Think of a Number

As they reached the pond, the path broadened into a mowed swath. Somewhere in the woods, an owl screeched-or, more precisely, there was a familiar screech they thought might be an owl when they first heard it that summer, and each time after that they became more certain it was an owl. It was in the nature of Gurney’s intellect to realize that this process of increasing conviction made no logical sense, but he also knew that pointing it out, interesting though this trick of the mind might be to him, would bore and annoy her. So he said nothing, happy that he knew her well enough to know when to be quiet, and they ambled on to the far side of the pond in amiable silence. She was right about the smell-a wonderful sweetness in the air.

They had moments like this from time to time, moments of easy affection and quiet closeness, that reminded him of the early years of their marriage, the years before the accident. “The Accident”-that dense, generic label with which he wrapped the event in his memory to keep its razor-wire details from slicing his heart. The accident- the death-that eclipsed the sun, turning their marriage into a shifting mixture of habit, duty, edgy companionship, and rare moments of hope-rare moments when something bright and clear as a diamond would shoot back and forth between them, reminding him of what once was and might again be possible.

“You always seem to be wrestling with something,” she said, curling her fingers around the inside of his arm, just above his elbow.

Right again.

“How was the concert?” he finally asked.

“First half was baroque, lovely. Second half was twentieth century, not so lovely.”

He was about to chime in with his own low opinion of modern music but thought better of it.

“What kept you awake?” she asked.

“I’m not really sure.”

He sensed her skepticism. She let go of his arm. Something splashed into the pond a few yards ahead of them.

“I couldn’t get the Mellery business out of my mind,” he said.

She didn’t reply.

“Bits and pieces of it kept running around in my head-not getting anywhere-just making me uncomfortable-too tired to think straight.”

Again she offered nothing but a thoughtful silence.

“I kept thinking about that name on the note.”

“X. Arybdis?”

“How did you…? You heard us mention it?”

“I have good hearing.”

“I know, but it always surprises me.”

“It might not really be X. Arybdis, you know,” she said in that offhand way that he knew was anything but offhand.

“What?” he said, stopping.

“It might not be X. Arybdis.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was suffering through one of the atonal atrocities in the second half of the concert, thinking that some modern composers must really hate the cello. Why would you force a beautiful instrument to make such painful noises? Horrible scraping and whining.”

“And…?” he said gently, trying to keep his curiosity from sounding edgy.

“And I’d have left at that point, but I couldn’t because I’d given Ellie a ride there.”

“Ellie?”

“Ellie from the bottom of the hill-rather than take two cars? But she seemed to be enjoying it, God knows why.”

“Yes?”

“So I asked myself, what can I do to pass the time and keep from killing the musicians?”

There was another splash in the pond, and she stopped to listen. He half saw, half sensed her smile. Madeleine was fond of frogs.

“And?”

“And I thought to myself I could start figuring out my Christmas card list-it’s practically November-so I took out my pen and on the back of my program, at the top of the page, I wrote ‘Xmas Cards’-not the whole word Christmas but the abbreviation, X-M-A-S,” she said, spelling it out.

In the darkness he could feel more than see her inquiring look, as if she were asking whether he was getting the point.

“Go on,” he said.

“Every time I see that abbreviation, it reminds me of little Tommy Milakos.”

“Who?”

“Tommy had a crush on me in the ninth grade at Our Lady of Chastity.”

“I thought it was Our Lady of Sorrows,” said Gurney with a twinge of irritation.

She paused a beat to let her little joke register, then went on. “Anyway, one day Sister Immaculata, a very large woman, started screaming at me because I’d abbreviated Christmas as Xmas in a little quiz about Catholic holy days. She said anyone who wrote it that way was purposely ‘X-ing Christ out of Christmas.’ She was furious. I thought she was going to hit me. But right then Tommy-sweet little brown-eyed Tommy-jumped up out of his seat and shouted, ‘It’s not an X.’

“Sister Immaculata was shocked. It was the first time anyone had ever dared to interrupt her. She just stared at him, but he stared right back, my little champion. ‘It’s not an English letter,’ he said. ‘It’s a Greek letter. It’s the same as an English ch. It’s the first letter of Christ in Greek.’ And, of course, Tommy Milakos was Greek, so everybody knew he must be right.”

Dark as it was, he thought he could see her smiling softly at the recollection, even suspected he heard a little sigh. Maybe he was wrong about the sigh-he hoped so. And another distraction-had she betrayed a preference for brown eyes over blue? Get ahold of yourself, Gurney, she’s talking about the ninth grade.

She went on, “So maybe ‘X. Arybdis’ is really ‘Ch. Arybdis’? Or maybe ‘Charybdis’? Isn’t that something in Greek mythology?”

“Yes, it is,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “Between Scylla and Charybdis…”

“Like ‘between a rock and a hard place’?”

He nodded. “Something like that.”

“Which is which?”

He seemed not to hear the question, his mind racing now through the Charybdis implications, juggling the possibilities.

“Hmm?” He realized she’d asked him something.

“Scylla and Charybdis,” she said. “The rock and the hard place. Which is which?”

“It’s not a direct translation, just an approximation of the meaning. Scylla and Charybdis were actual navigational perils in the Strait of Messina. Ships had to navigate between them and tended to be destroyed in the process. In mythology, they were personalized into demons of destruction.”

“When you say navigational perils… like what?”

“Scylla was the name for a jagged outcropping of rocks that ships were battered against until they sank.”

When he didn’t immediately continue, she persisted, “And Charybdis?”

He cleared his throat. Something about the idea of Charybdis seemed especially disturbing. “Charybdis was a whirlpool. A very powerful whirlpool. Once a man was caught in it, he could never get out. It sucked him down and tore him to pieces.” He recalled with unsettling clarity an illustration he’d seen ages ago in an edition of the Odyssey, showing a sailor trapped in the violent eddy, his face contorted in horror.

Again came the screech from the woods.

“Come on,” said Madeleine. “Let’s get up to the house. It’s going to rain any minute.”

He stood still, lost in his racing thoughts.