Page 9 of The Paradox Club

“Perhaps she is a Tess,” Marie had said, and the sound of the name had seemed to soothe the child. She fell asleep five minutes later and her parents had called her Tess ever since.

The morning that Tess boarded a bus a few blocks from the University of Illinois campus, bound for Aunt Vivian, Professor Harbottle herself sat before a pile of student papers thinking that Richard Pollard had got it right. Though Richard was a generation older than Vivian and Harry, retirement—especially the retirement Richard had described in his most recent letter—had an appeal that could not be found in one more essay on the application of quantum theory.

She missed Richard. He had moved to New York after the fire and had kept his distance for safety reasons, but they had chatted on the phone every couple of months, Richard asking about Tess and about the stories. Vivian couldn’t remember a story after she told it the first time. She had started writing them down instead of speaking them aloud when Tess left for college, and this meant she could share them with Richard when he called. But since his move to Florida, Richard had stopped calling, preferring to write long, rambling letters full of dull accounts of life at the Waves. She thought about calling him and sharing the latest story. He might be amused, if nothing else.

The first story she had ever written in her journal she was only able to record because Tess had repeated it back to her a few days after Vivian told it. Tess called it “the Mother Teresa Sketch.” It had been the first of Vivian’s stories that seemed to disturb Tess. At sixteen, Tess had reached the age when stories were no longer just stories, and Vivian’s insistence that she had really done the things in her stories gave Tess genuine concern. Maybe Vivian should have told Tess then—told her where the stories came from and why they were so real to her. But she hadn’t, she just kept telling Tess the stories whenever they came. Sometimes she told two stories in as many days; other times she’d go months without a new one. Often, the stories comforted Tess; sometimes they worried her. But Vivian had to get the stories out. She tried not telling Tess a story once and within two days she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, and felt like her brain was on fire. The stories demanded to be told.

She pushed the stack of ungraded papers aside and opened the bottom left drawer of Harry Maxwell’s desk, taking out a battered leather-bound journal. It took her only a moment to find the Mother Teresa story, and as she read it over the whole scene with Tess came tumbling back to her.

“Did I ever tell you that I wrote ‘the Mother Teresa Sketch’?”

“No, Aunt Vivian. What’s ‘the Mother Teresa Sketch’?”

“You never saw it? It was famous. Or at least infamous. I suppose the network buried it—kept it off that internet, you know. They can do those things.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I got hired as a writer on a late-night comedy show. My big break, or so I thought. It was my first week and the host was that…oh, what was her name? She was that teenage pop star who dressed like a cheap prostitute.”

“Isn’t that all of them?”

“Something like Melody Barely Pubescent. Anyway, I wrote this sketch, my very first piece to make it onto the show, where she played Mother Teresa calling a bingo game at the local Catholic church. She had funny expressions and phrases for each combination of letter and number. They start out innocently enough. Things like ‘B–four. Before I go on to the next number…’ or ‘G–twenty-two. Gee, twenty-two was a good year, wasn’t it?’ But then gradually her little asides become less and less appropriate for a Roman Catholic fellowship hall. First, it’s ‘B–thirty-two. Hey, that’s my cup size.’ And then ‘I–sixty-nine, well, actually, I don’t because I’m a nun.’ When she draws the last number, she starts to speak, and all the TV audience can hear is the censor’s bleep being held down while they see her lips move and then we cut to the dumbstruck looks on the faces of the little old Catholic ladies. Then, after a long awkward silence, the oldest, most wrinkled lady jumps up with a big smile on her face and shouts, ‘Bingo!’ And that’s the whole sketch.

“It killed in rehearsal, and Melody, or whatever her name was, actually went on this profanity-laced rant under the bleep, and the studio audience could hear her, so they were laughing hysterically. But during the live show something went wrong with the bleeper and Melody, who had done a couple of lines of coke since dress rehearsal, upped the wattage on her tirade and left even the studio audience in silent shock, to say nothing of every home in America. Well, the complaints started pouring in—viewers, sponsors, network brass, and of course the Catholic Church. They couldn’t have been angrier if she had torn up a picture of the pope on live television. For Melody, the FCC fine was a pittance—fifty thousand dollars or something. She was a gazillionaire already, so it meant nothing to her. And she was big enough to withstand the fallout—a few boycotts, some radio stations stopped playing her music for a while. But I was a nobody. So, two weeks after being hired I was back on Fifty-Second Street with a two-hundred-dollar severance check in my pocket and no prospects. That’s when I quit writing. I can’t believe you’ve never heard of that sketch.”

