Life After Genius (35 page)

“O flesh of the King,” Mead says, “do not decay, do not rot, do not smell unpleasant.”

Uncle Martin looks up.

“You taught me that. It’s a prayer, right? What Anubis, the god of embalming, says to the dead as he dusts them with spices.”

Uncle Martin continues to stare, long enough to make Mead uncomfortable. As if now
he
is going to start crying. But he doesn’t. He catches himself, turns his attention back to Mr. Fullington, and says, “As man passes through death into immortality, it is imperative that his body remain whole so it can function again in the afterlife.”

“Uh, we’re still talking about the Egyptians, right?” Mead says. “I mean, you don’t really believe that, do you?”

“In the afterlife? Why not?”

“Because. We know better now.”

“We only know what we think we know.”

Now it is Mead’s turn to stare. “He’s not coming back, Uncle Martin. You do know that, don’t you?”

His uncle gets the most hurt expression on his face. As if he didn’t know that. Shit. Mead should have kept his mouth shut. Here they were getting along for the first time since he has been home —talking civil to each other and all —and Mead had to go and screw it up by saying something rational. As if there is anything rational about Percy’s death. Or Mead’s being here in this room. Or anything else that has happened in the past few weeks. It is as if the whole world has spun out of control into chaos.

Mead figures that any second now his uncle is going to either start crying or start yelling. But he does neither. Instead he pushes back his chair and stands up. Walks over to the wall cabinet and pulls down an old cardboard box that is sitting on top of it. He sets the box on the floor, folds back the flaps, and lifts out a mask. A papier-mâché mask made of newspaper and flour and brown paint. A crudely crafted dog’s head. An art class project. A child’s interpretation of the jackal-headed god, Anubis.

“He made this when he was in the third grade,” Uncle Martin says. “His mother was so impressed. She thought he was gonna grow up and be a great sculptor. The next Michelangelo. But I knew better. I knew he was destined to be a great embalmer just like his old man.” Martin rotates the mask in his hands, looking at it from all sides. “When I was a young man draining the lifeblood out of all those dead bodies, pumping them full of formaldehyde, I didn’t believe. Those people were as pickled as gherkins in a glass jar. No way were they going to wake up on the other side and live again. No way, no how.” Martin sets down the mask, picks up Mr. Fullington’s hand, and begins to massage it, working the embalming fluid down into his fingertips. “Then one day that all changed. It was the middle of the night and I was all alone. I was feeling sorry for myself because it was New Year’s Eve and everybody else was out whooping it up, having a good time, partying and all, and I was down here. Working on a body. And suddenly I knew.”

“Knew what?” Mead says.

“That I wasn’t alone. Because they came to me that night. The spirit of every person I’d ever embalmed. I was surrounded by them.”

“Were they by any chance drinking coffee and reading obituaries?”

“What? No. I couldn’t see them, Teddy, I felt them, though. They were here all right. No doubt about it.” Martin sets down Mr. Fullington’s hand and picks the jackal mask back up. Puts it in its box and sets the box up on the shelf.

“So,” Mead says. “Is he here?”

“Who?”

“Percy. Is he here right now?”

His uncle sits quietly for a moment and then says, “No.”

M
EAD AND HIS UNCLE RESURFACE
an hour-and-a-half later. The store is closed, the showroom dark. But Mead’s father is sitting in the back office, going over the day’s receipts. He looks up when they walk in, his face expectant. “So how did it go?”

“Mr. Fullington looks as handsome as the day he got married,” Martin says, and ducks into the bathroom. A moment later, the shower turns on. Mead’s father looks at the closed door, then at Mead, and says, “No, I meant how did it go for you?”

Mead drops into the nearest chair. “Ancient Egyptians thought the heart to be the seat of intelligence and will. Not the brain, but the heart. What do you think, Dad?”

His father stares at him, as if searching for the right answer, then says, “I asked your mother to hold supper for us. You can shower at home.”

Mead nods and gets up again. Reaches for the back door.

“Teddy?”

“I’m fine, Dad.”

“I didn’t mean what I said earlier,” he says. “There will always be a place for you here. No matter what. You do know that, don’t you?” But Mead hears him say, “The heart. I believe the seat of intelligence and will is housed solely in the heart.”

