“Can you imagine? All those brilliant minds in one place. A real bash.”
“Like college all over again. Don’t you miss college, Vivs? We had such laughs. Do you remember that time we stayed up late, talking about that book, what was it . . . the heiress whose husband had to take her name, except his family wouldn’t let him . . .”
“Cecilia. Fanny Burney.”
“I liked that book.” She picked at her pajamas. “Sometimes I wish we didn’t have to grow up like this. Daddy used to say that to me, all the time, you know that?” She deepened her voice into the Lightfoot growl. “Don’t grow up, sweetie. Stay just the way you are. And he was dead right, wasn’t he, like he always is. Being a grown-up is the pits.”
I gave her hands a little squeeze and sat up. “I should really be going.”
“Do you have to?”
“Yes, I really do. I brought a couple of biographies with me. Einstein and Meitner. I’ll read them tonight.”
She padded after me through the ghostly Easter-egg rooms of her mother’s apartment. I found my pocketbook and briefcase in the hall and turned around to hug her good-bye. “You’ll be all right, won’t you? I can stay if you want.”
“I’ll be fine. Daddy’s calling every half hour.”
“Good. I’ll call you at bedtime.”
Gogo’s blue eyes went round. “Oh, Vivs, I completely forgot! I’m such a selfish little thing. Your boy, the one you met over the weekend. I never even asked about him!”
I picked up my briefcase. “Oh, it was nothing, really. I woke up Monday and realized I could live without him. End of story. Fun while it lasted.”
“Really, Vivs?” Her soulful look, searching me out.
“Really, Gogo.”
She shook her head. “Gosh, Vivs. I wish I could be you.”
That one, I had no answer for.
? ? ?
A LETTER in the mail slot. I almost didn’t open it, I almost chucked it into the bin right there in the vestibule, but I am who I am. A curious animal.
I read it at the table in the living room. I tend to get too sentimental in the bedroom. Too much like Gogo.
Dear Vivian,
I’m writing this between surgeries, so excuse my haste. I just wanted to let you know that I’m thinking of you all the time, you’re like a low and constant hum at the back of my brain, even when I’m working, and when I have a moment to myself with a cup of coffee, you rise up and stand before me in electric Vivian color with that smile on your face, the one that got me in the chest right from the start. I try not to waste a second, so I pick some scene from the weekend—the coffee shop, or the library, or when we stood in front of the Balto statue in the park and read the inscription together, and you wouldn’t look at me afterward, and I knew you were crying. Well, that brave old dog made me tear up, too, just so you know. I try not to think about what happened afterward, at my apartment. How perfect it was. I’m saving that for when I’m really down.
Not giving up, Vivian. Ever.
Yours,
Paul
Oh, Jesus. Oh, my ever-loving Christ.
Here’s what I would do: I would think about Gogo and Doctor Paul in that Los Angeles hotel bed together. I would think about Gogo naked and him naked, and fuse the two images into one entwined whole, and the nausea that followed this thought would work like a reverse Pavlovian response, until every time I remembered Doctor Paul, I’d feel that same curl of nausea. I would be cured.
A little fun, he’d said. A few kisses, maybe a little more.
Liar, liar. Pants on fire.
I crumpled the letter into a ball and tossed it into the basket. I thought about making dinner, but I wasn’t hungry, still had that ball of nausea in my stomach, so instead I carried my briefcase into my bedroom and changed into my favorite blue-stripe pajamas. I took out the Einstein biography, propped myself on the pillow, and focused my eyes on the dry words before me.
Violet, 1914
Violet has only to survey the interior of the Plancks’ comfortable electric-lit music room to remind herself how much she owes to Walter.
Of course, Walter himself is not present this evening. But Herr Planck is there, mixing drinks in the corner, and Otto Hahn and his wife, and Lise Meitner. Herr Einstein already sits in his favorite chair, listening intently to his violin, adjusting the strings. Isn’t it worth any personal humiliation, any number of dark-haired beauties copulating with your husband atop an antique French escritoire, to be creating music shoulder-to-shoulder with Einstein himself?