Physics Can Be Fatal (8 page)

     In short order the entire department showed up.  Drinks were ordered immediately. The mood was somber.

     “I had dinner here with Professor Sidebottom
last night
,” Edwina said incredulously. “It doesn’t even seem real, now.  How could he suddenly be gone?  Doesn’t make any sense.  Especially somebody like that.  So––I don’t know––larger than life.”

     A waitress brought over a tray of drinks and handed them around.

     “We all share those feelings,” Seth Dubin offered quietly.  “It’s really difficult to take any of this in.”

     “I wonder if it could have been suicide?” graduate student Laura Brenner said.

     “Yeah . . . I wonder if there was there a note?” chimed in fellow grad student Nate Harris.

     This avenue of thought quieted the table momentarily as people considered the possibility of a suicide.

     “Poor Alan was such an unhappy man, I think,” Helen Mann said, draining a glass of red wine.  “I believe there were a number of divorces––estrangements from children––the heavy drinking.  Seems he made a mess of his personal life.”

     “Boy, what a waste,” said first year instructor, Pete Talbot.  “Such a brilliant mind.”

     “Not much point in our speculating about suicide or whatever else––we have so little information,” said Nedda Cake.  “The police will get to the bottom of it in due time.”

     “The police?” exclaimed Donald Gaylord, practically spitting out his malt whiskey. 

     “Of course, the police,” Ravi Kapoor replied.  “A man died. The circumstances must be looked into.  Questions must be answered.”

     “But, I assumed it was natural causes.  The man had a bad heart, and I mean, my God, all the drinking!” Donald said.

     “You’re probably right, Don. I imagine poor Alan had a heart attack in his sleep.  It’s probably just pro forma stuff as far as the police investigation goes,” Seth Dubin said.

     More drinks were ordered, and a few people ordered dinner. Mitchell Fender, never much of a drinker, was soon in his cups, and began to doze off.

     “Here, Mitch,” said Seth Dubin, gently rousing him.  “Have half of my sandwich.  It’s huge.  I can’t possibly eat the whole thing.”

     Mitchell awoke with a start and ignored Seth’s offer of half a sandwich.  Instead, he raised his glass in a toast.

     “The man was a drunk, a satyr, and a plagiarist,” Mitchell said, tripping over his words. “But he didn’t deserve to die.  Rest in peace, you old horse thief!”

     The table was quiet for a few moments. Professor Nedda Cake broke the uneasy silence.

     “’Pride and grace ne’er dwelt in once place,’” Nedda said cryptically.  “We live in a rather vast universe, and it’s perhaps best to remember one’s place in it. Alan was a very reckless man.”

     “That was beautiful, Nedda,” Mitchell Fender said with tears in his eyes.  “Pure poetry.  You’re an angel.  You know?  You really are.  An angel.” 

     A few sniggers were stifled around the table.  Helen Mann discreetly asked the waitress to bring coffee for Mitchell.  Seth Dubin patted Mitchell gently on the back and handed him a handkerchief.

     “Do we know anything more about what happened?” asked Lois Lieberman.

     There were murmurs around the table of general denial.  No one had new information to offer.

     Helen Mann spoke.

     “The police said they would let me know when the cause of death is determined.  It certainly seems like it will turn out to be a heart attack or maybe a stroke.”

     “It seems to me,” Paolo Rossetti began,  “that death, especially when it’s so abrupt and unexpected has an abstract quality to it.  It’s as if our brains can’t process the sudden end of existence.  How could someone so alive suddenly be so absent?  What has become of the essence of that individual?  It’s a frightening thing for us humans to contemplate, no?”

     Charlotte Cadell spoke for the first time.

     “But who’s to say where the life force resides?” she said softly.

     “Eh?” Mitchell Fender said.

     “I was just wondering, Dr. Fender,” Charlotte said graciously, “does the human spirit reside in the subatomic particles that make up our bodies and get recycled into the universe when we die?  Or does it reside elsewhere?  Does it even exist?  Is Alan happier now, because his spirit can roam free, unencumbered by conscience or regret?”

     Mitchell Fender blinked uncomprehendingly and reached for his bourbon.

     
For someone who barely knew Professor Sidebottom, Charlotte seems to have rare insight about him,
Edwina thought, studying Charlotte’s profile. 

     “My dear Charlotte!” said Donald Gaylord, “What a dark horse you are!  I would never have dreamed such powers of reflection and perception lurked beneath that implacable lunar surface of yours!”

     “Oh, shut it, Donald,” Mitchell Fender snapped.  “Do you always have to behave like such an effing singularity?”

     “Charlotte is right!” Laura Brenner said.  “What about all those people who report leaving their bodies in a near-death experience, and being able to observe themselves from outside their own bodies?  How do we account for that?”

     “Don’t forget,” Lois Lieberman interjected,  “as Charlotte just pointed out, the very idea of physical reincarnation has some basis in physics.”

     “As physicists,” said Paolo Rossetti, “we know there is more to the universe than meets the eye.  We are dealing every day with forces we know exist, but that we cannot actually see or measure. Who are we to definitively rule out some of these possible scenarios?”

     “Pish tosh!” Helen said dismissively, her lipstick slightly smeared. “There’s no room for mysticism in science.  Some of this palaver is alcohol talking!”

     “I wonder if it’s possible,” said Charlotte Cadell, ignoring Helen, “that as astronomical observation becomes more powerful, and we are able to explore further into the universe––I wonder if scientists will bump into God one day and be able to prove his existence?”

     “Or disprove it,” said Paolo Rossetti.

