In the Beginning: Mars Origin "I" Series Book I (19 page)

“So, Professor Carey, there were no alien
encounters, invasions, or visitations with Earth men?”

“No. There weren’t.”

“How do you know for sure?” A student in
the back asked.

“We can’t always say for sure what did
happen, but we can ninety-nine percent of the time, say what didn’t happen. And
in this case, we know there were no invasions from space.”

Professor Carey glanced at the wall clock
and then down as his watch. “We didn’t cover everything I had planned for
today, but we had a good discussion. He hesitated. “Are there any other
questions or comments?” No one offered anything. “Then we’ll see you next
class.” He raised his voice over the noise of the students leaving the
classroom. “Read chapters four through seven in your textbook and I’ll see you
Wednesday.”

Courtney Dickerson left the lecture hall
and caught up with her friends Kelly and Robin.

“Hey, Courtney,” Robin said, “You goin’ on
the yard?”

“No, I gotta go back to my room and call
my dad.”

“Why, something wrong?”

“Oh, no. I just need some money and I want
to ask him if I can go to Florida for Spring Break.”

“You think your parents’ll let you go?”
Kelly asked.

“My dad a probably say I can go, but my
mother is a different story. She’s been translating some manuscripts that she
and my uncles found when they went to Jerusalem and she’s actin’ all weird
lately. Plus, she never lets me do anything. She’s so old-fashioned.”

 “Yeah, so good luck with that, huh?”

“Exactly. And she really won’t be too
happy when I tell her we learned about aliens and lines on the ground in
archaeology class.”

Cleveland Heights, Ohio

It was mid-January by the time I got over
to see Mrs. Margulies and to pick up Dr. Margulies’ things she wanted to give
me. I hated that I didn’t keep my promise of making it over by New Year’s, but
it was so hard getting up the courage to go over there. I took Claire with me.
I didn’t want to face all that sadness alone.

A lingering snow storm and cold winds
whipped heavy white flakes across every inch of the way, making our trek to
bring good cheer and mirrored sympathies shivering and slick. We slowly plowed
our way through the winter wonderland to her house underneath a bright sun that
gave false hopes of warming rays. Trees, cars and people were covered with snow
and curbs had it banked four feet high. We were definitely making up for the
lack of winter weather in December.

Being in Dr. Margulies’ home brought back
such memories. They were almost overwhelming. It seemed like any moment he
would come bounding through the door, laughing, calling out to me, “Lizzy,” he
would say, “what trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”

I’d known Dr. Margulies for about fifteen
years, but it seemed like I’d known him all my life. I met him at Case Western
Reserve University when he was assigned as my advisor for my dissertation, but
he quickly became a part of everything I did. He became family.

Man, I’m gonna miss him.

Seeing Mrs. Margulies so consumed with
grief, even this long after his death, made me even sadder. I don’t know what I
would do if anything happened to Mase. Claire stuck close to me.

Claire and I stayed a long while listening
to Mrs. Margulies talk about “her Jacob.” I could see in her eyes the
loneliness and I hated to leave her that way.

After taking off all of our winter gear in
the mud room, she directed us towards the kitchen. The kitchen was small, but
warm and quaint. The checkered café curtains, poppy (she was very specific
about the color) and white, made the room bright. She sat us at the white farm-style
table with matching spindle chairs.

“How about some hot chocolate.” More of a
statement than a question as in no time she was pouring us hot chocolate into
poppy colored mugs. While she was busy around the kitchen, she started telling
us about her and Dr. Margulies. We watched as her sad eyes give way to a
twinkle that grew brighter with every word she spoke.

It would have been forty-two years they
had been married this coming October, she told us. Claire touched Mrs.
Margulies’ hand. She patted Claire’s hand, offering her a warm smile. Then she
let her memories drift back to a time she had shared with Dr. Margulies. She
told us how they’d met at church and how she’d been captivated by his dark
black hair and beautiful green eyes.

 “That’s a beautiful story, Mrs.
Margulies,” Claire said softly as she finished her story. Claire. Always the
romantic.

