Pascal's Wager (16 page)

I wasn't in my office ten seconds when Deb poked her head in. “You got a minute?” she said.

“Sure.”

She closed the door behind her, and when she turned back to face me, I could see she was struggling. If she wasn't careful, she
was going to pop those contact lenses right out. “What's up?” I said.

“Did you get that memo about office hours?”

“I did,” I said, rolling my eyes.

She plopped down in the chair and tapped her lips with her finger. “Look, Jill, there's talk. I've tried to defend you and tell everybody it's because your mother's recovering from an accident—”

“What exactly are you defending me from?” I said.

“People talking about how you're never here anymore. How you don't hang out with anybody. You dash out the door after class like there's somebody chasing you.” She lowered her voice as if the place were bugged. “It's going to get back to Dr. Ferguson. I mean, he
is
the head of the department, Jill. You don't want that.”

As a matter of fact, I didn't.

“Thanks, Deb,” I said. “But don't worry about defending me. I'll get it worked out.”

“It's just that you work so hard. Who wants to see all that go down the drain?”

Certainly not me. The minute she was gone, I marched upstairs to Nigel's office.

“I won't take up much of your time,” I said as I closed his door behind me. “I just want to know one thing: Is there a problem with my performance around here?”

“Why don't you sit down, Jill?”

“Because it can't take that long to give me a yes or no answer!” I said—a little too forcefully.

And then I stopped. I had a flash of my mother, standing in front of me in the kitchen, finger pointed at my face as she told me just how it was going to be. Whoa. Where had that come from?

I sank into the chair. “I'm sorry.”

“You're under a great deal of strain.”

“That's no excuse. I'm sorry.” I wanted to look at him and say,
“Am I always this way? Have I turned into Elizabeth McGavock?” But I raked my hair instead. I suddenly didn't care if he thought I was stressed out or not. Hadn't I just made that painfully apparent anyway?

“Dr. Ferguson did remark to me that it appeared you were out of the building more frequently than you have been known to be in the past,” Nigel said.

“How would he know that? Am I supposed to be punching a time clock? Sorry—”

“I'm not sure how Dr. Ferguson got his information,” Nigel said, “and I assured him that you are fulfilling all of your requirements and then some. However, he did ask me to make certain that you knew how many office hours you were supposed to be keeping.”

“He did that himself,” I said. “Via a memo.”

“And are you maintaining your office hours?”

I nodded, but the reassurances I would normally have given him in no uncertain terms didn't even make it to my lips.

“I don't know how much longer I can do it, though,” I said. “My mother is requiring a lot more care than I anticipated, and although I'm exploring other options for her, it's going to take some time.”

“Then
you
take some time, Jill.”

“On top of Dr. Ferguson's comments? I don't think so.”

“Keep your office hours, teach your class, do what you absolutely have to do here in this building, and do the rest of your work at home. Work on your research there, your class preparations. Those don't require your physical presence.”

“Isn't that going to raise some eyebrows?”

“I will take care of the eyebrows. If I thought there was any reason for them to be raising in the first place, don't you think I would have come to you?”

I looked at him. He would have. He was a decent human being. It was as if I were seeing that for the first time.

“Just let the ladies at the front desk know where you're going to be in case we need to reach you, then go and be with your mother,” Nigel said. “Go.”

It was as close to an order as anything he had ever given me. I left dutifully. But somehow, the chord was still unresolved.

Freda III looked surprised to see me when I walked in the front door at one-thirty in the afternoon. She and Mother were sitting in the den with the television on, deep in the throes of
The Bold and the Beautiful
—or at least Freda was. Mother appeared to be dozing while sitting straight up.

I set up my stuff in Mother's study and left the door open a crack, although the argument some couple was having about whose baby was whose made it slightly more difficult to concentrate on K-theory. I was about to go ask Freda to turn the volume down when the phone rang. I snatched it up.

“McGavock residence,” I said. “This is Jill.”

“I'm so glad it's you,” a husky timid voice said. “When they gave me this number, they said it was your home phone, but I was afraid somebody else was going to answer and then it would be like I was bothering them and—”

“Tabitha?” I said.

