The Half-Life of Everything

by Deborah Carol Gang

  “That you kill me first?” Kate said.

  Now it was a smile. “We would hate to sacrifice our human subjects. We get so attached to them.”

  “When will you break the code on the drugs so we’ll know for sure?” Kate asked.

  “You think this is a placebo?”

  “David or somebody said there was a third group that’s on another combination.”

  “We have a number of people who are improved, and I’ll be surprised if they’re not in the same group as you. If you’re doing well when the study concludes, then you’ll stay on whatever drug combination is working. I’ll make it in my lab if I have to. If we find you’re on the placebo, we’ll definitely continue that too.” To address her question, he added, “That’s a long ways down the road—nine months at least.”

  David hadn’t even thought about indefinite access to the drugs.

  “Tell me your plans, Mrs. Sanders—Kate.”

  “Well, I’m going to get two cats and name one Anova.”

  He put his head back and laughed with delight. David looked from one to the other until Kate explained that the word stood for “analysis of variance.” “It’s how science decides if something really works or not. It’s sort of the backbone of comparing things.”

  “And the second cat? Statistics again?” The doctor seemed genuinely curious.

  “If it’s a male, maybe Nietzsche.”

  This one David understood.

  “Mr. Sanders—David—I’m not going to ask your wife if she feels ready to go home because I think it’s too frightening a thing to be ready for.” He looked only at Kate now. “I’d like you to go home today and spend the weekend at home. And,” he said, “maybe you’ll never come back.”

  Kate said “okay” so quietly that David saw only her lips move.

  Dr. Tsang left and soon came back with Dr. Ratha and a younger man with a long forgettable Russian name, who was usually in other cities at other sites. This must be quite an occasion, David realized. Mrs. Nowicki entered last and, when they finished with introductions and pleasantries, she said, “The room will be yours for the rest of the month so you don’t have to move your belongings at once.” David thought she looked a little dazed.

  Dr. Tsang said, “Either I or someone else on the team will meet with you every week at first. We’d like to see you at Dr. Ratha’s office—we don’t want you anywhere near the university lab. We’ll continue to videotape the exams, but we can also talk off-the-record about anything that concerns you.” Everyone took out a phone, tablet, or appointment book and made entries as Dr. Tsang scheduled himself to be at the first three appointments that Dr. Ratha offered. David noticed that Kate finished entering the dates in her phone before he did. The Russian finished last and then asked how the cover story was working. It had been the best scenario the team could come up with, he explained with a note of apology.

  “We realize you’ll need to tell more and more people once Kate is home. Obviously, people will learn that she’s better. We just don’t want them to know why she’s better. It’s not comfortable to be less than honest, but it preserves the integrity of the research. With lab animals, we control almost everything. With people…” He smiled. “And yet people are our favorite subjects.”

  David said, “I’ve been vague with my co-workers as far as why I need so much time off. I said Kate was having some unrelated health problems, but then I explained it to Kate’s close friend the way you said I should. She was too stunned to really dissect what I was saying. But we’ll need to tell a lot more people.”

  Kate said, “I think the story will hold for now. The boys know the truth—and eventually my parents and sister, but that’s it. Was it you, David, or one of the doctors—” she looked from one to the other, “who reassured me that people are mostly busy thinking about themselves?”

  “That sounds more like me,” David said.

  “I think that’s an observation we can all agree on,” the Russian said.

  “But eventually you’ll have your results, and if the results stay this good, it will be cataclysmic,” Kate said, worried.

  “We will never release your name. All you have to do is deny you’re patient…” Dr. Tsang looked at his tablet. “XT620.”

  “That’s our wedding date!”

  “A good omen then,” said the Russian, while the others looked carefully blank.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “I don’t think I see any changes in here,” Kate said.

  “Is that good or bad?” David asked.

  “Neither, I guess. I love this kitchen.” She walked the few steps to where he stood and took his hand, then let it go. “Let’s see everything.”

  They walked through the short hallway to the dining room. “Not used much lately,” David said. “Like maybe never.” She left the dining room, walking ahead of him, studying every photograph and every piece of art along the way until she reached the middle of the living room.

  “It looks beautiful. My memory of the house was sort of dim, but just like this. Oh, look at the flowers.” She took in all three vases, bouquets that could be straight from a garden. “You had Wilma do the flowers! I’d know her work anywhere.” She turned to him. “Who did she think they were for?”

  “I told her they were for you. I just didn’t tell her I was bringing them home.”

  “What if I hadn’t come home today?”

  “I would have brought them to you.”

  David walked over to his complicated music setup. He had his iPod ready to play the music he wanted, but he didn’t trust himself at the controls. He went for the CD player instead and started the machine on track four. Kate walked over just as the first notes began, sweet and poignant.

  It seems we’ve stood and talked this way before…

  “Oh! This song,” Kate said. “I still love it. It was the second dance at our wedding. Remember how my mother thought it was too sad?”

  “I was proud you stood up to her.”

