The Media Candidate (25 page)

“Who the hell is she?” he muttered, bumping into
the faceless Mr. Compton, who tried to ignore the intrusion as he
resumed a conversation with the chairman of the school board. “This
is all bullshit, not science. Doesn’t Dobbs know the difference
between bullshit and science?”

He rounded the corner of the last aisle and came
face to face with Richie Stevens, who was ecstatic about winning
the first prize for the sixth grade. He elbowed Richie aside to
gain his position in front of a neatly executed geologic cross
section of the valley beneath the city. The various strata were
represented by different colored sands in a plastic case that must
have spent its earlier life as an ant farm. “So, Mr. Stevens plays
in a sand box and wins a blue ribbon. You must be very proud of
your sandbox, Richie,” Elliott said to the young boy as his mother
pulled her son aside, whispering something in his ear. Then Elliott
asked him with a grin, “Check it for cat shit?”

Before the several shocked looks could register
on him, he was gone. He continued his serpentine walk down that
last aisle, still not finding what he was searching for. As he
walked blindly around the corner of that last aisle, he heard a
crunch under his left foot. He picked up the broken plastic pieces
and put them together in his hands.
Looks like the hood of a
model car
, he thought. “Wonder if this is from the grand prize
winner.”

Elliott dropped the pieces and began a march
back toward the Townsend green ribbon. As he rounded the corner of
that aisle, he noticed a crowd around a display near the
now-deserted Susie Townsend booth. He pushed to the front and stood
before the newly dedicated shrine of science at Trumpet Elementary,
the grand prizewinner. Large letters across the top proclaimed “Our
Environment—A Critical Overview.” On the center billboard was a
collage of glossy pictures clipped from expensive magazines
depicting a broad range of “environmental horrors.” A picture of a
garbage dump featured a plastic shopping bag blowing in an
otherwise unsullied breeze and the caption “plastic packaging
defiles our landfills.” Another photo showed brown water streaming
out of a pipe into a mucky river with the caption “industry
desecrates our rivers and streams.” A picture of a high-rise
condominium complex was accompanied by “developers destroy our
wetlands.”

Elliott stood motionless except for the heaving
of his chest, which coincided, with the uncontrolled sounds of his
labored breathing. He looked to the right and saw a blue ribbon for
first prize in the eighth grade. Partially covering that was
another ribbon, this one as white as the fur of the endangered harp
seal pup. Its golden center proclaimed “Best of Fair.” By now,
Melissa Macon had moved away from him at the request of Ms.
Dobbs.

Elliott’s hand trembled as he reached for the
evaluation sheets. The one on top was signed by S. Dobbs. Its
comment section was filled with perfectly formed letters:
“Environmental science studies the relationship between humans and
the earth on which we reside. It relates to how we treat the earth
and how we heed the cries of its inhabitants. In it, we consider
our errors and how we can rehabilitate a planet all but destroyed
in our reckless plunder of the very resources on which we depend.
This excellent project embodies the very soul of those principles
and should be a guide for those students who follow.”

“Can I help you, Mr. Townsend?” came the unheard
question from Ms. Dobbs.

He looked up at the display and he saw
process-control flow-charts for a state-of-the-art recycling plant.
Blinking and refocusing, the flow charts became a picture of a
nuclear power plant. He glanced to one side and saw a detailed
energy analysis of the glass bottle cycle, which evolved, with his
eye massage into a picture of an enormous tree half way between
towering into the forest canopy and its final submission to the
chain saw.

“Mr. Townsend, can I help you find you
daughter’s exhibit? … Mr. Townsend! You appear to be lost, and we
would like very much to help you locate young Ms. Townsend’s booth
so we can finish taking our pictures here for the year book.” Ms.
Dobbs took Elliott’s arm to move him away from the prize-winning
display.

Elliott turned with a snap toward the voice.
“What?”

“I said, we are trying to take some more
pictures here and—”

Elliott looked down at the evaluation sheet in
his hand. He slowly began to crumble it.

“Mr. Townsend, that is not your property!” Ms.
Dobbs ripped half of it from his hand. “Now look what …”

“You bitch,” he said in a controlled voice.