“Uh-huh. Is this okay?”

“Where did you get this number?”

“They gave it to me at the math department. I didn't ask for it. I just asked them if they knew where you were, and they gave it to me. Is it okay that I called?”

I reined in my bark. “Yes. What do you need?”

“Some extra help. I don't understand this new stuff at
all
, and I'm starting to feel like I did at the beginning of the quarter, and—”

“Jill! Jill, help! Come here! Quick!”

It was Freda III, squalling from the den. There was an edge in
her voice that went right up my spine.

“I have to go,” I said.

I dropped the phone on the desk and ran.

I
careened around the corner into the den just in time to see a rather macabre sight.

Freda III was in a half-reclining position at one end of the couch. My mother, on all fours, had her pinned down like a large cat, and she had one of Freda's eyelids lifted with her finger and appeared to be peering intently into it.

“Get her
off
me!” Freda III screamed.

Her cry went up my backbone, but it didn't even faze Mother. She was moving methodically to the other eyelid.

“Make her stop!”

“Mother!” I snapped. “Get off her! Come on!”

I took Mother by both shoulders from behind, but I couldn't budge her. For a petite thing, she was wiry—like a deceivingly strong wrestler in the flyweight division.

“You push while I pull,” I said to Freda III.

She did, but even at that it took several attempts before Mother finally let go, sending the two of us tumbling backward off the couch with her on top of me. I rolled her off and scrambled up to check out Freda III's condition. Mother wandered wordlessly to the TV and turned up the volume.

“Are you okay?” I shouted.

“I don't know,” Freda shouted back.

She sat up and brushed at the sleeves of her sweater as if Mother had deposited lice on her.

“What happened?” I said. I picked up the remote and muted the TV. Mother just blinked at me.

“We were just watching our show,” Freda III said, “and she nodded off and I guess I did, too. There wasn't that much interesting happening on there today—”

“What
happened
?” I said.

“I woke up and she was on top of me, just like you saw her, pulling up my eyelid and staring in there like she was looking for something!”

“Did she hurt you?” I asked.

“No, but she scared the daylights out of me. What the devil do you think got into her?”

“Equal and reactive.”

Freda III and I stared at each other. Those words had come from my mother.

I whipped my head around. “Did you say something, Mother?”

She just put her hand over her mouth and giggled.

“She thinks it's funny,” Freda III said. “She's losing all sense of judgment now. She's really failing fast—”

“Why don't you go in the kitchen and put on a pot of tea?” I said. “I'll talk to her.”

Freda III patted my arm and shook her head. “When are you seeing that social worker?”

“Why?” I said.

“Because I think it's time to consider other arrangements.”

“Make sure you use the caffeinated tea,” I said. “No sugar in mine.”

When she was gone, I turned the TV off altogether and squatted in front of Mother's chair. She had stopped giggling and had returned to her usual flat expression.

“You were looking at her pupils?” I said. “Why?”

She didn't answer.

“You just talked, Mother. We both heard you. You can still do it. Why won't you just talk to me?” She did nothing but blink.

“You want to look at
my
pupils?” I leaned close. “Go ahead.
Peel these babies back. Tell me what you see.”

This time she shook her head, and I rocked back on my heels. There was no way I could know what was happening in her head, and Sam was right. I was terrified.

Max came over to cook dinner about four o'clock, and we let Freda III go home early.

“I hope she comes back tomorrow,” I said to Max. I joined him at the sink, where he was pulling the tentacles off some poor former sea creature. “What is that?”

“Squid,” he said.

“What are you doing to it?”

“Cleaning it. They'll clean it for you at the fish market, but they never do a thorough job—and heaven forbid I should bring any more germs into this house. My mama, she's the one who taught me how to clean squid.” He stopped and looked at me. “Why wouldn't she come back tomorrow?”

I stepped away from the sink and went for the sack of fresh peas on the table. One more moment of squid cleaning and I was going to gag. In fact, everything was making me want to throw up.

