“Or he told her so.”
Maggie shook her head and returned the kettle to the stove.
“Why so silent? I’m your ally now that I see what’s going on.”
“Sarah, what can you really see in such a short time? If you leap to conclusions, you’ll alienate Jenn.”
“You are wound tight.” She took a sip. “I know I don’t have the whole picture, but when I tune in to spirit, I am truly guided.”
Maggie thought about the times prior Sarahs had claimed to have found true north. Each time she’d begun a new life, she’d followed it with gumption. Gut, or spirit, or whatever Sarah chose to call it, had worked for her, hadn’t it? “Well, I’ll follow your lead.”
“No you won’t. You’ll go your own way. You always do.” She looked straight into Maggie’s eyes. “Be warned, I’m going to make you listen because I’ve found the source, and someone as spiritual as you should tap in.” She took another sip. “Got any honey?”
Maggie retrieved a plastic container shaped like a bear from the pantry. Passing the honey bear to Sarah, she said, “I don’t think Arun’s shifty. He’s complicated.” Why was she defending him? She wasn’t defending him; she was defending Jenn. “I don’t mean to defend him. I just don’t want to cross Jenn.”
“Understood. I know what I’m doing. My clients say ‘It’s complicated’ whenever they want an excuse not to change things. We get there, by the grace of God and my persistence. Trust me.” Sarah rose, sweetened tea in hand. “Do I have time to do email before lunch?”
“Is half an hour enough?”
Sarah nodded yes and slipped out of the kitchen.
Maggie opened the fridge to start the salad. Trust me. That might be a problem. She didn’t question Sarah’s affection, but she worried about her judgment. Had something transformed Sarah, or was she herself different, still loyal and grateful for the friendship yet more hardheaded, more demanding? It pained Maggie to consider Sarah in a new light, not as the energetic enthusiast she sometimes envied but as the obnoxious dilettante Paul had long disliked. How many decades had she and Sarah known and loved each other? That wouldn’t change. But this visit might not go as planned.
Maggie carried two fresh bath towels into the guest room for Sarah, already in the shower. As she raised her hand to knock on the bathroom door to hand them in, her eye caught on a note in Sarah’s loopy hand atop a ratty spiral notebook on the bureau. She hesitated, then paused to read. Sarah had written, “I found this on a shelf in the garage, from a very long time ago. Love, S.” Her heart contracted as she opened the book: there, in Jenn’s adolescent handwriting, lay jottings from that awful summer. She read the first entry:
Dr. K. wants me to write every night so I don’t keep going round and round. Aunt Sarah drives us to work and she doesn’t question me. She leaves me alone at night. I could borrow her car but the freeways are too confusing, and where would I go? I’m bad company, which is why she wants me to write. I am trying to believe that the whole thing wasn’t my fault. I don’t. Why didn’t I see it coming? How stupid. He said you are the only one who ever believed in me, and I fell for it. Joan of Arc. Kidnapped by a nasty drunk. No, not kidnapped, I walked in with my delusions. Dr. K says my anger is misplaced. Ha—how do you pick up your anger and put it in another place? Whoever figures out how to carry anger in a baggie will rule the world.
Maggie flipped pages, past doodles of dogs and what looked like waves at the beach, and sideways writing, and splotches that might have been caused by a fluid, to the last entry:
Tomorrow I get on a plane to go home and start my senior year. Mom and Dad will meet me at the airport, and she will have that slightly terrified look on her face and he will be all noise. They’ll ask me what my summer was like. How can I explain/I don’t need to. They will worry but it’s not a question of whether or not they can trust me around boys or at school. It’s a question of whether I can trust me. I’m still not sure, but Dr. K says she does, and I think I can. At any rate, I’m going to find out. You gain nothing sitting on the sidelines. And we know complaining is not my style.
What a brave girl, Maggie thought, braver than she herself might have been if life had betrayed her at seventeen. She replaced the notebook on the bureau, glad she had snooped. She knocked on the bathroom door and slid the towels inside. Sarah trilled “Thanks,” and Maggie shut the door behind her. It had taken Jenn quite a while to rebuild her self-confidence after the rape, most of college actually. And now she wanted to put herself to an extreme test. Maggie thought, my poor brave girl.
