by Lisa Tucker
A few months later, Matthew got a promotion and enrolled in an executive MBA program that his boss said would be crucial if he wanted to keep advancing. It was no surprise that he was even more unwilling to talk after spending all evening in some stupid marketing or finance class. Amelia herself was getting ready to go on the job market, now that she’d finally finished her dissertation. Maybe they were both changing, though it felt like it was only Matthew, and he seemed to be changing so fast she kept thinking she had to be imagining it. She was dying to argue with him like they used to, really work out whatever was going on, but he was always too exhausted. When she tried to get him started by saying the same inflammatory things she had always said before, he either shrugged them off or asked her, in an ominous voice, if she was looking for a fight.
By January, the answer was yes. Even a fight was preferable to this strange nothingness between them. At least, that’s how she saw it. Once she asked for a fight, she got one—many of them, actually—and that was how she discovered that Matthew had moved into a completely different world.
She was shocked at how angry he was that she’d consistently refused to set foot into Astor-Denning. He’d asked her to come for lunch many times, but she’d always said it had to be somewhere away from the “evil corporate monster.” She’d always called AD that, but now he said he was sick of it.
“You wouldn’t even come to the Christmas party. How do you think I felt, the only guy in the room without the person I love? The woman who says she loves me, but won’t come on any of my trips, just because I’m traveling for my company?”
He used to call it Astor-Denning or AD. Now it was “my company.” She said the first word that crossed her mind. “Yuck.”
“Brilliant comeback.” They were having a Sunday dinner of sorts, eating lasagna, the frozen kind, now that they had a microwave. He threw down his fork. “Next time, maybe you’ll try two syllables.”
“You work for the devil. How is that my fault?”
“It isn’t, but it certainly is your fault, as you so childishly put it, that you reap the benefits of my so-called pact with Satan every day. Look at this house. In the last year, you’ve bought more than thirty thousand dollars’ worth of furniture, to make it—and I quote—‘livable.’ You bought an eight-hundred-dollar dress for an interview at a public policy think tank working on health care for the poor. I hope the irony wasn’t lost on you.”
“I have my own money. I didn’t think you—”
“Mind that you give it away to your charities? I don’t. I love supporting you, but I want you to admit that’s what’s happening here. I’m supporting you, and you won’t support me in the most trivial of ways.”
“Meaning the Christmas party. Look, I didn’t know that—”
“I had this elaborate plan.” He looked away from her, and she followed his gaze to the window. It was snowing again, big soft flakes that made her think of the smell of snow, the feel of it on her face. “After the party, I was going to take you up to my new office and ask you to marry me. I thought it would change that place forever, mark it with you and me and our future, which is what I’m doing there. Giving us one.”
Amelia knew that most women wouldn’t find an office proposal romantic, but she remembered telling Matthew a long time ago that she loved the idea of a man asking a woman to marry him in a place that was special in his daily life, rather than the “ordinary” special of fancy restaurants or even Paris. She was surprised and very touched, but then she became angry at the way he was rewriting history, changing his job into something good and necessary for them, when it was neither. “You’re lying to yourself, Matthew. You know if you quit tomorrow, we could live off my trust fund and the job I’m going to get in a few months and we’d be absolutely fine. We wouldn’t be rich, but that’s a good thing. I don’t want to be rich.”
He laughed. “Of course you don’t. You are and always have been.”
“You didn’t address my point.”
“Let’s see if I can do it justice. You want me to quit my job and trust in your charitable instincts. What exactly do I do in this scenario? Have sex with you more often? Cook and clean while you establish your philosophy career?”
“What’s wrong with that?” She honestly didn’t know. “Of course you wouldn’t have to clean, but you like cooking and gardening and staying home. You were happier when you didn’t have to work day and night for them.”
“You may be right, but let’s just say I don’t trust you enough to do that. Certainly not now, when you won’t help me with anything.”
“But what do you want help with?” She put her hand out to touch him, but at the last minute she changed direction, wrapping her arm around herself instead. “I really had no idea that you needed my help.”
“This new job is difficult.” He rubbed his eyes. “Doing the MBA work on top of it is extremely difficult. In case you haven’t noticed, I come home nearly every night beaten to shit. I’d like you—just once—to act like you care. Because even though you hate AD, you love me. And that’s where I work. Accept it or don’t, but make up your mind.”
He was right, she still hadn’t accepted it. When her friends asked what Matthew was doing, she said he was temporarily consulting for a small pharmaceutical company before starting his residency. Last week at the think tank interview, she’d said her boyfriend was trying to find a cure for cancer. If only it were true. Matthew had never done one moment of research at AD. No one seemed to, at least no one he worked with.
“I think you have a point,” she said slowly. “I’ll have to figure out a way to support you while still loathing that—”
“Jesus Christ, you can’t even mention my job without pointing out for the millionth time that you hate it.” He stomped away, muttering, “Redundancy R us.”
