10

The Max Planck Memorial Ballroom was sponsored by the Hamburg Plancks, in honor of their progenitor’s contribution to the world of science. It inhabited its own gorgeous building at the Toledo Institute of Astronomy, and on this night it was lit up like the Horsehead Nebula on the Fourth of July. Chandeliers sparkled in the lobby, leaded glass windows glittered up and down the façade, and a stunning brass astrolabe decorated the lobby, surrounded by cocktail waitresses spinning in a bright, bubbling orbit. The night of the annual welcome banquet was truly a night of a thousand stars, and the party was thrown in honor of the glamorous new acquisitions the institute could boast about in brochures and the incoming students, who dreamed of becoming such celebrated guests.

George and Kate Oakenshield emerged from his wagon, and George tossed the keys to the valet along with a twenty-dollar bill. He wore gray jeans, a white shirt he’d already opened at the throat, and a gray striped tie he’d already untied. When he got out of his car, a couple of undergraduates fluttered to the sidewalk and then shyly hid under a tree as he came around the vehicle, collected Kate Oakenshield on his arm, and strode into the building. No, he was not the star of the evening, nor was he even any longer the brilliant ingenue. He needed a breakthrough, and he needed it soon. But he still commanded a modicum of respect among the gentlemen, and the ladies still found he brought color to their cheeks. Kate drifted along beside him, in a droopy and romantic lemon chiffon.

Inside the lobby, George immediately spotted Father Oakenshield, wearing a clerical collar and pacing thoughtfully up and down one wall.

He called, “Mr. Oakenshield!”

Kate corrected him quietly and immediately. “Father.”

“OK,” said George aside to her. “But he doesn’t have a parish. He’s never preached a sermon. Father of what? Why does he wear that outfit?”

Kate said, “Father of me.”

They reached him. George and Father Oakenshield shook hands. Father Oakenshield maintained a certain ascetic distance from his surroundings. His face was pinched and disapproving, his aspect removed. His eyebrows said he was aghast. His hands spread apart, as if to say, “What can I do? Here I am. I participate.” He had served his prison sentence and emerged unapologetic, and since Kate had turned eighteen, he was allowed to be near her again, by her choice.

“George, how are you?” he said, and then he turned and warbled something to Kate.

She warbled something back. She wouldn’t speak in English when her father was around. Her voice sounded to George like a wood thrush at dusk. Vaguely chorded, pretty, but incomprehensible.

“Well, that’s just great,” said George, as if to a passing waiter. “Great evening. OK!”

George saw his mother and father coming in the door from outside. Sally wore a stylish camel-colored evening gown and the soft stretchy wrap she’d gotten in Panama last year. Her hair was blown back and restrained, her diamond earrings flashing. George’s father walked a step behind her, and off to her side. He had been stuffed into a tuxedo and had a hunted air. His hands floated around, unanchored. George saw Sally take him firmly by the arm and propel him toward the ballroom entrance.

“Hey, hey, Mom,” he called. George interrupted their progress and called them over to join him, Kate, and Father Oakenshield.

“Dad! Here we are.”

He clapped his father on both biceps, convivially. He kissed Sally on the cheek.

“Mom, you look beautiful. Dad, thanks for coming. You look … in attendance.”

“Well,” said his father, “your mother said I can’t eat in the house anymore if I don’t start behaving like a human being.”

At this, Dean stretched his arms out as if to demonstrate that he had, in fact, taken the shape of a human man. When he smiled, George thought he was being very charming. He dropped an exaggerated wink on Kate. Sally beamed at George, unperturbed.

“Good job, Dad,” said George. “Dad, Mom, you know Kate. And this is Father Oakenshield.”

“Ah, yes, the jailer!” Sally said. “Well met, Father. How is the tallest tower, now the princess has flown away?”

Father Oakenshield gazed scornfully at Sally, and licked his lips.

“I don’t expect you to understand my daughter,” said Father Oakenshield, taking Kate’s hand away from Sally.

“Her I understand just fine,” said Sally, taking Kate’s hand back with firmness. “It’s you I’d like to beat with a stick, buddy.”