TWENTY-ONE
Paul used his hypotenuse technique to cut through the crowd in Grand Central Station. You looked down as you walked in a diagonal to your destination, forcing the other people to use peripheral vision unconsciously to avoid you. He emerged untouched on Forty-Second Street sensing spring—a layer of sweetness over the asphalt stink of traffic and the salty odor of pedestrians—and headed south in long strides. To clear his head, he wanted to walk to the hospital rather than take the rush-hour subway. Now that Sarah had turned sanctimonious, she annoyed him even more than before. He’d left home before breakfast, taking the early commuter train to avoid her, and the fakir.
As he reached Park Avenue South, his mind turned to the work he needed to complete before the conference in June. He had persuaded the tumor research society to give him a prominent place in the program. This was it. He’d announce his latest breakthrough, the capper to more than ten years’ work, proving that his approach to the tumor microenvironment had been correct all along. He imagined the faces, some shocked, most of them impressed, as the presentation unfolded. They’d crowd around him when the lights came back on, clamoring to collaborate. But he’d reject their offers. No one would ride his coattails to glory. Let them find the courage to buck the trends and generate original hypotheses. He could almost taste his triumph now.
He crossed the street against the light, staring down an irate motorist, and his thoughts tumbled forward. As soon as he got to the lab, he would prepare the précis for his next grant proposal. He’d need to submit instantly once the news got out. A paragraph began to crystalize in his head. He considered finding the nearest subway station and taking the train the rest of the way. No, better to exercise—gut beginning to protrude over belt.
Subways were so damn efficient. He’d investigated them in all the cities where his various conferences had been held over the previous twenty years: Paris, London, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Barcelona. Compared to the others, New York’s subway was smelly and loud—trains ricocheted along the tracks and the sound penetrated cars and tunnels—but it was also fast and logical. He was a fan. New York one; Midwest zero.
A woman in a sari carrying a baby and pulling a cart full of D’Agostino grocery bags crossed the sidewalk in front of him. As he strode past, he saw her enter a building using her hip to open the door. That could be Jenn a couple of years from now. What a waste of talent. He caught himself: maybe the woman was a medical doctor running errands before work. A swarm of Indian women brought curry in plastic containers to the hospital cafeteria, eating and chatting together, stethoscopes hanging around their necks. Maybe this one was delivering her child and supplies to the nanny. Maybe this one was the nanny. In New York, anything was possible.
What did he need to have in hand to write the précis? Some new tables and figures showing Alicia’s latest results. He’d make them himself, in neon colors. Walking faster, he neared the deli next to the hospital. Should he stop for a quick breakfast? Nah, he’d ask Sandi to bring him a dry bagel. He needed to lose the gut—well, some of it—by June.
When he opened the anteroom door, Sandi said, “Alicia’s waiting in your office. She was here when I came in. She looks like she’s been crying.” He walked to her desk and proffered a five-dollar bill. She grumbled as she rose, “This is the last time. In the future, you fetch your own coffee.”
“Black, and a plain bagel, no schmear. Thanks.”
“What’s up?”
“No idea. She doesn’t confide in me.”
He entered his office and hung his windbreaker on the hook behind the door. Sitting on the folding chair beside the cluttered desk, Alicia looked paler than normal but otherwise composed.
“I’m surprised to see you so early.”
“I have to tell you. I’m worried. It was so uncalled for.”
Eyes on her face, he sat down behind the desk. Her hands, normally fussing with paper or computer, lay still in her lap. “Go on.”
“Last night I was finishing up and Provost Stamford came into the lab. He said he wanted to talk. He never said one word to me before this.”
Paul felt his hackles rise. “And?”
“He wanted to know about the last two experiments. He said he read the weekly summary and thought they were complicated, so he wondered if they had gone smoothly. I told him yes and no—that I had to redo some parts. Then he wanted to know which ones and why, and if I did the work or if you did. I didn’t know what to say.”
“He’s out of line. I’ll deal with him.”
Alicia looked down. “That’s what I told him. I mean, that he should talk to you.”
