Conjunctions 64: Natural Causes

by Natural Causes- The Nature Issue (retail) (epub)

  She’d never been able to comprehend what had happened except that one of her cabinmates was gone and the camp had shut down and sent all the girls home a week early. Soon after she returned home she could not recall the name of the drowned girl.

  Yes, but her name was Fern. Of course you remember.

  She could cling to the overturned boat if that were possible—if the boat didn’t sink. That had been the drowned girl’s mistake—she’d panicked, tried to swim, failed to grab hold of the canoe as the other girl had done. Lisbeth’s own terror she would transform into the sheer stubborn hopefulness of one who would not drown.

  Oh, but where was the marina? How far away, the southwestern shore of Lake George? She did recall a narrow inlet—passing close by land on their way out into the lake—but she had no idea where this was and she did not dare ask the man another time.

  She remembered an American flag stirring in the wind, high above the marina dock. Vivid red striped, white stars on blue background, triumphant in morning sunlight like something painted in acrylics. The flag was so positioned, she supposed, to reassure persons like her, uneasy on the open lake, that they were nearly safe, returning to land. Her eyes filled with tears of yearning, to see that flag again and to know that the ordeal on the lake was nearly over.

  The man’s name was Mikael Brun. The woman’s name was Lisbeth Mueller. They were forty-nine and forty-three years old, respectively.

  Each was unmarried. Which is not altogether synonymous with single. Between them they had accumulated just three ex-spouses. And just five children, of whom the eldest (nineteen) was the man’s and the youngest (seven) was the woman’s.

  The two were—technically—lovers; yet they were not quite friends. It was painful to the woman (though she knew that this was a thought the man wasn’t likely to have) that they were not a couple but two.

  A casual observer at their lakeside motel in Bolton’s Landing, at the marina that morning, or on Big Burnt Island through the day—obsessively the woman would afterward contemplate such “pictures” frozen in time as a way of trying to comprehend the man’s motives in behaving as he’d done—might plausibly have mistaken them for a married couple: middle-aged, in very good physical condition, and just slightly edgy as if they’d had a recent quarrel and wanted to avoid another. The woman, quick to smile. The man, more likely to frown, glancing about as if distracted.

  He is looking for someone. Something.

  That is why he has come back, to look.

  Were the two long married, thus invisible to each other? Or were the two not married, nor even lovers? The casual observer might have noticed how the man held himself aloof from the woman, as if unconsciously; though meaning her no ill will, he simply forgot to hold open a door for her, for instance, so that she knew to come forward quickly behind him to press her hand against the door, to hold it open for herself in a graceful gesture lost to the man; when the man conferred with the lank-limbed boy at the marina who was preparing the boat for him, the woman stood by alert and attentive, though neither the man nor the boy would acknowledge her. The woman had perfected a small smile for such limbo situations in which, though in physical proximity to her companion, she somehow did not exist until he recalled her.

  In the light wind, the woman’s tangerine-colored scarf blew languidly over her face. Somehow, without her knowing, she’d become the sort of woman who wears such scarves even before there is a need to hide a ravaged neck.

  The man wore a baseball cap to shield his eyes from the sun. The man also wore (prescription) sunglasses. His jaws glittered with a two-day beard that gave him a look of mild debauchery. Yet the man was speaking quietly, wistfully, to the marina attendant: “I first came to Lake George forty-six years ago—that is, I was brought as a small child. My parents camped on Big Burnt for weeks in the summer. I’ve come back often—though I’ve missed a few years recently …”

  But why did the man feel obliged to tell this to the lanky-limbed teenager in shorts and T-shirt, how did he expect the boy to respond? The woman was embarrassed for her companion, that he spoke so frankly to a stranger. Clearly, this was out of character. Mikael Brun barely spoke to her.

  “Same as my dad, I guess,” the boy said, not looking up from what he was doing in the boat, “except he lived here year-round.”

  “You’ve camped on Big Burnt?”—eagerly the man asked.