“You and I will have to accept our differences, Sally, if our children are going to marry.”

Sally balked.

“Who said anything about marrying?” she asked.

“I have seen it in her computations,” said her father. “A new candor. A new simplicity. She is in love.”

Sally pinched George on the arm. “What, with HIM?”

“George understands her,” Father Oakenshield elaborated. “I always knew she would marry a mathematician. No one else could appreciate the subtleties of her training.”

“Bullshit,” said Sally, not quietly.

“Mom,” George began.

“Yeah, I give it six months,” she said. “Here’s a clue, Padre. He only seduced your little chickadee because he thought he couldn’t do it. Now that it’s done, it’s done, you know what I mean?”

“Not done,” George interjected. He shook his head at Kate’s father. “Not done in any sense of the word. Not done. Did not do.”

“I do not see what you mean in the slightest,” Oakenshield said to Sally. And then, without warning, Sally pulled back her smooth, toned arm and punched Father Oakenshield right in the nose.

*   *   *

Inside the ballroom, wall sconces shed a warm glow on a rich red carpet, black wood trim, and round tables spread with bright white clothes, dappled with glittering cutlery and crystal plates. The parquet floor was inlaid with deep hardwoods, glorious chandeliers blossomed from the carved ceiling, and paneled walls were hung with oil paintings of popular constellations. A podium at the front of the room was flanked by two tables, and rows of chairs faced the podium. At the back of the room the caterers’ tables were set up with hors d’oeuvres. Among other things, there was a chocolate fountain and a champagne pyramid, ready to be filled.

Academics milled around, finding their places with their wives, their children, their grandchildren in some cases. Dean and Sally, Kate and George, and Father Oakenshield were supposed to sit together at a table, according to cards on the plates, but Father Oakenshield lingered behind, leaving one seat open at their table. When a large man entered the ballroom, clearly late and looking for a place to sit, George saw an opportunity to remove Father Oakenshield from his mother’s arm’s length, and motioned the man to come and sit with them at their table.

“Belion,” said the big man. He shook hands with George and sat down daintily on a folding chair. He looked like an elephant on a Victorian footstool. Sally’s eyes widened and she placed a hand on his arm, taking to him immediately.

“Hello,” she said, in hushed tones, for the program was beginning on the dais.

“Belion,” said Belion, and stuck out his hand.

“Well, don’t you look dashing and debonair?”

“I wore a tuxedo,” said Belion, to explain. His tuxedo was immaculate, and his hair was neatly brushed.

“My husband, Dean,” said Sally, pointing to George’s father, “and my son, George.”

Belion nodded blithely, and Sally turned to George.

“You’ve got to get rid of that girl, son. It’s just getting ridiculous.”

“Now, Mother.” George adopted a calming tone. “I told you last year what the astrologer down on Bancroft said. Brown hair, astronomer, Toledo. There are only so many, you know.”

“But that’s so limiting. Only astronomers?”

“Mother, come now. You don’t want to go against the psychic, do you? Against fate?”

“No,” said Sally wryly. “No, I wouldn’t want to go against her.”

“There you are,” said George, patting her arm. “You know best.”

At the front of the ballroom, the scientists and guests were taking their places at the head table. The microphone had been checked, a glass of water had been installed near it, and now as the others were seated, Dr. Bryant stepped up to the podium. The lights in the ballroom got a bit dimmer, except for those trained on the stage. The chandeliers above the assembled crowd twinkled warmly but were muted now, their false candlesticks playing in hushed light against their brass ligatures. George pinched his forehead between both his thumbs and exhaled.

“Good evening,” said Dr. Bryant. “Welcome to our favorite annual event. Welcome to our new faculty and their families, welcome to our patrons, our friends, to my colleagues, to the future of astronomy.”

Everyone applauded. George applauded. Oakenshield, in the back, dabbed his nose with a cloth napkin. The waiters surrounded the tables and ladled bisque into bowls, the top layer of flatware and cutlery assembled before all the diners. Sally picked up her spoon and expertly dipped it into the soup, delivering it neatly to her lower lip. Belion dandled his spoon in his soup bowl, pushing a cheese crouton around. George trained his eyes on the floor, suddenly feeling dizzy. If he looked at his soup a wave of nausea might surprise him into puking in it. There on the carpet was a rich pattern of curling vines and leaves, a baroque array of ornaments in large circular arrangements. And cherubs.

