30. This Isn’t About Adoption - Lords of Serendipity

Allard and Patricia flew to Rome in June. Their first day in the city, they went to Piazza Navona and had carbonara and excellent table wine, gelato and coffee. Patricia chose every place, with Allard nodding at her detailed rationale for each. And she nodded back. They were going through the motions of celebrating, and not because of jet lag. They were each thinking only about that evening when, at Allard’s doing, they would attend an event where a Vatican journalist was interviewing an internationally renowned astronomer. Allard had emailed Patricia the information while they were in line at immigration control, letting her know she was welcome to join him, or not. Neither had mentioned it yet.

After lunch, feeling drowsy and hot and tired from all the eating and walking, they returned to their hotel to lie down for the afternoon. In the dark hallway, flanked on either side by cleaners in hard fabric dresses pushing trolleys—one a bony, miserable-faced old Italian woman who looked anywhere from fifty to one hundred years old, the other a large, smirking young blonde in cherry-red lipstick—Patricia lingered.

This is for the best, she said.

You think so? said Allard.

She paused. His tone was as dangerously open-ended as the this in her sentence.

He had been so carefree, even jokey, that night in the apartment when they had celebrated Martin’s coming down in the world. But now that they were in Italy and Allard wanted them to go see him, he was his usual self, only more stolid, more sullen. This was no great surprise to Patricia. Her son had decided to meet his father for the first time, and he was doing so in a few hours. And he was bringing her with him. But why? Was that really for the best?

Yes, I think a siesta’s for the best, Allard. It’s a long-standing tradition in southern Europe, and with good reason, considering the climate and cuisine.

Allard shrugged and went into his room. He was annoyed. He wanted his mother to say what she obviously wanted to say, whatever it was. She owed him that much, didn’t she? He’d flown her to Italy and put her up in a fine hotel. He would let her take him around to museums and all the best places for the food she had researched in the days leading up to the trip. And he would pay for all of it, which he easily could. He didn’t need his money for anything else now. But she could at least say what she thought about the evening plan. Not that it would change his mind.

It was time to meet his father.

He was in as strong a position as he ever would be, compared to now-research-chair-less Martin. With all of his publications and awards, was he an actual, as in a technical, millionaire, like Allard was? Allard doubted this. And so he was ready, at last, to meet him, to let his father see what Allard had become, with no credit to him.

And he wasn’t doing it in secret. He was doing it in public, in full view of whoever attended the event. The talk was at 7 p.m. He had four hours to himself. Allard took out a SpaceX T-shirt to wear to the event and lay down on his hotel bed, looking up at thick timber rafters. He held his phone in one hand and ran the other over the damp barrel drum of his body, considering a variety of answers to the question he was going to ask his father.

Soon after returning to her room, Patricia had felt sweaty but couldn’t figure out the air-conditioning. Could jet lag give you midday night sweats? Was evolution that needlessly cruel to a woman in her mid-fifties? What an awful way to spend a day in Rome, reading websites about menopause symptoms. And she couldn’t even do that because the Wi-Fi information seemed wrong and she didn’t want to ask Allard for help. She was hopeful he would sleep through to the next morning. She went down to the lobby, ordered an espresso, sat on the corner of a long red couch, and began to read from her beautifully beaten-up edition of H. V. Morton’s A Traveller in Rome, a cerebral and chatty midcentury Englishman’s guide to the Eternal City.

One of Morton’s first lessons, on arriving, was to accept the inevitable disappointment of his overwrought expectations, and then find the real Rome. The boutique hotel Allard had chosen was helpful, in this regard. The place looked like a Roman postcard: narrow and tall, with black-framed windows opening to thick white marble ledges surrounded by a vine-covered mess of stonework from various eras. It was ramshackle glorious, like the city itself.

Tired but not sleepy, book in hand but not reading, Patricia didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want them to be here. The idea had always been that they would celebrate Allard’s doctorate in Greece—the Mount Hera College graduate showing her son the real Athens, the birthplace of the university. But, she sensed, Allard had likely dropped out of his PhD program and not told her, and he had wanted to go to Rome instead of Athens. Not wanting to ask why, she had been making the best of it, with him and for him, starting with the celebratory dinner at the apartment, and then all of the reading and discussion proper to the start of a grand tour of the Eternal City, together. And now they were going to meet a gutless man. A gutless hypocrite of a man who’d blamed priests for why he couldn’t help Patricia, when she’d told him she was pregnant, and was now publicly chatting about religion and science in Catholic churches, of all places. Did he blame the priests for that, too?

