Shockingly, the agent also notifies Maxine that she qualifies to receive the million-dollar reward the FBI offered for any information that might lead to the bomber’s capture. The agent warns her the government will need to deduct taxes from the reward, but they already have her social security number in their files.
A million dollars? For turning Thaddy in? Thaddy certainly wasn’t Jesus Christ, but she can’t help thinking of herself as Judas. She considers giving the reward to Thaddy’s mother. But Thaddy’s family will want the money even less than she does. Maybe she can use it to fund her institute. But even a million dollars will be too little, too late. Better to use at least some of the money to set up a fund in memory of Supervisory Special Agent Roland Shauntz. She will put Burdock in charge of figuring out how to spend it; hopefully, he won’t commission a tasteless portrait. Maybe she will divide up the rest to pay restitution to Thaddy’s victims. God knows if Arnold Schlechter will accept the money, or to what end he might put it. But that’s no concern of hers.
What she would really like to do is reserve some of the money to finance Zach and Angelina’s project. Zach won’t want to benefit from turning in his friend. And there has to be something suspect about a middle-class white kid thinking he can save Detroit by swooping in and growing vegetables. But maybe, with this unexpected windfall, not to mention the long-delayed proceeds of her mother’s lawsuit, the universe is showing its approval of the scheme.
… Holds Hands with Death
The Monday after Thaddy blows himself up, the provost wakes Maxine, calling to congratulate her on bringing to bay one of the nation’s most wanted criminals.
“But you know,” Perpetua says, “this leaves us with even less incentive to find additional sources of revenue for your institute.” The fundraiser has been canceled. “We can’t solicit donations for a program that will forever be associated in the public’s mind with a notorious antifuturist terrorist.”
Blearily, Maxine reminds the provost that Thaddy was enrolled in the mathematics department and had no real affiliation with her institute. But Perpetua has given the IFS faculty until the end of the year to clear out their offices; the following spring, the building will be demolished to make way for the new Thomas and Betsy Winkelmann Center for Entrepreneurial Research.
Maxine forces herself out of bed and sends around an email calling an emergency meeting to break the news. Rosa is using her vacation days to prepare for her granddaughter’s arrival, and the receptionist hasn’t returned from her maternity leave, so when Maxine arrives for the meeting, the front desk stands as empty as the prow of the Flying Dutchman.
She can’t bring herself to unlock her office. Instead, she kills time sitting in the grungy lounge, leafing mindlessly through scientific journals that only a few months earlier promised the latest revelations and discoveries but now are shabby and stained by coffee rings. When the faculty arrives, she calls the meeting to order—and is surprised to find, for the first time in the history of the institute she founded, no one seems to resent that she is running it.
“I would never have found the courage to do what you did,” Tobin Brazelton marvels.
Carleton Marius wants to know what science fiction novels were found in the bomber’s cabin.
Alphred and the rest of the AI and Robotics guys ply her for details about the FBI’s methods of surveillance.
Only Jackson seems to understand the reality of what has happened. “It would behoove us to remember someone died. A young man who graduated from our institution. And he took innocent lives with him. I don’t know how we can call ourselves a university when we allow so many of our young people to live in so much pain. This is what happens when we focus so much on preparing them in the sciences and neglect the development of their souls.”
And that ends the conversation. For once, there is nothing else on the agenda. Maxine doesn’t need to break the news that they have only a few months to pack up their offices; if anything, she was the last to know. Carleton is returning to the English Department to run a program in something called the Digital Humanities. Gavin Reinehardt, who never spent more than a few hours a week at the institute anyway, will resume working full time in his genetics lab.
The only surprise—at least to Maxine—is that Alphred and the rest of the AI team have signed on as consultants at the new entrepreneurial think tank. Even Tobin will be taking a position at the Winkelmann Center, managing any new terrors that might arise to frighten consumers out of making purchases.
They beg Maxine to join them. And really, why is she so adamant about refusing? Wasn’t her father an entrepreneur? How nefarious would it be to anticipate the products that might make human beings happier? Products that might distract us from our boredom? Our loneliness? Our fear of death? But she can’t muster the slightest enthusiasm for the prospect.
Alphred makes a motion to thank Maxine for her years of hard work in creating and directing the institute.
“Hear! Hear!” cries Gerhard Klostermann.
“I can’t imagine where I would have ended up if it weren’t for you, Maxine,” Alphred admits. “When I think of what a snotty twerp I was when I signed up for that seminar …”
They rise and clap with at least a modicum of appreciation before they toss their coffee cups in the trash and head out the door.
That afternoon, when she arrives to teach her final class of the semester, the students are dying to ask about the story they have been following in the campus daily.
“I’m sorry,” Maxine says. “I can’t talk about any of that. He was my student. The way all of you are my students.” She hands out blue books for the exam, then sits at the front of the room and tries to concentrate on the poetry she brought to read. It’s one of the volumes Jackson gave her, by Philip Larkin. Jackson has earmarked a poem called “Aubade,” which Maxine thinks might mean … well, she has no idea what the title means. To her, “aubade” is the kind of word a person would find in the title of a poem and nowhere else:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die… .
