Double Helix

by Nancy Werlin

  And maybe—wasn’t it possible?—my mother did, too.

  My father moved his head, but didn’t really turn. “I’ve been calling your cell phone,” he said.

  “I had it off,” I said. “I’m sorry.” And I was. After a moment my father nodded, and with his foot pulled the second chair closer.

  “Sit,” he said. “It’s almost time.”

  I sat next to him and I looked at my mother’s face, and then at my father’s impassive one, and we waited.

  It wasn’t a surprise, of course. We—my father and I—had been told a while ago that my mother was nearing the end of her life. She couldn’t talk anymore, in any way. The wild, uncontrollable flailing of her arms and legs, which had embarrassed her so hugely, which had been so scary and dangerous to her and to others, had quieted down to shivers and shakes. “A few weeks, at most,” the doctor had said. But he had said it months ago, last fall, and she had hung on, and somehow . . . somehow I had put it out of my mind. And now it was time.

  You could feel it, in the room with us. Death.

  I was choked with fear.

  Nonetheless, I moved to the other side of the bed and took my mother’s other hand in mine, feeling how it trembled. And then my father reached out across the bed and we held hands. He was trembling along with her. So was I.

  Then, quietly, though she had not been quiet in many, many years, my mother simply was no more. I cannot describe it except to say that there is no mistaking the sudden emptiness. There is no mistaking that moment of change.

  Dr. Wyatt had proclaimed to me that there was really no such thing as the individual human consciousness, no mysterious “something” or essence that made a human a human. And only a few minutes ago, I would have sworn that there was - really nothing left of the person who had been Ava Louise Lange Samuels, even though she was still alive.

  But—now that she actually had died, I could feel the difference. Something had changed. Something had departed. Something—someone—was now missing from the world. Viv would call it a soul. I—I didn’t know what to call it. I only knew it had been there, and was no longer.

  I heard my father exhale. His fingers tightened on mine, and I returned his grip. I didn’t look up, though. I closed my eyes. I lifted my mother’s hand to my cheek. Just for a second. Then I put it back down on the bed, by her side.

  CHAPTER 22

  I TOOK THE FOLLOWING few days off from work, not because I wanted to—it would have been a relief to have something concrete and impersonal to do for hours every day—but because my father asked. My mother had long ago signed a form to donate her body to scientific research, so there wasn’t to be an actual funeral, but a memorial service was scheduled for Thursday morning, at a chapel at the Harvard Business School. Many of my mother’s old colleagues and friends would want to come, my father said. My mother had been very impressive, and very admired, once.

  “I know,” I said. It was the day before the memorial service, and we were walking by the river.

  “Do you?” said my father.

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder. She was an extraordinary person. Just—uncommon. Her life wasn’t all tragic. There are many things to celebrate about it.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not sure you do. I think there’s no way you really can know. You won’t let yourself. That’s what I most regret, I think.”

  I contained my impatience. My father’s backward-tending musings seemed to me to accomplish nothing, though I knew I had to be there to hear them since that was what he wanted. That was okay. Just so long as I didn’t have to cough up similar thoughts. I didn’t have any. I didn’t want to look back. I - couldn’t understand why he hadn’t used up all these thoughts long, long ago.

  In many ways my mother had been dead for years, hadn’t she? And all these friends and colleagues who were supposedly going to celebrate her life tomorrow—I hadn’t noticed them visiting her these last years. Or even calling us, or providing support to my father in any way.

  He had been—we had been—alone.

  But I wasn’t going to get enraged about that now. There was just no point. It was over. I felt my pace speed up a little anyway. I couldn’t help it. But after a few seconds, I adjusted it back down so that my steps matched my father’s again.

  And we plodded on.

  We’d been taking long walks together every day. I wasn’t sure that my father found my presence a comfort—we continued uneasy with each other, and I kept my thoughts to myself—but he kept asking me to come out, and of course I did. We would walk and walk, and occasionally my father would make pointless comments like the ones he’d just made. And other times I would say, “Dad? Are you okay?” and he would say, “Fine, and you, Eli?” and I would say, “Fine.”

