The Vines

by Shelley Nolden

  Huffing, Rollie unlocked a cabinet. “See for yourself. Ever since she told me to leave her alone, in 2001, we haven’t collected a single unit of blood. We haven’t so much as touched her.”

  “Until last month,” Finn countered, “while Lily lay in a puddle, convulsing.”

  Rollie clasped his hands sheepishly. “That whole night was awful. I was so upset that she’d threatened you, but there won’t be another lapse in my judgment. For the past six years, we’ve exclusively been collecting environmental samples. That’s it.”

  He handed Finn a stack of journals and rolled back the desk chair so Finn could sit down to read. “You cannot mention any of this to your mother.”

  The request rankled Lily. According to Finn, Rollie believed that Ulrich’s unhinged scruples were the direct result of growing up without church and family. Determined to prevent Otto’s legacy of neglect from ever being repeated by another Gettler, Rollie championed the importance of both. And the values that came with them.

  “I don’t like the idea of keeping this from Sylvia,” she said.

  Fiddling with a microscope, Rollie cleared his throat in obvious irritation.

  A Mensch. That’s how she’d described him to her own father, admittedly to make Leonard envious. Now, away from Sylvia’s guiding hand, Rollie had strayed from that characterization.

  “Please,” Rollie said, and she realized she’d been shaking her head.

  He unlocked the freezer, exposing a vast blood databank, toxins surely sleeping within the pouches, and removed a slide. After placing it under a microscope, he indicated that she should look through the eyepiece.

  To show she couldn’t be manipulated, she turned her attention to Finn, hunched over the desk, seemingly oblivious to their conversation.

  “You’ve seen how Lyme has debilitated her.” Rollie peered through the eyepiece and twisted a knob. “If you tell Sylvia, she’ll make me stop. Or worse, kill herself, so I’ll have no reason to continue. The antibiotic-resistant spirochete that caused her Lyme will go unchallenged. And so, too, will this disease.” He backed away from the microscope.

  Without looking, Lily knew the slide contained a cancer cell. Her stomach churned. He could have planted it there before her visit, or begun work in earnest on a therapy.

  During her elementary school years, she’d wanted to become an oncologist. Even if she’d had the genetic goods to make it through medical school, all that radiation to her brain had stunted her critical thinking ability. And, most likely, her dyslexia had been caused by those treatments. That’s why she loved plants and painting. Aside from the occasional tremors, her hands worked perfectly. From her touch, life and beauty bloomed.

  Yet always, in the back of her mind, she’d felt like she’d let herself down. Along with so many others. Sure, she’d raised money for cancer research, but the sum would never be enough, no matter how many miles she raced for a cure.

  Standing in this lab, mere feet from a microscope, was the closest she’d ever been to “the front line.” If the Gettlers’ work had any validity.

  “You really think you can cure cancer?”

  Rollie cocked his hooded head. “Cancer cells are crafty—they often evolve and become drug-resistant, but we’d like to try.”

  “Billions of dollars have been spent, and you think . . .” Suddenly, overcome with irritation at his arrogance, she couldn’t complete the thought.

  The steamy air within her hood felt like it was about to suffocate her. She wanted out—of this room, and away from yet another tantalizing path of false hope.

  “Lily,” he said in the same pleasant tone he’d always used with her, “none of those big pharma companies has Cora.”

  “Then why don’t you share her? They’ll succeed where you’ve failed, and I can stop worrying, and Sylvia will be cured, and Finn and I can get married, and . . .” Finn was staring at her, but she couldn’t stop. “You’ll get to meet the president, and they’ll turn this pathetic room into a stop on the national heritage tour.”

  Out of breath, she inhaled stale air.

  No one spoke.

  Tears traveled down her face.

  She wished she could wipe them away, and maybe take back her diatribe. Not because she hadn’t meant it. Only because they now might exclude her from future discussions.

  “You know they would kill her,” Rollie said, “one way or another.”

