“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
Albert Einstein
Chapter 8:
Individual
Autumn 1952
Father Gareth parked his car in the gravel driveway. He was surprised that the Schist residence looked so modest, considering Mr. Schist’s successful law practice. The one-story shack was located near the coast, right next to a gas station, in an area that looked like a ghost town. Plant life was sparse, the grass was dirty, and scraps of litter rolled down the run-down sidewalk like tumbleweeds.
He cut the lights, got out of the car, and took one last look around, taking a mental photograph as the sunset dropped into the ocean behind him. Though his journeys around the world had taken him to such exotic locations as India, Rome, Moscow, and New Zealand, and though he was an obsessive reader of philosophy, science journals, and even just good old paperback novels, the simple, natural pleasures delighted him the most: the sun, the stars, the smiles of people he helped.
He loved visiting members of his congregation, though he suspected, with some amusement, that many people weren’t sure how to take him. Standing at nearly six foot two, with slender, gangly limbs, enormous hands, and a Merlin-like brown beard that trailed down to his stomach, Gareth resembled either a philosopher or a medieval wizard.
Gareth walked up to the porch and rang the bell. Marilyn Schist answered the door, clad in a polka-dotted summer dress, a white apron, and heels. Add in her tight red curls, light makeup over her pale, freckled skin, and the way her eye shadow emphasized her big eyes, she could have stepped off the set of I Love Lucy. Her chewed fingernails were the only crack in the perfect mold.
She moved to give him a hug but quickly corrected herself and instead offered him a one-armed embrace that more befitted her housewife image. The top of her head only reached the center of Gareth’s chest. “Oh, Father Gareth! I’m so happy you could make it. We really appreciate your help with our… dilemma. Our dear little boy has been acting so strange lately. I don’t know what’s got into him.”
“My pleasure.” Gareth chuckled. “And you look marvelous, dear. I did my best to prepare. Hopefully, my beard isn’t too long today?”
Her brow furrowed in confusion. Gareth shrugged. His bizarre sense of humor was often more for his amusement than anyone else’s.
“Well, come inside,” she said. “We’re having a wonderful dinner tonight.”
Gareth followed her into the immaculate living room, which was furnished with a mathematically precise arrangement of three loveseats around a circular coffee table. Beautiful paintings of sailboats, lighthouses, and rocky beaches adorned the rose-colored walls. The liquor cabinet was filled with a barroom’s assortment of drinks. There was no clutter, no stains, and every surface was polished to a glistening sheen. The contrast to the dirty, run-down outside of the house was disconcerting, like leftovers that had been reheated and served as the main course. Marilyn rushed off to the kitchen and disappeared behind the swinging door, leaving him with her husband, Henry, who was sitting on one of the loveseats. Holding a tumbler of what appeared to be bourbon in one hand, Henry glared down at an enormous stack of paperwork. Clean-shaven, with slicked-back dark hair and a dimple in the center of his chin, Henry had the handsome features of a movie star.
Gareth tipped his hat. “Greetings, sir.”
Henry removed his reading glasses and stood to shake Gareth’s hand. “Hello, Father. How do you do?”
“Quite well. And yourself?”
“Busy.” He gulped the remainder of his drink. “My apologies for dragging you here tonight, Father, but we could use the help.” Henry poured himself another drink. He seemed preoccupied, continually glancing back at the paperwork. “My son, Gabriel… he’s proving to be quite the challenge.”
During the war, Henry had been in the Navy, and he possessed the distinct deep, stony voice that seemed reserved for grizzled military veterans. Though he rarely wore anything but a cold grey business suit, he had a certain roughness to him. He moved like a knife, with hard gestures and no fidgeting, unconsciously revealing the sharp corners of the New York street kid he’d once been. With his sleeves rolled up, his biceps tattoos occasionally peeked out.
“So where is the little fellow?” Gareth asked.
“In his room. He rarely leaves it.”
Marilyn emerged from the kitchen with a platter of cheese and crackers. She sat beside her husband and eyed his drink with a worried expression. She began to chew at a hangnail then quickly lowered her hands into her lap. “We really do appreciate your company, Father,” Marilyn said. “We’re not just inviting you here to sort out our problems.”
Henry looked up at him apologetically and gulped down the rest of his drink. “Ah yes, Father. I’m sorry to be so demanding of your time.”
