A Theory of Relativity

by Jacquelyn Mitchard

“Well. Leave it alone, son. Just know, that there was nothing . . . the medics tried. They got the jaws of life, and they were going in. But they were gone . . .”

  “I know. I know they tried their best.”

  “It had probably been hours. The way the car was, no one would have noticed it.”

  “They . . . Ray and . . . my sister . . . left really early. I was over at my mom’s. Georgia put the baby in bed with me and said, ‘Kiss me, so you don’t . . .’ Had he smelled of Georgia’s scent, the Sugar Cookie cologne they sold at the Soap Bubble? He had a brief, gauzy impression of the cologne washing over him. Kiss me, so you don’t miss me. The limp, dampish bundle of Keefer, in her terry-cloth footie suit, placed between Gordon and the wall.

  “What?”

  “No, just a thing my sister . . . my mom always said it to us, when we left for school. Just, it was how she said good-bye; I wasn’t even awake yet.”

  “Oh. Anyhow, are you . . . can you get up, son? But take all the time you need. I could use a breather myself.” The big man, his eyes ringed and sad as a hound’s, was pouring sweat.

  “I’m ready.”

  “We should go see your folks, then. Ed Dean . . . my deputy called your uncle Mike. I’m guessing Mike went to get your dad at Medi-Sun.” Larsen drew a deep breath. “Gordon, you know I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart. Your folks, and Georgia, especially Georgia, meant a great deal to us. I know this is a helluva note. You’ve all had a time of it. And this isn’t going to make things any—”

  “It’s okay,” Gordon said. “Really, if you think about it one way, it makes things simpler for us.”

  The sheriff fell silent so long Gordon at first believed the man had not heard him, but when he glanced up, he saw with a sinking heart, the familiar look . . . he’d seen it a hundred times before. He’d gone ahead and done it, cut to the chase when other people were getting used to the scenery. Done it, meaning nothing by it, nothing but a leadfooted attempt at assurance.

  “You mean,” Sheriff Larsen ventured, “that it’s easier on . . . on Georgia.”

  “Yes,” Gordon agreed gratefully. “This way . . . it’s just. We would have had to watch her . . . die.”

  But then Gordon realized—and he had to work at this a bit, his mind struggling to get around it as a small child struggles to hold a fat pencil—Ray’s death made things simple in other ways, as well. Ways that even he could never say openly, could barely even permit himself to think. Georgia would have died soon in any case; but Ray would have lived on. And probably sooner rather than later, he’d have taken Keefer and moved to the edge of some southland golf club. He’d want to be near his own parents, so they could look after her during the endless summer Ray spent out on his minor pro golf tour. Ray might even have remarried—he was younger than Georgia, Gordon’s age. And eventually, the McKennas’ daily immersion in Keefer, since the day of her birth, would dwindle to Christmas visits and thank-you notes markered in a childish hand. They would have lost Keefer as surely as they had lost Georgia, in a breathtaking one-two punch.

  But now, the latter half of the punch was pulled. For Ray’s and Georgia’s will specified that the McKennas, he and his parents, would care for Keefer. If anything should ever happen.

  And anything had.

  What he had meant to say, and he had almost said it, was that losing Ray meant not losing Keefer.

  Okay, it was horrible. It was shitty. It was cold and harsh.

  But it was true, wasn’t it?

  Life is not a lab, he heard his sister’s voice say. Gordie, you are the most well-educated doorknob I have ever known. You always manage to have all the facts and still miss the point.

  The facts, he had always retorted, were the point.

  And the facts, Gordie thought, as he got into his own car to follow the sheriff’s cruiser to his parents’ home on Cleveland Avenue, meant he would have to be, now, right now, a father. And so he would have to give an account of this day to Keefer to explain why her own parents could not raise her. He would have to take painstaking care to tell it true, just as his parents had told him the unvarnished truth—he would have, honestly, preferred a little varnish—about his own origin. Keefer would be, Gordon realized, an adopted child, too, as he and Georgia had been. And she would, as Gordon did, tend to date her origins not from conception but from inclusion. She was only a baby, after all. She would never remember this time. Gordon had himself always felt that before his parents claimed him, he’d existed in limbo, between lives.

