Timescape (10 page)

They were nearly home, swinging onto Nautilus Street, when his mother said too casually, "This Penny, you should tell me something about her before I meet her, Gordon."

"What's to tell? She's a California girl."

"Which means?"

"She plays tennis, hikes in the mountains, has been to Mexico five times but no farther east than Las Vegas. She even goes surfing. She's tried to get me to do it, but I want to get in better shape first. I'm doing my Canadian Air Force exercises."

"That sounds very nice," she said doubtfully. Gordon checked her into the Surfside Motel two blocks from his apartment and then drove her over to his apartment. They walked into a room full of the smell of a Cuban casserole dish Penny had learned to make when she was rooming with a Latin American girl. She came out of the kitchen, untying an apron and looking more domestic than Gordon could remember her ever being. So Penny was putting on a bit of a show, despite her objections. His mother was effusive and enthusiastic. She bustled into the kitchen to help with the salad, inspecting Penny's recipe and banging pots around. Gordon busied himself with the wine ritual, which he was just learning. Until California he had seldom had anything that didn't taste of Concord grape. Now he kept a stock of Krug and Martaxi in a closet and could understand the jargon about big noses and full body, though in truth he wasn't sure what all the terms meant.

His mother came out of the kitchen, set the table with quick, clattering efficiency, and asked where the bathroom was. Gordon told her. As he turned back to the uncorking Penny caught his eye and grinned. He grinned back. Let her Enovid[?] be a flag of independence.

Mrs. Bernstein was subdued when she returned. She walked with more of a waddle than Gordon remembered, her invariable black dress bunching as her slight wobble carried her across the room. She had a distracted look. Dinner began and progressed with only minor newsy conversation. Cousin Irv was going into drygoods somewhere in Massachusetts, Uncle Herb was making money hand over fist as usual, and his sister–here his mother paused, as though suddenly remembering this was a subject she should not bring up-was still running around with some crazies in the Village. Gordon smiled; his sister, two years older and a whole lot bolder, was looking after herself. He made a remark about her art, and how it took time to come to terms with that, and his mother turned to Penny and said, "I suppose you are interested in the arts, too?"

"Oh yes," Penny said. "European literature."

"And what did you think of Mr. Roth's new book?"

"Oh," Penny said, plainly stalling for time. "I don't believe I've finished reading it."

"You should. It would help you understand Gordon so much more."

"Huh?" Gordon said. "What do you mean?"

"Well, dear," Mrs. Bernstein said with a slow, sympathetic tone, "it could give her some idea about ... well ... I think Mr. Roth is–you agree, Penny?–is a very deep writer."

Gordon smiled, wondering if he could allow himself an outright laugh.

But before he could say anything Penny murmured, "Considering that Faulkner died in July, and Hemingway last year, I guess that puts Roth somewhere in the best hundred American novelists, but–"

"Oh, but they were writing about the past, Penny." Mrs. Bernstein said adamantly. "His new one,
Letting Go
, is full of–"

At this point Gordon sat back and let his mind drift. His mother was onto her theory about the rise and preeminence of Jewish literature, and Penny was responding precisely as he could have predicted. His mother's theories rapidly became confused in her mind with revealed facts. In Penny she had a stubborn opponent, however, who wouldn't knuckle under to keep the peace. He could feel the tension rising between them.

There was nothing he could do to stop it. The issue wasn't literary theory at all, it was shiksa versus mother's love. He watched his mother's face as it tightened up. Her laugh lines, which actually came from squinting, grew deeper. He could break in but he knew how it would go then: his voice would slide up in pitch without his nothing it, until suddenly he was talking with the whine of the teenager barely past Bar Mitzvah. His mother always brought that out in him, a triggered response. Well, this time he would avoid that trap.

Their voices got louder. Penny cited books, authors; his mother pooh-poohed them, confidently assured that a few courses at night school entitled her to strong opinions. Gordon finished his food, savored the wine slowly, looked at the ceiling, and finally broke in with, "Mom, it must be getting late for you, with the time difference and all."