The group went instantly silent as Elliott and
Dobbs faced each other. Dobbs was the first to react. “If all you
can do is—”

“Do you call this hype, science? Look at it,
Dobbs!” His voice rose in frenzied swells. “It’s nothing but
bullshit! Show me the science!”

“Look, Townsend, if—”

“This whole show is bullshit, Dobbs! My girl
worked for months to compete with bullshit. Why didn’t you just
call it a bullshit fair? You don’t know what science is!”

By now, Mr. Compton and two of the larger
faculty had arrived. Martha and Luke also arrived with Susie. Their
mouths gaped as three men hustled Elliott toward the door. Nearly
the entire assemblage of the science fair convened around the
scene. As the eruption reached its climax, every pair of eyes
attended the small posse shuffling away from the grand
prizewinner.

Melissa stood flanked by her mother on one side,
holding her hand, and by her science teacher on her other side.
Dobbs, however, played no part in the consolation. Her attention
fixed on Elliott Townsend as he approached his final exit from
Trumpet Elementary. She published compassion with her hands, one
expressively encased in the other, and with the erectness of her
body, stern but sensitive.

But her eyes told a different story. They
gleamed with the grandeur of a full moon. They sparkled full,
bright, and zealous. Her cheeks could not disobey the subtle
commands of her eyes as they stretched upward delicately. Even her
lips responded like the tide lifted by a distant moon. Ms. Dobbs
experienced a euphoria that she skillfully concealed, but for her
eyes. Her eyes revealed a story of triumph and vindication.

No one could read that message, however, because
every eye was fixed on Elliott, every eye but his own. Just as Mr.
Macon heroically opened the door, Elliott wrenched one arm free and
swung about to face Dobbs. He alone looked into her eyes for an
eternal moment. And her look penetrated him. His protest evaporated
and an odor of defeat rose from him. His captors smelled victory
and thrust their victim out. They slammed the door shut.

When Elliott finally returned home, he faced a
sullen, silent front. He scanned the faces, busy with make work
tasks, closed to him. Luke studied a book with artificial
attention. Martha scrubbed sparkling china.

“Where’s Susie?” Elliott asked.

“In her room,” came the cold response from Luke
as he rose to leave the living room. As he walked past his father,
Elliott put his hand on his shoulder. “Snake,” he whispered. Luke
twisted sideways, and Elliott’s hand grasped only air as Luke
continued to his room and closed the door with a click.

Martha interrupted his silent stance. “We got a
ride home with the Beldens.”

Elliott reached into his left pocket. “Oh. I
have the keys here.”

“Lucky for us, Susie had a house key.”

“Yeah, I guess I better get the car,” Elliott
said softly.

“That would be nice.”

Elliott approached Martha and touched her. “I’m
sorry, Marty. I’m sorry.”

Without turning or even slowing her incessant
scrubbing, she responded in a guttural tone, “Don’t you dare touch
me. Don’t you ever touch me again.”

Elliott inhaled the vengeance and repelled. An
Arctic blast buried his retreating hand as her toxin infected his
body and capsized his spirit. He trembled at the finality of her
passion. Without realizing how, he found himself standing outside
Susie’s room. His hand knocked gently, received no response, then
reached for the doorknob. Susie’s room was dimly lit by the
darkening sky. A figure in dirty running shoes lay in a ball on the
bed.

“Susie? … Susie? … I just …”

The figure rose halfway. “How …” she sobbed.
“How could you do that?”

“I … I don’t know what to say, Susie. I’m—”

“Just get out of here! I don’t want to ever talk
to you again!” She picked up something on her bed and threw it. It
hit Elliott and fell to the floor. Susie rejoined her pillow.
Elliott picked up her science-fair notebook.

In his hands he held the tear-stained results of
her exhausting labor. The pages sang to him with the hours that
he’d spent with his young protégé. Elliott recalled when he’d given
the notebook to Susie and explained the importance of keeping a
detailed account of her activity. He replayed that day and others
as he fondled the notebook. Elliott dropped the book and his
daughter’s career on the corner of the bed and left the room.

