Life After Genius Read Online Free PDF Page B

the waitress has just set on the table, Martin refills Mead’s empty mug and tops off his own. “To homecomings,” he says and holds up his beer for a toast. Mead taps his mug against his uncle’s and then knocks back half the contents in one gulp, as fortification against what he knows is about to come next.
    “Thanks for inviting me to your graduation, Teddy.”
    Mead looks over at Mr. and Mrs. Sammons, hoping for a rescue. But they have fallen into deep discussion with their daughter, the three of them with their heads together, thick as thieves, like secretaries around a water cooler. “I didn’t graduate, Uncle Martin.”
    “I know. What the hell is the matter with you? Do you have any idea how much it cost your father to pay for four years of college? And this is how you show your appreciation? By walking out a week before graduation?”
    “Three years, Uncle Martin. I completed all my credit requirements in three years.”
    “Three, four. That’s not the point, Teddy; the point is you’re an overeducated, underachieving momma’s boy with no care or concern for anyone except yourself.”
    These words fall upon Mead in a shower of spit. Placing his hand over his beer mug, Mead glances at the Sammonses once more. They have come out of their huddle and are staring at Martin with pity in their eyes, even though he is the one doing all of the name-calling. “I’m sorry, Uncle Martin,” Mead says. “I didn’t miss Percy’s funeral on purpose.”
    “Funeral? There wouldn’t have even been a funeral if you had been where you were supposed to be when he drove up there to visit you.”
    Suddenly sick to his stomach, Mead stands up. Fresh air. He needs some fresh air now. The floor begins to tilt beneath his feet, his brain comes loose from its moor and sloshes around inside of his skull, and between the floor and his brain Mead is finding it hard to walk. He grabs on to the backs of chairs as if they were railings on a ship at sea and makes his way across the dining hall toward the lobby. A buck’s head is mounted above the men’s room door, a doe’s head hangs over the ladies’ room. The two stuffed deer gaze down upon Mead with indignation in their glass eyes. He pictures his own head, mounted above the door to Herman’s bedroom. Dust collects on his nose and in his hair and, once a year, a maid takes him down to vacuum him off. But the rest of the time Mead hangs there all but forgotten, Herman’s interest in him lost as soon as he was bagged.
    Mead staggers into the bathroom and throws up. Maybe he shouldn’t have come home. Maybe he should have just accepted Herman’s proposition, graduated with honors, and continued on with his life. No one would ever have to know just how dishonorable it really was. No one, that is, except Mead.

2
    MUSIC TO THE EARS
    Chicago

Four Months Before Graduation
    S OMEONE KNOCKS ON THE DOOR and Mead looks up. It’s after midnight on a Tuesday night and everyone else in the dorm is asleep. Or so Mead thought. Glancing back over his shoulder, he looks at his roommate, Forsbeck, who is nothing more than a series of lumps under a snoring blanket. It’s probably one of his cohorts from down the hall. Rick or Dick or Joe or Bob, some monosyllabic person who has decided to take a late-night study break but cannot do it without the help of one of his codependent buddies.
    Mead sits motionless and waits for whomever it is to leave. A pair of feet is visible along the crack under the door, or at least their shadow is. A minute goes past and then two. The visitor doesn’t knock again but neither does he leave. Mead decides to ignore the feet and goes back to work. Picks up where he left off reading about the theory of Riemann surfaces that contains powerful results and deep insights into the behavior of complex functions, yoking function theory to algebra and topology, two key growth areas of twentieth-century math. There are hardly enough hours in the day anymore, what with