The Altruists Read online

  * * *

  —

  Senior year, Ethan wandered the botanical gardens. He watched his feet in the footlights. All throughout the green were students in khakis and sleeveless dresses. Pinkies poked out from the stems of champagne glasses. Kids whom Ethan had seen expelling Chinese takeout on the sidewalk comported themselves like gentlemen and ladies. A girl skipped past him, barefoot and giggling. Rival a capella groups harmonized with each other. There was an air of forgiveness across the lawn, the smell of roses and tulips and of no hard feelings.

  He was eager to graduate and get to New York. He had dragged himself to the gala out of some misplaced hope that now, in the final week of college, he would find his people. That they would reveal themselves at last, and say: We’ve been waiting for you. But lapping the gardens he felt only shame and confusion, unable to comprehend how kids less attractive, less intelligent, and less talented than he had formed such close bonds with one another in a quick four years. He was surrounded by pairs and groups. The first bus back to campus wasn’t leaving for another hour, and Ethan was out of drink tickets.

  He rounded a corner. A young man sat on a bench by the reflecting pool, hunched, his head between his knees. He looked like he was sleeping, or possibly ill. The young man raised his head to watch a lilac-colored bubble of glass, pinched at the top like a teardrop, float across the surface of the water.

  Ethan froze. He hadn’t been this close to Charlie in two years. He’d moved off campus after Wrighton. Whenever he saw Charlie on the quad, Ethan ducked behind a building, as he did with Arthur. He feared for his life, but the more potent fear was that Charlie would hurt him again. What was stopping him from luring Ethan in and then disappearing? Certainly not Ethan, who wanted nothing more than to be lured. But Charlie didn’t look so menacing, not now. His hair was mussed. He wore a white button-down shirt tucked into chinos with no belt. Ethan walked tentatively toward him.

  “My man,” Charlie slurred, pointing at Ethan. “That’s my man right there.”

  Ethan sat beside him. He tried to summon anger at the boy who had abandoned him, but the sight of Charlie, his cheeks full and green, brought out the caretaker in him.

  “You okay?” he asked, in a voice that belonged to his mother. “Can I get you something?”

  “I know you, man.”

  “And I know you.”

  “No,” said Charlie. “I mean I know you.” He burped into the crook of his elbow.

  “Are you sure I can’t get you anything? Some water?”

  Charlie shook his head.

  “Okay. I’m just going to sit here, then.”

  A few stray students milled about the pool. Faint laughter carried through the purple air. Behind him, three bronze angels blowing horns were perched on tall stone columns.

  “It’s over,” Charlie said suddenly. “It’s all over.”

  “College?”

  “College . . . man, fuck college.” His eyes were half-closed, dimming the light of his eyes like a drawn shade.

  Ethan had the urge to pick him up and carry him into a walled-off section of the gardens, lay him down on the grass, and tend to him. He couldn’t locate the rage he was entitled to, the rage that Charlie deserved. “What are you doing this summer?” He tried not to sound like he cared.

  Charlie shook his head.

  “Going back to camp?”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Dad said. Even though I pay for it myself. I guess I’m too old.” He looked at Ethan, his eyes narrow and suspicious. “I’m too old for that.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Charlie said, his head bobbing. He swallowed a sob. His shoulders shook. Ethan was prepared to tell him it was nothing to cry over, but as the last of the sunlight drained from the sky and the overhead lights in the garden flashed on, forcing Charlie’s eyelids to flutter, on his face Ethan saw what it would mean not to return.

  “You’ll be okay,” he said. “You’re smart. You’ll find something.” The fear had left him completely. Charlie seemed incapable of hurting anyone. Ethan felt his body fill, like a glass, with tenderness.

  “Where are you going?” Charlie slurred.

  “I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here, with you.”

  “Yeah but where are you going.”

  “Oh.” Ethan nodded. “I fly to New York on Wednesday.”

  Charlie leaned in and lowered his voice. “Don’t tell anybody . . .”

  “I won’t.”

  “. . . I want to get the fuck out of here.”

  “You can.”

  Charlie sniffed. “Maybe.”

  “Why not?”

  Charlie shook his head. “You’ve got it all in front of you,” he said.

  “So do you.”

  “It’s different. You, Ethan.” Charlie flattened his palm and pushed it out ahead of him, making a whooshing sound with his mouth. “It’s all right there for you. I know where you live.”

  Ethan straightened his back. “What?”

  “I know where you live,” he said again, with less menace than understanding.

  “Your life is going to mean something,” Ethan said. “You can do whatever you want.”

  Charlie reached out toward him. Ethan closed his eyes, his lips pursing instinctively. He felt a hand on the tip of his ear. Charlie had stopped short. His fingers slid down the curved helix, landing on the lobe, which he held between his thumb and index finger, rubbing it like a coin, for luck.

