Chapter 6
I’d taken the bus to get to campus sixteen days ago.
I was supposed to take it again to go home.
Amy and I decided, in a strangely prosaic conversation, that it was too expensive for me to drive and leave my car in one of the parking ramps, and she couldn’t afford to take the time from work to drop me off and pick me up.
So, I was caught off guard when I saw her sitting, arms crossed over her chest, on one of the benches outside the science building. “Amy?”
She took a breath when she saw me. “Scott.” She stood as I came over.
I hugged her, and she let me, although she hesitated in the embrace, her arms only coming up to pat me. I stepped back but kept my hands on her shoulders as I looked at her. “I thought I was going to take the bus.”
“I asked for the morning off. My intern can sub for me until I get back.”
“You have an intern?”
A wince. “Yes. I forgot you wouldn’t know. It’s through WIP. They assigned her about a week and a half ago. I guess I’m officially a senior teacher now.” She forced a smile. “Not sure how I let that happen.”
“I’m glad to see you.”
“Me too,” she said. It sounded automatic, an ingrained response. “Did they learn anything?”
I realized why she was there. It was broadcast in her face, in the way she stood, even the way she’d put her hair up. She was hoping it was over, that Maggie and her helpers had solved my little problem.
It killed me to have to shake my head. I watched as she folded into herself, her arms coming up to cross over her chest again, her chin dipping, her eyes losing focus and drifting toward the ground.
“They took a lot of readings,” I said. “They’re analyzing them, figuring it out. They have a video of it, high-speed. You can see me disappear—”
“They don’t have a clue.”
“Amy—”
“They don’t have a clue.” She looked up. There were fresh tears in her eyes. “We did the math, Scott. Lyle and I, we did it together. The next time you’ll be gone for a month, then two months.”
“We’re going to figure—”
“It won’t be long before you’ll be gone for years at a time, Scott.
Years. Then decades.” The tears ran down her cheeks.
She wiped one side of her face with an angry jerk of her hand.
“Lyle and I can’t live like that, Scott.
We can’t pine away for years at a time only to have you back for a day… ” She trailed off, her voice cracking.
I saw, in a flash, what the last few weeks had been like for her. From my perspective I’d seen her only a few hours ago. But she’d had days—had endless dark hours in bed at night—to ruminate, to turn the matter over and over in her head, to dream up all the darkest possible outcomes.
“You don’t have a job anymore, Scott. It’s all on me now, on my shoulders. We’ll probably have to leave the duplex, and—” She bit her lip. “And goddamnit, Scott, why is this happening? What did we do?”
“Amy.”
I stepped in close. She took a step back, shaking her head, but I wrapped her up in my arms. She resisted for a moment, then relented, leaning into my chest. “We’ll get this figured out.
” I stroked her hair. “I won’t be gone for years.
I promise. We’ll get this sorted. Hell, it might stop as sudden as it started. ”
She let out a coughing laugh. But she nodded anyway, her forehead moving against my shirt.
I held her for a long minute, the two of us standing together near the steps leading up to Chamberlin. A few students and faculty members passed us, but no one gave us a second glance. Ours was a private little drama, even if held in public.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go get some coffee, okay?”
“Okay.” She looked up with wet eyes. “Are you hungry?”
I almost told her she’d cooked me breakfast a few hours earlier. I almost said it. But I caught myself at the last second and forced a smile. “Sure. Though I think coffee’s the priority.”
She barely seemed to hear me. She started walking toward State Street. I took her hand, and we walked together, pushing against the flow of students heading for early classes.
Amy had only asked for a few hours off from work for “an appointment,” so after coffee and scones she took me home and went back to the elementary school where she taught.
I drifted around the house, alone with my thoughts.
I considered going back online again, digging around, but it didn’t seem worth it.
I needed to make the most out of my time, and sitting on the computer poking through conspiracy forums and science fiction posts didn’t seem worthwhile.
But there was nothing else I could think to do, no obvious way to make the most out of things, at least not with Amy and Lyle away.
