“Well, that’s just the thing, Mother. She was supposed to come home a week ago. But she’s still down there.”
“Is she all right?” Paulette felt her heart rush. Already her mind was racing: she could leave immediately for the airport. She might be able to catch Tricia before she left Philadelphia. If not, she could leave a note at the Marshes’. Tricia would have to understand.
“She’s fine,” said Billy. “In fact, she sounded happy. Apparently she met somebody on the island.” He paused, as if aware of the import of what he was about to say. “Mother, Gwen has a boyfriend.”
The details, what few he knew, made no sense at all. They had met on a boat of some sort. They went scuba diving together. The young man’s name was Rico.
Absurdly, Paulette thought of Guadelupe the housecleaner, the recent ordeal of writing the girl a check.
“Heavens,” she said inanely. “I suppose she does speak Spanish.”
Rico wasn’t Spanish, Billy explained; he had some sort of French surname. He lived on the island, apparently. On St. Raphael.
Later, driving back from the market, she pondered what Billy had said. She tried to picture this Rico, with no success. She knew nothing, not the first thing, about the sort of people who lived on St. Raphael.
As always, when confronted with the unfamiliar, she consulted World Book.
She had bought the set long ago, early in her marriage, from a handsome salesman who rang the doorbell of their apartment in Cambridge. Frank had called the purchase extravagant, the books worthless, but all these years later Paulette still found them invaluable. True, they were thirty-five years old; but to Paulette this seemed a minor point. The parts of the world she cared about hadn’t changed all that much.
ST. RAPHAEL One of the Leeward Islands of the eastern Caribbean. Discovered by the explorer Sir Francis Drake, it was first colonized by the British in 1693, and later taken under French control (1782–1790). The sugar trade was temporarily suspended in 1800 by a mass suicide of sugar-growing slaves. Sugar production ended finally in 1910 when the eruption of the volcano Montagne-Marie wiped out nearly all the plantations on the island’s southern coast. Presently the principal economic activity is bauxite mining. Its capital is Pointe Mathilde.
Next to the entry were two postage-stamp-size photos. Palm trees laden with coconuts. A smiling brown-skinned man holding a bunch of bananas.
Paulette put down the book.
Heavens, she thought. Is this Rico black?
Like a traveler expecting a train, she waited for this thought to affect her, some additional rush of shock or distress. Curiously, the train didn’t come. Her body was already on high alert—heart hammering, heat masking her face and throat and chest. Just now further alarm was impossible. The volume was turned as high as it would go.
And in fact, when she thought about it—once every twenty years or so—she considered black men handsome. She was thinking primarily of Harry Belafonte, and of that young man who reported the sports scores on the local news.
She returned to World Book.
ST. RAPHAEL AT A GLANCE
POPULATION: 72,500
CAPITAL: Pointe Mathilde
GOVERNMENT: Protectorate (United Kingdom)
LANGUAGE: English (official), French patois
RELIGION: Various
INDUSTRY: Agriculture (sugar, bananas), mining (bauxite)
MONETARY UNIT: Caribbean dollar
She laid down the book. She had rarely been disappointed by the World Book, but aside from the possibility that Rico might be black, this entry hadn’t told her anything she needed to know. His blackness, or possible blackness, was like a disorderly room in a burning building, hardly worth fretting about. There were more urgent questions she needed to have answered. Such as: Was this Rico a serious person? Did he have a profession, a stable way of making a living? Or was he a criminal, an opportunist who preyed on American tourists? Did he see in Gwen—tiny, vulnerable Gwen—an easy mark?
Had they had sexual relations? From movies and television she knew that this was an expected part of dating, that girls much younger than Gwen made love easily, casually, with young men they were not yet, and might never be, in love with; that the young men expected this, and that the whole arrangement was pleasing to all concerned. Contrary to what Frank had sometimes said, Paulette was not a prude. She had enjoyed the physical side of marriage, and missed it when it ended. (Missed it, to her surprise, a great deal.) On the surface, anyway, this new kind of dating seemed sensible, simpler, and more straightforward than the elaborate gavotte they’d danced in her day. At the same time, it struck her as unbalanced. Paulette believed, at her core, that women were different from men, that they risked a great deal in love and wanted things in return—devotion, fidelity—that men did not always want to give them. While the things men wanted from women were simpler, and could be gotten nowadays with almost no effort.
