One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

  “I’m just … well, to be honest, I’m having a rough time,” he says. And when she still doesn’t reply, “I can make an appointment for next week or next month or whenever you have an opening, of course. I just thought I’d take a shot that maybe you had time right now. It’s a pretty small town after all.” Big, conspiratorial grin. “This is one of the good things about small-town living, right? I figured how many people in a town this size could possibly need a therapy appointment on any given day?”

  Her jaw clenches, and the back of her neck flushes. It’s the certainty of his presumption that he’ll still be here “next month or whenever.” It’s his blindness to just how much therapy the people of our little town need—and why. It’s that she has a second job to get to, which he knows but which does not occur to him anyway. When she opens the office back up, turns the lights back on, it’s to tell him no, not on the street where it might seem flippant or even punch-pulling but in a clinical setting where it will be clear who’s in charge. She motions him onto the orange sofa, where he sits while she leans against the front of her desk and regards him.

  “First of all, your wife is a patient of mine.”

  He shakes his head, unconcerned. “I understand that, but—”

  “Second of all”—she puts up a hand to interrupt and make him listen—“there would be a significant conflict of interest in my working with you.”

  “I appreciate that”—Nathan nods this time—“but I have confidence in your professionalism.” That flashed we-two-have-an-understanding smile again. “I like people who are good at what they do.”

  “And as you can see, my daughter is here.” She’s wavering. She indicates me with her chin but does not offer to make me sit in the waiting room. Probably she feels beggars of on-demand after-hours therapy appointments can’t be choosers. Only afterward does it occur to me: maybe she wanted a witness.

  Nathan Templeton does me the favor his wife did not of doubting whether he can discuss whatever he needs to with me sitting in the room. His eyes dart my way, and the wattage of his smile falters like when there’s a storm and the lights flicker but you don’t lose power altogether. He must feel just that bad though because the spark of his smile catches finally and flares. “Oh, Mirabel and I go way back. My secrets are safe with her.” He winks at me then beams at my mother. “You’ve got a gaggle of whip-smart girls, Nora. You must be so proud. Raising kids is hard work—believe me, I know—and you haven’t had the easiest time of it. Apple and I, we’re two against one. You, you’re one against three. I don’t know how you do it.”

  And that’s what does it. That’s when she decides to lay rough timber over the morass of ruin between them and help—because he comes to her at last, parent to parent, because she is wooed by his praise of her daughters, because he’s stopped short of admitting why she’s had such a hard time of it, but he’s come close, and that’s something. And because he needs help and she’s the only one here and that, after all, is her job.

  She moves from standing against her desk with her arms folded to her chair, where she tucks her feet up and says, soft but clear, “So, Nathan Templeton. How can I help you?”

  “Well, Nora, I’ll tell you.” But then he doesn’t. He’s wearing a silky cream shirt with tiny just-pink stripes—even the buttons look fancy and perfect—but it’s untucked from dark jeans, jeans nicer and more expensive-looking than anyone else’s entire wardrobe around here, but jeans nonetheless. He’s leaning forward on the sofa, toward Nora, his hands loosely clasped between his knees, his eyes on the floor. “It’s all a bit of a strain at the moment,” he finally manages, with a laugh that says this is pretty silly and not a big deal, but with eyes that admit he’s here, isn’t he? “I guess I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know since you saw my lovely wife just a few hours ago.”

  She opens her mouth to explain that she can’t reveal anything Apple has discussed in therapy, but he’s got his hands up already. “I know, I know, I would never ask you to comment on anything you two chitchatted about together.” Like they’re teenagers at a sleepover or old friends who insist on ditching their husbands for a girls’ night out once a month. “I know she blames me. I know you do too, for that matter.” He smiles at her, half sadly. “It’s hard to see, I realize, but I really am trying to help here. I have only the best interests of Bourne at heart.”

  Not hard to see, I think. Impossible.

  Not help but hide.

  Not best but self.

  She would not say any of that, but he keeps right on without giving her a chance to respond anyway.

