The Heart of Henry Quantum (14 page)

She hoped her attentions flattered him. He did sometimes puff up when she'd ask his opinion on the most trivial of things, but he seemed to have a natural desire to be kind. They laughed a lot and he said she was very, very sexy. She told him she'd do whatever he wanted. And maybe she would have, too, but he never asked for anything all that special. Mostly kissing and cuddling.

But that magical August came to an end and Henry had to pack his bags and go east to Chicago. She put him on BART but didn't go with him to the airport—he said he didn't want her to. The doors hissed shut, hermetically separating them for what they both figured was a final good-bye, and the train almost silently pulled away. He barely had time to wave. She walked home along Shattuck—she lived in a dilapidated Victorian with six other ex-students on Dwight—passing the Indian and Chinese and Thai and Vietnamese eateries that were the staple of so many college kids, the video stores, the bookstores, the little clothing stores, the bars. “Oh well,” she said to herself, “that's that,” and went inside for a beer.

Looking back, she was shocked at how immature she had been, how rudderless, barely recognizable as the Margaret she eventually became. She honestly hadn't even noticed how flaky and inconsequential her life was until Henry pointed it out in that kind of Asperger's way he sometimes had about him—stating the obvious about something no one with an ounce of social grace would do: “You're just treading water,” he said, “flailing about, you're not doing much of anything, are you? Don't you want to
be
someone?” She cringed when he said these things, and she cringed now remembering them.

The day after he flew to Chicago she went out to find a real job, even though she hadn't a clue how. She first went to an employment agency but all they had were clerical and sales. She thought the student counseling service might help, but she had no degree and no skills, and she wasn't a student anymore anyway. Then she remembered this guy who owned a nursery or something over in Oakland, and he said, “Sure, come on, I'll train you,” but on the third day of struggling to remember the names of hundreds of plants and flowers, getting soaked and muddied in the seed beds, and lugging stinking bags of compost, she dragged herself home, threw herself on the bed, and began to sob. It was one of the very few times in her life this happened, but it was a doozy. She couldn't stop for at least an hour. It was then she knew she missed Henry, missed him enormously, with every particle of her soul and every fiber of her body. It was crazy. She barely knew him.

She couldn't help wondering what he was doing at that very moment. He hadn't called or written. Possibly he even said he wouldn't, she couldn't remember. She checked the time. Six. It was already night in Chicago. No doubt he was out with friends. Or maybe he'd already found a girlfriend. The women at the University of Chicago were all brainy like he was. Nerdy like he was. They were focused and determined and squared away and, based on how she imagined they looked, man-hungry. She wanted to talk to him. Had to talk to him. But she didn't know the phone number of his residence hall. Nobody had cell phones back then. Christ, she thought now, if they had, none of this would have happened.

She remembered the sleepless nights like it was yesterday, and how one morning she worked up the courage to call the Philosophy Department because that's really all she knew to do, but the assholes wouldn't give her his number. They did let slip the name of his dorm, though, which she scribbled on the back of her hand. They assured her they'd pass the message to him, but she knew they wouldn't. They'd forget. Or he wouldn't come by the office. Why would he? He'd go to class. He wouldn't go to the department office.

That's why she got on an airplane and showed up at his door around dinnertime the next day.

“Hi!” she said, all smiles. “Surprise!”

“Margaret!”

“That's me!” she said.

“Huh!”

“I just kinda wanted to see where you lived,” she chirped.

“Really?”

“No. I came all this way just to stand on a street corner.” She instantly regretted her tone. Henry, thank heaven, hadn't seemed to notice it.

“Oh, sorry, sorry,” he said. “Come on in. Come in! I just didn't—”

“That's what a surprise is. It surprises you.”

“Well, you did a great job there,” he said.

She lowered her eyes, shuffled her feet. “Did I make a mistake?” she asked contritely. “This was really stupid, wasn't it? I'm an idiot.”