M
EAD LUGS HIS GREEN-AND-BLUE PLAID SUITCASE
out of the closet and drops it onto his bed, unzips the top, and lifts out a single sheet of zeta zeros. He has right here in front of him a billion-and-a-half reasons to believe the Riemann Hypothesis is true. But they are just statistics. A measurement of averages, not proof.

Statistically speaking, it should have been a breeze. Presenting this paper. Appeasing the dean. Graduating from college. Continuing on with his studies. But for one single aberration —one zero off the critical line, so to speak —that has proved Mead’s entire theory on life false. Single-handedly, Herman has pulled the rug out from under Mead’s feet. Cast his entire future into doubt. That one aberration —Herman Weinstein —has thrown Mead’s once ordered and calculated world into utter chaos.

A chair scrapes across the floor behind Mead. The six-legged creature is back. Unsure of what form the monster will choose to take today, he turns around to face his avenger. The devil on his left shoulder, so to speak. No longer haunted by its presence but merely annoyed by it. Resigned to its ubiquity. It’s a constant reminder of all the ways in which Mead has fallen short of expectation. He turns around and says, “Go away and leave me alone.”

“Is that any way to talk to your hero?” Bernhard Riemann says.

“You aren’t my hero. Not anymore. I’ve lost faith in the sanctity of math.”

“All faith gets tested from time to time, Mead, but the true believer does not allow himself to be so easily dissuaded.”

“I just meant it as a metaphor.”

“And a good metaphor it is. Think about it, Mead. Think about what your life would be like if you had to change your belief system every time someone challenged it.”

“Shut up. Shut up and leave me alone.”

“You have to stand up for what you believe in, Mead, or else sooner or later you won’t believe in anything at all. You’ll be a lost soul.”

“I thought you were a mathematician, not a frigging minister.”

“I am a mathematician but my father was a minister and I learned a thing or two from him about faith. No one can take it away from you, Mead, except yourself.”

“I said shut up. Leave me alone. Get out of my head. You aren’t even real. You’re a figment of my imagination. So just go away.” Mead puts the page of zeta zeros back in the suitcase and zips it up. Heaves it off the bed and drags it toward the hall. But Bernhard Riemann gets up off the chair and steps in front of him, blocking his path.

“Where’re you going with that, Mead?”

“None of your business. But I’ll tell you anyway. I’m putting it out on the curb. Next to the garbage cans. So it can go where it belongs. In the incinerator. I mean, it’s worthless, right? That’s what you said. A big waste of time. A pile of useless statistics. A way to blow smoke up the dean’s ass. Besides, if I burn it, I also get rid of the other problem that’s been haunting me.”

“Ah, you must be referring to Mr. Weinstein.”

“Good guess. But then I shouldn’t be surprised that you guessed right seeing as how you’re both taking up unwanted space in my head.”

“You sound bitter, Mead.”

“And why shouldn’t I be? Because of you, I no longer have a future in math.”

“You’re blaming this on me?”

“Yes.”

“But I’m not the one who befriended the fellow, Mead. You are. You know, you really aren’t a very good judge of character.”

“Hey, I knew he was bad news from the moment I laid eyes on him. I didn’t pursue his friendship; he pursued mine. Bribed it out of me is more like it. Okay, so I let my ambition get in the way of good judgment. I confess. I should’ve stuck with my gut. But then I wouldn’t have had anything to show for all my hard work. No big presentation for the dean. No dog-and-pony show for the university. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming the dean. I willingly accepted Herman’s bribe. Not for the dean, but for me. And the irony of the whole thing is, I still have nothing to show for all my hard work. Plus, I have this whole Herman fiasco on my hands. So it’s just as you said: pointless.”

“Not pointless, Mead. Misdirected maybe, but hardly pointless.”

“All logic and no intuition. I know. I heard you the first time. I guess I should have taken more notes on those hunting excursions with my uncle. Maybe if I’d been more alert, if I hadn’t been so caught up in myself, maybe I would’ve steered clear of Herman, would’ve realized that accepting a favor from him would come at a price. But no, I thought we were friends. That’s how pathetic I am. A small town genius with an overblown ego and no life experience whatsoever when it comes to people.”

“You’re being awfully hard on yourself,” Bernhard Riemann says, only without a German accent. Which means the six-legged creature has morphed again. Mead glances up to see what trick his mind is playing on him now. And there, standing before him, is none other than Henry Charles Fegley. His grandfather. But as a young man. The way he appears on the Fegley Brothers postcard.

