Prizes (7 page)

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that. How about coming to Washington next weekend?”

He challenged her. “How about you coming to Boston?”

“Fine. Thanks for the invitation.”

A few moments later Adam hung up and smiled broadly.

“Well, well, well,” Cindy remarked from a proximity that left no doubt that she had overheard the entire conversation. “It looks like you’ve blown your cover.”

“Meaning?”

“Your ostensible indifference to the female sex—at least the species that works in this lab.”

“Cindy,” he chided good-naturedly, “my private life is nobody’s business.”

“On the contrary, Prof, it’s probably the best source of gossip we’ve ever had. You’ve been voted the cutest doctor every year I’ve been here.”

“Come off it, Cindy. Go back to your amino acids.”

“Yes
sir,
” the young post-doc replied with playful deference, tossing off a final comment as she left. “We’ll take a straw vote to see if she’s worthy of you.”

Max Rudolph lived by his own rules. And they included surprise visits to the lab. Late the next afternoon, he discovered his protégé hard at work. Eyeing him with
disapproval, he demanded, “How many hours of sleep did you get last night?”

“A few.”

“ ‘A few’ is not a scientific answer,” he admonished. “And did you take in a movie as you promised?”

“Actually, I got carried away and missed the last show.”

The professor frowned. “I don’t like disobedience on my staff. Even your great brain has to recharge. So finish what you’re doing and we’ll go out to Newton and get some decent food into you.”

Adam was grateful for the invitation, and twenty minutes later they were in Max’s vintage Volkswagen Beetle, sputtering along Commonwealth Avenue in the growing winter darkness.

As the older man failed to stop for the second red light in a row, Adam scolded, “Pay attention. Your mind’s a million miles away. You shouldn’t be driving at the best of times.”

“At least
I
got some sleep last night,” Max replied with mock sanctimony. “Now sit back and listen to the second movement of this Schubert.” And with that he turned up the volume and hummed along.

Adam relented. At that instant he took his attention off the road—a lapse for which he would castigate himself the rest of his life. As they reached the crest of Heartbreak Hill on Commonwealth Avenue and began to hurtle downward, two teenagers on bikes suddenly appeared directly in the path of the car.

Max swerved to avoid them. Skidding on a patch of ice, he lost control and crashed violently into a tree.

The silence after the accident belied its gravity. There was the crumpling of thin metal. Then the sound of the driver’s forehead striking the windshield.

And then total quiet.

For a moment Adam sat there motionless, in shock.

He listened intently but could not hear any sound of breathing. Reaching over to feel the old man’s pulse, he
knew this was merely a pretext to touch his mentor for the last time.

Slowly he was gripped by an agonizing awareness.
He’s dead. My friend, my teacher—my father—he’s dead. And it’s all my fault.

A cry emerged from him like the howl of a wounded animal.

He was still sobbing when the squad cars came.

The cyclists, though horrified, were able to give a more or less coherent account of what had transpired.

The senior police officer wanted to get his paperwork over with. “Do you know about next of kin?” he asked.

“His wife. Lisl. She only lives a few blocks away. I could walk right there.”

“Would you like us to drive you?”

“No thank you, Sergeant. I need time to collect my thoughts.”

Lisl took the news bravely. She murmured a few words about the folly of allowing her husband behind the wheel.

“He was so headstrong, my Max, I should never have let him drive.”

She then realized how shaken Adam was and touched his hand gently.

“Stop blaming yourself. You have to accept that terrible things like this happen.”

But why to Max? Adam grieved. Why to such a saintly human being?

Lisl called one of her close friends, with whom she had done her analytical studies. The woman was more than willing to sit with her while Adam went through the grim procedure of making the funeral arrangements—which, in case of accidental death, had to wait for the obligatory police autopsy.

At six
P.M.
Eli Cass, the press officer from Harvard,
telephoned for details of the accident to add to the release he was rushing to complete for the next morning’s
Boston Globe
and the various wire services. Eli was pleased to speak to someone who could update the list of Max’s awards.

“Dean Holmes said it was only a question of time before Max got the Nobel,” Cass remarked.

“Yes,” Adam replied numbly. “He was probably the leading immunologist in the world.”

In the living room, Lisl had been joined by Maurice Oates, the Rudolphs’ lawyer.

“I wouldn’t be discussing Max’s will so soon,” he apologized. “Except that it’s very emphatic about there being no speeches at his interment. In fact, no service of any kind. Otherwise the testament is straightforward.” He paused, and then looked at the tall young doctor standing ashen-faced in the corner. “He wanted you to have his gold pocket watch.”

“I’ll get it,” Lisl offered.

“No, no,” Adam said. “There’s plenty of time for that.”

“Please,” she overruled him. “If I don’t give it to you tonight, you’ll have nothing of Max’s to go home with.”

And now, suddenly, heedless of the others in the room, she fell into Adam’s arms. And they both began to sob for the terrible loss of the noblest human being they would ever know.

Though it was nearly midnight when he left, Lisl was still surrounded by several friends and neighbors who had come to keep her company. In addition, the house was filled with palpable memories of Max: his office, his books, his clothes. His reading glasses placed neatly on the desk.

In contrast, all Adam had was the silent gold watch, a more poignant token since it had been given to Max by his own father when he’d received his M.D. It had
now become a symbolic way of passing the torch. Adam held the cold metal to his cheek.

His phone rang. It was Toni.

“It was on the eleven o’clock news,” she explained. “Are you okay?”

“Not really,” he replied bitterly. “I should have been driving.”

There was a silence. Toni did not know what to say. Finally she asked: “When’s the funeral?”