  We did not talk about the future—our future, and how things would now change—though I was aware that that conversation would have to occur. I wanted it to. After the service, maybe, he would speak up. I wondered if he would be honest with me about our financial situation. About the debt that, surely, there’d be some hope of overcoming now that there - wouldn’t be any new bills. I wondered if he would be thinking about dating other women—of remarrying, even. His whole life could change, if he wanted.

  He was free. Did it matter to him? Had he realized it yet? He must have. He must have been longing for this for years. Why couldn’t he say so? Did he think I wouldn’t know? Wouldn’t expect it? Wouldn’t understand?

  Did he think I was selfish enough not to want freedom for him?

  I ventured a glance at him as we trudged. His face, in profile, was down-turned, unreadable. He was fifty-two years old. He had thrown so much of his life away. Was he planning to salvage what was left? To indulge, finally, in wine, women, and song? He deserved all of that. He’d been good to her. To me. He could have a full life now, a new life. He ought to want it.

  But, as far as I could tell, he was still stuck dwelling on the past.

  She was an extraordinary person.

  So what? Who cared? She’d caused devastation and destruction. She’d wrecked lives, mostly his. Mine, too, maybe—if . . . if I had HD. She hadn’t meant to do that, of course. But she had, all the same.

  Well. One thing I knew. I could make sure that my father - didn’t have any additional burdens, any additional debt, any additional heartache, any additional life wreckage. Enough was enough. I was eighteen, and employed. In every way, I - could take care of myself now. I could move on, and in doing that, force him to do it, too.

  I could even take the HD test and—if necessary—lie to him about the results. Why hadn’t that occurred to me before? I - could even not take the test, but tell him I had. I could easily mock up a letter like the one he’d gotten. I could help free him from that last anxiety. I could free him of me. I could free him, and he could forget any of it had ever happened. He could move on and not throw any more of his life away. Not on her. Not on me.

  The only problem was that I couldn’t quite imagine talking to him openly about his new freedom. He would have to start the conversation if it were to occur.

  Or I could just go ahead and do what I had to do, without speaking of it to him.

  We walked on. Then, as we rounded a curve in the path, the glass-and-brick cathedral that was Wyatt Transgenics loomed ahead. It dominated the landscape. This was the first time we’d come this way on our walks.

  “I assume you haven’t invited that man to the memorial service,” said my father sharply.

  We both knew who he meant. “No,” I said. It hadn’t even occurred to me to invite Dr. Wyatt. I had not seen or communicated with Dr. Wyatt since the breakfast on the morning my mother died—a morning that now seemed as if it had happened a long time ago. I remembered the strange twist of that conversation, but I also knew that I had overreacted to it. After the service, I would call and apologize. I needed my job, liked it—as well as the career opportunities it offered. And there were still questions to be answered about Dr. Wy
att and his history with my parents. I still wanted answers . . . didn’t I? Even with my mother dead.

  Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe this, too, didn’t matter anymore.

  “Because I’d throw him out if he showed up,” said my father.

  Okay. It still mattered to my father.

  I stopped on the path. “Why?” I asked calmly. “Why would you throw him out? Why do you care? Will you tell me now why you hate him so much? It had something to do with her, I know. But now she’s dead. Can you let it go? Can you tell me? It can’t be important anymore.”

  He had stopped, too, a few steps ahead of me. He turned back. Our eyes met. And I expected him to say no again, flatly, but he surprised me. He drew in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and then opened them. He said, slowly but clearly: “It’s still important. And maybe I will tell you.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “You’ll tell me?”

  “I might. I’ll think about it. That’s the best I can do right now, Eli.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Fair enough.” Now it was my turn to pause, and then I used unfair artillery—unfair because, even though I wasn’t lying, even though I meant it—I did mean it—I was also saying it to manipulate. I needed to say it, though. Maybe as much as I knew he longed to hear it.

