'I didn't know mathematicians annoyed you.'
'This one does.'
Mitch's parents were both doctors of behavioral psychology, tenured professors at UCI. Those in their social circle were mostly from what academic types recently had begun to call the human sciences, largely to avoid the term soft sciences. Among that crowd, a mathematician might annoy like a stone in a shoe.
'I just fixed a Scotch and soda,' his father said. 'Would you like something?'
'No thank you, sir.'
'Did you just sir me?'
'I'm sorry, Daniel.'
'Mere biological relationship—'
'— should not confer social status,' Mitch finished.
The five Rafferty children, on their thirteenth birthdays, had been expected to stop calling their parents Mom and Dad, and to begin using first names. Mitch's mother, Katherine, preferred to be called Kathy, but his father would not abide Danny instead of Daniel.
As a young man, Dr. Daniel Rafferty had held strong views about proper child-rearing. Kathy had no firm opinions on the subject, but she had been intrigued by Daniel's unconventional theories and curious to see if they would prove successful.
For a moment, Mitch and Daniel stood in the foyer, and Daniel seemed unsure how to proceed, but then he said, 'Come see what I just bought.'
They crossed a large living room furnished with stainless-steel-and-glass tables, gray leather sofas, and black chairs. The art works were black-and-white, some with a single line or block of color: here a rectangle of blue, here a square of teal, here two chevrons of mustard yellow.
Daniel Rafferty's shoes struck hard sounds from the Santos-mahogany floor. Mitch followed as quietly as a haunting spirit.
In the study, pointing to an object on the desk, Daniel said, 'This is the nicest piece of shit in my collection.'
Chapter 17
The study decor matched the living room, with lighted display shelves that presented a collection of polished stone spheres.
Alone on the desk, cupped in an ornamental bronze stand, the newest sphere had a diameter greater than a baseball. Scarlet veins speckled with yellow swirled through a rich coppery brown.
To the uninformed it might have appeared to be a piece of exotic granite, ground and polished to bring out its beauty. In fact it was dinosaur dung, which time and pressure had petrified into stone.
'Mineral analysis confirms that it came from a carnivore,' said Mitch's father.
'Tyrannosaurus?'
'The size of the entire stool deposit suggests something smaller than a T. rex.'
'Gorgosaurus?'
'If it had been found in Canada, dating to the Upper Cretaceous, then perhaps a gorgosaurus. But the deposit was found in Colorado.'
'Upper Jurassic?' Mitch asked.
'Yes. So it's probably a ceratosaurus dropping.'
As his father picked up a glass of Scotch and soda from the desk, Mitch went to the display shelves.
He said, 'I gave Connie a call a few nights ago.'
Connie was his oldest sister, thirty-one. She lived in Chicago.
'Is she still drudging away in that bakery?' his father asked.
'Yes, but she owns it now.'
'Are you serious? Yes, of course. It's typical. If she puts one foot in a tar pit, she'll never back up, just flail forward.'
'She says she's having a good time.'
'That's what she would say, no matter what.'
Connie had earned a master's degree in political science before she had jumped off the plank into an ocean of entrepreneurship. Some were mystified by this sea change in her, but Mitch understood it.
The collection of polished dinosaur-dung spheres had grown since he had last seen it. 'How many do you have now, Daniel?'
'Seventy-three. I've got leads on four brilliant specimens.'
Some spheres were only two inches in diameter. The largest were as big as bowling balls.
The colors tended toward browns, golds, and coppers, for the obvious reason; however, every hue, even blue, lustered under the display lights. Most exhibited speckled patterns; actual veining was rare.
'I talked to Megan the same evening,' Mitch said.
Megan, twenty-nine, had the highest IQ in a family of high IQs. Each of the Rafferty kids had been tested three times: the week of their ninth, thirteenth, and seventeenth birthdays.
After her sophomore year, Megan had dropped out of college. She lived in Atlanta and operated a thriving dog-grooming business, both a shop and a mobile service.
'She called at Easter, asked how many eggs we dyed,' Mitch's father said. 'I assume she thought that was funny. Katherine and I were just relieved that she didn't announce she was pregnant.'
Megan had married Carmine Maffuci, a mason with hands the size of dinner plates. Daniel and Kathy felt that she had settled for a husband beneath her station, intellectually. They expected that she would realize her error and divorce him — if children didn't arrive first to complicate the situation.
Mitch liked Carmine. The guy had a sweet nature, an infectious laugh, and a tattoo of Tweety Bird on his right biceps.
'This one looks like porphyry,' he said, pointing to a dung specimen with a purple-red groundmass and flecks of something that resembled feldspar.
He had also recently spoken to his youngest sister, Portia, but he did not mention her because he didn't want to start an argument.
Freshening his Scotch and soda at the corner wet bar, Daniel said, 'Anson had us to dinner two nights ago.'
Anson, Mitch's only brother, at thirty-three the oldest of the siblings, was the most dutiful to Daniel and Kathy.
In fairness to Mitch and his sisters, Anson had long been his parents' favorite, and he had never been rebuffed. It was easier to be a dutiful child when your enthusiasms were not analyzed for signs of psychological maladjustment and whenyour invitations were not met with either gimlet-eyed suspicion or impatience.
In fairness to Anson, he had earned his status by fulfilling his parents' expectations. He had proved, as had none of the others, that Daniel's child-rearing theories could bear fruit.
Top of his class in high school, star quarterback, he declined football scholarships. Instead he accepted those offered only in respect of the excellence of his mind.
The academic world was a chicken yard and Anson a fox. He did not merely absorb learning but devoured it with the appetite of an insatiable carnivore. He earned his bachelor's degree in two years, a master's in one, and had a Ph.D. at the age of twenty-three.
Anson was neither resented by his siblings nor in any slightest way alienated from them. On the contrary, if Mitch and his sisters had taken a secret vote for their favorite in the family, all four of their ballots would have been marked for their older brother.
His good heart and natural grace had allowed Anson to please his parents without becoming like them. This achievement seemed no less impressive than if nineteenth-century scientists, with nothing but steam power and primitive voltaic cells, had sent astronauts to the moon.
'Anson just signed a major consulting contract with China,' Daniel said.
