“Don’t be crazy, Gordy, the rain is not letting up, can’t you hear that noise? It’s the rain beating on the roof and gurgling in the downspouts. Noah started making plans when it rained like this.”
“Okay, it’s still raining a little. That’s okay. I don’t mind it.”
“Well I do mind it! Sit down! You’re not leaving now! I don’t need both of you in the hospital! Don’t be an idiot!”
“Please don’t yell at me. Laura.” Gordon had begun to stand up but now he dropped back into the armchair. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re running away instead of answering me when I’m asking what you would do for Duncan.”
“I would do whatever I can. I’m not running away. I need to take care of Ferga. It’s late.”
“You would give Duncan your blood.”
“Yes, I told you, but I guess Dunc didn’t need it. They said I could donate at the Red Cross in his honor, but it’s not the same thing.”
“I understand that. But would you give him one of your kidneys?”
“Is there something wrong with his kidneys?” Gordon asked anxiously.
“No, no, I’m not saying that, but if there was?”
“I don’t get your questions, then, but of course, yes, I would give him a kidney.”
“Would you give him part of your liver?”
“Are you going to name a lot of body parts? Can I just stipulate to all organs?”
“Would you cut off a finger for him?”
“I don’t understand what you’re asking me, Laura. A finger isn’t an organ, but sure, whatever Duncan needs! Do you think I don’t love my brother enough?”
“I’m just trying to understand what you really mean when you say you would do anything for Duncan. Would you cut off a finger?”
“Yes, okay, I guess I would, if it would help him. He could have a whole hand.”
“So you would cut off your hand for him?”
“I’d rather not, but, okay.” What the hell. Gordon could usually count on Laura to be kind.
“Would you cut off your arm? Would you cut off your leg for him too? What else? Would you give him one of your eyes?”
“Yes, yes, yes! I would give Duncan anything! This is getting biblical! Why do you keep asking? I feel like you’re attacking me.” Gordon could hardly bear even the most ordinary sort of confrontation. She knew this about him.
“I don’t mean to be attacking you, Gordy. I’m just trying to figure out if you really mean it, when you say you wish you could do something for Duncan.”
“I don’t understand what you’re asking. And even if you’re not pregnant and you’re upset and it’s none of my business, maybe you shouldn’t drink any more of that paint thinner.”
Laura took an exaggerated sip from her snifter. “Maybe you should try having a drink, Gordo. You’re an adult. You can do adult things. Have you ever even tasted cognac? Have a sip of mine.” Laura held out the snifter for a moment as if she seriously thought he would take it from her, before putting it down.
“Did I do something wrong, Laura? I just want to go home now.”
“Little Gordy needs to avoid grownup things? Fine, run home to your dog.” Laura was horrified by the words coming out of her mouth but she couldn’t stop.
“Just tell me what you want from me,” whispered miserable Gordon. “What do you want me to say? Just tell me the right words, please.”
“What else would you give for Duncan? What else would you do for him, damn it?”
“Why are you yelling at me? Just tell me the right answer, and I’ll say it, okay?” One of Gordon’s legs was jiggling up and down. He watched it for a moment, before putting both hands on his knee to hold it still. “What do you want me to say?”
“What I want you to thay? Do you have any interest at all in women, Gordy?” Jesus, Laura couldn’t believe she was asking him this. Duncan had only shrugged when she asked him once, long ago, if he thought his brother was a virgin.
“I’m leaving now.” Gordon scrambled to his feet.
“I am so sorry, Gordy, that was way over the line. Stay, stay. Please? You just can’t bike on a night like this. It’s not safe. If you have to go home tonight, let me drive you.”
“Um, no thanks. You’ve been drinking. Speaking of not safe. And no thanks, anyway.”
“Oh Gordy, let’s start over. Don’t you get it? I’m just trying to fix something that might be fixable. Please hear me out.”
He stood in the doorway, waiting, looking down at his shabby work boots.
