The Heart of Henry Quantum (8 page)

But of course that's not what happened. Instead, she gently touched her eldest daughter on the shoulder and took up the baby from the stroller and said, “Ha-ha-ha, goo-goo-goo,” gently slipped a bottle in her mouth, and gathered the other two around her. They formed a kind of phalanx of family with the stroller in the middle, and calmly recommenced their walk up the street. Henry could not take his eyes off them, that United Nations of children loping along beside their mother in such careful quietude; and she, as if nothing at all had happened, cooing at the baby and instructing her children to stop at the corner and wait for the light.

Margaret had not wanted kids. Perhaps she had once, but something in her changed, and then she didn't anymore. Probably she was worried that children would derail her career, ruin her figure. She was a big real estate developer now. But he, Henry, had longed for them, and witnessing the agony of this desperate mother had not caused him to sympathize with Margaret one bit, because in the simple gesture of the middle child taking his mother's hand, and in the way the eldest girl tried her best to stop the baby's crying, he understood he was witnessing the emancipating power of a child's love.

Was it too late for them to have kids? Margaret was forty-two. You can still have kids when you're forty-two, can't you? And anyway, they could always adopt. In his mind's eye it was Christmas morning, and scampering down the stairs at first light, rounding the tree on a beeline to the pile of presents, they would come, his children, and one by one they would tear open their gifts, while they—was it Margaret in this picture, he couldn't quite tell—sat with their mugs of coffee watching, with hearts overflowing, the joyous tumult. They would have three, just like that woman, only it would be two boys and a girl, and the eldest boy would be the protector of the other two, and his name would be Hunter because that was the name Henry had always wanted for himself. Hunter had sandy hair and could already throw a football at the age of six, and Charlotte, whom everyone called Charlie, was five, with wild, red curls—which made him pretty sure the woman seated beside him wasn't Margaret—but he let that slide because little Charlie loved to sing and dance and now she twirled herself over to Henry and jumped on his lap and kissed him and said, “Oh, dear Papa! What a happy home!” As for the youngest one, the three-year-old—well, he would be named Dylan and he was towheaded and had beautiful pink cheeks and was completely content with his hand-painted wooden train—little did he know that in the closet was his very first tricycle. And from the kitchen the aroma of gingerbread and French toast, and on the stereo Bach or Handel, and the doorbell would ring and the carolers would be out on the front lawn knee-deep in snow . . .

But then it went blank, because someone had bumped into him.

“Oh, oh, I'm so sorry!” she said.

And he replied, “No, no, it's my fault.”

And she said, “Yeah, maybe it is. You're sort of standing right in the middle of the sidewalk.”

And that was his cue to continue on his way down Stockton toward Macy's.

He didn't have to walk far before he noticed the human robot at the entrance to Union Square. The human robot had painted himself silver from head to toe—clothes, skin, shoes, and bowler hat—and was currently frozen like a statue, as no one had put any money into his soup can, which was also painted silver. Even though Henry had ignored this guy a million times, today he found himself crossing the plaza to observe him. He wanted to see him move like a machine. But the human robot remained motionless, not a robot but a human statue, or maybe a robot that hadn't been plugged in. But that turned out to be far more amazing than Henry had imagined. The guy didn't bat an eye, twitch a finger, and you couldn't even see him breathe. Who could do that? How could he so completely quiet the teeming multitude of himself? Henry knew he had only to drop a dollar or two into the soup can and the statue would move like a mechanical being, which, of course, was his whole shtick, but Henry suddenly decided he wanted to see how long he could keep up this statue business even though his right arm was outstretched as if to shake your hand and the other was twisted in a weird left-handed salute, and his eyes were frozen open and his lips were curled into a rigid smile. He wondered for a minute if the guy really was made of metal. There was not one iota of movement.

