Q: A Novel (18 page)

“I suppose I do,” I say, though I’m not entirely sure it’s true.

Minnie Zuckerman’s decision
to leave her boyfriend on the basis of invitations to fondues and matzo, neither of which was unambiguously framed as a date, and neither of which ended with so much as a peck on the cheek, should have been cause for concern. The truth is, there are other warning signs too. One day at my apartment, shortly after she begins staying over, I find that Minnie has discarded all of my dress shirts. Many of the shirts are a blend of cotton and polyester, to which Minnie says she is allergic. This explains the purging of the no-iron shirts, but not the fancy cotton ones. These, Minnie explains, have been sacrificed purely in the name of fashion.

Were it just the shirts, it would be one thing, but Minnie later repeats the process with my pants (she is allergic to worsted wool), my socks (she is allergic to nylon), my cache of Earl Grey tea (she is allergic to bergamot oranges), and my neckties (she is allergic to certain types of silk and, implausibly, rep stripes).

The nylon sensitivity victimizes some unlikely offenders, including my tennis racket (replaced with an old-style woodie, with which I could never play in public), my shoelaces (replaced with hemp; surprisingly stylish), and my toothbrush. In another phase of my life, I might find this behavior intrusive or even oppressive, but in my current state I find her doting amusing, even pleasant. Many of the replacements are superior to the original products. Generally speaking, my wardrobe is sleeker and more modern than before. I had forgotten the comfort of cotton socks. And I downright love my new all-natural toothbrush, which has a bone handle and Siberian boar hair bristles. Brushing is, suddenly, a thrill.

From here, things progress
quickly, though very little (none) of this progress is the product of an active decision on my part. One day Minnie is putting her arm around me in the presence of Hank Snjdon and we are publicly an item. Hank asks several questions, including when we started seeing one another. Minnie answers, dating the start of our relationship back to our fondue excursion. Hank seems genuinely approving. His fondness for Minnie is obvious. His fondness for me, however, is not. Playfully, he puts his arms around me and says, “Now, don’t you go breaking the heart of the only good secretary I have ever had. They don’t grow on trees, you know.” Everyone laughs except me.

Soon Minnie says it is cost-ineffective for us to maintain separate residences when we are spending so much time together. My sublet will be up in a few months, and besides, I will like Williamsburg better than Morningside Heights. She reveals that she has been secreting away some of my books and dress shirts and has arranged for movers to box and cart the remainder of my things. All I need to do is tend to a short typewritten list of tasks. This includes returning the cable box to Time Warner but not filing a change of address with the post office, which she has already taken care of online.

The move will happen on a Sunday, and it is fine for me to play golf that day, as I often do, so long as I am at her place in Williamsburg by 10:00 a.m. This isn’t highly practical. Given that I travel to golf courses by train, her schedule allows me enough time to get there and back but not enough to actually play. So on the day we move in together, I don’t play golf, but I’m grateful for all of her preparations.

Several months later, Minnie announces one day that she has run simulations on our tax returns and determined that it will be cheaper for us to file jointly than to file separately. She reveals that she also has taken a small sample of my blood, had it tested, and determined that we can safely have children without fear of any of the genetic disorders that plague Ashkenazi Jews. She has arranged an appointment for us with her rabbi two weeks hence so he can marry us. She has a
ketubah
on order and is confident that it will arrive in time. The reception can wait until the following summer, she says, though she has already researched reception halls and concluded that we should hold the party on a Tuesday evening, resulting in substantial savings.

Minnie tells Hank Snjdon and a few dozen strategically selected others about her plans for us, and, before I know it, we are, as a practical matter, engaged to be married. I recognize this is a less than ideal procedure. The convention of asking the other party “Will you marry me?” has the advantage of ensuring the other party actually wants to wed. But saying no now would be complicated. The faculty of the department sends us gifts, several of which have been purchased during sales and thus cannot be returned. In any event, the truth is, I am fine with the result. I like Minnie’s attention. It feels good to be wanted and the tangible benefits are undeniable. Thanks to Minnie’s support, which includes making sure I have an ample supply of toner cartridges and warm coffee, my productivity is greater than ever. The mostly fabricated future of Freud is developing rapidly. He is well on his way to becoming a rogue naturalist, and a critical reinterpreter of Darwin’s legacy. Most of all, the relationship fills, at least in part, the gaping hole left by Q.

