by Nancy Werlin
“I’m taking a year off. Then I’ll go to college.”
He had attached a second wooden spool to the top of the red stick. “Where will you go?”
Viv was going to Brandeis. Very near. “I don’t know yet. I’ll apply this year.”
Dr. Wyatt scowled. “You have to go to college. Biggest mistake of your life not to. You should go to a good one, too.”
I could have mentioned Bill Gates and other wildly successful non-graduates, but why bother? “I know,” I said calmly. “I do plan to go.”
“And this year off? You’ll do what with it? Travel?”
“No.” I was going to visit my mom as often as I could stand to, and see lots of Viv; that was all I knew for sure. “I need to get a job. I was actually hoping that—” I took a deep breath. “I’d like to work here. If . . . if that’s possible.”
“Ah.” Dr. Wyatt had made a double-wheel kind of structure with the Tinkertoys. The spoke was green. The structure seemed to have his total attention. “You got A’s in chemistry and biology ?”
“And physics.”
A pause. Then, calmly, easily: “All right, then. You can work here for the year. It will look great on your college applications. You’ll like the work—it’ll be low-level, but you’ll see interesting things. And I’ll enjoy having you around. We can talk from time to time.”
This was what I wanted. But still, my mouth dropped open with shock. And I thought, maybe, maybe if I worked here, if I talked to Dr. Wyatt from time to time, I could find some way to ask—to find out—
“Well ?” Dr. Wyatt prompted. “Would you like that, Eli? It’s not every kid who has the opportunity to work at Wyatt Transgenics. Most of our employees—even the lab workers—have master’s degrees. Doctorates.”
“I would like it,” I said. It was true. Everything else aside—my God! Wyatt Transgenics!
“Then that’s settled.” Dr. Wyatt pushed the finished Tinkertoy structure away and stood up. “Let’s get you down to Human Resources. We can probably pay you something nice.”
“But—”
“What?”
“But why would you want to hire me?”
Another pause.
Then: “I knew your mother,” said Dr. Wyatt. “Years ago.” And now he was, indeed, looking at me straight on. “I knew both your parents, but especially your mother. Ava Samuels. Nice woman. I knew she’d had a son named Eli, so I knew who you must be immediately, when I got your message. So of course I’d like to do your parents’ son a favor.
“But we won’t talk about your parents, Eli. Your mother. There is no need to. We both understand the situation, eh?”
I stared at him. His linen suit. His big head. His eyes, mere pinpricks behind the black-framed glasses. Slowly his words sank in, and as they did, I felt something. I felt relief, and comfort, and security, of a kind that I hadn’t experienced—except maybe when I held Viv close—for years.
Even if I didn’t understand what he meant by “the situation.”
“Do you want a job, then?” said Dr. Quincy Wyatt. The Dr. Quincy Wyatt. “Is it a deal?” He stuck out his hand, as he had not done less than an hour ago when we met.
I did not hesitate. I put my hand in his, and we shook, firmly.
CHAPTER 3
OUTSIDE THE IMPOSING MODERN brick-and-glass cathedral that was Wyatt Transgenics, it was a perfect May afternoon. I decided to walk the three miles home, following the pedestrian path along the Charles River until I could turn off onto Western Avenue and up into deepest Cambridgeport.
I was so filled with incredulous exuberance that I wished I - could run. But even though I’d taken off the jacket, the fact that I was wearing my father’s suit made running a bad idea. I stuffed the tie in my backpack and walked fast instead.
I was going to be a lab assistant at Wyatt Transgenics, starting the Monday after graduation. That was in two weeks. Unbelievable. Unbelievable! I couldn’t have planned it even if I’d tried . . . or anyway, not so perfectly. It was a form of adulthood, sooner than I’d dared hope for. Adulthood—and control. Power over my own destiny.
Viv would keel over with happiness when I called her. What a bonus for me that was. It had worried her so much that I - wasn’t planning for college next year. It’s just not like you, she’d said mournfully.
