The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(46)
Three will die. I am the first.
She had followed both Isaac’s and Alex’s advice to stay away from the house, immediately moving her things to her brother’s place in Mid-City. This was not before verifying that none of the family would be staying in the canyon, either. No one, it turned out, wanted to be near the place, but Hazel received several puzzled looks for her sudden fixation on family members’ immediate accommodations.
As she continued to examine the photos that populated the living room, she discovered a five-by-seven that made her instantly light-headed. It was of Alex and, judging from the brand-new frame and lack of dust, had only just been placed among the others. He stood at the black mouth of an anonymous cathedral, tanned and darkly handsome, very un-Severy-like, probably looking much like his negligent father. Hazel certainly didn’t need any more prompts to remind herself that Alex existed. Over the past several days, under a mantle of gloom, she had sketched out a vivid picture of him in her mind: the way he spoke, how he could switch from frothy conversation to scholarly clarification and back again with ease, and how his troubled brow could transform into a smile in an instant.
She had no idea how she could get in touch with him. Alex’s mother had been at the funeral, hovering at the periphery, but when Hazel approached her afterward, Paige scuttled off to her car, pretending not to see her. Paige did not appear at the reception, leaving Hazel to assume she had retreated back to her hovel in Venice Beach. Alternatively, the thought of asking her aunt Jane for anything other than how she might help in this emotionally eviscerating time struck Hazel as monumentally rude; she may as well ask her if she could borrow twenty bucks to go stock up on some Boone’s Farm. If Alex couldn’t be found or relied upon to help her, she would have to dismantle the computer herself, check out of room 137, and ship everything up to Seattle. But for what? A giant bonfire of melting plastic and hard drives?
The sane thing to do, of course, was to hand off the responsibility to someone Isaac would have trusted, despite his warning that no such person existed in the family. Just as she entertained this thought, she looked up and saw her uncle Philip standing at the window, staring out into the side yard. Hazel realized that she had not spoken to him in any meaningful way since Sybil’s death. As she took a few steps closer, she saw that he was watching the child of one of his and Jane’s friends play on a small slide. The slide had presumably been set up for Drew, though Hazel couldn’t imagine it holding the girl’s interest for long.
Hazel approached cautiously, her voice coming out in a croak. “Uncle Philip?”
He turned, eyes crimson, and blinked at her. His earlier blank expression was gone, and Hazel found herself shocked by the raw feeling on his typically composed face. He pulled her into a warm embrace. “You stayed,” he said, his voice raspy in her ear. “Jane and I know you didn’t have to.”
As he pulled away, Hazel quickly stuttered something about how sorry she was, what a shock, what a lovely, lovely person Sybil had been. She was barely aware of what she was saying but wondered at the same time if she might segue into inquiring about his father’s work, find out if he knew what Isaac had been working on before he died. Ridiculous, of course. Listen, I know your daughter’s dead and all, but I could use your help destroying your father’s mathematics.
Philip thanked her for her kind words and turned back to the window. The child was now struggling up the slide’s wooden ladder. After several seconds, Philip said, “Do you know how many steps run down that canyonside, Hazel?”
It was an odd question, but she knew the answer. “Two hundred fifty-seven, isn’t it?” There were multiple sets of staircases tucked between property lines that allowed for shortcuts up the west end of Beachwood Canyon. Isaac had liked to notify the guests who took these stairs not only of the number of steps they had just climbed but also that 257 is a prime number—one of the so-called Fermat primes, exceedingly rare.
Philip nodded. “I have yet to find someone who can’t answer that question. My father apparently drilled it into all of us. And do you know the number of steps on the hillside, leading from the road to the house?”
He was referring to the steps down which his daughter had tumbled.
“No, I don’t.”
“Twenty-nine.”
Hazel combed her memory for the significance of that number but could find nothing.
“Sybil was twenty-nine,” he said. “The age she’ll be forever now, I suppose.”
Hazel searched for something comforting to say, but he continued: “This knee-jerk mathematization of the world, of course, when applied to everything, is deeply stupid. Isn’t it funny that I seem to be realizing this only now? You know, when I was young and bruised quite easily—actual bruises, I mean, purple and green—I can remember being forced to play this or that sport in school, and for days afterward I would count up the accumulated spots on my arms and legs. At the time, it seemed a way of turning something unpleasant into a useful activity. You know, sort of tricking oneself out of feeling awful? I think I was even proud of this impulse, but now . . .” He laughed. “It’s merely a not-so-subtle illustration of a terrible family pastime. Let’s all ignore the blatant fact staring at us down the gun barrel of being alive—I mean pain, because it’s all pain—and just break it down into its component parts, shall we? We may as well be practicing numerology.”