by Nova Jacobs
As she pulled the envelope from her pocket and contemplated a hiding place among her Hercule Poirot novels, she took one last look at the contents of the letter, wondering if the desire not to disappoint Isaac over the years had turned into a more general habit of avoidance. What if she chose to do nothing with the letter? She was flying back home in two days and was hardly in the position to be tracking down a room number she’d never heard of, let alone obliterating her grandfather’s legacy. And then to be chasing down some guy named Raspanti? A man apparently fond of only the most popular men’s suiting pattern there is?
Turning to the window, Hazel thought back to the innocent hours before she’d opened the letter. What had she been expecting? Not this sober directive from the grave, but maybe: “Lily no longer recognizes me” . . . “My ability to do math is deteriorating” . . . “No shame in bowing out gracefully, you understand.” But with all his talk of being followed and wishing he could flee—what was she supposed to do with that when he’d forbidden her from going to the police? Could it be that Isaac had lost his foothold on reality and that these were mad ramblings?
Just as she was slipping the letter into Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Hazel heard the loose floorboard outside creak. She shelved the book and stepped into the darkened hall just in time to see someone—a man, she couldn’t see his face—leaving her grandfather’s study. He shut the door and seemed to waver for a moment before disappearing down the stairs.
She became aware of a prickling sensation, as if charged particles were scaling her spine. Being alone on the second floor suddenly felt like a bad idea, so she shut the bedroom door and made her way to the social level of the house.
* * *
Downstairs, she fell into some hugs and nice-to-see-yous before going to the buffet table for something to settle her stomach. When she had filled her plate, she nearly stumbled over little Drew Severy-Oliver, who was sitting in the middle of the floor, an Audubon guide open in her lap. Hazel was often blind to the allure of small children, but with Drew, she couldn’t help but melt a little.
The five-year-old looked up. “Did you know that the albatross has the widest wingspan of any bird there is?”
“Really? I had no idea.”
“Yeah. No one does.”
While Drew flipped through her book for more bird facts, Sybil appeared and gave Hazel a sideways embrace. “My little bug isn’t bothering you, is she?”
“Oh, no. I’m getting a much-needed ornithology lesson.”
“Birds are her big thing right now, and plants. She’s already identified all the plants in our backyard. She’s bored with them now, of course.”
Drew peered up at her mother. “Did she say ornithology?”
“No, honey. She didn’t.”
Drew bounced toward Hazel. “But you did, didn’t you?”
Hazel looked to Sybil, who grimaced.
“Ornithology is the study of birds!” Drew announced.
“Drew, please. Not now—” pleaded her mother.
“Orology is the study of mountains. Orthopterology is the study of crickets and grasshoppers!”
“Oh, God,” Sybil said, running a hand through her hair. “She’s memorized all of the ‘ologies’ in alphabetical order. When she reaches zoology, she starts all over again. There are hundreds of them. Hundreds . . .” She broke off, exasperated.
“Well, I’m feeling very inadequate,” Hazel said.
“Osteology!” Drew sang. “The study of bones.”
“She’s going to be very smart. Everyone says so,” Sybil said in unmasked dismay. “We have to go find Daddy, Drew. Say bye to Haze.”
“Bye.”
Sybil lifted her daughter from the floor and floated away, but not before Hazel heard: “Ovology, the study of eggs . . .”
Nothing like a know-it-all child to make you feel completely worthless. Hazel looked down at her food, realizing she wasn’t at all hungry. A drink, that’s what she needed. A strong drink would put the letter out of her mind.
She headed for the kitchen, first having to circumnavigate the depressed geeks who were closing in on Philip and Paige, the new default celebrities of the family. Without meaning to, Hazel met Paige’s eyes again. Her aunt had always been an intimidating figure. Hazel’s early memories of her usually involved some odd comment thrown her way that she had been too young or too nervous to comprehend. Only later did she register it as a steady stream of disdain and sarcasm. Hazel mustered a cursory smile at Paige and moved on.
