Relativity (17 page)

The old man coughed. “Next time, bring Ethan.”

Claire didn't have the heart to say she probably wouldn't, although now she wasn't so sure. “It was good to see you, John.”

He closed his eyes. “Ethan,” he whispered.

As Claire closed the door, she noticed her eyes were wet, although she didn't remember crying. There was a smell in the air, curdled and sweet, that reminded Claire of breast milk, and a vague sense of being needed, of that phase in her life when she'd been indispensable but didn't yet understand it was only a phase. John's words—perhaps inadvertently—had left her with an insoluble burden. Blood, thicker than water. Didn't deserve a second chance. Immediately, Claire thought of Mark.

She was struck momentarily by an uneasy feeling, some abstract glimpse of what it might mean to forgive and forget. Of the way children love their parents—irrationally, uncritically, blindly—without needing proof that their parents were worthy of love. Claire understood she had the power to give, and also to take away. She could bring Ethan to meet his grandfather. Who would it hurt? Ultimately, this was her choice to make.

But her heart intervened, quickly overriding those thoughts. Exposing Ethan to more stress wasn't a risk she wanted to take. Best to keep that door locked. Claire rushed away from the palliative-care wing and out into the parking lot. John could voice his deep regrets, reflect on his mistakes, but that had nothing to do with Mark. How did she even draw that parallel? Ballet had taught her that on the stage; you only had one opportunity to get it right. Claire felt narrowed to a ruthless pinpoint of quickening regret. Because it was denial—not remorse or mistakes—that ruled out second chances.

Ω

ETHAN WAS DISCOVERING
his body in the bathroom mirror. He wiped the layer of shower mist off the glass surface and looked at himself in the nude. Popping and flexing, tensing and bending; he found new muscles every day. With a clenched jaw and serious expression, Ethan tightened his deltoids, biceps, major pectorals. He was getting a sharpness about him now—angles, corners, nooks—and he didn't know where these beginnings of definition came from. How he might look one day when he was fully cooked. Change was exciting, but he was also terrified of his future body, his metamorphosis into the unknown.

He held an arm straight up in the air and carefully examined the reflection of the darkening skin of his armpit. No hair grew under there yet. His eyebrows were thicker; maybe he was getting his first pimple on his chin. He took a secret delight in his transformation. Posing like a bodybuilder—taut shoulders, bulked-up neck, groin thrust upward to the ceiling—Ethan imagined he was a grown man. He relaxed his muscles. Although puberty was speeding up, he still had the body of a little boy, a bit doughy and sweet.

Ethan had never seen a naked man in the flesh. He'd seen his mum without clothes on before, but there was a strange, soft hairlessness about her—white thighs, smooth arms, small pointy elbows and knees—and he was never going to have a body like that. Most of the girls in Ethan's class were taller than the boys now. Budding breasts, curving hips, tampons and pads; their accelerated development wasn't just physical. The Year 6 girls posed and preened, spent their lunchtimes sitting in conspiratorial circles. On the opposite side of the playground, the Year 6 boys still played with sticks.

But a mature male body, an adult penis, a hairy ballsac: he'd never seen those things with his eyes. Ethan could search the Internet for images of “naked men” but he didn't want to do that; that'd make him a pervert. If anyone ever found out, he'd be called a homo for sure. He wasn't. Ethan just wanted to know everything about becoming a man. Needed to study it, understand it, master it. Men had their own language—foreskins, beards, erections—but he knew his mum couldn't be his translator. Masculinity was a foreign dialect Ethan still needed to learn.

“We need to leave in five minutes.” Mum knocked on the bathroom door.

“Hold on.” Ethan took one last look at his naked body in the mirror, dried his hair and pulled on his school uniform.

At school, his mum accompanied him to the classroom. Ethan didn't let her kiss him good-bye. She stood at the door and watched him walk into class, her eyes on him as he entered the room. Ethan felt everyone's stares. Not everybody was there yet, the morning bell hadn't rung, but a hush came over the room. One girl smiled at him hastily. He hung up his bag and rummaged through it slowly, delaying any interaction. Everybody knew. About his brain. About his father. His pulse raced.