Still, despite the encouraging progress on my novel and the comfort of the new relationship, I am not entirely surprised to find a note on my office desk. It arrives one week before Minnie and I are scheduled to appear before Rabbi Pincus. “Lunch,” it says in my own handwriting. “12:30 tomorrow. Le Piste.”

Chapter Seventeen

I
am shocked when I-50 tells me his age. He is a wreck. He has time-traveled ten years earlier in his life than the two other versions of me who came before him, but he looks far worse than either. He has dark rings under his eyes, which are profoundly sad, and he has gained, conservatively, seventy-five pounds. I barely recognize myself in him. It is as if another man has been circumscribed about me. There is loose skin everywhere—under his eyes, in his cheeks, on his second and third chins.

He has not waited for me to begin eating. I am on time, but he has already ordered himself two starters: wild burgundy escargot with gorgonzola gnocchi and veal sweetbreads with cauliflower and pickled cherry tomatoes. The idea of eating snails and cow glands repulses me, but this time the possibility that my tastes have expanded strikes me as authentic. When I arrive, I-50 is devouring his twin appetizers ravenously, so engaged in the meal that he does not notice me for several more bites.

“Sit down, sit down,” he says, finally. He forgets to offer his hand. For that matter, he forgets to look up from the food. “Sorry,” he says, “but one works up this enormous appetite traveling through time.”

“So I have heard.”

“I figured you wouldn’t mind if I started without you.”

“Not at all.”

“Right, right,” he says. “Don’t suppose, don’t suppose.”

He takes another few bites then looks up and around the room, urgently. I think for a moment that he wants to get down to business, but really he is looking for the waiter. He gestures wildly and demonstratively for one to come over, waving his hand as if he were the parent of an infant with a medical emergency.

“We should get our order in before the lunchtime rush.”

“Of course.”

The waiter arrives. I-50 orders two entrées: chestnut pappardelle in a veal ragout with wild mushrooms and rosemary, and braised rabbit with grain mustard, served with creamy polenta, bacon, and porcini mushrooms. I have an inkling that he may be ordering for me, but this is dispelled when he looks in my direction and asks, “What do you want?” I squeeze in an order for the romaine and parmesan salad.

“And please hurry,” I-50 tells the waiter. “We’re in a rush.”

“Nowhere to go,” I-50 says to me, “but my blood sugar drops like a stone.”

When the waiter arrives, shortly thereafter, with the main courses, I see that I-50’s agenda in ordering two entrées is quite different from I-55’s. I-50 is not interested in sampling new and fine cuisine. He is interested in volume. In a matter of seconds, the chestnut pappardelle is gone, seemingly inhaled. He soaks up the residue of the veal ragout with a slice of crusty bread, which he also devours.

“If you were going to eat like this we could have just gone to McDonald’s.”

I-50 does not acknowledge the dig. Rather, he turns his attention to the rabbit. He places a giant slab of hare on another slice of the crusty bread, creating an instant sandwich. He then douses this with grain mustard and polenta, and consumes the resulting concoction in two ambitious bites. He repeats this process with the remainder of the rabbit, impossibly accelerates, and the forty-five-dollar second entrée is obliterated in less than two minutes. When he is done, I-50 signals for the waiter and orders crêpes suzette.

During the brief pause between the rabbit and the crêpes, I ask I-50 to state his business. Even during this intraprandial hiatus, he is munching on the remainder of the crusty bread, but it is at least possible to hear him between bites.

“Why are you here?”

“It’s about Minnie,” he says. “You cannot marry her. Not under any circumstances.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Insufferable. She’s insufferable. The woman will ruin your life.”

“How so?”

“Most controlling person I’ve ever met in my life. Like a Nazi. Margarete Himmler did better. Heinrich was a chicken farmer before the SS, you know. Actually was kind of laid back.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Think you’re ever going to play golf again? Think again, unless you figure out a way to play in less than twenty minutes, because that’s how much time you are allotted each day for ‘personal
improvement and reflection.’ Aside from these brief periods, every second of the remainder of your life will be planned. She’ll map out what you eat, what movies you see, where you go on vacation.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“That’s what you think now, isn’t it? Seriously, that’s a question. I can’t even remember. What do you find appealing? You must have noticed the obsessive attention to detail. Surely my saying this doesn’t come out of the blue.”

