I wanted to tell her that there was no competition. I’d discovered that having my name on major papers or associated with a new drug was not the most important thing in my life. She was. I couldn’t tell her all that with Neil waiting by the car, but I would figure out how to show her. “I really enjoyed seeing you again tonight.”
The edge of her mouth moved up, but the caution didn’t leave her eyes. “This was good for Neil. It’s important for him to feel successful. The more stability he has in his life, the more he succeeds.”
I understood that she was talking about me. “We could do it again, or another movie night. I get that you’re a package deal.”
“Yes, that would be great. Let’s set something up next week.”
My schedule flashed in my mind, and I winced.
“What?”
“I could do Sunday. Judy is sending me to another conference Wednesday.” I felt none of the elation I’d had telling Valerie about the International Diabetes Association conference. I felt angry about how quickly the potential clinical trial was forcing me to travel again.
“There is only so much change Neil can tolerate. I cannot push him,” Remi said.
“I get that,” I said, realizing that my words about understanding they were a package deal were empty without the follow through.
“What’s taking so long?” Neil called from the car.
Remi leaned forward to give me a chaste kiss. I wasn’t expecting her to deliver anything smoldering in front of her brother, but her lips felt stiff on mine. She was still guarded. I watched her walk to the car, uncertain that I had made any progress at all.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Why do you keep doing that?” I asked as Valerie repeatedly bent over to look under plants. I was panting from the pace Valerie set but didn’t want to tell a pregnant lady she was walking too fast for me.
“Checking for goats, mate. Wouldn’t want you to go running off to have sex with one.”
“I never should have told you that,” I groaned.
“No, I’m glad that you did. I wouldn’t want you to destroy your career because you couldn’t stay away from a stray goat.”
“Judy said she didn’t care if I screwed a goat.”
“Oh, right. So you want me to let you know if I see one? Ah, brilliant idea! Since Remi isn’t staying over, let’s find you a goat. Emma’s been talking about getting a pygmy goat for yoga. Since we’ll have our hands full with the cricket, you can take care of the goat. Betcha you’ll sleep like a baby with a goat around!”
“Have you seen my friend Valerie?” I huffed. “I was supposed to walk with her and get some sort of emotional support and advice on my career.”
“Sorry. No more jokes. Promise. Would you really give up research? Right when you’re about to step up and take over the renal program? Not to mention the retinal trial.”
“I don’t know if I want it. I didn’t want to go to that last conference. I got into research because I wanted to help people, and the further I progress up the career ladder, the further away from people I get. I don’t want to be like Judy.”
We walked in silence for a spell, and then she was craning her neck once again. “Would you please be serious just for today?”
“Sorry. Thought I saw your little mentee off the footpath there.”
I frowned, doubting the likelihood of Maricela being on campus. I had texted after her mother stopped being a volunteer and had heard nothing. I hadn’t expected to ever see her again. Honestly, I didn’t know if I even wanted to talk to her. “Keep walking. If she wants to see to me, she’s going to have to work for it.”
Instead of powering ahead, Valerie hollered “G’day!” and reduced her speed considerably. Seeing my glare, she said, “You said you wanted to help people. She’s a person, and you helped her. You should talk to her.”
Maricela stood off to the side of the footpath as we passed, wrestling, I guessed, with whether to follow through on her plan to track us down. “You said I could walk with you, even if I’m not gay or pregnant.”
I didn’t respond immediately, which earned me one of Valerie’s elbows to the ribs. I had to admit she was trying, but that didn’t mean I was going to let her off the hook. “From the complaint my boss got, I was pretty sure I’d succeeded in turning you gay.”
Valerie poked me again. “You’re always welcome,” she said to Maricela.
I walked in silence, fuming about the letter that had turned my world upside down. Even though I rationally knew that any number of things could have thrown my relationship with Remi into a tailspin, emotionally I still blamed Maricela.
“I tried to keep my mom in the trial. I didn’t want to mess things up…”
“I hear a but there!” Valerie happily nudged her to continue.
I glanced over to see a huge smile on Maricela’s signature red lips. I blinked a few times. She looked so different, I blurted, “Are you pregnant?”
She stopped abruptly. “No!”
Valerie shook her head. “I agree she’s glowing, but it’s from love, idiot.”
Maricela blushed deeply.
“The nurse worked out, did she?” Valerie asked.
Valerie was certainly having a good time catching up with my former mentee.
Maricela nodded. “Penny asked me out, and it was great and then my mom wanted to know where I was going.”
“You could have told her you were taking a new class! Or that you joined a gym!” I started walking again, and both Valerie and Maricela followed.
“You’re the one who said I should stop lying about who I am. That’s why I told her who I was with and why. You were right, too. It’s easier now that I’m not trying to hide that from her. She’s pissed about it, but now it’s like that’s her problem. I’m not carrying around a bunch of guilt.”
“Well, I’m glad someone’s life is easier,” I grumped.