“No, don’t worry. It’s fine.” Gareth laughed. “Hit me with your worst. Trust me, after some of the confessions I’ve heard, nothing shocks me anymore.”
“We’re at our wit’s end.” Marilyn sighed. “We can’t figure out what to do about poor little Gabe! We hoped you could talk some sense into him, Father.”
Gabe. Though Gareth had only met the boy a handful of times, he knew that Gabriel hated being called Gabe. “Gabriel has always seemed a very bright young man. What is the problem?”
“He doesn’t talk,” Marilyn said. “He’s quiet as a mouse, Father. He doesn’t play games, doesn’t like eating, doesn’t make any friends at school. The poor boy just sits in his messy room all day like an invalid. He’s always doing odd things, reading strange books, writing stuff down, muttering to himself. He never likes going outside—”
“He likes sailing,” Henry interrupted. “He and I go out on the boat every few weeks. He gets a big smile on his face when he’s out there, looking out at the horizon.”
“And that’s about the only time he smiles.” Marilyn scrunched up her nose. “And furthermore, even then, he doesn’t talk. He always wants to be alone. And it’s not like he’s doing schoolwork. I mean, his grades are—”
“Abysmal.” Henry snuck in yet another glass of bourbon. “He doesn’t even do the work.”
Marilyn nodded. “He just does all this crazy stuff instead. Writing all the time, pinning his work on the walls. It’s a bunch of nonsense I can’t even look at without crying in confusion.”
Gareth had always felt an odd connection to the boy. He’d noticed a startlingly mature intensity in Gabriel’s grey eyes, something darker than a shadow, yet glowing at the same time, and he’d often wondered what was going on in that little head. “Well, let’s go see him, eh?”
With noticeable hesitation, the couple got up and led him down the short hall off the living room then stopped at a door on the left. The fidgeting, nervous way the pair tiptoed up to Gabriel’s door made it seem as if they were the children, approaching a feared parent.
“This is it,” Henry whispered. “Now, Father, we have to be calm and quiet as we go in. He doesn’t like being interrupted when he’s working. It throws him off balance.” Henry’s tone held a surprising note of admiration.
“He’s studying?”
“He’s doing something. He doesn’t share much with us.”
Have you ever ASKED him to share it? Gareth nodded. “I’ll be quiet.”
They opened the door and entered the room. Compared to the sparkling, flawless, spit-shined majority of the house, Gabriel’s room was a pigsty. Lord, that boy was messy.
But the mess wasn’t chaotic. While some clothes were on the floor and the bed was unmade, the majority of the clutter was caused by notebooks, graphs, and drawings. The entire room was covered in a landscape of dead trees, used pens, and broken pencils. Almost every inch of the walls was masked by tacked-up sheets of lined paper, index cards, and sticky notes covered from top to bottom in Gabriel’s distinct boyish handwriting.
“Where did he get that?” Gareth whispered, pointing at the enormous green chalkboard hanging on the far wall.
“He asked for it,” Henry replied. “Probably the only Christmas present Gabe has ever asked for.”
Gabriel, a scrawny, freckled eleven-year-old with bright-red hair and clothes just a bit too big for him, stood before the blackboard, scrawling on it with a stubby piece of chalk.
Gareth gasped when he noticed that the entire chalkboard was covered with unbelievably complex-looking equations and scientific notes. There were terms that he could never even hope to understand.
“Gabe!” Marilyn called. “Come say hello!”
Gabriel froze then put down the chalk and turned around to face them. At first, his face was blank, but after several tense seconds, he smiled—a forced smile, Gareth noted. “Oh.” He glanced back at the blackboard then picked at tiny calluses on his fingers.
“Don’t be so rude, Gabe,” Marilyn scolded. “Father Gareth came all this way to see you. The least you can do is say hello to the man.”
“Hi, Father Gareth,” Gabriel said. “I don’t mean to be, um… rude. It’s just… I was studying.”
“It’s okay.” Gareth laughed. “Looks like a complicated project you got there, eh?”
“Yes.” Gabriel raised his head and gave him a hopeful look unlike any expression he had ever seen on a child. He wasn’t the cold, emotionless boy that his parents had so vividly painted a picture of. He was a lonely, desperately passionate boy who struggled to translate his emotions into a language that others could understand.
