Timescape

CHAPTER EIGHT

GORDON THUMBED THROUGH THE STACK OF MAIL IN his slot. An ad for a new musical, Stop the World—I Want to Get Off, forwarded by his mother. Not likely he’d be making it to the fall openings on Broadway this year; he dropped the ad in the trash. Something called the Citizens for Decent Literature had sent him a gaudy booklet, detailing the excesses of The Carpetbaggers and Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn. Gordon read the excerpts with interest. In this forest of parting thighs, wracking orgasms, and straightforward gymnastics he could see nothing that would corrupt the body politic. But General Edwin Walker thought so, and Barry Goldwater made a cameo appearance as savant with a carefully worded warning about the erosion of public will through private vice. There was the usual guff about the analogy between the US and the decline of the Roman Empire. Gordon chuckled and threw it away. It was another civilization entirely, out here in the west. No censorship group would ever solicit university staff for contributions on the east coast; they’d know it was futile, a waste of postage. Maybe out here these simpletons thought the Roman Empire line would appeal even to scholars. Gordon glanced through the latest Physical Review, ticking off papers he would read later. Claudia Zinnes had some interesting stuff about nuclear resonances, with clean-looking data; the old group at Columbia was keeping up their reputation.

Gordon sighed. Maybe he should have stayed on at Columbia on a postdoc, instead of taking the leap into an Assistant Professorship so early. La Jolla was a high-powered, competitive place, hungry for fame and “eminence.” A local magazine ran a monthly feature titled A University on Its Way to Greatness, full of hoopla and photos of professors peering at complicated instruments, or ruminating over an equation. California goes to the stars, California leaps ahead, California trades bucks for brains. They’d gotten Herb York, who used to be the Deputy Director of the Defense Department, to come in as the first Chancellor of the campus. Harold Urey came, and the Mayers, then Keith Brueckner in nuclear theory, a trickle of talent that was now turning into a steady stream. In such waters a fresh Assistant Professor had all the job security of live bait.

Gordon walked down the third floor hallways, looking at the names on the doors. Rosenbluth, the plasma theorist some thought was the best in the world. Matthias, the artist of low temperatures, the man who held the record for the superconductor with the highest operating temperature. Kroll and Suhl and Piccioni and Feher, each name summoning up at least one incisive insight, or brilliant calculation, or remarkable experiment. And here, at the end of the fluorescent and tiled sameness of the corridor: Lakin.

“Ah, you received my note,” Lakin said when he answered Gordon’s knock. “Good. We have decisions to make.”

Gordon said, “Oh? Why?” and sat down across the desk from Lakin,-next to the window. Outside, bulldozers were knocking over some of the eucalyptus tree; in preparation for the chemistry building, grunting mechanically.

“My NSF grant is coming up for renewal,” Lakin said significantly.

Gordon noticed that Lakin did not say “our” NSF grant, even though he and Shelly and Gordon were ail investigators on the grant. Lakin was the man who okayed the checks, the P.I. as the secretaries always put it—Principal Investigator. It made a difference. “The renewal proposal isn’t due in until around Christmas,” Gordon said. “Should we start writing it this early?”

“It’s not writing I’m talking about. What are we to write about?”

“Your localized spin experiments—”

Lakin shook his head, a scowl flickering across his face. “They are still at an exploratory stage. I cannot use them as the staple item.”

“Shelly’s results—”

“Yes, they are promising. Good work. But they are still conventional, just linear projections of earlier work.”

“That leaves me.”

“Yes. You.” Lakin steepled his hands before him on the desk. His desk top was conspicuously neat, every sheet of paper aligned with the edge, pencils laid out in parallel.

“I haven’t got anything clear yet.”

“I gave you the nuclear resonance problem, plus an excellent student—Cooper—to speed things up. I expected a full set of data by now.”

“You know the trouble we’re having with noise.”

“Gordon, I didn’t give you that problem by accident,” Lakin said, smiling slightly. His high forehead wrinkled in an expression of concerned friendliness. “I thought it would be a valuable boost to your career. I admit, it is not precisely the sort of apparatus you are accustomed to. Your thesis problem was more straightforward. But a clean result would clearly be publishable in Phys Rev Letters, and that could not fail to help us with our renewal. And you, with your position in the department.”

Gordon looked out the window at the machines chewing up the landscape, and then back at Lakin. Physical Review Letters was the prestige journal of physics now, the place where the hottest results were published in a matter of weeks, rather than having to wait at Physical Review or, worse, some other physics journal, for month after month. The flood of information was forcing the working scientist to narrow his reading to a few journals, since each one was getting thicker and thicker. It was like trying to drink from a fire hose. To save time you began to rely on quick summaries in Physical Review Letters and promised yourself you would get around to reading the longer journals when there was more time.

“That’s all true,” Gordon said mildly. “But I don’t have a result to publish.”

“Ah, but you do,” Lakin murmured warmly. “This noise effect. It is most interesting.”

Gordon frowned. “A few days ago you were saying it was just bad technique.”

“I was a bit temperamental that day. I did not fully appreciate your difficulties.” He combed long fingers through his thinning hair, sweeping it back to reveal white scalp that contrasted strongly with his deep tan. “The noise you have found, Gordon, is not a simple aggravation. I believe, after some thought, that it must be a new physical effect.”

Gordon gazed at him in disbelief. “What kind of effect?” he said slowly.