“What’re you gawking at, Teddy, did I forget to button myself up?” And he glances down at the crotch of his pants —circa 1930 —to make sure he hasn’t.

“Grampa Henry? What are
you
doing in my head?”

“Well, since everyone else is getting to speak his mind, I thought I might throw in a word or two of my own. If you think you’re the only one who ever ran into bad news, Teddy, think again. I had some grand ideas when I was your age. My father was a carpenter from the old country —Germany —and taught me his trade. And I was good. The Leonardo da Vinci of dovetail joints. The president of the local bank filled his home with my handiwork. So one day I decided to approach him for a loan so I could start my own business. And unbeknownst to me, he made himself my partner. You see, I could saw and sand and finish but I couldn’t read. It was all based on blind trust. It wasn’t until my business exploded and he ran off with all the profits that I learned how naïve I had been. Oh, was I furious. I stopped building furniture altogether. I was not going to let that man benefit from my hard work. I’d rather starve than be taken for a fool even for one more day!”

“But you died a rich man,” Mead says.

“Not rich, Teddy, but better off than most. Thanks to your grandmother. She’s the one who taught me how to read. And I started all over again. Started with nothing because that banker had taken all my money. I built furniture in exchange for food. I built myself a reputation that reached as far as Alton, where I got another business loan. And this time I read every word of the contract before signing.”

“Great. So what you’re telling me is that my bad luck was inevitable. A Fegley curse. Unavoidable.”

“It’s only a curse, Teddy, if you allow it to be one.”

“Lemons into lemonade. Got it,” Mead says and sets down his suitcase, shoves it back into the closet, and flops back on his bed, burying his face beneath his arms. He no longer feels like putting the suitcase out on the curb. At least not today. He hasn’t the energy. He’ll just throw it out another time. When there aren’t so many people around hassling him.

“What’s all this talk about a curse?” the six-legged creature asks.

Shit. Its voice has changed again. No longer low and male but high and female. Mead drops his arms and looks up at his mother, sitting in the straight-backed chair. Her arms crossed over her chest, all war-like. Mead wonders how long she has been sitting there. “How much did you hear?” he asks.

“Oh, I’ve been hearing plenty, Teddy. Dolores Fischer told me she ran into you at Delia Winslow’s wake and that you told her some cock-and-bull story about how your lower-than-average body temperature makes you smarter than the rest of us.”

Mead sits up, convinced that he is on the verge of losing his mind. That is, if he hasn’t lost it already. “Oh, that,” he says. “She touched me, Mom. Like a monkey in a zoo. She had it coming.”

“I see. And Sandy McClod. She says you told her son, Simon, that you invented the VCR. Did he touch you like a zoo animal too?”

“I was kidding. I told him I was kidding, did he tell his mother that?”

“And apparently you and Stephen Hawking have a speaking engagement in Paris. Perhaps I’ll fly over there to catch it since I missed the one you were scheduled to give in Chicago three days ago.”

“You know Donna Eubanks’s mother?”

“Eubanks? No. Mr. Colgan told me. Your high school principal. When he returned this to me.” And she holds out the credit card Mead left at the department store. “He’s worried about you, Teddy. We’re all worried.”

His mother has run out of accusations and resorts to staring. And it is a good stare, good enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of Mead’s neck. But she’s not done yet. She’s just warming up, just getting to the good stuff. She uncrosses her arms and leans forward. “You punched Freddy Waseleski in the face?”

“I did not! That is an out-and-out lie! I merely grabbed his collar.”

His mother shakes her head. “What’s happening to you, Teddy? I did not raise my son to behave like this, like a barbarian. This is all your uncle’s fault, teaching you that it’s sport to kill small animals. I should never have let you have that gun.”

“Jesus, Mother, that was six years ago. This has nothing to do with Uncle Martin. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s yours. You want to know why I got that C in seventh grade? Because Freddy Waseleski ripped up my science project, that’s why. He ripped it to shreds and threatened to shove a ruler up my ass if I ever told anyone. And then you made me go to his mother’s funeral. Not because he was my friend, but because you cared about what other people might think if I didn’t go. You’ve always cared more about what other people think than about me.”