I laughed. “You do your homework in your head? How does that work?”
“Eidetic memory,” he answered. “I read the problems and then I’ve got them in my head, and I can just…think them through and come up with the answers.”
“What’s—that thing you said…eidetic memory?”
“It’s what most people are thinking of when they talk about a photographic memory. My brain basically takes a snapshot of everything I read—math problems, physics equations, books, sheet music, schematics, whatever. If I look at something once, I can bring it up in my mind with perfect recall.”
“So that’s why you’re so damn smart?” I said, lifting the baskets from the fryers and shaking the grease out.
He tilted his head side to side. “It’s more of a…symptom of intelligence, you could say. The fact that I have an eidetic memory isn’t the cause of my intelligence, but rather is more of a by-product of it.” He grinned a little sheepishly. “You know, just…clinically speaking, I mean.”
“Hey man, as wicked smart as you are, I think you get to be a little smug about it sometimes.”
He paused in the act of sliding a patty onto a bun. “Smug? You think I’m…smug?”
His expression was so concerned I couldn’t help laughing. “Dude, chill,” I said. “No, you’re not smug.”
He went back to plating the rest of the food. “I can’t rely on raw intelligence. If the smartest person in the world is a lazy bum with no drive or ambition, nobody will ever have heard of him because he won’t have ever accomplished a single thing. It’s wasted potential. I’m not going to waste my potential. Doesn’t matter what my IQ is or what my SAT score was if I’m not pushing myself. That’s all useless horseshit if I don’t actualize my potential and turn it into real world accomplishments. Working as a short order cook just keeps my body busy while I’m unable to sleep, and lets me earn money while my mind is busy doing other things. I solved an equation in my head while flipping burgers that my professor was stumped on for six months—and that’s less a brag on my smarts than my efficient use of time.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said, feeling distinctly overwhelmed by my baby brother’s intelligence.
I knew for a fact all of my brothers felt the same way if they spent too much time around Xavier. The brute force of his intellect tended to dominate everything. His mind was never at rest, ever, and neither was he. Even while studying, he’d be doing something with his hands. I remembered watching him read a history textbook for class once while he was standing up at the kitchen table idly tinkering with bits and pieces of electronics and a laptop. He finished the entire textbook in a single two-hour session, and when he was finished he’d built a four-legged robot that would totter around like a drunk dog, then stop, tip forward on its forelegs, then keep walking around doing handstands. It didn’t do anything other than that little trick, but it wasn’t meant to. He’d stuck pieces together to keep his hands and the rest of his brain-space busy while reading, and the robot was what he’d ended up with as an accidental by-product.
Honestly, it was hard not to feel a little inferior around him.
When all the food was plated up, we carried all seven plates out together. The others had shoved a pair of tables together and were playing some crazy drinking game that involved playing cards, and a lot of shouting, and a bottle of Jameson that had been new and unopened less than half an hour ago and was now nearly half empty. I had a feeling my liquor overhead was about to go up exponentially.
The game was cleared away and fresh beers were poured all around, even for Xavier and the twins since, as Brock—the only other brother with college experience—pointed out, even though they were underage here in Alaska it was obvious Xavier was going to drink at Stanford, and the twins would have constant access to booze while on tour, so pretending they didn’t drink was kind of dumb.
We dug into our late dinner; it was well after ten by this point, but we’d always been a family to eat late. When I was the one in charge, I usually didn’t get a chance to fix dinner for the boys until after nine or ten most weeknights, having been too busy cooking and waiting tables to take time for it until after the rush ended. Dad was always behind the bar then, and usually fairly well into a bottle of Jack by then anyway. He’d never gotten so drunk on shift that he stopped being a whirlwind wizard of a bartender, but it meant he was focused on the drinks and the customers rather than the rest of us. His way of coping, I guess. Easier to bury himself in booze and customers than to let himself give in to grief.