“No, no,” he said.

“Who would want someone like me to show up at their doorstep?”

“It's fine. It's fine.” But his eyes suddenly grew wide. “Uh, is that a suitcase?”

“Just an overnight bag.”

“Oh, good.”

“Oh dear!” she cried, moisture forming in the corners of her eyes.

“No, I mean, ‘Oh
good
—you have a change of clothes at least!' ”

She smiled and kissed him on the cheek.

He grabbed her suitcase, which of course was much too big to be an overnighter, and led her up to his room, describing the place as he went. There were students from all over the world, he said, postgrads mostly. Library here, media room down there, kitchen in the basement, I'm on the fourth. It seemed to her a horrible place, far worse than her house in Berkeley, which at least had the charm of a genteel dilapidation. This was a desolate, gray, Gothic monstrosity, sunless and claustrophobic. Whatever charm it might have had was eradicated by layers of modernization, barren stretches of Formica and vinyl. The narrow halls echoed as they walked, and there was a dark smell of too many bodies, of pizza and bratwurst, textbooks and laundry. At least he had his own room, but it was tiny, a miniature of a room. And what a mess. Clothes thrown everywhere, books piled on the floor, bed unmade, a sliver of a window you might find in a jail cell.

“Hey, nice!” she exclaimed. “I like it.”

“It's kinda small,” he said, “but what do I need with big? It's just me.”

“It's not that small,” she replied, and, in a move so fast and agile it amazed even her, she yanked her blouse over her head and exposed her bare breasts. Her nipples were hard as rocks, so hard and extended they hurt. It embarrassed her, but she stood there without so much as a quiver, crumpled blouse dangling from one hand, eyes dilated and fixed upon his, lips soft and, she hoped, glistening with the lip gloss she'd applied just before going into the building.

“My God,” he finally said. “What a woman!”

She could feel the old sweetness come over him, the way he cuddled her afterward, the way he asked her if she were hungry, the way he ran to get her something to drink from the Coke machine. Whatever it was that she had feared now dropped away, as if she had thrown off a heavy winter coat. She washed his sheets and made his bed, organized his drawers and closet, created a nice shelf for his books, unpacked her bag and put her clothes away in spaces she had set aside for herself. Most lovely of all, he never once asked her how long she was going to stay.

A few weeks later the Resident Head on his floor informed Henry he couldn't have such a long-term “guest,” and a week after that they moved into a furnished graduate student apartment on Kenwood that miraculously had just been vacated. “Kismet!” Margaret exclaimed with a delighted smile and threw him on the big double bed and had a wonderful orgasm.

In retrospect she couldn't say if she'd been genuinely happy or just relieved. And she now had to ask herself, what was I so afraid of anyway? What was I after? She remembered quite clearly thinking it would be cool to be a professor's wife (yes, she had said the word “wife” to herself—so unenlightened, as if she were some creature of the 1950s, not the 1990s!). Of course she would matriculate and go to graduate school, too. Anthropology or something. But yes, that was what she wanted. A life with Henry. A life—and a home. A real home. That's what the shrink was probably getting at all these years later. Before her father died, she'd had a real home. And that was stolen from her. Mother, of course, was useless. And Margaret, at fourteen, was supposed to do all the taking care of.

“How could you have?” the shrink told her at least twenty times. “You were only a kid. You have to forgive yourself.”

As it turned out, she hated Chicago, hated the town, the weather, the school, and especially all the dweebs at the university who were so socially inept and absurdly intellectual. Not a clue about the real world. Their parties were the worst. You'd see them gather around a wheel of Brie from the Hyde Park Co-op and argue about fucking Heidegger. They were constantly trying to outdo one another in the smarts department. And there was this weird sexual vibe to everything. Like everyone was sleeping with everyone, or wanted to. The professors were particularly egregious with their minions of coeds and adoring acolytes. Gay, straight—it was like being in the middle of a nerd pornfest.