  I said, “I love you, Dad.”

  Now he was the one who was surprised. He glanced away so I couldn’t see his face, but I did see the movement in his throat as he swallowed. Then he took a step forward and reached out to grip my hand.

  “Me, too, son,” he said.

  I gripped back. Just for a moment. Then we turned, side by side, and walked on. We didn’t look at each other, or at Wyatt Transgenics as it towered above our heads as we passed.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE EVENING AFTER the memorial service I went running for over an hour, and in the middle of the night I swallowed two sleeping pills, but I still slept badly, full of rage and longing and uncertainty that I kept trying to stamp down. I just wanted to be . . . robotlike. That would work.

  Viv again.

  She had come to the service. In my memory, I could see her still. She’d entered the chapel with a firm step, but after a single glance across the width of the chapel during which our eyes met, she’d looked quickly away and made a beeline for the last row of chairs. She’d settled, alone, into a seat on the end, and sort of collapsed into herself, ducking her head to study the little folded paper my father had prepared to explain the content of the service. Hymns. Poems. Prayer.

  I had not contacted her. I had not asked her to come—but I found I was glad to see her.

  She did not raise her head, and so I took the opportunity to watch her, just for a minute. She wore a black blouse and skirt with little white flowers all over it, and, on her head, a small, slightly-battered straw hat. Thrift store, I guessed. But, as so often, Viv had gotten her outfit slightly wrong. This time it was the fabric. It was over ninety degrees outside, and even from across the room—even in the air-conditioning of the chapel—I could see the beads of perspiration on her forehead.

  She was wearing high-heeled sandals with thin straps. She’d crossed her legs and one little foot dangled beneath the hem of her long skirt, bare ankle circling nervously. She had slender, sensitive ankles . . .

  Her head came up abruptly and she caught me. I nodded to her calmly, as if I hadn’t just been ogling—at my dead mother’s memorial service, too—mouthed “Thanks for coming,” and turned definitely away. Then it was my turn to feel her eyes on me, throughout the entire service. I didn’t look at her directly again, though, and when the chapel finally cleared afterward, I discovered that she had not been one of the - people who lingered to talk to my father or me. She had left.

  I told myself I was glad about that, too. I told myself it was just as well, because Kayla Matheson had come also—slipping in as the service was starting, but staying long enough to briefly wish me sympathy afterward—and I felt uncomfortable when I thought of Viv seeing me with Kayla. But I could have predicted that Viv would leave as quickly as possible, because Viv is proud. I forget that from time to time, but it’s true. She had attended my mother’s memorial service; she would send a note to me, expressing her sympathy; and in the background she would be reading about HD and brooding—I knew it—but, even if she were dying inside, she would not call me.

  Which was fine. Which was good, because my mother’s death had not changed anything major in me or my life. At least, not anything that would affect Viv and me.

  Knowing that trying to sleep more was useless, I got up at five a.m. and was at work an hour later, entering the accumulated data that had piled up while I was out, and then running reports on it and on last week’s data for everybody in the lab. By late afternoon, I had everything that I was responsible for squared away and in control again, and as people began streaming out for the weekend, I heard myself volunteering to take the rabbit-care detail for the next couple of days. That way, the woman who was originally scheduled to do it could go to the Cape with her boyfriend. “Wow, thanks,” she said. “I was just complaining about it for the sake of complaining, you know; I didn’t really mean—I wasn’t asking—”

  “It’s no problem,” I said. “Go have fun, Robin. I’m happy to do it.” Which was a fact; I was glad to have rabbit-care plans for the weekend. Any plans.

  “Well, thanks. You know I’ll do it for you sometime.” Robin began scribbling on a Post-it note. “Just in case you have a question or something, let me give you my cell phone number.”

  “Okay, great.” I accepted the piece of paper and stuck it on the frame of my computer monitor.