After an hour of pacing around the living room, I found myself back in my beat-up Civic. I drove downtown, with no destination in mind, and parked in one of the garages near the Capitol.
The square was busy, as always, although “busy” was a relative term.
Busy for Madison was not busy for Chicago.
But there were always people walking about, buses roaring by, joggers and bikers fighting for space on the sidewalk.
College students with bulging book bags on their shoulders mingled with people in business suits, and gray-haired retirees watched squirrels dart around the grassy lawn surrounding the capitol building.
I walked the square, wrapped in a strange mental blanket, almost a fugue.
A not-insignificant part of me screamed to get moving, to figure out what was going on so I could get back to living my quiet life.
Another part of my mind, the part having done the math just as Amy and Lyle had, whispered that I needed to take Amy and Lyle and run, as though I could physically outdistance whatever it was that had grabbed me.
But instead of rushing to a library to do research or driving to yank Lyle out of his class, I walked.
I rounded the square and wandered on the side roads, toward the lake.
I ended up on the rooftop of the Terrace, overlooking Lake Monona.
The wind etched arcing lines across the surface of the lake.
Sunlight sparkled along rippled edges. Churning, changing, repeating.
I leaned against the concrete wall and the short metal railing and let the wind sweep through my hair and billow my shirt.
I thought about my grandmother. Her gentleness in all things.
How different she was from my father and how determined I’d been—still was—to be more like her than like him.
I thought about the times I wished she’d been the one to raise me.
Looking back now, many years after her death, it was clear that in a lot of ways she had.
I might have lived with my mother and father, but my grandmother had guided me, given me direction when I’d needed it most. I’d come to her first when I had problems. Her death had not been unexpected, but it had been a blow that I still hadn’t come to grips with.
Severine and Sophie, too, shaped me. We were friends for years, from elementary school right through the end of high school.
An unlikely trio. The freshman math teacher had called us “S-cubed” and had been quite amused with himself.
What we had was never romantic, although I think both Sophie and I were in love with Severine for years, in our own ways.
Instead, we’d been friends, three against the world, wrapped up in our own troubles but always there for one another, standing at the lockers every morning before class or riding around in Sophie’s sedan on Friday nights.
Talking about everything, and nothing. Just being together.
I hadn’t had friends like them before or since.
In college, I had a few buddies. I had casual friends from work.
But the deep, almost spiritual connection was missing.
Maybe only teenagers could make friends like that.
But the years crept up on us. Life happened. Spouses and kids and jobs. It felt tragic, now, particularly in the face of what was happening to me. We’d allowed something so special to drift away.
I got my phone out and scrolled through my contacts list. I found Severine’s name and, after hesitating so long the screen went dark and I had to unlock the phone again, I called her.
“Scotty?” Severine gasped when she answered. Her voice was as I remembered, the same tone and inflection, the slight edge of a French accent she never lost despite having lived in America since she was nine.
“Hey, Sev.”
“Scotty, how are you? I can’t—wow, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Sev, it’s really good to hear your voice. How are you?”
“I’m—I’m good, Scotty. I—wow, I mean, I wasn’t expecting to get a call from you.”
“How are your kids?”
“They’re, ah, they’re great. How is, um, Lyle, is it?”
“He’s amazing. Yeah. Sev, I, uh. I just needed to hear your voice.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m…” I stopped. I gazed across the lake. “Just having a hard time. Just needed a friendly voice.” My voice cracked, and I felt tears well up in my eyes. I ducked my head, keeping the phone pressed against my ear.
“You want to talk about it? I have a few minutes.”
“I’d—” I sniffed and wiping at my eyes. “You know, I’d like to hear about how things are with you.”
“Okay,” Severine said, although I could hear the doubt and concern wrapped up in that single word.
I was transported to late weekend nights at Sophie’s house, the three of us listening to industrial music and watching movies and talking about whatever came to mind, whatever hugely important thing was concerning us at that moment in our young lives.
I was staggered by how much I missed it, missed those moments.
I’d been so focused on Amy and Lyle and my career, to the exclusion of all else.
It was a shock to come back around to this.