“Tell me she didn't bring in crystals, too,” Max said. “She did, didn't she?”

“No,” I said, and then I gave him a rundown on that afternoon's episode.

When I was through, Max laid a paper towel over the wet mess on the counter and came to the table where I was shelling peas. He moved them away from me and took my hands. The odor of raw seafood was nauseating.

“Jill,” he said, “maybe we've made a mistake. Do you think?”

“What—hiring Freda? Max, I didn't have many good options.”

“No, I mean trying to keep Liz here.”

“You were the one who talked
me
into it.”

“I know, I know, heaven forgive me. I just couldn't stand the
thought of somebody else taking care of her. Who was going to make her calamari the way she likes it? Who was going to buy fresh squid and clean it right there in the sink?”

“Oh, I'd say nobody.”

“There's more to it than squid—”

“I certainly hope so.”

Max's deep, dark eyes looked absolutely tragic. “I'm not kidding with you, Jill. I think maybe it's not safe here for her—for anybody. I think I was wrong.”

“So you're saying put her in a home?”

“Am I saying that? I don't know what I'm saying!”

Max pulled his bear of a body out of the chair and lugged it back to the sink, where he leaned over the squid with his back to me.

I stayed in the chair, staring miserably at the unshelled peas, having yet another epiphany—about my fourth of the day.

“Max,” I said. “You're in love with her, aren't you?”

He moaned as if he were in physical pain. “I've been in love with her since the first day I saw her. I settled for a friendship—that was all she would have—but I never stopped. Not from here.” He pounded a fist on his chest.

Maybe he was right. Maybe it was time to seriously consider moving Mother to a home—social worker or no social worker, truth or no truth. But knowing what had been right there in front of my eyes for over twenty years, that Max was hopelessly in love with my mother, it was clear he was the least reliable person to help me make this choice. All he wanted was to stop hurting, and that didn't require any rational thought. I wasn't sure he even had any rational thought
left
.

I wasn't sure I did either, for that matter. All I could do at the moment was
feel
—feel heavy, feel nauseous, feel like my chest was going to contract completely if it got any tighter.

“Max,” I said, “can I pass on the squid? I need to go out and get some air.”

“Sure, sure, you go. You're going crazy here, huh? This thing, this tragedy—it could drive a person mad.”

“Something like that,” I said.

I went upstairs, pulled on some running clothes, and called Sam. I kept my voice controlled. I knew if I didn't, I'd probably throw up on the cell phone.

“Can you meet me on the Loop?” I said. “In about twenty minutes?”

“Absolutely. Thought you'd never ask.”

His voice was light and happy, and that was good. So far I'd disguised how much I wanted to vomit up everything I was feeling. Hopefully by the time I saw him, I'd have myself calmed down.

When I got to the Loop, Deputy Dog lowered her sunglasses, which were virtually pointless at that hour, and said, “He's not here yet.”

“Would you just tell him I started without him?” I said.

“Sure,” she said. “With those long legs of his, he should have no trouble catching up.”

I skipped the stretching and set off at a jog for the first hill. It was going on five o'clock and getting chilly so there was no one else on the path for as far as I could see. I tried to settle into the blessed solitude, just the way I'd always done.

Only it was no longer blessed. It wasn't even solitude. It was loneliness. I'd never been lonely in my life. I had always been enough for me. When I heard Sam calling my name from the bottom of the hill, I turned in relief. And then I stared.

What the heck was he wearing?

I shielded my eyes with my hand and peered down. Sam was charging toward me in his usual swishy running shorts and T-shirt that looked like it had been rescued from the bottom of the laundry basket. But there was something metallic around his waist, and as he drew closer, I could hear it making a sharp, wicked-sounding noise.

What on earth?

When he was within a few yards, I saw what it was—except that I didn't believe it. Why the
heck
was he wearing what looked like an oversized spiked dog collar around his waist?

“What is that?” I said.

He stopped in front of me, breathing only slightly harder than normal, and unhitched the contraption in the back.