It seemed to her a very pleasant time to be a man, and a hazardous, unfairly difficult time to be a woman.
And Gwen was no ordinary woman. Life had taught Paulette hard lessons about how men loved, the meaningless, ephemeral attributes they found attractive. When she was young and beautiful, Frank had loved her. His faithlessness—in thought if not in deed—had coincided with her own aging. Gil Pyle—she couldn’t think of him without wincing—was no different: he had chosen beauty, as any man would. And Gwen—it was beastly to say it, disloyal and cruel, but Gwen was not beautiful. Could any man see past the surface to what was dear in her? It was tempting to believe that such men existed. But Paulette did not, could not. Her own experience made faith impossible.
Did this Rico care for her daughter? Did he love her for herself, her odd, difficult, uniqueness? Or were there other, darker reasons for his interest in her?
PREGNANT WOMEN dreamed. Asleep, tossing fitfully, they gave birth to birds and flowers and fantastical creatures. Paulette remembered one dream in particular, in which she’d expelled a whiskered catfish with a mouthful of tiny teeth. She had dreamed vividly through all three pregnancies, but especially the second; she’d been most anxious, most unwell, while carrying Gwen. Then the baby was born a month premature—a serious business in those days—and she did not sleep for a week. Finally the scare passed; her baby girl emerged from the incubator. Gwen was fine, just fine.
Paulette believed this for a long time, right up until the moment Frank forced her to see otherwise. Then she was simply livid. It wasn’t rational—she knew it even then—but she couldn’t shake the feeling that Frank, with his tests and scientific journals, his relentless hunger for bad news when even their family doctor wasn’t worried, had brought on Gwen’s condition all by himself.
The tests done, Paulette stayed angry. What was the point of all this knowledge if the condition couldn’t be treated? Frank had been adamant about starting growth hormone, but it was Paulette who’d taken Gwen for the injections, soothed her fears for days beforehand; Paulette who’d comforted her later when the shots had no effect.
At such moments Frank, as always, was in the lab.
Paulette was no scientist, only a mother. And as a mother she wondered what exactly they’d accomplished by assigning a label to their daughter. They’d made a small but healthy and happy child feel like a curiosity, a medical freak.
It was Frank who’d insisted on classifying Gwen. This struck Paulette as cruel, unforgivably so. And she would not be a party to it. Even to her own family she had dissembled: Oh, she’s fine, Daddy. Just small for her age. To her parents, to Anne and Martine, she had lied without compunction. Knowing the cruelty of children, she’d made sure Billy and Scott kept quiet too. Don’t say anything to your cousins. It’s nobody’s business but ours.
She wondered, later, if this had been the right impulse. Yes, she’d wanted to protect Gwen from any stigma; yes, she had the child’s welfare at heart. But there was more to it, just as there was more to Turner’s syndrome than simply being short. The other aspects of the
condition—the sexual aspects—had mortified her. Was she to tell her father, her brother, that Gwen would never go through puberty? Nothing in her entire life had prepared her for such a conversation. In the Drew family, nobody went through puberty. Such matters were not discussed.
Mortally embarrassed, she had avoided the whole subject. The family could see for themselves what was happening to Gwen, or not happening. Cowardly, perhaps; but it had seemed to Paulette the best course. And even now, more than twenty years later, she couldn’t say with certainty that she’d been wrong.
THAT EVENING she telephoned Billy, something she hadn’t done in years; mindful of her long-distance bills, he insisted on phoning her himself. Annoyingly, Billy’s recorded voice answered the phone. Paulette did not speak to recordings, on principle, but this time she made an exception. “Billy, this is your mother,” she said, a bit self-consciously. “It is critical”—Frank’s word; why had she used that word?—“that I speak with you. I need your help.” She was surprised when, a moment later, her telephone rang.
