In the Field

by Rachel Pastan

  Sarah smiled. “My fault. I forgot rule one.”

  Kate looked away and picked up her corn again. After a while she said, “Don’t you miss your work at all?”

  “When I’m here? With you? Are you joking?”

  “Don’t you even wonder how your patients are doing?”

  Sarah helped herself to another fat tomato slice and poured them both more wine. “It wouldn’t help them if I did.”

  On their last full day, Kate poked her head into a half-collapsed outbuilding and found a little skiff with oars. Sarah, who had finished Anna Karenina and moved on to The Bostonians, agreed to go rowing. They dragged the boat up through the sandwort and beach plums to the top of the dune, then pushed it over the edge and let it slide down. The tide was high, and it wasn’t long before a wave stretched far enough up the sand to help them get launched. Kate fitted the oars into the oarlocks and began to row: out toward the dark blue line of the horizon and then down along the shore in the direction of the public beach.

  “Let’s go the other way,” Sarah said. “There’ll be children screaming in this direction.” Her dark hair blew sideways across her face.

  “This is against the current. You always row in the hard direction first.”

  It was pleasant out on the water. The breeze was fresh, and the boat skipped along as Kate leaned into the oars. Pretty soon they came up on the public beach. As predicted, children were screaming, possibly joyfully, jumping into the waves and bursting up again, streaming with water, while their parents lay sprawled out on brightly colored towels, looking stunned.

  “You’re not fond of children?” Kate asked.

  “Not particularly. Are you?”

  “I can imagine liking certain ones. I was thinking about your mother saying how much you loved your dolls.”

  Sarah laughed. “That was a long time ago. And, as you’ve doubtless noticed, Mutti thinks what she wants to think.”

  “I like your mother,” Kate said.

  “Everybody likes her. Everyone thinks she’s wonderful. I think she’s wonderful. I’m just saying that she looks at me and sees what she wants to see.”

  Kate maneuvered the boat to skirt a drift of seaweed. “My mother thinks, whatever anyone does, they’re doing it to punish her.” She pulled on through the rippling water. The day was so clear that the curling wrist of Provincetown was just visible in the distance, the Race Lighthouse standing sentry where the land came to an end.

  “Are you getting tired?” Sarah asked after a while. “I could row.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “You’ve gotten your strength back.”

  “I guess I can move back into my place, then. When we get back.” The words came out sounding bitter. Kate pulled even harder on the oars, ungracefully, and an inch of bilge water sloshed back and forth in the bottom of the boat. Sarah, leaning back against the bow, laid one arm over her face to shade her eyes and trailed the other hand in the water. It was infuriating, how languid Sarah looked. Kate dropped the oars and moved toward the middle of the boat, which bucked. “I guess you can row, if you want to,” she said.

  Sarah eased herself into the stern. The crow’s feet around her eyes deepened as she squinted into the sun. Kate settled herself as Sarah worked the left oar, turning them around. She had a long clean stroke. Kate remembered how, when she had first seen her in the hospital, she had thought she looked like a lynx. In a minute, they were flying through the water, the current with them now.

  “You don’t have to move out,” Sarah said flatly.

  Kate looked hard at Sarah: her carefully neutral face, her wild, windblown hair.

  “It’s further from campus, of course. But you’ve seen how much room we have. And of course, Mutti would adore it.”

  Overhead, a tern let out a harsh trill and dove hard, skimming the water, then soared up again, gulping down a fish. On the surface, the water looked barren, but really it was full of life: stripers and flounder, eel grass and tiny shrimps and dozens of different kinds of algae.

  “I suppose I might get a new car,” Kate said thoughtfully.

  On their final morning, Kate woke with the first shift of the sky from black to gray. Sarah’s weight on the old mattress made a shallow burrow, and Kate rolled into it, resting her cheek against Sarah’s back as the room emerged from the shadows.