And then the cherubs were moving.

Dr. Bryant continued, “Our work, here at the institute, and around the world in other ivory towers, or rather aluminum domes, often goes unnoticed, except when we have enough beautiful pictures to warrant a coffee table publication, or when Hollywood decides to make two asteroid movies in the space of a summer.”

There was a polite chuckle. Dean coughed out a loud laugh, but no one looked over. George was watching the rug very carefully now, his brow furrowed. The cherubs that had been so still, clinging to vines along the very predictable columns woven into the rug, had swung down off the vines and were clambering over the columns and other greenery—woven into the rug in muted tones of gold—and headed toward the head table and the dais.

“We know, as scientists, as mathematicians, that recognition will be interspersed with long intervals of quiet, solitude, in the shadow of the world’s attention. We all need the courage to be ignored.”

The audience nodded, spooned up their soup.

“Of course, we also hope, on behalf of ourselves, our students, and the institute itself, to draw the world’s eye back to astronomy on occasion. Not because the world is about to end, of course, but because we have unlocked another secret, another mystery.”

Dr. Bryant waved affectionately toward the new faculty on his right. George looked up, squinting, and when he looked back down at the rug, the cherubs had all congregated in front of the microphone and were now pointing excitedly at it, as if to say, “Look, George!”

“Perhaps one of these, the new additions to the TIA family of scientists and scholars, could be the next one to put the stars back on the front page.”

Applause sounded in the room. The rug cherubs clapped and turned somersaults. Several marble gargoyles from around the edge of the ceiling now appeared to creep across to where Dr. Bryant was standing and aligned themselves behind him in a bunch. Were they muttering to each other? Were they nodding? Were the columns painted into the walls now hiding flocks of naiads who were peeking around at George, giggling, tugging at each other, and gesturing to him?

“Now without any more pontification on my part,” he went on, clearing his throat, “Let me introduce our featured speaker this evening, one of our new fellows … joining us from Carnegie Mellon University, with a brand new Ph.D. in computational astrophysics and a two-page spread in USA Today coming out tomorrow, covering her groundbreaking research in the genesis of black holes, Dr. Irene Sparks.”

A small dark-haired woman rose from her seat at the head table and went to the podium. She shook hands graciously with Dr. Bryant. He bent down, removed a small block of wood from inside the podium and set it there for her on the floor, and she took a step up on it to stand behind the microphone. She faced her audience, politely smiling. George strained to see better. This woman was the one who’d taken his office and his assistant.

They were probably fifty feet away from each other. How far is fifty feet? To the top of the tallest tree? From one lip of a volcano to the other? As far as a man can go in ten seconds, striding briskly? As far as a man can go in five seconds, falling over himself in enthusiasm? Irene Sparks surveyed the room with a wide smile on her face, as if public speaking classes had encouraged her to make eye contact with the audience.

When she looked at him, George felt himself rising, involuntarily, from his seat. She did not continue showing her friendly smile to the room. She looked straight at him and she halted. From behind the columns painted to the walls, the naiads pointed their fingers. From the cherubs pulling eagerly on vines in the rug, from the gargoyles flocked against the ceiling, all the demigodly fingers were pointing, as if in a giant circle radiating inward, and telling him: her.

It’s not like time stopped for George, or like the stars suddenly shone brighter. It’s not like there were fireworks, or avalanches, or that the woodpecker drilling a hole in the side of his head paused to say, “Wow, she’s a looker.” It’s more like every electron in every atom in the universe paused, breathed in deeply, assessed the situation, and then reversed its course, spinning backward, or the other way, which was the right way all along. And afterward, the universe was exactly the same, but infinitely more right.

“It’s you,” said George. And his mother, next to him, grabbed him by the back of the pants and pulled him down into his seat.

Irene’s jaw dropped. He saw her falter. He felt the moments ticking by, moments where she wasn’t saying anything.