He watched some stupid horror movie on television and then went to bed. At eight-thirty. She thought maybe they could make up the old-fashioned way, but no, he was sound asleep by the time she brushed her teeth and took off her clothes. When she nuzzled up against him, he said, “Love you,” in that sleepy unconscious way that made it impossible to doubt he meant it. She started crying then, but softly, so she wouldn’t wake him. It was the least she could do, given how tired he was. Even if he was working for the devil.
The core problem would have fascinated her if she hadn’t been in the middle of it. How do you make peace with the fact that the man you love is doing something you can’t respect? Being on the job market made her very aware of her own values. Astor-Denning was being investigated for offering bribes to doctors; yet she had turned down the think tank job because part of their funding came from a giant HMO. Did that make her a better person than him? Yes and no. If everyone compromises his or her ethics to make money, you have a world run by greed. But goodness is personal, too, and in some essential way, Matthew was better to her than she was to him. He rarely judged her, and he always supported her work; he’d even brought home expensive champagne when she published her first anti–corporate science article. It was almost as if he believed the world was the two of them and the rest was just a silly game they played. But it wasn’t a game. It was what their lives would mean and be, ten years from now, twenty years, when they were old and looked back on what they’d lived for and believed.
After a few more pointless fights, she thought of a new tactic. It was a Saturday afternoon. He was sitting in the living room, taking notes from a statistics book. He had his David Bowie CD set on repeat, and he’d been listening to “Space Oddity” over and over—a clear sign that he was stressed. In Baltimore, he and Ben used to play that song whenever they were studying for a big exam; she would go down to their apartment and it would be blasting through the door. They even invented this goofy code where Ben called Matthew “Ground Control” and Matthew called Ben “Major Tom.” Amelia never understood most of the code, but the whole thing annoyed her. When one of them said, “Planet Earth is blue,” the other inevitably responded, “An
d there’s nothing I can do.” They were young and under a lot of pressure, but it still seemed so stupid.
She walked to the stereo and turned the volume down. She ignored Matthew’s protest and asked him what his “brother” thought of what he was doing at Astor-Denning.
“Why are you bringing that up?”
“I’m just wondering if the two of you have ever talked about it.”
“No, Amelia.” His voice was dripping with sarcasm. “We never talked about it.”
“All right, then what did Ben say?”
“Ben is a real scientist. He wishes I was in there with him, trying to discover—”
“Why aren’t you? You’re smart, too. You could be anything you wanted.”
“How would you know? Because I got into Hopkins and you didn’t?”
“I didn’t apply,” she said stiffly. “But no, because you did well there. Because your professors said you could do any residency you wanted.”
“I’m doing what I want.” He smirked. “Can’t you tell how much I love the MBA program?”
“I can’t believe you feel sorry for yourself. You’re young, and you have no responsibilities. It’s not like you’re stuck working on the assembly line at Ford.”
The last part just slipped out, but she didn’t regret saying it. If anything, she thought it was an important insight. Matthew’s father had worked on the Ford assembly line and hated it so much that Matthew blamed the job for his father’s alcoholism. Maybe Matthew was living against that history, rather than choosing what he wanted for his own life.
Her important insight was met with a sneer. Then he turned the volume back up, louder than before. “This is Ground Control to Major Tom,” screamed from the stereo.
She was desperate. “I’m going to call Ben,” she shouted. “See if he can get through to you.”
He was up and walking to the kitchen before she finished the sentence. When she got there, he had his big hand on the phone. “Don’t you even think of involving him in our shit.”
“He cares about you. I’d think he’d want to help.” When Matthew didn’t reply or move his hand, she said, “Oh, the precious Ben. He can call you in the middle of the night, but you can’t call him for anything. He’s too important. He can’t think about anything but science.”
She’d said “science” in a stupidly bratty voice—and Matthew called her on it. He walked around the kitchen, ranting that science was important, the only truly important part of both of their careers. “If you don’t care about science, then you don’t deserve to be talking about how it’s funded. You have no business talking about any of this.”
“And I suppose you do care about science? That’s why you gave up your medical career?”
He looked away, but she could tell he knew the answer and was just trying to decide whether to share it with her. Which made her feel like she absolutely had to know why he’d left Hopkins. The money was only part of it, as she’d suspected all along. The rest she felt sure he’d told no one but Ben. At that moment, she hated Ben in the same way she’d hated her own brother, for being born, for taking her mom’s attention, for growing up to be a stockbroker, the kind of person she could never understand. She remembered back in Baltimore, all those nights when Matthew had gotten out of her bed to go back to his apartment because he didn’t want to leave poor Ben alone. And the times when he couldn’t see her at all because he and Ben were studying together or just talking about something “fascinating.” It was almost like a love affair, and she realized she’d always been painfully jealous of that stupid, brilliant guy.