I made a little bet with myself now. When I told her about the job offer, and my acceptance, Viv would say solemnly, We should always trust the universe, Eli. I should have known better than to doubt.
Viv and her trustworthy universe. I grinned and shook my head. I could never understand how it was that Viv could genuinely believe all would be for the best in the end. It wasn’t like she was the kind of fool who went around thinking everything was always wonderful. I’d known that about her ever since that one day back in fifth grade, when we were both eleven.
I’d entered the boys’ room ten minutes before Scott Eisenstadt, Jake Fitzhugh, and Mike Wynne were due—the news was all over school—to drag Asa Barnes in so they could beat the crap out of him and hold his head in the toilet and . . . well, who knows. I was big and strong even then, and I had - every intention of stopping this nastiness toward Asa for good. But there would be an unholy mess of denials and counter-accusations and lies and suspensions and parental interference ahead, and I was not looking forward to it. I just didn’t see another way.
Viv did, though. I found she had occupied the boys’ room ahead of me. She was standing on a toilet, artfully hidden by the stall’s carefully ajar door, with a scared but grim look on her face and a video camera in her hands.
We each knew instantly what the other was doing. It was the first time I saw how beautiful Vivian Fadiman is when she smiles directly at you.
She lifted her camera slightly, her brows quirking in a question.
I said, “New plan. I’ll go back out, and after they get here, I’ll give you exactly a minute and a half to get some good footage. Make sure you get sound, too. Then I’ll interrupt. And if you need me here earlier, scream and I’ll come.”
She nodded. The rescue mission—our rescue mission—proceeded exactly as if we were undercover agents who’d worked together forever. And even though we didn’t become friends then, there was always my knowledge that Viv was . . . well, was the girl who’d figured out how to save Asa Barnes from hell, and then did it.
Maybe, I thought now, that long-ago incident was one reason why Viv believed things always ended well. Maybe, for her, the universe had always proved trustworthy.
If that was the case, then I hoped she would never know the truth.
I crossed Memorial Drive, heading away from the river, now only a few blocks from home. I decided that as soon as I got my first paycheck, I would take Viv to the most elegant restaurant in Boston. And I would buy flowers for my mother’s room at the nursing home. She loved—had loved—irises, yellow roses, and some other flowers I didn’t know the names of but might recognize at the florist’s. I would order a new arrangement to be delivered every week.
I could afford it. They were going to pay me $18 an hour. That turned into about $2,000 a month, after taxes and deductions.
When I compared it with my current after-school minimum-wage job running backups for a local computer company, it seemed a dizzying fortune. I could help out with the bills—I’d force my father to let me help. And maybe there’d be money left over. Maybe—
I indulged in fantasies about renting an apartment of my own. I never had and never would bring Viv to the apartment I shared with my father. And while Viv’s mother was great—never knocked or came into Viv’s room when we were in there with the door closed—well, it would be better to have a private place of our own. Obviously.
On the corner of my street, I stopped in a neighborhood grocerette, bought ramen noodles, apples, cereal, eggs, milk, barbecued corn nuts, and the local paper, and scanned the newspaper’s rental listings right there in the grocery. That put a firm end to the apartment fantasy. I’d known before, a
nyway, because of what my father paid each month for our tiny two-bedroom. Even a studio apartment would eat up more than half my salary . . . and there were more important things to spend the money on, and ways to arrange it myself, too, if my father was a stiff-necked bastard about my giving him money directly.
Which he would be.
Inside our small brick building, I grabbed the mail and took the stairs two at a time to the fourth floor. I let myself into the apartment, which, after three years, still retained the unmistakably empty feel of the temporary.
My father was not there. Sometimes he went to the nursing home after work. Other times I didn’t know what he did.
I changed out of the suit and wondered if I ought to take it to the dry cleaner’s. I put on a pot of water for the ramen noodles. I was still fantasizing about the money. Maybe I could buy a car. That would help a lot next year because Viv’s college was an hour away by public transportation, but only twenty minutes by car.