Her search of the kitchen cupboards turned up a precious half bottle of Isaac’s rye, perhaps the last of his stores. She took a quick swallow from the bottle before pouring herself a proper glass.
In the living room, she noticed a young foursome gathered in a recess, a bronze bust of Copernicus peering out from their animated orbit. From the unconcealed arrogance in their voices she guessed they were grad students, and from the volume of their conversation, that they were happily intoxicated. The bearded man who’d spoken at the funeral stood among them. She saw up close that his hair was a bit of a nest and that his suit—not herringbone, she noted, but a faint checked pattern—was probably a size too big. His anxious look from that morning had gone and he was now engaged in confident conversation with a cute brunette. But Hazel sensed his eyes following her, and as she took a seat in a nearby club chair, she could feel a lingering heat from his gaze.
The four had moved on from reminiscing about Isaac to complaining about relationships. The brunette grumbled about her computer-scientist ex, who was a dead ringer for Albert Camus but whose broodingly handsome braincase had been empty.
“No joke,” she said. “I had to explain Riemann’s zeta to him, like, zeta of s times.” Laughs all around.
“I bet he was fun, at least,” a redhead broke in. “Try dating a number theorist who thinks it’s the height of hilarity to celebrate only prime-numbered birthdays. Oh, ha-ha!”
The beard was still focused on the brunette. “So you dumped him.”
“Afraid so.”
“Hey, I hear you,” said the fourth member of the group, a man with unfortunate acne scars. “People who don’t get mathematics can be shockingly dull—”
“Now, wait a second,” Beard interrupted. “Take this book on the shelf here: Numbers: How the History of Mathematics Is the History of Civilization. I mean, sure, the history of math is tied to human progress and all that, but the title is meaningless. There are other things to life.”
“Like what?” demanded the brunette.
“Oh, I don’t know, nature, long naps, a dog chasing a ball, food—”
“You don’t think nature is packed with mathematics? Or that the advent of agriculture was totally dependent on rudimentary geometry?”
“Sure, but it was also dependent on people being hungry.”
The brunette tutted. Hazel couldn’t see her face, but she imagined it sucking a cigarette.
“Look,” continued Beard. “You can plug in anything—Architecture: How the History of Building Shit Is the History of Civilization—literally anything.”
“Booze?”
“How the History of Fermentation—”
“Mustard.”
“How the History of the Spice Trade—”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that I’m sick to death of all the pretension, of insisting that the abstract science we call mathematics is more vital than anything else, because if God forbid someone doesn’t memorize the zeta function for his girlfriend, he’s some straw-munching rube.”
This wasn’t the first time Hazel had heard a heated discussion like this in the Severy house, but it suddenly struck her as hilarious that people actually talked like this.
“You know,” the brunette broke in, “speaking of pretentious mathematicians, I wasn’t the one who got up at a funeral and made a hundred people listen to number garbage for twenty minutes.”
“Number garbage?”
&nbs
p; “That’s right.”
“Whatever you say,” said Beard, but the brunette was already stalking off to the kitchen, her friends right behind her.
Beard glowered at his drink as if rebuking his own reflection. When he reoriented himself, his eyes alighted on Hazel.
She shifted uncomfortably on her cushion and cleared her throat. “Big Comfy Chair: How the History of Sitting Down . . .”
He laughed. It was a boozy cackle that lasted several seconds and brought an involuntary smile to Hazel’s face for the first time in days.
“You heard all that?” he asked.
Feeling self-conscious, she cracked open a book sitting on an end table. “Oh, no. I was just reading up on”—she flipped back the cover—“An Extended Treatise on Mathematical Modeling, by Hermann Henck . . .?”
He tried not to smile.
“I actually know him. The man is deadly.” Beard suddenly frowned in the direction of the kitchen. “Christ, I seriously don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. I’ve been such a prick.”
“You mean to that girl? I wouldn’t worry about it.”