“Oh, please call me Frances.” She stood up
and patted her hands on the front of her thighs and went over to the stove and
poured us more hot chocolate. “Yes, and I guess it really was fate that brought
us together. You know he was born Jewish, but his mother changed religions. If
he hadn’t been at church, I guess I would have never met him.” She looked at
the two of us and then seemed to get
a
little embarrassed. “Oh listen to
me. You girls didn’t come here to hear an old woman ramble on about ancient
history. You came for the boxes.”

“Oh that’s okay.” I assured her. “We enjoy
hearing you reminisce.”

“I’m glad I didn’t bore you. We wouldn’t
want you to have an excuse not to come and visit me again.”

Claire spoke up before I could even open
my mouth. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back. Won’t we, Justin?”

“Yep. Couldn’t keep us away with a
ten-foot pole.” I smiled.

“Come then, let’s get to the matter at
hand – those boxes.”

CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE

Mrs. Margulies led us upstairs to a spare
bedroom that had pink walls and a pink, white and powder blue quilt spread
across the metal framed bed and matching pillow shams. She walked over to the
boxes that were lined up at the foot of the bed.

“Now two of these boxes are Jacob’s things
and then the one there,” she pointed to a large box in the corner of the room,
“We got from his mother’s house after she died. It’s a box of his father’s
things. I would have carried them downstairs for you but they are just a bit
much for me.”

“Oh, that’s all right. We can get them,” I
said. I went over and looked in the box in the corner. “Yes, I remember you
telling me his mother had died. Dr. Margulies didn’t mention it to me.”

“Like I told you, it was all quite
strange. I don’t think that Jacob cared much for his stepfather so Jacob and
his mother didn’t see much of each other after he left home for college. His
real father died in a car accident.”

I think there’s a clipping from the local
newspaper here somewhere.” She bent over and searched through the box from his
mother’s house. “Oh yes, here it is. It’s in Hebrew. You can read Hebrew can’t
you, Justin?” She handed me the newspaper clipping but before I could read it
she said, “Jacob’s mother had never approved of her husband’s occupation. She
felt it kept him away from his family and you’ll never believe this, Jacob’s
father was an archaeologist, too.”

“Really,” I said. “I never knew that.”

“Yes, but you know how that is, Justin. When
you’re an archaeologist, you’re always out in the field, in some foreign
country or locked up in a laboratory studying the artifacts that you’ve found.
His mother just couldn’t handle that kind of life, so after Jacob’s father died
she married a man with a regular job and made a new life for herself. She
stopped going to the synagogue and started going to a Protestant church. Her
second husband adopted Jacob. That’s why our last name is ‘Margulies.’ It was
his stepfather’s name.”

“Man, I never heard him talk about his
stepfather,” I said. I wondered did I act more like Ty than I realized.
Worrying about my problems and not taking time to find out about the lives of
the people I really cared about.

“His stepfather died a few years back.
They weren’t very close either. Yeah, so, um after she remarried they moved
from New York to Virginia. And for some reason, his mother kept a lot of his
father’s work. Let me see now, what was his father’s name? Oh yes, Sabir. Amos
Sabir. Anyway, his mother packed up all his journals, papers and things, and
put them in the attic for storage not wanting her young son to follow in his
father’s footsteps. But, as we all know, he did exactly that.”

It must have been in the genes
, I thought,
because I couldn’t have imagined Dr. Margulies as anything else.

“Although he didn’t talk about it much,”
Mrs. Margulies continued, “I think that’s another reason why he and his mother
became estranged because Jacob had gone the same route as his father. After his
mother died, Jacob brought all of his father’s things up here and started to go
through them. He never got the chance to finish because you know, he left us
right after that.”

“But one thing he found was this.” She
handed me a brown envelope that she picked up off the large dresser. “Jacob’s
mother never even opened it. He was very excited and told me he had to get you
over here to see this. He said he was going to wait until you got here to open
it because you’d be really thrilled about it.” She handed the envelope to me.

As I reached for it, I scrunched up my
nose and thought,
Why would he want me to be here . . .
. But, before I
could finish the thought Mrs. Margulies said, “Evidently his father had been
one of the original translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls.” She put the envelope
in my hand.

