Muriel’s outward calm belied her inner turbulence. Her apparent serenity was in great measure due to the strong tranquilizers prescribed by the therapist she had been seeing. To safeguard any future relationship with Isabel, it was best that in the short term she seem to be in agreement with the revised plans. Though she deeply resented Ray’s perfidy, a pitched battle would only make things worse. For it was abundantly clear that however strongly she held on, Ray would only pull harder. And Isabel would inevitably be torn to pieces.
Without emotion she wished Ray a safe journey. It was only when she embraced her daughter that she could not hold back the tears. Peter bit his lip as he in turn hugged his sister, then tried not to reveal his intense loathing as he perfunctorily shook hands with the man who had refused to be his father.
Isabel napped as Ray drove demonically through the night. He was intent on lifting her mood by reaching San Francisco at the magical moment when dawn and darkness met, driving further north than necessary so that they could turn onto Route 80, along the eastern side of the bay, and contemplate the first rays of the morning sun beaming over the Berkeley Hills and illuminating the Golden Gate bridge in the distance. The side lamps of the majestic span still burned as the first beams of sunlight brushed the cables strung between the huge arches, making them glow like the filaments of a giant light bulb.
“Ah,” he remarked, “home sweet home.”
Isabel pretended to be asleep. But in her heart she still thought of the house they had left behind as her “home.”
When they reached their apartment on Piedmont Avenue, Raymond had to push open the door, since the floor inside was piled high with mail.
“Anything for me?” she asked hopefully. As a rule, Isabel never received letters at the apartment, since Ray had arranged with the University to withhold all personal information, including their address and phone number. Any correspondence that came for her was directed to the Physics Department. It consisted mostly of requests for autographs.
It all embarrassed her. Isabel did not want to be treated like a pop star. Nor did she relish the notion of being held up as a shining example to female children.
Raymond was busy tearing open envelopes, grumbling to himself, “I can’t believe this electric bill, you’d think we were running Cape Canaveral in here.”
And then he noticed it. “This is your lucky day, Isabel. There’s actually something for you.” He felt comfortable passing the letter on to her since he had already seen that its provenance was the Physics Department.
She opened the envelope, stared at the card inside for a moment, and then smiled broadly.
“Hey, this is really neat. Karl’s invited me—I mean us—to a party.”
“Who’ll be there?” her father inquired, suspicion immediately surfacing.
“Oh, just physics types,” Isabel replied. “For some reason most of them are loners. It comes with the territory, I guess, since they live so much inside their own heads. But Karl sweeps them out of the lab one day a year to get some fresh air.”
“That sounds very hospitable.” Raymond averred, knowing from his own experience that his daughter was right. But it was not really Isabel he worried about, but himself—concerned with the disquieting possibility that he might not be able to hold his own in conversation.
But at least it would give him a chance to size up this Pracht fellow.
The professor’s home was, appropriately enough, on Panoramic Way in the Berkeley Hills, straight above the university and in the area to the east of the Cyclotron and the Bevetron, a high-energy, multibillion-volt proton accelerator. It was definitely an up-market neighborhood, its lavish homes giving architectural testimony to the fact that their owners were the most highly prized, and therefore most highly priced, members of the Berkeley science faculties. Raymond looked around him with satisfaction. It was common knowledge that MIT had been wooing Pracht with a lucrative offer which Berkeley, a state university, could not possibly match. Judging from his house, the professor liked to live well; maybe he would, in fact, be lured to Boston.
Karl Pracht himself answered the door. He was lean and stoop-shouldered, with a prematurely receding hair-line, and was undeniably attractive, especially when he smiled. Raymond disliked him instantly.
Pracht welcomed Isabel warmly and introduced himself to her father. “Glad you could come, Mr. da Costa.”
Feeling defensive, Raymond interpreted this greeting as a bit of subtle irony, criticizing his constant presence as Isabel’s shadow.
“Come out into the back garden,” Pracht continued. “Isabel can introduce you to just about everybody. But I warn you, they’re not all as bubbly as your daughter. It takes two or three drinks to make them let down their hair.”
As they walked through the back of the house, Raymond glanced at the guests’ faces. This was an ideal opportunity to check out the cast of characters Isabel worked with during her labs, where he could not find a plausible excuse for being present.
It was a typical Berkeley summer evening, just cool and refreshing enough so that most of the guests wore sweaters—at least tied around their necks.
He was not surprised to find that most of them were male. The few women present, wives of the graduate students, were especially thrilled at the sight of Isabel, the departmental celebrity.
The young scientists were indeed, as Ray whispered to her, “all cut from the same cloth”—Isabel had smiled and quipped, “Yes, wet blankets.” It was no wonder she shone like a Roman candle in their midst.
They greeted Raymond with a respect he had not anticipated. His confidence returned until a sudden thought struck him. He whispered to his daughter, “Isn’t there a Mrs. Pracht?”
