Double Helix

by Nancy Werlin

This time the door was closed. I read the sign on it. It didn’t say “Elevator.” It said “Utility Room.”

  CHAPTER 24

  I DIDN’T KNOW exactly why I’d come to look at the hidden elevator. I hadn’t really imagined it would be open or that I - could examine it closely. Certainly I hadn’t thought I’d be able to ride to wherever it went. I assumed it would be locked.

  I’d just wanted to see that closed, blank door. Something about the memory of it—drew me.

  Utility room.

  I stared at the sign and anger filled me. All at once I had to prove to myself that there really was an elevator there; that I - hadn’t hallucinated it—a modern rabbit hole—as I chased my own white rabbit. I felt my fists clenching and, for one wild moment, I thought that if I just grabbed hold of the handle and wrenched with all my might, I could shear the heavy wooden door right off its hinges. I would reveal the steel sliding elevator door within for all to see. It would serve them right, I thought. Liars! I pictured Judith Ryan’s cobra head.

  It was in this mood that I pulled out the card key for my own laboratory and jammed it into the card reader next to the “utility room.” I didn’t expect the key to work. I expected it to fail, and that would give me—in my red haze I thought this—a good excuse to wrench the door off.

  Okay, I doubt I actually would have tried to break the door. I’d have come to my senses. But I wasn’t tested, because—incredibly—the key worked. The card reader clicked smoothly, and its little light flashed green. Disbelieving, I grasped the door and pulled.

  It opened easily.

  And yes—I had not hallucinated it. There was the elevator inside. It wasn’t even closed; its door was fully rolled away into the wall and the interior lay as innocently open and empty and bland as any public elevator in any public building in the land.

  As quickly as it had welled up, my anger subsided, leaving a kind of mingled shame and embarrassment behind. I looked down at the card key in my hand. It was a very basic-level security key; programmed, I’d been told, to let me into my own lab and also into public areas like restrooms and lounges. And, apparently, into elevators and utility rooms.

  I blew out a long breath. Well. As long as I was here . . .

  Feeling foolish but determined, I stepped into the elevator. I looked at the bank of buttons and was hit by a momentary sensation of déjà vu. Then it faded and I understood.

  Of course, I’d seen the control panel before, when I’d run in after Foo-foo. I had seen it only for a second, but I realized now that it had stuck in my mind for a reason, and that reason was why I was here right now.

  Compared to the other elevators in the building, the control panel had one too many buttons. Ground floor, mezzanine, 1, 2, 3. That was all the same. But beneath that: B1 through B5, where the regular elevators had only B1–B4.

  I was sure of this, though I made a mental note to double-check the other elevators before I left tonight.

  I reached out gently and pressed the button for B5. It lit up for a second, only to go out as I removed my finger. The elevator door stayed stubbornly open; locked open. I tried three other buttons with the same result. Then I fixed my eyes on a second card key mechanism that sat beside the control panel. Its presence, too, made this elevator different from the others.

  Automatically, I tried my card key there, as well. But this time it didn’t work. I still couldn’t access B5.

  Well, what had I expected? This was ridiculous. I was going to leave, right now, and get my head in order.

  I got out of the elevator and closed the wooden door firmly. I did not turn again to stare at the utility room sign. Instead, I walked away. Calmly, I checked the inside panel on every single public elevator in the building, where I saw exactly what I expected to see. Four basement levels only.

  I went back to my own lab. I spent an hour carefully focused on taking care of the rabbits. At the end of the circuit, I went to stand in front of Foo-foo’s cage. I stared at her, and her nose twitched at me.

  Okay. Okay, I had somehow managed to creep myself out thoroughly, and I was imagining all sorts of nasty . . . Okay, I was having some attack of senseless paranoia.

  Except—at the same time—I didn’t believe that I really was being paranoid.