“It’s her, Mom,” said George, pushing his mother’s arm away. “She’s right there.” He said it loudly enough for the room to hear.

“George, sit down, and take some medicine,” said Sally, reaching in her bag for a prescription bottle. “Here, have a pain pill.”

For George it was as though a seed that had been sitting in his brain for twenty years had now opened, sprouted, and flowered in a moment. As though his ears had just popped or he’d just been plunged into water and a whole new layer of sound and feeling was available to him.

He looked at Irene on the podium, blinking stupidly. She obviously couldn’t remember what she was going to say. George beamed stupidly back at her. He felt she knew him. He felt she heard him say, “I missed you. I’m so glad you’re here.”

Everyone else assumed it was stage fright. Irene picked up the water glass and took an indelicate chug. She pressed her lips together.

“Thank you,” she said. George heard her make the words with her mouth. He took in the way she made the words, the way she moved her mouth, the way her hand went up to poke at her hair, the way one foot went sideways, scraping the side of her heel against the podium. It was all so admirable. He admired it.

“Thank you,” she said again. “I want to thank my new colleagues at the institute for choosing me to receive this position.”

The people in the room nodded at each other. It was alright. She was going to be OK.

Irene took a couple of deep breaths and looked up at the ceiling. Look at me, thought George. Look at me, I’m right here. I want you to look at ME.

“You know, when I told my boyfriend I was going to create a black hole in my laboratory, he was like, ‘Wow, I hope you have a really excellent copper casing and a very accurate calibrator for your magnetic containment field!’”

Boyfriend, thought George. But the word didn’t really mean anything. She laughed nervously. The rest of the room was silent. “No, actually he didn’t say that. But, obviously, since the earth and all matter didn’t collapse into my work space, I must have had the thing calibrated pretty well.”

Irene glanced around the room. It seemed like she was purposefully avoiding looking at George. The cherubs laughed. The naiads slapped their naked thighs. The gargoyles were pulling the petals out of the ornamental daisies on the stone decorations. She loves him. She loves him not.

“Little did I know the attention my experiment would receive. I’m just so humbled, and grateful, to be here. With all of you…”

Irene’s eyes locked onto George’s again, and he felt the sensation of being plunged underwater, feeling lighter, looser, more fishlike.

“I haven’t been able to understand exactly why I was a scientist,” said Irene to George, “until now. Have I? Have I been able to?”

George nodded his head vigorously. He had not been listening to the words she was saying, but he felt sure any question she asked must be answered with “Yes.”

“But now I do,” she said. “Thank you.”

Dr. Bryant stood up and began to applaud, gesturing to the audience to do the same. He took Irene by the arm and gently led her to her seat. She shook her head. She seemed to be still talking. But the audience was enthusiastic. They clapped and clapped.

*   *   *

I’m having a heart attack, thought Irene. I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m dying. This is it.

Death does have an event horizon, she realized in that moment. Surely this must explain why she could still hear the reception going on around her, still smell the lobster ravioli on the plate next to her, still hear the band, a couple of Bolivians with acoustic guitars and a Latin drum kit crooning. Maybe she would remember everything that happened before the fire. Maybe her life would parade before her eyes as her heart clutched and cramped, her brain failed from oxygen deficiency, her eyes closed. To everyone around her, it would seem that she fell straight to the floor. But to her, a lifetime of movement and memory would pass between the heart attack and the death. Time to think of everything. She waited for the slideshow to begin.

Some of the astronomers and their rich enablers were taking a spin around the dance floor, trying to samba or just shake it.

“I need a drink,” said Irene aloud to no one in particular, and she stood up. With her legs under her, her heart raced and skipped, but she was able to walk. She wasn’t looking for the man at the table with Belion. But there he was, beside her, at the table where drinks were being served. She asked for a ginger ale. He was so familiar and so attractive, but she had never met him before. She wanted to say, How are you? How have you been?

A past life maybe, said her mother’s dreamy voice in her ear. In a past life, you were lovers.

“Who are you?” she said. “Do I know you?”

“I’m George,” he said. “George Dermont.”

