The DNA of You and Me

by Andrea Rothman

  I’d been with a number of men since Aeden, but unfortunately there had been none about whom I could tell myself, as I had once told myself about him: Maybe it could be, would be, if I allowed it to happen. I don’t mean to imply by this that I was entertaining the hope of getting back together with him, but it would be a lie to say that I absolutely wasn’t.

  Our meeting location was the Nectar diner on the southwest corner of Madison Avenue and Eighty-Second Street—the same place I’d fled into years ago with Allegra’s hairclip. I’ve been there many times since: weekend mornings, mostly, before the brunch crowd takes over, when I will sit at one of the booths in the front with a stack of research papers and catch up on my reading over breakfast and coffee. I like the modestly cheerful atmosphere of the place, and the jar by the cash register filled with peppermint spheres. I like how the door chimes every time someone steps in, and how the sun across the windowpanes uncovers cracks and stains and all sorts of imperfections on the otherwise smooth white tiled floor.

  It was I, of course, who suggested that we meet at the Nectar, knowing that I would feel more at ease in a place I knew well. I arrived a good ten minutes early, and was relieved to ascertain that Aeden was nowhere in sight, and that moreover the place was almost empty. I walked over to the nearest booth and sat down facing the door. The idea was to see him before he could see me, to not be taken by surprise.

  Behind me, in one of the larger booths by the restrooms, a group of elderly people sat soberly chatting over leftover strips of bacon and refilled cups of coffee, waiting for the stores and museums to open. Directly in front of me, across the aisle, a young woman was obliviously chatting on her phone. Parked next to her was a stroller, and inside the stroller a sleeping infant with a pink cap on her head. I thought of Giovanna, and wondered if she too would soon be spending her mornings in diners and cafés, eager for a taste of freedom. I didn’t know whether she was expecting a boy or a girl, and had never thought to ask. The fact that her life would soon be tethered to that of another human being had dwarfed for me the question of gender.

  The infant stirred in her sleep and kicked off her blanket. Watching her I had a sudden fear that she would wake up and start to wail and that my initial encounter with Aeden would be ruined, but then her mother, as if she’d been reading my thoughts, stood up from her booth and wheeled the stroller toward the cash register. “I understand,” she kept saying into the phone, even as she paid her bill. “No. I do. Seriously.” Her insistence made me wonder if she really did understand what the person on the other end of the line was trying to tell her. If anyone ever really understands anyone else. The thought of this, paradoxically, gave me hope.

  I heard a chime, and looked over to the door to see a tall, thin man holding it open for the mother: Aeden. I stood up and he caught sight of me and mechanically smoothed back his hair, or what remained of it, and when the woman had stepped into the street with her stroller he let go of the door. For a moment we stood awkwardly gazing at each other, until Aeden walked over to me and we lurched into each other’s arms.

  “I’ve missed you, Emily,” he said, tightening his hold on me. “I have missed you so much.”

  “So have I, Aeden.” My face was pressed to his chest. I thought I could smell on him something sour and faintly medicinal, like aspirin, but wasn’t sure.

  Eventually he released me and stepped back, and we stood there, within arm’s reach, looking at each other. I saw dark circles under his eyes and it occurred to me that something was wrong. My biggest fear during the last two years had been that Aeden had contracted lung cancer from all his years of smoking and was terminally ill, and I didn’t know it.

  “Do you still smoke?” I asked, trying not to sound alarmed.

  Aeden shook his head as though I’d asked him if he’d killed someone. “Quit,” he answered. “A long time ago.”

  “I’m happy to hear that,” I said.

  At the booth the waiter stood two tall glasses of water on our table and slapped down a pair of menus. I opened my handbag and pulled out a guest pass to the Lasker Awards ceremony: a long rectangular strip of paper that looked more like a bookmark than an actual pass to anywhere.

  “What’s this?” Aeden asked.

  “Your ticket to the awards ceremony.”

  Aeden took the ticket from me without a word, as though it were a napkin I was offering him to clean his mouth with, and slid it into his shirt pocket. “I’m assuming David Hobbs will be there?” he asked across the table, with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Him and his wife,” I said.

  “I guess he made it into medical school after all.”

  “He just finished his residency,” I offered, meaninglessly adding, “I’m very happy for him.”

  “What about the asshole? Will he be there too?”

  “Justin is retired,” I said. “I walked into the lab last month and thought I’d walked into a war zone. They’re in the process of erecting another lab, and there’s someone new in charge, a young couple, with a child. Anyway, I don’t know that he will be there.”

  “I’m glad,” Aeden said. “About Justin retiring, I mean. He was a terrible lab head.”

  “The responsibility was maybe too much for him,” I said, wanting for some reason to defend Justin. “And he always had other interests, aside from science.”

  “I bet you he’s locked up in some hotel room with a Playboy as we speak,” Aeden said, paying no heed to my comments. He made as if to laugh, but didn’t. Instead he held my gaze for a long moment. His eyes were the same indeterminate gray I remembered, in which I’d once seen myself reflected. “You don’t look a day older, Emily.”

  I smiled at him. “You’re just saying that.”

  “I’m not just saying it. I mean it.”