  Lily closed her eyes and pictured Cora on the morgue roof. In her heart, she knew Rollie was right. But conceding that would condone his choices.

  “Let’s go.” Finn rose from the desk, and the name of the file cabinet behind him came into view. VZ.

  “Does your wife know about that one?” Lily asked, pointing to the label.

  “No.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not surprised.”

  Finn rapped the metal cabinet. “You’re asking me to meet with her; I deserve to know.”

  “Why does it matter? You’ve been inoculated against it.”

  Finn glared at him.

  Rollie squared his shoulders. “VZ is our—no, society’s—safeguard. It’s what ensures that Coraline can’t survive away from the island long enough to spread her germs.”

  “Conveniently, that strengthens your excuse for why we can’t involve the CDC,” Finn said, “but it sure doesn’t jibe with your supposed goal of returning her to the city.”

  “First of all, it wasn’t my doing. Secondly, it doesn’t have to be permanent. Theoretically, the vaccine could be used to develop an antidote.”

  “Theoretically,” Lily muttered. That word had been helping the Gettlers rationalize their actions for more than a century.

  “You still don’t trust me,” Finn said, and she sensed that he was thinking of Kristian. Although Finn had claimed he wasn’t hurt by the fact that they’d excluded him for so long, his recent sullenness suggested otherwise.

  Rollie tugged on the file drawer to ensure it was locked. “This isn’t about you.” He put away the journals, securing that cabinet as well. “I haven’t told your brother what it stands for either. We’re done here.” He ushered them toward the exit.

  Lily stole one last glance around the room, her gaze settling on the microscope, its stage clips still gripping the slide with the malignant tumor cell. The notion that this lab could produce a magic bullet for cancer seemed absurd. Yet the impossible did happen—somewhere—every day. She stepped into the transition space, and a sterilizing agent cleansed her biosafety suit.

  Maybe it could happen here, she thought. And the speck of hope she’d been harboring, initially the size of a single cell, divided in two.

  1946–1963

  September 1946

  tto.

  Cora dropped her gardening hoe. From the field beside the coal house, she strained to see the man in the brown boater who’d just stepped off the gangway. At his feet rested a suitcase and a black physician’s kit that made Cora tremble.

  The Bronx skyline behind him swayed.

  To steady herself, she sat back on her heels. Ten years had passed without a single credible detail regarding his whereabouts. During the first two, when Ulrich had dominated her, she’d scrutinized every male who’d stepped off that ferry. Back then, Otto’s return, with his more humane methods, would have been akin to salvation. Following Ulrich’s departure, however, she’d been thrilled to be rid of them both, her exhilaration marred only by a nagging concern about her missing files. And she hadn’t yet found a new doctor she could trust.

  Following Germany’s surrender, Cora had read in the papers about Ulrich’s role as a doctor in Hitler’s Schutzstaffel. Either through his imprisonment or hanging, she would be beyond his reach forever. Yet she hadn’t celebrated the news. For weeks she’d lain in bed, wishing that, back in 1938, she’d convinced him that he could better serve the Fatherland by advancing
his research on her.

  Now abandoning her effort to weed the field, Cora buried her face beneath her neckerchief and pressed her wide-brimmed hat farther down her forehead. Still, she felt too exposed.

  Otto’s resumption of their project could assuage her guilt, she told herself. Especially if he succeeded in creating a cure-all for disease. Her stomach, however, heaved in disagreement.

  Grasping her crucifix pendant, she studied the man.

  No, it can’t be him, she realized, exhaling slowly. At seventy-eight, his stature would be stooped, whereas this man’s chest bulged in his white dress shirt.

  A flaxen-haired boy of about four years ran down the gangplank, and the man swung him onto the dock.