“Right. I need you to work, not gossip. I want to make new figures from last week’s data. Set it up on your computer?”
She looked at him. “Will we be okay?”
“Of course. More than okay. You’re going to be famous.”
The corners of her mouth relaxed a millimeter. She rose. “I’ll open the file.”
He fussed with his computer as she left the room. He stared at the screen, mouse in hand. Whatever Stamford was up to had something to do with Hope. Maybe she’d said something about Alicia. No matter, he was safe. He had made sure himself that Hope’s work had been properly entered. She didn’t know enough science to be dangerous. He squinted at the screen.
A sour taste formed in his mouth. No other woman had ever rejected him. Ever since the army, he’d enjoyed every piece of flesh that had stirred him sufficiently, and the women had been grateful. But with Hope, the attraction went beyond lust. She understood his mind and it excited her. How could she abandon him, and for Martin Miller of all people?
In the two weeks since she walked out, he’d first doused his anger with thoughts of revenge. He fantasized about bursting into Miller’s lab and calling her a liar, convincing Miller to dump her. After he’d cooled some, he reframed the ugly business. Bedding Hope, he decided, had been a sexual experiment. He’d wanted to screw an aristocrat, a young athlete with strong, long legs. He should have suspected her motives when she came on to him, but the sex had been good. He prided himself on mounting the thoroughbred so expertly. All in all, he gave the experiment a C. Irene got a B-plus because she treated him right, to the best of her ability. Maggie didn’t count; she was like lab hardware, quietly functioning in the background.
This morning the sour taste lingered. Why did Stamford keep poking around? Son of a bitch needs to be the only hero in the hospital? He closed the computer and marched into the wet lab to work up Alicia’s data once again, better this time.
When Metro North stopped at Pelham, it was full dark. He drove home from the station, weighing how much of that day’s work he could preview to his colleagues without giving Stamford any leverage. He’d tell the team, of course—their work had made it all possible—and swear them to secrecy. He knew he had their respect and could count on their loyalty. Turning into his driveway, he could see into the lighted living room: the four of them appeared to be in conversation. He hesitated at the doorstep, anticipating a tiresome evening. Maggie came into the hallway to meet him.
“We waited half an hour; then we ate. Your meal is in the kitchen. I am appalled at your rudeness.”
“Today’s stuff was more important than manners.”
“Manners? Don’t you understand what’s going on?”
“Cut me some slack. I’m hungry.” He hung up his windbreaker and turned away from her. He heard her heels click angrily on the hardwood floor.
A plate wrapped in plastic lay on the top shelf in the refrigerator. He ate the cold meal standing at the counter, savoring the flavors. Maggie could cook. She always could cook, even back when they were too poor to buy a steak. He could count on her making a good meal, if nothing else. There was a time, he mused, when they enjoyed a healthy screw. He couldn’t remember when they’d started avoiding each other or who was at fault. She’d blame him regardless. He placed the empty plate in the sink and, wiping his mouth and hands on the dish towel, went to face the company.
Jenn sat on the couch leaning into her lover, right hand planted on his thigh. Maggie and Sarah sat opposite them on the love seat. A depressing sight. He wanted to go down to the Lair and watch a baseball game, put his feet up, and sip bourbon. But Jenn would be hurt and Maggie ticked off, and then he’d hear about it. He sat in the wing chair near the fireplace, waiting for a break in the conversation to apologize for being late. Sarah glared at him. Maggie looked away.
Arun said, “I understand that you are on the verge of a discovery, Dr. Adler.”
“Call me Paul. No, I’m on the verge of proving that my discoveries are correct. The standard of proof in science is sky high.”
“As it should be,” Arun said. “I look forward to hearing about your work.”
“Not now, Paul,” Sarah said. “We were discussing Arun’s visit to India last month. He’s made a fascinating discovery.”
Arun demurred. “Not a discovery in the scientific sense. I have been telling the ladies about a technology that is having a great impact on the poor. In a village, one woman gets a cell phone that she rents to her neighbors for a few minutes at a time. The cost is low. Then everyone has access to information that they need.”
Sarah said, “They can bank by phone. That’s so important! People need a safe way to transfer money so they don’t get robbed on the way to the market.”
