A Theory of Relativity (34 page)

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the age of, say, eleven. He’d longed for a time when his mother would not ask them to watch while she moved the three kings—Georgia, as a child, had called them “the wiseguys”—a fraction of an inch closer to the stable, hand-carved in Hungary and blessed by obscure holy Hungarians. He’d longed, during college, and after, for what he imagined a Manhattan type of Christmas, adults sipping expensive champagne and nibbling oysters, exchanging a few but very elite items made of chrome.

But his mother and Georgia favored shirts silk-screened with unearthed family photos, stocking caps with jingle bells, enough sports equip-ment to outfit his own gym.

Of course, damned luck, he missed that now, that excess, and was thankful for the chance to drive through the woods and over the hill to Nora’s, where he and his male cousins had thrown a football around the side yard after consuming thirds of every class of cholesterol-enhancing cuisine. They had guzzled Labatts, sworn mightily, laughed at the dogs, behaved, in short, like people from Wisconsin, and Gordon was not pretending for one moment. Screw the chrome Christmas. He’d felt safe, counted in.

That night, he’d slept in his old bed at his parents’ and dreamed of Keefer as a grown girl, fitting long, strong fingers down the seams of the pigskin, his own hand helping her form the fit. When he awoke, he woke to thinking of how it was for her in the morning, how he’d turn from shaving to see her flipping Rice Chex out of his cereal bowl, using the spoon as a catapult, and how he’d no sooner clean up the Rice Chex then he’d catch her washing the windows with baby wipes, and he’d no sooner get those back into the box than she’d try to walk in his shoes and fall, wailing. Her face, when he dared tell her “No!” was pure opera; Keefer would collapse to her knees, hands on cheeks, mouth wide open in the silent cry, and for an hour later, even after he’d given back the wipes, she would refuse to look at him. Mark had called Keefer’s determined ignoring of her elders “shunning.” He said that defiance was the picture of Georgia.

Gordon’s place was his own now, but he’d lost the lazy luxury of bachelorhood. He’d once cleaned as a single guy cleans, to prevent the origin of species, not to pass the white glove test. Now, in the early days Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:11 PM Page 225

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since Keefer’s departure, he found himself unable to stop making sure that all the surfaces two feet above the floor were spotless. Keefer had possessed the baby’s knack for finding subatomic particles on any surface to pluck up and ingest, and he eagle-eyed everything as if she were still there and vulnerable.

After a while, though, the second law of thermodynamics took over. Gordon was depressed. His tuner for the guitar occupied the middle of the coffee table, along with a six-pack of bottled water, along with the watch his parents had given him for Christmas, his electric screwdriver, a threaded needle and the rent shirt it was intended to mend, several sock bombs he rolled to pitch at the plastic hoop he’d desultorily mounted above his front door, a paper carton of grotesquely aged vegetable sub-gum, papers to grade—weighted with a can of anti-fungal powder. Laundry lived on the couch, clean to the left, dirty to the right. He no longer had to sweat the pixie rushing in the door to make joyous confetti out of his T-shirt and boxers. Rare, under-the-bed sweeps turned up wrenching relics, the tinkle bracelet that had belonged to his sister, one blue-and-green Baby Botte shoe, a sock with tweety birds marching around the ankle, the Barbie whose brittle blond hair they’d put in corn rows one Saturday night.

The energy he could muster he gave to his students. He’d given them a quarter of what they deserved.

“Everyone should have four cards,” Gordon told the class, a few days after they’d straggled back from winter break and recovered from vacation lag, “two marked big
A,
two marked little
a
. Shuffle the cards and place them facedown.” He switched on the CD player, “Love Shack” by the B-52’s.

“Now, take the top card off your stack, and let’s breed. Select your mate,” Gordon instructed.

The boys lurched toward one another; the girls clustered instinctively. “Okay, okay,” Gordon said. “Pick your partners. And remember, no one can breed with the same person twice. It’s the experience that counts. Come on, people. This usually doesn’t take that long, especially at your age.” Over the boom of their released laughter, he told them,

“As you know, each of these cards represents an allele. The genes that Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:11 PM Page 226

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dictate a specific trait, such as brown eyes, can occur in two or more alternative forms, called alleles.”

