Intuition

by Allegra Goodman

  “Do you see what I mean?” Sabbatini asked her.

  And Robin said yes. She wasn't stunned, as Cliff had been. She did not have to wait for the news to hit her. She hung up the telephone in Ginsburg's lab, where she had been working since January second, and tried to lose herself in the bustle around her. She tried to forget everything but the tasks of the morning, extracting DNA from tissue samples, plating new cells and splitting older colonies.

  Few events or emotions escaped Ginsburg's notice, however. He was an investigator who loved to prowl his spacious laboratories, to pace and measure his domain. When he was in town, he walked among his students and his postdocs and made chance remarks and daunting suggestions. He'd seemed to Robin, when she arrived, to be everywhere at once.

  “What is it?” he asked her now as she stood at the microscope. “Is something wrong?”

  Once again her flushed face betrayed her as she realized Ginsburg must have heard about the appeals board's findings. That was his way—to know all the news, and know it early.

  “Step outside a minute,” he told her, and she followed him into the hall.

  “I'm sorry about the appeal,” he said, “and I'm sure you are too.”

  She tried to speak then. She wanted to say something stoic and offhand. Oh, well. Or That's just the way things go. Or That's life. But the clichés were difficult.

  He was looking at her keenly, choosing his words. “You did very well,” he said at last.

  “Thank you,” she said, and tried to duck back inside the lab.

  “And sometimes,” he continued, “the truth has to be enough.”

  She looked back at him, and faintly, almost imperceptibly, she smiled. That pleased him. He felt he'd said the right thing. In fact, she was considering Ginsburg with all his honors and awards, his chair at Harvard, and she was wondering whether the truth—which should have been enough for her—was also sufficient in itself for him.

  “But it's not just a triumph for us,” Sandy was telling a reporter on the phone. “In fact, it's not for us at all. It's a triumph for open inquiry all across the nation.”

  Across the nation, Marion thought. Such a grand, almost quaint phrase. He spoke in newsreels. That was just one of the things she loved and hated about Sandy.

  He had been busy all day, racing down the stairs to speak to Hawking, talking constantly on the phone, arranging interviews, spreading the news. He had been gloriously busy, almost giddy. Gleefully he scooted in his swivel chair between desk and file cabinet, and she had to move fast to keep out of his way. This was almost like old times. And she knew this was when she had to speak.

  She waited until he got off the phone, took a breath, and said, “Sandy, I need to talk to you.”

  He turned toward her quickly, eagerly. “No, wait, there's something I have to tell you first.”

  She felt herself caught out then, and off balance. She had thought so long about what to say, and how, that she was nearly paralyzed to lose her rhythm like this.

  “I've accepted a new position,” he said, and he was beaming. “I'm going to be the head of a new private cancer facility in Wellesley. It's an entirely new enterprise dedicated to combining research and treatment. It's called the Stoughton Clinic and we're breaking ground next year.”

  “A private clinic!” She forgot everything she'd planned to tell him, she was so startled and dismayed.

  “And what's so shocking about that?”

  “You'll spend all your time fund-raising,” she blurted out.

  “Don't you think I'll be good at it?” he challenged her.

  “But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “You could do better,” she said, looking away.

  “And you're a snob,” he reminded her, and added carelessly, “I held out against them as long as I could.”

  “You did not. You did not hold out against them. You never hold out against anything,” she said.

  He shrugged. “They made me an offer I couldn't refuse.”

  This was all a little too slick, a little too devil-may-care, even for him. And she understood, then, that he had known exactly what was in her mind, and what she'd been planning these last days and weeks. He was too proud to endure the speech she had prepared. He would not listen to her talk about how they had to go their separate ways. Typically, he'd decided to act first. That was just his way: chivalrous and selfish at the same time. He'd leave the lab for untold sums of money, preempting her painful valediction. He'd saved her that. She should have been relieved, and in a way, she was. Why, then, did she feel he was abandoning her and selling out? It was just like him to steal her thunder this way, to snatch the decision from her own hands—and then make her suffer for it.

  “You could have asked,” she said, “before you decided to take this position.”

  “What? Asked your permission? Given notice?” Now he bristled at her. “I beg your pardon. I didn't realize I had to ask leave to go.”

  “You could have raised the issue,” she said, “and discussed it with me.”

  “Isn't it interesting,” he told her, “that after all these years you still think of me as your employee?”

  “I don't,” she said.

  “Yes you do, Marion. You do.”

  Wounded, she turned on him. “You were my equal partner, and we shared everything alike.”

  “Not true. You know it's not true.”

  “You always got what you wanted,” she retorted. “You got everything. Do you think you'll have more freedom over there?”

  “Yes,” he said cheerfully.

  She shook her head. “They'll work you into the ground,” she said. “And you'll be at their beck and call. They'll have you traveling constantly and holding meetings every day.”

  “We'll do clinical trials of our own,” he said.

  She looked at him reproachfully. “You'll be an administrator.” She spoke the words as if they were a death sentence.

