DUARTE: I introduced myself and told her I was Steven’s friend and would of course be her friend, too.
BURNS: Did you become friends?
DUARTE: Not really. She liked me, but I didn’t like her. I’m not attracted to tall and skinny women. Her nose was too big, and there were other things I didn’t like.
BURNS: But you saw each other.
DUARTE: We had a plan. She called it a mission.
BURNS: What plan?
DUARTE: I showed her a picture of Benjamin, which I had seen in the newspaper and cut out, and I told her that I thought Benjamin was implicated in her brother’s death.
BURNS: Did you have any reason to think that was true?
DUARTE: I hated him.
BURNS: Did you have any reason to hate him?
DUARTE: He was cruel to me when I was in elementary school and ridiculed me after my mother died, and I needed to punish him.
BURNS: So you decided to tell Claire Frayn that he was responsible for her brother’s death even though you had no reason at all to believe that?
DUARTE: That’s true.
BURNS: And Claire went along with your story?
DUARTE: She believed me.
BURNS: Have you seen her lately?
DUARTE: I haven’t seen her since Benjamin Reed came to town and she was supposed to meet up with him but he was too busy and had to go to Prague in the Czech Republic.
BURNS: When is the last time you saw her?
DUARTE: I went to the Frayns’ house in August a year ago, and she was there and said she didn’t want to see me again. So I left. I didn’t want trouble.
BURNS: Do you have anything to add, Mr. Duarte?
DUARTE: You didn’t ask me about the flag.
BURNS: Did you put the Justice Department flag on the Frayns’ front porch?
DUARTE: I did.
BURNS: Did you have a reason for that?
DUARTE: I wanted them to know I was here and that I knew where they lived and I had important connections, so I was able to get a flag from the Justice Department. Especially I wanted Dr. David Frayn to know. That’s all.
BURNS: Thank you, Mr. Duarte.
DUARTE: I don’t call myself Victor Duarte any longer.
BURNS: What do you call yourself now?
DUARTE: I call myself Steven Frayn.
My father is sitting in his office chair, the chair tilted so far back it could easily overturn, his crossed ankles resting next to the propeller. He’s facing the garden and hears me come in the door.
“Claire?”
“It’s me.”
“Has everyone gone?”
“Benjamin and his father have left.”
“For good?”
“They’re coming back for dinner,” I say.
He hasn’t turned around, so I’m standing behind him, hesitant, as if I expect after what he just heard in Victor Duarte’s confession that his face will be changed beyond recognition.
“At least I hope Benjamin and his father are coming,” I said. “That’s what they said when they left.”
My father stands, pulls his chair away from the plane, turns it toward me and pulls up another chair—all of this without facing me, and I am watching every gesture as if each has particular significance and will define the meaning of this day.
When he finally turns, motioning for me to take his office chair, I gasp because there’s no difference in his face except the accumulated light, perhaps from the brightness of the day filtering through the Plexiglas window.
I sit down, tucking my legs under me.
“Did the Reeds have anything else to say?” he asks.
“Charles Reed said something to Faith. I couldn’t hear, but he put his hand on her arm, so I suppose what he had to say was sweet.”
“And Benjamin?”
“I could tell Benjamin was horrified. He couldn’t even look at me.” I slipped off my shoes, dropping them on the floor. “I’m not surprised about anything Victor said. Maybe nothing surprises me any longer.”
“It was no one’s fault, Claire.”
“I know that.”
He’s looking out the window, straight into the noon sun. “We never know what we are in other people’s lives.”
“Did hearing Victor’s confession make you feel better?”
“Not better. Relieved,” he says. “What about you?”
“I don’t excuse myself for what I did,” I say, not ready to take in what I’ve just heard.
“We do our best,” he says. “I think that’s the human inclination, and if the stars reconfigure to bring such unlikely people as all of us into the same orbit, that’s what happens.”
I’m not exactly sure what he’s saying, but he’s done with this conversation, and it will suffice that I figure it out in my own time.
He wants to show me the completed airplane, and we walk around it while he points out how he fixed the wing with parts from other planes, how he reassembled the engine and put together the propeller and refurbished the interior.
“It’s done,” he said.
“Now what?” I ask after he finishes talking and we are heading out of the hangar toward the house.
He takes my face in his hands, kisses my forehead.
“Now life, my treasure,” he says.
Dusk, the sun slipping down the horizon, and in the kitchen Faith and Charles are sitting on stools with glasses of wine. I can tell they are pleased to be together. But that is all. Pleased.