“Proximity is the most dominant force in attraction,” Carlson said to Perry Kistler, “and we’ve lived on the same block for years, Kistler. I think we’re meant for each other.”

“Let’s reveal what you’ve produced—-or reproduced—here, scholars,” Gordon tried to joke. “Just looking around, I confess I feel a little concern . . .”

On the first round, the cards had distributed themselves fairly evenly, as he’d known they would. “What are we seeing here, Mr. Carlson?”

“Well, my offspring are big
A
, big
A
. . . that’s homozygous dominant,” the boy said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. . . . it’s just the way some people are.” More laughter.

They proceeded into the second round. Barry White on the CD

player assured his sweetheart that they had the staying power.

“You got any Steppenwolf, Mr. McKenna?” one of the boys shouted.

“I’m dying with this music.”

“No, it’s good,” another guy chided. “Soft rock reminds me of getting my braces off.”

“I don’t understand this,” Kathy Zurich mourned.

“That’s not what I heard!” the Woffling kid teased.

“No one understands it,” Gordon told them, during a pause. “The science of genetics is like the theory of relativity in that there are so many detours and apparent contradictions that it’s difficult even for biologists, and I hasten to point out I am not one, to get their minds around it. Even Gregor Mendel, who was the father of what remains the basis of all genetics, even Brother Mendel—”

“A hip-hop guy,” Carlson said.

“No, a monk, even Mendel gave up in despair when what worked with yellow peas didn’t work with other plants on which he tried the same method of hybridizing. He quit and became an administrator.”

“You should quit and become an administrator,” Kathy said. “This is way confusing. Do I have to do the calculations if I baby-sit for you extra?”

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The class fell silent. Gordon heard a siren’s brief whoop from somewhere west, near his parents’ house.

“Shut up,” Carlson said.

“Well, I’m sorry,” Kathy whispered. “I wasn’t thinking. I forgot she was gone.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Gordon went on. “Now, you know that among all species, human beings are the only creatures to which natural selection does not apply. In other words, humans keep bad genes going. And I’m not necessarily referring to you, Carlson.” Laughter.

“No, people, now listen. A good example is a baby born with PKU, phenylketonuria, a disease that means a vital conversion of amino acids can’t take place. If it isn’t converted, the child’s metabolism will be all messed up—that baby would be retarded, and then die.”

“That stinks!” Melinda Gallo meowed.

“That’s what perinatal researchers thought, too. So now, practically the first thing that happens after a baby’s birth is a urine test for that condition, that defective allele,” Gordon told them. “And if it’s there, the baby can be given a special diet and therapeutic support through all its life, and lead a normal life. So what happens?”

“It grows up,” Carlson said.

“He or she grows up and mates”—Gordon nodded—“and eventually there’ll be a pairing with another individual who possesses the recessive allele, and it will manifest again. And so, genetic traits that should have vanished go on. Now, at one end of that spectrum, you get some wonderful things out of this, like the great physicist, Stephen Hawking and Ludwig van Beethoven, who was also disabled . . .”

“And at the other end, some other things like Carlson,” Kye Olstadt said. “Are freckles on the recessive gene?”

“Let’s proceed to the third round now. You should be noticing some changes in the distribution,” Gordon continued smoothly. “More of your offspring are carrying recessive genes for certain traits, even if their actual appearance, their phenotype, doesn’t reveal that. But they are capable of passing on those traits . . . beware.” He turned on

“Patience” by Guns N’ Roses.

“Impressive herd of CDs there, Mistah McKennah,” said Dennis Reilly.

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“I’m sooooo dominant!” from Kelly Rafferty.

“Listen, Olstadt, nobody said anything about love,” Ben Jones said.

“Say you’ll call, be sure to say you’ll call,” Gordon reminded them, falsetto.

“Here come the offspring! I’m in the delivery room now! Where’s the placenta?” Reilly asked. “Speaking of placentas, where’s yours? My brother Neal said you had a real one. Did you get it from the UW?” Gordon balked. “I wasn’t going to use it,” he said. “Let’s finish all the pairings and then we’ll talk.” He had, in fact, prepared a biohazard bag to dispose of the placenta. Keeping it had seemed like a lark at the end of last year, and now it seemed like a blasphemy. Half of that ruddy-colored, once vital, now only illustrative former organ had nour-ished Keefer. Half had come from his sister. He watched the kids, giggling and exclaiming over their cards, and then, slowly, opened the freezer and lifted out the placenta, in its steel roasting pan, and set it on the slate lab tabletop.

