Appetite

by Sheila Grinell

  Maggie looked at the pink page. It read “Brian Sayler,” followed by an address, vehicle identification number, insurance company name—all the information she had provided on her form. And the sergeant had given her information to Brian Sayler. She saw him study it.

  “Is it Ms. or Mrs. Adler? Your house is on my way. Sure I can’t give you a ride?”

  “No thanks, my husband is coming. From lower Manhattan. I’ll just wait.”

  In fifteen minutes she could be home, taking a shower or contemplating the damages over a cup of tea. Why not cut herself some slack? And what if she were to ride with this man whom chance had tossed her way? An attractive man, a pleasant enough person. Jenn would accept the offer. Jenn, who used to pick up strays and find them brilliant. Jenn, who might call at any moment on the landline at home.

  “Want me to wait with you?”

  “No thanks. I’ll be fine.”

  “Well, you know where to reach me.” He tucked the tablet into the knapsack and walked toward his van.

  Maggie touched her injured shoulder gingerly. Traffic had picked up, probably the after-school crowd. There was aspirin in her gym bag, and she wanted to get it before the tow arrived. She regretted summoning Paul now that she was calmer. A cab would have been quicker. And Paul would tell her to stop worrying about Jenn and keep her eyes on the road. As if she could.

  TWO

  Sunlight seeped around the edges of the blinds and Paul Adler woke, feeling like fortune’s darling. Soon he’d have new money for the next phase of his research; soon his world-traveling daughter would come home. He lay quietly in his mistress’s bed, happier than he had a right to be, savoring his success, and his luck.

  Cancer, Paul had long thought, was beautiful. But he never said so, not even to his scientific colleagues. People couldn’t think about cancer dispassionately, and he didn’t want to challenge them. Where others saw monstrous distortions, he saw an orchestra of tiny alterations in biological mechanisms that let tumors strike out vigorously, crowding ordinary life out of the way. For decades, he had been trying to understand its magic. And now, at last, he was close.

  He dressed quietly, let himself out of Irene’s apartment. Although his belly flared the front of his sweatshirt, he walked like a younger man, upright, pressing ahead. Even at 6:00 a.m., energy oozed out of the city. A truck pulled up in front of the grocery midblock, and the driver got out to deliver a tray of breads. Paul looked past him to the deli next door, where the owner used a hose attached to a spigot beneath his plate-glass window to force dirt and paper into the gutter. Should he grab a sweet, greasy corn muffin, the kind that sits in your gut and makes you feel satisfied for an hour? God, he loved New York—best food in the world, twenty-four hours a day. He inhaled deeply and the October chill caught in his throat. He exhaled and watched the vapor condense. Soon the streets would heat up and his breath would disappear. Nothing like the early morning with its endless promise.

  Walking fast, he reached the hospital that housed his lab in twenty minutes. He took the elevator to the suite of rooms he captained at the end of a corridor on the ninth floor near Administration. He had a tiny, cluttered office; another windowless room next to his contained a desk, copy machine, cabinets, and Sandi, the lab manager. Four industrial refrigerators in the anteroom held reagents and experimental material. There were three wet-lab rooms, where the research staff practically lived, their computers perched on desks jammed under shelves that held books, bottles, tubes, specimen trays. Photos of spouses, dogs, and scenes from home sprouted from the edges of shelves and monitors. Paul hired grad students who didn’t mind the cramped quarters, or at least didn’t complain.

  He stepped into his office, intending to check email before the staff meeting called for eight. As he sat to boot his machine, Sandi appeared in the doorway holding two mugs of coffee. She passed one to him and leaned against a file cabinet to drink from the other. She was Paul’s age but looked older, tired. It wasn’t a matter of muscle; she could heft boxes of supplies as well as he. But her short, mousy hair drooped, her unadorned face sagged, and she made no effort to dress, wearing the same sky-blue smock over her street clothes every day.