  “Some islands we camped on, I guess. But I don’t remember their names.” The boy paused, shifting his shoulders uncomfortably. “Hasn’t been for a while.”

  Lived. The man had not heard the boy say lived. The woman sensed this.

  In Cambridge, Mikael Brun was often stiffly formal with strangers, and even with acquaintances and colleagues; his manner was never less than civil, but he wasn’t a naturally friendly man. As a prominent scientist at Harvard, he’d cultivated the poise of a quasi-public figure who, even as he seems to be welcoming the interest of others, is inwardly repelling this interest.

  When they’d checked into their lakeside motel Mikael had engaged the proprietor in a similar conversation about Bolton’s Landing, Lake George, and the Adirondacks generally; he’d asked the proprietor questions intended to establish that they knew some individuals in common in the area. And the proprietor had certainly known of Big Burnt Island though he had not ever camped there.

  Lisbeth had thought of her companion—He is lonely. Lonelier even than I am.

  She felt a surge of hope, knowing this. For the weakness of the man is the strength of the woman.

  He’d called her out of nowhere, to ask her to accompany him to Lake George for a few days at the very end of August. It would make him very happy, he said, if she would say yes.

  Astonished by the call, needing to sit down quickly (on the edge of a rumpled bed in her bedroom) as faintness rose into her brain, the woman had murmured, Yes maybe—she would have to check her schedule.

  She scarcely knew Mikael Brun. She’d had an unfortunate experience with the man the previous year, which she would not wish to repeat; yet, when she’d heard his voice on the landline, she’d felt a stab of hope, and happiness. She’d thought—He has forgiven me.

  Lisbeth Mueller was an actress, or had been an actress in regional theaters and on some daytime TV, whose primary source of income came now from teaching in the speech and drama departments in local universities. Of her recent projects she was most proud of having staged a multiethnic production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream conjoined with an original, collaborative drama of the sociology of urban immigrant life from the perspective of first-generation American-born undergraduates at Boston University.

  Among Lisbeth’s fiercely loyal circle of theater friends and acquaintances in the Cambridge-Boston area, ever shifting and diaphanous as the trailing, undulating tendrils of a great jellyfish, it was believed that her considerable talent as an actress had never been fully realized. Married too young, children at too young an age, two divorces, numerous men who’d exploited her trusting nature, career missteps, misjudgments—how swiftly the years had gone, and how little, except for the children, and her reputation for stubborn integrity, Lisbeth had to show for them. It was very difficult for her to believe, waking in the early hours of the morning as if an alarm had rung somewhere close by, that her career wasn’t still in its ascendency: The next audition would be the catapult to long-delayed recognition … And there was always teaching, into which she threw herself with the zeal and enthusiasm of a seasoned ingenue, always the hope that, experience to the contrary, she would be offered a more permanent contract than simply the three- or one-year contracts given adjunct instructors like her.

  “‘Adjunct’! I don’t think we have ‘adjunct instructors’ in our department. I know we don’t have anything like ‘adjuncts’ at the institute”—so Mikael Brun had remarked, like a man discussing a rare disease.

  How did you meet Mikael Brun?—the w
oman who’d accompanied him to Lake George would be asked. What did you know of Mikael Brun’s state of mind?

  And she would say, for this was the awkward truth, that she had no clear memory of when they’d first met, only a (vague) memory of their being (re)introduced to each other, at one or another social gathering in Cambridge. Not frequently, but occasionally over the past several years since Lisbeth’s separation and divorce they’d “seen each other” in interludes of varying intensity. Lisbeth berated herself for being (nearly almost) always available to the man. (Of course, she saw other men in the interstices between seeing Mikael Brun. Always she was hoping that a relationship with another man would take predominance in her life, that she might forget Mikael Brun altogether; but this had not yet happened.) Once he’d brought her a dozen bloodred roses after he’d seen her in The Cherry Orchard, and they’d been drinking together in her house when Mikael said, in an outburst of emotion, that lately he’d been feeling the need to try again … And this, too, in the faintly bemused, faintly incredulous tone of a man describing a rare pathology.

