As I begin to eat, I am careful not to give the impression of being a slob. Half-way through my first bite, however, I realize that everyone is staring at me. They are all holding hands. At first, I am not sure what they are doing. Some sort of before dinner ritual? Then I realize that is exactly what it is, a ‘before dinner ritual’. Prayer. I’m not sure whether to allow the bite I have placed in my mouth to slip back onto the plate or gulp it down quickly. I decide on the latter and nearly choke.
“Sorry,” I say after taking a swig of drink and allowing the food to slip down my throat. “I’m not used to this. Not much use in praying over a TV dinner. It’s bad for you either way.” I make a joke, trying to escape embarrassment.
Justine smiles warmly. “That’s alright, darling,” she says. “We just prefer to offer a prayer before we eat. You are welcome to join us if you like, but we don’t want to pressure you.”
“Oh no,” I say as I offer my hands to Justine and Ethan who are sitting at my sides. “I’m fine saying prayer with you.” Actually I’m not, but as Garza said, I have to make this work. This is definitely beyond my usual dinnertime experience.
While Jeff offers prayer, I discretely look around at the others to make sure I am doing it right. The rest of the meal I am sure to watch and follow what the others do. I have never been so nervous at doing such a simple task as eating. I shouldn’t be nervous. After all, I have been doing it my whole life, yet I still feel like I am completely failing. My mind is caught up in thoughts of how everyone must be perceiving me. Usually, I don’t care. But it is difficult to feel that way with a new foster family that I actually need to make things work with, and a good looking guy sitting beside me does not make it any easier. The only thing I can think about is how they might see me. Keeping up images is exhausting; I don’t know how the Gregor’s do it.
“This is good,” I say, trying to direct their attention away from my eating. “What is it?”
“Thank you,” says Justine. “It’s a vegetarian casserole.”
“No meat,” I say. “You guys don’t eat meat?”
“No, of course not,” says Justine as if the thought of eating meat was absurd. “We don’t take in anything of lower natures.”
“So it’s some sort of soy-something,” I say, straining to keep the conversation going.
“Heaven forbid,” Justine says. “Beans are not to be eaten. They are to be revered as sacred representations of the budding of life.”
I have heard of vegetarians not eating meat out of respect for the life of animals, but I have never heard of vegetarians considering beans as sacred. Still, I’m used to the quirks of fosters. I had one guy who swore the government could see you through your TV. Consequently, he did not allow one in the house. Instead we listened to the radio. That is until I suggested that the government might be listening through the speakers, a joke I paid dearly for as I was unable to listen to music for almost a year. I take another bite of the vegetarian casserole. At least it doesn’t taste bad and I’m sure I can catch a burger somewhere in town.
“Justine,” Jeff exclaims, “where is the salt.” His tone is harsh as if the fact that there is no salt on the table is a grievous sin. “Remember, always put salt upon the table.”
“Forgive me,” Justine begs. “I don’t know where my head is. I guess I am just a little caught up in everything going on.”
“That’s no excuse,” Jeff says, sternly. “The path to Hell starts with our little indiscretions.”
“It’s just salt,” I say. This is getting to be a little absurd.
“No, he’s right,” she says. “I should have done a better job at remembering. I’ll go get it right now.” She leaps from her chair and nearly runs to the kitchen, returning only moments later with the salt. “Here it is. Everything is perfect now.”
“That’s why I love you,” says Jeff.
She sits with a bereaved smile. It is clear that she is flustered, but is not about to let that crack her perfectly pristine image. She reminds me of a porcelain doll, so perfect, yet so fragile. It seems she will shatter at any moment. And yet there is a certain beauty, something almost precious about her that makes me feel for her. Her shaking hand reaches for her napkin, knocking her dinner roll to the floor.
“I’ll get it,” I say jumping from my seat to pick up the roll off the floor.
“No,” Justine squeaks. “Pick not up what is fallen from the table.”
“It’s alright,” I say, emerging from beneath the table. “It’s still good, see. Thirty second rule.” Justine looks as though she is going to have a breakdown. “I can break off the bit that landed on the floor.” I take the roll, break it in half and offer it to her.
Justine looks at the defiled roll in my hand, as if I had just pulled it from the garbage. She snatches the two halves away from me and thrusts them onto the table, her hair jostling out of place from the exertion. As if nothing has happened, she wipes the disjointed hair from her face back behind her ear and begins to smooth out her napkin on her lap. With the poise of a mad woman, she starts in on a conversation with her husband about his day at work.
