Fare Forward Page 23

  I hear the fear in her voice.

  "Well, yes I . . . I'm not sure how I can get there before the end of the week, but I'll find a way to . . ."

  It's freezing on the roof. I had rushed up without my jacket and I start to shake—not only from the temperature but from everything she is saying. And what she is leaving out.

  "Gabriella, are you there? You know I wouldn't ask you if I didn't think," she breathes the words rapidly. "I mean if I didn't know that—"

  "Know what, Maggie?"

  "It was important. That you need to know."

  "Maggie, please tell me what you're talking about. Where is Papa? Does he know about this?"

  I feel two strong arms: Philip. And by the look on his face I know he has heard my side of the conversation.

  "No! Gabriella, he doesn't know anything. Please, if you speak to him, don't say anything. I'm so sorry to have to call you about this." Maggie is practically sobbing.

  "Listen to me, I'm going to get there as soon as I can. I just need to figure out how."

  Philip turns me to face him. He understands what is going on. "I'll take you there, right after our exams. Then I can bring you back to Kennedy Airport."

  I look at him and see the care in his eyes, the concern.

  "Okay, Maggie." I nod to Philip. "We'll be there as soon as we can."

  "Good, that's good. Just don't say anything about this to anyone. Especially your grandfather."

  "I won't."

  "Fine then. I'll be waiting for you."

  * * *

  51

  * * *

  “YOU KNOW," I SAY, my head pressed flat against the seat as Philip accelerates his car into the night, "there is a speed limit in this country."

  The BMW is flying up Route 128 toward Gloucester. We have made the trip in record time from New York—just over three hours.

  "It's the middle of the night, Gabriella, even your cops are sleeping. Close your eyes. We'll be there soon, love. You know how emotional Maggie is, always worrying about everything. I'm sure there's a simple explanation."

  "I don't know; I hope you're right."

  I look out the window at the moonlight on the thin layer of snow. It is surreal—winter has turned the lush green world that I love into a frozen landscape. Put it to sleep. It is so quiet and beautiful even without the radiance of the sunlight. Maybe this trip was a good thing. A short break from the city after the harrowing end of the semester and everything ahead.

  "Gabriella?" He concentrates on the road and doesn't turn to look at me. "Are you sleeping?"

  "If I was, I'm not anymore."

  "I was just thinking about something."

  "What is it?"

  "Benjamin."

  "Yes, Benjamin." My eyes are closed as I smile and repeat his name.

  "If he really travels from another place, then there's a way he gets here and goes back, right?"

  "Go on."

  "And the laws of physics—if they are different there, you know, time and all that, then the theory says that he is subject to those laws right?"

  "I suppose."

  "I mean think about it. I know that the science talks about tunnels or black holes but what the hell does it all really mean? How does it really work?

  "I have no idea, Philip." I open my eyes.

  "I think I do. That's why he can't stay here, or why he can only stay for short periods of time. That's why he keeps disappearing!"

  I look at him. "What?"

  "That's it. The reason! He can only spend a certain amount of time here before he becomes subject to the laws of our universe. Maybe that's why he's two hundred years old and still looks so young."

  "Philip, please."

  "But, I wonder, Gabriella, why he's really here?"

  I turn away from him, from the conversation, and from everything I have seen in the premonitions I've had about my grandfather. "I don't know."

  "Well, we're going to find out aren't we?"

  "Along with the rest of the world," I mutter under my breath.

  "Did you ever consider that there may be more than one answer?"

  "Philip, more than one answer?"

  His hands are off the steering wheel, helping to make his point. "I mean, maybe it's a metaphor for something else, a bigger idea, more than simply a scientific explanation."

  "Like?"

  "Like your grandmother's book—on mysticism."

  "What?"

  "Think about the things in there, what they say about time."

  The small book is in my bag next to my feet.

  "I have it here," I say.

  He smiles. "Of course you do."

  I reach down and open the book and look for her notes. The paragraphs that have been underlined, circled. The many thoughts in the margins, things she wanted to remember and draw attention to.

  "Turn the light on, Gabriella, and read it to me."

  I take a deep breath.

  Concerning the nature of time, Kabbalah finds evidence in the most recent scientific findings. Physicists tell us that time cannot be separated from space, nor space from time. The speed of a clock is faster when flying in one direction around the earth than it is when flying in the other. Time stands still at the edge of a black hole. . . it comes to a dead stop at the speed of light.

  I look up at him. "It's everything Einstein said."

  We both sit quietly as we absorb the words I have read.

  "Gabriella."

  "What is it?"

  "I have to tell you something I've been thinking about. Something your grandfather told me when we were in Switzerland with him a few years ago."

  "What did he say?"

  "That he was going to choose science, not the mystical tradition you have inherited. What your parents had devoted their lives to."

  His voice softens as he mentions my parents.

  "I see."

  "He said that the Kabbalists—they were always considered the scientists. And now he wants to find the scientific data to prove what he already knows, what he has always known is true!"