He was tall, smiling. He looked so glad to see her. She felt she might put her arms back around him, press her face into his ribs. I missed you, she might say. Or some stupid thing that one of her mother’s clients would come up with. We were Scottish lords and ladies together. We were locked in a pyramid together. We were climbing the Andes together. Whatever. Where have you been?

“Oh, right, Dermont.” She felt a twinge of surprise that this man and the man she’d taken her office from would be the same. “You’re sort of … religious, is that right? And I’ve got your lab and assistant now. How you must hate me.”

“No, no!” he said, grinning. He seemed incapable of controlling his hands, switching his drink from one to the other, leaning on the table, fussing with his collar. She could not help but imagine those hands touching her hair, pulling at it, lodging themselves in it. There was some force pulling her ribs to his, her internal organs to his. As if she could never be warm again, without the warmth in his torso, without her face in his neck.

“I really like you,” he said. “I mean, I’m not religious. You’ll see, once you get to know me.”

“I think you dabbled with one of my friends at the University of Toledo, years ago,” said Irene. She felt herself scrabbling backward from him and this attraction, like she was cutting off tentacles of herself as they reached out for him, freezing them off, cauterizing the stumps.

“Probably not,” he said. “Well, was she an astronomer? I—”

Irene picked up the ginger ale that the man in the jacket had set down for her.

“And you believe the stars are God’s daisy chain or something like that … I actually read your abstract for that piece in the Dark Star Review.”

Irene wanted to leave and go back to the dais and safety, but she could not. She was looking at his face, his pink cheeks, the dark curve of his brow, his square chin. There was something about her body that was saying to her brain that he was already hers. She recognized him, and she couldn’t turn away from him. She wanted to go toward him, to slip her hand inside the button placket of his shirt, and touch his skin, and feel his heartbeat with her hand. It was a palpable want. She felt that if possible she should be very mean to him. As a precaution.

“You read that?” said George.

“My mother sends me clippings sometimes … you know, she doesn’t know a lot about real astronomy. She’s an astrologer.”

“How strange. My mother used to be an astrologer, too.”

“Really,” said Irene. She took a deep pull of her ginger ale, suddenly feeling so dry.

“I mean, not a professional one. Just an amateur one.”

“Mmm,” she said. There was a flush creeping over his throat. His eyes kept darting back and forth from her to the rug. He seemed on edge, excited.

“I’m a—oh what can I say—”

“Are those your parents?” said Irene, pointing over to the table where George had been sitting.

“Yes,” said George. “Those are my parents. Right over there.”

“We should go over,” said Irene. “I think your parents are devouring my boyfriend by inches.”

“Is that your boyfriend? Well, I hope they came hungry,” said George quickly, and then his jaw dropped and he stared at her, stricken. “Did I just say that? I’m so sorry.”

“That was not kind,” she said to him. But she found she was smiling. And she recognized also, in that second, that her heart had slowed to a reasonable pace, and she was no longer dying. But she did not slip her hand into his. She did not nudge him with her shoulder. She was in control of her body.

“Sorry, it’s just—you’re so beautiful. I didn’t think he could be your boyfriend. I’m sorry, I’m sure he’s really … smart?”

Irene picked up her drink and walked off to the table, glancing backward to George in what she meant to be a reproving glare, before she sat down decisively on Belion’s lap. But had she winked at him instead? Had that happened to her face?

“Hello,” said the man George introduced as his father. “I’m Dean. So nice to meet you.”

“Dean,” said Irene. “I’m Irene. And this is my boyfriend, Belion.”

“Belion was just telling us about how he is an immortal in a role-playing game. That must be very exciting,” said the woman George introduced as his mother. “Being an immortal.”

“I don’t play,” said Irene.

“It is,” said Belion. “Very.”

“Reminds me of good old Uncle Ray,” said Dean. “He thought he was an immortal, too.”

“Uncle Ray!” said George, joining the table but standing awkwardly behind Kate Oakenshield’s chair. “Yes, in a way. He was perfectly immortal, right up until the time he shot himself playing Russian roulette.”

“Wow, really?” said Belion. “I didn’t even think that game was real.”