I slink back to my seat, not sure what to think. The whole scene was completely insane. I look to Ethan, hoping he doesn’t subscribe to the same sort of crazy. I am relieved to see he is just as baffled as I am.
The rest of the meal is spent in a conversation about Jeff’s work. He is a math teacher and has no concept of normal conversation. But Justine soaks it in as if it were the most important thing in the world. Ethan simply listens. I think he is afraid to do anything else. I know I am.
Later, Jeff shows Ethan and me his reprint of Raphael’s painting, School of Athens, in the hall. Justine clears the table in the dining room, refusing any help. Jeff studies the painting with pride and intense interest. The teacher in him cannot resist pointing out the many mathematicians and philosophers in the painting, with a lengthy story of each: the beggar-philosopher Diogenes who sits on the steps, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, the list seems endless. His greatest attention is given to a man in the corner writing in a book.
“And that,” says Jeff with great emphasis, “that is the great Pythagoras.”
“The triangle guy,” I say. I remember hearing about Pythagoras when I learned the Pythagorean Theorem in Geometry class.
“The triangle guy,” exclaims Jeff as if offended. “He is not just the triangle guy. He is perhaps the greatest adherent to the perfection of this world than any person in history.”
His reverence for Pythagoras is almost religious. I envision him with his other mathematical cronies, enacting sacred rites with their compasses and protractors in hand. The idea is amusing to me. After all, it’s just numbers.
“I think what Kyra means is that he is most known for his Pythagorean Theorem,” says Ethan.
“Yes, that’s it,” I say. At this point, I am just trying not to offend anyone. Usually I can read people and know what sets them off. Most of the time, I purposely try to get a rise out of them. The Gregor’s on the other hand are an entirely different breed of people that I cannot pin down.
“Yes, but Pythagoras was more than just a mathematician, he was a religious man,” says Jeff, enlightening our ignorant minds. “He was said by his teacher to be the reincarnation of Aithalides.”
“Who’s that?” Ethan asks.
I’m glad he asked because I was not sure if I should know who he is. I’m not much for academics. School for me was usually spent in finding ways of not being in school. It’s not that I had anything against learning or thought that I couldn’t learn. I saw many who hated school because of that. I just had so much going on in my life that the idea of learning about theorems and equations did not seem to be the most pertinent things. I’m sure if my life was more together, I would have a greater interest. But it’s hard to be up all night with someone’s drunken rampage and to be expected to function as if nothing existed outside of school. But that’s exactly what the teachers always wanted fro
m me. Needless to say, I wasn’t that cooperative.
“He’s the son of Hermes,” answers Jeff.
This name I did know. He was the Greek guy with the wings on his feet that could zip around really fast. I think I remember there being some relation between him and the marathon. In my head, I can vaguely recall a picture of him carrying a rod or something, but any details of him have been wiped clean with time and so the only response I can give is, “He’s a Greek god, right.”
“Messenger of the gods,” Jeff adds. “A very important station. In fact, he was the one who gave Pandora the jar.”
“Don’t you mean box,” says Ethan. He seems way too interested in this. Of course, it could be that he is trying to be polite, a good listener.
“Many think incorrectly that it was a box, but in actuality, it was a jar,” says Jeff, looming in close to me. “A jar filled with all the malice and evil that now pervades our world.” He is obviously trying to get a reaction out of me, but the only reaction I am getting to the conversation is the beginnings of a yawn. There is a reason that these types become math teachers. They need a place to keep them so they don’t disrupt normal conversations.
“And hope,” adds Ethan.
“What?” Jeff turns to him.
“Hope,” says Ethan again. “That was at the bottom of the jar. Wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Of course.” Jeff seems less impressed by this aspect of the story. My interest, on the other hand, is peaked. It might be because Ethan is speaking and I find his voice intoxicating. If he had been my math teacher, I would have gone to class more often.
“Prometheus,” continues Jeff, “out of mercy, decided to place hope at the bottom of it all. He being the god of foresight, he blinded our ability to see what was to come. Thus allowing us…hope. Something that we needed after the misery and imperfections were left to run rampant in the world.”
“So all those gods knew that there were bad things in the jar,” I say, quite distraught by the story. “And they still gave it to her.”
“The gods were the ones that put them in the jar,” Jeff says.
“But why? That’s an awful thing to do.” This story has not raised my opinion of gods by any degree. Not that it was that high to begin with. As far as I am concerned, if there is a God, I want nothing to do with him. Especially, not ones that send misery and pain upon the world. Man does a good enough job messing things up on his own, we don’t need God adding his hand to it.
