The Fountain of Age Read Free

Only Dr. Erdmann had said once that what she’d done in high school wasn’t “mathematics,” only “arithmetic.” “Why didn’t you go to college, Carrie?” he’d asked.
    “No money,” she said in a tone that meant: Please don’t ask anything else. She just hadn’t felt up to explaining about Daddy and the alcoholism and the debts and her abusive step brothers, and Dr. Erdmann hadn’t asked. He was sensitive that way.
    Looking at his tall, stooped figure sitting on the desk, his walker close to hand, Carrie sometimes let herself dream that Dr. Erdmann—Henry—was fifty years younger. Forty to her twenty-eight—that would work. She’d googled a picture of him at that age, when he’d been working at someplace called the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. He’d been handsome, dark-haired, smiling into the camera next to his wife, Ida. She hadn’t been as pretty as Carrie, but she’d gone to college, so even if Carrie had been born back then, she wouldn’t have had a chance with him. Story of her life.
    “—have any questions?” Dr. Erdmann finished.
    The students did—they always did—clamoring to be heard, not raising their hands, interrupting each other. But when Dr. Erdmann spoke, immediately they all shut up. Someone leapt up to write equations on the board. Dr. Erdmann slowly turned his frail body to look at them. The discussion went on a long time, almost as long as the class. Carrie fell asleep.
    When she woke, it was to Dr. Erdmann, leaning on his walker, gently jiggling her shoulder. “Carrie?”
    “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry!”
    “Don’t be. We bored you to death, poor child.”
    “No! I loved it!”
    He raised his eyebrows and she felt shamed. He thought she was telling a polite lie, and he had very little tolerance for lies. But the truth is, she always loved being here.
    Outside, it was full dark. The autumn rain had stopped and the unseen ground had that mysterious, fertile smell of wet leaves. Carrie helped Dr. Erdmann into her battered Toyota and slid behind the wheel. As they started back toward St. Sebastian’s, she could tell that he was exhausted. Those students asked too much of him! It was enough that he taught one advanced class a week, sharing all that physics, without them also demanding he—
    “Dr. Erdmann? “
    For a long terrible moment she thought he was dead. His head lolled against the seat but he wasn’t asleep: His open eyes rolled back into his head. Carrie jerked the wheel to the right and slammed the Toyota alongside the curb. He was still breathing.
    “Dr. Erdmann? Henry ?”
    Nothing. Carrie dove into her purse, fumbling for her cell phone. Then it occurred to her that his panic button would be faster. She tore open the buttons on his jacket; he wasn’t wearing the button. She scrambled again for the purse, starting to sob.
    “Carrie?”
    He was sitting up now, a shadowy figure. She hit the overhead light. His face, a fissured landscape, looked dazed and pale. His pupils were huge.
    “What happened? Tell me.” She tried to keep her voice even, to observe everything, because it was important to be able to make as full a report as possible to Dr. Jamison. But her hand clutched at his sleeve.
    He covered her fingers with his. His voice sounded dazed. “I . . . don’t know. I was . . . somewhere else?”
    “A stroke?” That was what they were all afraid of. Not death, but to be incapacitated, reduced to partiality. And for Dr. Erdmann, with his fine mind . . .
    “No.” He sounded definite. “Something else. I don’t know. Did you call 911 yet?”
    The cell phone lay inert in her hand. “No, not yet, there wasn’t time for—”
    “Then don’t. Take me home.”
    “All right, but you’re going to see the doctor as soon as we get there.” She was pleased, despite everything, with her firm tone.
    “It’s seven-thirty. They’ll all have gone home.”
    But they hadn’t. As soon as Carrie and Dr. Erdmann walked into the lobby, she saw a man in a white