“Tuesday morning. There’s not going to be any ceremony—he specified no eulogy.”

“That seems wrong,” Toni objected, “there should at least be words—expressions of affection. Lisl may not realize how much she needs it too. You can’t just walk away without saying
anything.
Would it be all right if I came?”

“But you didn’t even know him.”

“Funerals are for the living, not the dead.”

“I realize that. But I have to look after Lisl.”

“I know,” she answered gently. “But somebody has to take care of you.”

There was a momentary pause.

“Thanks, Toni,” he whispered. “I’d appreciate that.”

There were two dozen or so gathered around Max Rudolph’s freshly dug grave: the dean, colleagues, their wives, his lab teams and students. And standing discreetly among them was Antonia Nielson from Washington.

The undertakers, experienced with “silent” funerals, had prepared cut flowers for the mourners to drop onto the lowered coffin as they passed by to pay their last respects.

Finally, only Adam and Lisl were left. And as he held his flower, unable to let go, words emerged from his throat unbidden.

It was the lines from Hamlet, which suddenly seemed so appropriate.

Then, unwillingly, he let fall his flower.

And Lisl did the same.

7
 

Curiously enough, Sandy Raven did not look back on his formative years with any anger. For he was only marginally aware of his parents’ mutual hostility and he always recalled childhood as a time of purest love. Not anyone’s for him, but his own secret passion for his classmate, Rochelle Taubman. He burned for her with a flame intense enough to vaporize diamonds.

Moreover, this was long before Rochelle became the radiant goddess who graced the covers of
Vogue
,
Harper’s Bazaar
, and
Silver Screen.
In those days, she was simply the belle of RS. 161.

After all, she was slender and strikingly beautiful, with high cheekbones, shiny auburn hair, and deliquescent eyes, while he was pudgy and bespectacled, with a complexion reminiscent of oatmeal.

She barely knew he existed, except when finals approached and she cajoled him into helping her prepare for their math and science exams. He did not feel the slightest bit exploited.

The mere fact that she sweetened each tutorial session with phrases like, “You’re wonderful, Sandy,” or “I’ll love you forever,” was recompense enough. And yet
when the testing period ended, amnesia of the heart stepped in and she ignored him until the next semester’s finals.

And in the interim Sandy would merely pine.

His father tried to cheer him up. “Don’t take it to heart, sonny boy. Remember that even if she prefers the football captain, someday his jock will fade. And suddenly you’ll find yourself alone with her on either side of Yankee Stadium with millions cheering as you walk toward each other in slow motion and embrace.”

“God, Dad,” Sandy exclaimed in wonderment, “where’d you get an image like that?”

Sidney beamed. “The movies, of course.”

School was not yet over and Sandy still had time to boast of his father’s new eminence in Hollywood. And he made absolutely certain to mention to Rochelle that his dad was now a junior executive at Twentieth Century-Fox.

Once again she remembered Sandy’s existence, rushed to him and declared, “I don’t know how I’ll bear being without you. I mean, you’ll be at Science and I’ll be at Music and Art. When will we ever see each other?”

“There’s always the telephone,” he replied with a touch of sarcasm. But then he chivalrously volunteered, “Any night you need help with your homework, just call me up.”

“I will, I will,” she chirped. “I guess I never had a chance to tell you, but I was sorry to hear about your mom and dad splitting.”

“Thanks,” he replied. “I suppose it’s better for all of us.”

“But will you ever get to see your father?”

“Actually he’s just sent me a bus ticket so I can spend the summer with him in Hollywood.”

“Gosh, that sounds so exciting. I wish I could go too.”

Oh Rochelle, he thought to himself, his heart drumming. If only I
could
take you with me.

“Be sure to send me a postcard.” She smiled seductively. “That is if you still remember your old friends.”

Sandy would never forget his first visit to California.

It was nearly lunchtime when Sid’s Chevy arrived at the gate of the Twentieth Century-Fox studios on the corner of Pico and Avenue of the Stars.

The guard immediately recognized him, gave a kind of salute, and smiled. “Good morning, Mr. Raven. This is pretty late for
you.
”

“Yeah, I had to pick up my boy at the station.”

The guard waved them through with a cordial, “Hi there, young fellow. Welcome to Tinseltown.”

Sid drove slowly to his parking place so that his son could drink in the sights of the studio. Indeed, for the first quarter mile they seemed to be in another era.

Huge swarms of stagehands were busy putting up an elevated railway track, while others were hammering and nailing what looked like a row of old-fashioned brownstones—the set for
Hello, Dolly.

In the commissary, a cavernous dining hall whose facade served as one of the buildings in “Peyton Place,” there was an elevated platform reserved for major moguls, a category for which his father did not yet qualify. The bigwigs would be joined by whichever stars were filming on the lot at that time. Today it was Charlton Heston, wearing an astronaut’s gear.

Yet the most startling view was of the plebeians’ eating area, which seemed to have been attacked by a legion of gorillas—who were sitting everywhere, casually munching sandwiches and swilling coffee.

Sid explained that these creatures were extras from an epic called
Planet of the Apes,
in which “a pack of overgrown monkeys chase Chuck Heston all over the map. It’s a dynamite concept.”

Everyone seemed to know and love his father. As
they ate their tuna on rye with pickle, Sidney was greeted by innumerable simians as well as other Hollywood animals. Sandy was awestruck.

“Musicals are in,” Sidney declared to his son over that evening’s chili, and went on to explain that
The Sound of Music
had struck a vein and the American people were waiting for more of the same.

“And I’ve got a notion for a blockbuster. Wait till you hear this, kiddo, it’s a real winner.”