  He prized his story, the story his parents told him over and over. How you came to be ours. And Georgia had prized her story even more. His sister, exotically enough, had been the birth child of a Hungarian medical student stranded pregnant in the United States. His own story was humbler, a teenage cashier’s vague recollection of tanned biceps, a moonlit night, and the guy who ran the Tilt o’Whirl. His mother had once told Gordon, who remained rueful about the comment for years, that when they’d heard of Georgia’s existence, “We thought we hit the genetic jackpot! Since the mother was both Hungarian, like my family, like Grammy and Grandpa Kiss, and a medical student, we’d have a baby who’d look like me and be smart like Daddy!”

  But Gordon had been the one who earned a bachelor’s in environmental science. Georgia, who could play chess at four and read the newspaper headlines at five, whizzed through high school without ever studying for a test or ever earning anything less than a C, perpetually running for something, some school office or club, making Lorraine paint posters, buying jelly beans for the whole student body on election day. Mark had predicted that he would walk into the parking lot at Medi-Sun one morning and find his daughter shaking hands: “I’m Georgia McKenna, your senator . . .” But Georgia had summoned up no greater ambition than managing a soap boutique in Tall Trees, two blocks from the house where she’d grown up.

  And here, Keefer would grow up. Keefer’s story, beginning with this day, would include radiant, intentional parents snatched away by a grotesque twist of fate, which was horrible.

  But it would be told her by the remains of her birth family, which was a plus.

  They would have to explain to Keefer about that collision of forfeit and gift, the truth of all adoptions.

  Gordon would want her to know that not even his grief over losing his sister and Ray meant that he would ever be anything but happy to have her. He did love her so. Being around Keefer had made these past months bearable. That, and . . . well, he shouldn’t even think this, but . . . having his sister back. Half the time he was terrified and horrified by her illness, but half the time he was . . . happy. Happy in her company, which he’d missed since she’d gone ahead, zoomed into full-fledged adulthood, leaving him feeling like some absurd, overgrown kid. He’d enjoyed sitting up late with her when she couldn’t sleep, while Ray was out on the circuit or snoring like a rhino on the twin bed that had been shoved to one side to make room for Georgia’s massive hospital contraption, watching Twilight Zone reruns, even playing charades. You can’t always do Rainman, Gordie. It’s like running the play up the middle. The other team catches on after a while.

  He wouldn’t have chosen this. But here it was.

  He would take it as it came.

  People would say he was being too . . . methodical or something. They would say he shouldn’t even be thinking of the future at a time like this. They always said that. And it was always bullshit.

  Well, he’d tried slowing down to the polite pace, and he had no talent for it. Georgia loved to tell the story of Gordie’s first attempt at heroic sensitivity. Her name was Taylor, and for the first semester of college, a mere whiff of her Vanilla Bean sun lotion was a ticket to his instant erection. But fall melted into winter and then spring, and he’d got eyes for this peppery little New Yorker in his water-quality engineering lab, and that meant facing the inevitable kiss-off confrontation over caffeine. It seemed to Gordon an amazement of life: One day Taylor’s sleeping bag on Cocoa Beach was all he’d ever hoped
of heaven, and the next day, it was like finishing off a pound of fudge. You just knew you would have to have time to forget the taste before you’d touch the stuff again. With what seemed to him great care, Gordon had explained to Taylor that he had hoped theirs would turn out to be a great year-long relationship, but instead, it had turned out to be a great three-month relationship. There was nothing wrong with them, nothing wrong with her, or with him. There was no reason to be sorry for the times they’d spent together; he would always remember them. She would always show up in his dreams, he said (and he’d liked this part), in Technicolor, and with the smell of vanilla. And in an instant, Taylor one-handed her heavy book bag across the table, knocking over his cup, burning the hell out of his thigh. . . . What? Why?

  Don’t you get it, Gordo, Georgia had asked him, back then, when he’d whined over the phone about the general unreasonableness of women, don’t you get that you could have chosen a more sensitive way?

