The pain that receded some days ago, now began to oscillate here and there, as though looking for a place to settle permanently.
“Do you think he’ll like physics?” he asked Suzy.
She looked at him for, what seemed like, a long, long time, and then burst out laughing. It may have been the tension of keeping her good news under her belt, literally and figuratively, for such a long time, but she just couldn’t stop laughing. Tears filled her eyes, and she laughed as though she hadn’t laughed for months on end.
“What have I said?” Alec sounded hurt. Or he thought he was hurt. Shouldn’t I have been? This fatherhood is very confusing stuff.
Finally she quieted down. Only still, for a while, her body shook sporadically. Then she got herself under control.
“Of course, he will, darling. I can see it in his eyes.”
“You what!!!”
“Well, I am sure he’ll have your eyes. And you do love physics, don’t you?”
Suzy was a mighty clever girl. Woman. Mother?
Suzy was mighty clever, he thought.
And then it was time to say goodbye. The past week she and Alec had stayed with Alicia. Tonight they would spend their nuptial night at the Ritz. Tomorrow, they would go back home, a small walking distance from the Ritz, for lunch, after which Alec’s mother would drive them to Dorval Airport. For some reason, the French Canadians liked to change names. The airport was now renamed the P-E Trudeau International Airport, after a fairly recently demised, very popular though long despised in Quebec, Prime Minister of Canada, who had now risen to the ranks of local superheroes. The Québécois, like all people, needed idols to worship. P-E stood for Pierre-Elliott, exemplifying the marriage of the Two Solitudes, as the French and the English people were often referred to. Alec thought the Québécois were lucky that the powers at large decided to abbreviate the late PM’s name. Had they not, the new name of Dorval would have been the Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau International Airport. A mouthful for any taxi driver.
Alec, Suzy, and all their friends, still called it Dorval.
Baptismal rites for the airports notwithstanding, all the newlyweds had to do now was to say goodbye to everyone, and disappear. It was easier said than done. Joan Norman, who normally seemed most reserved, now held Suzy in conversation, giving her a litany of advice. On cooking, furnishings, travelling arrangements, feeding the baby, teaching him to walk, read, write, history, geography...
“But sweetheart, you’re flying to California. That’s the other side of the world. I might never see you again.”
“You will, Mother. You will. More than you care to.”
“And you must write.”
“I will”
“Often!”
“Yes, Mom. Often.”
“Every day...”
And so it went on. Each time Suzy tried to say goodbye to anyone else, Joan appeared at her elbow, hung on to it for dear life, and continued to impart the wisdom of her years. Dad, John Norman, watched from a distance, his eyes following Suzy’s every move. Now and again he blew his nose. For a long time he said nothing. Then he approached.
“Come, Mother,” he said, and took Joan gently by the arm. “Come, we must go. So must they.” It wasn’t easy for John Norman. It wasn’t easy at all.
Gradually they all gravitated toward the small entrance hall. Dr. and Mrs. Alexander Baldwin were about to be driven by the proverbial limousine to their bridal suite. There was nothing more to be said. The final embrace, the final admonition, the final kiss...
And then a telephone chimed in somebody’s clothing. Professor McBride reached into his pocket with some embarrassment. As he listened his face relaxed. He folded and put the cellular away.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. “I am pleased to report that the nomination for the youngest recipient for the Nobel Prize in the history of physics has been accepted.” Then he walked up to Alec.
“Congratulations, my lad. My heartiest congratulations.”
The rest of them, including Alec, just stood there.
They were all stunned.
***
9
Alexander Baldwin III
On June 25th, at 1.30 a.m. PST, Alexander Desmond Baldwin III was born at the Good Samaritan Hospital. He displayed the requisite number of fingers, a good complexion, excellent vocal chords, boisterous energy and, what promised to become, a horrendous mop of hair.
