All I Ever Dreamed

by Michael Blumlein

  As Dr. Jim does now. “A towering figure, Jean-Baptiste. A gifted scientist.”

  “He deserved better than he got.”

  “He bore the cross, it’s true. You’ll point this out?”

  “I’ll state the case. It’s not total chaos down here. We’re not doomed to some predetermined fate. If people want to believe otherwise, there’s not much I can do. But if it was me, I’d take heart.”

  “Lamarck did. It pleased him to know there was structure. Structure and purpose. He liked a world like that.”

  To Carol it seems the most human of desires and beliefs. How could anyone live with the inevitable highs and lows of life, the swings and shifts of fortune, not to mention mood, without stable ground to stand on and without purpose?

  “Who wouldn’t?” she says.

  “He liked his giraffes getting taller to reach those leaves. His waterbirds developing webbed feet to improve their swimming. These were useful adaptations, and usefulness was rewarded.”

  “In Heaven and on Earth,” she replies, a reference to the world in which he and everyone else of his time lived, the world of religion and the tug-of-war between religion and science.

  “Heaven? Is there such a place?”

  “He was Catholic. I’m sure it was useful not to antagonize the Church.”

  “Antagonism is who we are. Rise and fall, push and pull, positive and negative feedback. Contradiction defines us.” His eyes drift toward the kitchen, and his attention shifts. “We’d be nothing without it,” he adds under his breath.

  It’s a reference, she assumes, to his visits downstairs, and it’s as close as he’ll come to mentioning them. Although, when she thinks about it, it could be a reference to almost anything, and in fact, his attention has veered again, this time back to the yard, where his gaze is now fixed. In profile the changes in his face are more pronounced, the thickening of the muscles along his jaw, the roughening of his cheeks with their now ubiquitous stubble, the deepening of his eye sockets and paradoxical prominence of his eyes. He looks, oxymoronically, both nourished and underfed, replete and hollowed out, a man of wealth and of hunger, sybarite and victim of his own fanaticism, at this particular moment in intense communion with what he’s built.

  The look is not deceiving. He’s enchanted by what he sees, especially his latest addition: a tetrad of pulleys fused together, a kind of block and tackle, which represents the four-pronged histone unit of the epigene. Through one of the pulleys he’s threaded a cable, which represents a chromosome. The histone both protects and holds the chromosome firmly in place, but below it, between it and a second tetrad of pulleys, the cable is more open and exposed, more accessible and also freer to move, like a running loop of rope. Chromosome-wise, this is where the action is. Where genes transcribe themselves, communicate with other genes, make RNA and proteins.

  He’s built, in short, an epigene within the epigene, a microcosm of the whole, a kind of fractal. His paltry skills as an engineer and sculptor don’t come close to capturing what the real McCoy represents and does, what it’s capable of. Such a cunning design, the epigene. Such a beautiful, pliant system. But what next? What next?

  The question casts a shadow on his sunny state of mind. He doesn’t have the answer, and his love affair with what he’s done is pierced by doubt. He feels a heaving in his chest, and all at once he’s drowning in a sea of negativity and dismay. It happens like that: full of himself one moment, fighting for air the next. Presto chango. Snappety-snap. It’s a cold, dark place he’s fallen into. A bottomless, watery prison if he doesn’t get out. It takes every ounce of will to resist the descent. He has to get downstairs, throws a glace towards the kitchen, struggles to his feet.

  A hand stops him.

  “Stay,” says Carol. “Please. Just a few minutes more. Then I’ll let you go. This is really helpful.”

  Her hand is manacled around his wrist, and he glances at it, then bares his teeth. Immediately, she lets go and quickly threads her fingers through his. He’s trembling, and she steadies him with a firm, reassuring grip. She’s iron to his quicksilver, ground to his jagged downward burst. At the moment she’s also a force greater than the siren call. But not for long.

  “A minute or two. Max.”

  “What were we talking about?” he asks in a gravelly voice.

  “Lamarck.”

  He nods, waits, searches her face.

  “Will you sit?” she asks.

  He sits.

  “You said he was a gifted scientist,” she prompts.

  “A true scientist,” he replies after a lengthy silence.

  “True? In what way?”

  “Not everything he did or said was right. But his effort was right. His passion. I count him as a colleague.”

  The similarities between Lamarck and her husband have not escaped her. She has certain concerns about this, which must be handled delicately, and she asks herself if now is the time.

  “He had a passion for truth. Is that what you mean?”

  “For reason, I would say.”

  She accepts his correction, though it makes her just a tad uneasy. Passion can submarine reason, just as certainty can masquerade as truth.

  “Do you know he had no money when he died? His family had to beg for the funds to bury him. Couldn’t afford a private grave and had to put him in a rented one.”

  “He was dead.”

  “Still.”

  “Private. Rented. What’s the difference?”

  “I’m sure it felt different to his survivors. Especially when he was kicked out after the lease expired.”

  “Great men suffer. It’s the same old story. He was brilliant but ahead of his time. His views were not accepted.”

  “Are yours?”

