Prizes (21 page)

The young scientists were indeed, as Ray whispered to her, “all cut from the same cloth”—Isabel had smiled and quipped, “Yes, wet blankets.” It was no wonder she shone like a Roman candle in their midst.

They greeted Raymond with a respect he had not anticipated. His confidence returned until a sudden thought struck him. He whispered to his daughter, “Isn’t there a Mrs. Pracht?”

“There is, yes, but they’re in the process of splitting.”

“Oh,” Raymond said. Paradoxically, even though he himself was divorcing, he counted Pracht’s dubious marital status as a point against him.

Raymond felt more at ease with the professors than with the graduate students. While the junior physicists were so involved with their doctoral projects that they could speak of nothing else, the senior guests were happy to take a night off from talking shop. They preferred gossip … like who might get the Nobel this year.

Two young boys, roughly sixteen and thirteen respectively, were grilling vegetarian hot dogs and burgers when father and daughter reached them with their empty plates. The elder chef, sinewy and bronzed, greeted Isabel jauntily.

“Hey, you must be Ms. Einstein.”

Ray frowned. “Come on, Isabel,” he chided her with surly impatience. “We’re holding up the line.”

“On the contrary,” the boy dissented. “
I’m
holding it up so I can get acquainted with God’s gift to physics and—regardless of age and mental capacity—the cutest
thing to happen in science since the apple that hit Newton on the head.”

“Just who do you think you’re talking to?” Ray demanded.

“Have I caused offense in some way, Mr. da Costa—or is it ‘Doctor’? I know you’re in the game too.”

Raymond took this to be a not-too-subtle put-down. Surely everyone in the department knew he had no doctorate, and this young upstart was deliberately trying to humiliate him.

“May I introduce myself?” the boy continued.

“That isn’t strictly necessary,” Ray replied acerbically.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he agreed. “I’m just the backward boy with the forehand, sometimes known as the forward boy with the backhand.”

“What?” Isabel exclaimed.

“Did that get you?” he asked, his eyes twinkling. “I rehearsed it on my kid brother all afternoon, didn’t I, Dink?”

The younger chef, now burdened with double duty, nodded obediently. “Yeah, my brother’s an amazing pain in the ass.”

“Isabel,” her father urged, “I see a free table over there on top of that slope. We could—”

Totally without precedent, Isabel ignored her father and refused to move, captivated by this manic iconoclast.

“Is your brother’s name really Dink?” she asked—simply to make conversation.

“Not officially. He got saddled with ‘George,’ but I gave him something more colorful and onomatopoetic. Which reminds me—I’m Jerry, Karl’s punishment for being too smart. I mean, how else would I have gotten into this highbrow party—right?”

Then, turning to his assistant, he commanded, “Dinko, take over the food while I show these V.I.P.’s to a table.”

“There’s no need for that,” Ray began to protest. But by now he had been caught up by this teenage equivalent of a gale-force wind.

The young man scooped up their paper plates and led them across the lawn, calling irreverently en route to various professors to “make way for the princess.”

They reached a table on the little ridge, which Isabel now noticed had a hand-scrawled place card with “Reserved” on it.

“Yeah,” Jerry acknowledged without being asked. “I personally saved it for you guys—and you don’t even have to tip me.”

Then, balancing the two plates on one arm, he flicked his towel to remove any crumbs and elegantly placed the food down.

“Thank you,” Ray said in dismissal, hoping he could cut further dialogue between his daughter and this juvenile delinquent.

“Mind if I join you?” Clearly, Jerry regarded the question as rhetorical, because he sat down before either of them could answer.

Though fuming inwardly, Ray had to keep tight control of his temper. After all, he kept reminding himself, this was the son of his daughter’s adviser.

“I’ve seen your picture on Karl’s desk,” Isabel remarked.

“For use as a dartboard, no doubt,” Jerry retorted. “I suppose he told you I’m not exactly a microchip off the old block.”

