The Tree of Knowledge, Daniel Miller [unputdownable books txt] 📗

Albert not just to solve a problem but to understand its core nature. He would always give the example of multiplication tables, which he thought were a destructive influence. “Cages for the mind,” he called them as he paced around the room, his tall, stork-like figure throwing off energy, his narrow face alight with feeling. “Any idiot can memorize seven times eight is fifty-six,” he would say, “but until you understand at a gut level why it is fifty-six, you don’t understand math.” Albert would just giggle watching the old man get upset about multiplication tables.

His father loved logic puzzles and games. The two would play chess on Sunday mornings, at which Albert always excelled. His father would then tell him fantastic tales of mathematical concepts and their almost religious connection to nature. He would instruct Albert on the Fibonacci sequence, a string of numbers that appeared in the most fascinating natural settings, from the flowering of the artichoke to the arrangement of a pine cone. They would take long walks through the woods behind the campus and pick up pine cones to see how the spirals grew according to the famous sequence. His father would point out spiderwebs, pond ripples, clouds, moss on tree bark, and explain how mathematics described their patterns. The boy learned about numbers; he also learned to look carefully at everything around him. He treasured these walks with his father and often hoped they would never end.

But they did end.

One morning, Albert stumbled down the creaking stairs of his house in search of his usual bowl of Cheerios. Surprisingly, as he breezed through the living room, he saw both his parents sitting together on the living room couch. The image struck him as odd because neither of his parents ever used that room. It was one of those decorative living rooms that went unused unless company was over. The colors of the room were dark—dark red and blue upholstery, dark wood, curtains pulled—and his parents, even his fair-complexioned father, looked dark as well. The jarring nature of the scene caused Albert to stop and lock eyes with his father. His eyes were heavy; the boy could see he was exhausted. Scared, Albert turned his attention to his mother. The expression he saw on her face terrified him. The woman who had so boisterously taught Albert and loved his father had been reduced to rubble. Her eyes were dull, her face ashen. The only sign of life was the flicker as her gaze met his and a twitch of her bloodless lips that was more grimace than smile.

His parents could see the fear in Albert’s eyes and wasted no time in delivering the news. They were getting a divorce. It wasn’t Albert’s fault. They both loved him very much, but they had grown apart, and it was time to move on. His father had decided to take a very prestigious teaching job at a university in China. He would be leaving at the end of the month. Albert could fly out and see him whenever he wanted, but most of the time, he would be living with his mother.

Albert pleaded with his father. Tears streaming down his face, he begged and bargained to keep his father from leaving. He would do better in math. He would clean the house every day. But his father just shrugged and said this was something “he needed to do.” Albert then turned to his mom for help—help making his dad understand that he needed to stay. His mother just held Albert and looked at him with that face, that blank look of despair.

It was this same expression that Albert had seen on Professor Turner’s face. He, too, looked as if he had been crushed and abandoned. And what made the expression on Turner’s face even more affecting was that, to Albert, Professor Turner had been an idol, someone who could not be crushed, defeated, or abandoned. His mastery of the classroom made him like a sports hero who always prevailed on the playing field. Professor Turner seemed to float above the challenges of life that impeded mere mortals.

And his despair had come over a woman and her daughter. Eva? Could it be the same Eva?

Albert thought of the scrawny little high school student with whom he had shared a class early on in his college career. He had treasured her. She was a lovely young girl, with a smile and laugh that made you forget where you were and carried you back to a time when the world wasn’t serious. He was twenty, but he still felt the draw of a friend who made him feel young. Albert always felt slightly uncouth spending time with a fourteen-year-old. He was aware of how other students looked at him when the two of them would walk and giggle together after class. Even Professor Turner stared at the two of them with a parent’s watchful eye. So, when at the end of class, she had invited him to her quinceañera, Albert realized that he had to put a stop to it. As the words fumbled out of her mouth, he could see the love in her eyes and wanted nothing more than to give her everything she wanted. But it was dangerous and confusing, full of pitfalls. So, he did the “right thing” and told her he couldn’t go. In the fourteen years since that day, Albert had thought of it many times and regretted it every time. Seeing the effect that she and her mother had on the giant that was Angus Turner made his regret even more piercing.

Albert angrily slammed down the accelerator as though he could outrun the pain of his past. In his youth, he had fought the battle between logic and emotion and had vanquished emotion, or so he’d thought. Now, as the car tore down the country road toward the Princeton police station, Albert sensed that emotion was back and chasing him. He turned his attention to