  The path to the beach was sharp with dune grass and broken shells. Rose pranced ahead, nosing at clumps of bracken. It was chilly, but Kate liked the scouring wind. There were pretty fluted scallops, bunches of translucent jingle shells the color of amber, a few mottled and shiny purple oysters, stacks of slipper limpets. Kate walked along the water’s edge, watching Rose pouncing on the surf as it receded, her feathery tail held high. She galloped back to check on Kate, ran ahead, galloped back. When Kate was a girl, they’d had a dog named Clementine who loved the beach. For a moment she might have been eight years old again, having escaped the summer rental house, a folded-over jelly sandwich in her pocket. Oh, how she used to run on those mornings! She remembered it so vividly, the way her knees would lift so high she practically floated through the air. She could run for what seemed like miles like that: effortlessly, without tiring, the waves hissing and sighing at her feet, her mind drifting, going transparent as a soap bubble, until she was existing from moment to moment with a perfect blank consciouslessness, the way a tree existed, or a blade of grass. Years later she’d read a book that described how monks in the mountains of Tibet ran just that way—steady, high-stepping, unwearying—across the cloud-capped peaks.

  Twenty years ago! Yet it seemed to her she hadn’t changed much in all that time from that odd, curious, private, stubborn child.

  Her feet splashed in the shallow surf; her arms pumped and her legs floated up. She moved like an arrow through the damp gray air. Time receded. The sky was enormous, open, pale and filled with light.

  When she got back to the house, Sarah was up and dressed, though it wasn’t yet eight. Her bags were packed. The bed was made up with fresh sheets, and all the dishes were washed and put away. “Where in heaven’s name have you been?” she said.

  CHAPTER 24

  Sarah said it was too early in their trip to make a stop. She said it would be difficult to find the place since the university buildings weren’t marked on the map. She said Mrs. Sonnenfeld was expecting them and they shouldn’t waste time.

  “We won’t stay long,” Kate said. “Maybe he won’t even be there.”

  Sarah honked at a truck piled high with straw bales that bounced and shifted at every bump in the road. “I don’t understand why you suddenly want to see this person. You didn’t say one word about it till now.”

  “I couldn’t,” Kate said. “Because of rule one.”

  In fact, the idea of visiting Paul had only occurred to her when she saw the Boston-Cambridge road sign. But once she’d been seized by the idea of stopping, she could not bear to just drive by.

  They reached Cambridge near eleven and left the car by a big grassy park just north of Harvard Square. Sarah tapped her elegant shoe on the bumpy brick sidewalk while Kate asked passers-by where the biology labs were. It turned out they weren’t far. As they walked, Kate looked around at the large buildings with their decorative brickwork and tall windows. The campus wasn’t elegant, but it had a seductive air of not caring what you thought of it. “It’s this one,” she called to Sarah, who was lagging, then herded her inside.

  “You’re bossy now that you’re well,” Sarah said.

  “You’re getting to know the real me.”

  After the bright August sunshine, the lobby was dim. They peered up at the directory board, and there he was: Prof P Novak — 201.

  Nerve had gotten Kate this far. But as she contemplated the door of 201 with its brass embossed name plate, nerve began to fail her. Still, it was too late to turn back. Sarah was watching,
her lips pursed. Kate knocked, and turned the knob, and in they went.

  The room was empty.

  “We tried,” Sarah said.

  Kate moved farther in and began looking around. It was just an ordinary lab, nicely equipped, with long shelves of notebooks, and tall wooden filing cabinets, and benches with microscopes and racks of petri dishes and Bunsen burners. It was nicer than her own lab, but not tremendously nicer, though it was on the corner with windows on both sides. She walked over to a bench and began peering at a few petri dishes where fuzzy colonies of various sizes and textures bloomed on the agar medium. A notebook lay on the bench nearby, and she opened it, scanning the pages.

  “Stop that,” Sarah said.

  Kate frowned and bent closer, reading more slowly.

  Footsteps approached, and Kate clapped the notebook shut. Someone was striding down the hall. Kate knew that stride. The next moment Paul came into the room. He was wearing field khakis, although, having abandoned corn, he no longer worked in a field.