  "He told you that?"

  "Think about it. Even if Darwin is right and everything evolved randomly, and a series of insane chance events had to occur to allow everything to happen in the correct sequence so that cells could emerge from the primordial soup, then—"

  "Philip, slow down."

  "Then there was still that moment, Gabriella! The moment when the genetic code was created, the brilliance of each cell to understand that code. There is no way—no way all that happened by chance. Your grandfather knows it, Einstein knew it, and others, too."

  I read the last sentence my grandmother wrote in the book I hold:

  Science, in its quest to reveal the underlying unity within nature, constantly finds itself returning to the origins of the universe, to the beginning of time. Science and Kabbalah both seem to agree that the idea of time adhering to some vast, universal rhythm is a complete fallacy.

  "Einstein again, Gabriella."

  As I finish reading the words, I realize that we have arrived at the house. The car turns down the long driveway toward the sea. I am overwhelmed by what I have just read. The description of what I know and what I have experienced.

  "Stop, please. I need to get out!"

  I burst out of the car and welcome the shock of cold on my skin. I pull the air into my lungs as if I had just emerged from the depths of the sea. I need to get away from the words, away from what I know to be true. That my parents and my grandmother are all still very much with me, close, watching and communicating and sending messages from another place and time. Confirming that my life was beginning to unfold in the way it was always meant to. The force and power of what I thought were random events suddenly make sense. And they all connect back to Benjamin.

  "The beginning is the end and the end is the beginning," I whisper under my breath.

  "What did you say?"

  "It's Four Quartets, the poem." My words are barely audible.
<
br />   "There it is again. The idea, I mean, about time."

  "Philip, you remember that night at Columbia, when my grandfather spoke? When you saw us on the terrace of the restaurant?"

  "I will never forget that night, you and your grandfather arguing. The way you stormed down the stairs."

  "It was one of the worst nights of my life. Except for one thing. I was talking to a colleague of my grandfather's. A brilliant woman I've known for many years."

  "Dr. Potter. I know who she is, Gabriella."

  "She said something to me then that I couldn't understand. Not until now, that is."

  He leads me toward the house, out of the rain, and onto the porch. As we sit quietly for a few minutes in the rocking chairs that overlook the sea, the motion of the drive from New York slips away and the stillness enters.

  "Philip?"

  He looks out at the twin lighthouses off the coast, beacons that guide so many out to sea and back home. "It's so beautiful here, Gabriella. Timeless."

  "I asked Dr. Potter to explain certain things about my grandfather's research, about the different theories. What they mean and how it would work. The last thing she said to me was completely, well, unscientific."

  "Unscientific?"

  "She said that it all depends on what you want to believe and what you're looking for."

  Philip leans his head back onto the weathered rocking chair and exhales slowly. He folds his arms across his chest and closes his eyes. "Exactly, Gabriella. That's what I mean. That's exactly what I mean."

  * * *

  52

  * * *

  JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH!"

  It's Maggie.

  She lapses into her thick Gaelic accent at the shock of Philip and me sleeping in the living room. She runs over and throws her arms around me as she starts to kiss the top of my head.

  "When did you get here? I thought I heard the alarm being turned off last night, but I can't believe this."

  I'm stretched out on the sofa where I collapsed the night before and I try to lift my head off the pillow to look down at Philip. All you can see are his feet sticking out from the blanket. Teddy, my golden retriever, lies protectively across my body, and I can't move.

  "Maggie," I groan, "what time is it?"

  "Oh, I can't believe this whole thing. I mean, you said you were coming, but I didn't realize it would be in the middle of the night. I've been so exhausted lately, recovering from my jet lag and dealing with the house, your grandfather, and everything that is happening of course." She wrings her hands again, a sure sign that she's anxious about something. "You should have called, my pet."

  "Please, slow down. I didn't want to wake you. It was so late."

  "Gabriella." It's Philip's groggy voice, very low as he draws out my name in a yawn.

  Teddy jumps up and starts to lick him, pulling the blanket away so he can reach Philip's face.

  "Oh, Philip." Maggie notices him on the floor. "Hello, dear—nice to see you again." She is all business.

  Philip grunts in response.

  "I'm going to make breakfast," Maggie says.

  This is not a question, whatever we would have said would have been irrelevant.

  "Come on." I pull the blanket off of him and throw it over the back of the sofa. "Get up! We need to find out what's going on."

  In the kitchen, Maggie moves quickly, and soon the breakfast table is filled with a feast of my favorite foods.

  "Coffee." Philip points to the espresso maker, the only word he seems able to speak.

  Maggie walks over to help us. "You look good, my pet." Her eyes scan me suspiciously. "Tired—but good." She shakes her head. "As I've always said. Architorture." She seems relatively satisfied that I have survived three months in New York.

  "You sounded so worried when you called." I reach across the table to her. "Please tell me what's going on?"

  "It's the library, your grandfather's office."

  "What do you mean?"