Mrs. Bernstein paused in mid-sentence and looked at him blankly, as if coming out of a trance. "We were simply having a discussion, dear, you don't need to get all flustered." She smiled. Penny managed a matching wan stretching of the face. Mrs. Bernstein poked at her beehive hairdo, a castle of hair that resisted change. Penny got up and removed plates with a clatter. The pressing silence between them grew. "C'mon, Mom. Best to go."

"Dishes." She began gathering cutlery.

"Penny'll do them."

"Oh, then."

She rose, brushed her shiny black dress free of invisible crumbs, fetched her bag. She went down the outside steps with a hastening step, clump clump, more rapid at the bottom, as though fleeing an undecided battle.

They took an alleyway shortcut he knew, their footsteps echoing. Waves muttered at the shoreline a block away. Fog fingers drifted and curled under street lamps.

"Well, she is different, isn't she?" Mrs. Bernstein said.

"How? No, really." Though he knew.

"You're— "she made a sign, not trusting the words: crooking her longest finger over the index to make an entwined pair–"like that, yes?"

"Is that different?"

"Where we live it is."

"I'm older now."

"You could've said. Warned your mother."

"Rather you met her first."

"You, a scholar."

She sighed. Her bag swung in long arcs as she waddled along, the slant of street lamps stretching her shadow. He decided she was resigned to it.

But no: "You don't know any Jewish girls in California?"

"Come on, Mom."

"I'm not talking about you taking rumba classes or something." She stopped dead. "This is your whole life."

He shrugged. "First time. I'll learn."

"Learn what? To be a something-else?"

"Isn't it a little obvious to be so hostile to my girl friends? Not much analysis needed to understand that."

"Your Uncle Herb would say–"

"Screw Uncle Herb.
Hustler
philosophy."

"Such language. If I should tell him what you said— "

"Tell him I have money in the bank. He'll understand."

"Your sister, at least your sister's close to home."

"Only geographically."

"You don't know."

"She's slapping oil on canvas to cure her psychosis. Yeah. Psycho Sis."

"Don't."

"It's true."

"You're living with her, yes?"

"Sure. I need the practice."

"Since your father died ..."

"Don't start with that." A cutting-off chop with his hand. "Listen, you've seen how it is. That's the way it'll stay."

"For your father's sake, God rest his soul ..."

"You can't–" He was going to finish – push me around with a ghost and that was the way he felt, but he said, "know what I'm like now."

"A mother doesn't know?"

"Right, sometimes not."

"I tell you, I ask you, don't break your mother's heart."

"I'll do as I like. She's fine for me."

"She is... a girl who would do this, live with you without marriage–"

"I'm not sure what I want yet."

"And she wants what?"

"Look, we're finding out. Be reasonable, Mom."

"You throw up to me reasonable? That I should lie down and die and say nothing? I can't stay here and watch you two love birds cooing to each other."

"So don't watch. You have to learn who I am, Mom."

"Your father would–" but she didn't finish. In the cool wan light she jerked erect. "Leave her." Her face was rigid.

"No."

"Then walk me to my bed."

When he returned to their bungalow Penny was reading Time and eating cashews. "How'd it go?" She tugged her mouth to one side wryly, wearily.

"You're not going to win the Susie Semite contest."

"I didn't think I would. Jesus, I've seen stereotypes before but ..."

"Yeah. That dumb stuff of hers about Roth."

"That wasn't what it was about."

"No, it wasn't," he agreed.

The next morning his mother phoned him from her motel. She was planning on spending the day walking around town, seeing the sights. She said she did not want to take up his time at the University, so she would do it on her own. Gordon agreed that was probably best, since he had a busy day ahead; a lecture, a seminar, taking the seminar speaker to lunch, two committee meetings in the afternoon, and a conference with Cooper.

He returned to the apartment later than usual that evening. He called her motel, but there was no answer. Penny came home and they made supper together. She was having some problems with her course work and needed to get in some reading. By nine o'clock they finished cleaning up and Gordon spread some of his lecture materials out on the dining room table to do some overdue grading. Around eleven he finished, entered the grades in his book, and only then remembered his mother. He called the motel. They said she had a "do not disturb" sign out and wanted no calls put through. Gordon thought of walking over and knocking on her door.