  “How come we’re meeting on a Friday?” she asked. Sandi had worked for Paul for all the years he’d run the lab, and she spoke her mind. She had tended to him in so many ways, keeping the books, writing his monthly staff reports, soothing the young researchers, arranging his travel. Lately, he had been depending on her for dry cleaning.

  “I got a call yesterday from the foundation. They want some fine-grained detail. You know that pretty much means that we got the grant. You’ll get to push me around for another three years.” He grinned.

  “Well, I expected that.”

  “You’re pretty casual about your paycheck.”

  She raised her brows. “You always find a way.” She turned to leave and then turned back. “I almost forgot. Stamford wants to see you right away. I told him you had a meeting, but he said it can’t wait. I’ll tell the others.”

  He rolled his eyes and reached into his in-box. He glanced at the papers one at a time without concentrating, sipping the hot, black brew in Sandi’s best mug. Of course his peers didn’t understand the groundbreaking implications of his work. With one more suite of experiments, he would prove that he could destabilize one type of brain cancer cell in a matter of days. On his fingers he counted the months until he could start spending the grant money, when the paperwork would be finalized, processed, and the funds would hit the bank. He reached up to smooth his hair, a vestigial gesture from when thick hair used to spring from his scalp. These days, the mirror showed a receding hairline, but to his satisfaction, not one touch of gray. Ten fresh samples of glioma tissue from the hospital’s neurooncology department lay waiting in the lab to be processed.

  Halfway down the ninth-floor corridor, Provost Robert Stamford stood in front of a glass door etched with the hospital logo. As Paul neared, Stamford opened the door and gestured toward his office down the softly lit interior hallway. Stamford was a short, stocky man who wore round-rimmed glasses and a bow tie. He was known, and mocked, for speaking in paragraphs where others would use a sentence. He and Paul had been scientific colleagues years back but had diverged professionally, Stamford moving into administration while Paul wrestled with research in the lab. Stamford oversaw the hospital’s research portfolio; Paul refused to kowtow.

  Thick carpet muted the sound of voices, a telephone, their footsteps as they made their way to Stamford’s office. They passed Stamford’s assistant and entered the room. At the far end, a wooden pedestal desk with a glass top glinted in the light from the windows. Behind the desk, framed photos on a credenza showed Stamford shaking hands with politicians and portly, white-haired men and women whom Paul understood to be donors. Three framed diplomas hung on the wall. Stamford sat in an armchair and beckoned Paul to the couch.

  “I understand congratulations are in order.”

  “How did you hear?”

  “You played handball last night. Everyone in the locker room heard your conversation.”

  “Nothing is official,” Paul said, sitting, “so I’m not prepared to discuss it.”

  Stamford’s face remained neutral. He crossed his legs.

  “Comes at an opportune time, doesn’t it?” He paused. “I’d like you to think about something. When you’re ready to staff up, I have a candidate for your new position.” He folded hands in lap and leaned back into the chair, a faint smirk on his face.

  Paul felt annoyance rise. Stamford irritated him more quickly and more thoroughly than anyone else. He thought Stamford a parasite, a stuffed shirt who exploited other people’s creativity to elevate his own standing. Twenty years Paul had struggled to develop his lab while Stamford manipulated the wealthy. Stamford was just a landlord, but he acted like a lord.

  “I’m pretty sure that you will need to hire someone to gather the data for your next experiment. Your team just gets by as it i
s.”

  “We do good work, Robert.”

  “But you do need my help. You know you need me to cover the overhead on staff. For every salary dollar you spend, my department kicks in a quarter.”

  A siren sounded outside, growing louder as the ambulance pulled up to the emergency entrance in the courtyard below Stamford’s windows. Paul sometimes forgot that he worked in a clinical setting.

  “I’d like to introduce you to someone. She’s a master’s candidate at NYU, cancer biology. She’s also the niece of two of our hospital’s good friends. Her aunt and uncle are in a position to make another donation.”

  “Do you expect me to hire somebody’s niece to help you make your numbers?” He was proud of his team of compatible people whom he could trust. No interference welcome.