Mr. Thompson talked to his mum outside the classroom door. She wore her worried face; she'd worry about being worried if she could. It was a face Ethan noticed her sporting a lot at the moment: crushed forehead, red eyes. This face made her look one hundred years old. If only Ethan were less weird, less sick, not a freak: that face she made was his fault. Mr. Thompson nodded thoughtfully at Mum, but Ethan couldn't hear what they were saying. Not that it mattered. Obviously, they were talking about him.

At nine o'clock the school bell rang. Children poured in and filled the empty seats in the classroom, stopping midsentence or doing a double take when they noticed Ethan was back. Some of the kids said hello but most avoided him. A loud group of boys walked through the door—Daniel, Will, and the rest of their gang. Will's black eye looked better now. His skin had healed; the eyepatch was off.

Daniel whispered behind him. “Stephen Hawking's back, check it out. E equals M C squared!”

Ethan kept his eyes on the whiteboard at the front of the class. That wasn't actually Hawking's equation.

Mr. Thompson explained the new project for the week. The children were going to break up into small groups to make a stop-motion animation, using cameras and clay to trick the eye. “Animation relies on persistence of vision,” he said. “The eye can retain an image for a fraction of a second. So if your film has a speed of about ten images per second, the motion in your sequence of different pictures will look seamless.”

Kids broke off into pairs and brainstormed about their movies. Mr. Thompson took Ethan aside. “How do you feel? You okay to do this?”

Ethan nodded. “Sounds like fun.”

“Your mother explained your condition. Let me know if you get fatigued. Everyone will be taking lots of photos, using a flash. So just give us a yell if you're not feeling great.”

Ethan was partnered with Nathan Nguyen. The boys drew their storyboard and started to mold plasticine characters. It was nice to do something with his hands, and Ethan let himself get lost in the details of the activity—sculpting, embossing, shaping, reshaping. Nathan arranged the first shot against their background and took a photo. Ethan moved a soldier's plasticine arm. Nathan took another photo. Ethan adjusted the arm's angle again. Click. Flash. Change. Click. Flash. Change. Before Ethan knew it, two hours had passed. The bell for morning tea was ringing.

Ω

OUT IN THE PLAYGROUND,
kids ran and screamed. Ethan knew nobody wanted to play with him so he took his apple and muesli bar from his schoolbag and locked himself in the farthest cubicle of the boys' bathroom. He felt light-headed and lonely, longed to be back home. Everything will be okay, he told himself. It's just school. Not the end of the universe. Sure, since it could be expanding indefinitely at an accelerated rate, the end of the universe was probably inevitable. But it wasn't going to happen today.

Ethan sat on the toilet seat and chewed his muesli bar. Sticky oats got caught in his throat. When he was finished, he shoved the wrapper into his pocket. Something was in his shorts. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his uniform.

The letter. His father's letter.

He read it again. Ethan still didn't understand what his father wanted, what this letter was trying to say. Each paragraph was more cryptic than the next. His dad was somewhere in the same city, right now, maybe only minutes away. But Ethan didn't know if his father wanted to see him. The letter wasn't clear; it didn't say yes or no. Everything took on a new meaning now that he knew about his injuries.

He's my son, but I don't know anything about him. Maybe I should've sent him birthday cards, called him at Christmas. I don't know. I wasn't sure if you wanted to hear from me. And I needed to focus on getting my own life back on track. I often wonder what you've told Ethan about me and about what happened. I'm his father. How have you explained the fact that I'm not around?

Ethan took a slow bite of his apple and read the words again.

The bathroom door creaked open.

“Stephen Hawking! We know you're here,” Daniel cooed. “We're going to find you, freak.”

Ethan held his breath. He quietly stood up on the toilet seat so the boys couldn't see his feet under the door.

Bang!
They started to kick the cubicles.
Bang! Bang! Bang!

In the farthest cubicle, Ethan's knees quivered. He might wet his pants. They were going to beat him up to a pulp; he knew it. Yeah, that was definitely the plan. An eye for a black eye. Ethan probably had to pay some price for what he'd done to Will's face. Physics wanted balance. Equilibrium.

Bang!
The noises were closer and louder now.
Bang!