“My son!” Alec exclaimed, the first time he held him in his arms. “My son,” he repeated, as though not quite believing his own words. And then, terrified of his boldness, he laid him gently by his mother’s side.
During the last few days, even hours, they’d tried to get back to Canada, to assure their son’s Canadian birthright, but there simply wasn’t time. Till that very last moment Suzy had felt and looked good, relaxed, hardly complaining about the extra load she’d been carrying. If it hadn’t been for her flushed cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes, one would have thought that she’d simply put on just a little too much weight. Well, perhaps a trifle more than a little, but to Alec, and certainly to Desmond McBride, she’d remained the most beautiful woman around.
And thus, Sacha, which Desmond said was a Russian diminutive for Alexander, was born a US citizen. Alec thought that the Russian diminutive, which they all loved instantly, was a nice twist. A sort of balancing act. A Russian/US citizen. Nevertheless, when Sacha was naughty, Alec, remembering his own father’s idiosyncrasies, called him ‘a bloody foreigner’.
After flying in from Montreal they’d settled in their new apartment with just a twinge of nostalgia. They missed the view of the lake, the sunsets, and the comfort of the warm, cuddly indoors, when they came back from a brisk walk during the Canadian winter. On the other hand they did not miss at all the slush on the sidewalks, the ramparts of dirty snow when they had to cross the street, nor the need to don galoshes over their shoes each time they wanted to go out. That last chore, or inconvenience, Alec used to hate with a passion he’d normally reserved only for intellectual inadequacy.
Within four weeks or so, Suzy had turned the apartment into a cozy nest, as only a woman can do. Men tend to be neater. They tend towards chaque chose à sa place attitude. Not all men, of course, but most who needed an orderly mind in their work. Women are freer. They accept asymmetry as a state of being. They go for balance rather than for mathematical precision. Alec was growing capable of both.
“My, you’ve cerrtainly made a bonnie place, lassie,” Desmond said, the moment he came in.
The Professor had become a frequent guest, virtually a member of the family. He was always welcome. Dr. McBride’s wife had died almost twenty years ago. He never remarried, and his only surviving child, a man now, a broker of some financial clout, lived in Australia. They kept in touch by email. It seemed to suffice for both of them. Desmond welcomed being adopted by the Baldwins.
“Soon now you’ll be looking afterr two childrren...” he quipped, referring to his own age.
“When the time comes, you’ll be welcome, Des,” Alec assured him.
“When that happens, make surre y’put the harrd stuff in my bottle. I don’t take kindly to milk.”
But before all that, a lot had happened.
Once the apartment had been fixed up, Suzy had begun looking for something constructive to do. She’d toyed with the idea of teaching, again, but, after due consideration, discarded the idea. At least for the present. In a few months, four to be precise, Sacha had been expected to join their family. She’d thought that starting work, and then taking maternity leave so soon would not be fair to the school, nor the pupils. Students, as they called them here. Actually, they also started calling the children students in Canada. She had no idea whether it was pure ignorance or just a gradual deterioration of the everyday language. Students, in her opinion, were people, young or old, who listened to lectures and made their own decisions about what to learn. Mostly they studied matters of their own choosing. Pu
pils were not given such a choice. Pupils were told what they must learn ‘or else’. You stopped being a pupil the moment you left school. A student––you remained all your life. Or should.
Finally, Suzy decided to study art.
Perhaps it was Alicia’s influence, but when they’d stayed that last week in Montreal, Suzy had grown closer to Alec’s mother. What had drawn them together was, among other things, Alicia’s love for art. Of course, Alicia has been painting for years. She’d had a number of successful solo exhibitions, and not just in Montreal. There were galleries in Toronto, and a small one in New York, that welcomed her work.
To her disappointment, Suzy soon found out that there were no undergraduate courses in art at Caltech. But within easy walking distance of their apartment, Suzy discovered a private school, which did not delve into the history of art, nor into the finer aspects of fine arts. Instead they believed that anyone could learn to paint. All it took was a little money for the tubes of paint, lots and lots of paper, a few brushes, and infinite hours of practice. This was exactly what Suzy had been looking for.