“There is, yes, but they’re in the process of splitting.”
“Oh,” Raymond said. Paradoxically, even though he himself was divorcing, he counted Pracht’s dubious marital status as a point against him.
Raymond felt more at ease with the professors than with the graduate students. While the junior physicists were so involved with their doctoral projects that they could speak of nothing else, the senior guests were happy to take a night off from talking shop. They preferred gossip … like who might get the Nobel this year.
Two young boys, roughly sixteen and thirteen respectively, were grilling vegetarian hot dogs and burgers when father and daughter reached them with their empty plates. The elder chef, sinewy and bronzed, greeted Isabel jauntily.
“Hey, you must be Ms. Einstein.”
Ray frowned. “Come on, Isabel,” he chided her with surly impatience. “We’re holding up the line.”
“On the contrary,” the boy dissented. “I’m holding it up so I can get acquainted with God’s gift to physics and—regardless of age and mental capacity—the cutest thing to happen in science since the apple that hit Newton on the head.”
“Just who do you think you’re talking to?” Ray demanded.
“Have I caused offense in some way, Mr. da Costa—or is it ‘Doctor’? I know you’re in the game too.”
Raymond took this to be a not-too-subtle put-down. Surely everyone in the department knew he had no doctorate, and this young upstart was deliberately trying to humiliate him.
“May I introduce myself?” the boy continued.
“That isn’t strictly necessary,” Ray replied acerbically.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he agreed. “I’m just the backward boy with the forehand, sometimes known as the forward boy with the backhand.”
“What?” Isabel exclaimed.
“Did that get you?” he asked, his eyes twinkling. “I rehearsed it on my kid brother all afternoon, didn’t I, Dink?”
The younger chef, now burdened with double duty, nodded obediently. “Yeah, my brother’s an amazing pain in the ass.”
“Isabel,” her father urged, “I see a free table over there on top of that slope. We could—”
Totally without precedent, Isabel ignored her father and refused to move, captivated by this manic iconoclast.
“Is your brother’s name really Dink?” she asked—simply to make conversation.
“Not officially. He got saddled with ‘George,’ but I gave him something more colorful and onomatopoetic. Which reminds me—I’m Jerry, Karl’s punishment for being too smart. I mean, how else would I have gotten into this highbrow party—right?”
Then, turning to his assistant, he commanded, “Dinko, take over the food while I show these V.I.P.’s to a table.”
“There’s no need for that,” Ray began to protest. But by now he had been caught up by this teenage equivalent of a gale-force wind.
The young man scooped up their paper plates and led them across the lawn, calling irreverently en route to various professors to “make way for the princess.”
They reached a table on the little ridge, which Isabel now noticed had a hand-scrawled place card with “Reserved” on it.
“Yeah,” Jerry acknowledged without being asked. “I personally saved it for you guys—and you don’t even have to tip me.”
Then, balancing the two plates on one arm, he flicked his towel to remove any crumbs and elegantly placed the food down.
“Thank you,” Ray said in dismissal, hoping he could cut further dialogue between his daughter and this juvenile delinquent.
“Mind if I join you?” Clearly, Jerry regarded the question as rhetorical, because he sat down before either of them could answer.
Though fuming inwardly, Ray had to keep tight control of his temper. After all, he kept reminding himself, this was the son of his daughter’s adviser.
“I’ve seen your picture on Karl’s desk,” Isabel remarked.
“For use as a dartboard, no doubt,” Jerry retorted. “I suppose he told you I’m not exactly a microchip off the old block.”
“Actually, he told me you were rebelling at the moment,” Isabel responded. “But that you’re very brilliant.”
“No, I used to be. But I gave it up when I quit school to take up tennis full-time.”
“Why are you so anxious to be thought of as stupid?” she asked with genuine interest.
“Truth?” he answered somberly, in stark contrast to his previous frenetic behavior. “Let me tell you a cautionary tale. It might some day influence your choice of a husband.”
How much more of this could he tolerate? Ray wondered.
Jerry launched into his narrative. “Until you came along, Karl Pracht had been the youngest person ever admitted to the Berkeley physics program—”
“I never knew that,” Isabel interrupted.
“Yep.” The young man nodded. “You took his crown. Anyway, if that wasn’t bad enough, at an all too precocious age he married a supersonic math graduate student. The result of this genetic overkill is yours truly—cursed with an IQ around the Fahrenheit boiling point of water.”
At this moment, Ray’s interest was awakened. He found himself intrigued by this young man’s lineage and the staggering intellectual potential it bespoke.
Isabel instantly knew she had met someone who would understand why she sometimes felt like a freak. And what’s more, he’d been brave enough to escape from the monkey house of genius.
“But think of how much you could learn about the world,” Raymond offered in the first civilized words he had exchanged with Jerry Pracht.
“I’m not exactly knocked out by the world, Mr. da Costa. It’s a polluted, overpopulated suburb of the universe. I’m more into space.”
