Physics Can Be Fatal (3 page)

     “I have an announcement to make,” she said.  “Perhaps the biggest coup of my tenure as Head of Department so far.

     Helen bowed her well-coifed head, allowing a moment for the occasion to sink in.  Faculty members rolled their eyes and stifled chuckles at the absurd pomp of it all.  Helen looked up with the victorious expression of a successful self-promoter.  Gone were the days of modesty.  Sir Edmund Hillary had made less of a fuss at the press conference after he conquered Everest.

     “Distinguished Professor Alan Sidebottom from Cambridge University will be joining us at Cushing this semester.  It’s a real feather in Cushing’s cap!” she beamed.

     “Hear, hear!” bellowed Mitchell Fender, leading the accolades.  “Well done, Helen, very exciting news!”  Everyone seated around the table knew Mitchell’s enthusiasm was disingenuous.  Only Helen Mann, preening with pleasure, took his laudatory words at face value.

     “I thought you’d all be pleased,” she purred with an expression of self-congratulations.

     To Helen’s great frustration, the mood among the faculty did not budge from low-key.  The idea of a celebrity colleague did not seem like nearly as much-of-a-much to most of them as it did to Helen.  If anything, it seemed like much ado––another one of Helen’s public relations maneuvers for Cushing College.

     Edwina, seated next to Donald Gaylord, noticed that his jaws were clenching and unclenching nervously.  He had not spoken a word.

     “We’re all set for Friday,” Edwina addressed everyone.  “Cocktail reception at seven Friday evening in the library.  I’m sure I’ll be wearing the LBD you’ve all seen me in fifty times,” she laughed.

     “LBD?” Ravi Kapoor turned to Paolo Rossetti.

     “Little Black Dress,” said Lois Leiberman, a petite assistant professor of astronomy, sporting pink-tinted eyeglasses and a pixie haircut.”

     “Right.  Good point, Edwina. Thank-you for bringing that up,” said Helen.  “Dress appropriately, people, let’s try and put our best foot forward.  Suitable cocktail attire, please.”

     Seth Dubin appeared flush with excitement.

     “Which courses will Professor Sidebottom be teaching?” he asked.

     “Strictly graduate level,” Helen replied.  “I’ll be working on his schedule over the next couple of days.  Anything else?” she asked, looking around the table.

     The meeting soon broke up.  Feeling cheated from the cascade of kudos she had hoped for, Helen hovered near the doorway in order to salvage any remaining accolades.  It was clear to everyone they would not be able to leave the conference room without congratulating Helen, so one by one they muttered ‘nice job, Helen’ or ‘great news, Helen’ on their way out.  Helen’s oversized ego wished for more, but these modest expressions of appreciation would have to do.

     Mitchell Fender, deeply aggrieved by Helen’s announcement, was suddenly dealing with a mild stomachache.  He scurried out of the meeting rather quickly.

*

     The Physics & Astronomy Department was soon humming with the exciting news of Alan Sidebottom’s imminent arrival.  For the next few days, faculty members spent more time than usual congregating in the Department reception area, drinking coffee and talking about this new development.

     Ruth Benjamin, the department secretary, looked up from her desk.

     “What the heck is going on?” Ruth said to no one in particular.

     “A bigwig from Cambridge is coming to Cushing, Ruth,” Lois said. “A superstar egghead!  The guy is a real character––he’s got a show on television, three best-selling books, and I heard they’re even making a movie about him.”

     “I wonder who they’re going to get to play Professor Sidebottom’s part?” astrophysicist Ravi Kapoor said in liltingly precise English, his dark eyes shining in his handsome, brown face  “It would have to be a cross between Harry Dean Stanton and Boris Karloff!”

     “But it’s not just the fame,” chimed in Paolo Rossetti in a strong Italian accent.  “It is the infamy, also!  The dubious honor of having the most colorful reputation in all of physics, no?”  A lock of shiny umber hair fell forward onto Paolo’s long, thin face.  He pushed it back from his forehead.  “I have heard from more than one person that Professor Sidebottom got the wife of one of his college professors pregnant.  They ran away together to Morocco, until he got bored, and returned to England! 
Che tipo!
”  

     “Did anybody else read the trashy biography that came out about him a few years ago?”  Lois Lieberman asked, through a mouthful of doughnut.

     “Guilty as charged!” laughed Pete Talbot, a first year instructor.  “There was a preposterously steamy incident in an airport bathroom––but who knows if any of it’s true?”

     The atmosphere around Sanborn House was frothy and boisterous.  The last minute announcement that such an eminent celebrity in the field as Alan Sidebottom would soon be among them, induced downright giddiness among students and staff.  The excitement over his arrival continued through the rest of the week. Faculty members carried on these impromptu coffee klatches in the Department’s reception area, enjoying too many cups of coffee and doughnuts, exchanging Sidebottom stories, wandering in and out of each other’s offices, discussing his work, speculating what it would be like to work side by side.  After all, Professor Alan Sidebottom was a legend.

*

     When each autumn brought new faculty to the bewitching New England town of New Guilford, they arrived with hopes of ascending the academic ranks from adjunct to instructor to assistant professor to associate professor to full professor.  The majority were dedicated educators and scholars who approached their academic ambitions with a devotion to their students, a reverence for their subjects, and a healthy respect for their colleagues. The Physics and Astronomy Department was full of such people. 

