Unknown - The Genius

Once in a fit of madness he decided to knock. As the door opened, before he could run away, he suddenly understood the humiliation he was about to bring on himself. He saw for a brief and clear and terrible instant what the person on the other side of the threshold would see: a barely pubescent boy in a necktie, and some creepy son of a bitch standing right behind him. They would think he was somebody’s little brother. They would think he was a Boy Scout selling commemorative stamps. He wanted to flee but the light came spilling out and he caught a glimpse of all that he could not have: a room with plush furniture and a half-dozen undergraduates with their jackets off and their sleeves pushed back and another five of them playing poker and cigar smoke and powdery Radcliffe coeds draped over the sofas and girlish peals of delight and a whirling phonograph and paintings of old ships hung askew and glasses of beer and shoes kicked off and carpets rolled up and steps that led to somewhere mysterious and dark and off-limits even to his imagination.

The fellow who answered the door seemed less concerned with David than with Gilbert, whom he evidently took for a police officer or a member of the administration. He began to ask what the idea was, every time they tried to have a good time somebody had to come trample all over it, wasn’t there any such thing as a private party anymore. At the sound of his voice, David snapped to and walked away, drawing Gilbert like a duckling and leaving the boy in the middle of his tirade, which came to an abrupt conclusion with a shout of, “That’s right.”

Without math he might have been a goner. He was good at it; its clarity redeemed and soothed him. Plus, all the other students were the tiniest bit off, enough to assure him that he was far from the college’s most outstanding freak. He discovered that he wasn’t the only one his age. In Introduction to Higher Geometry there was a boy named, bizarrely, Gilbert—no relation—who had a lisp and who lived with his parents, commuting from Newton on the bus. In Potential Theory there was a heavy-lidded boy in horn-rimmed glasses who was, by all appearances, on his own. He and David orbited each other for most of the semester, a formal introduction coming in April when the boy plopped down in the next seat and offered David peanuts from a small wax-paper pack. He said his name was Tony.

THANK GOD FOR HORMONES. His voice leveled out by the middle of his sophomore year; he put on his father’s inches and his great-uncle’s muscles; his beard started to come in—more heavily than he liked; it became something of a pain in the neck—and, importantly, Gilbert got the boot. David and Tony got thick as thieves, both of them taking up squash, Tony eventually rising to become captain of the Lowell House team. David played with a chamber orchestra and Tony would come sit in the front row. They huddled together at the Game; they ate together in the dining hall. Eventually they did get punched: David by both the Porc and the Fly, Tony by the Fly alone, which effectively made David’s decision for him. They even had a few dates. Like finals clubs, once girls figured out that David Muller was David Muller of those Mullers, they warmed up to him pretty fast. He tested their mettle by insisting that they bring along someone for Tony. That cleared out roughly half the potential applicants: after learning that they would have to convince some poor girlfriend to spend the evening making conversation with a not-especially-rich eighteen-year-old math-prodigy Jew, a lot of girls found themselves busy with unanticipated homework.

Ironic, because when those double dates did come off, it was not unusual for both girls to end up talking to Tony. He was a natural-born charmer. David, on the other hand, preferred to sit back and reap the fringe benefits.

After graduation Tony went off to Princeton for his Ph.D. David went back to New York to work for his father. Before parting, David asked if Tony didn’t eventually want to come back to the city. The Wexlers lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where she kept house and he was an actuary. One of the first things the boys had learned about each other was that they’d grown up less than three miles apart.

“We’ll see,” said Tony. He wanted to be a professor. And why not? He had all the makings of a young academic; his senior tutor had referred to him as “one of the finest minds of our century.” Even David couldn’t keep up. He had to work problems out, whereas Tony would look down at the page and hear the answer shouting at him.

They wrote a few times a week. David wanted to know what Princeton was like; had Tony met Einstein? Tony replied that there were trees and that his general impression of the great man was that he needed a haircut. They saw each other when Tony came home to visit, which happened less frequently as he sank further into his research. Once David took the train out and they had a weekend like old times. Tony said that girls were easier when you were a graduate student; too bad there weren’t more of them around. Campus could feel like a monastery.

David withheld comment. In those days, he had no shortage of social engagements. His mother, apparently panicked that she had starved him for friends, had been throwing parties virtually every weekend in an effort to find him a wife. This, he had come to understand, was his mother’s fatal flaw, her belief in the quick fix. Ignorant of history, heedless of consequences, she could see nothing but the problem currently occupying her mind; and the smaller that problem was, the more it grew to fill her obsession. David knew from observing his father that the best course of action was silent assent. If she wanted him to be out and about, so be it.

In 1951 Tony received a tenure-track appointment; that same year he served as best man at David’s first wedding, a role he would play at the next one, six years later. The third time around, David told Tony that he was bad luck, and besides, little Edgar was nine years old and man enough to do the job.

TONY SAID, “I WANT OUT.”

“Just like that.”

“It’s a terrible life. Susan is going out of her mind. All she does is read magazines, and she’s going bonkers for kids.”

“Then have a kid.”

“You say that like that hasn’t occurred to me.”

“You could adopt.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“What, then.”

“Give me a job.” Tony sat back in the big leather armchair, crossed his legs, laced his fingers across his stomach. The waiter came by and deposited their drinks, both of which sat untouched, melting ice ruining perfectly good scotch.

Tony said, “I’ve been passed over twice now.”

“You’re thirty-two.”

Tony shook his head. “Trust me, David. Not gonna happen. Not for me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I got it from someone who got it from Tucker.”

David said nothing.

“I’m not about to pick up and move to Wisconsin or Texas,” Tony said. “It’s enough already. You’ve been asking me for years when I was going to come back to New York. Well, here I am. The only thing standing between me there and me here is a job.”

David thought about what it would mean to have Tony working for him. For him? With him. He couldn’t expect him to start at the bottom. “I’ll see if—”

“You’ll see? Come on, David. Just give me a goddamned job.” He bolted down his scotch. “I’ve already tendered my resignation.”

David was surprised. “That’s a hell of a bold thing to do.”

“Well, you’re a hell of a friend,” said Tony.

HE EXPECTED TONY to be bored, but on the contrary: his role as fixer and right-hand man seemed to appeal to a primal part of him, the same cheerful and deferential boy who would concede squash matches to David when total slaughter loomed evident. His assistant professor’s salary no longer a source of frustration, Tony bought a thirteenth-floor triplex apartment on Park, a quarter-mile from the house on Fifth; with their wives, the two of them went to Miami and to Paris. There was a time, after Tony’s divorce and before David met Nadine, when they were both bachelors again, and they spent some exciting weekends in Atlantic City, weekends that left them wrung out and soberly aware of their age.