  I need to see what Maggie is talking about, to confirm for myself the suspicion I feel that the preparations he's made for this trip are somehow very different. I'm no longer interested in the food and push away from the table to walk down the hall in the direction of the library. Philip and Maggie both jump up to follow me. Maggie talks nonstop, filling the tension with her nervous chatter. "It will be good to take a nice trip, spend some time there with him, I mean. Just the two of you."

  "Uh huh."

  "Really, sweetheart, I know how hard you've been working since you started school and everything else, I mean everything that's happened." I look over at her and remember that she knows. Everything.

  "Yes."

  I take long purposeful strides, and she takes two steps for every one of mine. Philip tries to keep up but he can't seem to take his eyes off of the paintings that I walk quickly by without a second glance. His eyes are practically popping out of his head at the changes in my grandparent's art collection.

  "Your grandfather." Maggie tries to catch her breath and keep pace with me down the long skylit gallery. "He is really looking forward to this trip with you." She pulls her sweater over her shoulders as she shakes off a chill. "But I have to tell you, he was meticulous about preparing everything before he left."

  I stop suddenly. "What do you mean?"

  "It's probably nothing, honey, but he spent hours organizing his files and papers. He went down to the bank several times and made sure everything was in order. I know he met with Mr. Sack, his attorney." She takes her handkerchief out of her pocket and dabs her eyes.

  "And?"

  "Well, it's just that he hasn't seen him in years, Gabriella. Why now?" She waves her hands in the air in front of her as if she is pushing away her thought. "He's usually quite organized when he goes away, but this time it feels different. I have never seen his library like this, I don't know what came over him, really."

  I feel goosebumps on my skin. The information she has just shared with me shakes me to the core.

  Philip puts his hand on my back. "Come on, Gabriella, let's see what Maggie's talking about."

  We continue to his library and turn the corner. I stand in the doorway and cannot move. I understand immediately what Maggie means.

  The library has never looked like this. Empty—organized, with no trace of his recent presence. The usual disarray of papers, evidence of his rich mind pursuing many ideas at once, is absent. Instead, the desk is wiped clean, nothing but the gleam from the polished wood reflecting back the photograph of him with my grandmother. The books are all put carefully away on the shelves, filed in alphabetical order, the usual backlog of mail and personal items—missing.

  "See what I mean, Gabriella?" she says.

  "Where is everything? His papers, computers, all of his . . ." I can barely finish my sentence. "His work?" I turn to look at Maggie, then at Philip, and wonder whether they can hear my pounding heart, sense my fear. "When, I mean, who did this?"

  I am unable to believe that this is the work of my grandfather. I need information to try to understand the mystery of this completely uncharacteristic behavior.

  "Well," Maggie begins and tries to steady her voice. "I was away for a few days, you remember don't you? I went to visit my sister in Ireland. Anyway, he was here—in the house, he just insisted I go. I think he had a visitor then."

  I feel all the blood rushing to my head as I sit down in his chair.

  "What?"

  "I mean, it made me feel better to know that he wasn't alone. You know I hate to leave him when he's here in Gloucester, but I had no choice. Anyway, I came back, and he had already left for the Far East. I found everything in the house as it usually is—except for this." She is clearly frightened.

  "Yes." I look around the room one more time then back into her eyes. "Now I understand."

  In that moment, I realize that Maggie and I are two people who love Sydney Vogel very much, our futures, in different ways, inextricably linked to his.

  * * *
r />   53

  * * *

  THERE IS NOTHING else to say. Nothing to do at the beach house except worry and wonder what is going on. Why nothing about my life seems familiar anymore. So Philip and I head back to New York for my flight to Tel Aviv.

  "Gabriella?" Philip's voice is concerned. "Maybe I should come with you. Your grandfather would like that I'm sure. Right?"

  "That's ridiculous. Everything is fine; it's all going to be just fine."

  I am going to make it that way. I need to see my grandfather, to reassure myself that he is well and to share the luxury of the many hours alone with him on the flight. This would be a rare opportunity to be uninterrupted—no appointments or cell phones. I couldn't wait to have him all to myself, there was so much we needed to talk about.

  "Are you listening?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "When I fly home to London, I can easily continue on to Tel Aviv. I've talked to my parents about it, and they agree I should go with you. They also said your grandfather is everywhere." His voice drops down. "Front page news."

  I feel sick.

  "No, Philip, that's not necessary." I reach out for his hand. "But, I've been meaning to tell you something for a while. Everything you have done for me, Philip, it's all too much—more than I deserve. I'm going to be a better friend to you in the future. I promise."

  "You are an amazing friend," Philip says.

  "No, I'm not."

  "You've given me so much, Gabriella, taught me."

  "What could I possibly—"

  "To really see people, and things, in a new way, the many possibilities. Things I could never have imagined."

  "Really?"

  "Yes, I thought I had it all figured out. That I had all the answers, but now I see how wrong I was."

  "You do, you know so much. You are so good at everything—music, architecture."

  "No, it's okay, Gabriella. I like it better this way."