  Gordon couldn’t believe it; that had been the sensitive way. The unvarnished truth would have been to tell Taylor that leaving him notes sealed with kitten stickers and insisting that the whorl of hair on the crown of a human head was an exact mirror of the solar system were things he could ignore only before the first full month they’d been sleeping together.

  No, no, no! Georgia had said. No one could ever meet your standards and still keep you from getting bored. She told him that his intolerance for other people’s little quirks and weaknesses was really not integrity. It was a birth defect, a mental block that only tripped other people.

  It had been only one dumb conversation. One of hundreds of im-promptu brother-sister rants. But dying young, and leaving in her wake a raveled mess of intentions, Georgia had made all her words last words, and all her words prophetic . . .

  It would finally come to him, long after the court proceedings were over, that he had—in innocence? in arrogance?—honestly thought that life could be lived like an experiment conducted in keeping with scientific method, that a certain set of results could be obtained and, once obtained, repeated. And it was not possible. Or it was possible only if you were a hermit. If your life was lived in contact with anyone else, contact changed the nature of the experiment. The uncontrolled variable intruded, the pressure of the human hand behind the instruments.

  The day of the accident, the drive home from the bridge, would be the last time Gordon would be confident, stupidly confident, that he was well on the way to managing the most horrific surprise his life would likely ever offer.

  In court just a few months after the accident, the facts, that which Gordon had always relied on as his best defense, would be turned to work against him. And they would seem poised to work against him decisively, elegantly, just as Georgia’s leukocytes, her body’s sworn defenders, had turned collaborators with her illness, doing just what cells should do, but more avidly, with more precision. The judge would suggest an interpretation of law that no one could argue was not literally true, but which might have the power to blight both the future and also the past for Gordon and his family. Love, like fear, might only be a thought, but love had blinkered Gordon. He had not seen it coming.

  CHAPTER two

  Another half hour, and Nora Nordstrom would have been gone by the time the sheriff’s car pulled up to the curb on Cleveland Avenue. She’d have made the turn off County Q onto Spirit Lake Road and been more than halfway home. Her sister-in-law Lorraine would have been alone when Dale Larsen came up that walk with the burden of his terrible news, Gordon trailing right behind him.

  The Lord, Nora had to think, not without a shudder, works in mysterious ways. But some of the things he revealed were not wonders.

  There was only one kind of grief that was unendurable, a child dying who was old enough to know what dying was. Nora had lost a baby boy born two months too soon, years before her eldest son. He’d lived only two days, and though she could still feel the leaflike weight of him in her arms, she still kept a white crocheted blanket she’d swaddled him in while he took his few, excruciatingly slow and shuddering breaths, she had known even then that she was young and strong enough to be able to convert this death to a sad memory instead of a tragedy. Nora imagined that the transition back between worlds had been inconsiderable, the only loss being her own. As for Georgia’s death, Nora feared that if she let herself think about anything but helping console her brother and Lorraine and Gordie, her rage would burn down these walls.

  When she saw the police car, her first, silly thought was, there’ll be no berries boxed this afternoon. A police car never meant anything good. Lorraine, carrying Keefer, came into the hall where Nora was already standing, her big straw carryall at her feet.

  “Lorraine,” the sheriff said, “may I come inside?”

  “Of course, Dale,” Lorraine told him, pushing open the screen, admitting the sheriff into the gloom of the hall. She said then, “Look, I know it’s Mark. He had a heart attack, didn’t he? I know he’ll make it. He’s been jogging every day for fifteen years—”

  “It’s not Mark,” the sheriff said. “Afternoon, Nora.” He nodded, and carefully, as if it hurt him, removed his broad-brimmed hat. “Gordie’s right here, he’s just fine, and Mike is bringing Mark home from the plant. Mark is just fine.”

  “Georgia’s in the hospital,” Lorraine said, her voice dull as a nickel dropping. “She had a seizure. Keefer Kathryn,” she nuzzled the baby. “Your mama loves you with all her heart.”

  “Lorraine,” the sheriff said.

  “Mommy,” Gordon put in. His face was raw looking, blotched. “Let Aunt Nora take Keefer for a minute.” Lorraine obeyed, mutely opening her arms, eyes wide.