     But Dr. Donald Gaylord was not one of them.  At thirty-nine years of age, he was the youngest member in the history of the Department to become a full, tenured professor. A well-respected university press had published his hugely successful book,
Mind Your P’s and Q’s:  Philosophy In A Quantum Universe.
  The publisher had sent him on an extensive European book tour.  In Rome he replenished his already superb wardrobe.  Donald was on the fast track to academic success.  The fact that his sites were set on becoming the next Head of Department was no secret to anyone.

     If the Department had a poster boy, it would be Donald Gaylord.  Athletic, tanned, and lantern-jawed, reminiscent of a Roy Lichtenstein romance comic book hero, Donald was popular with students for his engaging charm and classroom theatrics.  Exuberant and mesmerizing at an auditorium lectern, outside the classroom Donald could be aloof and secretive.  He was less adored by his colleagues than he was by his students.  The general feeling among staff was that Donald stayed up nights plotting strategies to take over the Department, like some kind of demented general in a non-existent war.  His wife worked in Boston as a personal chef, and that is where she lived.  With no children, their commuter marriage had Donald spending weekdays in New Guilford and weekends in Boston, leaving him with plenty of solitary evenings to think too much.

*

     Dr. Seth Dubin closed the door to his office and called his wife. 

     Sheila Dubin was sitting in the sunny living room of their home in New Guilford, painting her toenails ‘Outrageous Red’.

     “Incredible news,” Seth said.  “Alan Sidebottom is coming to Cushing!”

     “Who?” Sheila asked.

     “You remember, Alan Sidebottom!” Seth said.  “I used to talk about him all the time in grad school––he’s the reason I studied physics!”

     “Oh, right, I remember.  What’s he doing in New Guilford?”

     “He’s teaching at Cushing this semester! I can’t believe I’ll actually be working with him!  This is s-so incredible!”

     Sheila Dubin, in her forties, earthily attractive, stared admiringly at her glossy, red toenails.  She reached over to set down the nail polish, and picked up a jar of shea butter moisturizer, which she lovingly massaged into her feet.  When she had finished rubbing the stuff in, she could think of nothing else to do to pamper her feet, now that she had trimmed, filed, soaked, scrubbed, painted, buffed, moisturized and polished them to perfection.

     She and Seth had met during college.  Sheila found Seth’s gentle and cerebral manner very appealing, and more importantly, malleable.  A gifted physics student, Seth was destined for great things, and Sheila thought he would go far in academia.  She would be able to maneuver their life together however, wherever she liked.  Seth would have his pick of universities to teach at, and together they would climb the ranks of academic success.  She imagined all the beautiful places they would travel when he gave lectures and attended conferences around the world.

     Sheila gazed critically around the small living room of the modest, one-story home.  She had imagined more glamorous digs when Seth got the appointment at a top school like Cushing.  Circumstances being what they were, Sheila felt increasingly frustrated and disappointed.  She was tired of what she perceived as Seth’s dithering lack of ambition.  He seemed to be satisfied with research and teaching, contented to be in the classroom with his students, or in the lab doing research.  He had less and less time for Sheila, who expressed no interest in his work.

     She had her sights set on Donald Gaylord, that handsome paragon of upward mobility and ambition.  Sheila considered being separated from his wife made Donald fair game. In turn, Donald seemed happy enough to be the object of Sheila’s flirtations, although he received her attentions passively, and did as little as possible to advance the relationship.  Sheila did not conceal her attraction to him, and Donald didn’t hide the fact that he was flattered by the attention.

     Sheila’s work as an illustrator of medical textbooks had faltered when, after thirty-five years in the field, her publisher went out of business.  Sheila got free-lance work as she could, but it was sparse.  One curious consequence of having more free time was that she had started watching forensic procedural programs on television in the daytime. She had developed an insatiable appetite for these crime stories. The more baffling the cause of death, the more arcane the method of demise, the happier Sheila was.  Hers was an exacting knowledge of the workings of the human body, and she had developed the habit while watching these programs of making illustrations of the deaths under investigation.   Sheila’s drawings were ghoulishly precise, as any illustrator of medical textbooks should be. 

     In her early years in New Guilford Sheila had gone back to school to take classes in chemistry.  An enlarged knowledge of chemistry improved her skill set as a medical illustrator, and she started to incorporate into her drawings the effects on major organs of toxic chemicals in things like food preservatives, beauty products, and pharmaceuticals.  Her portfolio had expanded to include highly detailed illustrations of organs degraded by poisoning, by chronic drug and alcohol abuse, and the like.  She had a vague idea about compiling it all into a book one day. 

     In her spare time Sheila had also turned her considerable focus toward fitness, almost obsessively some thought, and began working out at the gym three times a week and running on the other days.  Her interests and hobbies fell into a more or less earthbound category; she left a life of the mind to others. 

    Sheila picked up a small mirror and scowled.   She kept her body so toned and fit she might have been mistaken for a much younger woman, if it hadn’t been for the telling grooves on her face.  Grooves and creases caused by habitually feeling disgruntled, by frowning and scowling too much.   She leapt up from the sofa and ran to the bathroom, where she furiously rubbed facial moisturizing cream on her cheeks and forehead.

    
That’s better,
she thought with vain satisfaction, feeling optimistic about the wonders of modern science. 

     Sheila was a determined sort of person.  She had places to go. Although Donald Gaylord seemed receptive to her romantic overtures, and despite her best efforts, their relationship had not achieved a physical level.  Sheila was flustered by these moments of opportunity that seemed to keep slipping away.  She feared Donald was trifling with her, leading her on for no reason.

     Not one to back away from a challenge, Sheila pressed on, arranging dinners and secret meetings for the two of them, and ceaselessly continuing her campaign of self-improvement until the day she could crack the nut of Donald Gaylord.  It would be her finest hour!