“Darling,” she told him, “I’m worried to death about your sister.”
“Mom, take it easy.”
“Take it easy? I’m surprised at you, Billy. You and Gwen have always been so close. Aren’t you at all concerned?”
Billy hesitated. “Yeah, sure. But it’s her life, Mom. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Of course there is! You could go down there and have a talk with her.”
“I already talked to her on the phone, and she sounded fine. Anyway, I don’t think she’d appreciate me rushing down there.”
It took Paulette a moment to comprehend this. “You mean you won’t go?”
“It’s a terrible idea, Mom. Trust me on this.”
“Billy, I don’t know why you’re being so stubborn! Your sister could be in danger.”
“There’s no reason to think that,” Billy said calmly. “If this guy were a total creep, I’m sure Gwen wouldn’t get involved with him.”
“But how would she know, Billy? Your sister is very inexperienced.”
“Is she?”
“Well, of course!” Did he know something she didn’t? “Why? You don’t think so?”
Billy sighed. “I really have no idea, Mom. Gwen never talks about that stuff.”
Paulette tried a different tack. “Well, we don’t know the first thing about this young man. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“A little,” he admitted. “Maybe you should talk to her yourself. The next time I hear from her, I’ll tell her to give you a call.”
“Darling, don’t be silly. You know she never listens to a word I say.”
Billy did not disagree with this.
“Mom, I’d leave it alone if I were you. She’s thirty-four years old. She’s entitled to make her own mistakes. And maybe—” He broke off.
“Maybe what?” she said, utterly perplexed. She’d always been able to count on Billy. It was inconceivable that he’d refuse to help.
“It’s a weird situation, I know. But maybe he makes her happy.”
Happy.
Long after she’d hung up the phone, Paulette tasted this word. She had always wished for Gwen to meet someone—an anthropologist perhaps, or an archaeologist. (They weren’t the same thing, though Paulette couldn’t recall what the difference was.) He and Gwen would fall in love. It would be clear at a glance what had drawn them together (their common love of anthropology, or archaeology). The young man’s motives could be trusted because they would make sense. Gwen would marry and adopt children or, like many women these days, live contentedly without. With each passing year, this scenario seemed increasingly unlikely; but Paulette continued to hope.
Yet now a young man had appeared, and she was filled with dread. Her daughter was in love, possibly for the first time. Paulette had learned long ago—and had been reminded again recently—that there was no more vulnerable state. A woman in love would part with anything. Comfort, security, dignity; her own plans for the future. And when love raced off to Providence in the new truck she’d bought him, she would stand at the curb waving good-bye.
Frank climbed the stairs to an outdoor platform in the far end of Brookline, along a sleepy spur of the Green Line. He had left his Saab at the dealership; he would catch the inbound train to Park Street, where he would change trains to Kendall Square. The whole business would eat up most of his morning. He glanced at his watch. The Green Line trains were notoriously slow, and today he had no time to waste.
Back at the lab his docket was full. A presentation this afternoon, the Genetics in Medicine lecture series at Harvard. Afterward he’d drive straight to the airport. He was scheduled to speak early the next morning at Stanford. With publication looming, his life had grown hectic. Cristina had submitted just after New Year’s, and the enthusiasm at Science was palpable: almost immediately, the paper went out for review. The reviewers, whoever they were (Frank had his theories), made a few minor suggestions, and Cristina had done the revisions in record time. In a mere three weeks, the paper would be in print—the fastest publication of Frank’s career. Waiting was a kind of sweet torture, not unlike the first weeks of courtship, the runway leading up to sex. Daily, hourly, he thought of the apoptosis labs at Baylor and Chicago, the lingering danger of being scooped. With the paper in print, his lab would have a clear title to Cristina’s findings. There would be more speaking engagements, interviews with the press. For the first time in ten years—since the heady days of XNR—Frank McKotch would have the world’s ear.
And then.
