Let who can, experience for themselves the full complexity and symmetry of the resulting figure. Roughly, two spheres are joined at every point through their “equator,” itself a third sphere of sheer connectivity, and the whole suspended within a fourth dimension. The figure has finite volume but no boundary: “every point is interior.”
She could not experience this. Because it was insane.
She reshelved the book and called her father.
“Well of course, kitten,” he said. “We’d be delighted. Honored. We’ll be in bed, but you know where we keep the key. Don’t say it on the phone. So just you? Sans Rick-hard?” The first time Richard had met her father, he’d gotten drunk and gone into his rap about how Bayreuth in effect was Monsalvat; the phrase “sacramental spaces” had been the deal breaker.
He coughed. “Well, we’ll just have to bear up, won’t we? I’ll have Abigail make up the bed off my study. You’ve got the tube-o-lator in there, DVDs, stay up all night if you want. We won’t hear a thing.”
“The tube-o-lator?”
“It’s a young person’s expression,” he said. “I’ve decided to be young from now on. The old-person thing simply wasn’t working. Anyway. Manifold options in there. Books, even, if you’re feeling earnest.”
“Heaven itself,” she said. “I’m a fool for options.”
—
Her Cavalier was parked around the corner on Eighty-Third. Only yesterday morning she and Richard had done their routine of moving both cars, then sitting together in his Saab until eleven sharp, drinking coffee and sharing the Times, Paige trying not to snuffle. Richard called the Saab “the Roundhead”—wasn’t that good? Didn’t you have to give it up for him? Mary Beth had. Not a student but an ex-student, which made it ethical. He’d taken her for drives in the Roundhead, Paige had gotten that much out of him. To where, he’d refused to tell. That refusal, too, was ethical.
She got off the Thruway at New Paltz and found a dark place to pull over and have her nightly couple of tokes. As she came up her father’s driveway, the Islamic moon was about to touch the pointy hemlock. As in Wordsworth, where the moon goes down behind the cottage and he thinks, Dum dum dum and dum dum dum if Lucy should be dead. Not Ah my foes and oh my friends—that was Edna St. Vincent Millay burning her candle at both ends—but something to the tune of that. (She’d only taught this about a million times.) What about Holy shit and holy fuck if Lucy should be dead? Okay, getting too silly now.
She crept up the flagstone walk, smelling the metallic, bloodlike stink of the boxwoods. A white envelope was taped to the door, with WELCOME! in girlish handwriting. Paige pulled it free: empty. The key must still be hidden underneath the bronze turtle. How offensive was it that Abigail was bidding her welcome? Then again, Paige had never lived in this house. She’d have to consider this when she was straight. And when might that be?
In the morning she did just a single bump, since here she was in the healthy countryside. But what if in doing just the left nostril she’d activated only the left brain? If she could remember whether that was the rational side or the emotive-intuitive, she could monitor herself for a possible imbalance. She went out to the kitchen for water, saw a strip of duct tape across the sink like the international NO and stepped out onto the porch, where she found Abigail sitting sidesaddle in one of the Adirondack chairs. A hot autumn day, trees already past the peak, wasps crawling on the posts where the sunlight hit. In daylight Paige could see that the boxwoods had suckers sticking up. Must “topiary” and “topology” not have the same root? Something to do with surfaces?
“Hi, welcome.” Abigail stood up. Bare feet, piggies painted pink. “Let me get you some coffee. How do you take it?”
“I often wonder,” Paige said. “Actually, I can get it.”
“No, no, sit.”
Paige watched her go: dirty heels, rising to show white insteps. You couldn’t not look at her ass. Abigail played tennis, yes, but this had to be gym related. She was four years older than Paige.
She set a mug on the arm of Paige’s chair. “Charles is still sleeping. I think he was up most of the night. At some point I got up to go to the bathroom, and he was in there with his laptop. I don’t ask anymore.” The coffee tasted foul because of that salty chemical shit still in the back of her throat, but actually pretty great. “I didn’t hear any of this. I thought you guys were like early to bed, early to rise.”
“Well, sort of yes and no,” Abigail said.
Paige had never been able to discern whether or not this woman was stupid. She did have a Ph.D. On the other hand, Charles Eckhaus had chaired her committee. “So what’s up with the sink?”
“Oh, it’s such a pain. Charles called the plumber a week ago, they were coming right over—this is what it’s like up here.”
“So you still miss the city.”
“Yeah, no shit.” Abigail started to cry. “Oh God. Too early in the fucking day for this.” She got up and went inside, a hand before her like a blind person. Paige heard a door shut somewhere. Probably that bathroom off the kitchen. Two people and three bathrooms: What could he have been thinking? Right, well, if you knew that.
—
Back in the study, Paige checked the Wordsworth poem—it was “ ‘O mercy!’ to myself I cried”—and felt a headache sneaking in. She got up to look for aspirin and met her father coming down the stairs: black shorts and a regrettable white alligator shirt, his calves still muscled. He hugged her, then took a step back, his hands cupping her shoulders. “Terrific.”
“Looking good yourself,” she said. Well, he did have a tan.
“Actually,” he said—and she knew what was coming—“there’s this extremely horrifying portrait of me up in the attic.” She tried to give him a smile; her mouth did something but her eyebrows wouldn’t go up.
She followed him out onto the porch. She didn’t want to do the exact same scene over again, though she couldn’t not sit down in her same chair.
“You sleep all right, kitten?” He coughed.
“Fine,” she said. “It’s so quiet up here.”
“It is that,” he said. And as if to demonstrate.
Paige listened awhile. Then she said, “Did Abigail go back to bed?”
“Yep.” He coughed again. A barking cough. “I don’t think she got much sleep.”
“She was telling me you didn’t get much sleep.”
“Aha,” he said. “And how did she know? You see the pathology. Well, ‘pathology’ is too strong a word.” Coughed again.
“How long have you had that?”
“What, the cough? Dah—not worth discussing. Now, how are you?”
“Oh. You know.”
“Mm,” he said. “I’m not quite getting a reading here.”
“No, I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just nice to be away, you know. From all of it.”
“All of it, eh?” he said. “No, you certainly won’t find that here. So what shall we do to amuse you?”
“Put me to work? You want me to finish your hedge for you?”
“Ah. Thereby hangs a tale. I was merrily trimming away with the hedge trimmer—before cocktails, I’ll have you know—and I somehow managed to cut through the cord. You’d think one would see an orange cord. I assume this is why they make them orange. I’m just not a country boy, kitten.” Cough.