  Among the great mysteries of biology is the inheritance of what appear to be immutable animal instincts; behaviors that are not necessarily taught by parents to children, but which appear unerringly in the next generation. Spiders spin webs. Birds migrate south to the same places in which their ancestors wintered. Salmon return to spawn in the rivers in which they were originally hatched.

  Of course, these behaviors must somehow be genetically coded. After all, if a robin can possess the correct DNA to lay a blue egg, then why shouldn’t it possess coding to know just how to build the nest for the egg? It must. It does. Species coding obviously encompasses more than the instructions for an animal’s appearance; it encompasses DNA instructions for its behaviors and its instincts.

  And since DNA is DNA—the same in a spider as in a human—then why shouldn’t humans have instincts that are capable of being just as powerful? Even if we aren’t accustomed to thinking of them that way. Even if we generally call them ESP and the subconscious, and more than half distrust what they have to say to us.

  These thoughts raced through my head. I wondered, defiantly, if there was any reason why I shouldn’t pay attention to the instinct inside of me that was screaming that I knew something, something, something. Why I shouldn’t pay attention to the instinct that strung together my mother’s long-ago mention of Dr. Wyatt, and my father’s hate-filled reaction, and my own doubts about myself, and the silent alert that had gone off inside of me at the sight of that elevator panel. Why I shouldn’t pay attention to this . . . and do it as quietly and carefully as my instinct was screaming at me to do.

  Why couldn’t I trust my own instinct, even if I couldn’t understand it?

  I went to the computer and set methodically to work. In short order I had discovered that the building plans for Wyatt Transgenics were on file at Cambridge City Hall, in the Inspectional Services Department. Public office hours from 10 to 4, Monday through Friday.

  As soon as I could, I was going to check the building plans for that extra subbasement level.

  CHAPTER 25

  ON SUNDAY—WITH the exception of one short trip to the lab to take care of the rabbits—I stayed home with my father. We planned to sort through my mother’s belongings. I was a little shocked when we went into the apartment building’s storage area in the morning and I saw the carefully stacked pallet of large plastic containers. I’d known it was there, of course, but I’d always avoided coming in and really looking, really seeing.

  The pile of boxes was huge.

  My reaction must have been obvious. “I didn’t get rid of anything of hers when you and I moved into the building,” my father said defensively. “I just packed it all and put it here. It just seemed . . . I couldn’t . . .” He shrugged.

  “Yeah,” I said quickly. “I understand.” Of course it - wouldn’t have been possible for him to give away my mother’s things while she lived. It was horribly daunting now, however, to look at the containers. Automatically, I began to count: The pallet was stacked six high, six deep.

  By contrast, exactly two small boxes and one suitcase had come from the nursing home. Those had been sufficient to hold her personal belongings for the past few years.

  I cleared my throat. “How should we do this? Just start opening things? Make a pile for the donations, another for stuff you want to keep? Maybe I should go get some empty boxes so we can sort things into them.”

  I looked at my father and saw that he was standing perfectly still beneath the bare overhead lightbulb, with his eyes closed, his arms tight to his sides, and his hands in fists.

  “You know,” I said, “we don’t have to do this today. Next weekend would be fine. This stuff isn’t going anywhere on its own.”

  My
father’s eyes snapped open and gave me a look that was almost accusing. “I want to do it today.”

  “Okay. That’s fine. Just a thought,” I said.

  He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I need to do it today. I feel I can do it today.”

  “All right.” I eyed the pallet and thought that the only way to do it in a day would be to haul everything off in a truck to the Salvation Army without opening a single container. But even though I knew that my father wanted to donate a lot of the stuff, he had also been clear about planning to sort through everything first. “Let’s get started. Why don’t I climb up and haul a few containers off the top, and then we can—”

  “Eli. Wait.”

  I turned back to my father.

  “I know this is extra work. But I want to bring everything up to the apartment and sort through it there. If we do it here, anybody can come in anytime.”

  Now it was my turn to take a deep breath. We lived on the fourth floor! But my father’s hands had fisted again and, well, it wasn’t my decision anyway. It had to be how he wanted it. I felt a surge of protectiveness. If my father wanted privacy, he would have it.