She should have asked Allard why he wanted to meet Martin. But she hadn’t. To ask a question like that was to have to live with the answer, the consequences.

Because, was it possible that his wanting to see Martin at last had nothing to do with Martin and everything to do with her? With how she had raised him to believe in the world of the university, to believe that his proper place was in the university, when she had been denied her own proper place in it because of him? Meaning Martin. But also, Allard wasn’t stupid. Because of him, too. Everything she’d become in life, including nearly a PhD and definitely a single mother, was thanks to the university. Research-chaired or not, Ivy League–tenured Martin was a god of the university world. Patricia wasn’t. She was a nonfaculty academic support worker who had taken early retirement. A frail mortal. Maybe—and this was what really scared her—she was afraid that Allard would meet Martin and then look back at Patricia and, in his terrifyingly straightforward way, choose god.

And seeing Patricia for the first time in twenty-eight years, what would Martin think?

Suddenly, infuriatedly, Patricia lowered her N95 and searched for a mirror. Why was she worrying about this? She snapped the book shut and went back upstairs in the small, gilded glass elevator whose gorgeous details and old-world charm she now hated. She hated all of this. She hated what was coming next. She walked past her room, to Allard’s. Maybe she could persuade him not to attend Martin’s talk. She tapped on his door. He didn’t answer. She tapped louder and texted him. No answer.

She went to her room, washed her face without looking in the mirror, came out of the bathroom, and cursed the air-conditioning. She levered open the large, cobwebbed window that overlooked the shuttered windows of two buildings pressed in at strange angles behind theirs. She lay down and did not fall asleep but came as close as she ever had to praying, that they would not wake before morning.

Martin was enthroned in a deep wooden chair just before the steps leading up to the altar of a magnificent church in the heart of the old city. Across from him was a Jesuit priest who edited a Vatican newspaper. The priest wore bright red Coke-bottle glasses and a black turtleneck, black pants, and black trainers. This was the last of the religion and science talks that Martin had agreed to give during his sabbatical. No prepared remarks were necessary this time, as Martin was to be interviewed by an Italian journalist-priest. He had also agreed to go to dinner afterward with the journalist, a few other Jesuits, and a group of donors from California, all of whom were sitting in the front row of the church. Knowing they were there, knowing they would all want to sit beside him at the dinner if he gave a good show, gave Martin a vaguely sexual feeling. But he didn’t need it. He had the Chinese behind him now, and Jack in place to go open the new data institute in Sri Lanka.

Professor, are you familiar with the famous Leibniz-Clarke letters? asked the Jesuit journalist.

I’m not.

May I?

Please.

Well, they were letters exchanged between the great German mathematician and theorist and an important early disciple of Sir Isaac Newton’s, about physics and nature, about contingency and necessity, and, if you will, about religion and science. They come to mind because it seems to me that your engaging in discussions with our community at the Vatican Observatory this past year extends this tradition of dialogue into the twenty-first century. What do you say to that?

That my agreeing with you is a necessity if I want to keep working at the Vatican Observatory.

Everyone in the church laughed except Patricia and Allard, who were sitting near the back.

Very good, very good, and please know, Professor, that there is no contingency whatsoever to your continued time with us. Now, for my next question, can you tell me what you think of the following formulation?

Of course.

Can we believe in God . . . and believe in science?

Why bother, when you don’t need to?

That’s a very provocative thing to say!

No. It is a statement of fact, said Martin.

Well facts can be very provocative things these days, especially in your country, no?

Martin shrugged.

The interviewer waited, but Martin said nothing more.

Okay. If you would, please, expand upon your meanings.

You don’t need to believe in God, and you don’t need to believe in science, for either God or science to be real, said Martin.

Yes, yes, very good, said the interviewer. Of course you are correct. We know first causes from their infinite and multiplying effects, and what better place in all of Rome can we see that than here, in the Gesù, the great and humble mother church of the Society of Jesus. And while no one can of course know for certain, I am sure that if the Holy Father himself were here, he would agree with you. I want to add, by the way, that I told him about our talk, and he was very pleased to know we are building these bridges between religion and science. But, just to challenge you if I may be so bold, what’s the proof of this reality you describe, if you don’t believe in God or believe in science?