  “Paul, you’re a fine researcher, but you need to take a broader view. We’ve been good to you here, through thick and thin.” Stamford waited a beat. “Just take a look at the girl. We can talk again after you meet her.” Stamford rose and went to his desk to push a button on his phone. “Eric, would you please give Dr. Adler Ms. Caldwell’s contact information? He’s on his way out.” Paul rose and they moved together to the door, Stamford cupping Paul’s elbow as he would a woman’s.

  “I’m confident that you will appreciate Ms. Caldwell’s gifts and that you’ll be an excellent mentor.” They moved into the hallway. “She’s very bright and capable. She’s also very attractive, you know.” Stamford opened the glass door to the main corridor and its fluorescent glare. “Again, congratulations.”

  Footsteps squeaked on the linoleum floor as a pair of orderlies pushed an empty stretcher and a couple of IV stands ahead of them. Chatting loudly in a foreign tongue, they moved aside as Paul passed. He strode down the antiseptic-tinged corridor and charged into his warren, past a startled Sandi. Nothing like five minutes with Robert Stamford to kill his joy. He punched his phone.

  Irene, a nurse three floors below, his mistress for nearly a decade, answered. “What’s the matter?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Why are you calling me at work?”

  “Want to meet for lunch?”

  “You could have asked me this morning.”

  She had a point. His voice softened. “How about it? I can’t get to your place again until Thursday night.”

  “I’m on duty. See you Thursday.”

  He replaced the phone in its cradle. He knew she didn’t like to be interrupted at work. So why had he phoned? Because she would understand his pique without his having to explain. She disliked Stamford nearly as much as he did.

  He refocused on the manila folder on his desk. Inside, a neat stack of papers, courtesy of Sandi. Report from the tumor biology conference to which Alicia, his lead researcher, had gone to represent the team. Next: letter to Alicia’s former advisor. Next: request to a correspondent lab in Stockholm to send more tumor tissue. None of the issues grabbed his attention; he closed the folder.

  He stepped into Sandi’s office and over to the vertical file jammed against the rear wall, where she kept paper copies of important documents. He opened the drawer labeled “Grant Proposals.” As he thumbed through the files, he heard someone behind him.

  “What are you looking for?” Sandi said, coming toward him. She stood frowning, arms akimbo. “Before you make a mess, tell me what you need.”

  “I want the foundation proposal.”

  “I figured. Here.” She handed him a wedge of paper squeezed into a black metal clip.

  “Atta girl.”

  “I’ll bind it properly when you’re done.”

  Paul opened the clip and spread the papers on his desk, looking for the budget. He found the salary items in year one, year two, and cumulative. He subtracted the dollars that his current team cost, rounding quickly. There was enough to pay a level-one research assistant. He could go up a level if Stamford kicked in the overhead. Paul added numbers in his head: if he rolled the three years together and didn’t give raises, he could add a few grand to the position. Still not enough. He didn’t want a level one; he needed more. Stamford had the advantage.

  He picked up the phone to call his wife, his ultimate resource.

  THREE

  And there was Jenn, coming through the international-arrival doors, dark curls surrounding her head, layers of cloth flaring from her shoulders and obscuring her figure. She hobbled, a bandage around her ankle. She had phoned Maggie from Frankfurt close to midnight the night before, asking to be picked up at JFK at one in the afternoon. She was all right, she had assured her mother, but couldn’t talk because her flight was boarding.

  “What happened?” Maggie took Jenn’s backpack with one arm, embracing her with the other.

  “I twisted my ankle in the hotel lobby, day before yesterday.”

  “Is that why you came home suddenly?”

  Jenn laughed. “Sort of. We stayed at a deluxe hotel in Delhi, and I tripped going up the marble staircase. Up! My usual graceful self.” She adjusted the mirror-cloth bag over her shoulder.

  Maggie ignored the reference to Jenn’s history of bumps and bruises. “Are you sure you’re all right?” She searched her daughter’s face, browned and smooth beneath a patina of fatigue. She scanned her body: Jenn had always carried more flesh than was fashionable, and she looked solid, normal; no foreign parasites had wasted her, thank goodness.