  “I meant what I said in the bar, you know.”

  “About what?” As if she’s at a bit of a loss, can’t quite remember what he’s referring to, hasn’t given it another thought since.

  “About the jobs. They’ll pay well. They’ll have good benefits. They’ll be good jobs. Stimulating, safe, regular hours. That’s what Bourne needs now. Hell, that’s what everyone in the whole world needs now.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” she says.

  “It is, it is,” he agrees.

  “Why are you here, Nathan?” Gentle and not a question really. More like permission. It’s okay to tell me. It’s okay to say.

  “And we’re also supporting other families’ businesses.” He’s spinning his wedding ring around and around on his finger. “We’re the go-between, Nora. Facilitators. Helpers, if you will. We enable other families to run their businesses, innovators to be able to afford to follow their dreams, companies to produce right here in America instead of having to ship the manufacturing part of their production overseas. Honestly, we’re just a small cog in the great wheel of local entrepreneurship, and I can’t think of any part I’d be prouder to play.”

  He peeks up at her—involuntarily I’d imagine—to see if she’s buying this.

  “Plus, if we weren’t here, it would be someone else, someone who doesn’t care about you the way we do. Bourne feels like home to us, and we want what’s best for everyone. You get someone else in here? They won’t be so invested. They won’t be so careful and caring. There’s a lot of corruption out there, Nora, a lot of people with their hands in one another’s cookie jars, a lot of CEOs who would ruin this town and everyone in it out of greed and sheer myopic disregard. We would—I would—never let that happen here.”

  Again, she does not add.

  Instead she repeats, quietly, “Why are you here, Nathan?”

  He doesn’t say anything. He screws his eyes shut. He holds his head in his hands. Finally he looks up at her. “I have, you know, misgivings, Nora. I have misgivings.”

  He looks done, like that was the confession. I am barely breathing.

  “What kind of misgivings?”

  “Just.” He waves around vaguely. “You know.”

  She waits.

  But suddenly he stands, smooths his expensive shirt and jeans. Runs a hand over his flushed face. “Thank you, Nora. That helped. It was kind of you to fit me in. I appreciate it. I know you’ve got places to be. I’ll see you both”—he’s fumbling in his back pocket but pauses to wink at me—“all around the town.” He finds his wallet and extracts a pile of machine-new fifties, pulls two of them free, pauses again, pulls out two more, folds them in half and in half, clears his throat, and holds them out toward Nora awkwardly, his face ablaze now, flustered or maybe just sorry.

  She does not move. Her office is so small, all he has to do to lay his fold of money on her unkempt desk is lean forward. He gives it a little pat.

  Her eyes do not leave him. “Nothing you say here leaves this room, Nathan. Not under any circumstances.”

  He looks at the floor and nods, chastened as a toddler, then holds his hands out, helpless. Without the wallet to occupy them, they’re shaking. The blood has drained from his face like a downspout, and I see what I’ve missed before. Fear. This man is terrified.

  He tries to pace, finds there’s nowhere to do so, and sits back down, resigned to it
now, ready to get it over with. “I have a PhD in chemistry. Bet you didn’t know that.” He’s going for breezy, but his voice is shaking as much as his hands. “Over my father’s vehement protestations. He thought school was a waste of time. He said what did I need an advanced degree for since I was inheriting a job. If I insisted on going, he wanted me to get an MBA. But I didn’t want advice, a company, or anything else from him. I didn’t want anything to do with Belsum. I wanted to teach chemistry at a nice liberal arts college somewhere far away from my parents. That was the plan.” He looks up at her. “I had a plan.”

  “You were a kid,” Nora says, pointedly but not unkindly. “Kids have plans. Almost no one does what they thought they would when they were twenty.”

  “I would have.” He sounds like a kid, a petulant one, sulky he didn’t get his way but smart enough to be embarrassed about it.

  “Except for what?”