He was tired, though, and resolved to see her first thing in the morning.

He woke late. He had a bowl of shredded wheat while he looked over his lecture notes in Classical Mechanics, reviewing the steps in some of the sample problems he would work for the class. He was putting the papers away in his briefcase when he thought of calling the motel. Again, she was out.

By mid-afternoon his conscience was nagging him. He came home early and walked over to the motel first thing. There was no answer to his knock. He went around to ask at the desk and the clerk looked in the little mail slot under her room number. The man fished out a white envelope and handed it to Gordon. "Dr. Bernstein? Yes. She left this for you, sir.

She's checked out."

Gordon tore it open, feeling numb. Inside was a long letter, repeating the themes of the alleyway in more detail. She could not understand how a son, once so devoted, could hurt his mother this way. She was mortified. It was morally wrong, what he was doing. Getting involved with a girl so different, living like that–a terrible mistake. And to do that for such a girl, such a sly turtle[?] of a girl! His mother was weeping, his mother was filled with worry for him. But his mother knew what sort of a boy he was. He would not change his mind easily. So she was going to leave him alone.

She was going to let him come to his senses on his own. She would be all right. She was going up to Los Angeles to see her cousin Hazel, Hazel who had three fine children and who she hadn't seen in seven years. From Los Angeles she would fly back to New York. Maybe in a few months she could come and visit again. Better, he should come home for a time. See his friends at Columbia. Come visit people in the neighborhood; they would be overjoyed to see him, the big success of the block. Until then, she would be writing him and hoping. A mother always hopes.

Gordon put the letter in his pocket and walked home. He showed it to Penny and they talked about it for a while and then he resolved to put it in the back of his mind, to deal with his mother later. These things usually cured themselves, given time.

"Well, where the hell is he?" Renfrew exploded. He paced up and down his office, five steps each way.

Gregory Markham sat quietly, watching Renfrew. He had meditated for half an hour this morning and felt relaxed and centered. He looked beyond Renfrew, out the big windows the Cav sported as the prime luxury item in its construction. The broad fields beyond lay flat and still, impossibly green in the first rush of summer. Cyclists glided silently along the Coton footpath, bundles perched on their rear decks. The morning air was already warm and lay like a weight. Blue shrouded the distant spires of Cambridge and ringed the yellow sun that squatted over the town. This was the blissful fraction of the day when there seemed an infinite span of time before you, Markham thought, as though anything could be accomplished in the sea of hushed minutes that stretched ahead.

Renfrew was still pacing. Markham stirred himself to say, "What time did he say he'd be here?"

"Ten, damn it. He set out hours ago. I had to call his office about something and I asked if he was still there. They told me he'd left very early in the morning, before the rush hour. So where is he?"

"It's only ten past," Markham pointed out reasonably.

"Yes, but hell, I can't get started until he gets here. I've got the technicians standing by. We're all set. He's wasting everybody's time. He doesn't care for this experiment and he's making it hard on us."

"You got the funding, didn't you? And that equipment from Brookhaven."

"Limited funds. Enough to keep going, but only just. We'll need more.

They're strangling us. You know and I know that this may be the only chance of pulling us out of the hole. What do they do–make me run the experiment on a shoestring and then that sod doesn't even care enough to show up on time to watch it."

"He's an administrator, not a scientist. Sure, the funding policy does seem short-sighted. But look, the NSF won't send anything more without more pressure. They're probably using it for something else. You can't expect Peterson to work miracles."

Renfrew stopped his pacing and stared at him. "I suppose I have made it rather obvious that I don't like him. I hope Peterson himself isn't aware of it or it might turn him against the experiment."

Markham shrugged. "I'm sure he knows. It's clear to anyone you two have different personality types, and Peterson's no fool. Look, I can talk to him, if you want–I will, in fact. As to you turning him off the experiment–tripe. He must be used to being disliked. I don't suppose it bothers him at all. No, I think you can count on his support. But only partial support. He's trying to cover all his bets and that means spreading support pretty thin."