A Theory of Relativity by Jacquelyn Mitchard

with bells, the one she used to wear with her swimsuit. Gordon remembered her asking, in a voice slurred with morphine syrups, for Ray to bring it to her parents’ house, because the sound would comfort the baby.
    A cup that had contained coffee and . . . here it was, the milk that had gone bad . . . stood beside Ray’s datebook. The open entry, June 3, was for Georgia’s chemo. Slightly queasy, Gordon flipped ahead a few days. Block-printed across the spaces for a whole week later in the month were the words “Call lawyer.” That, and a note for September reminding Ray to schedule Keefer’s eighteen-month checkup, were the only entries. A litter of indistinct faxes from the Knockouts Tour were folded and stuck in a back pocket, along with a fast-food game card scribbled with what looked to be a shopping list: Garlic capsules, juice, molasses . . . Ray’s mom was the South’s lay minister of health food. Unopened bottles of herbal drops still lined the win-dowsill in Georgia’s old bedroom at his parents’ house, names more Theory[001-112] 6/5/01 11:58 AM Page 53
    A Theory of Relativity
    53
    appropriate to a picnic than a war on cancer: dandelion, thistle, wild clover.
    Gordon tried not to look at the hall gallery. He’d only a few hours left before the whole engine of mourning was set in motion. Once he saw the inside of Chaptmans Funeral Home, Gordon knew that any remnant of ability to concentrate would be torn away. He didn’t need distractions now.
    There was Georgia in her gown with the twenty-two-foot train. Tim Upchurch had called it the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Maria. It was not one of the formal wedding portraits, but a candid, and Georgia loved it more than any of the others. In the photo, also, was Ray’s cousin Delia, who lived in Madison; she’d grown up with Ray nearly as a sibling and had made Ray’s move to the North bearable, and she had also been Georgia’s matron of honor and was Keefer’s godmother. She was quite the Bible-thumping pill, if Gordon recalled correctly—everything that could go wrong with a woman who was resolutely blond, resolutely Christian, and from Tampa. He could recall only one thing Georgia had ever said about Delia, “I like her. She really believes what she says.” In the photo, Delia was reverently holding up the end of the languid net of lace, holy beatitude in her face, but her teenage kid from her previous marriage—what was the kid’s name, Alyssa? Alexandra?—
    was peeking through the huge fountain of bronze leaves and stands of creamy Japanese lilacs and bearded irises like some kind of wacky altar ornament, her plush red hair wild and her face a map of pure hellion glee.
    Gordon thought idly, nastily, all that holiness did not evidently pre-clude divorce . . . but that was lousy. He barely knew Delia. Maybe she was a widow.
    One space over, a photo of Ray and Georgia in the pool at their first apartment, that place in Titusville. (“Titsville,” Georgia had written, just after learning she was expecting a baby. “I’m the only woman in this whole complex under five feet ten and over a hundred and thirty pounds. You have to be an aerobics instructor or they won’t let you sign a lease.”) And the next shot, Ray holding newborn Keefer triumphantly overhead in one of his massive hands, as if she were the Stanley Cup.

    Theory[001-112] 6/5/01 11:58 AM Page 54
    54
    JACQUELYN MITCHARD
    Then, Georgia’s framed collage: “Why You Are Keefer” (picture of the baby, in a felt bonnet sewn to look like a sunflower, with an arrow from that to a toddler picture of Gordon, grinning toothlessly, Georgia with one fat arm around him in a headlock. “Once There Was a Little Boy Who Could Not Say His Sister’s First Name.” How, Gordon now tried to remember, had he ever ended up calling Georgia “Keefie,” and not just when he was a tot, but until . . . what, sixth grade or so, when she threatened to belt him if he didn’t stop it? He still sometimes