To her own surprise, she exhibited considerable aptitude for harnessing colour and form, and particularly in the use of her powers of observation. She saw the world in a very personal way. She saw, as did Alicia, beauty where other people failed to see it. Often in the most unexpected places. Perhaps this is what being an artist really means. An artist at heart, that is. Until the middle of June she’d painted at least four to six hours a day; that was in addition to the art course she was taking. All the while she remembered what her instructor had told them at that first lecture:
“You are not here to talk. You are not here to think. You are here to paint.” The instructor concentrated on freeing the intuitive artist within.
And paint she did. Soon the spare room, ‘Sacha’s room’, became a depository of her voluminous papers, canvases and even tablets of pressed wood. She painted on anything she could lay her hands on. Quite indiscriminately. By the middle of June she’d moved her considerable output to the storage space they had in the garage, and spent the next two weeks painting directly on the walls. By the time Sacha arrived from the hospital, his cradle stood in the middle of a jungle. The walls, ceiling, even the window frames had been completely covered with vines, leaves, and exotic flowers. Gnarled faces peeked from behind twisted branches, their equally twisted smiles rustling of unspeakable secrets. The doors became mysterious caves cut through giant red cedars and western firs, where fairies made their home; the blinds hiding the windows opened and shut as though branches swaying in the wind. If Sacha didn’t grow up loving the mysteries and beauty of nature, no one could possibly blame Suzy.
“Welcome to Eden,” Suzy said as she laid him down for the very first time at home. “Welcome to Paradise....” she whispered.
Yet, during those final months of waiting for Sacha, there had been moments when she and Alec still found time to go for a walk, or to sit back and just talk. About a month before the birth, they found themselves, as often after dinner, chatting; Suzy curled up, comfortably on the sofa. He’d asked his wife, by then radiant in her expectation, what she’d meant by the comment she’d made way back, after the Christmas dinner.
“The peek-a-boo business. You haven’t mentioned it lately.”
“That’s because you are doing exactly what you want to be doing.”
“And this means...?” He was baffled.
“And this means that Sandra and you are one.”
Alec smiled, leaned back, then got up and started pacing the room. He had considerable reservations about Suzy’s conclusions.
“Are you trying to tell me that I ‘peek-a-boo,’ as you call it, only when I am not engaged in something which calls on all my attention?”
“Partly. But more so, when you are not doing what you really enjoy.”
“Why would you say a thing like that?” He was completely lost.
She pulled him down next to her, and cuddled under his arm. They sat like this for a while. They enjoyed moments of silence almost as much as when they exchanged ideas.
“You remember when I first told you that you’ve been shifting positions? It was in Montreal. At the time you already had your doctorate, but you’d been unemployed, restless, one might say not very content with your modus operandi. You, I would also venture to say, you’d been stifled, unfulfilled. You started shifting.”
“Assuming that you’re right, how come I don’t have any recollection of it?”
“Well, this is the hard part. It is not really you who are shifting, although your body does appear to change position. Sandra is the one who is really shifting.”
“What!? What does she have to do with this?”
“Actually, everything.”
Alec wanted to get up but she held him down. He thought he’d buried Sandra. He’d done it for her. For Suzy. For his wife.
“Wait,” she said. “Let’s think this through.”
Grudgingly, he complied.
“From everything you’ve ever told me about Sandra I gather that she is that part of you that cherishes, or you might say that which, or who, personifies absolute freedom. She appears to have her being outside time, outside space, in fact she does not recognize any limitations whatever.”
Suzy turned to face him. He nodded. “Bull’s eye, so far.”
“But there is one other trait which you never mentioned to me, but which is obvious to an outside observer.” Suzy seemed to be taking a deep breath, as though the trait was not as obvious as she’d claimed. “I am talking about Sandra also personifying your happiness.”
