Behind Every Great Man
Joshua Keegan, like most nineteen-year-old college sophomores, had an eye for a pretty face, not that it did him much good because most attractive young women had little interest in him. Despite his easy-going personality, intelligence and quick wit, he had few dates. It was not that he was a particularly bad-looking young man. On the contrary, he had a pleasant enough face, one that reminded people of actor Tobey Maguire.
The cause of his lackluster love life was that most of the girls he met invariably considered Josh to be the quintessential nerd. This is understandable since he suffered from all the classic symptoms: one, he was majoring in computer science; two, his favorite "sport" was chess; and three, he was forced to wear glasses whose lenses were as thick as the proverbial Coke bottle.
Given his poor eyesight, Joshua was the perfect candidate for Dr. Julius Voorhees's latest experiment. A brilliant biological research scientist and inventor, Dr. Voorhees had already made several significant contributions to the field of medicine. His latest invention was a revolutionary ocular microchip, which, when inserted into the vision center of a human brain, would make the cornea, pupil and retina perform an estimated one hundred times more efficiently. Thus, with the insertion of the microchip, a patient would have no further need for glasses or contact lenses.
Once he had been assured that the operation was relatively painless and posed no serious threat to what little eyesight he did have, the young college student agreed to volunteer his services as a human guinea pig. The experiment proved to be a success, and Joshua thereafter boasted perfect twenty-twenty vision. However, the implant was to have a significant side effect, one that even the brilliant Dr. Voorhees could not have foreseen.
* * *
Dr. Ann Wilder was one of Joshua's favorite professors. She taught English Composition and Creative Writing, but no matter what the intended subject of her lecture was, it usually ended up as a zealous discourse on women's rights. Her passion and politics made her popular not only with female students but with liberal males as well.
What Joshua liked most about Dr. Wilder was her vast knowledge of American and British literature. He particularly enjoyed the professor's habit of quoting lines from obscure books or short stories she had read. Joshua, an avid reader and trivia aficionado, tried to guess the source of these quotes before Dr. Wilder revealed the author.
One Monday, for instance, she ended class with instructions for the weekly writing assignment.
"According to one popular Victorian novelist, 'The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no past.' Does anyone know the name of the author who said that?"
Dr. Wilder looked directly at Joshua, but this was one of the few times she managed to stump him.
"Does anybody know it? No? Well, that author is a woman by the name of Mary Ann Evans. Does that ring any bells? No? That's because she wrote under the pen name George Eliot. Ah! I see some of you have read her. She used a male pen name to ensure that her work would be taken seriously. Although female authors were published under their own names during Eliot's lifetime, she wanted to escape the stereotype of women only writing lighthearted romances."
"Didn't she lead a rather scandalous life?" one student asked.
"Yes," the professor replied, "but you must remember you're talking about Victorian England, a time when women were expected to adhere to a strict set of rules for behavior. That brings us to the subject of your writing assignment."
A general groan could be heard across the classroom.
"Need I remind you that this is a creative writing class? That means writing assignments. This week I want you to write a brief biography of a twentieth-century woman whom you think is destined to go down in history."
Joshua, who had always admired President John F. Kennedy and his Camelot administration, chose as the subject of his paper former first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. That evening after dinner he logged on to the Internet and read through the available reference material on Mrs. Kennedy, noting the many facts he wanted to include in his writing. He was so intent on reading the text, that he completely ignored the photographs. But as Joshua scrolled down the screen, he noticed a picture of a young woman whose incredibly beautiful face quickly caught his attention.
If asked to describe the color of the woman's hair, Joshua wouldn't know how to respond. It wasn't exactly gold, and it wasn't red either. Rather, it was a perfect blending of the two. The young woman's cheekbones were high, and her facial structure would have put many a cover girl to shame. Still, the woman's most striking feature was undoubtedly her eyes. They were blue-green and were framed by thick, gold-red lashes. They were so intense in their gaze, that Joshua could easily imagine her in the role of a female Svengali.
In this particular photograph, the woman—dressed in the height of Sixties fashion in a Christian Dior original evening gown—was holding onto the arm of President John F. Kennedy. The caption, which was obviously a typographical error, identified the couple as President and Mrs. Kennedy. Joshua had no clue as to the identity of the unknown woman, but he knew she sure as hell wasn't the dark-haired former first lady.
As he continued reading the online article, Joshua came across the now legendary photographs of Kennedy's assassination, frames taken from the famed eight-millimeter home movie shot that terrible November afternoon in Dallas by Abraham Zapruder. The student recognized the iconic blood-stained pink Chanel suit and matching pillbox hat worn by Jackie Kennedy. However, the woman wearing the outfit was not the widow of the slain president. Rather, it was the beautiful woman with gold-red hair and blue-green eyes.