“It's for you,” he said, grinning. “A la Pascal. So you won't accidentally let somebody touch you—”

He stopped, the spiked belt in hand, and the grin faded. “This isn't the time for a joke, is it? Jill, I'm sorry.”

“For what?” I said. “Very clever, Blaze. Very cute. But if you think I'm going to wear that thing—”

“Stop,” he said. “Just stop.” He tossed the belt off the side of the path and put his hands on his hips. “Did something happen? You look wretched.”

“Thank you so much.” I strained to keep my voice even. “Look, I just wanted to tell you that I've made my decision so we probably don't need to talk about this anymore.”

“About your mother.”

“Yes, about my mother,” I said, teeth gritting.

“Okay,” he said. “But can we talk about you?”

I started to say no. I wanted to say no. I wanted to fire off some sizzling retort and trot my way around the Loop and go back to the life I'd been entirely satisfied with before. Before I'd found out I was wretched.

Instead I said, “You know, I was perfectly content until you helped me see that I am a miserable, sarcastic—”

“Come here,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

He took me by the arm, looked over his shoulder, and pulled me to the waist-high fence that rendered the hill beyond the path off-limits. Before I could even protest, he picked me up lightly and deposited me on the other side of the fence and then followed, leaving the spiked belt hidden in some bushes.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Breaking every rule you made,” Sam said. He took my arm again. “Come on.”

I let him take me down a partially overgrown sand path that wound up the hill and down its gently sloped other side. We stopped in front of the thick, gnarled remnant of a tree.

“What do you see?” Sam said. “Humor me. It's another one of my little tests.”

I yanked my ponytail tight with both hands. “It's a tree.”

“What's it doing?”

I titled my head. “It looks like it got broken off—probably in an earthquake or something—only it kept growing.”

“Yes! Ten points! Now for twenty bonus points:
How
did it grow? Where? In what way?”

“Blaze, you're out of control. Okay, it continued to grow, but along the ground instead of straight up.”

“Right again! You get the bonus points!”

He nodded again at the misshapen tree, which, as I'd described it, had grown a strong, thick trunk in a horizontal direction, not five inches from the ground.

“No earthquake is going to take this baby down again,” Sam said, “because it's already down—and yet it kept growing. It's still alive. Playin' it safe but alive.”

“Is there supposed to be some hidden metaphor here?” I said.

Sam sat down on the horizontal trunk and patted it with his hands on either side of him. “I think the tree's you,” he said. “I think you've grown like this—safely, along the ground, where nobody can hurt you.”

“And so far nobody has,” I said, “so I guess it's working.”

“Is it? You aren't feeling any pain right now?”

I folded my arms across my chest.

“You don't even have to answer that,” Sam said. “I can see it in your face.”

“But they're just circumstances, and I'm only trying to cope with them!”

“Like this.” He patted the tree. “I can tell you why it isn't working for you anymore.”

“You said no more psychoanalyzing.”

“Options, then. I promised you options.”

I considered it. Then I went to the tree and climbed onto a gnarled place just above where Sam was sitting. “Okay, options.”

“Passion is an option,” he said.

“What?”

“I'm not talking about sexual passion. Contrary to the picture society paints, there
are
other kinds.”

“Name one.”

“The kind of passion I see in you when you lose your temper and start beating me up.”

“Well, you tick me off.”

“But that isn't just anger—it's passion. You have a passion for finding out the truth. And not just so you can do the right thing for your mother, although that was the catalyst. I don't think anything else you've ever done in your life has aroused that kind of passion in you—no mathematical dilemma, no man—nothing until now. That's what has you torn up. You're finally finding out that you have this deep passion inside you, and you don't know what to do with it. I'm offering you the option of finding out.”

I was still suspicious. “Why?”

“Because I love passion. I love to see its fire in someone.”

I bet you do
, I wanted to say. But I didn't. I just watched him closely.

“I don't like empty Christianity any more than you do,” he said. “And there's a lot of it around, especially in intellectual circles. It's cold. What I like to see is real fire, real passion for God—somebody who
sees
Jesus Christ and is burning up with the vision.”