“Actually, he told me you were rebelling at the moment,” Isabel responded. “But that you’re very brilliant.”

“No, I used to be. But I gave it up when I quit school to take up tennis full-time.”

“Why are you so anxious to be thought of as stupid?” she asked with genuine interest.

“Truth?” he answered somberly, in stark contrast to his previous frenetic behavior. “Let me tell you a cautionary
tale. It might some day influence your choice of a husband.”

How much more of this could he tolerate? Ray wondered.

Jerry launched into his narrative. “Until you came along, Karl Pracht had been the youngest person ever admitted to the Berkeley physics program—”

“I never knew that,” Isabel interrupted.

“Yep.” The young man nodded. “You took his crown. Anyway, if that wasn’t bad enough, at an all too precocious age he married a supersonic math graduate student. The result of this genetic overkill is yours truly—cursed with an IQ around the Fahrenheit boiling point of water.”

At this moment, Ray’s interest was awakened. He found himself intrigued by this young man’s lineage and the staggering intellectual potential it bespoke.

Isabel instantly knew she had met someone who would understand why she sometimes felt like a freak. And what’s more, he’d been brave enough to escape from the monkey house of genius.

“But think of how much you could learn about the world,” Raymond offered in the first civilized words he had exchanged with Jerry Pracht.

“I’m not exactly knocked out by the world, Mr. da Costa. It’s a polluted, overpopulated suburb of the universe. I’m more into space.”

He certainly is, Ray grumbled to himself.

“In fact, as my dad won’t let me forget, the first question I ever asked was, ‘Why do stars shine?’ ”

“Really?” Isabel remarked, thinking of her own childhood curiosity and feeling an uncanny kinship. She could not help noticing how the sun had bleached his blond hair nearly white, making his eyes seem all the bluer.

“How old were you?” Ray inquired. There was an unmistakable competitive edge to his voice.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jerry mused jocularly. “I guess I
began stargazing and asking questions when they changed my diapers.”

“Well, you had the right parents to ask,” Isabel offered.

“So did you,” Jerry said, returning the compliment, his instinct telling him that flattery in this area would get him very far indeed.

“Did your mother and father tutor you?” Ray inquired.

“Endlessly,” Jerry answered, “bordering on child abuse. I had to beg them to send me to school to get away from the academic pressure.” He grinned. “Of course, it was a school for ‘special’ children. I hesitate to use the word ‘gifted’ in reference to myself, but I bluffed my way in. I was motivated because at least they had tennis courts.

“Anyway,” he continued, “that’s where I met my future pal Darius, who, like me, was crazy about the stars. We built a telescope, even ground a perfect twelve-inch F6.0 mirror. I did most of the glass work, and Darius figured out how to use a laser to check the curvature. He actually made the interferometer.

“It took us a couple of months until the mirror was absolutely perfect. As you might have guessed, Dad wanted us to write it up for
Sky and Telescope,
but Darrie and I both nixed the idea. Our technological triumph’s currently mounted on the other side of the garden in a handmade plywood shell with a dome that can actually swivel. I’d be happy to show you if you have the slightest interest.”

“I would—” Isabel responded instantly.

“Not at night,” Ray interdicted, with such urgency that only after he’d spoken did he realize the absurdity of his objection. “I mean, some other time,” he quickly corrected himself.

“Great,” Jerry enthused. “I regard that as a firm commitment. Anyway, now that I’ve made an indelible impression on you, could I hear more about Isa?”

Raymond cringed at the barbarous mutilation of his daughter’s name.

“I’m afraid I live a very dull life compared to you.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” her father pouted.

“Well, it’s true, Dad. You’re too nice to rebel against—even for a game of tennis.”

“What?” Jerry exclaimed histrionically. “You mean you don’t play?”

“She’s not interested,” Raymond quickly answered.

“Actually, Dad, I really don’t know because I’ve never tried.”

“It’s a game,” Raymond declared categorically. “
Life
isn’t a game.”

