as your lab assistant, using grant funds. A Miss”—he peered into the file again—“Rocio Salinas.”
“I hired Rocky because she is the best young scientist I know. More imaginative and finally more capable than any of my graduate students.”
He looked up. “The young woman who was just ... lying on the lab floor next to you?”
I smiled. “That’s the one!”
He looked down again. “It’s against university policy. We have also had complaints about the presence of your child in the radioactive areas of the Oberman labs. I hope I don’t have to remind you, Esme, as a mother, about the inherent dangers for children of low levels of—”
“I take care to ensure my child’s safety in the lab. She is restricted to the outer area, where there’s about as much radiation as she’d get on a flight to Chicago.”
“Nevertheless, we’re talking about a number of imprudent decisions made willy-nilly, if you ask me. This is highly disturbing behavior. And since you yourself brought up the subject of chemistry theory, I will reiterate what you said. You were not hired to theorize; you were hired to do biochemical research in the area of single-gene-deficiency disease, most specifically Alpha1 Antitrypsin Deficiency.”
Saving St. Germ Page 16