A Theory of Relativity (14 page)

Then, the thin, tenor throat of the organ surprised them and they looked up, expecting to see Mrs. Wilton at the keyboard. But instead, there sat Carl Jurgen, blue-white in his linen slacks and shirt, bathed in a funnel of sunlight, playing that old jazz, “Georgia.” Theory[001-112] 6/5/01 11:58 AM Page 84

“Did you notice Carl Jurgen didn’t have a suitcase,” Tim was saying.

“He’s like a spy in a movie or something.” Gordon didn’t reply. He had to tug himself from a trance state even to understand what Upchurch had said. They were sitting in Church’s Maxima on one of the embryonic roads in Wood Violet Hollow, the new subdivision that was Tim’s pride and obsession—he being, as he would often offer, apropos of nothing, the second-youngest public works director in the nation. After dropping Jurgen off at the airport, Tim had stopped for a couple of double cheeseburgers with everything. The smell of the burgers and the sound of Tim’s energetic munching made Gordon’s stomach quake.

“I don’t know how that works,” Gordon admitted. “I know he changed his clothes two or three times. He was wearing linen pants at the funeral.”

“Linen pants. Right. They’d have been up around my knees after the first hour. Where’d he iron them?”

“I have no idea,” Gordon said. “I don’t even own an iron. Could you open a window while you eat that, Church? Or better yet, eat it in . . .

Canada or someplace? I’m going to hurl, here.” Church bit into his burger unperturbed. A spurt of mayonnaise coated his lower lip. “Maybe the clothes thing is from being born rich,” he went on. “Maybe they have shrunken clothes like those capsules little kids have. You just put them in water and they grow up into 84

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dinosaurs. Only these would grow up and be sport coats. The rich are different from us, Gordo.”

They sank into a silence that must have seemed companionable to Tim, but was excruciating for Gordon. It wasn’t that he minded the quiet. He’d heard enough voices in the past two days to last him the rest of his life. But a welter of competing thoughts and narratives were slugging it out in the back of his mind, nagging him to get home, not to his own place, but to Cleveland Avenue.

Church was chattering on about the latest installment in the environmentally challenged history of the subdivision, which owed its name to a tiny circle of land, a bowl of tender blue flowers that legend described as an ancient buffalo wallow. Then the members of the Red Stick tribe had turned up, anxious, to the point of litigation, to halt the whole project until it could be determined if a strangely table-shaped rise was a Woodland Peoples’ burial cairn. The desperate developer then offered to name the subdivision “Indian Burial Mound Place.” One of Gordon’s only honest laughs of the past year had been Tim’s account of his diplomatic reaction, when he’d gently asked the developer,
How
long has it been since you’ve seen any
. . .
horror movies?

“I think I’d better get home soon,” Gordon suggested softly. “My folks probably need me. We were gone all night. I just feel like I was in a play . . . a production of some kind and now it’s over. Like it was a show we put on for other people.”

Gordon thought briefly of the news report they’d watched yesterday, as if TV coverage were a staple of everyone’s family tragedy. Jane Hampton of WINN-TV in Madison intoned sadly, “We first met little Keefer Nye last year when we covered a touching event. The forces of big-time athletics and small town love joined in a huge benefit to raise funds to fight cancer, which was claiming the life of Keefer’s twenty-six-year-old mother, Georgia McKenna Nye, whose husband, Ray, was an up-and-coming pro golfer on the Knockout Tour. Today, there is news almost too sad to imagine. Keefer Nye has lost both her mother and her father.” The sports guy, Mike Albert, weighed in, almost joshing,

“Keefer is lucky in that she has two sets of loving grandparents still living, and maybe she’ll grow up to play on the LPGA . . .” Theory[001-112] 6/5/01 11:58 AM Page 86

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*

*

*

“Got any aspirin, Church?”

Tim shook his head, chewing. Gordon was fairly certain he was well into stage one of a bastard hangover. This sitting around was aim-less, but it seemed somehow necessary, an obligatory pause before everyone turned away and plunged into the flume of everyday life.

There were two conversations that stood out in his mind from the night before. He cudgeled them in his mind, and they only deepened his impatience.

The first was something Delia Cady, Ray’s cousin, had said at an impromptu dinner with the younger people.