Perplexed by the repeated appearance of the same mysterious woman, Joshua remained at his laptop late into the night, examining one online reference to Jackie Kennedy after another. In every BMP, GIF, JPEG and PNG image he came across, the features of the celebrated, dark-haired first lady had been replaced by those of "the Golden Girl"—a nickname Joshua bestowed upon the unknown woman.
Finally, exhausted and bleary-eyed, he gave up on his exploration of the more than thirty-three million results for Jacqueline Kennedy on Google and went to bed.
The next day he continued his search on the Internet and in the local public library. He examined hundreds of photographs, supposedly all of Jackie Kennedy, which now depicted the Golden Girl. Confounded by this mystery, Joshua hastily thumbed through a book on American presidents and first ladies. He stopped at the chapter on Abraham Lincoln. He had seen photographs of Mary Todd Lincoln many times before. She had been a rather plain, plump woman whose dark hair was usually pulled back in one of the more severe hairstyles of the 1860s. Yet in this photograph, once again, he saw the beautiful Golden Girl—only now she was standing next to Abraham Lincoln.
"It's impossible!" Joshua told himself.
Lincoln had been president a hundred years before Kennedy, yet the Golden Girl had shown no sign of aging during the intervening century.
Starting back at the first page, Joshua scanned the entire book for photographs, paintings or drawings of American first ladies. Although most of the women were recognizable as those that he'd seen in history books, there were a handful—Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, Eleanor Roosevelt and a few others—who were clearly the same woman as had appeared in place of the photographs of Jackie Kennedy and Mary Todd Lincoln.
Joshua then decided to expand his search to include other famous women in history. He discovered that his mysterious Golden Girl kept popping up throughout the centuries—identified as such diverse persons as Marie Antoinette, Napoleon's Josephine, Alexandra of Russia, Cleopatra, Eva Braun, Anne Boleyn and dozens of others.
As Joshua thumbed through the pages of library books for the photographs of these famous women, he was reminded of one of Dr. Wilder's quotes of Virginia Wolf: "Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size."
John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Julius Caesar, Adolf Hitler, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Henry VIII and Napoleon Bonaparte were all powerful and influential men, and all of them were in some way connected to this woman.
"Why has no one else ever mentioned this woman's existence?" he asked himself. "Could it be that I'm the only one who has seen her?"
As a test, he took a picture of the mysterious woman—alias Eleanor Roosevelt—to his weekly meeting of the chess club. He told his fellow students that he was conducting an experiment to find out how many people could recognize famous Americans. The former first lady was correctly identified by all the students except one, who thought it was a photograph of famed cooking expert Julia Child. No one, however, saw Joshua's mysterious woman with gold-red hair and blue-green eyes.
* * *
It seems to be an accepted fact of life that most nerds have above-average intelligence—perhaps fate's way of compensating them for their relative lack of social graces. Joshua was no exception. The reason only he could see this mysterious woman was fairly obvious to him: he was the only one walking around with an eighty-thousand-dollar computer chip in his head.
Having come to this valid conclusion, the college sophomore decided it was time to pay a visit to Dr. Voorhees.
After a complete physical examination was conducted, the brilliant doctor reaffirmed his earlier prognosis that Joshua's vision was perfect and that there were no complications resulting from the operation. The young patient casually asked the scientist if there was any way the microchip could cause him to hallucinate.
"What do you mean by hallucinate? What exactly have you been seeing?"
Joshua explained his recent experiences with observing the Golden Girl online and in the library history books.
Dr. Voorhees looked at the young student with suspicion and asked, "Are you taking any illegal or recreational drugs?"
"No, of course not!"
"Do you find this woman with gold-red hair physically attractive?"
"Yeah, sure. I suppose so. Why shouldn't I? She's beautiful."
Relief appeared on Dr. Voorhees's aging face.
"Ah, that explains much!"
"What?"
"In the spring, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."
"You're quoting Tennyson's 'Locksley Hall.'"
"Am I?" the scientist laughed. "I'm afraid I don't know one poet from another. Anyway, I wouldn't worry too much about seeing this girl with the gold-red hair. It's normal for a man your age to daydream about women."
"This wasn't a daydream."
Joshua tried to explain, but Dr. Voorhees had already made up his mind.
* * *
After he visited with the scientist, Joshua came to a terrible realization: no one would believe his story of a mysterious woman repeatedly appearing throughout the annals of history. They would likely assume he was either crazy or just another hopped-up college student. So, unless he wanted to be the cover boy on the next issue of The National Tattler, he would have to remain silent about his discovery.