“It’s not necessary to go into all this,” said Sally.

“Uncle Ray!” Dean went on, entertaining the table. “Yes, he was the finest of uncles. He escaped from prison once on a cow.”

“What?” said Belion, profoundly interested.

“It was a low-security prison,” said George. “He used the cow to swim across a river. True story.”

“This is not appropriate,” Sally said. “I don’t think we need to talk about Uncle Ray anymore. You’re making him sound like Paul Bunyan or something.”

“Paul Bunyan,” said Belion with arch solemnity. “Was my father.”

Dean laughed long and loud. “I like you, Belion,” he said to Belion. “You are not so bad.”

“Belion,” said Irene. “I’m tired. I think we need to go. Goodnight, all. Goodnight, George.”

*   *   *

Outside the ballroom, locusts whirred in the branches of the maple trees, and the occasional breeze set the leaves stirring and rippling. Couples and groups meandered down the street or popped into cars the valets were bringing around. Irene and Belion had gone home, with Belion packed into her little car and Irene driving. George stood by himself on the sidewalk, just thinking about her, and wondering how soon he could get her into his orbit again.

There was a noise at his elbow and he looked over and it was Kate Oakenshield, the girl who was raised mute.

“Oh, hey,” he said. “There you are.”

She said, “I want to go home with Dad.”

“What, back to his house?” George asked. He saw her father coming close, and his own parents right behind.

“Yes, to my house,” said Kate. Her face was wounded, as if she knew she was no longer in the target position. George softened. Poor thing. She wasn’t Irene, but who could be Irene? No one. There was only one Irene.

“That’s not a good idea, Kate,” he said.

His mother interjected. “Let her go.”

“Yes, do,” said her father.

Kate warbled, “Broodle bree, deedoodle! Deeedoo!”

George wavered. On the one hand, there was the fact that Kate should not be in her father’s house. On the other hand, there was the fact that Irene said goodnight to him in such a charming way, almost as if to give him a secret signal that she was about to ditch Belion and swing back around to pick him up instead.

“OK,” said George. He bit his lip and put his hand protectively on Kate Oakenshield’s arm. “If you need anything, you call me. Or my mom. If I’m out. Or busy.”

“Push off, Dermont,” said her father, the heel of his shoe striking angrily against the sidewalk and echoing in the stillness against the other buildings.

Sally brandished her fist, “Hey, are you looking for more love, Padre?”

“You stay away from me,” said Father Oakenshield, shepherding Kate away from them. “You’re a monster.”

“You’re the monster,” jeered Sally. “Freak.”

Father Oakenshield and Kate, wrapped in her shawl, huddled off down the sidewalk toward the parking lot, tweeting and twittering at each other and producing rapid arpeggios. George turned to his mother and took her by the elbows.

“Mom,” he said. “Listen!”

“I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I get so excited. I sound like a twelve-year-old.”

George said, “No, I don’t even care about that.”

Sally pulled her wrap around her arms more firmly, and a valet popped up at George’s arm, ready to retrieve his car. George produced a ticket and handed it to the man.

“Really,” Sally said, “Hmm? What then, darling?”

“It’s that girl! The black hole girl.”

Sally frowned, her finger tapping on her cheek, “Hmm … Irene Sparks…”

“Come on, Mom, isn’t she gorgeous? She’s not even very, ah, scientific looking. More like, oh, I don’t know, Aphrodite? Helen of Troy?”

“George, my son, my son,” said his mother, as her face pulled into a wry smile. “Has your attention really been captured by that little black cloud in a dress?”

“I can’t stop thinking about her.”

“How interesting. I don’t see it happening, George,” she said coldly. “But it is so interesting.”

“Do we know her, Mother?” said George.

“What? No, of course we don’t.”

“Because when I see her,” he went on, as if she hadn’t answered no, “I don’t miss anyone. I just feel happy that she’s near.”

“Speaking of near,” said his mother, “Where has your father wandered off to?”

They both recalled the existence of Dean, and looked around to discover that he had climbed a tree.

“Good grief,” said Sally, but with warmth and affection that made George happy. “I can’t take my eyes off him for a second.”