She rereads the poem, oddly comforted that a stranger has expressed the fear that has haunted her all her life.
… Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood… .
She looks around at her students, nearly all of whom are scribbling in their blue books. She has set only one essay: they are to project themselves thirty years into the future and describe the ways the topics they have discussed that term will influence their daily lives. Luther van Dyke is studying his tattoos; maybe the raven is croaking out suggestions. Hideyo Suzuki writes so intently all Maxine can see is the topknot on his head. Tommy Bruce chews on his pen, no doubt attempting to figure out if baseball is still being played in the middle of the twenty-first century and, if so, how it might be affected by the increased longevity of its players. Did he make it to the pros? Will he be able to continue pitching into his seventies?
At the rear of the room, Russell Charnow sits with his eyes closed, his expression conveying that his time would be better spent anywhere but in this room. Thaddy was a fair, blue-eyed, square-jawed Slav; Russell is a tall, dark, Dostoevskian Jew. But there is something similar about these two young men. Russell came to Michigan as a physics prodigy. Like Thaddy, he gives off the air of someone studying for the priesthood who is afraid to admit he has lost his faith. He no longer rolls his eyes at everything Maxine says. But his essays still give off the brimstone stink of rage. In one paper, he theorized that if the majority of the population chooses to take advantage of medical advances that allow for extreme longevity, and if one unhappy person carries out a massacre that cuts down victims who
otherwise might have lived hundreds of years, the punishment will need to be all that much greater than the system metes out now. If the penalty for murder now is death, won’t the penalty for slaying a human being who otherwise might have lived forever be perpetual torture? She imagines Russell ten or twenty years from now, bearded, unwashed, poring over a wiring diagram. Sees him rigging his jacket with explosives. Walking toward the bushes where Supervisory Special Agent Roland Shauntz stands arguing with the local ranger about the boundary of his property.
She can’t leave the room. Not while she is proctoring her exam. She only hopes the students won’t notice she is crying.
But of course they notice. The first to finish is Obayo Stevens. He bends from his great height, lays his blue book in front of Maxine, then, tentatively, places his enormous hand on her shoulder. “You okay?” he mouths. When she doesn’t answer, Obayo bends and envelopes her in a massive hug. He lets her go, and Maxine smiles up at him to reassure him what he has done is okay. He gives her a thumbs-up and leaves.
After that, every student who hands in a blue book bends for a hug.
“Thanks for everything,” says Patti Querk.
“Great class,” says Tommy Bruce.
Last of all, Russell shuffles up and tosses his blue book on the pile. For all she knows, he has written “FUCK YOU!” on every page. She can’t hold herself responsible for the anger of every white guy who feels unloved. If she continues to teach, shouldn’t she invest her energy in students like Obayo Stevens, Yvonne Switalski, or Patti Querk?
“Russell,” she says. “You stay in touch, okay? Let me know how things are going.”
The expression that comes over him is the expression Maxine imagines on Raskolnikov’s face when he is surprised in the middle of his robbery and hacks the pawnbroker’s sister with his axe. She jumps to her feet, to evade whatever blow he might deliver.
“I’m sorry I was such an asshole,” Russell says. “This is the only class I felt like coming to all semester.” He reaches as if to hug her, then backs away and hurries out, leaving Maxine as unsteady on her feet as if, without her student’s support, she might topple from a cliff and fall.
The next afternoon, she drives to Sunrise Hills. According to the nurse, her mother has been sleeping more than usual. Refusing to eat or get out of bed. This might be the natural effect of the Parkinson’s. Or her mother has seen the news on TV and can no longer bear the horror.
When Maxine goes in, her mother is lying not on top of the covers but underneath them. She is so thin she barely makes a bump. Maxine pulls up a chair. Strokes her mother’s face. Kisses it. But her mother doesn’t stir. Her father was dead when the EMTs carried his body past her. Her husband died on another continent. She is damn well going to be sitting beside her mother when she draws her last breath.
“Mom?” she says. She thinks of revealing the news about the million-dollar reward. But Maxine isn’t even sure her mother knows who she is. “Mom?” she says again. “Do you want to get your hair done? I’ll come as early as you want.”
Her mother’s eyes flutter open. They focus on Maxine. She shakes her head no. Then she closes her eyes and goes back to sleep.
A week later, they move her upstairs to hospice. She hasn’t been conscious for more than a few minutes here and there, has eaten nothing but ice chips. No doubt she would derive great joy from holding her newborn great-grandson. But has her time on the planet really been so valuable that she should be granted eternal life? If Maxine could prolong her mother’s suffering, even for a minute, would she?
“It’s all right, Mom. Everything is okay. I love you.”
The hospice nurse tells Maxine the end will come soon. Another hour passes. A series of rasping, throat-rattling breaths. Her mother is here, but not here. Crazily, Maxine watches for her mother’s soul to escape her body. And so is thrown backward in alarm when her mother rears up and shouts, “Lennie! Lennie!,” smiling radiantly, as if she sees Maxine’s father at the door, bringing her a bouquet, as he often did on his way home from his appliance store. The nurse warned Maxine that when someone’s brain is deprived of oxygen, she will imagine she is seeing “beloved ones from her past.” And yet, her father’s presence is so strong Maxine wants to find a vase to hold the flowers.