  He had not stayed with Lisbeth that night, however. Or any other night.

  And then, he’d been furious with her when she’d had to leave a dinner party to which he’d brought her, having had an unexpected call from a friend who’d had a medical emergency that day, and could not bear to be alone. Livid with indignation, Mikael had said to Lisbeth, not quite in an undertone, that, if she left the dinner, she shouldn’t expect to see him again; Lisbeth was stricken with regret and tried to explain that she couldn’t ignore the call, a plea for help—“Please understand, Mikael. I’d rather be here. I would rather be with you.” Her oldest friend in Cambridge had had a sort of seizure, perhaps a small stroke; the woman simply could not bear to be alone that night, and had called Lisbeth out of desperation.

  Lisbeth had smiled at Mikael Brun most winningly, like Desdemona beguiling Othello. But the man had been unmoved. It was astonishing to her, he’d been unpersuaded by her appeal; for wasn’t Mikael Brun renowned as a man of generous instincts himself; wasn’t he a legendary figure with students, postdocs, younger scientists? Lisbeth had said, faltering, “Well—I won’t go. I’ll call Geraldine and explain that I can’t see her until tomorrow.” But Mikael said, “No. Go to her. Whoever she is, go. I’m leaving, myself.” Others at the dinner had seemed not to be listening to the two as they spoke rapidly together in an adjoining room.

  In the end, Lisbeth left the dinner, her host having called a taxi for her. By the time the taxi arrived, Mikael Brun had departed.

  How stunned she’d been by the man’s fury! It had been in such disproportion (she thought) to the situation. He’d looked as if he’d have liked to hit her.

  She’d wondered if it meant that Mikael Brun was in fact attracted to her, and possessive of her; or whether his behavior was just mean-spirited male vanity.

  I’m sorry, Mikael. I don’t think I want to see you again.

  Or simply, I’m sorry. I don’t want to see you again.

  These terse words Lisbeth prepared, but Mikael Brun had not called her.

  It was the story of her life! Lisbeth Mueller was the radiantly smiling person to whom others turned in desperation, like stunted plants in need of sunshine. Patiently she listened to them, like a therapist; unlike a therapist, she didn’t charge a fee. (Though if she’d been a therapist she might have had a steady income at least.) She was kind, generous, unjudging. She had not the personality for the rapacious competition of the stage. She was never ironic and may even have not quite understood what “irony” was—as she’d been accused by more than one man. Possibly it was easy to take such a woman for granted, even to betray her, who seems to demand so little from others, while freely offering so much.

  But then, after several months, Mikael Brun called her. His voice was tremulous over the phone. He made no acknowledgment that months had passed since he’d last spoken to her, as if he’d forgotten the circumstances but he did sound contrite, hopeful.

  “You will, Lisbeth? You’ll come with me?”

  “I said—I’m not sure. If the children can stay with their father a few more days … They’re at Aspen.”

  “You’re—free? And you’ll come with me to Lake George?”

  Had he not heard? Children, their father. Aspen.

  “Well, yes, I think so. Yes.”

  Impulsively she spoke, overcome by emotion. She would not have been prepared for her reaction to the sound of the man’s voice.

  Mikael Brun continued to speak, excited, near ecstatic. Through a buzzing in her ears Lisbeth could barely make out his words. Had she been mistaken, all these months?—had the man been waiting to hear from her?

  After they hung up Lisbeth remained sitting on the edge of the bed, somewhat dazed. Her heart beat sharply, quickened. Her heart had not beat in this way for a long time.

  Afterward she would realize that she’d been waiting for the phone to ring again, and for Mikael Brun to decide that he’d made a mistake and would have to cancel their plans after all. For he’d called the wrong woman.

  Elaborate plans he’d made for the weekend, which had to include the woman. A woman.

  And the Monday following, when he’d have returned home.

  Last things he’d prepared with care. So long he’d contemplated these, with the thrill of toxic bitterness, it was a relief when the last things were finally executed.