  “Hello, Paul!” Kate said. “You weren’t here, so we just barged in.”

  Paul looked surprised, but not for long. He came over and clapped Kate on the shoulder. “Good to see you!”

  “This is Dr. Sonnenfeld. We were driving back from Cape Cod, and it turns out you’re right on the way. I thought I’d stop in and take a look at your setup.”

  Paul turned to Sarah, taking in her striped blue dress with its matching jacket, the scarf she wore to protect her hair from the wind. She looked very haughty and very beautiful. “A pleasure to meet you, Dr. Sonnenberg. Are you a geneticist as well?”

  “Sonnenfeld,” Kate said.

  “I’m not a doctorate kind of doctor, I’m afraid,” Sarah said. “I’m a physician.”

  Paul smiled. “A real doctor. Even better.”

  Sarah untied her scarf, tucked it away in her purse, and removed a comb.

  “We can’t stay long,” Kate said, trying not to be distracted by the sight of Sarah combing her hair. “I just thought I’d take a look at your flies. But you don’t seem to be working with flies. In fact, you seem to be working with Neurospora!”

  “You’ve been snooping.” He looked delighted. “Yes, as a matter of fact. I got your note back in June. I meant to write and thank you.”

  “How could you possibly have gotten my note?” Kate demanded. “I never mailed it.” Everything that had happened since she got sick had blotted out, more or less, the night of Thatch’s wedding. But it came back to her now, in all its confusion of pleasure and displeasure. That was the last time she had spoken with Paul, or communicated with him in any way.

  “You must have,” Paul said. “Because it certainly arrived.”

  Kate felt he wasn’t listening to what she was saying. “I didn’t have a chance to mail it,” she repeated. “I wrote it right when I was getting sick.”

  “I heard about that. It was pretty serious, wasn’t it? I’m glad to see you’re better now.”

  Yet he hadn’t so much as sent a card.

  “She almost died,” Sarah said. She had coiled her hair into a knot and was pinning it in place.

  “How frightening. What was it?”

  “Pneumonia,” Kate said.

  “Maybe you don’t remember mailing the note because you were ill.”

  “I don’t forget things,” Kate said.

  “Maybe your boss mailed it,” Sarah suggested, peering into the mirror of her compact. “When he broke into your apartment.”

  “Whitaker broke into your apartment?”

  “He thought he had to, apparently. To save my life. Anyway, how’s it working?” Kate asked as Sarah shut her purse with a snap. “The Neurospora.”

  “Extremely well, actually.” He walked over to the petri dishes and began to tell her what he had been doing. First he had produced several mutants of the bread mold that were unable to make a particular amino acid the organism needed to survive. Then he’d linked that inability to the fact that the mutants were missing a specific gene. No gene, no amino acid. As he spoke, his words seemed to enter her brain directly, his ideas leaping from his mind to hers. It was so clear once he began to explain! She forgot about what had happened between them, that he hadn’t written, that Sarah was standing impatiently by the door. His idea—missing gene, missing amino acid—was so sharp and bright, like the blade of a knife. He showed her a couple of slides, and she peppered him with questions, and then she looked up from the microscope to see Sarah’s face.

  “Come look,” Kate coaxed. “It’s incredible.”

  “We really have to go,” Sarah said.

  Paul smiled at her. “Stay for lunch at least. You’ll be my guests at the Faculty Club.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Sarah’s white neck stretched longer. “Another time.”

  “Sarah’s mother is expecting us,” Kate explained, peeking into the microscope for one last look.

  “Because I have some things I’d love to discuss with you,” Paul said to Kate.

  “You’re hoping to cash in on some more of my good ideas?” But she was smiling. She couldn’t help it.

  “I could use your help with the cytology. I can’t make the chromosomes out at all.” He spoke urgently, as though he were thirsty and she held a jug of water.

  “Kate,” Sarah said.

  “What do you know about the meiotic cycle?” Kate asked, still staring down through the lens. Sometimes, if she stared long enough, it was as though she’d drifted into the cell itself, the structures and organelles all around her as big as life.