  “Well, for one thing, I started dating Apple. She didn’t want to be married to an academic. She didn’t want to be married to an academic’s salary. Her family and mine go way back. When we got together, she assumed I’d be inheriting the business. I didn’t know it at the time, but I’m sure that was the appeal.”

  “Marriage often requires compromise and sacrifice,” Nora allows, “and changes of plans.”

  “I agree.” But he doesn’t sound like he does.

  “And for another thing?” she prompts.

  “Pardon?”

  “You said for one thing you met Apple. What’s another thing?”

  He says nothing but nods at the floor. She’s asked the right question.

  “For another thing…” he begins, and then stops. And then says, “It was me.”

  “What was you?”

  He looks at her. Looks back to the floor. “I invented GL606.”

  He looks up at her again, expecting fury to subsume her professionalism, but she already knew this. Or maybe it’s not that she knew it but that she doesn’t care. It’s Belsum. It’s always been Belsum. It doesn’t matter to Nora who did the actual legwork. But I’m starting to see what’s coming.

  “I didn’t mean to. People always say that—I didn’t mean to embezzle those funds, murder that snitch, cheat on that wife. But no one does those things accidentally. You know what people do do accidentally? Chemistry. So much of what you discover, you discover looking for something else. My research was environmental. Swear to God, I got into this to save the world. My dissertation work was on developing cheap, portable materials, like plastic, except they would biodegrade. Can you imagine? And GL606 is two of those things.” He glances up to see if she can guess which two. She can. “I named it Gala 606. After Apple. Gala? Get it? And June sixth, the first night we kissed. God, I was young.”

  He stops like there’s no more to the story, like the emotional trauma of inventing a life-thieving, limb-curdling, town-destroying chemical is the embarrassment of naming it like a middle schooler. If I could, I would leap across the room and shake him.

  “But my father, well, his goals were different from mine. He got really excited. Belsum wasn’t a chemical company at the time. We were Belsum Industrial. We made containers and container parts—bottle tops, rubber seals, things like that. But my father got how big GL606 could be before I even finished explaining it to him. He was … proud of me. Proud of. Impressed by. Thrilled with. Do you know what it feels like to please a man you’ve been disappointing your whole life? Do you know what it feels like to succeed like that in front of your father? Especially when your father is a man like mine?”

  I catch Nora’s eye. She has never not been proud of, impressed by, and thrilled with me, even when I am nothing special, even when I am nothing but. It occurs to me for the first time: there are some ways, some crucial, breathtaking, shattering ways, in which Nathan Templeton’s lot is far unluckier than mine. I mean, there’s money and mobility and living in the house on the hill, but which would you choose: parental love and support and pride, or a chemical company mired in public relations nightmares and a tenuous all-eggs-in reopening plan, the thwarting of which is currently being concocted by three tenacious teenagers?

  “I can imagine that would be a very seductive feeling,” Nora allows.

  “So I started testing the 606.”

  “And?” Nora nods, giving him permission to continue, never mind what’s coming. I catch her eye again and remind her to breathe. I remind myself to breathe. “What did the tests show?”

  “Increased liver size in rabbits. Birth defects in rats. Tumors and cancers in dogs. DNA damage. The same thing that made it appealing was also the problem with it. It was resistant to degradation, meaning it held up to the manufacturing process, but it was also bio-resistant. It stays in the body, builds up over time, does not biodegrade or break down really ever. I told my father all this, but he didn’t … It’s not that he didn’t care. It’s just that it wasn’t a deal breaker as far as he was concerned.”

  “But, I mean, it wasn’t your or even his decision, right? There are procedures, regulations. Right?” She’s trying to allay his feelings of guilt and culpability, which is what she should be doing, but there’s an edge in her voice that’s desperate, panicky almost. “You had to show the government or the EPA or the—I don’t know—oversight bodies of some kind? You had to prove it’s safe.”