  We’ve looked at each other in the same way then…

  But I can’t remember where or when…

  He hadn’t been so sure of his idea, but she looked happy, and he lifted his arms so she could slip in close to him. “Isn’t it strange we’ve always liked this one?” she said.

  He pulled her closer.

  The clothes you’re wearing are the clothes you wore…

  It felt right to hold Kate again. It was the most they’d touched since she woke. Where was good and faithful David?

  They danced more gracefully than he remembered, then broke apart and smiled.

  “I felt we needed something ceremonial,” he said. “I tried to think of what you might do.”

  “Well, I probably wouldn’t have made you dance.”

  Kate was home. And she was teasing him.

  “But that was a good choice for me. Show me the upstairs.”

  She admired the guest room—what a feat it had been to afford a house with a guest room—and then the boys’ rooms, tearing up at Jack’s teen decor. She declared the whole thing far less shabby than he had claimed. “It doesn’t look freshly done, but it’s not falling down by any means.”

  “Like those houses we looked at that old people were selling.”

  “Not even close.”

  “Good. Tomorrow we’ll see the former garden,” he said as they headed to their bedroom. He sensed her stiffen as she entered, but then she said, “It’s just the same.”

  She reached for the phone. “I should have called the boys hours ago. I memorized their cell numbers, David. I can call them right now from memory. Can you do that?”

  “Were you always this competitive?”

  She sat on the bed, propped against the pillows, and called Dylan. David knew this would be one time Dylan would pick up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in her soothing voice. “I know. It’s been an intense day. We didn’t mean to worry you. The meeting went fine and I’m home. No, no, don’t come tomorrow. It’
s too much driving for one day. Let me get situated and you and Jack can come next Friday or Saturday. Will you do that? I love you, too. And Dylan, I’m sorry you worried all day. Yes, I’ll call Jack right now.”

  Her half of the call to Jack was almost identical. “They’re a little irritated with me.”

  “What? They didn’t blame me for not calling sooner?” He was guilty, having scarcely given the boys a thought all day.

  She brightened. “Actually, they didn’t. They didn’t mention you. They were annoyed with me. Isn’t that great? Isn’t that normal?” She stretched out the syllables of “normal,” making it sound like the most exotic and desirable of states. They were both sitting on the bed now. There was an awkward pause before she said, “We should go back downstairs.”

  They sat across from each other at the kitchen table—a table they had refinished on winter afternoons almost thirty years before. It had been their first project together. Kate toasted her return with one short glass of wine, and David with a Scotch, the first of three, but he drank slowly, snacking as they cooked together, so he never left his target of being neither sober nor drunk. He cleaned up while she looked through the ambitious recipes, now yellowed clippings, held by strong magnets on the fridge.

  He joined her at the table and paged through the paper while she read back issues on her laptop. She periodically read snippets out loud and he was surprised by all that he had forgotten from the last few years of mostly bad news.

  She shut down her laptop. “I need to go to sleep,” she said. “Where do you want me to sleep?”

  He must have looked mystified because she continued, “I mean, would you rather we didn’t share a bed? I’m going right to sleep, but still…”

  This is so fucked up—she’s in her own house. “I don’t want to sleep without you. Unless it’s not what you want, I mean.” He tried to add, “I’m so sorry—” but she cut him off.

  “Apologies make me feel worse.” She stood. “Just be quiet when you come up, and don’t thrash around in anguish. We can talk tomorrow.”

  She moved to kiss him, aiming for his cheek. He assumed they would kiss on the lips and turned towards her in time to receive a gentle kiss on his nose. Without trying again, Kate went upstairs to sleep in her own home at last.

  When he saw the call was from his mother, Dylan walked from the kitchen into the far end of the next room. Even though his mother’s voice was heavy with contrition, he didn’t try to hide his irritation that she’d waited so long to call him back. While he didn’t say it, it reminded him of his years of anxiety as she became undependable and childlike.

  When they finished, he took a moment, as he always did in recent weeks, to absorb the fact that he had just had a conversation with his mother. He had criticized his mother. Who thought that would ever happen again?

  He joined Lily in the kitchen, where she was still chopping vegetables noisily, as if to show that she hadn’t made any attempt to listen. Lily had tried to bring up the topic of Jane, but he couldn’t talk about it, and he knew she wouldn’t ask again. The subject made him feel like a double agent, rooting for his mother while sympathizing with his father. There was only one road for his dad to choose. Still, he couldn’t help interrogating himself about what conditions would compel him to give Lily up. He tried to believe the situations were too different—that his dad should have used up his quota of passion long before he met Jane.

  “She’s home.” The words sounded strange to him. “They’re both home. They’re going to cook dinner.” A tone of amazement crept into the last sentence.

  She gave him a happy smile and, looking down at her now laughably oversized pile of tiny slices, said sheepishly, “I think we have enough.”

  On the morning of Kate’s first full day at home, David stood just inside Jack’s room. Kate had been upstairs for so long that he’d gone to look for her, but she left as soon as she heard him approach. He saw where she had shuffled through the school souvenirs, old term papers, awards, prom pictures, dried boutonnieres, and on and on. Jack’s life without his mother was there for her to find. David saw the imprint on the twin bed where she had lain, a yearbook lying open next to the last team photo.