Gordon had, by then, sunk into a stupor he’d hoped would be taken as the effects of shock, and so at first, he hadn’t realized that Delia’s comments about Ray’s absolute faith in eternal life were directed at him.

“And I know Georgia felt the same way,” Delia had said, brushing back the skillful rigid structure of dark ringlets that framed her large, pale face. “That’s right, isn’t it, Gordon?”

“I don’t know,” Gordon had said, itching with discomfort as the rest fell silent. “I mean, I don’t know whether she believed in that.”

“She was your sister,” Delia chided. “We discussed it many times.

She felt certain that God was directing her course.”

“God was her copilot,” Tim put in, his attempt at lightness landing with a leaden plop in the hush.

“We just never discussed religion,” Gordon had explained. “I know she was more religious than I am . . .”

“I wonder if she’ll be raised . . . Catholic,” Delia said.

“Do you mean Keefer?”

She’d nodded. “You know, the Nyes aren’t.”

“My folks are, though,” Gordon said. “Socially, at least.”

“There’s a lot more to it than smells and bells and holidays,” Delia went on. “It’s a big responsibility, one of the most important things about raising a child.”

“I think . . . well, we haven’t got that far yet, Delia,” Gordon had said wearily, and he remembered wondering as he spoke, were the McKennas somehow behind the game?

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He’d assumed, of course, especially after learning of the annulled will, that there would have to be some sort of conference about Keefer.

But the McKennas were her designated guardians. Everyone knew that.

He hadn’t discussed the lawyer’s message with his parents, hesitating out of deference to their grief. He’d been angry, in fact, that his attention to his own grief had been diverted by ridiculous speculation. But as he listened to Delia, he’d been forced into more speculating: Had his parents been holding back also, out of respect for him? Did all three of them know things they weren’t telling one another?

The second conversation had happened that morning, with Carl Jurgen, during the dizzy dawn of a long night. A drinking conclave had followed the dinner. It started with at least two of the Upchurch brothers (Gordon’s memory blurred), Pat Chaptman, Kip Sweeney, Lindsay, and Stephanie Larsen and her boyfriend, along with great quantities of cranberry juice and vodka and Triple Sec that dwindled to vodka alone.

By the wee hours, the crowd also had dwindled, leaving only Gordon, Tim, Jurgen, and Kip.

Jurgen had been talking quietly with Tim, making it clear he intended to sleep that night at Tim’s apartment, and Tim—though he’d met Jurgen only once before, on a visit to Florida—was going along with the plan as if it had been his own invitation, as if they’d been brothers for life. That was Jurgen’s effect on people, a wonder to Gordon as long as he’d known him. People said he, Gordon, took things lightly, but Carl had nerves of steel, or of silk.

Sometime during the night, in a befuddled way, Gordon had decided that Jurgen would be someone to confide in. Jurgen was, after all, almost a lawyer, one of the few of his friends from college who hadn’t been math or science grinds.

And so he had waited. He had waited, trying to do his part in recalling, for the Tall Trees bunch, the impossible rapture of their Southern college days and nights, which seemed at this point, in alcohol-fueled retrospect, like an endless sunlit kiss on a white beach that stretched on forever.

“Tonight,” Jurgen said then—with elegance out of keeping with the pie tins rubbled with two roach ends and the butts of Kip’s Camels, and Theory[001-112] 6/5/01 11:58 AM Page 88

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flies drowning in the pool of cranberry juice that had jelled on the cable spool Tim used for a coffee table—“Despite all . . . this revelry, which is probably unseemly, we are all a little older than we should be. So let’s remember when we were young.” He’d added, “For my beloved pal, Ray Nye, Junior.”

And Jurgen went on, his recall for place and words so much more acute than Gordon’s own. He’d told them all about the sandwich guy they’d tortured with their weekend raids on his marquee—by Sunday morning, “Meatball Subs” read “Bust Me Balls,” “Hot Dog and Fries” ended up “Sand Ho Got Fried.” About using Carl’s lawyer father’s credit card to charge cases of Hula Girl at the Sunoco station, the weary guy behind the counter deadpanning, “Regular or unleaded?” slapping the charge slip right on top of the sweating beer cans. They’d traded stories of adventures that led up to the fall when Georgia had come to Florida State. For Gordon, a Northerner utterly infatuated with the languor of the South, life had then been perfect. With new friends, Georgia had taken on the role of unofficial little sister to the Evans Scholars, organizing softball matches and dress-up dances. The first Thanksgiving after, as Jurgen put it, “Georgia conquered Florida,” there’d been a big golf tournament. And so a dozen of them couldn’t go home for the holiday.

