Easter Island

by Jennifer Vanderbes

  The evolutionary shift from the gymnosperm to the angiosperm fascinated Thomas, represented, for him, an advance far more significant than that of ape to man. Flowers brought fruits and nuts, producing food that had allowed the rise of large mammals, and eventually Homo sapiens. And mankind had become the flower’s greatest fan. “It was the poppy, after all, like a floral Helen of Troy, that launched a thousand opium warships.” Human migrations, trade routes, invasions, wars—they all came down to angiosperms. Tea, spices, tulips. Man had joined the dance, seduced, like all other creatures, by nature’s greatest invention—the flower.

  But how had this transition come about? Exactly when, and where? Darwin, a century earlier, had noted it as “an abominable mystery,” and since then, nobody had come up with an answer. The mystery was too ancient, the evidence buried deep in the earth. Thorough investigation would require extensive paleobotanical evidence—Thomas’s expertise.

  Thomas’s project had started the year before Greer entered graduate school. He began gathering Cretaceous rocks from various sites within the United States and set a small team of Ph.D. candidates to look for fossil pollen. Their task: Find the first flower, the oldest angiosperm known on earth. Thus far, they’d come up with a likely suspect: the magnolia. In several rocks dating back to the mid-Cretaceous era, 120 million years before the present, they’d found traces of magnolia pollen. But this was just the beginning. The lab’s next and most important step was to eliminate the magnolia’s competition.

  To do this, they needed to examine sedimentary rocks from all over the world. At the time Greer joined his lab, Thomas had received a new grant, and was arranging to get samples from South America and Europe. There was also talk of trying to get samples from Greenland and Australia. The lab would examine these international rocks and verify that there was no mid-Cretaceous angiosperm pollenother than magnolia.

  If Thomas could definitively prove the magnolia was the first flowering plant, it meant the magnolia’s structure represented the significant evolutionary shift from gymnosperm to angiosperm, the first domino to fall in the world’s greatest ecological evolution. And it meant that Thomas Farraday would once again win the scientific gold. The first, the largest, the smallest—in any discovery, preeminence in size or age was crucial.

  Greer also had to settle on a dissertation topic related to Thomas’s project and the work she would do in his lab. Finally she decided on the cross-water dispersal patterns of magnolias. If the magnolia emerged in the mid-Cretaceous period, it was after Pangaea, the landmass that had once held all seven continents, and the supercontinent of Gondwanaland had broken apart. The magnolia appeared in a world where water divided lands; therefore for angiosperms to have spread, they had to cross the ocean. While Thomas determined when the magnolia first appeared, she would track its movements.

  The bulk of the lab work was the scientific equivalent of typing or filing. Thomas was a demanding advisor, and weeks passed when Greer did nothing but purify samples, walking between the centrifuge and the sink. Then she had to determine which pollen came from gymnosperms, which from angiosperms. At her microscope for hours, she counted the known and unknown grains, examining the structure of each—their bulbous forms, the lines mapped like veins along their exines, the blemishes and beauty marks. Their variety and resilience impressed her. Here was pollen blown across meadows and valleys millions of years ago, buried in the earth, perfectly fossilized, waiting to be explored. When she looked into the microscope, it felt like coming upon a hidden landscape, like glimpsing a distant, unnamed moon.

  That first year, she and Thomas worked together constantly. His office was just down the hall from the lab, and he would stop by every few hours to see the team, always checking in with her. At lunchtime, she brought sandwiches to his office and they talked about the project’s status. Often, before she returned to the lab, they pulled the shade on his door and kissed. They enjoyed the temptation of working nearby, had fun sneaking small touches, lingering in the building at the end of the day after everyone had left. Thomas would be sitting in his office with his books open, and Greer would begin unbuttoning his shirt, unbuckling his belt, while he feigned trying to read. Or Thomas would find her in the quiet lab, and slowly remove her white coat while she looked in her microscope.