In just a month the Academy would announce this year’s nominees. Frank had been hopeful in the past, but this year he was dead certain. His moment had arrived.
Until then, he was cagey. The trick was to talk about the research, to generate excitement, without giving away too much. I’m like a tired old stripper, he grumbled happily to Margit. Take off the gloves, the stockings. Keep the pasties on. He’d prepared two versions of the same spiel: a quick forty minutes for Harvard, a longer, more detailed (but still oblique) talk for the meeting at Stanford. Frank was a natural public speaker, relaxed and confident; but he knew better than to show up underprepared. He’d planned to spend this crucial morning reviewing his notes. Instead he’d squandered it on errands. The Saab’s inspection sticker would expire while he was in California, leading to even more headaches when he returned. His colleagues had wives to look after such details: the unending, time-consuming maintenance, the hidden costs of owning a car, a house, a body. That fall he’d caught a cold that developed into bronchitis; hacking and aching, he’d driven himself to the emergency room. At such moments he felt deeply his aloneness. In these ways and others, life was more complicated for a man on his own.
He glanced around. A small crowd had gathered under the shelter. A cold rain beat its Plexiglass roof. In the distance was a well-funded public high school, new and gleaming, overlooking athletic fields. It was the kind of school Frank’s children might have attended if Paulette had not insisted on Pearse, where all the Drew men were bound to go. That Billy and Scott were not Drew men but McKotch men was a point he never bothered to articulate. His surname was a joke, an alias, a sore reminder of his father’s disgrace. If anything, it was the brand of failure. Certainly it had never done a thing for Frank.
He stared out at the football field, unchalked, useless, a soggy, undifferentiated expanse of dying brown. The snow had melted; rainwater pooled in the end zones, reflecting the dull gray sky. Melancholy came upon him in a wave. For most of his life he’d evaded it with sprints and deft pivots, like the gifted quarterback he’d once been. Now, with old age looming, his fancy moves had abandoned him.
He’d believed, always, that success was the cure, that a major find in the lab would melt his despair. And now, after ten years of frustration, he had a major publication in Science. In a month the Academy would announce its new members, an honor that again seemed within reach. So why did he feel exhausted and ho
peless? His appetite was off, his sex drive nonexistent. When the alarm rang at five each morning, he could scarcely drag himself out of bed.
A train approached, horn sounding, the airy chuff of brakes. Frank stepped aboard and grabbed a strap. The train was crowded, the last wave of the morning commute. He studied the passengers with interest. They wore hip, casual clothes, carried laptop computers or backpacks. Most were middle aged, or nearly so, yet dressed like students. Fully half were female. Frank wondered what sort of work they did.
He’d have expected a different crowd this far out in Brookline, which was almost the suburbs: young married men, a few yarmulkes maybe, everyone in business attire. Years ago this would have been the case. But times had changed: people were more reflective, now, about what was called settling down. Frank himself had settled down at twenty-four, willingly, cheerfully, with no thought to how much settling was actually involved. In those days only misfits stayed single past thirty, mamas’ boys and sad sacks who couldn’t get themselves a girl. He’d been a young husband and father when the world began to change. He had scoffed at the hippies, with their beards and ponytails; but all these years later, he could see the appeal of bumming around California or Europe, taking earth’s pleasures like healthy young animals, innocent and vital and strong. If he’d been born just a few years later, Frank McKotch might have joined them. Instead he had married, studied, sweated away his best years in the bright lights of the laboratory. Now he was aging rapidly, shuffling toward sixty. And he was still in the lab.
He was thinking such thoughts when the train slowed at a crossing. He glanced out the window and saw a girl riding a bicycle, wearing a long black skirt. The bike was battered and heavy, an old-fashioned model with a low-slung crossbar, a woman’s frame. As a youngster he’d found such bikes confounding. A boy, after all, carried the pendulous genitals, the fragile packet prone to accidental blows, the mildest of which could drop him like timber. It seemed wrong that Frank was expected to straddle the crossbar, while girls—their nether parts so well hidden that studying them would become his life’s work—got the special low-slung frame.
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