“I apologize for not being clearer. I’m asking if you would be a sperm donor. For us, for the baby we want to have. For all of us. If we caught the next cycle and it was successful, Duncan wouldn’t even need to know.”
Gordon sat back down slowly, still looking down, not meeting her gaze. Minutes passed. Laura sat forward to take an astringent sip of the dregs of her now stone-cold tea instead of the cognac.
“That’s just crazy, Laura,” Gordy whispered finally, looking up now and fixing her with his sad gaze. “You’ve had too much to drink.”
“I know what I’m saying! Why is it crazy? Being a sperm donor is less invasive than giving blood! Just a few minutes of your time, and I would take care of the rest. Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to have sex with me!”
“No.”
“No to what?”
“No, I can’t do that.”
“You can’t, or you won’t, Gordo? Don’t you even have a wank from time to time? Am I embarrassing you? Don’t worry, you wouldn’t have to touch another human being. We could get you a Dog Fancy magazine, or whatever floats your boat.” Laura was shocked by her own viciousness.
“You said you were sorry a moment ago when you were so nasty, and now you’re asking me for this, but you’re being cruel. Please stop. I’m saying I won’t do that because I won’t trick Duncan. I just can’t do that.”
“Oh, Gordy, you’re right, you’re right, I am so sorry. I love you, and I don’t mean to be hurtful. I’m just so frustrated trying to understand how you could say you would do anything for Duncan when that’s not true and you don’t mean it.”
“I just can’t do that to Duncan. Maybe if you hadn’t been drinking you would understand what I’m saying.”
“But you would be doing it for Duncan.”
“Behind his back.”
“For now, anyway. But maybe he would never need to know. Would it really matter that much? You were so keen to give him your perfectly matching blood. Explain to me why this is so different, really.”
“Laura, I just can’t have this conversation with you. This is just crazy talk. What happened to the Chinese baby idea? You guys were doing that, weren’t you? Duncan told me a while ago. I thought you guys were on some waiting list.”
“We’ve lost that chance. They have a long list of rules and a parent in a wheelchair is a deal breaker.”
“How would they find out about the accident?”
“Oh Gordy, I don’t know how you imagine it works, but you don’t just fill out a form and then they send you the baby. They require both parents to go to China. It’s a long, complicated process that takes weeks once you’re there. There’s no way we could lie or conceal something like this. Unless you want to go with me to China and be Duncan?”
“Now you’re just saying more crazy things.”
“I hadn’t thought of it until just now, but seriously, why not? You could be Duncan for a few weeks. You could travel on his passport. Surely you and I could figure out how to share a hotel room.”
“I think that’s a federal crime, Laura. Probably some kind of international crime. I could end up in some Chinese dungeon. Not that I would do it in the first place. You’re not serious about any of this.”
“I’m just trying to fix this, Gordy. I can’t believe you won’t help me fix this.”
“Not everything can be fixed.”
“Don’t you want to give Duncan one good thing to look forward to
in his life right now?”
“Now we’re going in a circle again. I just can’t do this for you. I can’t. I can’t be Duncan! Don’t ask me to be Duncan!”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“What’s the difference, Laura? I can’t! I’m not Duncan! I’m Gordy! Please, stop asking me about any of this!”
“It matters to me. Can’t or won’t?”
“Please, Laura. It’s a distinction without a difference.”
“Duncan says that all the time. Is it some kind of fucking Wheeler family saying? What the hell does it actually mean?”
Gordon stood up again, shaking his head as if to dislodge something. He stood there, just looking at her.
“What?” Laura felt a pang of guilt for how sad he looked just then.
“You and I can’t be fighting, Laura. Let’s just forget this whole discussion, okay? I know how hard this must be for you, not just the accident, but what you just told me about, you know, not having a baby. I’m really sorry.”
“But we have had this conversation. What’s done cannot be undone.”