Martin shrugged again. We look around, whether with the Very Large Telescope or with our eyes.

And, Professor, tell us, what do we see?

Martin smiled at the packed church.

Well, based on my years of research, I could say we see exploding stars. And looking ahead to my next major project, I could say that we see the creation of black holes.

Apologies, but how can we see such a thing? Aren’t black holes the collapsing of all light?

Yes, correct. What we can see, actually, is what’s called the afterglow of neutron stars colliding. So much energy is released in the collision that the space around the new black hole is radiated with light. The darkness glows.

The darkness glows. The darkness glows. That’s very theological, actually.

I see why you think so.

So then, to use your own words, whether it’s with telescopes and astronomical research or with our God-given eyes, Professor, that’s the proof of reality?

Martin gestured at the vaulted ceiling painted with angels and stars. He waited for everyone to follow his hand. He smiled again.

Be religious or be a scientist. It doesn’t matter. Either way, when you look up, you see the heavens.

The audience began clapping, and they were loud enough that no one heard Patricia’s stream of muttered invectives except Allard, who didn’t care that his mother was so offended that Martin was being adored by the crowd. A church full of Italian dream-catchers were impressed by his father sucking up to some rando priest with a pun about the heavens? That just confirmed things for him.

Allard, said Patricia.

What?

Do you want to leave?

He didn’t answer.

We can leave, right now.

No.

Are you sure?

Someone shushed her. Silenced, she studied her son—his eyes were watering and his fists were balled and he was rocking a little, his lips pressed together, breathing through his nose, preparing himself.

The interview ended. Allard got up. Looking like a drunk man trying to act sober, he walked to the front of the church. Martin was chatting with a group of Jesuits and the cognac-colored couples from California, the men in bronze-buttoned navy blazers and the women in strands of pearls that matched their thick, pearl-colored hair. Patricia got up and exhaled. She touched her chest. For how long had she been holding her breath? She sat back down and watched her son meet his father.

Do you know who I am?

I’m not accepting new graduate students, sorry. But thank you for coming to my talk.

I’m not a graduate student.

Okay. So? I’m sorry, there are a lot of other people waiting to speak with me. So? Do you have an offprint or journal you want me to sign?

Do you know who I am?

Are you all right, young man?

Do you really not know who I am?

No. Should I?

Allard turned away. Patricia saw his face. It looked like burning, like a scorched carpet. But then it became blank, a stone. A hard and sharp stone.

I have made more than two million dollars with my own business.

And what’s the business?

Educational technology.

Martin checked his watch.

Well, congratulations. But I don’t actually teach, so if you’re looking for me to adopt your technology or something, I can’t help you.

Adopt? No. This isn’t about adoption.

Then what is it about? Do you want to support my work with a donation?

No!

People turned and looked. The Jesuit journalist approached.

Apologies, Professor. There are many other people waiting to speak with you.

Martin waved him away.

He beckoned Allard closer. Allard stopped swaying. He hesitated. What if his father was going to hug him? He obeyed.

I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but whatever it is, it’s not working. People like me waste too much time dealing with people like you. People trying to graft off what I’ve grown, myself.

Allard stared at him. He was biting his bottom lip like he wanted to tear it off and spit it in his father’s face.

Don’t do this again, or you’ll be sorry, whatever this is.

Patricia approached slowly and stood near Martin and Allard. “Whatever this is,” you say? Don’t you mean “What is this?” You’ve certainly said that before.

And who are you? said Martin. But then he looked more closely at her and then Allard. He began nodding, his eyes glassy, then squeezed them shut to beat back whatever this feeling was, because it was a wrong feeling, an unnecessary feeling. It was noise. And he looked for signals. And when he couldn’t find them, he created them. He opened his eyes and yes, now things were right. His whole self was suddenly burning with fury at the bad decision he’d made twenty-eight years ago, because of the stupid priests.

So this is what I get for helping you, after all these years?

You never helped me. And you’ve done nothing to help him, said Patricia.

Actually you’re right, said Martin. He looked at Allard, who was still as a stone, a stone that was cracking, that was being crushed in place.

I am truly sorry, Martin said to Patricia. I am truly, truly sorry . . . that I didn’t drive you to the clinic that morning. He turned to Allard. Which is what your mother desperately wanted me to do.

Patricia slapped him and took her son and left.