She got a job in the social services library. When that didn't work, she took one as phone operator for the medical center. When that didn't work, she took an art appreciation class at the extension and finally became a teacher's aide at the Lab School. That was a nightmare, but Henry was proud of her. And so the months dragged on and then the years. She never did anything to matriculate. Henry's classes piled one atop the other like the books on his desk, melting into one continuous jargon-filled term paper. He seemed no closer to finishing. The boredom, though, was strangely narcotic. She sat for hours doing nothing. Henry was either in class or at the library or hidden behind a book in his easy chair. She had a few friends, but actually she hated them. They'd have a dinner party and the next day she couldn't remember what they'd eaten. And when they did go out, it was to some lame lecture or a student concert or fucking
folk dancing
. And worst of all, two years had slipped by and he had yet to ask her to marry him.

One day, Henry came home and asked Margaret to sit down next to him on the sofa.

“This is going to be hard,” he began.

She braced herself. Where would she go? What would she do?

“I can't do this anymore,” he said.

“Henry, please—”

“I don't want to finish my degree.”

“What?”

“I know it's terrible. After all I've put you through.”

“You don't—”

“Maybe I don't have what it takes, I don't know. But I just don't like it anymore. And the politics—you always have to be on your guard. Everyone's always putting everyone down. I feel so outside, you know? I don't fit.”

“Really?” she said, trying to gauge his intent.

“Yeah. It's pretty awful.” He sighed. It was perhaps the first time she ever heard him sigh.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

Now came the second sigh. The second ever.

“You do know what we are going to do, don't you?” she said.

“No. I really don't.”

“But you were going to be a professor. We were going to live at a university. We would go to faculty teas and be happy. Remember?”

“I know, I know. I'm so sorry.”

She still wasn't sure if she could say what she really thought, so she put her arms around him and said, “I'm so sorry, Henry. I am. This was our dream. Your dream. Did I mess it up for you?”

“You? No! No, never! You are the only good thing in my life. You're great. You're loving and loyal and fun and, Christ, you never complained about any of it.”

“I just wanted you to be happy,” she said.

“But I'm not. I'm not happy here. I want— I don't know—”

She stroked his hair. Her own heart was pounding. She didn't want him to notice, so she turned ever so slightly away and pressed his head to her shoulder.

“Are you?” he said. “Are you happy here? Because if you are I can make it work. I'll just do it, you know?”

“It doesn't matter what I want,” she said. “I just want to know what's next. What are we going to do?”

“I don't know.”

“But you
have
to know, Henry.”

“It's just all so new. I mean I've been thinking about it for a long time, but—”

“Well then you must have a plan.”

“I don't. I don't know where you got the idea that I always know what to do. I never know what to do. I mean, I've been thinking I should quit for over a year!”

A wave of panic went through her and then, as if on the wings of angels, went sailing out of her, past the ugly kitchen, the crappy TV, the lumpy bed, and out the sooty window into the crisp Chicago air. A wonderful, long breath fled her lungs and she felt her whole body relax.

“Well,” she said, “I have an idea.”

And so they returned to San Francisco. And five months later they were married.

“My God!” she cried.

“What?” said Peter.

“Oh!” she said. “Nothing. I don't know why I said that.”

“Is it something I did?”

“Oh, no, no. Honestly, I don't know why I said that. It must be the alcohol.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you feeling we shouldn't be doing this?”

“Of course not!” she said with alarm. “Why? Are you?”

“Not at all,” he answered, and immediately motioned to the waitress for the check.

They decided on his car for the drive down the mountain, a silver Mercedes, and she asked him, “Why do you think people jump from the Golden Gate Bridge? I mean, think about it, going down, how horrible that must be, how long it must take. You can't turn around and you can't stop it. It's like when you do something in a dream and you can't undo it. Ugh.”

“It's stupid to jump,” he said.

“No, but think about it. Imagine yourself falling off that bridge.”