  “I look much older than I did the last time we saw each other, Aeden. I know I do.”

  “Not to me you don’t. To me you look the same.”

  I opened my mouth to ask him what I’d had in mind about memory, but I didn’t want to spoil the moment. “I keep up with your work,” I said. “I’ve read all your papers on memory. It’s impressive, what you’ve accomplished in just ten years.”

  “You never wrote me back,” he said. “For nine years, not a peep from you. Not even to let me know you were reading my letters.”

  “It was silly of me not to. I’m sorry,” I said.

  Aeden looked at me with concern. “What’s going on in your life? Personally, I mean.”

  “Between my responsibilities in the lab and the traveling, I don’t have much time for a personal life, as you can imagine. What about you?”

  “I’m married,” Aeden said.

  My eyes dropped to his hand, and I saw on one of his fingers the wedding ring I hadn’t noticed earlier, or hadn’t wanted to notice: a plain band of silver. “That’s nice,” I said. And smiling with effort, “How long have you been married?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  For an interminable moment neither of us spoke. I could feel him staring at me, and couldn’t bring myself to meet his eyes. I felt that if I just continued to sit there and stare beyond his shoulder, at the sun crashing through the windowpane behind him, the moment would soon pass. Given enough time it would be behind me, like most other moments of my life.

  “There is no meeting,” he said. “I drove all the way here just to see you, Emily. I should have done it years ago. I wanted to see how you are, and to apologize for trashing your results.”

  “Our results,” I said, making an effort to speak casually.

  “Ours, yours, there’s no excuse for what I did. I’ve thought about it for years, how you and I would be together now if I hadn’t done what I did.”

  I mustered a laugh. “No, we wouldn’t,” I said. “I’m genetically hardwired to be alone. You know that about me.”

  “No, you’re not,” Aeden said. He sounded annoyed. “We had this conversation a long time ago, across a shut door, remember?”

 
“I remember,” I said, managing a smile.

  “What did I tell you?”

  “You said it wasn’t in my destiny to be alone.”

  “And what did you do, shortly after that?”

  “I opened the door and stepped outside and there you were, waiting for me.”

  “You agreed to go to Cambridge with me, to give it a shot, didn’t you?”

  “I did,” I admitted.

  Aeden looked at me with conviction. “It will happen again,” he said. “With someone else.”

  “It won’t,” I said. “It will never happen again.”

  He sat back in his chair, studying me from under knitted brows. “It will,” he said. “One day. I guarantee it.” As if to convince me of this he dug into his coat pocket and pulled out his phone and handed it to me. I lowered my eyes to the screen and found myself staring straight into a pair of light gray eyes like Aeden’s, except noticeably slanted. There was an overwhelming calmness about the gaze, a quiet tranquillity that made me think of someone only half-formed, not yet fully conscious of himself or the world. Not quite yet human.

  “He’s beautiful,” I said, handing him back the phone. “How old is he?”

  “Twenty days,” Aeden said proudly. “Twenty-one, actually.”

  “Now I understand why you look so tired.” The sour smell of earlier, I realized, was curdled milk.

  “You actually know his mother, Emily. Remember Ginny?”

  I could hardly believe my ears. “Ginny from the lab?”

  Aeden gave me a sobering smile. “I guess you do remember her.”

  “I remember we used to make fun of her. I remember she used to wear so much perfume it made her smell like a skunk. I remember . . .” I wanted to also remind him about what he’d said, how he would be bored out of his mind with her, but I found I didn’t have the heart to. “You even came up with a theory to explain the phenomenon. How did you end up with her?”

  “She changed perfumes,” Aeden said, trying to humor me, but the smile had faded from his face.

  “I’m not amused,” I said. “Does she still play the oboe?”

  “Not lately, but she’ll get back to it soon. I hope.”

  “She sure could carry a tune,” I said, and immediately regretted it. What did I know about music, after all, about art; what did I know about anything other than my narrow field of expertise? “What about her bloodhound?” For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to say his name. “How is he?”

  “Smokey?”

  “Yes. Smokey.” Suddenly I wanted to cry.

  “Gone,” Aeden said. “He was old even back then, ancient, really, for a dog.”

  Unable to bear it any longer, I grabbed my purse and stood up. “I need to leave,” I said.

  “I was hoping to have breakfast with you,” Aeden said, sounding disappointed.

  “I have a meeting I forgot about, with a student.” My voice was shaking.

  He nodded understandingly at me and stood up, catching on to the lie. “I’ll walk you out,” he said.

  At the register Aeden paid for the two coffees we hadn’t consumed and stood joylessly watching Galina (platinum-dyed hair and now working the register after twelve years) process the payment. There was a sad air of conformity about him standing there, slightly stooped in his beige coat, that made me wonder if he was genuinely happy. It seemed impossible to me that he was, that he could ever truly be himself with Ginny, but then who was I to say that he wasn’t?