  “That's right,” he shot back. “I'll be an administrator; I'll be a doer. I'll manage people and money and equipment and projects, and I'll get things done. I'm not afraid of that. Wake up and look around you, Marion, and maybe you'll finally realize that if you want to get something done in this world, you—yes, even you—have to be an administrator too.”

  “Do you really think you're going to get research done at a private clinic?”

  “Absolutely. Far more than you.”

  She threw up her hands at that, because they both knew it simply wasn't true.

  “And do you know why?” He pressed on. “Because I have a plan.”

  “You always do,” she said.

  “I have a plan—but here's the difference between us, Marion. When I have a plan I carry it through.”

  “This is a plan? To start up some little clinic?”

  “Little? Ha! Did I mention our endowment? We're gonna buy the Philpott and sell it for scrap.” He held up his hand. “No, don't speak. You can't afford me.”

  And already she missed him, his bravado, his joy in competition, his sense of fun. She already missed fighting with him. She missed their constant arguments, their incessant lunchtime conversations. She missed what they had been to each other, before the inquiry. Their partnership had not been perfect, but she had respected him, fully. And he had been wonderfully disrespectful in his turn. He was the only person in the world who'd ever teased her. Jacob and Aaron weren't teasers, and no one in the lab would dare.

  “Sandy,” she said.

  He searched her face and saw her annoyance, her disapproval, and underneath, her sorrow. He saw all of that, but he knew her too well. He knew there would be no second chance with her. She wouldn't ask him to stay.

  That weekend, Jacob surprised Marion with dinner reservations at Upstairs at the Pudding. “What's the occasion for all this?” she asked, glancing around the expensive candlelit restaurant.

  “A successful appeal, to begin with,” Jacob said, lifting his glass of wine.

 
“Oh, that,” she told him. “That's more cause for embarrassment than celebration.”

  “Then there's the interview for Feng.”

  “He'll be going out to Houston on Monday,” she said.

  “And he seems to stand a good chance there.”

  “We'll see,” she countered superstitiously as she picked at her smoked pheasant salad.

  “And there's the job offer for Prithwish at Genentech.”

  “That was very nice,” she said, slightly more cheerful.

  “They're well on their way,” Jacob told her. “Even Cliff. What did you say he was doing?”

  “Well, apparently he has a possibility in Utah.”

  “You see how they all land on their feet,” said Jacob.

  “I suppose they do.” She didn't want to sound ungrateful. She was profoundly grateful the NIH appeals board had spared her lab, tremendously relieved to be done with ORIS and its suspicious inquiries—the politics and gamesmanship of the past two years. Still, the thought of starting over pained her. She would have to develop five-year plans for funding. How good Sandy had been at grandiose plans, and how she hated the idea of projecting her work into the future, assuring others that results would come to pass where as yet there were none. He had done all that for years, so that she had not dirtied her hands. And the whole thing was dirty, the whole dirty game. She would have to go to the dog and pony shows and talk up the lab, and she would never get any work done because she would be traveling and on the phone and always, always interrupted. Desolately, she thought about all this while she sat with Jacob at their table high above Holyoke Street.

  But Jacob was not desolate at all; he had never been happier, his dark eyes never so loving or so bright. “Try to see it the way I do,” he told Marion. “It's an opportunity. Try not to underestimate yourself—because every time, you rise to the occasion. You know you do.” If he could only make her see how much better off she was at that moment than she'd been for years—how much richer she was now without Sandy's flashy talents and questionable resources. She had cast off an entire line of research, a universe of empty possibilities. Now the world was all before her. His wife was free—liberated from half-truths and spectacular data. She was free of the windmills of publicity. Free of puffery and free of scandal, and what was more, he had played his own small part in liberating her. He could not help congratulating himself that he had been right about the virus from the beginning. He was happy, truly happy. He loved the rack of lamb on the table, he loved the wine, he loved that what he had foreseen and dreamed had come to pass. He was discreet by nature, and inward-turning in his practice, nearly self-contained—except at this moment of celebration. Then it seemed the prodigy in him slipped out, the brilliant child he had been danced with righteous satisfaction, and joy loosened his tongue.

  “I always knew Cliff's work was too good to be true,” he told Marion. “I said as much to Robin.”

  She set down her fork. “What are you talking about?”

  He froze for a second, then collected himself. “I said as much to everyone who would listen,” he reminded her, “especially you.”

  “What do you mean?” she demanded. “When did you speak to Robin?”

  He knew he had said too much. He should never have mentioned Robin's name.

  “When did you speak to her?” Marion pressed him.

  “It's not important. It was a long time ago,” he said. “Before any of this ever happened. It doesn't matter.”

  “You told her you thought the results were too good to be true?”

  “I gave her my opinion. You know I hated the R-7 paper. That was no secret.”

  “But you told Robin you hated it?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “I would never say something like that directly.”

  No, she thought, looking at her cunning husband.

  “I would never betray a confidence to someone like her,” he insisted.

  “But you might hint,” she said.

  “No, no. You misunderstood me. Forget everything I said.”

  But she could not forget. Nor could she sit there with him and go on eating, as he celebrated the end of false research, and flawed inquiries, and boasted of his own insinuations.

  “Marion,” he said, “let me explain.”