He planted a hand on Copernicus’s bronze face.
“Yeah, I don’t really know them, anyway. And I’m not apologizing to a mathematician who can’t recognize decent math when she hears it.”
“It’s funny,” Hazel said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard an equation read out loud like that. Definitely not at a funeral.” At this, she was surprised to see him glance away, the skin above his beard reddening.
“I guess it was a bit much.”
“Not that I would’ve understood it had it been written out.”
He smiled. “If you had an hour or two, and a basic understanding of differential equations, I could—”
“Oh, don’t waste your time.”
He took a swallow from his glass. “I’m probably not that far behind you. My number talents are pretty unspectacular nowadays. Ordinary, even.”
Hazel half stood so that she was leaning on the chair’s arm.
“I’m Hazel, by the way. Isaac was my grandfather.”
He gave her an odd, searching look.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Oh, it’s not biological,” she said quickly. “I don’t have a brain that anyone would want to cut open.” When he didn’t respond, she kept talking. “He told me once I had a mind for logic, but turns out he was just being nice.”
“Now that I think of it, maybe I have heard him mention you.” He held up his last bit of whiskey: “To Isaac.”
After tossing it back, he set the glass next to the heliocentrist’s shoulder and glanced around the room. “Do you know any of these people?”
Hazel followed his gaze.
“A few. But honestly, without Isaac, I’m a bit lost in crowds like this.”
He nodded. “This is supposed to be my tribe, but all I can say is, I know exactly what you mean.” He suddenly pulled out his phone and frowned. “I’m very sorry, Hazel. I’d like to stay, but I have to be somewhere. I’ll see you around?”
“I don’t actually live here.”
“Neither do I.”
She was about to ask his name, but he made a sudden awkward move toward the kitchen, pausing to examine a piece of artwork on the adjoining wall. It was a large red canvas with a snarl of string fixed to the center. He stared at the identifying tag: Found Twine #126.
“Sybil made that,” she explained.
“I wonder what the odds are.”
“Odds?”
“Of stumbling upon twine one hundred and twenty-six times in your life.”
He turned away again, but thought better of it.
“Sorry, I’m Alex,” he said, producing a hand. “I should have mentioned that Isaac was also my grandfather, which if I’m not mistaken makes us related. Don’t mean to rush off, it’s just that I’m late. Good-bye, Hazel.”
She stood stunned at the front window, watching his rumpled figure move away from the house. Did she really have a cousin she didn’t know about? She didn’t expect his journey across the vast lawn to clear up her confusion, but she studied his slightly uneven stride as if he were stomping out clues to his identity. She felt her brother step up beside her.
“So you met Paige’s spawn.”
She turned, eyes wide, and laughed. “Alex is Alexis? Of course.”
“Insane, right?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Gregory shook his head. “Just found out from Aunt Jane. What a surprise to discover that our mysterious cousin isn’t the pretty girl I imagined, but a wannabe Englishman.”
“Why would Paige lie like that? Or at least not bother to correct anyone?”
“I guess it’s not a proper joke unless it runs on for thirty years.”
They watched Alex’s figure grow small and vanish down the flight of canyonside steps. “He does have a weird accent.”
“Jane says he picked it up while in school overseas. Couldn’t possibly have been intentional.”
“I don’t know. He seems nice, in a neurotic sort of way.”
She expected her brother to say something about all his years as a detective for the Los Angeles Police Department and his preternatural ability to know people at a glance, but instead he put an arm around her.
“How’d you turn out to be so generous?” he asked, leaning his head on hers. What once would have been an effortless gesture now felt stilted, as if he were trying to make up for something. Still, she returned his half embrace, and for that moment she felt close to him again.