“I wasn’t interested in clinical practice,” Matthew said. “For a variety of reasons, but the main one was that the practice of medicine was being taken over by insurance companies. They decided who we could admit to the hospital, and even what tests we could use to diagnose. Everything had to be solved as quickly as possible, usually with the administration of the right drug.”
“I know all this. What does it have—”
“At some point, Ben told me the future of medicine would be determined by technology like diagnostic software and especially the quality of available drugs.”
She waited a moment. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.” He shrugged. “I decided he was right.”
“But it makes no sense! Ben didn’t quit medicine. Ben didn’t go to work for a company that dumps untested drugs in the market just to make a profit. Ben didn’t—”
“The drugs are not ‘untested.’ Ever heard of clinical trials? Christ, if you want to be Ralph Nader, you’re going to have to work a hell of a lot harder.”
The phone rang then, Amelia’s father, calling to see how her job hunt was going. Matthew walked out the back door, without his coat or gloves, even though it was no more than 20 degrees. She saw him pacing around the backyard while she told her dad that she’d been offered a wonderful position at a university in Chicago. It was tenure track; their philosophy department was planning a new major in ethics and policy, and they wanted her to help create it.
“What about Matthew?” her dad said. When she didn’t answer, he said, “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing, honey? If you love this man, you might regret—”
“Please be happy for me, Dad. I’ve worked hard for this.”
“Of course you have. And we’ll be proud of you no matter what you decide.”
When Matthew came back in, his cheeks were bright red and he was rubbing his hands together. His timing was perfect, though, as if he’d gone outside so he didn’t have to hear her talking about the Chicago job. He’d already told her he would understand if she took the position, but when she asked what would happen to them, he threw the question back at her. “What do you want to happen?”
The answer was always the same: she wanted him to come with her, to quit his stupid job and be like he used to be, but he refused to even consider that. She felt like they were reaching the breaking point, but still, she kept fighting with him. They fought constantly through February and the first two weeks of March. The last big argument was right before Matthew left for an AD corporate conference in Palm Beach, Florida. She knew he was mad that she’d refused to budge on going with him, even though the resort had a great pool and he’d been booked into a suite with a Jacuzzi. He was also extremely stressed because he had to give a big speech about the future of some chemical that might turn into a good drug, somewhere down the line, ten or twelve years from now. If they spent millions of dollars developing it. If his speech was good enough to convince the company officers to invest in it. Blah, blah, blah.
She’d asked him if the drug would really cure anything, or if it was just another thing they could make money on. He’d said she was guilty of a logical fallacy: the false dichotomy. If it cured something, of course they would make money on it.
He was packing to leave when she begged him to play the What If game with her. He shot her a look like she’d lost her mind, but she pressed on. “Just a few questions.” She was sitting on the bed, watching him hang suits in his garment bag. “Only really important ones. I’ll do all the asking.”
“Fine.” He exhaled loudly. “But I can’t imagine why we have to do this now.”
“What if you were asked to lie for Astor-Denning?”
“Oh, Christ. But all right, I’ll answer. Yes, I’d lie for them.”
“What if the lie would hurt someone?”
“I’d have to think about the circumstances. Every decision has risks and benefits. That’s the first thing you learn in medical school. If you do treat, you can kill someone. If you don’t treat, you can also kill them. It’s all about the probabilities. Making the best decision you can, given the available information.”
“What if you found out that one of your biggest-selling drugs was killing people?”
“I already know that some of our biggest-selling drugs have killed people. Chemotherapy drugs, to give just one example. They all present a risk of leukopenia, which can
be fatal. But what choice does the doctor have if the patient will die from cancer?” He zipped the garment bag closed and sat down on the bed, several feet away.
“Why are you asking me all this?”
“Because I realized I really don’t know what you’re doing there. And I need to know before I—”
“Decide to leave? Here’s a question I should be answering: What if Amelia decides I’m not up to her Little Miss Perfect standards?”
She ignored that, but waited a moment. “What if you had to be a whistle-blower? Like you found data that showed a drug was bad for everyone?”
“You mean if one of our medicines is really a poison? I doubt I’d be the one breaking that news to our scientists, but sure, I’d do it.” He jerked his hand up in exaggerated salute. “The human race will not become extinct on my watch.”
“Why turn the question into a joke?”
“Because it is a joke. It’s also beneath you. You write articles that make the subtlest moral distinctions. Is it that you don’t think I’m capable of doing that myself? Or that I’m unwilling? Or both?”
“I don’t know—I’m trying—”
“What exactly is it about me that makes me so eminently worthy of your contempt? Because to tell you the truth, I’m getting really fucking sick of it.”
“I don’t have contempt for you,” she said slowly. “I have contempt for what you do for a living, and the place you—”