Georgia had cooked a dinner, and in lieu of a blessing, had sung, in her sweet alto, the old Louis Armstrong song, “What a Wonderful World,” whereupon strong men sobbed and rushed from the table to call their mothers.

It was on the tide of those memories, at dawn, when pink flossy clouds were shredding overhead, that Gordon had asked Carl to join him on the balcony at Tim’s place, finally able to give voice to his troubles.

“I guess, you know, we haven’t had a chance to work everything out, about my niece,” he’d begun. “But I guess we’ll take care of her all together. The three of us. Me, mostly, I guess.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Jurgen said solemnly, and Gordon’s neck prickled. “I can’t imagine raising a baby alone.”

“I can’t imagine raising a baby at all. But it’s Keefer. I have to.”

“Do you want to?”

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“It’s Keefer.”

“Big Ray and Diane,” Jurgen said thoughtfully, “are they okay with this?”

The thought of that student’s dad, Mr. . . . Liotis, lawyer Liotis, rapped at Gordon’s chest.

He wanted to ask Jurgen, did the last will stand in force even if the principals revoked it? Did they have to work out all these complexities immediately, and for all time? His words stalled in his mouth. Georgia seemed to be receding, fast, away from him down a long passage, like a vanishing train.

“My sister and Ray named us guardians,” he’d ventured. “That’s what they both wanted.”

“Us,” Jurgen repeated.

“Didn’t the Nyes talk about it?”

“Yes, they did,” Jurgen acknowledged.

“What, do you feel okay telling me what they said?”

“All they said was, they were meeting with Ray’s lawyer. Friday.

Tomorrow. Today, I guess, by now. And I assumed this had something to do with their estate.”

“They didn’t have much of an estate, Carl, and it’s all Keefer’s, I mean, whatever we can get for the condo, or whatever . . . it will pay for her college and all.”

“They had insurance. I assume any responsible parent, with, I’m sorry, a very ill spouse, would be very careful about that.”

“I, you know, I just hadn’t thought of it.”

“No one would, in your circumstances.”

“Do you think that the Nyes . . . ?”

“What?”

“Well, do you think they would consider wanting custody of Keefer?”

“I think they would consider that, yes.”

“Do you think that would be . . . ?”

“I’m in a sort of place, here, Gordo. Ray was my best friend all my life. I’ve known the Nyes since I was in first grade. And two finer people never walked on land. They love that little girl. And your mom and dad are equally good people.”

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“And they’ve been with the baby, every day of her life, practically.”

“It’s a tough one. I’m sure the Nyes want the very best for Keefer.” Something in his tone alerted Gordon. Implied a contest. Will there be sides, Gordon thought? Will Jurgen be on mine? South versus North?

Friendship versus history?

“I know they do. I know they do,” he’d finally managed, stupidly.

“I’m sure good people can work this all out. You know, Georgia was in her way a great beauty, Gordo. I got to know her well in the time they lived down there, when you were off in the jungles with the earthy folk. She had a mouth on her, but what a sweet soul. Yep, I’m sure you all can work this out.”

Was he sure? Gordon sneaked a look at Jurgen’s angular jaw. His friend looked placid, serene. Then Jurgen sighed. “I’m pulling for . . .

well, for all of you.”

All of you, Gordon’s mind repeated. Jurgen had to have an agenda here. The ties were deep and tangled. Jurgen, Gordon happened to know, had availed himself of Alison Nye’s virginity one fiercely hot night on the carpet of the ninth green at Sandpiper, though it had not been an enduring relationship, and Alison had married Andy several years later. At Georgia’s wedding, the fact that Gordon had been Ray’s best man, had been a sore point with Jurgen.

But what significance could any of this have now, Gordon thought?

Here, now, when they’d all grown up and Ray and Georgia were dead and he was sweating and nauseated, in the dawn of his grief, in a car in Tall Trees in the middle of a dusty field with Tim—Gordon noticed now—asleep in the driver’s seat?