“Last year, when my niece was born,” he began, “I asked my sister if I could keep this. Hell, I didn’t know if it was against the law or something. But she said sure, why not? Some carnivores eat the placenta. Some people, too, but not in Wisconsin. Lots of cultures customarily keep all kinds of relics from a birth, like part of the umbilical cord—”

“Yish,” said Kathy.

“Well, yeah, pretty gross,” said Gordon. He uncovered the placenta, which, even frozen, seemed to glisten. “But this is the sustenance of a baby’s life. This is how Keefer grew, entirely dependent on my sister’s body, and yet entirely separate. At no time during gestation does the mother’s blood ever mix with the baby’s. Anyway, I wanted to preserve this for my classes to see. But now, my . . . you know that my sister died.” Twenty-four heads dropped in unison. “It’s okay. I know that some of your folks must have talked about it with you. You saw the TV news.”

“That you were adopted,” said Dennis, “by Mrs. McKenna at the middle school.”

“But not last week. I was adopted when I was a baby,” Gordon said.

“My mom is the only mom I’ve ever known.” Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:11 PM Page 229

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“Do you know your real mom?” Kelly Rafferty asked.

“I don’t know her,” Gordon said. “But it was from her, and my birth father that I received this . . . bad hair and these very excellent legs.”

“Was your sister adopted?” Dennis asked.

“You know she was, Den,” said Gordon.

“I didn’t. I thought only you,” Dennis insisted. “I can’t imagine being adopted. With our family, it’s always, like, there’s a Reilly. That’s gotta be a Reilly. We’d know you anywhere, you’re Bill Reilly’s kid.”

“That’s something I’ve never experienced. And I never will, unless I ever have kids of my own. And in fact, though, as we’ve seen right here, you can be the genetic product of both your parents and not look anything like them,” Gordon said, “which is what you can all think about tonight when you’re doing the math.”

“I think it sucks,” the Reilly kid said, suddenly.

“What?”

“What happened with your baby,” he said, “it sucks bigtime.”

“What did you say then?” Lindsay asked him that night as they lay spoon fashion, in his bed. Lindsay more often than not stayed over now, Gordon no longer having either the urge to stray or the absurd inhibi-tion to shield Keefer from his nocturnal proclivities. And Keefer was so rarely, anymore, around. He’d given Lindsay a key, and she would come directly from work, and they cooked together
—hi, honey, hi, honey, how
was your day?

“I couldn’t say anything,” Gordon told her. “I guess I just nodded or something. I hope the kid knew I appreciated it.”

“He gave you so much flack before.”

“He’s a good kid, though. Definitely the genetic high-water mark of all Reillys.”

“Does it make you think, teaching all that stuff, about what your own kids will be like?”

He felt Lindsay’s back stiffen when he said, “I don’t know for sure if I’ll ever have kids, Lins.”

“Why not? Gordie, you’re beautiful.”

“You’re biased, goofer.”

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“No, I mean, you have the best genes.”

“I guess I think about Keefer. And if I get to raise Keefer . . .”

“And?”

“Well, how she would feel, if we . . . I mean, if my wife and I, if I should get married, would feel about me having a kid who was biologically related to me. I wouldn’t want to hurt Keefer. I know that’s nuts.” Lindsay rolled out of the bed, and he noticed the faint line where her bikini had covered the crack in her butt before she shrugged into one of his shirts. She sat down cross-legged on the foot of the bed, her pale red pubic thatch visible between her knees. Hills, Gordon thought, thickly forested with evergreens, had always reminded him of pubic hair. “I think it is nuts, Gordie. You wouldn’t have felt any different about Georgia if she’d been born to your folks.”

“I was jealous, when I was little, that she looked like my mom.”

“But you say you’re like your mom.”

“I am like my mom, in personality. Maybe because I was jealous. Kids are like any other little animal. They’ll push and root and find their niche in the unit. If they’re not the biggest, they’ll be the quickest—”