  The jar with the peppermint candy I’d never tried was right under my nose. I brought one up to my mouth and cracked it open between two molars. A minty odor wafted retronasally up to my brain, deflecting the immense sadness that had begun to descend on me. I was transported back to my childhood, to my father summoning me with a roll of Life Savers across our den window to join him in the yard, where he was planting vegetables. At the beginning I’d refused, on account of the smell of grass, but then I’d joined him, and we had ended up having a fine day together. It seemed as though a similar window of opportunity had presented itself just two years earlier, with Aeden’s last letter, the one in which he’d requested, demanded almost, that I forgive him. But I hadn’t.

  Outside I could feel Aeden studying me across the sunlit air as I gazed toward the street, assessing the unebbing flow of traffic. After two failed attempts to flag down a cab I stepped around him and wordlessly began heading south. I could feel Aeden following me but didn’t turn around to look. What I wanted was to be alone, to allow the grief to sink in and phone him later to apologize for my behavior.

  I had nearly reached the corner when I felt his hand on my shoulder, and saw him waving a piece of yellow paper in front of me. It was his guest pass. “I can’t go, Emily,” he said. We were standing only inches apart, and yet his voice felt as faint and distant as if he were miles away. “I can’t make it to the ceremony. And even if I could, it wouldn’t be a good idea. I honestly think my being there would only spoil your evening.”

  “It wouldn’t,” I said. “It absolutely wouldn’t.” But I could already see the futility of Aeden’s presence at the awards ceremony, and with crystal clarity the vital years of our lives behind us, dissipated like smoke. The tears I’d managed to suppress rushed to my eyes, and I told him what I knew I’d wanted to tell him all along, and had never told anyone before him, except maybe my father. “I loved you, Aeden,” I said. “I loved you.”

  “I loved you too, Emily,” he said. “I still do.”

  “I wish I had known it,” I said. “That you were marrying her.”

  Aeden smiled at me. “Would it have made a difference?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “I wish I could say yes, but . . .” I tried to swallow. The tightness in my throat was unbearable.

  He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’ll come visit you again some other time, when it’s over.” By “it” I knew he meant the awards ceremony.

  I nodded. “I would like that, Aeden. I really would.”

  Before losing myself in the nearest side street, before the tears streamed down my face and the world became a blur, I glanced behind me and saw him standing where I’d left him, and then he was gone. Ahead of me was a narrow path dotted with brownstones and caged trees with their branches static in the windless sky. I wasn’t sure where the street led out to, and didn’t care.

  Chapter 31

  Whenever I sit down at a scope to observe the olfactory bulbs of mice made in my lab, I often find myself reflecting on the courses of people’s lives. I see nerve endings swerved off their paths, reaching places in the map of smell different from those they were genetically predetermined to reach, and I think about destiny, and I ask myself if it exists as such. I get to wondering if there’s a single place each one of us is meant to arrive at or if there is no such place, and destiny does not exist: we simply make our way as we go along.

  Yesterday, after I parted from Aeden and randomly turned into that narrow side street on the southwest corner of Madison, I found myself staring across Fifth Avenue at a building I slowly came to recognize as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’d been there only once, nearly twelve years earlier, and had not returned since.

  I crossed the avenue and climbed the steps to the entrance of the museum. In the lobby I purchased a ticket, and after a few false leads on the cavernous first floor was finally able to locate the wide staircase leading to the second.

  Upstairs, beneath tall opalescent ceilings, a guided tour was in session, but it was a relatively small and noiseless group made up predominantly of elderly people. I shuffled quietly past the torso they were huddled around and made my way into a large open room, and across it, through a maze of similar rooms. My feet hurt from managing high heels and my throat was swollen with the knot I was still fighting to keep from unraveling. It took several rounds of tortuous wandering to locate him, but I finally did, in room 827, cornered on a narrow wall between a small bright red painting and a very large one of a w
oman in a black dress who looked like she was about to break out in song.

  He seemed to be observing me with his troubled dark eyes from his desk, but in truth he was looking at the artist who had portrayed him, more than a hundred years ago and thousands of miles away. Garshin’s portrait was not, as I’d once thought, a self-portrait, but it was the notion of one that had made me uncover the unique nature of my gene. Without this insight it was unlikely that I would have ever tested its function and identified an entire family of similar genes, and without Garshin’s striking resemblance to Aeden it was unlikely that I would have ever stopped to observe him in the first place, or that I would have observed him long enough to have had the insight. And if I hadn’t stopped to observe him, and if I hadn’t discovered what I did, Aeden would have never misled me, and we might have very well ended up together. It was as if these two things, Aeden and the discovery, could never coexist with each other: as if only one of the two had been meant to be and I had made my choice.

  A few feet from where I stood, there was a low wooden bench. I walked over to it and sat down. And there, just like that, I began to cry. Not in the quiet way in which I’d cried in the street, but a choked, muddled sob punctuated by high-pitched screeches not unlike the squeals of a frightened mouse, a cry as primitive-sounding and primal in origin as the sense of smell. Two other people were in the room with me, a girl in her twenties and a man about my age. They’d been standing with their backs to me, discussing a painting hanging somewhere to my left, and now they kept throwing worried looks in my direction. I held a hand over my mouth, but it was useless. The tears kept rolling down my face, and my throat emitting that terrible sound. I could not remember ever crying this way before, and I could not stop.