A car . . .
I had a thick folder in my backpack describing all the Wyatt Transgenics employment benefits. They ranged from the trivial to the terrifying, from discounted movie tickets to death and disability insurance. I thought I remembered something in there about a credit union that gave loans for used cars. I hauled the folder out and flipped it open.
Confidential counseling support in times of personal and family difficulties—I dropped that brochure as if it were printed in fire. Stock option purchase plan. Tax-sheltered retirement investments.
I couldn’t find the credit union information, but I found myself frowning at the thick folder that contained all the details about the health insurance plan. There’d been an odd little scene at Wyatt Transgenics, after Dr. Wyatt had left me with the Human Resources director. The scene had involved health insurance . . . at first.
I had tried to tell the HR director, Judith Ryan, that I - didn’t need to sign up for the health plan. That I was never sick. But apparently this was one thing about which there was little choice. You could only get out of it if you were covered by some other plan.
“You need health insurance,” Judith Ryan said. She had the whitest hands I’d ever seen. There was a heavy crystal bowl of hard candies on her desk and, on the wall behind her head, a poster of an owl accompanied by the words: If you attend to the details, the details will attend to you.
“After all, things happen. Let’s suppose you’re right, and you never get sick.” Her voice told me she thought I was an idiot. “You could always get hit by a car.”
She was indisputably right. But that didn’t make me like her. However, it floated into my mind that I already had health insurance through my father’s coverage. Surely it would be cheaper for my father if I took this on for myself?
I said, “You’re right. I could get hit by a car. Or fall into an elevator shaft. Or, hey! Get infected by deadly microbes right in this building. You’d better sign me up.”
“What did you just say?” I stared across the desk; Judith Ryan had drawn her body up fully in her seat, like a hooded cobra preparing to strike.
I was flummoxed. I searched my memory. “Sign me up?” I ventured.
“Before. That.”
I thought she might haul off and hurl the crystal bowl of candy into my face. I was so unnerved that it actually took me a second to remember. Elevator shafts. Deadly microbes. “I was just joking.”
“Wyatt Transgenics is a scientific laboratory. We do not joke about microbes and loose safety procedures.”
Now I really was feeling like an idiot. “Okay,” I said. I raised my hands in a placating gesture. “Okay. I get you. Sorry.”
But she wasn’t through. “We do not joke about these matters at work. We do not joke about these matters at home. We do not”—her glare grew more ferocious—“joke about them at school. Not to anyone. Not to friends, girlfriends, parents.” Her nose squinched. “Not in messages written while inebriated.”
She had read my email. Judith Ryan had read my embarrassing, begging email, which had literally begun with the words: I wouldn’t dare send this if I wasn’t drunk.
I hated her. But—I wanted this job.
“Okay,” I said again. I had no clue what else I could say. “Okay. No jokes.”
Perhaps a full half-minute elapsed, however, before Judith Ryan relaxed from the cobra position and resumed telling me—in a cool voice that had said it all many times before—about company benefits.
CHAPTER 4
I HEARD MY FATHER’S KEY in the lock and rapidly gathered together all the Wyatt Transgenics employment brochures and pieces of paper, stuffing them back into their folder.
“Hi,” I called.
From the living room, my father gave a kind of grunt. Then, as if he had remembered that since the fight, we were being excruciatingly careful around each other—though we both knew the politeness was just the thin crust on a sleeping volcano—he called back: “Hello, Eli.”
Calmly now, I slid the folder into my backpack and levered myself up from the kitchen table. It was only a few steps to the living room, where my father stood, facing away from me, riffling through today’s mail.
His straight gray hair straggled nearly to the collar of his shirt. In a few days, I estimated, he’d go around the corner to the barber and emerge with a buzz cut that would do credit to an army sergeant. Then he’d ignore the matter for another year.
“How’s school?” he said, his back still to me.
“Fine,” I said.
“Still salutatorian?”
I almost didn’t answer. “Yeah.”