* * *
“It’s just terrible you all couldn’t have grown up together,” their aunt Jane told them long after the house had emptied. “Alex should have been part of the family, but Paige does what she wants, I suppose. Whether it was her insecurity over his not having a proper father or what, that’s no reason to go on this long—though the father isn’t exactly some delinquent. Out of the picture, sure, but he’s paid for Alex’s entire education. I mean, Philip and I knew that she was a he—Isaac let it slip about a year ago, said he was bored with Paige’s insistence on ‘privacy’—but even so, we just met the boy on Friday. Though he’s hardly a boy anymore.”
Jane poured iced teas and set out a plate of leftovers from the reception. “When I confronted Paige yesterday, she grudgingly admitted that her son has great mathematical potential, or did once.”
“He told me that he was ordinary,” Hazel said, staring through a window at Isaac’s hot tub. Why had Isaac confided to Jane about Alex but not to her and Gregory? Then she remembered the letter and the fact that much of her grandfather’s life had clearly been kept from her. What was one more secret?
“Ordinary?” Her aunt laughed. “Alex was a prodigy like his mother—won a fellowship to study at the Max Planck Institute in Bonn, but dropped out after an autobahn accident. There was some cerebral cortex damage, but Paige wasn’t all that sympathetic; claims he used the accident as an excuse to give up on mathematics entirely. Maybe it broke Paige’s heart—what little she has.”
“So what’s he doing now?” Gregory asked.
“Freelance photographer out of Europe, apparently. For travel magazines and the AP. He was living in Paris for a while. Paige doesn’t think he’s making much of a living, though I’m not sure how she’d know. Did you notice they weren’t even sitting together this morning? I haven’t seen them interact once.”
“Where’s he staying?”
Jane shrugged. “I told him he could stay with us, but he says he has a friend in town. A girlfriend maybe, who knows.”
Gregory must have made a face because Jane said, “Oh, don’t look so surprised. I’ve seen pictures of him, and he really is a good-looking man underneath all that hair. Wouldn’t you say so, Hazel?”
Hazel nodded an agreement as she continued to stare at Isaac’s hot tub, dark and covered, dusted with droppings from a pepper tree. Beyond it, a gibbous moon was rising from the leaves of a date palm. As her
aunt chattered on, Hazel rinsed out her glass at the sink and stared out at the pale blue satellite. It had never seemed so frightening and beautiful as it did to her now, knowing that only several nights before, Isaac had looked out his study window at a sliver of this same moon, as he composed the last words anyone would ever receive from him.
– 4 –
The Policeman
An accident on the shoulder of the freeway made Gregory think of Isaac. He might have pulled his Honda Civic over to see if his assistance was needed, but the strobes told him that plenty of police had already arrived, so he continued on, preserving the sensitive momentum of the interstate. Isaac would have approved. At one time, it had been his grandfather’s quest to return Southern California to its streetcar paradise. Isaac hadn’t necessarily wanted to rid the road of cars—“Let’s be sensible”—he had simply wanted to make car culture more efficient. He had even wrangled some public funding before the city council decided that drought and the homeless were more pressing issues. But during that brief window, when he and the city had held hands and gazed into a bottleneck-free future, Isaac was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying, “What’s the use of mathematicians if we can’t solve the gigantic math problem staring us in the face every time we drive to work? Traffic is a car dilemma, yes, but it is also a mathematical one.”
With the accident receding in his rearview mirror, Gregory looked to his left across the median. If he had kept his original engagement tonight instead of going home, he would be shuttling along the opposite side of the freeway about now. But he had reluctantly cancelled. It was with a woman he very much wanted to see, but there were limits to his duplicity.
Besides, his sister was coming over for dinner. He felt compelled to make up for his bad brothering of late, as in his complete inability to return a simple phone call or text. Just because he could barely manage his own life, that was no excuse for neglecting his only real blood connection. Maybe they could take this opportunity to become close again, as they had been when they were young. Hazel and Gregory together again—or Hansel and Gretel, as they’d been called in their schooldays, a taunt that had mysteriously followed them no matter how many times they changed homes or schools. They could have a laugh about that tonight.