Life After Genius (45 page)

Mead boils with anger. But of course, she thinks the two of them are friends. She thinks the best thing her son ever did was befriend Herman Weinstein. And that is exactly the kind of thinking that got Mead into this mess in the first place. No wonder he is such a poor judge of character. No wonder he let himself be taken in by Herman. None of this is Mead’s fault; it’s all on his mother. This whole fucked-up mess happened because of his stupid mother!

“Here, let me freshen up that cup of coffee for you,” Mead hears her say to her guest, then her heels start
click-clack
ing toward the kitchen.

Mead hurries down the hall and ducks into his bedroom, standing stone still in the dark as she patters around in the kitchen waiting on Herman, sucking up to the rich boy from Princeton who is probably in the living room right now having a good laugh at her expense. Only when his mother has returned to the living room does Mead tiptoe back into the kitchen, pull open the basement door, and slip down the stairs.

A rack of clothes in dry-cleaner bags stands next to the furnace. The rollaway bed on which Henry Charles wasted away sits next to the water heater. Two card tables and eight folding chairs are stacked up against the far wall. And sitting on the never-used workbench next to them is the maze. It’s still here; his mother never threw it out. Mead runs his finger over one of the bridges and it comes away covered in dust. And he starts to cry. For all the things he never said. For all the things he should have done differently. For not being at the dorm when he was supposed to be. For not making it to Percy’s funeral. For putting his trust in the wrong person. For disappointing the dean. He screwed up. He screwed up so royally that he doesn’t even know where to begin to make it all right again. Everyone thinks he’s a genius but Mead knows the truth: He is the stupidest person ever to have walked on this planet. Ever!

He swipes his sleeve across his face to dry his cheeks and catches sight of something blue sticking out from under the maze. Curious, he grasps the edge of it and pulls and out comes a folder with the words “The Life of a River” written across the front of it in the neat penmanship of a ten-year-old boy. Inside is the science report he handed in to Mr. Belknap, the letter C scrawled on the upper right-hand corner in red pencil and circled. But what is it doing here? Mead distinctly remembers burying it in the bottom of the garbage can on the morning of trash collection day eight years ago. He remembers because he was so grossed out from having come in contact with rotting leftovers that he ran to school and washed his hands all the way up to his elbows in the boys’ lavatory. Mead now flips through the pages of the report until he finds evidence to back up his memory: a brown-rimmed stain that long ago soaked its way through the last four pages.

But that isn’t all he finds. Tucked behind the report Mead handed in is his original science report, the pages taped back together as if by an archaeologist trying to make heads or tails out of some unearthed ancient text. But on the same day he buried his C-grade report in the trash, Mead put the pieces of his original report in a shoebox and then stowed the box on his closet shelf because he didn’t have the heart to throw them out. Who found the box? Who reassembled these pages?

“Chin up, Fegley,” Herman says. “It can’t be that bad.”

Mead spins around. Herman is standing at the bottom of the stairs.

“Go away,” Mead says. “I’m not in the mood to deal with you right now.”

“It’s good to see you too.”

“I mean it. Get lost,” Mead says and swings his arm through the air as if to dismiss his vision of Herman once and for all, but instead he hits flesh and bone. “Shit,” Mead says and cradles his not-yet-fy-healed right hand in his left hand.

“Ouch, Fegley,” Herman says, “that hurt. I think I deserve an apology.”

Which just makes Mead even angrier. He drops his hand and says, “Listen, Weinstein, I don’t know what little scheme you and my mother are cooking up together to try and make me go back to school, and frankly I don’t care, so why don’t you just sneak back up the stairs as quietly as you snuck down and go tell my mother that I’m not going along with it. I’ve had it with the both of you.”

“You’ve got me all wrong, Fegley.”