And then with a laugh Henry Quantum realized that he himself hadn't moved a muscle, either; he had been unconsciously mimicking the robot man for the last two minutes. Now, that was lightning Zen! But, of course, as soon as Henry became aware of it, he lost it—like the Heisenberg thing again. But the robot man—the robot man had learned somehow to forget his stillness, to become unaware of it, to lose himself on some other plane of existence, perhaps by focusing those unblinking eyes on some distant object. And that's when the subject of the Sombrero Galaxy returned to Henry's consciousness. Because it seemed to him that the vastness of the universe was no different that the vastness of this man's soul, and the impossibility of understanding either of them oppressed him so much that he cried out, “Do something, for God's sake!” And everyone thought he was yelling at robo-man, but Henry knew otherwise.

Someone next to him explained, “You have to give him money.”

“Yeah, I know,” replied Henry.

“Eventually, though, he'll have to move even without the money.”

“I have a feeling they can last like this for a couple of hours,” Henry said, remembering something he had read. “Here, I'll give him five bucks.”

“No, don't,” said the man. “He should make some gesture to show he cares about us.”

“But the whole point is for us to give him money.”

“No, he should care about his audience. He should want to connect with us. And since he can hear every word we're saying, he'll definitely hold out till we pay him.”

“I don't mind paying him,” Henry said.

The man asked, “Where are you from?”

“From here.”

“Figures. But it's kind of cool that you still take the time to watch these guys. We're from Oklahoma City.” The man indicated his family with a sweep of his hand. “You would think he would do something for my kids,” he said. But the fact of the matter was the kids weren't interested. They were playing on their phones. “They might as well have stayed in Oklahoma,” their father remarked.

“Maybe if we get him to perform, they'll pay attention,” Henry suggested, because by now he was feeling responsible for the robo-man's well-being, and this guy from Oklahoma City sort of frightened him.

“No, no, don't. Believe me, he'll break. How long can he keep this up?”

“I don't know. A long time.”

“Everyone has a breaking point, my friend.”

“I guess people are pretty tough in Oklahoma City,” Henry remarked.

“You ever been to Oklahoma City?”

“No. I've never been to Oklahoma City. All I know about it is cows or something.”

“That's Kansas City.”

“Oh, right, right. You guys are the bombing.”

“For God's sake.”

“No, I mean—jeez, I'm sorry—”

“We're much more than that.”

“Of course you are. Restaurants, theater, opera.”

“Opera?”

“Steaks?”

“You people think San Francisco is the be-all and end-all and the rest of the country is filled with hayseeds and sheep fuckers.”

“I didn't say that.”

“All you've got is queers and Chinese.”

Henry wanted to leave, but he felt if he fled now, he'd be capitulating to this guy's bullying. So they stayed side by side, watching the robot man do nothing. Henry felt terrible. Why did he have to bring up that whole bombing thing? And opera? And
steaks
? Okay, the guy was a bigoted asshole, but hadn't they shared something? A bit of human interaction, a moment of intellectual exchange, of artistic appreciation?

“We do have more than queers and Chinese,” Henry said. “We also have Japanese. And quite a few Russians.”

The guy turned to him with a bemused expression.

“What are you,” he replied, “stupid?”

Henry reached into his pocket, found five bucks, threw it into the silver-painted soup can, and bolted up the stairs to the plaza. Out of the corner of his eye he could see robot man spring to life. That's how wars are started! he thought. Someone blurts out a hurtful word and even though he didn't mean anything by it the other guy says something back and before you know it, nuclear winter! It brought to mind
War and Peace
and Levin having his epiphanies that vanished in the light of morning, and the vast armies moving about like chess pieces for the generals, but on the field of battle, a tangle of discord and confusion and dumb luck and grotesque misfortune—not to mention Pierre! Because no one really controls anything, do they? Not when they're in the middle of it. You may think you have a handle on something, like history, but you don't, you can't. It's just a trick of perspective, a fun-house mirror, some version of the world that has nothing to do with reality, because none of us know what is happening to us, ever. Oh, wait. Levin was in
Anna Karenina.

Henry could not resist the urge to glance back, like Lot's wife, only it was the guy from Oklahoma who was the pillar of salt, frozen with anger, although Henry hoped he was just mesmerized by the performance of the human robot. The kids were still on their smartphones.