Arun said, “Yes, and farmers use the phone to find out crop prices so they know how to sell without being exploited by middlemen. The American government is sponsoring NGOs to send health information by telephone. It is social transformation without war, in the style of Gandhi. The blessings of the twenty-first century are coming to rural India.”
Paul said, “What about the curses? Teenagers plotting terror attacks by cell?” He could feel his blood pressure rise as he watched Arun’s pudgy face.
Arun said, “That too—more likely in Pakistan than in India. As you see, Jenn’s and my work becomes all the more necessary.”
Jenn said, “Arun thinks there may be a way for us to partner with one of the NGOs he met with. We won’t know until we get there. I am so excited!”
Arun took her hand in his. “You have two weddings to think about first.”
Maggie rose. “I’m going up. Knock on my door if you need anything. Good night.”
As if waiting for the first person to make a move, the others stood. Jenn said good night and took Arun’s hand as they climbed the stairs. Paul realized that Arun would be bunking with Jenn. Maggie must have given Sarah the guest room. She’d broken another one of her rules. Inviting Sarah had been a bad idea, and he wanted Maggie to know she’d made a mistake. He followed the others up the stairs.
Maggie stood in front of the narrow, old-fashioned closet in their bedroom, removing her clothes. He sat on the foot of the bed, watching the familiar contours of her limbs emerge as she pulled off shirt and stepped out of slacks. He wanted to prick her, like a balloon. Self-righteous about her precious Sarah. Time to deflate.
“Your old buddy seems to have taken to the fakir. She likes his idea of church by cell phone.”
“She doesn’t like him. She agrees with him that everyone needs a bank.”
“Yeah, even people who live on a dollar a day.”
“You c
an’t stand it when other people have good ideas.”
“Here we go again.”
“If Arun were an untouchable instead of a Brahman, you’d cheer him on.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You know you’re a reverse snob.”
“Irrelevant. I’m talking about my daughter. She is not going to marry that creep. I’m gonna put my foot down.” He stood up, coiled to pounce.
“Where are you going to put it? On Jenn’s neck? Don’t be foolish. Jenn won’t be bullied.” She slipped the baggy T-shirt that served as a nightgown over her head.
He approached her. “She’s naive. She doesn’t know men lie. I will straighten her out.”
“You’re so busy strutting in front of Arun that you can’t see who’s lying and who’s not.”
“Watch your tongue.” He would hit her if he stayed a minute longer. “I’m going downstairs.”
“You can stay there.”
He slammed the bedroom door behind him, shaking the old wooden framing, sending reverberations down the hall. He descended into the Lair and turned the television on loud. One shot of bourbon remained in the bottle in the cabinet. He found a passably clean glass and poured. Maggie had pushed his button. Years before, in a few weak moments, he’d let slip some comments that she’d interpreted to mean that he was prejudiced against the upper crust, even if he envied them. So what if he detested spineless little guys who pulled rank to get ahead? What mattered was Jenn sitting silently next to Arun, as if she meant to walk four steps behind him for the rest of her life. His plucky, chatty girl, full of adventure, transformed into a shadow. To hell with Maggie’s cautions. He would get Jenn alone tomorrow and make her see straight.
He sat at his desk and sipped, confirmed in his resolve. The booze spread warmly in his mouth and slid down his throat, biting gently in his chest. He could feel the coil of gut beneath his ribs untwist. He sipped, a fine flavor on his palate, a tang mounting the back of his throat. Every sip a pleasure, every morsel of pleasure improving his mood. With a sigh, he booted the computer and connected to the lab. In a few moments the file opened. He inspected the graphs he had labored over at Alicia’s machine. Two of the curves, in cherry red and acid green, arched solidly upward, showing a steady response to the treatment Alicia had applied to her breast cancer mice. He was comforted by the incontrovertible proof that the mechanism he had posited was, in fact, responsible for the mice’s tumors and that the antagonist he had discovered could block it. It was only a matter of time before other scientists would translate his discoveries into clinical practice. Some drug company would make a fortune from his ideas. He didn’t care. A lifetime of hard work would be recognized, and the world would be better off besides.
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