The next day, Elliott said he was way behind on
a project at the Lab and spent the whole Sunday there. It became
increasingly common for him to not return home until after the
children had gone to bed. After a while, the Lab became his
sanctuary, and he embraced it. His old family seemed to thrive in
his absence. His work became increasingly exciting as he immersed
himself more deeply into the projects. Year after year, he provided
the Lab with a fertile imagination and boundless energy and
enthusiasm. It provided him with a caring family, a responsive
receptacle for his devotion.

* * *

Elliott sat on the bar stool, motionless except
for the figures he traced in the soy sauce. Guinda now stood beside
him, drawing him close, feeling the warm tears through her blouse.
Neither said anything. Neither moved, save for the subtle motion of
sobs beside her.

“That’s what happened in 2010,” he finally
said.

“You had a mental breakdown. It happens a lot.
It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Straightening up and pushing a sushi roll across
his plate, he said, “It wasn’t a breakdown. It was a tantrum. I was
thirty-four, had a Ph.D., was a respected member of the community
with a wonderful family. I irrevocably disgraced myself and that
family. And I’ve been running from that all my life.”

“You’ll feel better now, Ted, now that you’ve
let it out. It can’t hurt you any more now that it’s outside.”

“If only that were true, Guinda. But the truth
is, I’d give anything now for you not to know that about me. I
could hide behind my Nobel Prize and all that before, but now you
know who I really am. Now you’re like Susie and Luke and Martha,
just another face I need to beg forgiveness from.”

“Why would you need forgiveness from me? I’m
just …”

Elliott studied the soy sauce. Guinda studied
Elliott.

Finally she said, “Did Susie really forsake
science after that?”

“No. I guess even a raving lunatic of a father
couldn’t snuff that fire out. She became a computer scientist and
has been very successful designing advanced neural-networks.”

“She was able to look past her father’s
limitations and measure you on a more enduring scale. How about
Luke?”

“He followed in her footsteps, but he’s
concentrating on the development of DNA-based computers at the
University of Dayton. He’s on sabbatical in Japan right now.”

“So he, too, was able to pick out his father’s
best qualities and not hold a single event against you. Are they
close to you now?”

“No.”

“Well, it looks like you did a lot more right
things than wrong things.”

“I think the biggest right thing I did was
leaving them alone after the science fair. I shudder to think what
might have happened if I’d influenced them more than I did.”

“You don’t give yourself much credit, Ted. You
were probably the biggest influence in their lives. And it was
during those important early years. Take it from me. My father was
never around. I have absolutely no memory of him. Mom divorced him
when I was real little, and I never saw him again after that.”

They and their refreshed Tecates moved to the
living room after the sushi disappeared. A glass-wall exposure to
the west dazzled him as he deposited the two beers on the glass
coffee table. The sun shone a deep crimson as it descended toward
its temporary extinction. It seemed to be suspended just outside
for their pleasure alone in defiance of Kepler. The table cradled a
thick glass top with deeply cut geometric patterns on its
underside. The sun’s evening rays refracted their way through that
maze of glass prisms, engulfing the room in a mosaic of glints and
spectra. The light sought to analyze and expose every detail of
those glass furrows, as if they were magnets drawing each photon
into their mysterious web of angles by an invisible force and then
dispatching it again in a direction prescribed by some timeless
canon.

Elliott rotated one of the beer glasses and
watched the display change. As he stood pondering the spectacle,
Guinda walked in. “If that’s too bright for you, I can just draw
the drapes.”

“No. Please don’t. Look how those patterns dance
across the wall just by moving these things a little?” He performed
a little show for Guinda with the colorful forms doing pirouettes
around the walls and ceiling.

“That’s great! I didn’t know you were a
performing artist, too,” Guinda giggled.

“I was a goat in our third-grade Christmas
pageant. I butted Christine Beste and knocked her into the manger
to show her my undying love.”

“I’ll bet she was impressed with that!”

“Yes, I guess impressed is one word,” Elliott
continued. “She cut her lip and got blood all over the Christ
child. But the worst part was that I had to take the manger home
and have my dad fix it that night. And, of course, he asked all the
right questions. That put a damper on my show biz career … until
the next Christmas, anyway.”