But now atop the plaza, Henry was confronted by something he hadn't expected. It wasn't the huge Christmas tree—you could see that a block away—or even the giant Hanukkah menorah on the east end of Union Square, no, it was the ice-skating rink that had been set up where the stage usually was, and people were gliding round the tiny rink as if in some New Hampshire wood. They wore mittens and floppy-eared woolen caps even though it was sixty-five degrees out. A huge crowd had lined up between a set of ropes, anxiously awaiting their turns, unconcerned that a large hand-painted sign declared they were allowed on the ice for only half an hour at a time. The children could barely contain their excitement, and the parents, in spite of trying their best to contain them, sooner or later succumbed to the same anticipation. Christmas music blared from the loudspeakers and off to one side Emporio Rulli café was selling hot chocolate and espressos. It was all a strange cartoon version of Rockefeller Center, with red and green bunting and mounds of cotton snow and Santa's bejeweled sleigh parked on the roof of the hut where you rented your skates. But for all its ersatz atmospherics, it was also a genuinely happy scene, and it got Henry to wondering: What is it that makes us happy, after all? A person imitates a statue, a refrigerated concrete slab imitates a winter wonderland—and we're filled with joy. He remembered when Margaret went to EST, or whatever they were calling it then, the Forum or Landmark or something, and all she talked about was “authenticity.” Maybe it helped her, but he doubted very highly whether she, or anyone else, could be
authentically
authentic. You know what Sartre called authenticity? Resisting the pressures of the external world. But if you lived in the external world, you would always be in relationship to it, so how could you ever be authentic in a world of culture? He thought again about his Papua New Guinea idea—saw in his mind's eye the bare-breasted women and the mostly naked men. Ahhh, he sighed. But they stick animal bones through their lower lips, don't they? That would be uncomfortable. And the women get old and ugly really fast, with breasts like two hanging frying pans and bumpy nipples the size of studded snow tires.

And they eat sago! What the hell is sago anyway? He'd read enough to know it was poisonous until you processed it, and what if you processed it wrong? But what did it taste like anyway? It was a mystery. And also crickets. They eat crickets and grubs. Although maybe he could manage the occasional monkey. But then it occurred to him: this is also culture. It was useless to go to Papua New Guinea! No authenticity there, either. So how can anyone be himself? Can anyone even
be
? Is there really a me? And if there's no me, how can I ever be
free
?

He was still thinking about Sartre—whom he had not read since college, and then only skimmingly—but it seemed to him Sartre said the idea of freedom was so terrifying and boundless that it made you nauseous. And he did feel a little sick actually.

In the meantime, though, he continued to watch the ice skaters make their little circles around the tiny rink and beyond them the hawkers of souvenirs and the bums looking for handouts and the street jugglers putting on a show up and down the ticket line, and, farther off, an enclave of Rastafarians banging steel drums and some guy strumming a guitar and singing Bob Dylan songs, and beyond that was Geary Street with its Christmas traffic and its sidewalks thick with pedestrians, and beyond that, directly behind the pedestrians, in fact, every window decked with golden wreaths and silvery lights, was Macy's.

The nausea got a little worse, so he found a vacant bench and sat himself down. He checked his watch. It was already past three. He had read about a physics experiment in which they had made time disappear, at least as far as the observer was concerned. They make a time hole by speeding up the speed of light going into an event and slowing it down coming out, or maybe it was vice versa, but whatever, and the event just disappears as if it never happened. Even though it did. Right before your eyes. Of course they did this on a micro scale of like a forty-trillionth of a second—but for that forty-trillionth of a second, time ceased to be. He checked his watch again. He should have been back at the office two hours ago. But it was nearly Christmas! Why should he even think about work this time of year? And anyway, there was the office party tomorrow, and then everyone would be off for three days, and then the no-man's-land between Christmas and New Year's Eve, when nothing gets done and most everyone just goes skiing or flies off to Maui. We make our own time holes, but, oh, if only time could really disappear!