There was a slight pause, and then, as if our truce didn’t exist, as if he couldn’t help himself, my father bit out: “Not that it matters, since you’re sending it all down the drain. You think I’m stupid? You don’t fool me with your ‘next year’ story. If you’re not careful, you’ll ruin your life.” He had still not turned to face me, and suddenly I longed more than anything to grab his shoulders, spin him around, and punch him hard, right in his stubborn face. His nose would crunch satisfyingly . . . it would bleed right onto his white shirt.
I took a deep breath. If I hadn’t punched him on the night of the big fight, after reading that letter I’d found, I wasn’t going to do it today.
The memory of Quincy Wyatt was oddly calming. Things were going to change from now on. I had a job, and a future that I had some sort of control over.
I wondered if my father had just come from visiting my mother at the nursing home, but I didn’t ask. Nowadays we visited separately and didn’t discuss her. “Anything interesting in the mail?” I said instead.
My voice came out evenly. He wasn’t to know that, beneath the calm, I was remembering anew the letter that I’d discovered on the day we’d had the big fight. That short, formal letter that was, now, over ten years old. The letter that had prompted me to email Dr. Wyatt.
What had it been doing crumpled up at the back of the mail drawer in the hall table? Had my father tossed it in there on the day it arrived, when I’d been seven, and my mother had not yet begun to show symptoms? It was hard to believe that he’d leave such an important letter in the drawer as if it were a telephone bill or an old birthday card, and yet . . . he had. And, over time, the letter had worked its way to the back of the drawer, becoming one of several pieces of paper that for months had prevented the drawer from sliding in and out smoothly . . . until the day I’d finally gotten impatient enough to yank the whole drawer out and go fishing at the back for whatever was interfering.
The letter. I’d had to sit down after reading it. I’d been incredulous. Shocked. Scared. And then . . . I’d been angry.
I still was.
Every word was engraved in my memory.Dear Mr. Jonathan Samuels:
This letter is to confirm in writing our telephone conversation of last Tuesday. As per Dr. Quincy Wyatt’s request and referral, we have tested your blood sample and can confirm that you are negative for Huntington’s disease. Congratulations.
However, we are aware that learning the results of one’s HD test can be difficult even when the news is good, as in this case. The burden of years of anxiety is not so easily lifted, and for many HD-Negatives, there are complex additional family health concerns. Therefore, I am enclosing information about counseling and support groups. I urge you to investigate these.
If you have any further questions or need assistance in any way, please call.
Sincerely,
Harriet Emerson, MSW
Genetics Counselor
I read the letter again in my mind as I stared at my father. He hadn’t replied to my question, so I asked again. This time, my tone was a little testier. “I said, anything interesting in the mail?”
“Just bills.” My father cut off his last word halfway through as he remembered that bills were another one of the rough points between us. It was, in fact, the only rough point that he knew about, because I hadn’t mentioned the letter to him. Hadn’t mentioned my secret rage.
My father must have been at risk for HD, too. It hadn’t just been my mother. He must have been at risk, or why would he have taken the test?
His having been at risk didn’t change my own risk profile, of course, since he was negative, according to the letter. So he - couldn’t have passed it on to me; only my mother could have done that. Still . . . how dare he not tell me?
But I had put the letter back. I had not wanted to talk about it, because, inevitably, he would then urge me again about my own testing. And I hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Not now. Not yet. So, as far as he knew, we’d fought only about money that night. Money and college, which were the same thing, as far as I was concerned.
Not that money hadn’t been enough to cause a fight between us. In fact, I felt my fists clench as I reminded myself of all the money problems he’d concealed from me these last few years, actually lying about the number of clients he had in his small private therapy practice, claiming to have raised his hourly rate, while he bleated to me about the importance of school and study and grades. But the fact was, long-term talk therapy with a psychologist like my father was out of fashion. It was expensive and time-consuming, and many health insurance plans didn’t like to cover more than a half-dozen visits a year.