  Hand on the doorknob of the lab, Robin still lingered, looking guilty. But the pull of a weekend at the beach was strong, and I could almost see her thinking that it wasn’t as if rabbit-care patrol was difficult, or as if shift-swapping wasn’t done all the time. I waited, and she said, “Just, uh, don’t let any rabbits out again, you hear?”

  That was it, then. “Does everybody know about that?” I asked. I did my best to look and sound upright and responsible. “How embarrassing. Well, believe me, Foo-foo and all her friends are staying in their cages where they belong. And any questions, I’ll call you. Deal?”

  Robin was reassured. “Deal. Hey, it’s not like letting Foo-foo out was so bad. I remember once, this guy fed the wrong nutrients to some mice and ruined a whole experimental cycle.” She opened the door. “Aren’t you leaving? You have a few hours before the ten p.m. data collection. You can get dinner and then come back.”

  “I have a few more things to do here first,” I said, gesturing vaguely at my computer.

  “All right.” Finally, she was gone. I sank into my swivel chair and just sat there, feeling the evening gather in around me. I closed my eyes. It was funny how much easier I found it to be alone at the lab than I did at home. How calm I felt now, as, out in the corridors, the footsteps and voices passed by and faded and the building settled down into its after-hours quiet that no longer felt creepy to me.

  I sat there for a long time, not even thinking. I might even have dozed off.

  When, eventually, I came back into myself, I checked my cell phone for messages. None. I left a message for my father to say I’d be working late. “Really working,” I told the recording. “I mean, I’m not having dinner with—I’m taking care of the rabbits.” I hung up feeling chagrined—why had I said that? It wasn’t my father’s business if I saw Dr. Wyatt. I would see Dr. Wyatt if I wanted to.

  Though, in fact, I hadn’t seen him or talked to him that day, or all week, and although I thought he must surely know about my mother’s death, since Kayla Matheson did, he hadn’t come with Kayla to the memorial service.

  It was just as well, of course. My father might have made good on his threat to throw Dr. Wyatt out if he’d shown up. Maybe Dr. Wyatt had known he wouldn’t be welcomed by my father and had kindly stayed away, while sending Kayla.

  My father had definitely noticed Kayla. Well, who would
n’t? He’d stared after her as she strode confidently out of the chapel after talking to me. “That girl,” he said abruptly to me, later on. He’d described her, meticulously. “A friend of yours?”

  “Yes,” I’d said cautiously.

  “A new friend?” he pressed.

  “Yes.”

  The strangest series of expressions had passed over his face. One of them was almost—fear. And then, for a moment, I’d thought he was about to start screaming at me. But in the end, all he’d said was: “You ought to be with that nice girl, that Vivian Fadiman. Where did she go?” And he’d turned away.

  A shiver shook me, now, in the lab. I got up and adjusted the air-conditioning, but it didn’t help. All at once I was overwhelmingly conscious of the unanswered questions that I’d mostly refused to think about these past weeks. Why was Dr. Wyatt so interested in me? What was my father going to tell me, if he did decide to tell me, about why he hated Dr. Wyatt?

  I discovered I was pacing. I looked at my watch; there was ample time to go out and grab a sandwich or some pizza before coming back to do the bedtime rabbit review. But it felt somehow as if it would be too overwhelming to leave the building and come back again. I wasn’t tired, exactly, just . . . just . . . And I wasn’t hungry, either, although a candy bar - wouldn’t be a bad thing.

  A vision of the extensive vending machine bank in the company cafeteria floated into my mind and before I knew it, I was out in the corridor, locking the lab door carefully behind me.

  This part of the building featured floor-to-ceiling glass, and through it I could see the darkness beginning to settle down outside, in the world. The building almost seemed to whisper secrets around me.

  I found myself, not heading over to the cafeteria and the vending machines, but instead tracing the route that Foo-foo had taken. And then there I was, in HR, in that dead-end of a corridor, facing the door that hid the little elevator.