“Don’t let her get you down. She’s got the shits about her work right now, but it’s got nothing to do with you,” Valerie said.
“Did you get in trouble because of my mom?” Maricela asked.
“No, I’m not in trouble. Uncomfortable talking about my sex life with my boss, but not in trouble. I’m not enjoying my job as much now that a lot of it is away from the bench.”
“So you don’t hate me?”
“I don’t hate you. I just hate my job. I don’t know if I can stay in Judy’s lab.”
“What?” Valerie barked. “You’ve got a drug that’s about to put your name on the map. Everyone wants a name in research. That’ll get you your own lab. I thought you wanted to be your own PI.”
“I don’t want to run my own lab.” I stopped, stunned to put what I had been feeling into words.
“You can switch fields. Dr. Seonwoo would take you.”
“You know how I feel about working with mice,” I argued.
“Chang?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Language barrier?” Valerie asked.
“No, I could handle that, but not how he micromanages everything. Plus, breast cancer? I’d be doing cell culture all day every day. Boring.”
“Arce?”
“Plants.”
“Then what do you want to research?” Valerie’s voice was rising.
“Nothing! I’m sick of research!” I yelled back. My words echoed in my head. “I don’t want to do research anymore.”
“That’s not true,” Valerie argued. “You don’t want to do research for Judy. There are other labs.”
“And every one of them is going to make the same demand on my time. I can’t do it. I’m not you! I’m not Judy! I don’t want to live at the lab!” My heart was pounding, and I was breathing heavily, but my head was clear for the first time in weeks.
“You should teach,” Maricela said.
I’d forgotten all about Maricela and simply blinked at her. It took me several seconds to register what she’d said. “Where?”
“You could teach at m
y college. You were way better at explaining things than my teacher,” Maricela said.
I looked to Valerie to see her reaction. Helpfully, she shrugged.
“I’ve never thought about teaching.”
“But you’re really good at it, and think of all the students you could get excited about research. I was a goner. I was so ready to drop out, and I ended up finishing Bio 101 with a B! If I’d had you from the beginning of the semester, I might have even gotten an A!”
I veered off the path and found a bench. “All I’ve ever thought about is research.”
“But you’ve got to adapt,” Valerie said. “Look at me and Emma. We only thought about her being pregnant, but when that didn’t work…” All eyes turned to her bulging tummy.
“You think I should be a teacher?” I asked them both.
“I already said.” Maricela shrugged.
I looked at Valerie. “It could make sense,” she said. “You seem to know how to make it relatable to students, but I can’t see you at a community college. You’ve done so much here at The Miracle Center, it’s hard to see you leaving.”
“What do I say to Judy?” Thinking about it made me feel so sick, I tucked my head between my knees.
“Don’t say anything yet. You’re a friggin’ researcher. Go home and find out how hard it is to get a job teaching biology. Then make a decision. You’ve got to do that and sleep on it, or at least lie in bed with your eyes closed thinking about it, before you make any drastic decisions,” Valerie said.
I sat a minute more until my head stopped spinning and then finished the walk. Maricela peeled off from us at the parking lot, and Valerie and I walked in silence toward my building. Her eyebrows were set in a straight line the way they always were when she wanted to say something but didn’t want to hurt my feelings. “What?” I asked at my door. “Spit it out. I have to get back to work.”
“It has to be for you.”
“What does?” I asked.
“If you leave research. You can’t leave because you think it will make Remi happy. It has to be the right thing for you. If it is, then telling Vogelsang will be a piece of cake. Like when I told Seonwoo about the cricket.”
Finally, I smiled. “That makes a lot of sense. Thanks. For all of this.”
“Come to dinner. I’m too tired making this baby to explain all this to Emma. You can tell her while the cricket and I rest.”
I agreed and entered the building. For the first time, I walked up the stairs and swiped into the lab wondering whether it was the place I was meant to be.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I turned the recently purchased Lego figurine in my hand as I waited for the outgoing voice mail message on Remi’s phone. I’d heard it too many times lately. I thought about hanging up before the beep but gathered my thoughts, knowing that we needed to talk in person.
“I’m back from the conference,” I said lamely. She knew that. I’d texted her while I was away and again when I’d made it home, but I had only gotten a courteous, Glad it went well response from her. “My research has kind of taken a turn, and I’d like to talk to you about it. Would you call me? Please?”
I tucked my phone in one pocket and the figurine in another and rolled my shoulders. On the desk were the notes I had jotted down to make sure I didn’t freeze when I went to talk to Judy. Of course, she was still in her office. I’d made up an excuse to walk past to make sure and had promised myself I wouldn’t leave work before talking to her.
Judy’s eyes danced from one monitor to the other while I stared out the window at the ocean, still looking for the right words.
“Karla!”
Although my presence was a surprise to her, I was the one who jumped. “Do you have a minute?”
“Certainly,” she said, her eyes returning to the screen. “What is it?”
I walked into her office and perched on the edge of the chair that faced Judy. “I wanted to say thank you for the opportunity to represent the lab at IDA conference.”