“I know I’ve led a sheltered life, Vivian. But I’ll tell you this: When you have as much trouble sleeping as I do, you watch a lot of late-night television. I’ve watched it live and in reruns and on YouTube. But I’ve never seen a sketch about Mother Teresa. I’ve never even heard of a sketch about Mother Teresa.”

“You think I’m remembering wrong?”

“I think it was a great story, Aunt Vivian, but I worry that you think it was more than that. Maybe you should see…someone.”

“What do you mean someone?”

“Like a doctor. I mean it could be Alzheimer’s or something.”

“I don’t need a doctor,” said Vivian, pulling Tess close. “All I need is you.”

Vivian turned to the next page in her diary and watched as a slip of paper fluttered to her desk. The slip of paper that had been weighing on her mind more and more lately. The paper on which Harry had written two dates. And the second one, October 14, 2015, was only eight days away.

HEADLIGHTS IN THE LAKE

Tess stared out the window of the bus at the billboards slipping by. With the index and middle fingers of her right hand, she tapped out SOS in Morse code on the arm of her seat over and over. One hundred times. Then counted to fifty. Then one hundred times again. And so on. It only took a small part of her brain to keep up the tapping, so her mind wandered to Aunt Vivian. Tess couldn’t decide if she was excited or worried or embarrassed about taking refuge at Vivian’s house. She couldn’t even muster the energy to feel ambivalent. She didn’t feel anything. But that lack of emotion gave her the chance to replay memories of Vivian, watching them like an in-flight movie. And that was how, watching herself picking blueberries with Aunt Vivian, she had stumbled into the memory of the first of those three nights on Maxwell’s Island that haunted her still. Nights whose sharpness of detail had never faded.

It had started as a perfect day on the lake. Vivian and Marie had cooked breakfast, and when Tess came into the kitchen the smell of the bacon and the sound of the two women laughing together cocooned her in comfort. They’d all sat outside to eat, and Vivian and Marie continued their joking—telling funny stories about things Harry had done.

“That time he fell in the lake trying to dock the canoe,” said Marie.

“When he tried to split firewood and got the axe caught in the log,” said Vivian, and they both exploded in laughter until Tess joined in.

“All right,” Harry said with a smile. “I could tell some stories on you two, you know.”

“But you won’t because you love us,” said Marie, leaning over to kiss her husband on the cheek and wipe a smudge of syrup from his face. They ate for a few minutes in happy silence. The bluebirds sang and a kingfisher perched on a dead tree limb that overhung the lake. The cloudless sky promised excellent starwatching come nightfall, but until then the day stretched before them without cares or responsibilities—or so it seemed to eleven-year-old Tess.

Harry took her fishing after breakfast, paddling the canoe into a secluded cove on the north shore of the lake. It was Harry’s special spot, and this was the first time he had ever brought Tess along when fishing there. It had buoyed her spirits to be taken into Harry’s confidence in this way. Tess had caught a smallmouth bass, which she had thrown back, and a rainbow trout, which, along with two other trout caught by Harry, Marie pan-fried for lunch, letting Tess hold the pan and slide the sizzling fish onto a plate.

“I think it’s time I started teaching you to cook,” said Marie, and Tess felt warmth suffuse her body. Being invited into Marie’s kitchen was as special as being invited to Harry’s secret cove.

In the afternoon, Harry read in the hammock while Vivian and Marie played cards on the deck, their laughs tinkling across the lawn all the way to where Tess sat on the dock reading The Hobbit. Marie and Vivian often laughed together, but especially that day, Tess recalled. She had wondered if they were telling more silly stories about Harry. Tess occasionally dipped her toes into the frigid waters. Even though it was already mid-July, it had been an exceptionally long winter, and the lake wouldn’t be warm enough for swimming for at least another week.