“Negative, negative.” Jerry Pracht dissented passionately. “That’s the one thing that makes me happier than all the eggheads at this party. My horizon ends at the baseline, and nothing in the world brings me more joy than crushing a forehand winner to a corner. How many other people here would settle for less than a new Theory of Relativity? By the way, would you like some lessons, Isa? I’m not much at physics, but I’m one hell of a tennis teacher.”

“Gee, that would be nice. I mean—” She glanced instinctively at her father for guidance.

“Isabel’s got a punishing schedule, Jerry. I really don’t know how she could manage it.”

“No one appreciates that more than I, Mr. da Costa, but you’d be surprised how much I could accomplish on a Saturday morning while you’re teaching.”

Stymied once again, Raymond wondered fleetingly how the minutiae of his activities were such public knowledge. And then he instantly remembered the many notices he had put up on bulletin boards near the Physics Department, offering his tutorial services and indicating when he was free.

Jerry turned to Isabel. “Why don’t I come by this Saturday around ten? I’ll bring an extra racket, and I’ll
pillage my attic to see if I can find a pair of shoes the right size.”

Isabel knew what she felt, but she did not know how her father wanted her to feel.

Before she could answer, Jerry suddenly glanced over his shoulder and quickly excused himself. “Hey guys, my poorly coordinated brother’s causing havoc back at the grill. I’d better shoot over there and bail him out. See you Saturday morning, Isa,” he called as he dashed off.

“My God,” Ray observed the moment Jerry was out of earshot. “Pracht must be brokenhearted.”

“What do you mean, Dad?”

“That boy is obviously very disturbed.”

“He seemed okay to me,” Isabel remarked innocently.

Ray frowned at his daughter’s naïveté. “There’s no way I’ll let you play tennis with somebody like him.”

“Why not?” Isabel countered. “I’d really like to learn.”

“Then I’ll get you a qualified tutor,” Ray insisted.

“But that’s just the point! He
is
qualified.”

Ray felt uneasy disputing this in Pracht’s home territory. “We’ll discuss it later.”

“There’s nothing to discuss, Dad. You’re letting me go.”

“What makes you say that?” he inquired with surprise.

“Because I know you, and you’d never deny me something I really wanted.”

Raymond’s jaw tightened. This was the first hint of disobedience his daughter had ever displayed.

No, that was too mild a word for it. It bordered on revolution.

20
 

Medical conventions are complex phenomena—at once serene encounters of Olympian minds and convivial occasions like high school reunions. And yet there is also a great deal of time spent in bad-mouthing, back-stabbing, and mutual denigration.

That first September evening in San Francisco, his official duties discharged, Adam was enjoying a drink at the Top of the Mark with several West Coast colleagues. One of them, Al Redding of USC, looking across the room, caught sight of an approaching interloper, shielded his mouth and whispered, “Hope you’ve got your parachute, Coopersmith. Red Robinson’s heading our way faster than a speeding bullet.”

“Too late,” Adam responded with a melodramatic sigh. “But you guys stay here in case he attacks me with a swizzle stick.”

Professor Whitney “Red” Robinson of the Louisiana State Medical School was a southerner from tip to toe. He even managed to project aggression with excruciating politeness.

“Why, Professor Coopersmith, how very fine to see you here.”

“Likewise,” Adam replied, lobbing the ball back. “Would I be intruding if I joined y’all?”

“Of course not, Professor Robinson. I’m sure those present who know you by your writings would be fascinated
to meet you in the flesh,” Adam said, adding mischievously, “As long as you’ll buy a round.”

Adam’s coterie had difficulty suppressing their smiles. Robinson was a notorious tightwad who, after the introductions, settled in for a long evening’s free-loading.

“I must say you know how to hurt a man, Professor Coopersmith,” he drawled. “Don’t you think your paper in last month’s
Journal
went a bit overboard in discounting my theories about embryotoxins? After all, you saw my statistics.”