  “Not much. Well, nothing, actually.”

  “Kate,” Sarah repeated, this time in the tone she reserved for nurses.

  Kate looked up. “Let’s just stay another hour,” she said. “An hour’s not going to matter.”

  Sarah lifted her chin in Paul’s direction. “Will you excuse us a moment?” she said, and strolled out into the hall.

  “Someone’s used to getting her own way,” Paul remarked.

  “Oh, for godsakes,” Kate said, shooting him a look.

  She found Sarah standing at the end of the hall by the window overlooking the biology quad. Despite the hot, dry summer, the lawn was lush and green. Across the way, the frieze of another imposing brick building was engraved with animals: a snake, a turtle, something that looked like an aardvark.

  “We’ve come,” Sarah said. “We’ve exchanged greetings. Now it’s time to go.”

  “We need to eat lunch anyway,” Kate said. “Why not stay and see what the Harvard Faculty Club is like?” She tried to keep her voice calm and light, but she was too stirred up. Couldn’t Sarah see how important this was to her? After a week of not even talking about science!

  Sarah opened her purse again and began once more to rummage inside it. “I wouldn’t have guessed you were so susceptible to prestige.”

  “Prestige has nothing to do with it. This idea Paul’s had—what he’s figuring out about how the genes actually work—it would be good to be part of it.”

  “So you’re not talking about just staying for lunch.” Sarah began taking things out of the purse and laying them on the windowsill: the comb, the compact, a lipstick-stained handkerchief.

  “What Paul said is true. He can’t do the cytology by himself. This is what I’m good at, Sarah.” She didn’t say she was the best. She didn’t say this was what she had made her career on. Her career so far.

  A memorandum book. A roll of Life Savers. A glinting silver cigarette case. “I don’t see why you even want to help him. It sounds like you gave him the idea that made this whole thing possible in the first place, and he never even thanked you.”

  “That’s not the point,” Kate said. “The point is that the problem is interesting.”

  “Mapping chromosome nine isn’t interesting enough?”

  So Sarah
had been paying attention. “Not as interesting at this!” Missing gene, missing amino acid—how did that work? What did the gene do, exactly? She could feel ideas stirring deep inside her brain, swirling up toward consciousness on rippling currents.

  A fountain pen, a monogrammed money clip, a small silk pouch with a knotted drawstring. “Maybe you’d better find your own exciting project to work on,” Sarah said.

  Kate laughed. “It’s not so easy.” How to convey that this was no ordinary idea; that it was a once-in-a-lifetime idea. She saw that—maybe more clearly than Paul did himself.

  But no, Paul saw it. She could tell by his confidence and by his powerful need, by the determined way he was drawing her in—reeling her in—the hook set, the lure flashing silver in the dark water.

  Sarah tossed the little pouch to Kate. “For you,” she said.

  Kate caught it. The silk was pale green, embroidered with pink rosebuds. It was about the size and weight of a walnut.

  A once-in-a-lifetime idea, she thought, if the cytology could be worked out. If someone else didn’t get there first. (Were other people working on it? She’d have to find out.) If it wasn’t a mistake. A glitch in the data.

  But Kate knew it wasn’t a mistake. She knew.

  “Look inside,” Sarah said.

  “Listen,” Kate said. “This is important.”

  “I’ve been listening,” Sarah said. “Please just look inside.”

  Kate loosened the drawstring.

  “Careful,” Sarah warned. “Don’t spill it.”

  Kate cupped one hand and tilted the pouch with the other. A stream of sand poured out into her palm.

  “It’s from the beach at the cottage,” Sarah said softly. “A memento of our time there.”

  The coarse grains sparkled, beige and pure white with a few flecks of something greenish. The smell of the beach: dried seaweed and decayed mollusks and chilly water.

  “I was going to wait and give it to you when we got back. But at this rate, that might be never.” Sarah held herself carefully, her dark hair shining in its pinned knot.