“Yes. I am particularly happy for you to get the experience when I’m so busy with the clinical trial.”
It would have been so easy to continue the conversation following either vein of opportunity, but for me, the Band-Aid is best pulled off quickly. I filled my lungs and said a little prayer. “This conference was not the same as West Coast STEM when I came back invigorated about our research. This conference put things into perspective for me.”
Judy’s eyes left the monitor. “One of the Biotechs is trying to tempt you away with the promise of salaries in the triple digits. Is that it?”
“No! I’m not interested in Biotech.”
Her level gaze told me she didn’t believe me.
“Biotech would be as demanding of my time if not even more so. Each new opportunity means a new sacrifice of time. Putting all my commitments on the table, I don’t have enough hours in the day to keep everyone happy. If I try, I know I will disappoint you.”
“You’re quitting? You’ve invested years in this research. You would throw it all away?”
“I can pass on what I’ve learned. Helping the community college student who was struggling made me think about teaching. I can pass what I know on to people who do have the amount of time a lab like yours expects.”
“Or…” I could see Judy applying a new protocol to the experiment of me. She tapped the desk for a few moments and then smiled. “Yes. Teaching. A university like Stanford or UCLA would have great funding and resources to explore new possibilities. Of course you wouldn’t be able to take our human cell lines, but if you…”
Her mind amazed me, and there was a time when hearing the confidence she had in my abilities would have been all the validation I needed. But when I heard Stanford and UCLA, I heard prestige and prestige came with time and money. It came from getting papers out yearly in publications like Cell and Nature. Prestige came with expectations, higher expectations than I could sustain without continuing to make sacrifices.
“I’m looking for something closer to home, maybe the Cal State in San Diego.”
“Are they hiring? Do you have any idea how many people apply for a position at any educational institution?”
I didn’t.
“Besides the question of whether they happen to be flying a position, a state school is not going to support your caliber of research. You are capable of substantially more than a state school can support. Berkeley. Princeton. A university with recognition.”
Not so long ago, her words would have shamed me into listening to her direction, but that direction was what made her happy. It wasn’t making me happy anymore. “I wanted to give you notice, so you have time to hire another research scientist.”
She did not respond, and I guessed that the extended silence was supposed to invite me to take back my words. I stood. I was ready to go. When she still said nothing, I nodded to punctuate the end of our conversation and walked to the door.
“Karla?”
I turned at the doorway.
“This is a major decision. One that should not be made in haste. Sleep on it. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
I said okay even though I knew my answer was not going to change. My shoulders felt lighter than they had in years as I gathered my things and headed home.
I took the street that passed my parents’ house and stopped at my place only long enough to give Petri a pat and check her food before heading back out again.
Rosa was waiting for me at the corner. I smiled at the look of surprise that greeted me.
“Gramma sent me to see if something was wrong.”
“Why would something be wrong?” I slipped my arm through hers as we walked back to her house together.
“You’re never home this early.”
“I found a stopping place.”
“I’m glad,” she said.
“I am, too.” When we reached the house, I told her I needed to call Remi and would just be a minute. My family would give me that.
I
glanced at my watch and crossed my fingers that Remi would pick up. When she did, I felt like a leaf lifted by the wind. I was being carried by something out of my control with no way to predict where I was going. It was exhilarating and scary at the same time.
“Hey. Thanks for picking up.”
“You’re welcome.”
I loved her voice. Even two words made my skin tingle. “I left work early, and I wanted to tell you I miss you and I wish we were having dinner together.”
“Karla…”
“Not tonight. You have plans with Neil tonight, and my mom is staring at me through the window wondering what we’re talking about. I called to invite you to dinner. Will you have dinner with me tomorrow?”
I heard her sigh.
I said the phrase I’d looked up on the Internet. “Tu me manques.”
She laughed and repeated the phrase in her beautiful French.
“Are you correcting my pronunciation, or do you really miss me?”
“Correcting you,” she said, but I heard humor in her voice.
“Maybe I need a tutor to help me with my French. Have dinner with me. Please?”
“Dinner sounds like a date.”
“Would you be okay with that? I’d like to take you out again. I still have one more language to guess.”
“That is true,” she said.
“If I guess right, maybe you’ll come home with me.”
“We shall see how it plays out tomorrow. Text me the time and place?”
I agreed and joined my family, distracted by figuring out what I was going to say but present nonetheless.
I didn’t mention my talk with Judy to my family. I didn’t text Valerie to tell her I’d set the wheels in motion. When I got back home, I spent an hour exploring the Cal State San Diego website, checking out their class offerings and the human resources site. I didn’t see any job listings for biology professors, so I looked up positions at Stanford and UC Berkeley, feeling again like I was getting further away from what I wanted. The magnitude of material on the university websites was overwhelming, but the only other thing that came to mind would be in Biotech, and I had already dismissed that idea. Frustrated, I closed the computer. It would not help my sleep to continue searching when I did not know what I was looking for.
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