“Who knows why they did it,” Jeff replies. “Perhaps jealousy. Perhaps revenge.” He shakes his head. “Yes that’s probably it, revenge. What else drives the greatest of men to do evil acts?”
Ethan suddenly seems uneasy. “Well, even God must enact his revenge on those who do evil.”
“Why should he? What right does he have to give us such miseries in this life?” I ask, allowing my anger to invade the conversation.
“It is just a myth,” Ethan says, confused by my sudden anger. “No one believes that a group of gods put misery in a bottle to give to man. God is not at fault for the miseries of man.”
“Well he hasn’t done much to alleviate them,” I exclaim. Ethan says nothing. “We do the best we can without him and instead of helping us, he enacts his revenge on us.”
“His revenge is upon those that make misery for man,” Ethan replies sternly. “And if he doesn’t, then we must. We must be God’s vengeance.” He says these words as if he has his own anger issues to deal with that make mine pale in comparison.
By this time, Jeff is getting uneasy with where the conversation is heading. “Wrath,” he says, “not revenge. Wrath is about judgment. And judgment is best given to God’s wisdom, not man’s.”
“Yes, of course,” Ethan concedes, once again calm and in complete control of his emotions.
Tired of the discussion of God, my attention retreats into the painting. My eyes rest on a figure standing next to Pythagoras. It is that of a woman holding what looks like a chalk tablet with strange markings on it. One of them seems quite familiar, but I am not sure where I have seen it. It is ten straight lines like tick marks arranged in a triangle. “What is that?” I ask, interrupting the uneasy silence that has developed. “It seems familiar.”
Jeff moves in close to the painting, adjusting his bifocals and squinting. “Ah now, that is a very important symbol to the Pythagorean Brotherhood.”
“The what?”
“The followers of Pythagoras,” he says. “The symbol is called the tetractys or ‘mystic tetrad’. It represented the elements of creation: earth, fire, water and air. It also shows the 3 dimensions of space.”
“What about the curvy things above it?” I ask.
“That, my dear, is a diagram of the consonances of music. It is said that Pythagoras discovered the origins of music theory while passing by a blacksmith and listening to his hammer strike on the anvil. Interestingly, others attribute the discovery of music to Hermes who fashioned the first instrument, the lyre. Also a very sacred symbol. In any case, Pythagoras felt that his geometry of music could be transferred to everything in the cosmos, even the movements of the planets. A sort of ‘harmony of the spheres’, if you will.”
None of this, of course, sinks in. Perhaps Jeff forgot that he is talking to a teenager in public education. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I say.
Jeff thinks for a moment, most likely trying to find some way to bring it down to my IQ level. “Think of it as if the entire universe was nothing more than the expression of musical notes, as if God himself were playing a tune and poof here we are.”
“Pythagoras thought the universe was created out of one of God’s little ditties?” I ask. The image of God sitting at a baby-grand, plunking out show tunes, sporting Elton John glasses is amusing and better than any other image I have had of him.
“Maybe that’s a little too over-simplified,” Jeff says. “The point is that he saw close ties between music and the motion of all things in the cosmos. It is not an uncommon thing for people to believe that the Universe was created and is maintained by a song or words from God.”
“Hmmm.” I’m not sure what else to say to this. My curiosity has long since been spent. And I don’t care to go into anymore details of Pythagoras and his brotherhood. From what it sounds like, they’re just a bunch of kooks who read too much into things. Unfortunately, Ethan’s interests are not quite satiated.
“What do you know about this Pythagorean brotherhood?” he asks.
Jeff seems uncomfortable with the question. “Why do you ask?”
“Just curiosity’s sake.”
“The brotherhood was very guarded as to who they divulged information to,” Jeff says, almost annoyed. “While they accepted outsiders, they were very particular about who they trusted with their most sacred secrets.”
“What secrets could a mathematician possibly have?” I ask, skeptical. “I mean they’re just dealing with numbers.”
“To the Pythagoreans and many other ancients, numbers were considered mystical. Akin to magic. Their secrets required great devotion. You see, mathematics represents a higher order of perfection separate from the rest of the world. That is something of great worth to a lot of people.”
“Worth killing for,” Ethan interjects.
“There is a story of one of Pythagoras’ students who threatened to divulge the long kept secret of irrational numbers. He was taken out on a boat with some of Pythagoras’ followers and drown at sea. All in the name of maintaining perfect order.”
“What are…” I’m about to ask what irrational numbers are, but decide that I don’t really care to have another long drawn out Math lesson. “Never mind.”
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