  “Okay,” I said. “I think I saw a dolly around here someplace that we can borrow to wheel things down the corridor. What if I do the stair part, and you handle the flat stretch with the dolly.” I hesitated one last second, thinking of our apartment lined with the containers; piled high with my mother’s stuff. It was going to be a disaster area, and in more ways than one. Well, so be it. “Dad, one thing . . .”

  “What?”

  “We might not get through everything today.”

  “I know that,” said my father. “But I think we might be able to do most of it.”

  I knew better. It would take many trips just to haul everything upstairs. The irony did not escape me. In my mind I’d been swearing at elevators all night, but now, I’d have done just about anything to be living in a building that had one.

  I went to borrow the dolly. Maybe we could at least have everything upstairs by noon, when I’d go off to visit the rabbits.

  We did. We managed to fit all the containers into the apartment’s living room and hallway, covering the sofa and most of the floor, stacked two and three high. Then, still breathing hard and sweating heavily, I left my father to begin opening the containers alone.

  I was gone for an hour and a half. I worked quickly with the rabbits, not only because I was anxious to get home again, but because being inside the Wyatt Transgenics building was now making me feel uneasy. I had barely been able to meet the eyes of the security guard at the front desk when I signed in. I was filled with guilt, although I had done nothing wrong. Nothing but feel determined to chase my instinct about one little elevator. There was nothing bad about that. It was perfectly within the law to examine public building plans.

  Yes, whispered a voice in my own head, perfectly legal—but stupid, too. Why not just go ask Dr. Wyatt directly? Don’t you owe him some trust? He’s been nothing but good to you. You know what I think? I think you’re letting yourself invent something suspicious about Dr. Wyatt because you want to feel closer to your father. But that’s dumb, too, because nothing has really changed between you and your father. He still hasn’t told you what his problem with Wyatt is. He’s still just “thinking about it.”

  I shook my head to get rid of the voice. I wasn’t going to listen to it today. Today belonged to my father. I could worry about the building plans and the elevator on Monday.

  I finished up with the rabbits as quickly as I could and went home, where I found my father sitting cross-legged on the floor. He didn’t move or speak, though.

  Around him, the room looked as if a tornado had ripped through it. Containers were turned over, upended, their contents—clothing and shoes and books and pictures, a basket of unfinished knitting, a wrapped set of teacups, other strange sundries—were strewn about. And as I gazed around, each object stabbed with its instantaneous familiarity.

  That little footstool with the butterfly embroidery on it.

  The giant wheel of a Rolodex.

  Several dozen red three-ring binders, carefully labeled on their spines.

  A beige silk dress.

  The skeins of navy wool spilling out of the knitting basket.

  Her ancient portable computer that must have weighed twenty pounds.

  A single purple Birkenstock sandal.

  I said to my father, “Are you okay?”

  After a moment, he nodded. He gestured vaguely around the room. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve made a mess. I just . . . I couldn’t stop.”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “I can’t give it all away,” my father said. “We’ll pack it all up again, after I’ve looked at everything, and we’ll put it back.”

  I opened my mouth and then I closed it. “Okay,” I said. “Whatever you want.”

  He looked at me straight on then, and I saw that it was actually okay. His eyes were clear and, though sad, totally sane. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I think I just needed to say that aloud. Of course we won’t put everything back in storage. Of course we’ll sort through it all and figure out what can go. I’m sure a lot of it . . . some of it . . . can go.” He waved one hand vaguely. Then it dropped limply back onto his lap, and I saw that he was holding a photograph album there. It was open. He looked down at one of the pages and then his shoulders began to shake.

  I went and sat down next to him on the floor—shoving aside a pair of high-heeled black pumps to do it—and held him while he cried. “I’m sorry,” he said. I shook my head but - didn’t reply. I tried not to look around. I tried not to see all the stuff.