“We haven’t done anything but talk, Laura. Don’t be so dramatic. What’s done cannot be undone? Seriously? You’re not Lady Macbeth. If I can forget it, you can forget it.”
“Gordy, I admire you. I do. You’re a very big person. There’s a lot more to you than meets the eye.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment and not an inebriated insult, and you’re my only sister-in-law and I care about you, but I think you really need to go up to bed now before you say anything else.” Gordon edged toward the door as he spoke, and opened it. “And I am really going.”
“I mean it, Gordy. You have a lot of dignity, for a—”
“Listen, do you hear that?” Gordon interrupted.
“What? I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly. That’s the sound of it stopped raining a while ago.” Gordon wheeled his bicycle out the front door and propped it on the porch railing. The wet street glittered. He bent down to tuck his jeans inside his work boots. “Goodnight, Laura. Hey, you’re going to need to build a ramp, you know that, right?”
When Duncan had been stable for twelve days, Laura stopped feeling obligated to doze fitfully beside him every other night. He still wore the intermittent pneumatic compression leg wraps that prevented blood clots. Even when there was the quiet between nurses barging in to check Duncan’s vitals, each time Laura had dropped into sleep, only moments later the pneumatic compression leg wraps would come to life and inflate, and the whooshing sound would nudge her back up into consciousness each time.
The morning after the humiliating conversation with Gordon, Laura told Duncan that she wasn’t pregnant, and maybe hadn’t been. She didn’t tell him how long she had known, and he didn’t ask. After whispering how sorry he was, Duncan simply closed his eyes, his only option, given his inability to turn his head, and said nothing more.
He often spent hours lying so still with his eyes closed that it was hard to tell if he was awake or asleep. After spending most of each day sitting beside Duncan trying not to be panicked by his increasing silence and withdrawal, or talking with doctors and trying not to be discouraged by their irrefutable prognosis, Laura felt guilty about her relief at being able to escape.
She ate dinner on her lap in front of the television most of these nights, zoning out on mindless microwave comforts and old sitcom re-runs (two things Duncan deplored) before going upstairs where, after she turned out the light, she lay still and wide awake under the covers, thinking of Duncan’s position in his hospital bed as she left him for the night a few hours earlier. Laura developed a habit of deliberately positioning herself exactly as she knew Duncan was still lying, just as she had left him, pegged in place like Gulliver by monitors and catheters and intravenous lines, braced by a padded halo vest that kept him stable.
She would lie there replicating Duncan’s position: supine, legs straight, arms straight at her sides, palms up. She would try to imagine her way inside his body, what it felt like to be Duncan, what it felt like not to feel. Lying there that way, feeling profoundly grateful that she was not paralyzed in the least, Laura had to fight her obsessive return to the crazy belief that she was somehow responsible, that something she could have controlled had led to the accident. She couldn’t keep herself from ruminating that she should have called Duncan to ask him to pick up corn from one of those farm stands on the way back from Stony Creek, thus delaying his drive back into town, which surely would have changed everything that happened that afternoon. Or she shouldn’t have kept him those extra minutes at breakfast, listening to public radio poetry when his mind was probably already focused on the work of the day that lay ahead.
The first rule of art conservation, as Laura knew very well (antithetical as it was to Lady Macbeth’s lament), is “Do nothing that cannot be undone.” The second rule of art conservation, as Laura also knew very well, was that nobody, even conservators, could always follow the first rule.
NINE
Laura enjoyed her work in the conservation lab
LAURA ENJOYED HER WORK IN THE CONSERVATION LAB at the Yale Art Gallery. She was very good at her job. She had apprenticed in both painting and object conservation, and was technically proficient in skills that were in incessant demand for the maintenance of paintings and objects, such as Chinese porcelains, in the Gallery collections. Her work was usually devoted to analyzing and assessing condition and damage, after which, with supervision, she conducted certain basic treatments for cleaning and stabilization.