     Donald Gaylord rolled his eyes theatrically.  Mitchell Fender looked as if he were about to implode.

     Ravi Kapoor jumped in diplomatically.

     “I’m sure we can all agree on one thing,” Ravi said.  “That is, that some things remain unknowable at the present time.  There is room enough––and tolerance enough––for each to have his or her opinion, until such time as these questions are proven one way or the other.”

     “Well spoken, Ravi!” said Lois Lieberman.

     Nearly everyone had ordered dinner by then, and the general conversation broke up into smaller groups around the table, when suddenly everyone’s attention was directed toward Helen Mann. 

     Helen’s eyes were no longer focusing sharply.  Her usually impeccable appearance had started to fray.  Her dark hair, which she wore in a short, smooth style resembling a helmet, had sprung a few loose strands, and her black eyeliner was traveling south.  Slowly, Helen raised her fourth glass of red wine.

     “’Man hath no better thing under the sun,” she blurted out, “’than to eat, and to drink, and be merry’!  And that‘s from the Bible, so drink up, god dammit!  The Department is footing the tab for all this.”

     There were embarrassed murmurs of ‘thank-you, Helen’, and ‘very generous of you, Helen’ around the table.  Only Nedda Cake ventured further.

     “We’re all very grateful for your generous gesture, Helen,” Nedda said. “But this is perhaps not an occasion for merriment, seeing as there is one less among us today.”

     “So true, so true,” Helen continued, speaking to her wine glass, “You know, I knew Alan Sidebottom thirty years ago.  We met at a conference in Brussels.  Alan seemed unhappy, even then, but he was so young, and so beautiful . . . I was young and beautiful, too.”  She glared around the table as if challenging anyone to disagree. 

     “We had a brief affair, couldn’t keep our hands off each other, as a matter of fact.”

     The gathering sat silent. People looked down at their food.  Laura Brenner nudged Edwina under the table.  Helen Mann had always kept her personal life private, and the fact that she had divulged something so intimate while under the influence of alcohol was discomfiting to everyone.  Except perhaps to Donald Gaylord, who relished Helen’s confession with great satisfaction.

       It was Seth Dubin who finally spoke, puncturing the moment.

     “Tomorrow is another day, my friends.  We all need to be fresh and rested in order to do our best work.  What say we call it a night?”

       Vastly relieved, most of the table got up to leave, mumbling ‘good-night’ or ‘see you tomorrow’.  A few straggled behind. Edwina couldn’t get out of the restaurant fast enough, unsettled as she felt by practically everything that had happened since she arrived at Sanborn House that morning.

     She jumped on her bike and started home, happy for the fresh air to clear her head.  When she got to her little house on Canaan Farm Road she washed up and went to bed, and quickly fell into a deep sleep, laden with dreams she could not, would not, remember the next day.

*

     Edwina woke up the next morning with a heavy feeling of guilt over Alan Sidebottom’s death.  She could not shake off the notion that she had been somehow delinquent.  That it was somehow her fault Sidebottom had met with an untimely ending.  After all, she had been with him earlier on the very night he died. 

     She hardly knew what to do with these feelings, so she busied herself in the kitchen making breakfast, fed logs into the wood stove and stoked the fire.  She filled the kettle with water, set it on top of the wood stove, and sat down at the kitchen table in her nightgown.  Outside the window a group of chickadees perched patiently on the branches of an apple tree, while a spirited gang of blue jays monopolized the bird feeder, squawking and carrying on like drunken frat boys.

      Edwina picked at a breakfast of oatmeal, toast with orange marmalade, and tea, while she watched the birds outside the window, all the while thinking about Alan Sidebottom.  Finches, juncos and sparrows joined the chickadees, waiting for their turns at the feeder.  When six crows suddenly swooped onto the scene, the blue jays screamed bloody murder, flapping their wings wildly.  

     
Wasn’t that typical of bullies, to raise the alarm when they become the bullied,
Edwina thought.

     With no classes to teach until the following morning, Edwina felt like taking the day off.  Maybe pack a lunch and go kayaking.  Maybe just sit in the rocker of her cozy kitchen, feeding sweet-smelling wood into the wood-stove and watching the birds.  She gazed across the room at the stack of student papers piled high on the kitchen table.  She leaned her head back in the rocking chair and closed her eyes, certain in the knowledge that she would spend the entire day carefully reading through every one of them, and giving considered thought to the comments she would write in the margins.  Emitting a sighing little moan, she rearranged herself in the wicker rocking chair by the window, and concentrated on the ongoing drama at the birdfeeder for ten more minutes. 

Chapter 5

       Chief of Police Valerie Burnstein was nursing a headache.

       The New Guilford Police Department had not had a suspicious death on its hands in years, and Chief Val, a pleasant-looking, middle-aged woman who had pictures of her grandchildren on her desk, was feeling put out.  She was looking forward to retirement in two years, and in recent times had gotten lulled into the quiet routine of nothing more serious than shoplifters or people writing bad checks.

      Detective William Tenney handed her his report, and sat down across the desk.

     “What the hell kind of retirement joke is this, Will?” she muttered, reading through the report and sipping coffee from an ‘I Heart Grandma’ mug. 

     “No blood at the scene,” she read, “no sign of a struggle, no injuries. No forced entry.  Nothing missing, that we know of.  Who is he?”

     “Alan Anthony Sidebottom. A physics professor from Cambridge, England, teaching at Cushing this semester,” Will said.

     “Jesus, poor guy,” Chief Val said.  “Looks like he’d only been here a few days.  Some welcome.  Have you contacted the family?”