  Just another veteran and his family, she decided. For the past few months, they’d been carrying out a full-fledged invasion of the island. To accommodate the influx of ex-soldiers studying at New York City universities under the GI Bill, Riverside had been rezoned for student housing. Even the rooms in the tuberculosis pavilion, completed only five years earlier, had been converted to apartments. Thankfully, the colleges had retained her as a groundskeeper, which allowed her to continue living in the nurses’ residence.

  The man hugged the child and offered his hand to a statuesque blonde. Hampered by their luggage and the spirited boy, the couple progressed down the pier, the man walking with a slight limp that favored his left side.

  The back of Cora’s neck prickled.

  He was staring at her.

  Reflexively, her shoulders rounded forward.

  He grinned.

  Ulrich.

  No, she thought, it can’t be. His war crimes . . .

  Had he escaped from Nuremberg?

  She clutched the grass, which suddenly smelled repulsively sweet. Like chloroform.

  The blonde squeezed his shoulder and whispered into his ear.

  He laughed, the harsh wind bringing the familiar, grating noise to Cora. And the revolting scent of his Foster’s hair gloss.

  How Ulrich had persuaded President Truman to allow him reentry she couldn’t fathom, though she should have expected it. After all, she was convinced that he’d murdered his father and then worked the system to fill the empty position himself. He must be using a fake identity.

  The pokeberry tea in her stomach felt like it was fermenting.

  In her nightmares, she’d often contended with the prospect of his return, but he’d always arrived alone. Not with a ravishing wife and child, while Cora remained achingly single. Now, not only would he resume the torture, but he’d torment her with his happiness as well.

  The child squirmed free of his mother’s grasp and ran toward the meadow. He was heading straight for her.

  “Rollie,” Ulrich shouted, “halt!”

  The boy reeled toward his father, a mischievous grin filling his chubby face.

  “Diese Fraulein ist schlecht. Bleib weg.”

  Ulrich was right: she was a danger to the boy. Hastily, she tossed the tools into her bucket. As much as she despised the father, the child was innocent.

  Gently, Ulrich rotated his son and instructed him to run to his mother.

  Cora slung her satchel over her shoulder and rose to flee.

  “Miss McSorley, I didn’t dismiss you,” he called out as he strode across the field, seemingly unslowed by his limp.

  Rollie reached his mother, who clutched him against her lipstick-red skirt.

  A safe distance from Cora, Ulrich stopped and folded his arms.

  Now that he was closer to Otto’s age at the time of his disappearance, Ulrich’s resemblance to his father was striking. A twinge of sorrow gripped her heart.

  He stood there, she knew, expecting an apology.

  It had been eight years since she’d last heeded him as her master; the required submissive demeanor no longer came automatically. Plus, now that he was a war criminal, why should she cower before him? She straightened her shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “I’ll tell them who you really are.”

  He grinned, revealing his straight teeth, still pearly white. “They’re already fully aware.”

  At a loss for words, she stared at him.

  “The US government has absolved me of all alleged crimes.” He tipped his hat at the American flag, fluttering above the morgue roof. “They’ve recruited me for Operation Paperclip.”

  Her temples pounding, she pinched her trousers to keep from putting her gloved hands to her eyes. None of the four newspapers she subscribed to had ever referenced a Project Paperclip. “What’s that?”

  “Our new enemy is the Soviet Union.”

  “What’s that got to do with the hundreds of people you exterminated during those immunization experiments at Dachau?” she asked loudly, hoping a passing veteran might overhear. Even if the US government had condoned his Nazi past, the soldiers who’d won the war would not.

  “Allegedly killed, and if you speak of those false allegations to anyone, I’ll turn your files over to my new employer. Germ warfare has become one of the biggest threats to our national security. If I were to tell the government about you, this entire campus”—he arced his hand— “would become an army base dedicated to studying you. And dissecting you. In a theater operating room with dozens of observing scientists, each concocting new ways to extract your secrets. The rest of the time they’d keep you in a glass observation box—your home for eternity.”

  Her fingers tightened on a trowel, which she’d instinctively pulled from the bucket.