  Often, they traveled together for sample collecting. Her first year in his lab they went to Brazil and Belize. In her second year, they took a two-week trip to Nova Scotia, then Greenland. She loved the travel—it was on these trips, watching Thomas out-of-doors, away from colleagues and admirers, shedding his classroom bravado, that Greer realized how deeply she had fallen in love with him. Watching him collect samples was like watching a boy swipe a twig across an anthill, amazement brightening his face as life emerged beneath his touch. Thomas could insist all he wanted that nature wasn’t beautiful, but he was speechless in the face of its intricacy.

  Without rest, without reservation, they both threw themselves headlong into the project, lured by the idea of the world’s first blossom. The magnolia was a white-petaled dream they were chasing, a ghost they wanted to touch. Some nights, when she fell asleep in the lab, Greer dreamed she was floating above an ancient landscape thick with dark-needled trees, searching for one white flower. Once she even saw the bloom in the distance, winking from a shadowy forest.

  When Thomas found her and roused her from her workstation, she described her dream.

  “And you didn’t bother to ask what continent the bloom was on? I’ll believe in the psychic relevance of any dream that answers a question.”

  “Mags doesn’t like questions,” said Greer.

  “Mags?”

  “With this many people pursuing her, I think she deserves a name.”

  In the afternoons, they would take a break from the lab and wander through the university greenhouse, talking over the research.

  “Some of the samples simply don’t date back far enough to be relevant.”

  “Mags is just being coy,” said Greer. “Give her time.”

  “You know, in the end, it’ll come down to examining enough rocks from enough regions. Quantity and variety, that’s all. We’ll probably never find magnolia pollen that predates mid-Cretaceous. All we can do is make sure that we don’t find any other angiosperm pollen in that era.”

  “And hope that nobody else does.”

  “You know, Lily, that’s precisely it.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Greer. “You’ve devoted yourself to Mags. She won’t let you down.”

  “I hope not,” he said.

  “Just think, Thomas, we’re on the trail of the earth’s first flower.” They had waded through the tropics, the glass-enclosed sanctuary of misted ferns and guavas, and now crossed into the Orchid House. Greer looked around her at the sea of purple and red petals. “Before there was a human to smell it,” she said, “to touch it, to know it was beautiful, before a pollinator knew what to make of it, somewhere there was one spectacular flower, waiting for the world to catch up with it.”

  “Ah, Lily.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you’re a woman, aren’t you.”

  “So they tell me.”

  “Just don’t let your imagination distract you from the science. Don’t search for what’s beautiful to you. Remember, search for what’s true.”

  “Distract me? I’m in there, doing science longer than anyone else. I acid- wash, I count, I analyze. It’s just nice once in a while to remind myself of what it all means.”

  “You’re right. I know. You work like a machine. I’m sorry. I’m just worried about this project, about all the work ahead.”

  She looped her arm around his waist. “Let’s just remember to enjoy it.”

  He kissed her. “My sediments exactly.”

  The next two years Thomas was often gone, giving lectures at symposia in Missouri or Iowa or Ohio. Greer didn’t like these separations but learned to live with them. Several times he was invited to Harvard, to guest-lect
ure. News of his study kept him in the scientific spotlight but left little time for work. When he visited the lab, it was usually to collect data sheets from Greer and Jo and Bruce Hodges, a new research assistant who had just transferred from Harvard to join Thomas’s project. Bruce was a former all-American linebacker who liked nothing more than to brag about the game in which he had three sacks, two fumble recoveries, and an interception.

  “But you can’t top that, so in the end I junked the pads and the helmet for a lab coat,” he would say theatrically, the epilogue of his athletic saga. But he certainly had a knack for science, even if he did lack the passion. He could rattle off pollen classifications like sports statistics.

  “And here we have a Magnoliaceous dicot, a May-Juner, making a strong dash for the mid-Cretaceous! Our littleclavatipollenites is holding tight to the reticulate veins and dual cotyledons!” He would then cup his hands to his mouth, hooting and whistling, the sound of a hundred fans cheering his taxonomical victory.