  He found her in the living room. She’d stopped crying, but her eyes and nose were raw and she didn’t greet him. He waited.

  “It’s not that I’m ungrateful,” Kate said. “I am grateful, but years are gone.”

  He knew he should acknowledge what she had lost. He should give her permission to feel grief. He should promise to accept her every feeling for however long she felt it. The inadequate words he heard himself say were, “I think this will take a lot of time. And I think time will fix it.”

  “Time?” She pulled back her shoulders. “Do I have enough time left to accept all the time I lost?”

  “Maybe it’s okay to be grateful about one thing while being sad about another. Or mad at the world.”

  “I know. I know that. I just don’t know how to do it.”

  “Maybe it’s not something you do. Maybe it’s just something that happens.”

  “Can you let me be sad?”

  Could he? He didn’t know. What he wanted was to somehow travel seven years back and Kate would stay well and Jane would stay a stranger.

  “You need to let me know if it’s better or worse when I tell you about the kids and our lives when you were gone,” he said. “I mean, when I fill you in on things you missed.”

  “I want you to tell me about it. And I want to see the photos and videos. Not yet. Not today, but I will want to. And…”

  “And?” he asked. “Jane. Yes. I will talk about Jane.”

  The phrase he hated, man-up, came to mind as he took the stool across from her. “I should have been the one to bring it up today. I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t speak.

  “I was finally beginning to think about the rest of my life—that possibly I didn’t deserve to be alone, like punishment for something I didn’t do,” he said. “Maybe that thought allowed me to notice her because I certainly didn’t notice anyone before that or when we were married.”

  He corrected himself, “I mean when you were well. I didn’t notice except in the most detached, appreciative way that any man would observe women. Noticing without action. I’m good at that.”

  He had never been called on to testify to his fidelity until, first Jane, and then Martha had questioned him. Now Kate, only months later, was indirectly asking for that same information.

  To say that he appreciated without wanting wasn’t a complete answer. It’s what you tell your wife, but it’s not the whole story. He had always been interested in the lifespan of crushes. His own, of course, were the only ones that he could follow confidently. There had been three since he and Kate got married: an interest in a colleague, then a neighbor, and the last, a friend’s wife, all punctuating the first twenty or so years of their marriage. The first time, he was a novice and, as the attraction grew, he thought he’d have to do something about the desire. He thought the feelings had some authority and that eventually he’d be under their command.

  But he didn’t do anything, even though he was almost certain his interest was reciprocated. And he didn’t do anything about the next two either. Sometimes he thought of each woman, in turn, when he was having sex with Kate, but he never felt guilty about it. That was what wives were for, he knew, to be the person you were with, thinking whatever thoughts you wanted, while you weren’t out wrecking lives.

  He learned that he didn’t have to obey these odd, obsessive attachments. He just needed to be careful not to betray anything, not to pay too little or too much attention, not to make anyone else feel excluded from the light of the attraction, and eventually it dimmed or she moved away. The dimming was a better solution because you saw how unnecessary it proved to be to act. The heat died down, and your wife was your life again, and you hadn’t ruined anything.

  She reached across the counter to hold his hands. “I know you ha
d many temptations. I admired your skill. And your loyalty.” She broke away and sat back. “Jane,” she said. “Jane…When you confirmed you had a lover, I was reading about the tsunami, and that’s what kept racing toward me. I mean, a tsunami of possessiveness and jealousy, and I could drown in it.

  “You haven’t shown any of that.”

  “It’s a good policy not to show everything.”

  “Did you keep feeling that way? And you’re somehow able to hide it?”

  “It was odd, but after you let me know a little bit about her, I just couldn’t sustain that kind of jealousy. Maybe I don’t have enough prima donna in me. You know, look what happened to me, me, me.” She started to move her stool back as if to stand, then stopped and said, “I am afraid, though.”

  He waited until he could talk in a controlled voice. “It’s you and me. You know that I love her, but I won’t ever talk about it again. It’s always been you and me. I’ve never stopped loving you and missing you and admiring you. I cannot not have you in my life.”

  He meant it completely. The moment after saying it, though, he wasn’t so sure. But it wasn’t the kind of statement you could qualify.

  She smiled, a sadder smile than he would have expected, and said, “I love you too.”

  He wondered later if he should have asked her what she was afraid of. He’d been so sure he knew that he didn’t think to ask.

  Martha came through the side door with a box of tissues in one hand, and when Kate noticed this, she laughed, and then Martha laughed, and they hugged, then broke apart to look at each other, then hugged again.

  David left the kitchen, certain neither had noticed him, and decided to go for a walk, then headed back to the kitchen to tell them. When he was a few steps away, he heard Kate say, “Thank you for not sleeping with David. Not that I think you would have, of course.” He moved in close enough to hear Martha say, “Maybe it would have been better if I had.” He backed away quietly and left.