A Theory of Relativity (44 page)

He would have to relinquish her, stand aside so that she could become someone else. He could do it. He had mourned Georgia. He had mourned Georgia and gone on.

This was a lie. He had not begun to mourn Georgia. He had not had time. He had been forced to shunt Georgia aside, for Keefer. In the unremitting struggle for what already was his.

He would lose them both!

How were such things accomplished? He thought of talking this over with his father, who seemed to have achieved a quiet acceptance.

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What reserves of character did Mark possess that Gordon had not inherited? Experience. He would come to it in time. An accumulation of wounds degraded the first gash. He would learn.

That hot night, his neck pain bellowing if he so much as moved his eyes, a weird belling in his left ear when he lay down, he’d driven to the ER at Methodist. And the doctor on call had been Michelle Yu.

“I thought this was stress, but now I think I have a neurological problem,” he said. “I’m stroking out.”

“Stress
is
a neurological problem,” she smiled. “You look like the sicker brother of the guy I saw in here a couple of months ago.”

“How do you remember me?” Gordon said, and then cursed himself for an egregious asshole. “I mean, you see hundreds of people every week.”

“You’re thinking it was your good looks?” Doctor Yu smiled, rubbing the face of her stethoscope in cupped hands before placing it against Gordon’s breast. “Well, let’s just say I remembered. And that I’m an avid late-night viewer of CNN. You’ve got quite a pulse going there for a guy your age. Ninety-five, resting. How’s your daughter, formerly your niece?”

“She’s my niece again,” Gordon began.

“How so?”

“We’re breaking up,” he said, and began to cry, gulping grateful sobs that forced his head down, as though he were a diver with the bends.

To her eternal credit, she did not try to put her arm around his shoulders or even pat his back. She’d hitched one tiny hip onto a metal stool and said, “Fortunately, what’s out there is an old guy with a sore throat who’s going to smoke no matter what kind of lecture I give him, and an older lady who makes the rounds of urgent-carecenter rooms to get painkillers for a back injury she suffered when Jimmy Carter was in office.”

“You weren’t born when Jimmy Carter was in office,” Gordon said.

“I was,” Michelle Yu told him. “I’m thirty-five, Mr. McKenna.”

“You are? How come you look so young?”

“Ancient Chinese secret. I’ve been at this for a while. It takes a couple of semesters to become a doctor.”

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“Right. I considered doing that.”

“Too intense?”

“Too much math. I’m sure you use calculus daily.”

“Yes; in fact, constantly.” She’d smiled.

“Well, I couldn’t hack it.”

“But you are a scientist.”

“Only to people north of Stevens Point, like my friend Tim says.”

“So, as I was saying, what we have is a waiting room full of people who’ve induced their own ailments. In fact, everyone here tonight has what we’d call emotionally aggravated physical complaints.”

“Me, too, you mean.”

“I mean, you have a sleep deficit.”

“How do you know?”

“By the circles under your eyes, and by the fact that it’s two in the morning and you’re here talking to me instead of sleeping.”

“Right.”

“I could do an electrocardiogram. I could do some labs, because you could have mono. But in the absence of fever, sore throat, vomiting—”

“I vomit. I’m a great vomiter. But nothing comes up.”

“Persistent nausea.”

“At night.”

“Any other kinds of . . . dysfunctions?”

“Wouldn’t know,” Gordon sighed, “I have the romantic life of your average retirement-home resident.”

“You’d be surprised by that, I think. You should hear that guy out there with the cigar throat tell stories. I think that what we’re talking about here is a healthy guy under an unhealthy amount of pressure.

Who needs sleep and surcease of sorrow—”

“My sister would know what poem that was.”

“Your sister, who’s dead—”

“A year now.”

“Buddy, I’m going to give you . . . about, um, ten Alprazolam. That’s more or less Valium . . .”

“I don’t think I need ten.”

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Doctor Yu rolled her eyes. “I don’t mean ten at once, Mr. McKenna.

I’m going to give you what should amount to a couple of weeks’ worth of guaranteed uninterrupted sleep. . . . Do you use any form of sleep medication now?”

“No medication whatsoever. Except,” he blushed, “like Nutra-Gen.