  Jo found him tedious, and gave him the finger when he wasn’t looking. But Greer thought he was mildly charming, and was glad for the extra company in the lab; it felt empty with Thomas gone.

  Returning from his conferences, fatigued, hoarse, Thomas would sit with Greer late into the night, reviewing the data. She told him what samples should be looked at next, or where they needed to collect their next batch of sedimentary rocks. He was always sure to ask, at the end of it all, about her dissertation. His interest in her work never waned. And they would chat for several minutes about magnolia seed and pollen dispersal patterns, and he would give her research leads, sometimes suggesting biogeographical studies to read.

  “What’s interesting is to correlate the magnolia dispersal with pollinator dispersal.”

  “Exactly,” said Greer.

  “Because even if you have cross-water movement of pollen and seeds, the plant can’t colonize without pollinators.”

  “I’ve been poring over the data and I think I’m coming up with some interesting numerical relationships. It involves the delay factor—the time lapse between the arrival of the flower and the beetle. I think it might turn out to be a significant equation.”

  “The equation should account for the threshold. The number of plants required to permanently install a community.” Thomas would rub the sleep from his eyes, then take her hands. “I missed you.”

  “You too,” she said, resting her forehead on his chest. “You’re gone a lot.”

  “Work calls.”

  “I know.” She listened to the beat of his heart, that soothing rhythm of life, then lifted her head. “The numbers will differ, of course, from plant to plant. Flowering period, gestation, et cetera.”

  Thomas laughed. “Work calls you too.”

  Greer smiled. They understood this in each other, what they were driven by.

  “You know,” said Greer, “the magnolia had something no other plant had.”

  “What’s that?” asked Thomas.

  Greer couldn’t help but smile at the thought. “A yearning to exist.”

  They were married in a small ceremony at the university’s arboretum. Bruce Hodges and Jo Banks and Professor Jenks were in attendance.

  For a wedding present, Thomas gave Greer the seed of a magnolia in a Venetian apothecary jar.

  “For your work,” he said. “You’ll be just like Darwin now. He tested all sorts of seeds in jars of salt water to see how long they could survive in the ocean. It’s perfect for you.”

  Greer gave Thomas her father’s microscope, the one he had kept in his basement lab for years, the first microscope she had ever used.

  Thomas examined the brass knobs, the thick ocular. “Thank you for trusting me with this.”

  On their honeymoon in Tuscany, they spent two weeks driving through the Apennine Mountains to collect sandstones and marls. The Magnolia Project was stalled, and needed samples of greater geographical diversity. Greer and Thomas managed a few elegant dinners in Florence, a brisk walk through the main galleries of the Uffizi; they had their photograph taken on the Ponte Vecchio, but the rest of the trip was work, hunting down Cretaceous and Jurassic outcrops. They tried to make the most of it, stealing kisses between procedures, calling each other “Husband” and “Wife” as they hammered at the rocks and lugged their heavy packs from site to site. In the evenings, when they returned to their hotel room, they peeled off their soiled clothes, climbed into the bathtub, and scrubbed each other’s back and arms, shampooed mountain dust from each other’s hair. And when they were both pink-skinned from the bath, they climbed into bed and made love.

  Shortly after they returned from Italy, Greer developed a bad neck cramp and had to see a chiropractor, who told her to limit microscope work to five hours a day.

  “We’ll get you a nice cot so you can lie down when you start to cramp,” Thomas said in bed one night. They had just moved into an apartment on Madison’s West Side, on the edges of the arboretum. He was massaging her neck. “And one of those special neck pillows.”

  “Why don’t we just get someone else to do some of the counting? Another grad student. Then I can do some unknown IDs. Or help with the analysis. You’re gone too often now. You’re overextended. Someone needs to check the results, the math.”

  His hands stilled. “Listen, don’t be angry, Lily . . .”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Bruce is going to help with the analysis.”