  He doesn’t miss a beat. “They will be, when I make them known.”

  She doesn’t doubt it, though she does wonder how long this might take. Two hundred years, as it took for Lamarck, would be on the long side for her.

  Not that she’s impatient, though she does worry a little about money, because her husband at the moment is making absolutely none. Her income supports them both. A non-issue if she gains tenure. If she fails, they will have to cut their expenses drastically, maybe even sell the house. Live in a trailer, not the worst thing. Revert further and live in the woods.

  She could make it. That said, she’d rather have money than not. She likes what it does. Likes having what she needs when she needs it. Likes being able to support Dr. Jim in his quest. She’d prefer not having less of the stuff, though if it came to that, she’d survive.

  She’s been poor before. She grew up poor. Nothing was ever handed to her on a platter. All that she’s gained has been the result of her own hard work and dedication.

  It’s because of this that she values hard work, and it’s one of the reasons she values and respects her husband. No one could work harder than he does. And if it comes to pass that he finishes what he’s building and goes on to publish his epic book, and it makes no money, she’ll be disappointed because he will be, but otherwise she’ll be okay. She understands that poverty for some men and for many women is the price of eccentricity. It’s the cost of being different, the joy and sorrow of being ahead of one’s time. It’s not financial poverty that concerns her. It’s not poverty of spirit: her husband has spirit to burn.

  “Did Lamarck have friends?”

  “I have no idea,” he replies.

  “He had a family.”

  “Yes.”

  “A wife. Children. They lived together in a house.”

  “I assume. You know as much about this as I do.”

  “I wonder how he felt when he couldn’t provide for them. I wonder if he doubted himself. I wonder if he got depressed.”

  He drums his fingers on his knee, glances toward the kitchen. He really needs to get to work.

  “Your point?”

  “You’ve never talked to me about what happened before we met. After you were fired by the unive
rsity.”

  “I was never depressed.”

  “You were hospitalized.”

  “That was a different man. That wasn’t me.”

  She takes a moment to process this claim. Her husband is many things, and he operates according to his own set of rules and values, but dishonesty has never been one of them. And from the look in his eyes, he’s not being dishonest now.“Aren’t there sometimes recurrences?”

  Her questions are driving him further from where he needs to be, which right now is down in the basement. He fidgets, shifts, drums, then gets to his feet.

  “Is that what this is about?”

  Is it? She isn’t sure. She began the conversation talking about herself.

  “I may not get it.”

  “Get it?”

  “Tenure.”

  “You don’t need tenure.”

  “I want it.”

  “Lamarck had it, and look where he ended up.”

  “You had it, too, and look at you.”

  He doesn’t answer, as if to say what possible difference does it make, and instead begins to pace. He has a powerful urge to flee, when something out the window catches his eye and stops him. The epigene-in-miniature atop his creation is glowing like an ember, as though the rising sun has singled it out and set it on fire. It goes from liquid red to liquid gold, then all at once the light appears to gather and condense. He can barely look, it’s so intense.

  He hears a hum, then feels a vibration.

  “It’s powering up,” he mutters.

  “What?”

  He points, spellbound.

  She follows his finger.

  “It’s opening,” he whispers.

  “What’s opening?”

  “The door. The path.”

  “Look at me,” she says.

  He doesn’t respond, forcing her to repeat herself. “I said look at me. I’m talking to you.”

  Of anything on Earth, her voice, at that moment and in that way, is perhaps the only thing that could reach him. It combines concern with authority, solicitude with resolve, the verbal equivalent of a one-two punch, and the woman, make no mistake, is a force to reckon with. With a shudder he wrenches himself free of his vision, as free as he can be, and makes eye contact with her. Knows that he needs to re-establish a connection. Desperately tries to recall what they were talking about.

  “You would have liked him,” he says.

  “What?”

  “You would have liked him.”

  “Who? Lamarck?”

  He nods.

  For a moment she’s bewildered, as if he’s pulled a fast one on her, a rope-a-dope trick. She can’t believe the man, but of course she can. He’s done his best to give her his undivided attention. It’s been heroic, really, how well he’s done. But there are some things a man like Dr. Jim cannot resist. Some things a woman like Carol, née Schneeman, now James, cannot resist, either.

  Pedagogy, for example. That, and a parting shot.

  “Did she?” she asks.

  “Did who?”

  “Did Mrs. Lamarck?”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Energized by the conversation and her husband’s interest and support, Carol dives headlong into her subject, tentatively titling her paper “Toward an Epigenetic Future: Beyond Randomness.” To her the epigene represents hope: for the future of her species (possibly for all species, though this is beyond the scope of her piece) and for the future of the planet. People change in response to what’s going on around them. That’s the message and the fact. They change not merely on the surface but inside, intrinsically: as the environment changes, as the culture changes, as the world changes. This has always been the case, but the new idea (or not so new but new to her) is that this doesn’t have to rely on random chance. It doesn’t have to be glacially slow. It doesn’t have to be passive. Quite the opposite: it’s an interactive and highly participatory act.

