Life After Genius Read Free

Mead.
Yip, yip, yip, yip.
The damned thing is no bigger than a cat.
Yip, yip, yip, yip.
Reminds Mead of Dr. Kustrup, the chairman of the math department, a man who confuses quantity with quality when it comes to the use of his vocal chords.
Yip, yip, yip, yip.
Mead sticks his tongue out at the dog.
Yip, yip, yip, yip.
The smaller they are, the bigger they try to sound. Seems to go for both dogs and men.
    By the time Mead pulls his head back inside, Delia has been transferred from her bed to the gurney and covered with the ubiquitous white sheet. Samuel apologizes again and offers Mead a glass of water. Mead turns it down because of the look on his father’s face. It isn’t a look of disapproval —Mead only gets those from his mother —but of embarrassment. Mead knows what his father is thinking: The family of the deceased has enough on their minds and shouldn’t have to deal with the undertaker’s weak-stomached son.
    T HE RIDE BACK INTO TOWN IS SILENT . Mead stares out the window of the hearse at the passing houses but sees instead an auditorium full of mathematicians and visiting professors squirming in their seats. Glancing at their watches. Talking among themselves. Wondering where the key speaker is. Why the damned presentation has not yet gotten under way. Mead sees a man walking on the sidewalk but pictures instead Herman, pacing up and down the hall outside of the auditorium, watching his master plan crumble to pieces before his eyes. Mead sees Dean Falconia stride purposefully past Herman and into the auditorium, eyes to the floor, head shaking, trying to figure out what he is going to say to the scholars in the audience who made a special trip to Chicago just so they could witness —with their own eyes —the overwhelming statistical evidence that Mead has gathered that points to the veracity of the Riemann Hypothesis. Important men. He sees Herman walk up to the dean and ask where Mead is. Sees shock register on the young man’s face as it begins to dawn on Herman that there was a third possible scenario to his plan. One that he had not foreseen.
    Mead’s father turns onto Main Street and drives past a row of mom-and-pop stores. A pharmacy. A grocer. A hardware store. A five-and-dime. Welcome to lovely downtown High Grove, a mere six hours and three decades away from Chicago. A hop, skip, and a jump into the past. The hearse then passes in front of the largest storefront in town, in front of a row of plate glass windows behind which are displayed a tall chest of drawers, a floor lamp, and a sofa. And hanging above these windows is a sign that reads: FEGLEY BROTHERS INC. FURNITURE. CARPETS. UNDER TAKERS. The hand-painted sign has hung there for a couple of generations. Mead’s father turns into the alley just beyond these windows and parks in the lot behind the store where Mead’s uncle Martin is waiting.
    Mead slides down in his seat. Shit. He had forgotten all about his uncle, something about which he is not at all proud. Another indication of just how messed up his life has become in the past twenty-four hours.
    “It’s all right, Teddy,” his father says, peering down at Mead from on high, “I told him you were home.” But this only makes Mead feel worse.
    He slides back up, peers out the window, and smiles at his uncle, but the man does not smile back. Instead, his uncle looks straight through him, as if Mead doesn’t even exist. He opens the back of the hearse and pulls out the gurney. Mead’s father and uncle lock heads to discuss the deceased —time of death, age, approximate weight —then roll Delia onto the freight elevator. After another short conversation, Mead’s father walks back to the hearse, peers in at his son, and says, “He’d like you to join him downstairs.”
    Shit. Mead would rather his uncle find another way to get back at him. Like screaming in his face and calling him an ungrateful, self-centered, egotistical spoiled brat. At least Mead could take that, knowing that