They drove out to L.A. together. “That was an amazing road trip,” said my friend wistfully, resting his chin on his father’s half-thawed head. Some of his dad’s head slush smeared off onto his chin, which was weirdly touching. “We were probably closer during that trip than we’d ever been before,” he said.
But film school was a bust. He could tell from his father’s head’s expression that it was a lot less rigorous than the head had expected. It was no history doctorate, that’s for sure. His father’s expression, he said, went from dubious to disappointed. “Look!” he said, pointing at his father’s face. “Even right now, as I’m telling this story, he’s thinking I should have gotten a Ph.D. in history. The man is obsessed! In case you were wondering,” he said to the thawing head, “this is precisely why I don’t take you out of the freezer so much anymore.”
He covered his father’s big, unfrozen ears with his hands. “I quit film school,” he confided. “He doesn’t know that yet. Right now I’m just one hundred percent focused on writing this screenplay, and for money I work at a Coffee Bean.”
He uncovered his father’s ears and said loudly, “So, when I get my film degree, we’ll see what happens.”
“It’s been fifteen minutes, by the way,” I said.
“You can stand another five,” said my friend to the head. “Can’t you? You don’t want to be cooped up in that freezer again, I don’t think.”
Just then a whole sheet of ice calved off the frozen head’s heavily-lined forehead and hit the floor, liquefying on impact. “Fuuuck,” my friend groaned. He pointed at a cupboard. “Mind snagging the paper towels?” As I kneeled down to mop up the forehead puddle, I noticed — I don’t think I was inventing this — that the father’s head was trying to catch my eye. He was almost thawed out. All that remained was a thin coating of ice over his slightly parted lips. He looked a little panicked.
“So,” I asked with forced nonchalance, “what happens when he’s fully melted?”
“I’ve only gone this far once before,” said my friend. “Last time, when his mouth ice melted, he murmured something to me. I’m curious if he’ll do it again.”
“After that you should really put him back in the freezer.”
“Yep, after that, back he goes.”
As the father’s face grew more and more agitated, and we waited for the melting of his mouth ice, I inquired about the current state of reanimation technology. How long from now till they’re able to resurrect the man?
Again he covered his father’s ears.
“They could do it today,” he said. “The technology’s there. I’m the holdup now. I’m waiting until I, you know, achieve something. I don’t want him back until he can be proud of me. Is that ridiculously selfish?”
“No, not at all.”
“It is, isn’t it? That’s why so much depends on this screenplay. I know it’s got some structural problems, but I’m kind of hoping it’s the one.”
“I hope so, too,” I said, knowing it was not.
The last piece of ice slid from his father’s open mouth and hit the floor. The son, solemn all of a sudden, lifted his father’s now totally unfrozen head and put its mouth to his ear like a conch shell.
Sure enough, the lips moved.
There was a raspy, rabbinical sound.
Then the head said something.
I missed it, but evidently the son did not. He put his father’s head back on the kitchen table, snatched his script, stomped into his room, and slammed the door.
The labor historian’s head stared at me, terrified.
Hastily I found the other pair of head-handling gloves under the sink and returned the head to its freezer. The head seemed relieved, but also very sad and very alone.
As I slipped out of the apartment I could hear the son ripping up page after page.
• • •
But I said there was a happy ending, sort of.
A little while later my friend gave me a call. “Really sorry for how things ended the other day,” he said. “That must have been kind of awkward for you.”
“No, no. Not to worry. How do things stand with your father’s head?”
“Well, not so good.”
“No reconciliation?”
“Not as such. Listen. You guys seemed to get along pretty well. I noticed how he kept catching your eye.”
“I think he was just scared.”
“He liked you, obviously. And that’s fine. Actually, that’s great. I was hoping you could take him for a while. I can’t really write with him in the freezer. I’m happy to struggle, but I can’t struggle with my father’s frozen head in the other room, do you know what I mean?”
“Absolutely.”
“It’s just hard to do the whole struggling-Hollywood thing with your father’s head twenty feet away in a freezer, if that makes any sense.”
“It makes perfect sense.”
I pictured life with the labor historian’s head, and I liked what I saw. I have kind of a distant relationship with my own father, who is extremely supportive but a bit aloof, so I felt that I might really benefit from a judgmental visage in the freezer.
I said, “I would be very happy to take him off your hands for a while.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Thank you. Seriously.”
“No problem.”
“I owe you one.”
“It’s my pleasure.”
“Promise me one thing, though. You can’t resurrect him until I’ve made it.”
I knew by that point that he would never “make it” in Hollywood, or probably anywhere else, but still I said: “I won’t, I promise.”
My friend — it occurs to me now that that’s the wrong designation — brought over his father’s head in the big freezer, and I never saw or heard from him again. But the labor historian’s head and I embarked on a pretty wonderful little life together. We saw a lot of the world. He improved my life in a number of ways, personally and professionally. And a few years later, while the son was still flailing around L.A., I broke my promise and had his father resurrected. They affixed his head to an animatronic body and zapped the whole thing with an ultraprecise amount of electricity. So, he’s back now. He’s back at Princeton, too, where he teaches a popular lecture course called Work in America. Just one semester a year, a sort of semiretirement. He’s a great guy. Our relationship is a little more complicated — obviously — than when he was a just a frozen head, but it’s still very, very solid. We talk about everything. The only thing we never talk about is his son.
72: IMPROVEMENT
…………………….
A particular line of male lab rats has exhibited, from generation to generation, a marked improvement in maze performance, suggesting that the skill may in fact be heritable. The first rat in this line completed the maze in one minute and fifty-nine seconds. His sons finished the maze in an average time of one minute and forty-two seconds. The third generation ran it in an average time of one minute and twenty-five seconds, and the fourth generation finished it on average in one minute and seven seconds. Unfortunately, the trend ended with the fifth generation. After an hour in the maze, the fifth generation of rats had still not budged from the starting line. It is not known whether they were unable to move or unwilling. They were also unable or unwilling to mate, so the experiment has since been discontinued. Upon dissection, their brains were found to be pathologically large.