“I do not know. Certainly something is disturbing the usual nuclear resonance process. I suggest we call it ‘spontaneous resonance’ just to have a working name.” He smiled. “Later, if it proves as important as I suspect, the effect may be named for you, Gordon—who knows?”

“But Isaac, we don’t understand it! How can we call it a name like that? ‘Spontaneous resonance’ means something inside the crystal is causing the magnetic spins to flip back and forth.”

“Yes, it does.”

“But we don’t know that’s what’s happening!”

“It is the only possible mechanism,” Lakin said coolly. “Maybe.”

“You do not still treasure that signal business of yours, do you?” Lakin said sarcastically.

“We’re studying it. Cooper is taking more data right now.”

“That is nonsense. You are wasting that student’s time.”

“Not in my judgment.”

“I fear your ‘judgment’ is not the only factor at work here,” Lakin said, giving him a stony look. “What does that mean?”

“You are inexperienced at these matters. We are working under a deadline. The NSF renewal is more important than your objections. I dislike putting it so bluntly, but—”

“Yes, yes, you have the best interests of the entire group in mind.”

“I do riot believe I need my sentences finished for me.”

Gordon blinked and looked out the window. “Sorry.”

There was a silence into which the grating of the bulldozers intruded, breaking Gordon’s concentration. He glanced into the stand of jacaranda trees further away and saw a mechanical claw rip apart a rotten wooden fence. It looked like a corral, an aged artifact of a western past now fading. On the other hand it was more probably a remnant of the Marine land the University had acquired. Camp Matthews, where foot soldiers were pounded into shape for Korea. So one training center was knocked down and another reared up in its place. Gordon wondered what he was being trained to fight for here. Science? Or funding?

“Gordon,” Lakin began, his voice reduced to a calming murmur, “I don’t think you fully appreciate the significance of this ‘noise problem’ you’re having. Remember, you do not have to understand everything about a new effect to discover it. Goodyear found how to make tough rubber accidentally by dropping India rubber mixed with sulfur on a hot stove. Roentgen found x-rays while he was fumbling around with a gas-filled electrical discharge experiment.”

Gordon grimaced. “That doesn’t mean everything we don’t understand is important, though.”

“Of course not. But trust my judgment in this case. This is exactly the sort of mystery that Phys Rev Letters will publish. And it will bolster our NSF profile.”

Gordon shook his head. “I think it’s a signal.”

“Gordon, you will come up for review of your position this year. We can advance you to a higher grade of Assistant Professor. We could even conceivably promote you to tenure.”

“So?” Lakin hadn’t mentioned that they could also, as the bureaucratese went, give him a “terminal appointment.”

“A solid paper in Phys Rev Letters carries much weight.”

“Uh huh.”

“And if your experiment continues to yield nothing, I am afraid I will, regretfully, not have very much evidence to present in support of you.”

Gordon studied Lakin, knowing there wasn’t anything more to say. The lines were drawn. Lakin sat back in his executive chair, bobbing with controlled energy, watching the impact of his own words. His Ban-Lon shirt encased an athletic chest, his knit slacks clung to muscled legs. He had adapted well to California, getting out into the welcoming sun and improving his backhand. It was a long way from the cramped, shadowy labs at MIT. Lakin liked it here and he wanted to enjoy the luxury of living in a rich man’s twon. He would hustle to maintain his position; he wanted to stay.

“I’ll think it over,” Gordon said in a flat voice. Beside Lakin’s sturdy frame he felt overweight, pale, awkward. “And I’ll keep taking data,” he finished.

On the drive back from Lindbergh Field Gordon kept the conversation on safely neutral ground. His mother rattled on about neighbors on 12th Street whose names he didn’t remember, much less their intricate family squabbles, their marriages, births, and deaths. His mother assumed he would instantly catch the significance of the Goldberg’s buying a place in Miami at last, and understand why their son Jeremy went to NYU rather than Yeshiva. It was all part of the vast soap opera of life. Each segment had meaning. Some would get their comeuppance. Others would receive, after much suffering, their final reward. In his mother’s case he was plainly reward enough, at least in this life. She oohed at each marvel that loomed up in the fading twilight, as they zoomed along Route 1 toward La Jolla. Palm trees just growing by the roadside, without help. The white sand of Mission Bay, unpeopled and unlittered. No Coney Island, here. No cluttered sidewalks, no press of people. An ocean view from Mount Soledad that went on into blue infinity, instead of a gray vista that terminated in the jumble of New Jersey. She was impressed, with everything; it reminded her of what people said about Israel. His father had been a fervent Zionist, plunking down coin regularly to insure the homeland. Gordon was sure she still gave, though she never implored him to; maybe she felt he needed all his gelt to keep up with the professoring image. Well, it was true. La Jolla was expensive. But Gordon doubted if he would give anything for the traditional Jewish causes now. The move from New York had severed his connection to all that mumbo jumbo of dietary laws and Talmudic truths. Penny told him he didn’t seem very Jewish to her, but he knew she was simply ignorant. The WASP land she’d grown up in had taught her none of the small giveaway clues. Still, most people in California were probably equally oblivious, and that suited Gordon, He didn’t like having strangers make assumptions about him before they’d shaken his hand. Getting free of New York’s claustrophobic Jewish ambience was one of the reasons for coming to La Jolla in the first place.

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 Martini 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 noticing 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.”

“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?”

“Well.”

“No, really.” Though he knew.

“You’re—” she made a sign, not trusting the words: crooking her longest finger over the index to make am 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.”

“Tour 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 shtunk 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.