In my bedroom, where I go to put on a different shirt, Julia is sitting on the end of the bed, a bunch of yellow gerbera daisies on her lap.
“From the Reeds,” she says of the daisies. “What did your father have to say?”
“He’s finished his airplane.”
I open my closet and check my blouses, deciding instead to wear a dress for Steven’s celebration, a red dress made of thin wool that I got in New York on a trip we took there when I graduated from college.
“Nice choice,” Julia said. “Red is good on you.” She showed no evidence of leaving, so I took off my trousers and sweater, put the dress on and pulled it down over my hips.
“You’ve changed,” she said. “You know that.”
I went to the mirror above my dresser and brushed my hair, piling it loosely on top of my head.
“Do you remember when you used to call me a student of living things, before I even knew very much about biology.”
“I’m a mother. I wanted to say something that I hoped would be true.”
“I paid attention,” I said.
She follows me out of bedroom, dropping the daisies in a vase on the kitchen table, taking the lamb out of the oven.
In the living room, where I go to tell Milo, who is practicing his concert for the celebration of Steven’s life, that he is needed to carve the lamb, Julia and my father sit with a giggling Asa balanced on my father’s legs, my father’s face nestled in the baby’s soft belly.
“Tell me, how are things now?” Julia asks.
“Things” refers to Benjamin, and I have nothing to report.
“No change,” I say. “You’ll be the first to know if anything happens, Mama. He’s coming in the house now.”
Bernard opens the door for Benjamin, who’s carrying a case of wine with flowers on the top of the box, held in place with his chin. I watch him walk through the hall, into the kitchen, and for no expressed reason—he has said nothing personal to me, made no gesture in my direction, no mention of this morning’s revelations—there’s the scent of possibility in the air.
Milo trots into the kitchen looking for all the world like a mad musician, his hair flying, his glasses balanced precariously on the end of his nose.
“Speak to me,” he says, clapping Benjamin on the back, taking the flowers off the top of the box, handing them to Bernard.
“We need a vase,” he says.
Bernard looks bewildered. He reaches into a cabinet, takes out a vase and hands it to me.
“Have you rec
overed from this morning?” Milo asks with a shade too much cheerfulness as he puts his long fingers into kitchen mitts, opening the oven to take out the lamb.
“I’m not going to recover,” Benjamin says.
“Oh, dear, I thought it would be better,” Milo says. “I thought it would be much better to know Victor was insane.”
I look over at Benjamin, who’s watching me as he opens the case of wine, and I sense, the way a body’s chemistry has its own language, that something is happening between us.
“Did Claire tell you she’s becoming a composer?” Bernard asks. “I think she’s very good.”
“I knew she’d given it some thought,” Benjamin says, taking the bottles of red wine out of the box.
“But I’ve decided to be a biologist, Bernard,” I say. “I’m a terrible composer, but I’m hoping to be a good biologist.”
At the stove Julia is making couscous.
I want to talk to Benjamin and don’t know how to begin, but it seems necessary to have the conversation about Victor, so I’m thinking of how to bring up the subject without upsetting him, when he leans against the counter where I’m standing.
“What are we going to do now?” he asks quietly in my ear so no one else can hear.
“What are we going to do?” I say in response, since I have no answer except to repeat his question as reply.
We have paired off in separate places in the kitchen, waiting for Lisha to arrive before the celebration can begin. My father comes in with Asa over his shoulder, Asa’s baby head stretched up out of its body shell like a turtle’s. My father leans over to Julia, saying something that makes her smile. Bernard is helping with dinner, putting the lamb on a platter as Milo carves. Faith is locked in conversation with Charles Reed.
I stand beside Benjamin, tentative in the moment, as if at any second the direction of the wind could change.
“Do you want to talk about what happened today?” I ask.
“I want to play the piano,” he says, moving away from the sink. “Come with me.”
And I follow him to the living room, slide onto the piano bench beside him.
“Fast and witty or slow and melancholy?” he asks, his long fingers resting lightly on the keys.
I hear Lisha’s car pull up to the curb, so we’ll be starting soon.
“Very, very fast,” I say. “We’re about to begin the celebration.”
The table is set with wineglasses and champagne, so we’ll be very drunk by nightfall. There’s an empty chair for Steven—Julia has insisted on that—and thirty white balloons filled with helium are tied to the railing on the front porch. After dinner, after the toasts and the drinking and the tears, Julia plans that we’ll take the balloons outside in the garden next to the hangar, let go of the long strings, and they will illuminate the night sky with full moons.
1 from my notes in reading Biology by Neil A. Campbell.—C.F.
A Student of Living Things Page 22