She was occasionally given some restoration assignments for straightforward repairs of damage to paintings in the collection, which often meant the painstaking removal of the problematic older varnishes of the past and the application of new varnish that met contemporary standards. She had a reputation for a very steady hand and good, careful work. She was a generalist, but she had a special knowledge of the issues and materials of seventeenth-century paintings. While getting her undergraduate degree in art history at the University of Connecticut, Laura had thought her devotion to works on paper was immutable, particularly Renaissance prints and drawings, and she had planned to pursue a graduate degree to become a paper conservator. But after a two-month postgraduate internship in the Philadelphia laboratory of Renaissance specialist Carolyn Maybank (who was as overweening as she was legendary in paper conservation circles), Laura never again had the nerve to work with paper.
Exactly what had gone wrong and why, and who was responsible for the fate of the precious Dürer woodcut (St. George and the Dragon) that was accidentally bleached out of existence before Laura’s eyes?
The annoyingly prim Jill Feldman, the other intern (as she and Laura each thought of the other), had been assigned the basic task of creating a simple weak paper wash cleansing solution for the woodcut. She had misread the written instructions in the Maybank Conservation Laboratory Manual of Practices and had added ten full syringes, a total of one hundred cc’s, of ammonium hydroxide to the gallon of water in the tray, rather than ten drops. (To be fair, the instructions were penned in highly ornamented fountain pen script, and the heavy, leather-bound Manual was more like a sacred volume of recipes for Merlin’s spells than it was like a compendium of modern scientific laboratory standards of practice.) Jill had asked Laura if she agreed that this was the correct proportion, but Laura had neither agreed nor disagreed, because she wasn’t listening to Jill Feldman, though this was a matter of dispute later that day.
Laura was engrossed in making diligent notes in her Moleskine notebook about the science of this task, committing to her little gridded pages as much as she could quickly copy from the precious, leather-bound Manual of Practices as soon as Jill had let her take full possession of the volume: Water can cleanse acidity, discoloration, and degradation from paper. Wetting a work on certain kinds of paper can strengthen its structure by re-establishing the bonding of the fibers. Ammonium hydroxide is a weak, volatile alkali, and its salts are
soluble in water. This sort of solution was favored, in the Maybank approach to paper conservation, as superior for brightening when compared to other diluted de-acidification solutions.
The titular (in every sense) Carolyn Maybank (who rarely let a day pass that didn’t include mention of her Wellesley Method art history training) had imperiously donned cotton gloves to demonstrate to her two interns (would she ever be able to shape these two imprecise and easily distracted girls into capable, competent paper conservators?) the best practice for slipping the precious, fragile Dürer woodcut gently into the tray of solution—the gallon of deionized water treated with what should have been the merest tincture of ammonium hydroxide.
Laura was then assigned the tedious (and to her mind utterly pointless) task of twirling tiny tufts of pulled cotton fibers onto the ends of bamboo skewers in order to make perfect fine-pointed cotton swabs. In the Maybank Laboratory, stray fibers from commercially manufactured cotton swabs were not tolerated. When she had done fifty of these (she was supposed to complete a hundred), she took a break and walked across the lab to take a look at the Dürer woodcut floating in its bath. The picture was nearly gone, almost entirely effaced, with only the faintest image of the vertical line of St. George’s lance penetrating the dragon’s mouth, along with a trace outline of his rearing horse’s forelegs.
Two postdoctoral apprentices nearly knocked Laura to the ground, pushing past her when her squeak of dismay attracted their attention. Jill Feldman, who was organizing supplies in flat files on the other side of the laboratory, stood up, and when she saw all their shocked expressions she burst into tears. Carolyn Maybank shoved everyone aside (“Stand back!”) to administer the emergency treatment, first flooding the tray with deionized water over and over to rinse away the toxic solution, then lifting the dying woodcut onto blotting paper, and then, finally, placing it on the vacuum suction table in a last attempt at resuscitation. The work of art had disappeared.
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