“No, I don’t. I’ve got you just right. You use people, Weinstein. You used Dr. Kustrup and when that didn’t turn out so great you decided you’d use me. I must have looked like some damned easy target to you. Fresh off the hay truck. A naïve, young kid with brains but no social skills who spent every Saturday night sitting alone in the library reading math books, easy pickings for a sophisticated prep school kid like yourself who doesn’t think twice about breaking the law because he knows he’ll get away with it. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Weinstein, but I guess it turns out that I’m not as much of a sad sack as you first thought. I happen to know what real friendship is because I once had a real friend. He built this maze right here for me and never asked for a thing in return. So screw you, Weinstein. Now get the hell out of my basement.”

“Your mother didn’t invite me here, Fegley.”

“So you invited yourself. Big surprise. Now leave.”

“I think you better shut up and start listening. Are you listening?”

And then Mead hears it. His mother is still talking to someone in the living room. But if she isn’t entertaining Herman then who the hell is she entertaining?

“What do you say we get out of here and go for a ride,” Herman says. “We don’t have to go back to Chicago, we can go anywhere you’d like: California, Florida, Mexico. We don’t even have to pick a destination, let’s just take off. Two buddies on a road trip together. Like Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady.”

“They were unemployed bums with no future.”

“Exactly. It’ll be fun.”

It has its appeal, it really does. It’s even better than a cello player who couldn’t cut it with the local garage band. Mead could work for cash and sleep in the back of a car. It doesn’t get more anonymous than that.

“That was you in the cemetery, wasn’t it?” Mead says. “I wasn’t seeing things. You’ve been here all week stalking me.”

“I don’t like that word, Fegley. Stalking. It sounds so psychotic.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Well, I was hardly going to hang around campus. My father came this close to throwing me back into that mental institution after you made your big declaration of independence to him in my dorm room. This close,” he says and holds his thumb and forefinger within inches of Mead’s face. “I could have talked him out of it, though. I could have convinced him that you were wigging out from the pain pills and the pressure and all, but then you had to go and take off. You’re a lousy friend, Fegley, but I forgive you. I forgive you because I know you didn’t do it deliberately, you did it because you were oblivious to the consequences. That’s why I’m here now. I’m here to give you a second chance. To make things right. I’m here to tell you that I’m willing to put that little incident behind us. I’m here to work on rebuilding our friendship. Because that’s what friends do, they forgive each other their shortcomings.”

“What’re you, deaf? We are not friends, Weinstein. Got it? You and me: not friends. And how dare you stand there and talk to me about second chances. I didn’t screw you over, I simply told the truth. You screwed me. If anyone owes anybody an apology around here, you owe me.”

“You’re right.”

“Damned straight I’m right.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

“Now you apologize to me.”

“For what?”

“I can’t go back there empty-handed, Fegley. You gotta give me something.”

And even though Mead doesn’t think he owes Herman a goddamned thing, he feels like doing the guy a favor anyway. Maybe because he knows his father is a dick. Maybe because he never thanked Percy for the maze. Maybe because, despite being so screwed up in the head, Herman did do Mead a huge kindness by flying him out east and getting him access to the supercomputer. And even if he did it for the wrong reason, at least he’s willing to stand here now and admit it. And so Mead says, “I’ll make things right with your father. I’ll tell him you were helping me out and got carried away in your enthusiasm.”

“So the road trip is on?”

“I’ll get my suitcase and we can go.”

Mead gets to the top of the steps before he realizes he’s still holding the blue folder. He sets it down on the breakfast table —he’ll deal with
that
later —and heads for his room. Herman follows, standing in the doorway like a prison guard as Mead drags his suitcase out of the closet and tosses in a clean pair of socks, an undershirt, and some boxers, then shadows Mead back down the hall. They are just entering the kitchen when they hear Mead’s mother say, “The bathroom is through that door and down the hall to your left.” And a second later the kitchen door swings open and Dr. Alexander steps through it. At first Mead does not react, unsure of whether it is the actual professor standing in front of him or just another one of Mead’s many hallucinations, so he says, “Is that really you, Dr. Alexander?”

“Mr. Fegley,” the professor says. “How would you apply the basic prime finding process to all real numbers up to 701,000?”

“With a pen, a pad of paper, and a list of primes up to 829.”

The professor then proceeds to pull something from his back pocket. “I believe this belongs to you,” he says and hands him the periodical Mead found in the bookshop off campus. “The dean asked me to return it to you.”