  “I’m fine. But I’ll go for an X-ray tomorrow; not to worry.” They started down the long, concrete corridor, Jenn stepping carefully. “This airport is almost as ratty as Delhi, but without the smells. You can’t imagine how many smells there are.”

  “Should we get a wheelchair? Where’s your friend?”

  Jenn’s voice brightened, “Arun’s staying on until Thursday. He has the luggage. We decided it made sense for me to fly yesterday. Better than hanging around a dirty clinic in Delhi.”

  They rode the elevator to the parking level. Maggie offered to bring the car around while Jenn waited on a bench, her foot elevated. It had been over a year since Jenn had left her job and apartment in Brooklyn. She used to say that she didn’t mind working at a halfway house because philosophy majors like her appreciated existential problems. But she wasn’t happy. Then one day she called to ask for her immunization records, saying she needed to get booster shots and renew her passport to go to India. Maggie had been taken aback and pressed her for details, to no avail. Now that Jenn was home, Maggie counseled herself not to bombard her daughter with questions.

  Maggie pulled the Ford Focus to the curb. Jenn hefted her backpack onto the rear seat and sank into the front in a cloud of cloth. The woolen shawl encasing her shoulders fell open, exposing silver-threaded sari cloth bunched around her neck. She wore no makeup. Filigree earrings dangled against her cheeks; she smelled faintly of cloves.

  “Gave up the Prius, Mom?”

  “This is a rental. I had an accident a couple of days ago.” Sergeant Hernandez’s scowl loomed in her mind’s eye. Shame flashed through her. She didn’t want to discuss it.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing serious. No one was hurt. The car only needs bodywork.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine.” Maggie reached for the dashboard. “How about some heat?”

  “No thanks. But make yourself comfortable. Still wearing the leather jacket with the ink stain I made in junior high, I see.”

  Maggie’s left hand went to the stain.

  “Now I know I’m home.” Jenn removed the shawl from her shoulders. “I’ve gotten hardy, Mom. You spend so much time outdoors at an ashram. We moved around a lot. Arun is in demand.”

  “He’s coming on Thursday?”

  “Uh-huh. Not to our house. He’s going to see some colleagues first. And he has family in New Jersey. He’ll spend time with us afterwards. I want you and Dad to get to know him.”

  “Of course.” Maggie didn’t want to share Jenn with this man, but she would. And she’d figure
out how he had managed to captivate her. Studying the road signs, she pulled out of the parking lot.

  Jenn leaned her head onto the seat back and closed her eyes. “I need a nice, long, hot soak. Then I’ll be fit for company.”

  “I think there’s some Epsom salts under the sink.”

  They threaded their way along the web of highways that cross Long Island, heading for the bridge to Westchester County and home. When Jenn was little, she and Jenn used to love crossing the bridge for the view: Manhattan skyline in the distance, jagged shoreline beneath. From the top of the long arch, you could see for miles, Long Island Sound lapping into nooks and inlets, all kinds of boats making their way through the channel. Maggie would marvel at the great port city that had grown in this place, and Jenn would ask if they could stop to catch a fish. They had gone fishing once, trolling for flounder from a motorboat that bounced in the currents. Maggie had been miserably seasick. Paul and Jenn had had a fine time, and Jenn had reeled in the only catch of the day. For years afterward, she’d ask her father for another fishing trip. Paul had been too tied up at work to produce one.

  “I’ve had a good year, Mom. Being with Arun in India was better than I expected. You would have approved.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you care about what’s important. You taught me to ask tough questions about character and conduct. I found answers in India. I couldn’t find them in Brooklyn.”

  As Jenn adjusted the seat belt, a breath of clove wafted toward Maggie. She glanced toward the woman Jenn had become. She couldn’t help but recall every other Jenn she had transported in the passenger seat: curly-headed kid going to nursery school, chubby preteen going to the orthodontist, sullen-faced adolescent fleeing to a friend’s house. Every Jenn she had loved had telescoped into this unknown Jenn, sitting here now.