Muscle potion, you know.”

“Training for the Iron Man?”

“No, just an idiot.”

“Now, you’ll need to be careful with alcohol when you take one of these. Start with a half, and don’t do it when you’re getting ready to fire up the John Deere; this is all on the label.”

“And it will make me sleep.”

“It should. You should feel drowsy in about an hour. And get some decent food.”

“I can’t face food.”

“Not even Kung Pao tofu?”

“I wouldn’t know Kung Pao tofu if it was hanging on my leg.”

“Well, I will introduce you to it. I’m off in fifteen minutes.”

“Tonight?”

“I eat every night at this time.”

“Where do you go to eat at this time? Around here?”

“My house,” she said. A look balanced between them. “I’m not inviting you to have sex with me, Mr. McKenna. Though it has crossed my mind, this would not be the time or the place. You just . . . I’ve read about what you’re going through; I made the connection with the little girl who didn’t have an ear infection, and now you’re the one who’s losing sleep. I thought we could eat a midnight snack, which would not include me.”

“You’re going to cook?”

“Ancient Chinese secret,” she said. “I buy it from Hurry Curry in Wausau every night on the way to work and then I think of it all night, just waiting for me in that little silver-lined bag in the fridge.” They did just that. They ate tofu in her elegant, spare, totally white apartment, fetchingly decorated with dried branches and constructs of Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:11 PM Page 297

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rock and driftwood. “I thought doctors were rolling in money,” Gordon said.

“First-year residents are rolling in debt,” she explained.

“This is very kind,” he told her, finding that it was possible for him to eat in the company of another. “This is impossible to understand.”

“Not for me. I was adopted.”

“But your last name—”

“I’m the only Korean orphan in America to actually have been adopted by Chinese people.”

“So you don’t have . . . all the stuff you’re supposed to have?”

“All the anxiety about my roots?” She twirled her silver chopsticks, then made them into a cross. Gordon was using a fork. “Dave and Sherry Yu are as Chinese as lox and bagels. We’re Episcopalians. Our favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. They gave me dolls from Korea. But I’m a New Yorker. I only have the custom chopsticks because I don’t like the taste of the wood kind. And I fight with my dad every time we spend more than three hours in the same apartment.”

“How’d you get here?”

“UW Medical School. I like it.”

“I think sometimes of going back for my Ph.D. Research.”

“Yeah, well, I love my dad more than anything on earth. From behind, when I walk, I’m a little Dave Yu. He’s . . .” She looked away from him for an instant. “He’s my heart. I love my dad. I love . . . my dad.”

They turned to their food, embarrassed by the size of the emotion in the small room. “So, I wish you good luck. That’s all.” It was nearly four when he left. At the door, he leaned over and kissed her cheek, inhaling her scent of wooden tongue depressors and honeysuckle. “Thanks,” he said, and then put his hands on her waist and kissed her again, with intention.

“You have a girlfriend,” she said.

“You’re psychic, too?”

“You do.”

“I do. But right now, I wish that I did not.” Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:11 PM Page 298

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“But right now, you do.”

“Thank you for the tofu, Dr. Yu. That sounds like the name of a movie.”

“No fee, Mr. McKenna. For the tofu or the consummate wisdom.”

“May I call you?”

“Someday, maybe. I’m not going anywhere.” He’d been asleep for no more than four hours, drooling blissfully in the arms of the tranquilizer, when his telephone rang. Lindsay told him, “Your mother couldn’t find you this morning, and she called here.

The judge is asking for a teleconference, at two o’clock.” Gordon asked for a moment, dropped the telephone, stumbled into the bathroom and opened his mouth under the faucet.

“Run this by me again.”

“A mediation.”

“Judge Kid?”

“He wants you and your parents, and the lawyers . . . where were you?”

“When?”

“Last night . . . when! Where were you?”

“Do you mean, was I with a woman?”

“Yes. Don’t tell me. No, tell me.”

He told her. “I was at the emergency room, Lins. For sleeping pills.”

“Gordie, I love you,” she said.

“I know,” he said, “I know. And I love you. And I’m going back to sleep if I can.”