  She left the table. She made her way through the velvety restaurant and out the door, past the ladies' room and the coat check in the hall. She didn't have the ticket for her coat, but she didn't bother with that. She hurried down the stairs, and without hesitating for a moment, she began walking home.

  The wind was bitter, but she was wearing a good wool suit, and told herself she didn't care. She walked straight through Harvard Yard and then out the gate to Quincy Street before she even felt the cold. How pleased Jacob had been at dinner. How pleased with himself. That was the thought she couldn't bear. He was delighted she had failed. No, that wasn't right. He was thrilled that Sandy had failed her. That was it; he was ecstatic to see Sandy vanquished. Because, of course, he hated Sandy with all his heart. Sandy was quick and worldly; he was a clinician, and not a real scholar. He was a player. And Jacob hated Sandy for always wanting something from science: new treatments for his patients, glory for himself, money for the lab. That was blasphemy, to come to science wanting to make and take, to enter into research so impatiently, to try to bend an inquiry for personal and social gain. He hated Sandy for treating the publication process like a joyride, and taking her along. Above all, Jacob hated Sandy for that—for capturing her imagination, tempting her into his irresponsible, irrepressible fun-house world. He was only a distraction and a magician, to Jacob's mind. He was an expert at wishful thinking and public relations: parlor tricks and sleight of hand, and yet she and Sandy had been inseparable. Jacob could not bear that.

  Her husband had not been jealous. Not in the ordinary way. He wasn't so primitive, but he had been quite willing to play on Robin's jealousy. To whisper doubts into Robin's ear. To encourage her to act where he could not. She knew even Jacob could not have planned what Robin had done, or foreseen an entire inquiry. But the fact that he was glad of the results; the idea that he could have imagined even some of what had come to pass! Almost without thinking, she crossed Quincy Street and turned away from Inman Square and home.

  She strode instead into the institute and walked down the well-lit empty corridors and rubbed her cold hands together. He loved her. She knew that. He would give up his life for her. In fact, in many ways, he had. He had sacrificed for her, sublimated his imagination for her. And yet, how much had Jacob really given up, and how much had he transferred onto her shoulders? He'd bestowed on her every pressure to succeed, and his professional ambition and all his pain, the sharp hunger for perfection. He'd cast upon her his hope and his determination, and all the fury of his relentless mind.

  The office was quiet. Sandy's side was stacked with papers and jottings on yellow pads and crumpled messages, and photographs of his girls and Ann. Marion's desk, of course, was neat and clean. The amber cursor on her computer monitor winked at her. Sandy had been insisting that she needed a fancy Spark Station, but Marion was too frugal.

  “He loves to spend grant money,” Jacob had caviled once.

  “He's good at getting it,” she pointed out. “Why shouldn't he spend it?”

  Of course Jacob had been right about Sandy; he was right about everything. How difficult it was for her husband, always to be right. Certainly it was difficult for everyone around him. He was too true to be good. How tragic to see inside people, straight through all their pretenses. She opened up her desk drawer and took out her knitting. There, in a plastic bag, were the two pieces for the front of the cardigan, and also the sleeves. The big piece for the back was almost done; she smoothed it out on the desk and examined her work.

  Her mother, Alice, had taught her to knit, and taught her well. When Marion was a teenager she'd knitted herself a powder blue angora sweater. One evening, when she'd almost finished, she set the sweat
er on the chair next to her bed. In the morning, when she woke up, the sweater was gone, and a mess of blue yarn lay on the chair next to her knitting needles. “What happened?” she asked her mother frantically.

  “I found a mistake in it,” her mother told her, and then, as if she had done Marion a tremendous favor, she explained, “It was all the way at the bottom, so I ripped down to the third row for you.”

  Even years later, her mother had no idea why Marion had been so angry with her for this. “If you make a mistake,” she'd told Marion, “you have to rip it out.”

  But the sweater had not been her mother's. The experiments had not been Jacob's to revoke. Marion picked up her long silver knitting needles chained with tiny loops to months of work. She slipped one needle out, and then the other. Delicately, she pulled her wool and watched two stitches disappear. She plucked further at her yarn and an entire row of stitches vanished, then another. Slowly, meticulously, stitch by stitch, she began to unravel Jacob's sweater.

  Fifteen minutes later, Jacob found her, and the sight of the crimped ecru wool on Marion's desk stopped him in his tracks. He had intuited where she'd gone, and thought to bring her coat as well, but he stood stricken in the doorway of her office, almost afraid to cross the threshold.

  She said nothing to him, but kept on pulling at the wool. With a weird, meditative fascination she watched her stitches disappear.

  “Forgive me,” he said.

  She didn't even want to look at him. Nevertheless, she let the knitting go and sat back in her chair. Ann had been partly right when she'd considered Marion unforgiving. Marion did not have an easygoing nature. She did not take the world lightly, or bend easily to other people. Still, she forced herself to consider her husband where he stood in the doorway. She understood his belief in her—his dark, fraught, critical faith, so different from Sandy's. Even in her anger, she understood his ambition for her and his restless, unacknowledged jealousy.