Her mother’s arms shoot up to her head. “My hair! My hair!” As if her husband will be so put off by her appearance he will turn and trudge back to his grave in Fenstead.
“It doesn’t matter,” Maxine says. “Dad loves you. I love you.”
Even so, she can’t let go of her mother’s hand. It’s as if they are crossing Fenstead’s busiest street and Maxine isn’t sure if her mother is keeping her safe or pulling her into the path of an oncoming car.
This is how Zach and Angelina find them. The baby is due in less than two weeks. Zach and Angelina had an appointment with her obstetrician earlier that afternoon. “Stop by when you’re finished,” Maxine told them, thinking her mother would hold on for another day.
“Jesus,” Zach says. “Is Grandmom dead?”
Yes, she thinks. Her mother is dead. She and Zach will need to drive to Saratoga to bury her mother beside her father. After Maxine dies, will Zach and Angelina ever travel to Fenstead to pay their respects to Maxine’s parents? Will it matter if no one does?
Zach takes his grandmother’s other hand, as if they might send the current of life coursing between them. “Goodbye, Grandmom.” He leans down and kisses her cheek. Then he chides his mother for not having warned him that his grandmother was so close to dying. “You should have told me, Mom. Angie and I would have rescheduled our appointment.”
Angelina, who is balancing on her crutches, seems like Atlas holding up the world, except she is holding it in her belly and not on her back. She steps closer to the bed, then, alarmingly, drops her crutches and groans. Water gushes to the floor.
“Angie!” Zach says. But he isn’t quick enough to keep her from curling to her knees.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” Her breathing is ragged, not unlike the breaths Maxine’s mother struggled to draw a few minutes earlier. “It hurts so much! Zach! The baby! It’s coming!”
The hospice nurse, who has stepped in to see how Maxine’s mother is doing, runs to press the buzzer. Luckily, one of the other nurses on the floor has experience in obstetrics. She and an aide lift Angelina to a wheelchair, then wheel her down to meet the ambulance, where, Maxine thinks, the EMTs will be pleasantly surprised to find they are picking up not an old person destined for intensive care but a pregnant young woman about to give birth.
Zach lingers to make sure his mother will be all right. “This is just so crazy.” He gestures to his grandmother, then out the door toward his fiancée. “I’ll text you. I’ll let you know what’s going on.” Then he dashes out—she can hear his loping gait as he hurries to catch the elevator.
The hospice nurse flips open a clean sheet and allows it to flutter over Maxine’s mother’s body. Maxine wants to pull it from her mother’s face and ask: So, did that shade of mascara matter? But she finally understands her mother’s vanity. Why not look your best while you have the chance? She will give the funeral director her mother’s favorite pink lipstick, her new mascara, her favorite turquoise suit and matching pumps.
The nurse is gone a long time. So, her mother seems to be saying from beneath the sheet, if you’re such an expert on death, is there anything you know that I don’t?
No, Maxine wants to say. I don’t know a thing.
Except that the dead are boring. She wants to call Rosa. But it seems rude to talk on your cell phone in front of a dead person.
She calls anyway. “And please,” she tells Rosa, “don’t say anything about the transmigration of souls. Did my mother’s essence just kind of float out of her body and into my grandchild’s?”
“That isn’t how it works.”
“There’s no other way it could work.”
“I would explain,” Rosa says, “but I’m here in Grand Rapids, waiting for Mick to come back from taking Risa to get ice cream. Then we’re going to buy her some clothes so she doesn’t look like an eleven-year-old stripper.”
Maxine can hear Rosa’s impatience to get off the phone. But she is reluctant to allow her to go, not only because she doesn’t want to be left alone with her mother, but because she knows from now on, Rosa will have more important concerns than her. “Rosa,” she asks, “what do you think of Jackson Sparrow?”
“As what, a poet?”
“As a lover.”
“I don’t think Mick would appreciate my taking another boyfriend.”
“Is he too old for me? I think he’s too old. I don’t want to lose another husband.”
“Ah,” Rosa says. She yells something to Mick that involves “pistachio” and “chocolate chip.” “I have found that if you are worrying about someone dying, that’s a pretty clear sign you care about him. That’s how I knew I loved Mick. I kept watching him eat those Boston crème donuts he likes, and one day, I smashed one from his hand and asked if he was trying to make sure he died before he hit seventy.” More shouting. “Speaking of which, Mick just came back and said Risa threw a tantrum and tried to run in front of a truck. I have to go.”
The driver from the funeral home is large and bald, his forehead dented in such a way that Maxine imagines him kneeling behind a hearse and someone yanking out a casket. She answers his questions and signs some paperwork. She tells her mother goodbye, then tempers her sadness by reminding herself that her son is waiting at the hospital with her newborn grandchild.
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