  Most exciting of all, the change can be passed on to future generations and built upon. Little by little or quickly, in great bold leaps. It’s the answer, if not the antidote, to cynicism, complacency, and helplessness, which infest and plague so many. Another nail in the coffin of the Luddites and the fatalists who fear and despise progress. People adapt, adapt positively, adapt swiftly. This is what the epigene means to her. It’s a metaphor, of course, but it’s more than a metaphor, too. She can feel this in herself. She’s changing—on the deepest levels—and it seems to be happening, in part, in response to her grasping and grappling with this new idea, working it, following its threads, making intuitive leaps, doubling back, finding ways around apparent dead ends. She feels as if she’s tussling with some wild and beautiful animal, making it more beautiful and useful by taming and disciplining it.

  She is changing in other ways, too. In response to her environment, for example, her work environment, where the pressure is mounting to get tenure and get it now, while it’s within her grasp, and while she’s at it, do all the ancillary stuff: publish, teach, administer, procure grants, be exceptional, be more than exceptional, be a star, and if not a star then a pretty damn bright planet. Pressure translates to stress, which has well-known biological effects. Some are epigenetic, and not all of these by any means are deleterious. Being the optimist she is, she has every reason to believe that the positive changes she’s undergoing will benefit any future offspring she may choose to produce (currently an open question). It’s not just optimism: there’s growing evidence that the stress responses of the current generation of children in the nation are blunted, a splendid adaptation, given the exponential growth of sensory and immunologic assaults on their beleaguered defense systems, and proof once again that you can only pound the tip of a nail so much before it becomes dull.

  Her home environment is affecting her as well. Being with her husband, listening to what he has to say, watching him change physically and emotionally as his strange—and strangely compelling—sculpture takes shape, wondering where it will all lead and who or what is doing the leading. Is he in control, or is this, as she sometimes fears, a wild-goose chase? How she thinks and feels about him is changing, and this, of course, is changing how she thinks and feels about herself. If she had to guess, she’d say the same is true of him. Change begets change.

  A marriage, she decides, is epigenetic. Structured, orderly, fluid at times, unpredictable at other times, and at all times interactive: it’s like the very thing that’s growing in their yard.

  Which, by the way, has risen above the fence line. Not by a lot, but enough to get her attention. She’s been so absorbed in her paper that it’s been weeks since she’s given it more than a cursory look. She and her husband have been immersed in their respective projects to the exclusion of all else, like two children at parallel play, the difference, of course, being that these two children are married. How perfect, she thinks, to be as childishly self-absorbed as her husband. How much this helps her understand him. And how much this understanding will help him, in turn, to see the light when she reminds him of his promise.

  From Dr. Jim’s Diary:

  Friday, November 27th. Wake up, head hurts. Take a leak, catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. Can that be me? Is this Halloween? A circus? Who let that guy in the house?

  The effort of trying to figure that one out only makes my head hurt worse, and I throw a couple of aspirin down my throat, then take one of those other, blue-green, pills, which I shouldn’t, but who’s going to stop me? Down in the basement the cage door is unlocked. No worry about his escaping: a beaten animal knows its place.

  He’s sitting on the bench when I enter. I don’t have to tell him to get up.

  We face each other. We’re the same height now. I’ve grown (success adds inches) and he’s shrunk. You could say I’ve cut him down to size.

  We fight. I beat his pathetic self. Afterwards he seems even smaller than before. He also appears more naked, which is odd, because he doesn’t wear clothes, hasn’t from the get-go. Maybe it’s h
is hair, which used to cover every inch of his body. Now it’s patchy and thinned out, like a sick and mangy dog’s.

  Carol’s in the kitchen when I come up, a cup of steaming coffee in her hand. She smiles when she sees me, but then a shadow crosses her face.

  “Something wrong?” I ask.

  “You look like hell.”

  “I feel great.”

  “Is that right?” She wrinkles her nose.

  “Got a problem?”

  She fans the air in front of her face. “You smell.”

  “Of course I smell. It’s the smell of human.”

  “A particular human.”

  “You no like?”

  “The human, yes. The smell, no.”

  “Too bad.”

  She compresses her lips. “What you mean is, ‘You’ll get used to it,’ delivered in a helpful and encouraging, which is to say, a warm and affectionate voice. ‘Too bad’ is so cold and antagonistic.”

  “I’m sorry you’re not happy.”

  She considers this, first with an inward look, then an outward one at me, as if trying to see past some particularly ugly packaging to the gift underneath.

  “You’re changing,” she says at length. “Sometimes I’m happy about it. Sometimes not.”

  “Be happy.”

  “Like you.”

  “Like me. That’s right.”

  “Until you’re not.”

  It may be the truth, but it feels like an accusation. “I don’t see that happening. I’m not a guy that gets depressed. What’s to be depressed about?”

  “You make it sound like it’s a choice.”

  “Why would anyone choose to be depressed?”

  “The point, I think, is why wouldn’t they choose not to be?”

  Talk talk talk. Choice is overrated. Things exist or they don’t. I have a smell? Damn right I have a smell. It’s called the smell of success.