  “You’d like to believe that, right? That’s what we count on. You believing that. You think if a chemical might be unsafe, it’s tested, and if the results are unfavorable, it’s banned or at least regulated. But it’s not true. Until last year, the EPA only had to test chemicals that had been proven to cause harm. Already. And the burden of that proof … Well, let’s just say, most chemicals never get tested at all. There are tens of thousands of synthetic chemicals in use by companies a lot less scrupulous than we are, and nearly none of them have been tested for safety, never mind environmental impact. They’re almost all entirely unregulated.”

  “But.” Nora’s mind skitters away from Nathan’s crisis of conscience. “But, like, the FDA? I have a patient who was part of a clinical trial a few years ago that required more paperwork and monitoring than anything I’ve ever seen. And she was sick already.”

  “GL606 isn’t a food, and it isn’t a drug. You don’t ingest it.”

  “You do if it gets in your water.” Her voice is shedding the downy cloak it wears for therapy sessions.

  “We didn’t know it would. We thought it might, yes, but we didn’t know it would, and we didn’t know it would be harmful if it did. Mine were barely preliminary results. Conclusive ones would take years and a team of scientists and a budget well beyond what they give postdocs. Therefore I was being unnecessarily rigorous with the testing, overly stringent, obnoxiously dogged as usual, in my father’s opinion. Meanwhile, his experts were pointing out that humans are bigger than lab animals with different biology and can handle significantly higher dosages.”

  “And that’s all it takes?” Nora sounds not angry but awed. “To make everyone ignore what you don’t want them to see? To slip right through?”

  “That, and Dad knew a guy. Bunch of guys. He always does. Strings were pulled. Officials looked the other way. Forms got signed. I fought him. I did. But not that much. Not enough. And then I thought, well, if it’s happening anyway, better to be on the inside. Maybe from there, I could do some good. Maybe inside, I could help. So I came aboard.”

  “And how’d that go?” Her tone is less psycho-rhetorical than deep-fried sarcasm.

  “That’s the sick part.” That is? “I’m better at running this company than he is. He’s always on about how I don’t have that cutthroat instinct. I’m not willing to do what it takes to get things done, make the hard calls, put it all on the line, first to the finish at all costs. That’s true. But people don’t like him. They don’t trust him. Everyone likes me.” He sounds ashamed, sorry about it. “People like me and believe me. They go above and beyond for me. They want to help me out. They trust me. I don’
t know who was more surprised, me or Dad, but it turns out, I’m good at this.” He looks up, and his eyes meet hers again and hold, steady, unfaltering. “And then I couldn’t leave because now, well, now I’m all that’s standing between you and him.”

  “I’m not sure—” she begins, but he reads her mind.

  “It could be so much worse.”

  “It’s pretty bad already.”

  “I’m invested in you,” Nathan says. “All of you. I feel responsible for you. What happened wasn’t my fault exactly, but there would have been no 606 without me. I owe you. I have to make it up to you.”

  She blinks. “You can’t.”

  But he shakes his head, won’t hear her. “It’ll be different this time, Nora. We fixed it. The 606. We had this incredible team of researchers and scientists. We had the budget and the manpower this time. And the years. The test results are astonishing. It’s better now. It’ll be different this time. I swear.”

  “So you’re here for a do-over.”

  “Not a do-over. A do-better. All the good things we promised before. None of the bad ones. My dad thinks I’m stalling. Dragging my feet. ‘Pussyfooting around like the pussy I am.’” He nods an apology in my direction and makes quotation marks with his fingers to show me such language is beneath him and it’s only his father who would use it. But it’s not his language that offends me. “I keep telling him it’s easier said than done to get work started in this town. But honestly? It’s true. I want to slow down and do this right this time.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I want to do it right?”

  “Sure it’s fixed.”

  The faintest of doubts flickers over his face like a hair got caught in his eyelashes for a moment. “Sure as you ever get in this business. Or any business. Sure enough.”

  “Sure enough for whom?” Nora asks.

  But he answers a different question. In fairness, it’s the pertinent one. “He’s my father, Nora.”

  “So you care about us, just not as much as you care about your father.”