“It doesn’t come out of the blue. I’ve noticed it. It seems pleasant now. She brings me tea while I write and warms my socks in the microwave. You’re saying it’s not good-natured?”

“Queen of the Harpies! Queen of the Harpies!”

“It’s nice to have someone’s attention. I mean, after Q and all.”

“Minnie Zuckerman is not Q. Get this through your head once and for all right now. You are on the rebound! Minnie is not the best alternative; she is just the next alternative.”

“But I-55 said . . .”

“I-55 has no idea what he is talking about. He didn’t live this life, I did. I-55 was a moron!”

I let this sink in for a moment. I’m inclined to confess some intuitive empathy for I-50. “I’d be less than honest if I didn’t acknowledge finding the replacement of my socks a bit worrisome.”

“Not even the start of it,” he says. “At ten o’clock every night you receive a schedule of the following day’s activities. Most mornings you are required to shower at 5:30 a.m. so she can disinfect and have the bathroom to herself. On weekends, the time is pushed back to six o’clock.”

“There’s a schedule on weekends?”

“Every day. There’s a schedule every day.”

“That sounds challenging.”

“You have to wear a hat anytime you’re in her presence because she develops an allergy to hair. Any potential friend is subject to a vetting process. They need to submit references and two sets of tax returns. For three years she is convinced that nitrogen is carcinogenic. She cuts it out of our life.”

“How do we breathe?”

“She converts the apartment into an oxygen tent.”

“Can one breathe straight oxygen?”

“For a while. It’s irritating to the lungs. That’s the least of it, really.”

“Are there children?”

“There are no children,” he says this dismissively, as if the question is absurd. “She is allergic.”

“To children?”

“To life.”

He returns to the crêpes suzette. “This is it,” he says. “In the end, food is the only thing you will have in your life.” He looks up. “It’s all I have in mine.”

Leaving Minnie
is not nearly as emotionally complicated as leaving Q. I like Minnie, even love her, but she is not my soul mate. I don’t believe that she believes she is either, so there is none of the need this time to construct a scenario with narrative integrity. Leaving Minnie is a practical challenge mostly. There are the gifts we have received and the fact that we work together, of course. Also, I am not very good at breaking up.

At my office, I investigate Minnie’s father in the hope of discovering some questionable business dealings, but unfortunately Hiram Zuckerman makes yarmulkes and appears to be on the up-and-up. I-50 gives no indication to the contrary, so this avenue appears out. I consider telling Minnie that I am gay, but this also is complicated by our working together. Moving to a new country seems equally problematic. Finally, I decide to tell Minnie the truth, or at least some close enough version to feel like the truth. I tell her that I have decided not to get married, that it’s not the life I want, and, given this, it wouldn’t be fair to her to continue the relationship.

When I deliver this news to Minnie, she does not understand, or at least pretends not to understand. She says it is normal, all men get cold feet and I should talk things through with Rabbi Pincus. I explain that I am serious and my decision is not really up for discussion, even with Pincus. We got into this very quickly, I explain to her. It is easy to get caught up in the rush of things. The decision to get married was too hasty. I like her very much and hope that we can remain friends, but being husband and wife isn’t in the cards. She assesses me for a while. When she sees that I am sincere, she raises a series of practical objections to our separation. Many of these are difficult to refute. We have placed a nonrefundable deposit for the reception. Minnie has ordered personalized thank-you notes on heavy card stock. These cannot be returned either. And, of course, we will lose the tax advantage, and wouldn’t that money come in handy?

It would indeed. I almost waver on the tax advantage. It’s a $1,700 tax credit. One thousand seven hundred dollars to which the government has no legitimate claim. But then I think of I-50 and his broken spirit and jowly cheeks and say no, no, no, I am sorry but this is the way it must be. She finally accepts it and breaks down, sobbing uncontrollably. Leave, she says, just leave.

I am sad and regretful, but of course I have been through this before.

The next week,
Minnie resigns her position. One week after that, I have my annual evaluation with Hank Snjdon. He has given me favorable reviews each of the past four years, but this year he finds fault with my didactic style and my scholarship. He hands me a draft of his report. I know I am in trouble when I see that he refers to me only as “the professor.” The tone recalls Jill Nordberg’s harsh critique of me in her letter to the chair of the BMCC history department. It is never good news when someone refuses to refer to you by name.

