Pascal's Wager by Nancy Rue Page A

run—during which I didn’t run into Socrates again, thank heaven—I stayed up most of the night figuring out how to expand my research to reach a new conclusion. When I did sleep it was sprawled out on the couch in my apartment, my laptop blinking at me from the coffee table so I wouldn’t actually go into REM and lose my train of thought.
    I was bleary-eyed by Saturday morning, but I had the new proposal done and safely tucked into my desk drawer at the office, ready to be delivered to Nigel on Monday. It was so invitingly quiet in the building that I was tempted to prop myself up at my desk with a cup of Earl Grey and get work done. No Tabitha. No Jacoboni or Peter or Rashad or Deb or bevy of second-year grads. If there were a heaven, that would be it.
    But Max would never let
me
sleep again if I didn’t go over to my mother’s. My only hope of avoiding verbal bombardment came from knowing that she’d actually told Max she was going to see me again. That is, if Max was telling me the truth. I was beginning to think he’d do just about anything to make sure my mother didn’t drop out of his life—short of selling his pasta maker and his conducting baton.
    I knew Max hadn’t been lying to me or even exaggerating a little when I pulled my Miata—bought secondhand from Max—up to the house on Mayfield. He had, in fact, left out the most important information. The oleanders had grown past the lower windows andwere on their way up to the second floor. The grass hadn’t been cut since probably July—and it was October. There was a soggy Sunday paper lying in the middle of the lawn.
    Okay, so the yardman quit. Big deal
, I told myself firmly as I retrieved the paper and plopped it into the large garbage can that was still parked at the curb. If memory served me correctly, trash pickup was on Wednesday. Yardman or no yardman, Liz McGavock always had the trash can back behind the garage before the truck got to the other end of the street.
    I knocked on the front door, a “courtesy” I had been paying my mother since the first time I’d gone there when I moved back to Palo Alto four years ago. I had opened the door and called out, “Mother, I’m home!” Her initial greeting had included, “From now on, wait for me to answer the door.”
    That had been my first clue that her encouragement to quit my teaching job in Trenton and at least apply for a fellowship at Stanford had been purely in the interest of my career, not because she missed me and wanted me close to her. There had been no argument when I said I wanted to live in graduate housing at Escondido Village rather than move back in with her, but she’d definitely kept close tabs on me the first two and a half years—only because she wanted to supervise my studies and oversee my friendships and keep surveillance over my activities, just as she’d always done. She said she wanted to guide me in becoming, as she put it, a strong, independent, intelligent, well-educated, and culturally astute woman. Nothing more. When she’d stopped calling six months ago, I’d told myself I was better off beyond her scrutiny.
    Now, as the front door swung open, Mother greeted me in a half-open bathrobe. Black bikinis and a white bra did more than peek out from under it. The sight of me didn’t seem to surprise her or prompt her to cinch up the robe. She just smiled vaguely at me and said, “Oh. Come on in.”
    â€œDid I wake you up?” I said.
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous. I’m up at dawn—you know that.”
    I also know you stood over the yardman with a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass, but look what happened to that
.
    â€œI was at the office early, so I thought I’d come by,” I said. “I figured you’d have the tea made.”
    â€œNo, as a matter of fact, I don’t,” she said.
    â€œOh,” I said. “Do you mind if