  “Bruce?”

  “He’s sharp.”

  Greer flipped on the light and turned to face him. “So am I. Why not have him keep counting? He doesn’t have any neck problems.”

  “Lily, I’m not asking you to aggravate your injury. Take a rest. I’m just saying that Bruce is going to help with the analysis.”

  “What about me? Or Jo? We’ve both been in that lab longer than Bruce. Jo, the longest.She’s sharp.”

  “Bruce was the top of his class at Harvard. Listen,” he sighed. “I can’t have him transfer here to work in a lab under my wife. Or under Jo. I’m sorry, Lily. It has nothing to do with my feelings. He wouldn’t stay and you know it.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “Lily, please, don’t be naive.”

  “Fair isn’t naive.”

  Thomas looked helpless. “It’s just not the way things work.”

  “One year, Thomas. He’s been here one goddamned year.”

  “Please. If you care about the project, and if you care about me, you’ll understand. Besides, you still have your dissertation. There’s no way for you to do a good job on that and work on my analysis.”

  “There’s no way for me to do a good job on that and spend eighty hours a week here at a microscope trying to help you count pollen faster than anyone else in the world!” She could feel anger heating her face.

  “I never asked you to neglect your own work.”

  “But what did you think would happen? When exactly do you think I work on my research?”

  “You know what I think of your abilities. I wouldn’t have you in my lab if I didn’t think you were capable.”

  “Capable?”

  “Lily.”

  She turned out the light.

  “Lily.” His hand touched her shoulder. “Please.”

  “Bruce? I’m sorry, Thomas. I just can’t believe it.”

  “Don’t think about Bruce. Focus on your dissertation.Your work. Think of your career. You’re going to have a great career, Lil. This is nothing in the scheme of things.”

  Perhaps it was nothing. Greer wasn’t, after all, interested in fame. The spotlight in which Thomas basked held little appeal for her. The attention no longer seemed to flatter him, but had become an awkward weight he had to carry, a strain that slowly drew his attention from the work.

  So Greer did focus on her dissertation. She spent less time at the microscope, and more time reading about biogeography, dispersal patterns, islands, and continents. What she liked were the patterns; over and over again, nature displayed t
he same urge. The story never changed. Each species was just a variation in the king’s name, or the color of the princess’s hair. The moral was always motion, and life.

  She used the magnolia data she’d gotten in Thomas’s lab and applied it to her dissertation. How had the magnolia gone from a solitary bloom in the middle of nowhere to a tree that grew on all continents? Working in a small library carrel, she studied numbers, graphs, and curves. She liked her research, but missed the camaraderie of the lab. To work there, though, or to stop by while Bruce was in charge would seem like surrendering. Thomas was still traveling and lecturing, preparing his next paper. So Jo was her ambassador; Jo found Greer in the library a few times each week and let her know what was happening in the lab.

  “If I have to listen to one more touchdown metaphor, I’m going to ram a football down that guy’s throat.”

  “He’s that bad?”

  “Worse.”

  “I’m sorry, Jo. I’m sorry I haven’t been around.”

  “Hey, I’m sorrier for you. . . . The lab needs you.”

  “Well, I need to be working on my dissertation.”

  Greer hadn’t told Jo about her discussion with Thomas. She had pretended Bruce’s new role was a joint decision, but wasn’t sure if her misrepresentation had been out of loyalty to Thomas, or to simply save face. From Jo’s expression, it was clear she knew Greer was unhappy. But Jo played along.

  “And howis the opus coming?” Jo asked.

  “Not to pollinate my own stigma—”

  “Oh, jeez.”

  “But I’m pretty happy with it,” said Greer.

  “You’ll let me read it?”

  “I’ll force you to.”

  “I’m sure it’s brilliant.”

  “Blossoms. Beetles. Something for everyone.”

  Jo gave Greer’s shoulder a slight squeeze. “I can’t wait.”