  At the time, in his fiftieth year, Mikael Brun was a distinguished scientist, professor of psychology at Harvard and director of the Harvard Institute for Cognitive and Linguistic Research. In Cambridge it was generally believed that Brun was on an extended sabbatical leave from Harvard, freeing him to spend all his time at the institute; in fact, the leave was unpaid, and open-ended, while Brun was being (secretly, by a committee of professional peers and high-ranking Harvard administrators) investigated for “suspected improprieties” in his research. A former postdoc in Brun’s laboratory had reported him for having purposefully misrecorded data in a number of experiments, subsequently published in leading professional journals. Vehemently Brun had denied the charges; he had no doubt that he had not committed “scientific misconduct” (as it was primly called) either willfully or inadvertently, yet the effort to clear his name would be demeaning, exhausting; he thought of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus—he would not lower himself to the level of rabble to save his own career. And his disintegrated marriage, and the disenchantment of his children—he was weary of the effort of trying to make his fickle daughters love him again and prefer him to their mother as they’d once done.

  To the north. I will go to the north. The words haunted him like words from a song of long ago when life had been simpler and happier.

  Of course he would never do it that way—so crudely …

  Blow out my brains was a phrase he sometimes heard himself say, with a bluff sort of heartiness. There was a Chekhovian ring to such a remark—melancholy yet bemused. A joke!

  Still, he would not blow out his brains for such a trifle as the meretricious investigation at Harvard. And it was an absurd cliché to ascribe suicide to the breakup of his family; that was hardly a new development in Mikael Brun’s life. It was infuriating to him, that others might interpret his suicide in such petty and reductive terms.

  Who dies for what is quantifiable dies in shame. The suicide soars beyond your grasp as beyond your ignorant understanding.

  One final time, he would return to Big Burnt. He would put his things in order before driving north so that, when he returned, he would not be confronted with the responsibility. He’d come to realize that all the places he had lived had been spoiled for him by the experience of living in them, except for Big Burnt Island.

  Impulsively, he called a woman whom he’d known casually, in the years following his divorce, a woman whom he found attractive or in any case sympathetic, an intelligent woman, an uncompl
aining woman, with a local reputation as an actress—Lisbeth Mueller. And when he heard the woman’s startled voice over the phone he’d thought—She is the one. He heard himself ask Lisbeth if she would like to come with him to Lake George, in the Adirondacks, over the long Labor Day weekend.

  In an instant he’d felt certain. Something like a leaden vest had slipped from him. There’d been other women he called, or left messages for—this, Mikael would never tell Lisbeth, of course!—but Lisbeth Mueller was the one.

  She was a beautiful woman, or had been. He saw other men appraising her, and took solace in their looks of admiration and (maybe) envy. Several times he’d seen her onstage and would scarcely have recognized her, her ivory-skinned face illuminated by stage lights, flawless as her carefully enunciated words.

  In actual life, Lisbeth Mueller was not so assured. Often there was faint anxiety in her face, even when she was smiling—a “dazzling” smile. Her manner was gracious, and seductive; she was a woman who was always seducing, out of a dread of being rejected. A woman always slightly off-balance, insecure. Mikael quite liked it that Lisbeth was always in need of money, for the man should provide the money, binding the woman to him for as long as he wished her bound to him.

  Seeing Lisbeth Mueller enlivened in his presence, made happy by him, he’d laughed with relief and pleasure. Often there was a kind of skin or husk over him that made relating to others difficult, even breathing in their presence difficult; but that was not the case when he was with Lisbeth, who seemed never to judge and always grateful for his attention.

  It was crucial to Mikael, or had once been—that others might be made happy by him. For so long he’d been an outstanding son who’d made his parents happy or in any case proud of him. All of the Brun family, proud of Mikael, who’d received a scholarship to an excellent university (Chicago) and had the equivalent of an MD (that is, a PhD) from another excellent university (Yale). And now he was a professor at the greatest university of all (Harvard)—in fact, he was the director of his own research institute (though it wasn’t clear to the relatives exactly what Mikael was researching).