The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(77)

“This place closes soon, you know,” the guy called back.

Still feeling overheated, Philip took off his shirt and left it in a thicket of trees skirting the stream. If he ran into anyone else, they would just have to deal with the shock of his undefined midsection. As he followed the stream up the sharp ascent of the canyon, it started to drizzle, and the trail darkened with accreting decimal points. He suddenly remembered an equation that he had created as a child, after his father had challenged him to determine at what point raindrops of 0.04-centimeter diameter, falling at a speed of 9 meters per second and at a frequency density of 15 drops per square meter per second, would saturate 25 square kilometers of space—taking into account raindrop overlap, naturally. Philip had created an equation in ten minutes, knowing, of course, that the bait and switch from meters to kilometers was merely a cheap trick. He wasn’t a complete moron, not even at age nine.

Such rapid stunts of calculation had made his father proud, something that young Philip took for granted. As the years went by, though, he learned that engendering pride in his father was a feat harder and harder to come by. The proud tousles to the hair and pats on the shoulder dropped off in their frequency and enthusiasm. But then, that’s how it had been with his own children. It had been one thing to praise Sybil’s artistic endeavors at age ten, quite another at twenty-five.

The trail was getting steeper—Philip didn’t remember the climb being this difficult—and his brain was starting to feel constricted. Why was his medication taking so long to kick in? The sound of rushing water grew steadily louder as he approached the trail’s end. Any minute, just around the bend, the falls would appear.

Something in the brush beside the path fluttered and chirped. Probably some quail hiding from the rain. Jane had once been fond of pointing out such wildlife, along with their group names, always with a wink in her delivery. “Oh look, a bevy of quail . . . a kettle of hawks . . . a scold of jays.” She could always summon these collective nouns so easily. Perhaps this is where Drew had gotten her talent for recall. “A colony of rabbits . . . a cauldron of bats . . .” But what about a group of one? What would he be called? A struggle. A calamity. An embarrassment of Philip.

Just as he approached the final bend in the trail, something unexpected happened. The rain stopped, and the late-afternoon sun burst from behind the clouds. He was grateful for the extra light, but he hadn’t brought his sunglasses—or were they in his discarded coat?—and the sun pierced his eyes. He shielded his face with one hand, trying not to think about the advancing migraine army. Shade. There would be shade at the falls.

When he rounded the bend and stepped into the dark shadow of the surrounding rock face, he looked up and saw her. She stood at the top of the falls, at the very edge, looking down. The sun was behind her, feathering the outline of her body. A phrase of hers came back to him: “I would give you the gift of plausible deniability.”

“Jane!” he shouted.

She didn’t answer.

Philip blinked. It must have been an extended blink because when he opened his eyes again, she was no longer there. He glanced around in panic, scanning along the top of the ridge and down at the water.

“Jane!”

He kicked off his shoes.

Just as he reached the water’s edge, she appeared again, this time standing below the falls on the opposite bank. She was smiling at something just behind him. How had she gotten down there so quickly?

But this second appearance coincided with an urgent stab in his head—a pain more intense than he had ever experienced. That’s when Philip knew that Jane wasn’t standing there at all. He was alone. The auras were hallucinatory now, as Tom’s had been. Oh God, had Jane’s car been imagined, too? And those people on the trail?

The sun seemed to be getting brighter, which he didn’t understand, not only because of the late hour but also because he was in the shade. Or thought he was. The waterfall seemed to be growing in force, rushing all around and behind his eyes. The rushing was so loud. Why was it so goddamn loud?

Philip cupped his hands over his ears, but he needed to grab his pills. Were they in his pants pocket? Yes, he had slipped them in there as an afterthought. Good man!

He sat down at the water’s edge to rest. The bottle was almost full. He had all the relief he would need. He tried to dump a couple of pills into his hand, but ended up with five or six. Screw it. “Take as needed”—that’s what the bottle said, didn’t it, or had he made that up? He dumped them into his mouth, chasing them with a handful of stream water. He seemed to recall that the water from the stream was drinkable, or had been once, but at this point, he didn’t really care. Philip wondered if six pills would be enough.

The bottle was soon close to empty. Maybe he should save it for Sybil to put in one of her pieces. But, no, Sybil was dead. He had actually forgotten for a second that his daughter was pulverized and in the ground. A memory of her floated up before him: Sybil standing in front of one of her gallery pieces, an expectant look sent his direction. Then an image of himself, stifling his own disappointment while ladling out spoonfuls of feeble praise. There was nothing more sickening than realizing how much you had hurt your own child. How you hadn’t bothered to understand her at all. But then, hadn’t this been a Severy family custom? Upholding scholarly achievement to the point of self-erasure? His father had judged him the instant his research had flagged, had dropped hints of “brain rot” and “irrelevance.” And suddenly, in a confusion of self-admonition and self-pity, Philip couldn’t separate Sybil’s heartache from his own.