  “There’s been an accident, Lorraine,” Dale Larsen said gently, reaching out to take Lorraine’s elbow when she swayed. “The car . . . Mark’s old car. Maybe the brakes went out. It was at Lost Tribe crick. They went through the guardrail. The car flew over to the opposite bank.”

  “Where are they?” Lorraine asked. “Was Ray hurt?”

  “Both Ray and Georgia were killed instantly, Lorraine. They never felt a thing. They never knew what happened.”

  Lorraine moaned and her head rolled back on her shoulders, that wild mop of hair unraveling. She looked to Nora like one of those Greek or Roman women in the paintings they put on the overhead projector back in high school, mourning fallen legions on the battlefield. Nora opened her arms and Gordie snuggled against her. “I saw the car,” he said.

  “Are you sure there wasn’t a mistake?” Nora asked, thinking of the time her middle boy, Dan, was supposed to have been out with his friends at one of those drinking parties at Two Chimneys, and someone heard over their home scanner there was a wreck, and she and Hayes about went crazy until they found Dan asleep in the backyard hammock. “Are you sure it was them?”

  Georgia? she thought, scanning the sunny distance for some hint of connection to her niece, to her niece’s consciousness. Georgia? Georgia, of all the seven McKenna clan children, the only girl, her auntie’s special angel, from the time she was a demanding, headstrong little girl in corkscrew curls to the luminous bride blowing an air kiss at Nora while she walked down the aisle, her train like a mermaid’s shining, luxuriant tail.

  “The car was completely destroyed,” the sheriff said. “That car . . . you couldn’t take the Chevy for anyone else’s car.”

  “We brought her home in that car,” Lorraine said dreamily. “It was our lucky car. You know? We felt like, Georgia being born made us young all over again. It was kind of old even then, and I had my station wagon, which was probably a lot safer . . .”

  “I’m going to put Keefer down,” Nora said, but she didn’t move, just stood there.

  “Georgia was three days old. We’d never seen anything so tiny and perfect. Mark asked me if human babies had their eyes open when they were born! As if she was a kitten! People didn’t really use car seats so much then. But we got one, because we were afraid that if we didn’t do everything to the letter
the social worker would take her back or something. Mark said she looked like an egg in a cup. But we got about one mile away from the foster parents’ house and I reached back and took her out. I knew it was dangerous, and she was fast asleep; but I wanted to bring her home in my arms . . .”

  Nora and the sheriff exchanged frowns. It would have been a relief if Lorraine had screamed or cried or even collapsed on the floor. Keefer whined, “Mama!” As if she knew.

  Nora caught herself remembering. That sunny summer morning Mark and Lorraine had driven by the farm on the way home with the new baby, in that big, fancy sports car, she and Hayes just jumped in their truck and followed them back to town. It was like a parade, from the library to the University of Wisconsin Extension office, to the mechanic, the diner, Lorraine’s school, the Chaptmans’, the Soderbergs’, the Reillys’, the Upchurches’. Adopting a baby was not so commonplace then. People hardly knew how to stop themselves from blurting things like, she’s so beautiful, why didn’t her mother want her? They just let you have her? Is she all right?

  Nora was still lost in that anguishing recollection of approving smiles, blessing hands, honeyed sunshine, when her brother Mike came peeling around the corner of First and Cleveland and drove his truck up onto the curb, he and Mark—both of them skinny as cranes—loping up over the lawn, Mark, his big hands helplessly spread, reaching first for his wife, then his sister, and Mike angry, what the hell had happened? Wasn’t enough grief for one family, enough?

  All at once, the phone started to ring, and over the next hour, the first wave of friends began hitting the front porch like soldiers landing on a beach. Nora ended up never going home at all, just sending word to Hayes and her daughter-in-law Bradie to turn off the soup she’d set to simmer that morning and leave it out for the fieldworkers to eat that night. She felt a twinge of guilt, glad the answering machine picked up, instead of her husband. She’d been spending so much time in town since Georgia’s illness that Hayes was beginning to grouse. On a truck farm this far north, hours of sunlight and warmth were gold, pure gold.