Rather than jumping to his feet, or denying her words, Alec’s eyes drifted to those far away places to which only he had access. Again they sat in silence, close, in a half-embrace. Time seemed to drift on, leaving them behind. Alec was thoughtful, yet happy. It seemed to him that Suzy, dear, dear Sue, had found another piece of the puzzle that had baffled him for many years. Could it be that Suzy was right? Was Sandra that state of consciousness that rejected suffering, rejected unhappiness, refused to recognize that anything, anything at all, was impossible?
And as he sat there feeling Suzy’s warmth, he knew, with growing certainty, that his wife was right. As usual, he thought. What is it about women, he wondered? What gives them the right to offer through inherent intuition what men can only achieve through deduction?
He kissed her eyelids blessed with such great vision, then the lips, which gave him greater understanding of himself. And then he put one hand on Suzy’s stomach and he said gently: “You are a very, very lucky man, Sacha.”
The day after that particular discussion Alec woke up with virtually no stiffness in his joints. Happiness or not, Sandra definitely had something to do with his emotions. His emotional body? And it seemed that there were occasions when his emotional body, if such there was, had been, on occasion, stronger than the physical one. Whatever the truth, his back was giving him less pain.
But as he regarded himself in the bathroom mirror, he shrugged the idea away. “’Tis a fine scientist y’arre Doctorr Baldwin,” he muttered, aping Des’s quirk. “Next you’ll await ferr the fairries to curre you, orr maybe a wee leprrrechaun... ‘Tis a fine scientist you arre indeed?”
It was about a month after they discussed this matter that Sacha was born. A few days later he was installed in the jungle of Suzy’s making. He either didn’t notice his odd surroundings, or was too busy sleeping to notice. At least, he didn’t seem to complain. Not much. Considering he was sleeping in a jungle.
His partents’ life changed substantially.
There were no more walks, hand in hand, along the green slopes of Santa Monica Mountains, no more visits to the ocean shore to look at yachts they’d been hoping to buy, one day, soon, the moment Sacha was big enough to come sailing with them. The days became equally divided, as were the nights, by feeding times, a schedule in which Alec insisted to help. At least, once Sacha’d matured to a bottle.
A few months later things became easier. The frequency of the schedule was reduced. The feeding times grew further apart, in direct proportion to their size. Alec calculated that if Sacha were to continue eating in proportion to his size for the next ten years, his son would grow to be well over ten feet tall. Gradually, life returned to normal. Almost. Or perhaps they just got used to the new regime. A regime imposed by Sacha without the slightest effort on his part, yet with total and absolute confidence that it was completely his due. But even as Sacha changed, so did Alec’s attitude towards his son. The proud father no longer regarded Sacha as a Fabergé Egg, which he was greatly afraid to touch, but as a living entity, with bright eyes, showing promise of intelligence.
Yet, the first time Suzy entrusted Alec with sole charge over Sacha, the proud father was completely terrified.
“There’s nothing to it, darling. Really.” She tried to reassure him.
“But... b-but...”
“Really. People have been doing this for years. Generations. Millennia,” she smiled, vaguely amused.
“I ah… I s-s-suppose so,” he nodded, but he didn’t really believe her. People didn’t do it, he thought. Women did. That was different. But he said nothing.
She’d left all the instructions, what to do if and when it became necessary, and left for her art class. For the first time Alec remained completely alone with his son. For a while he just sat there, looking down and listening to the regular breathing, the utter peace emanating from the countenance too young to have, as yet, any personality. The face still belonged to one unaware of being apart from the rest of the world; one still accepting universal membership as a due and natural state of being. It was strange gazing at his tiny face. It was the face of an angel, untouched by any awareness of duality.
Then Sacha opened his eyes.
Alexander: [Alexander Trilogy Book Two] Page 12