“I’ll call you at noon.”

“Okay. You don’t have to.”

But she had called and had come to sit beside him as the red numbers on the clock toiled over to two, and Greg Katt phoned, putting him on hold while he got access to the conference line. Gordon could have sworn he felt the air change when the Cadys entered the line space.

Judge Kid was brief. “I want you people to meet. I want you to make a good faith and honest effort to work this out among yourselves, reach a solution like the family you are, for better or worse.”

“We have made every effort . . .” Mary Ellen Wentworth began.

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“Make more,” Judge Kid said. “Listen. I am perfectly in earnest when I say that it is not impossible that I could find that this child cannot thrive in an atmosphere of so much hostility. You communicate with notes, Mrs. Cady, Mr. McKenna. You ask your aunt to bring the baby outside when the Cadys come to visit—”

“That was agreed—” Greg Katt said.

“I want you to know that if you cannot reach an agreement, a third-party adoption is not out of the question.”

“By . . . what do you mean?” Lorraine breathed.

“It would be stressful for her in terms of her adjustment, but Dr.

Bogert assures me that she would indeed adjust, and the stress she is absorbing from this endless wrangling is not inconsequential, either.”

“Your Honor, we need time to respond—” Greg Katt said.

“Take your time!” Kid retorted. “Take hours! Take days! The Cadys have assured me that they are not intending to appeal the higher court—”

“Is that true?” Mark asked.

“We are not going to appeal the decision,” Delia said clearly.

“So you accept that Gordon is Keefer’s blood uncle,” Lorraine said.

“We also think that we know what’s best for her,” Delia said.

“If you know what’s best for her, why are you putting Keefer through this?” Lorraine asked.

“We don’t think we’re the ones putting her through anything,” Craig Cady said. “We think we simply want Keefer to have a stable, permanent home.”

“You’re ill!” Lorraine cried. “You’re ill, Delia!”

“I’ll get better, Lorraine. It’s almost over, and what a blessing it will be for Keefer to have a sibling.”

“This is the kind of thing I want you to consider together,” Judge Kid said. “Am I perfectly clear on this? I’ll expect to hear from you . . .

this is Wednesday. By Monday. We’ll get a conference call . . . Bridget?” He summoned his assistant. “Can I do a meeting on Monday at three?” They waited, their breathing gusting over the line.

“At three on Monday. I wish you Godspeed.” Kid’s tone softened. “I mean that.”

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The McKennas tried that night to talk together, choosing a restaurant in Merrill, a quiet Italian place where they assumed no one would recognize them, until the owner came bobbing out of the kitchen, wiping the backs of his hands on his striped apron, telling them their meal was on the house; he’d seen them on NBC. They’d eaten quickly, then sat on the porch on Cleveland Avenue, letting the mosquitoes feast on their bare arms undisturbed.

“We can’t give up,” Lorraine said. “Greg says the judge is harder on people he knows have the best case. That’s why he’s being so hard on us.”

“Maybe if we let him decide, he’ll make that call,” Gordon suggested listlessly.

“But what if he makes the other call? What if he does actually consider allowing Keefer to be placed for adoption?” Mark asked the night.

The moon rose, dull and nacreous as an oyster, and dappled the tree-tops in the cemetery.

“We’d have some control, we’d see her,” Gordon said.

“How can you say that?” Lorraine cried, leaping up from the stone steps. “How do you know that Delia would honor anything she promised? How do you know Diane Nye wouldn’t talk them right into moving back to Florida?”

Gordon felt as if he certainly was dying. His hands and feet were chilled, cumbrous, despite the eighty-degree mug of the ten o’clock air.

When he’d finally left his parents, he’d sought the salvation of the plastic bottle, along with half a joint Tim had given him on their last drive through the subdivision, then two bags of Cheetos and three bottles of Labatt. Still he’d been unable to sleep. Finally, he’d driven back to Cleveland Avenue. The grave was adorned, he knew, by Nora, with a spangled flag and the silvered cardboard representation of a firecracker.

The firecracker gaped, unglued by the previous week’s rains. Gordon disengaged it gently from the flag and pressed it flat, folding it to discard at the trash basket near the gates.