  SIX

  A priest, a rabbi, and an engineer are all lined up for execution. Guillotine. The priest steps up first. He lies down on his stomach, pokes his head through the head hole, and the executioner pulls the cord. Priest holds his breath—but nothing happens. The blade is stuck. ‘Divine intervention,’ he says. ‘An act of God.’ And he’s released. Okay. Next up is the rabbi. He lies down, and the executioner pulls the cord. The blade begins to fall, but it gets stuck again. ‘Baruch Hashem,’ he says. ‘I’m saved!’ Finally, the engineer steps up. Looks the guillotine over. Sticks his head through the hole. And as the executioner prepares to pull the cord, the engineer shouts, ‘Wait—I think I see what the problem is . . .’”

  Crickets. Or, rather, the rustle of paper, the unified hum of fifty laptops, and the thin snare of a pop song run through dangling headphones. But, otherwise, silence.

  “Because he kills himself. That’s the joke. The engineer is thinking technically, thinking like a problem solver, and he winds up killing himself. That’s why it’s funny.”

  The final slide of Arthur’s presentation loomed in LED behind him, a clip-art cartoon of a cat with its head through a guillotine.

  That he had been delivering this lecture in the same way for five years and only today tried something new—the joke—and that it failed in no uncertain terms only buttressed Arthur’s belief that teaching was an exhaustible art. Lectures could not be tweaked and turned forever as a painting or a poem could. A lecture’s perfection was finite. Not that it was any small thing, mastering a lecture—holding students’ attention, knowing when to change gears, change slides. It could take years of fine-tuning. But when you found it, you found it. Subsequent improvements were met with diminishing returns.

  A lecture was practical in that way, like a bridge. Arthur constructed a truss bridge in his mind to illustrate the point. He imagined its floor beams, stringers, and struts. It was a thing of beauty, this truss bridge, with its interplay of tension and compression, its manipulation of shear stress, the way the twin forces of each truss worked in elegant tandem. But a bridge had to have purpose before it was beautiful, which is to say a bridge is only as beautiful as it is successful in joining two shores. Embellishments were hindrances in Arthur’s field. A stunning bridge that collapsed under the weight of its adornments was no bridge at a
ll.

  He made a note to drop the joke.

  “All right,” he grumbled, “you’re dismissed.”

  A minute hand snapped into place and spring break descended on Danforth. Students fled the lecture hall. This was a profitable time for the university, one full week during which cafeteria staff, adjunct professors, and other hourly employees sat at home, their pay suspended, waiting for students to return from cultivating hangovers at resorts in developing nations.

  Arthur snuffed the projector light.

  “Professor Alter?” someone said. “Professor Alter?”

  He looked up from the small remote control in his hands. Standing before him was a pink boy with a fuzzy blond head and the anxious bearing of a freshman. ESE 103: “Engineering” Social Change was popular with underclassmen. It was supposed to be an idealistic survey, a gut for do-gooding nonmajors, and was advertised as such. In practice, the course was much more cynical. Instead of encouraging civic-minded DIY projects, Arthur railed against technological determinism. Instead of celebrating regional accomplishments in the field, he devoted an entire lecture to the human cost of local endeavors—a lecture he was especially proud of, titled “In the Shadow of the Arch.” Still, a fresh crop of young optimists filled the lecture hall each year, and it wasn’t unusual for a student to attach himself to Arthur—they were invariably male—in the hopes that he would be their mentor, their guardian, their campus father.

  “Yes?”

  “I wanted to say, I really liked today’s lesson.”

  “Thanks.”

  “The whole thing about thinking like an engineer? Super interesting. Not that I’m an engineer, per se. I mean, of course I’m not! I’m still deciding on a major. But what you said about the centrality of . . . um . . . managerialism . . . in the field, which tends to understand human relationships as factors to be exploited . . . a system of inputs and, um . . .”

  “Outputs.”

  “Right. That was cool. I never thought I’d major in engineering but now I’m really considering it.”

  Arthur’s eyebrow arched. “I’m glad you’re enjoying the class,” he said, tapping his foot. He wasn’t keen to foster parent anyone this year, not when he had his children to worry about.

  “So, anyway, I was thinking—how can I put my education into practice, you know? And I thought maybe it would be cool to start some kind of extracurricular organization? To help out in the city?”

  He squinted. “Like how.”

  “Like, I don’t know, installing some kind of sprinkler system in a, let’s say, community garden? And I thought—who better but Professor Alter to be our faculty advisor?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “It’s easy! The school will fund any club with three members and a faculty advisor.”

  “The way this place spends money,” Arthur muttered. “Listen. I’m not your guy.”

  “I looked you up, Professor. You have loads of experience, here and abroad, with—”

  “No.”

  “But in class you said—”

  “Don’t you get it? Weren’t you listening?” Arthur wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “These projects always fail. Always. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. That’s what this class is about. There are costs to this kind of work, understand? Tremendous costs.”

  “I only wanted to help,” the kid squeaked.

  “You redesign park benches and the homeless revolt. You build a shelter for them and a year later it’s a crack den. You can never foresee the real-life consequences of your work. A community garden—please!”

  The freshman hung his head. “It was just an idea.”