“The professor,” writes Snjdon, “needs to develop a second scholarly theme.” He continues, “A novel, even one historically situated, is not the basis of a tenurable profile in a history department. I even wonder whether a single novel, with mixed reviews, would be the basis for promotion in an English department. Moreover, the professor’s obsession with what might have been, as opposed to what actually was, infects his teaching. He relies heavily on hypotheticals and counterfactuals. Too often students in his classes leave with no clear sense of history. With his emphasis on characters and motivations, the professor teaches the past as if it were itself a story. Our students are the worse for this.”

When I finish reading the letter, I consider protesting. I could remind Hank of his recent assurances to me, including his dismissal of the distinction between is and was, which has somehow managed to find its way into my evaluation. Moreover, mine is not the first work of fiction produced by the City University history department. Hef Angkot’s
People’s History of the Peloponnesian War
, a retelling of the conflict from the standpoint of an Athenian street peddler, has as much relation to the truth as
Time’s Broken Arrow
. But I say nothing. I understand what is going on. Minnie has been sulking around the office since I jilted her, and Hank has taken her side. I can’t say that I blame him. History professors are a dime a dozen, but a good secretary is one in a million.

Hank Snjdon’s tepid review
of my performance makes me worry about my future at City University. It doesn’t bode well for tenure, and if I am denied tenure I will be finished in academia. I feel more pressure than ever for my book to succeed. I redouble my efforts and immerse myself in my work. For the next several months, I maintain no social engagements. I begin writing even earlier than normal, at six in the morning, and bring a sandwich to my office so that I will not need to go out for lunch. I even drink less so as to minimize bathroom trips and avoid encounters with the new department secretary. In the evening I take a run, eat soup, and turn in early so I can begin fresh the next day.

Together, Sigmund Freud and I embark on a journey, taking the young doctor from his groundbreaking analysis of eel testes to his ultimate position in the pantheon of evolutionists second only to Darwin himself, and perhaps even surpassing Sir Charles in connecting the insights of biology to the lives of ordinary people. The early part of Freud’s career is tedious, however, and the writing is a slog. Emboldened by the runaway success of his treatise on eel gonads, published in the
Proceedings of the Imperial Academy of Sciences
, Freud secures and accepts a post as a naturalist aboard SMS
Kaiser Heinrich
, a twenty-four-gun sloop of war in the Austro-Hungarian navy, charged with charting the islands of the southern Atlantic. The parallel to Darwin’s stint aboard HMS
Beagle
is obvious and conscious, both on my part and Freud’s, who views this as his apprenticeship as an evolutionist. He tells Nastasia and his colleagues aboard the
Kaiser Heinrich
that his goal is to deliver the definitive study of Atlantic whales. His secret goal, however, is more complex and ambitious.

Freud believes that the whale and hippopotamus share a common ancestor. He dares not share this hypothesis with the scientific community, which would ridicule him, but Freud is nevertheless convinced that whales descended from the land-living mammals of the Order Artiodactyl—the even-toed ungulates, which also includes peccaries and deer and pronghorn antelope. His specific conjecture is that between fifty and sixty million years ago, the hippo remained in sub-Saharan Africa, staying cool by wallowing in the mud of the savanna, while whales took to the water and radiated into the seas of the world. By dissecting and classifying the cetaceans of the Atlantic Ocean, Freud hopes to identify the missing link between these mammalian giants. If he could succeed in this, the discovery would vividly illustrate the comprehensiveness of Darwin’s theory.

It is important that Freud’s work possess verisimilitude, so I spend several weeks researching and drafting a detailed exposition of the diversity of Atlantic whales. Whale taxonomy can be a dreary business. They are divided into two suborders: toothed and baleen whales. The toothed whales, including the melon-head, the pygmy killer, the long-finned pilot, the short-finned pilot, and the orca, use echolocation to prey on fish and squid. Baleens are named for the keratin sievelike structure that they rely on to eat instead of teeth. Located in the upper jaw, baleen is used to filter plankton from the water. They are the largest whales and include the right, the fin, the sei, the blue, the minke, the gray, and the humpback.