  But then, as he got better control of himself, my father pulled away from me and grabbed the photograph album in his lap. “Look at this,” he said to me. “I went looking for this photo and I found it. Look at her. She was eighteen. It was before I ever met her. She was so beautiful. So beautiful.”

  He pointed. And I could feel his eyes sharply on me as I looked down at the photograph album, into the laughing face of a girl who could have been the sister of Kayla Matheson.

  CHAPTER 26

  SOMETIMES YOUR EYES play tricks on you. On the street, you catch a glimpse of someone you think you know, but when you get closer, you see you were wrong. The resemblance was an illusion; you can’t believe you ever thought it was there.

  So I looked away now from the photograph of my mother as a teenager, told myself sternly to be rational, and then looked at the picture again so that the mirage of Kayla, wrongly superimposed on my mother, could fade away.

  Except it didn’t.

  “Eli?” said my father.

  I felt as if the floor had dropped away beneath me; as if I had indeed fallen down some rabbit hole into another world where the laws of science had been cross-wired into nonsense. I wondered if I was dreaming. Nightmaring.

  “Eli?” said my father again, gently.

  I tore my gaze from the photo. His face was all compassion for me. And was there another expression there—something watchful? “She was the age you are now,” he said.

  I remembered vomiting behind a bush around the corner from Dr. Wyatt’s house. I could see that little boy’s face again. After you puke, you feel better.

  “Eli?”

  Genetics enforces one’s destiny. One cannot escape.

  “She was my age? That’s weird to think about. I don’t remember seeing this picture before.” I tried to make my face and voice ordinary.

  “Wasn’t she beautiful?” he said again, but I felt sure he was asking me something else. He’d seen Kayla at the memorial service. Or hadn’t he? I couldn’t remember now. I could ask—except I didn’t want to.

  I got up. I felt almost feverish; the walls of the room seemed far away and unfocused. “Excuse me,” I said. I walked as steadily as possible into the bathroom. I closed the door behind me, marched to the sink, and turned the cold water on full-force. I bent down and splas
hed my face. Did it again. Again. Again.

  Something I had forgotten came back to me. When I was a small child, often when people saw me with my mother, they would remark on our resemblance. No doubt whose kid that is, they’d say, smiling.

  Nothing odd in a child resembling his mother. Right? But . . . but . . .

  I lifted my dripping face and looked into the not-so-clean mirror above the sink. Male and female features seemed to transmute, to melt into each other. My mother—Kayla—me. I lifted my fist to smash the mirror and barely caught myself in time, knuckles half an inch from its surface.

  I pulled in a breath. Let it out. Another.

  “Eli?” My father was outside the bathroom door. “You’ve been in there awhile. Is everything okay?”

  Another breath. I lowered my fist from the mirror and with both hands, gripped the sink. Then: “Yes,” I called above the noise of the running water. “Fine. I’ll be in here a few more minutes, though. Okay?” The sink was full now. I turned off the water.

  “Okay.” I heard his footsteps as he moved away.

  What the hell did it mean?

  I lowered my head back to the sink. Cold water.

  Thought, analysis, were still impossible. I decided not to try, just yet.

  Cold water.

  Eventually, I toweled my face and head dry. Then, without making any conscious decision, I groped for my cell phone. With some difficulty, I made my fingers work well enough to call Viv at home. The line rang once. Twice. Then Viv picked up, and at the sound of her voice, I felt the ground beneath me steady.

  I didn’t say hello or my name or anything polite. I didn’t have the ability to say anything but what was most important. “Viv. Can I come see you now?”

  There was a moment of complete silence. Then: “Yes.” Viv said it as if we were still together, as if it were perfectly ordinary for me to call. Another moment of silence in which I simply breathed, groping for the words that I knew must be necessary, but not finding any. Then Viv added calmly, “Mom’s at Bill’s. I’m alone here,” and I knew that she was allowing me not to have to say anything else. Not to have to explain.