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When Will left Boston in 1998, none of us really expected to see him again. He was so intelligent, brimming with opportunity, that the possibility of his return seemed infeasible. Back then, we had encouraged him to disappear, to pursue everything he had the innate opportunity to, to achieve what was only possible for those gifted with an almost other-worldly intelligence.
As far as I was aware, he hadn’t been back once. A reality that was almost strange given the premier universities here that lauded their world class education. In fact, some had a working theory that he was avoiding the city. A google alert my ex-wife had created, back when that was still a popular choice, dutifully informed us of his comings and goings. For years, that alert gave us only whispers of information – a mathematical achievement here, a revamped understanding of some concept there – it appeared as though his life was developing in just the manner we had intuitively been aware could, would, happen.
Slowly, over time, my connection to his life dimmed further and further. The separation from my wife, the breakup of our burgeoning family, the overwhelming nature of survival ensured that the connection I had to him, the interest I had in regard to him dimmed. With the separation from my wife came the end of google alerts, and with that a final end to the routine updates of his life.
Of course, information sometimes still broke through. When my son was eight, and I sat at the side of his baseball pitch, I heard some excitable, reverential discussion of his exploits coming from some of the older boys. Clearly, he was continuing his reign of intellect. By the time little Danny was 12, I’d counted Will on the front of papers at least 5 separate times on my way to work. By 14, as Danny’s education began to appear more serious, he featured in textbooks in a variety of subjects Danny took.
He seemed so astronomically far away by the time Danny was 18 and getting ready to go to college. We’d been reflecting on my adolescence when we decided to swing past the old haunts. All the decrepit buildings were still there but refurbished – gentrified even. Dynamics within the city had changed so much in such a seemingly short period of time, and I had aided that change at its most basic level. With my son travelling away to study engineering in Oklahoma, we decided it was only right to look at Will’s old house – maybe to serve as a means of intangible, impossible to replicate, motivation. More than any other house on the street, it looked like I remembered – almost like it remained stuck in the past. That illusion was broken the minute we left the car to discover a small, personal museum in the final stages of construction there. To be significant enough to have a museum dedicated to you by the time you’re 40, holy shit. Well – maybe he hadn’t completely forgotten Boston after all.
Last month was my 41st birthday. I have two marriages behind me, three kids and more medical debt than I ever believed possible. Life has been hard recently – the rabid gentrification of Boston, the ever-rising housing market, the impossibility of success – even emotional success – in the time of technological dominance. There’s talk at work that a bunch of us are going to be let off, that we’ll be asked to find work elsewhere, that we’ll have to go back to wages we would have scoffed at even in our early twenties. Fuck – who knows what’ll happen.
I had a call last night, completely out of the blue, from my first wife. Apparently Will had done something amazing – revolutionised the world of physics – changed the entire way physicists think. She said that Danny – my wonderful 21-year-old Danny – had just ranted about it to her for about half an hour. Why he chose to do it to her, and not to one of Will’s good childhood friends, I don’t know. God, I know that I should have felt something, but really all I felt was acceptance. Of course. The one thing I’d learnt about Will in the past 20 years was that he truly was capable of doing everything that had been hypothesised about him.
This morning I had a call from a television program – wanting to do an interview about Will – about how his brain was able to develop to such extraordinary heights while he was surrounded by people like me. I declined, after all, my role in his story was one of an encouraging idiot. He needed to move on from us to succeed, and he had, flawlessly.
So, it was therefore somewhat of a shock that I now find myself opposite him, at a dingy restaurant, at six in the evening. In the end, we re-met entirely accidentally. I was at South Station, just getting back from work when I heard shouting coming from around 5 meters away from me. It was Will, and a woman, and they were coming directly towards me.
Apparently, he’s back in town for a conference at MIT, just for a couple of nights he assured me. I’d asked him if he’d been back at all since he left to chase Skylar, to begin life. Apparently, he had, a couple of times. His wife’s family is from here – so they visit the in-laws occasionally.
Our conversation has been a bit stilted, of course. But he’s still fascinating – even if he no longer has that tangible and close sense of opportunity that I once so closely associated with him. He’s so far gone in my past that our storylines don’t seem to converge at all anymore.
He’s asking about my life. My family. My story. In light of his recent achievements, they seem more futile than ever. Not that Will would ever admit to that – he does seem thoroughly engaged in our light conversation though, almost as if he was also engaged in an imagined flashback of a completely different life.
We part ways at around eight, having swapped numbers and vague promises to catch up more than once every twenty years. Not that that’ll really ever be an eventuality. I’m fully aware that the next time we see each other will be at some funeral or another – maybe at mine or one of the other boys. A lifetime of manual work does seem to shave off the possibility of a long life.
As I meander home, no longer worrying about missing the baseball game, I can’t help but reflect on Will, on Danny, on life. Yes, Will represents the kind of success that is still intangible to me, that will forever be unrealistic for me. But Danny – Danny is a direct line between me and the possibility of future, moderate success.
No, nobody that I know will ever shine as brightly as Will – people only do that once in a hundred years or so, but my children will also live a more fulfilling life that I have ever had, will ever manage. And I guess that that’s all someone can hope for.