  “Here’s an idea for you. Get a master’s in social work. Go to med school. You like gardens so much, become a botanist. You want to help in the city, become an urban planner. Or be an engineer, for all I care. But whatever you do, stay in your lane. Don’t think you know what’s best for other people, because you don’t.” His hands were shaking. “You can’t barge into someone’s neighborhood and tell them how to water their plants. I wish you could, but you can’t. I promise you, no good will come of it.”

  The kid’s mouth was open, his ears blushing. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t say sorry. Just. Don’t. Get. Involved.”

  “Okay. Sorry. I mean—sorry.”

  Arthur bounced his heel. “Are we done here?”

  “Yeah,” said the kid, shoulders hunching. He backed away from Arthur, one slow step after another.

  Arthur left the building and hustled through Extended Campus, his heart agitated, beating in double time. A sun-shower broke out, the slender raindrops pricking his neck.

  “Arthur.”

  He spun around, nearly slipping on the rain-slick footpath. A wide black umbrella floated toward him, beneath which he could make out the lower third of Dean Gupta, walking dry through the shower in wing-tip oxfords and a navy suit.

  “Sahil, hi,” said Arthur, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. “I was heading off, actually—”

  “I was thinking.” Gupta paused, exploring the silence while rain berated Arthur’s bald spot. Though Gupta had been directly responsible for denying his request for a tenure evaluation, Arthur found himself in the cumbersome position of craving the dean’s approval. The man’s scientific career was legendary: his professional experiments with chemiluminescence in the 1960s had run concurrently to his personal experiments with psilocybin, a fruitful pairing that led to the invention of the glow stick. Gupta’s storied past, with its controlled substances and prized patent (3,774,022), had long ago earned him the respect of students and colleagues alike—Arthur begrudgingly included. But lately, his reputation secured, the dean had mellowed out, turned administrator, and taken up golf. Like many successful men, he cherished success itself, and regarded his less-prosperous colleagues with bewildered contempt. Every brush with Gupta, ten years his senior, was a reminder of how little Arthur had accomplished. “Let’s set up a meeting,” he said finally.

  Arthur froze. “A meeting?”

  “Sometime after spring break.” The dean’s leathery voice was gilded with an aristocratic affect he exhibited tastefully, like a gold watch that spends most of its time tucked under a sleeve. “There’s something I need to discuss with you.”

  This was the end. Arthur could feel it. After years of teaching, five classes per semester giving way to four, then three, and now two, he felt the vise tightening all around him. What was the meeting for, if not to finish him off? He blinked away the thought.

  “Spring break. Perfect.”

  The dean folded his arms. He took his time evaluating Arthur. “Everything okay with you?” he asked.

  “Everything’s fine.”

  Gupta took a moment to assess him. “Good. Good. Now get out of this rain, hm?”

  Arthur nodded and made off for Greenleaf Hall. He took shelter inside, up the stairs, and through the doors to the African Studies Library. He raced toward the book. His comfort object. He imagined it gone, the sliver of space it occupied foreclosed on, squeezed out by the two massive volumes that flanked it.

  But it was there, where it always was, between Murdoch Alison’s Debunking Conrad and Chester Ambrose’s Understanding Apartheid. Arthur tore it from the shelf. He sat with it for forty-five minutes, poring over its contents, triple-checking that the pages were all present and in order.

  * * *

  • • •

  The clouds had parted by the time he left. Outside the library, with restored cell service, his phone pinged with an email from his son.

  He was coming home.

  Arthur forgot all about the dean. He let himself into Ulrike’s and cooked a reconciliatory dinner—baked salmon, his only specialty, frugally garnished because “the garlic does a lot of work”—and told her, when she walked through the door an hour
later, that she might not see much of him in the coming week.

  “Why?” she asked. “I do not understand.”

  He beckoned her to sit at the kitchen island, which he’d cloaked in a tablecloth.

  “It might be cold,” he said. “I waited.”

  “You know I teach on Friday nights.”

  “Rookie move is undercooking it. You have to wait, trust yourself. Not get overeager.”

  “Arthur.”

  “What.”

  “Is this because of our fight? The stupid fight? The fellowship, I still have not—”

  “No,” he said. “It’s not that. I’ve—well, listen. I’ll tell you. I’ve invited my kids home.”

  Ulrike’s chin dimpled, the impressions forming an unreadable alphabet of inverted braille. “I told you before, Arthur,” she said. “I do not like to hear about your children.”

  At the start of their affair she’d banned Arthur from discussing his children or his sick wife—especially his wife. She’d successfully deferred the guilt of sleeping with a married man simply by waiting it out. It worked; he was married no longer. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to imagine anything tangible about Francine. The night Arthur let slip her name the first time, Ulrike promptly got in bed with two Benadryl and a bottle of Malbec in an attempt to wipe it from her memory. Children, on the other hand, tended not to go away.

  “I will not be their mother,” she said.

  “I’m not asking you to! In fact, if you could make yourself scarce while they’re in town, that might go a long way toward getting us on track.”

  “First, I tell you I am leaving,” she said. “You tell me to stay. Now you are telling me to go away. Arthur, I cannot decipher you.”