That didn't mean he intended to forget about his search for Golden Girl's identity, however. On the contrary, during the next few months, he spent his free time browsing through more recent issues of Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The New York Times and several other periodicals that might contain photographs of active politicians and, more importantly, their wives. Although he couldn't find her photograph in any of them, Joshua feared that the mysterious woman would surface again as the consort of some soon-to-be eminent world leader.
* * *
Dr. Ann Wilder, while giving a lecture on allegories in American literature, once again brought up the subject of women's rights.
In the course of the ensuing discussion, the professor jokingly quoted Nietzsche: "God created woman. And indeed, that was the end of boredom, but of other things, too! Woman was God's second mistake."
All the students laughed except Joshua, who was too deep in his own thoughts to appreciate the humor.
Was the Golden Girl a mistake created by God? he wondered. Was she even a woman at all? Perhaps she was a phantom or a being from another planet, one of a select advanced group sent to colonize the Earth.
At the end of her lecture, Dr. Wilder announced a surprise guest speaker.
"She's a good friend of mine from college, and now she's a respected and highly successful lawyer." After a brief pause, Dr. Wilder added with a smile, "And, hopefully, the first female president in our country's history. Please, everyone, welcome Ms. Eve Moore."
Joshua sat paralyzed as the lawyer stepped into the classroom and approached the speaker's podium. Her gold-red hair was glowing like fire, yet her blue-green eyes were as cold as ice. When Ms. Moore's steely gaze scanned the room, her mesmerizing eyes made contact with Joshua's. The speaker was momentarily startled, and her piercing eyes widened with surprise. She knew that Joshua could see her, the real woman behind the innocuous identity of Eve Moore. Yet despite her shock, she quickly covered her discomposure and began speaking to the lecture hall full of students.
Joshua had no idea what the woman was saying, for his brain was unable to concentrate on her words. He was too intent on wondering what Ms. Moore might look like to the rest of the world. Was the woman they saw plain or attractive? Fair or dark? Thin or plump?
Eventually, the sound of his fellow students' cheering and applause brought Joshua out of his reverie.
"Like my good friend, Professor Ann Wilder," Eve declared, "I am going to end my speech with a quote, this one from renowned feminist Gloria Steinem: 'Now we are becoming the men we wanted to marry.'"
This statement produced more cheering, especially from Dr. Ann Wilder. Then, with one last glaring look in Joshua's direction, Eve More left the university's lecture hall.
The following day Joshua found an unsigned note in his mail slot. It contained a single quote neatly written on expensive stationery: The female of the species is more deadly than the male. — Rudyard Kipling.
It wasn't hard for him to guess who had sent it. The question was: why? Was this a threat, a warning for him to keep silent about her identity? If so, she needn't worry. The Golden Girl was just as much an enigma to him now as she had been before he'd seen her in the guise of the prominent attorney and political hopeful, Eve Moore.
* * *
As one semester ended and another began, Joshua Keegan did his best to forget about the mysterious Golden Girl. He would probably never know who, or even what, she really was. But at least he knew what her true ambitions were, and if she hoped to someday be the first woman president of the United States, who was he to say otherwise?
Not long into the new semester, Joshua received shocking news: Dr. Julius Voorhees was dead. The prominent inventor died when his laboratory mysteriously caught fire and burned to the ground. It was a double tragedy in that the same blaze that claimed his life also destroyed all his research records. Consequently, Joshua would be the only person to ever benefit from Dr. Voorhees's miraculous ocular microchip.
A memorial service to honor the deceased scientist was held at nearby St. Michael's Catholic Church. As Joshua sat in a pew at the rear of the building, listening to all the praise-filled eulogies given by Dr. Voorhees's colleagues, he glanced up at the church's beautiful stained-glass windows.
There it was: the answer to the mystery that had plagued him for close to a year!
He almost laughed aloud at the irony of it all. For more than two thousand years, theologians have predicted, based on their readings of the scriptures, the birth of an Antichrist who would bring about the destruction of mankind. Now Joshua could now see that it was in the book of Genesis, not the book of Revelations, where man's ultimate fate had been revealed.
The answer could be found on the stained-glass window depicting the Garden of Eden and illustrating the story of Adam, whom God had created in his own image, and Eve, whose attention was focused on the serpent wrapped around the branches of the Tree of Knowledge.
Joshua stared into the eyes of that serpent, able—thanks to Dr. Voorhees's extraordinary computer chip—to read the unspoken promise that the serpent was making to Eve:
"Let Adam have his brief time of glory. It will be you, Eve, who will triumph in the end. And through you, I, Lucifer, will prevail over the powers of Heaven."
Joshua Keegan then turned his gaze from the serpent to Adam's companion, Eve, and to the familiar icy blue-green eyes and fiery gold-red hair of his elusive Golden Girl.
Yes, Salem, I've heard that behind every great man there is a woman, but I've never heard that behind every great woman there is a black cat!