  He nodded at it. “At least while I’m in charge, you can keep your little hobby.”

  “I don’t believe your lies.”

  “The army’s recruiting the brightest minds to help our country shore up its defenses against the Commies. You don’t think they were eager to have me, given my alleged immunization experiments?”

  Yearning to gouge out his eyes, she pressed the tool against her leg. Her body shook with rage for all the wrongs he’d committed against her; for everything he’d done to the concentration camp prisoners.

  “Uncle Sam’s even paying for our housing, and they’ve set up a lab for me in Building Two Fifty-Seven. That’s their research facility on Plum Island, off of Long Island. It’s even got a storage room for ‘my’ files.” He grinned, showing those piercing white teeth. “I can’t let them down, now can I?”

  “Certainly not,” she said, keeping her chin high, “or they might deport you.”

  His ice-blue eyes narrowed. “Get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow we’ll pick up where we left off. My work has progressed nicely, thanks to all the Juden who sacrificed for the cause. After all, sacrifice is the core tenet of this project. I learned that from my father.” He nodded and winked.

  She scrambled to her feet to charge at him.

  “Ulrich!” his wife called from the far side of the field.

  Cora froze.

  “Don’t you think we should be on our way?” the blonde asked with an almost imperceptible German accent. “It’s suppertime.”

  “Yes, darling,” he called to her as he backed away from Cora.

  Cora studied the gorgeous woman. “How can she stand to be with a monster?”

  “Angelika—I call her Angela now—is a devoted Lutheran who believes that Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins,” Ulrich said, gazing at his wife, and Cora recognized genuine love in his expression. It sickened her.

  “She’s been teaching Rollie the Bibles stories, in English, which will help him assimilate.”

  A knot formed in Cora’s throat, and she looked away from Angela, now rubbing Rollie’s back as he continued to cling to her.

  “Otto would be so pleased,” Ulrich added with a chuckle.

  Refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her disgust, she kept a straight face. “Does she know about me?”

  “O
f course not. She thinks we’re living here while I teach microbiology at NYU.”

  He turned and strolled toward his son, who broke free of his mother’s hold. They met halfway, and Ulrich scooped Rollie up and spun him. Giggling, with the sun shining upon them, they fell to the grass.

  Against her will, Cora pictured little Emmett and Linnaeus, roughhousing as she watched with amusement from a nearby picnic blanket. Each would grab one of her arms, pulling her into a heap with them. Over the years she’d reworked their images into her perfect, imaginary family. One that would always remain beyond her reach.

  And while she was destined to eternal and utter loneliness, here was Ulrich: wholly undeserving. And deliriously happy.

  She dropped the trowel into the pail and hurried to the gardening shed, where her knives were once again rusting away.

  Cora pried the floorboard free and removed the dirt-covered case. Before her, secured by loops she’d sewn in herself, ran four rows of tarnished surgical scalpels. She slid one from its lodging.

  Surrounded by rakes, hoes, and potting jars, she raised the blade and vowed to drive him from the island. Alive or dead.

  But, as she schemed, the memories of his cruelty broke through their sealed chambers, and her strength began to erode. Like the onset of a new disease, fear crept into her bones and raked her body with chills.

  Her grip loosened; the knife fell to her feet.

  On the floor of the shed, she curled into a ball, allowing the dread to overwhelm her.

  Seventeen years later

  July 1963

  he chrrr of the physical plant died. With the throw of a lever, all power to Riverside had ceased. The Beatles song that had been blasting from the Emerson radio near the dock cut off at midrefrain and with it the commotion of the workers loading the ferry for its final departure.

  “The Day” had come. Far too fast. Within an hour, everyone but Cora would be gone from this godforsaken island, and she would be left to endure on her own. Except for the promised assistance from the man who’d been torturing her since his return seventeen years ago. Those visits would simultaneously keep her alive and destroy her.