With the slightest twitch of his finger, the letter fell out of Ethan's hand. It floated upward for a moment, before slipping under the door of the stall and into the main area of the bathroom. Stupid air resistance, Ethan thought, as the paper flew out of the cubicle.

“Dan,” one of the boys said. “Come here, check it out.”

“What's this? A love letter from Stephen Hawking?” Daniel read the letter in a girlish voice. “Dear Claire, I'm sorry to get in touch out of the blue like this but I urgently need to speak with you.” He paused for a moment; Ethan's skin burned. “Gold,” Daniel said. “This is fucking gold.”

“Let me see!” Will snatched the letter from Daniel's hands. “I sent a letter to your office but I'm not sure you received it. Your old phone number is disconnected. Hopefully this is still your address.” Will read the whole letter aloud. At first the boys sniggered but the more he read, the quieter they grew. “Maybe you could give me a call? Mark.”

Nobody said anything for a little while. Pipes clanged below their feet. Ethan wobbled, scared he might slip off the bending plastic toilet seat.

“I know you're in here, freak,” Will said to the door of his cubicle. “I can see you through the cracks. Come out, Stephen Hawking, or we'll knock down the door.”

Ethan closed his eyes. He wished the Big Crunch would start right now, that the real end of the universe would begin. Then these boys would just get swallowed into a black hole and disappear. Ethan would get sucked in too, but right now he didn't really care.

“Come out.” Daniel raised his voice. He punched the door with his fist and the metal hinge of the lock clattered.

Ethan made a suffocated whimper.

“Come on, Stephen Hawking. You can't hide forever. I've got another secret to tell you. Want to know what it is?” Daniel sounded a little deranged. “You think you're so smart and special, but you're just a piece of shit.”

Ethan's legs buckled. These boys didn't know any secret he didn't already now know himself.

“Stephen Hawking's mum is a slut!” Daniel said gleefully.

Heat rushed through Ethan's body. Those boys could say whatever he wanted about him, call him a freak, but they couldn't insult his mum. His nostrils flared; he bared his teeth. Ethan stepped off the toilet seat and onto the bathroom tiles. He pushed the cubicle door open.

“What did you say?”

Daniel looked delighted. “Hello, Stephen Hawking! Your mum,” he said slowly, “is a slut.”

“Take it back,” Ethan said. “That's not true.”

Will took a step forward, pushing Daniel aside. “Yeah, it is. Your mum is a slut.”

Ethan shook his head. “No, you're lying.”

“You don't know, do you?” Will looked torn for a moment. “Your mum had sex with my dad. Ask her. It's true.”

“Shut up,” Ethan cried. His ribs squeezed the air out of his lungs. The bathroom started to warp. Some unknown force pushed Ethan's body against the wall. His shoulder hit the hand dryer. Warm air burst out of the dryer's metal vent, heating millions of particles of air. “Shut up. Shut up, shut up.”

Hot particles rose to the top of the room. Cold particles sank to the floor. Suddenly, Ethan saw all the particles in the room collide. Bouncing, crashing, dancing; traveling at thousands of miles an hour, they ricocheted off every surface of the boys' bathroom. Atoms smashed into other atoms, creating the tiniest explosions of light. Microscopic fireworks filled the air.

It took Ethan's breath away. He bent his head up to the ceiling and stretched his arms wide. He let out a cry, a combustive groan like starting an engine's ignition. With a swish of his arms, Ethan controlled the army of particles, pushing them toward Will and Daniel and the rest of the boys. The particles crashed over their heads like an atomic tsunami. He started to shake and sweat.

“What the fuck?” Daniel looked at Ethan with wide eyes.

Will stepped back. “Let's get out of here.”

“What's wrong with him?”

“I dunno. Let's go.” Will grabbed the corner of Daniel's school shirt and led him toward the door.

As the boys bolted out of the bathroom, Ethan slumped against the wall. The particles made themselves invisible again, dissolved back into the other side of the unseeable air. But Ethan knew the others had seen them; they'd felt them too. They saw him make the particle wave with his hands. Will and Daniel were scared of his powers. He wasn't a piece of shit. They were wrong; they were liars. In his fingertips, Ethan had a unique gift. He could split open the hidden mysteries of the universe. See them with his eyes.