He certainly is, Ray grumbled to himself.
“In fact, as my dad won’t let me forget, the first question I ever asked was, ‘Why do stars shine?’ ”
“Really?” Isabel remarked, thinking of her own childhood curiosity and feeling an uncanny kinship. She could not help noticing how the sun had bleached his blond hair nearly white, making his eyes seem all the bluer.
“How old were you?” Ray inquired. There was an unmistakable competitive edge to his voice.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jerry mused jocularly. “I guess I began stargazing and asking questions when they changed my diapers.”
“Well, you had the right parents to ask,” Isabel offered.
“So did you,” Jerry said, returning the compliment, his instinct telling him that flattery in this area would get him very far indeed.
“Did your mother and father tutor you?” Ray inquired.
“Endlessly,” Jerry answered, “bordering on child abuse. I had to beg them to send me to school to get away from the academic pressure.” He grinned. “Of course, it was a school for ‘special’ children. I hesitate to use the word ‘gifted’ in reference to myself, but I bluffed my way in. I was motivated because at least they had tennis courts.
“Anyway,” he continued, “that’s where I met my future pal Darius, who, like me, was crazy about the stars. We built a telescope, even ground a perfect twelve-inch F6.0 mirror. I did most of the glass work, and Darius figured out how to use a laser to check the curvature. He actually made the interferometer.
“It took us a couple of months until the mirror was absolutely perfect. As you might have guessed, Dad wanted us to write it up for Sky and Telescope, but Darrie and I both nixed the idea. Our technological triumph’s currently mounted on the other side of the garden in a handmade plywood shell with a dome that can actually swivel. I’d be happy to show you if you have the slightest interest.”
“I would—” Isabel responded instantly.
“Not at night,” Ray interdicted, with such urgency that only after he’d spoken did he realize the absurdity of his objection. “I mean, some other time,” he quickly corrected himself.
“Great,” Jerry enthused. “I regard that as a firm commitment. Anyway, now that I’ve made an indelible impression on you, could I hear more about Isa?”
Raymond cringed at the barbarous mutilation of his daughter’s name.
“I’m afraid I live a very dull life compared to you.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” her father pouted.
“Well, it’s true, Dad. You’re too nice to rebel against—even for a game of tennis.”
“What?” Jerry exclaimed histrionically. “You mean you don’t play?”
“She’s not interested,” Raymond quickly answered.
“Actually, Dad, I really don’t know because I’ve never tried.”
“It’s a game,” Raymond declared categorically. “Life isn’t a game.”
“Negative, negative.” Jerry Pracht dissented passionately. “That’s the one thing that makes me happier than all the eggheads at this party. My horizon ends at the baseline, and nothing in the world brings me more joy than crushing a forehand winner to a corner. How many other people here would settle for less than a new Theory of Relativity? By the way, would you like some lessons, Isa? I’m not much at physics, but I’m one hell of a tennis teacher.”
“Gee, that would be nice. I mean—” She glanced instinctively at her father for guidance.
“Isabel’s got a punishing schedule, Jerry. I really don’t know how she could manage it.”
“No one appreciates that more than I, Mr. da Costa, but you’d be surprised how much I could accomplish on a Saturday morning while you’re teaching.”
Stymied once again, Raymond wondered fleetingly how the minutiae of his activities were such public knowledge. And then he instantly remembered the many notices he had put up on bulletin boards near the Physics Department, offering his tutorial services and indicating when he was free.
Jerry turned to Isabel. “Why don’t I come by this Saturday around ten? I’ll bring an extra racket, and I’ll pillage my attic to see if I can find a pair of shoes the right size.”
Isabel knew what she felt, but she did not know how her father wanted her to feel.
Before she could answer, Jerry suddenly glanced over his shoulder and quickly excused himself. “Hey guys, my poorly coordinated brother’s causing havoc back at the grill. I’d better shoot over there and bail him out. See you Saturday morning, Isa,” he called as he dashed off.
“My God,” Ray observed the moment Jerry was out of earshot. “Pracht must be brokenhearted.”
“What do you mean, Dad?”
“That boy is obviously very disturbed.”
“He seemed okay to me,” Isabel remarked innocently.
Ray frowned at his daughter’s naïveté. “There’s no way I’ll let you play tennis with somebody like him.”
“Why not?” Isabel countered. “I’d really like to learn.”
“Then I’ll get you a qualified tutor,” Ray insisted.
“But that’s just the point! He is qualified.”
Ray felt uneasy disputing this in Pracht’s home territory. “We’ll discuss it later.”
“There’s nothing to discuss, Dad. You’re letting me go.”
“What makes you say that?” he inquired with surprise.
“Because I know you, and you’d never deny me something I really wanted.”
Raymond’s jaw tightened. This was the first hint of disobedience his daughter had ever displayed.
No, that was too mild a word for it. It bordered on revolution.