I froze.

I stood with my arm outstretched and my
mouth open. I had to tell myself to breathe.

Dr. Margulies’ father was a translator of
the Dead Sea Scrolls?

I forced myself to listen to the rest of
what she was saying.

He had been elated,” she continued, “He
had never known. It was the happiest I had ever seen him over a find. I know he
would want you to have it.”

I stared down at the envelope and tried to
keep focused on the conversation. “Um, yes, he – he called me and . . . uhm,
left uh, a message the day before he died.” I spoke slowing trying to get the
words out and not give way to the rush of emotions I was feeling. “I didn’t,
uhm, get a chance to, uhm, you know, return the call. Uh, ma-- maybe that’s
what he wanted to, uhm, tell me about the, uh envelope.” I could barely form
the words.

“Yes, maybe so,” she said.

I quickly looked over the newspaper
clipping I held in the one hand. It read,
‘Dr. Amos Sabir, a lead
interpreter for the Dead Sea Scrolls, was struck by lightning and killed
instantly while trying to fix a flat on his automobile in the rain last
evening.’
The newspaper was dated October 23, 1949.

I looked at the envelope in my other hand.
The postmark was from Jerusalem, dated October 22, 1949. The same day Dr. Sabir
died.

And, the same day as the entry in Dr.
Yeoman’s journal.

I folded the newspaper and put it under my
arm and held the envelope with both hands. I looked up from it and looked from
Mrs. Margulies to Claire, back to Mrs. Margulies, my eyes wide, my mind racing.
Claire looked at me out the side of her eyes. She didn’t have the faintest idea
what was going on with me. But she knew it was something. I walked over and got
real close to her and pointed to the date on the postmark. She followed my
finger as I guided her across the face of the envelope to the return address.
She looked at me, mirroring my emotions, but her furrowed brow and empty eyes
told me she was clueless. Mrs. Margulies watched the two of us.

“Fix your face.” I whispered to Claire.
Then I tried to fix mine.

I could have been blown over by a still
wind. I pushed with all my weight against the floor to anchor myself to keep
from fleeing or falling.

“Is that something important you think,
Justin?” I looked at her. She smiled waiting for my response. I wasn’t sure if
I could talk.

“Oh, I don’t know,” finally speaking, I
let the lie slip out. “It’s just old and you know I like old things.” I was
singing the words in a duet with my counterfeit calmness. A smile plastered
across my face. But curiosity burned inside me. It took all the strength I
could muster not to turn and bolt out of that room, running and screaming, to
find a place to tear open that envelope and see what was inside.

“Thank you for all of these things. I know
I will always treasure them,” I said in a sudden burst, much louder than
necessary.

“I know he would want you to have them,”
she repeated. She titled her head, placed her hands on her hips and a
questioning smile emerged. “And, let me know if you find anything interesting.”

“I certainly will.” I pushed Claire over
to the boxes. “Grab one,” I said in a hushed tone.

Once we got the boxes downstairs and by
the door where we had left our coats, Mrs. Margulies gave us both a hug. I
wondered could she tell how badly I wanted to get out of there, because I was
itching to go. Claire wanted to talk, but I did not have time for that. I
practically threw her coat to her and in a lowered, very firm voice I told her
to, “Get on your boots and let’s go. Stop dillydallying.”

I’m not dilly - ”

I didn’t let her finish. “Let’s go.” I
pushed her with my hip as she bent over to pull on her boot. I smiled at Mrs.
Margulies and promised we’d be back, while I pulled Claire out of the house.

There were three boxes full of papers, notebooks
and books. I made two trips out to the car. Claire made one. She moved like
molasses in January. I just wanted to push her out of the way. My adrenaline
was pumping so hard I probably could have carried all three boxes all at once,
by myself. When I took the last box out, the one with the envelope, I grabbed
the envelope and held it close to my bosom as I ran back up the walkway to get
Claire. She was saying goodbye, again, to Mrs. Margulies, who stood at the
door.

“C’mon Claire, it’s too cold for her to be
here. Let’s go.”

I waved and smiled goodbye.