“What about storing them in Limbo?” Eleanor asked. Limbo, a large closet off the pantry, was where Eleanor stored old toys and athletic equipment the boys had outgrown but weren’t ready to part with. After three months in Limbo, an item was passed on to another brother, thrown in the garbage, or taken to a thrift shop. Eleanor’s mother disapproved, seeing it as “coddling Collyering.” She thought they should use things until they wore out. “I counted eight tennis racquets in that closet,” she said to Eleanor the year Sam went into middle school. Eleanor refused the bait. “I think you missed two behind the door,” she said. The boys had mixed feelings about Limbo. Sometimes, months later, one of the boys would spot a discarded toy or racquet in one of his brothers’ rooms and express regret at its loss. He’d complain to his mother. “Why don’t you share?” she’d suggest. Harry and Sam didn’t like sharing. Tom insisted he never got anything new, not even new underwear. “Everything I have came out of Limbo,” he’d complain. Years later, Tom came to think of Princeton as one more Limbo pass-along.
“I might change my mind after three months,” Sam said, already hedging his offer.
Shortly before his eighth birthday, Sam gave all his LEGO to Tom. He announced the handover at dinner. “I’m through with LEGO.”
“Just like that?” Eleanor asked.
“It’s all the same. I’d like a microscope for my next birthday.”
“Yes,” Rupert said.
“Can I have a horn for mine?” Jack asked, only six but already possessed. “A real one, not plastic.” Eleanor nodded. “Any other requests?” she asked.
“I’d like one of those steel tennis racquets,” Harry said.
“Me too,” said Will.
“Since when?” said Harry.
“Since Jimmy Connors,” Will said.
“Right,” said Harry.
“It’s true,” said Will.
“Next up,” Rupert said.
Eleanor smiled at Tom. “And you, Tomahawk?” she said. The others all turned to look at him, bibbed in his booster seat. He froze, stricken, then covered his eyes with his hands, silently, hopelessly willing his mother to pick him up and hold him in her lap. She wouldn’t, not at dinner.
“I don’t know what a tennis rocket is,” he said, looking up at the ceiling, blinking back tears. “I might want one. I like rockets.”
Everyone laughed, Jack loudest. Tom put his head on the table.
“I like rockets too,” Sam said.
Tom lifted his head.
“Give me five,” Sam said.
All his life, Tom loved Sam with the passionate feelings of a little boy. “I could do without the others,” he told his wife, Caroline. “Will’s OK.” Caroline shook her head. “You love them all, even Jack.” Tom grunted.
That year, Sam’s scientific career began in earnest. He looked at everything under his microscope: hot dogs, French fries, oysters, LEGO, sand, acorns, dead worms, living worms, mice, moles, lady birds, flies, sticks. He wrote down his observations in three notebooks: Things, Living Things, and Dead Things.
“Is a leaf I just picked living or dead?” he asked his father.
“Dying, I would think,” Rupert said. “So, living.”
Sam was quiet. “Living is dying,” he said. He was quiet again. “I’m going to be a doctor.”
“Yes,” Rupert said.
—
Sam had dreaded the move to the upper school. His father wanted him to play a sport. Over the years, he had joined and quit Little League, Soccer League, and Hockey League. He liked playing games; he hated being on a team. “The coaches are always yelling,” he told his mother. “And they make fun of the fat kids.” He was not a team player, not in athletics, not in life. He had his family, Team Falkes; that was the only team he wanted to play on. Rupert believed in playing sports the way he believed in churchgoing: it was character-building. But I have character, Sam thought, just a different kind. He wished he had Jack’s character. Jack got himself kicked off every team for poor sportsmanship. “I am a soloist,” Jack said.
Everyone at Trinity played sports. It looked good on college applications: Honor Society, Soup Kitchen, Varsity Soccer. Trinity expected it: labore et virtute.
In ninth grade, Sam went out for squash. He played for the team intermittently and listlessly. His game was a tennis player’s game. He attacked the ball with a wide swing that enraged his opponents. “Do I have to play on a team?” Sam asked his father as the next school year began. They were listening to music in the library, Schubert’s songs.
“What about running?” Rupert said. “You’re fast.”
“I always come in second,” Sam said. “It makes me cross. I get like Harry. I hate losing.”
The next weekend, Rupert took Sam to see Chariots of Fire at Lincoln Plaza, around the corner from their apartment.
That summer, Sam joined Road Runners. He got stronger, faster. Junior and senior years, he competed in the 400-and the 800-meter. “Tailor-made for neurotics,” he said to his father. Sam was built like a distance runner, as were all the boys when they were young. Legs and lungs, Eleanor thought, like me. At Princeton, Sam took up squash again. He paid attention to the coaches and learned to whip his racquet. Exploiting the runner’s advantage, he regularly beat Harry.
—
Eleanor never listened to music. It made her anxious. When Rupert proposed, she told him, as a warning, that she couldn’t be made to attend concerts. “I’d rather listen to news radio,” she said. She knew music was important to him. He had told her it had saved his life.
“We don’t have to like the same things,” he said. “I can go by myself.”
In middle school, Eleanor had been made to suffer through Saturday-afternoon concerts at the New York Philharmonic. She had a subscription, a birthday gift from her mother. In the beginning, her nanny went with her. “I expect you to appreciate what I’m doing to cultivate your musical taste,” her mother said. “I pay for Nanny’s tickets too.”