Mead sets down his suitcase and takes the pamphlet from Dr. Alexander. A note is paper-clipped to it. “My door is always open,” it says. And it’s signed
Dean Falconia.
“Ohmygod,” Mead says. “It is you. You’re really here. But what are you doing in High Grove?” Mead looks down at the professor’s cast. “And how did you get here?”

“Your mother picked me up at the train station in Alton a few hours ago.”

“My mother?”

And as if on cue, the door swings open again and she steps through it.

“Teddy,” she says. “When did you get home?”

Mead looks at his mother all neat and prim and perfect standing next to the rumpled professor and says to her, “But you wouldn’t even shake his hand. In Chicago.”

“I’ve already apologized to your professor for that, Teddy. And he graciously accepted my apology. I can only hope that you will do the same.”

The last time Mead’s mother apologized to him was at Mr. Cheese’s funeral. It didn’t seem like enough back then, so is it enough now? But then it has to be, doesn’t it? Because she cannot take back what she did any more than Mead can take back what he did. Shit. He ditched his presentation. He wasn’t thinking about anyone but himself. Not the dean, not all those visiting professors, just himself. If Mead cannot find it in himself to accept his mother’s apology, then how in hell can he expect the dean to accept his?

Mead’s mother looks at Herman, as surprised by his appearance in her kitchen as Mead is by Dr. Alexander’s, and says, “What is he doing here?” As if Herman is trying to steal her thunder. As if she suddenly suspects that the rich boy from Princeton is not the good friend she first thought he was to her son.

“Herman’s taking me back to school, Mother. We were just leaving.”

“Now?” she says. “In the middle of the night? When did you make these arrangements, Teddy? How come you didn’t tell me?”

These are all good questions, none of which he has any good answers to. But he does have a few questions of his own. Mead picks up the blue folder and says, “You found this in the trash, didn’t you? And you found the shoebox in my closet. You knew my original science report got destroyed and yet you still punished me for getting that C. Why? Why did you take me to Wessman’s if you knew the whole time?”

“Because,” she says in a tone that suggests that she has rehearsed the answer to this question a million times over the past eight years, “I was afraid of the consequences if I didn’t.”

“Consequences? What consequences?”

Mead’s mother looks from Dr. Alexander to Herman to Mead. “When you were a toddler I used to take you over to your aunt and uncle’s house to play with your cousin. Percy was always yanking whatever toy you were playing with out of your hand. It made me so mad. But what made me even madder was that you never cried or complained about it, you just let him take whatever he wanted, and I thought: Throughout his whole life, people are going to take advantage of my son.” She shifts her eyes to the blue folder. “When I saw you burying that in the trash, I knew something was up and searched your room looking for an explanation. I didn’t know who did it, only that it had happened.
Who
wasn’t important. I wasn’t going to be able to follow you around for the rest of your life and protect you.” She looks back up at Mead. “You weren’t a physically strong boy, Teddy, but you were exceptionally smart. I had to make sure that you would utilize that god-given talent to its fullest extent. And if taking you to Wessman’s that day meant you might end up hating me for the rest of your life, it was a gamble I was willing to take in order to ensure my son the best possible life.”

Mead sets the blue folder back down on the table. “I’m a grown man now, Mother. You’re going to have to trust me to take care of things in my own way.” And then he picks up his suitcase and steps out the back door.

“You handled yourself admirably back there, Fegley,” Herman says as they walk toward the strange car parked in front of the house. “I almost believed it myself, you know, that you’ve suddenly grown up. I hope it’s really true.”

It’s a nondescript rental sedan. The car. The kind gangsters drive in movies. And it gives Mead a moment of pause. He thinks about turning around and going back into the house but pride won’t let him. Instead he tosses his suitcase onto the backseat, crawls into the front, and slams the door. To let Herman know that he doesn’t appreciate the comment. Only when Herman has crawled in behind the wheel and started up the car does Mead bother to utter his own sarcastic response. “I’d give you directions to the highway,” he says, “but I don’t suppose you need them.”