by Condition
He named a side street off Mass Ave, another south of the square.
His GI tract thrummed like a cement mixer. An eruption of one kind or another seemed imminent.
"Paulette," he said."I have to go."
The past is always with us.
He had fallen hard for Paulette, immediately and completely. She was a child at nineteen—Frank saw that instantly—but the child could sail and play the piano and ride horseback, skills he was too much of a rube even to wish to possess. She had traveled through England and Scotland and Spain and Italy; he would learn on their honeymoon that she spoke French like a native. She had a memory for names and faces; charming strangers was her gift. Men, especially, were enchanted by her attention. Frank knew exactly how they felt. From the beginning he'd believed she hung on his every word, that she'd remember them for the rest of her life and quote them in his eulogy, weeping prettily, wearing a stunning hat.
Neil had seemed startled when Frank asked her out.
Really, fella? I wouldn't have said she was your type.
They're all my type, he'd joked, a little insulted. Neil's tone suggested Paulette was out of his league. She was, of course, but who was Windsor to say so? Frank was accustomed to his deference in all matters romantic. Neil the humble disciple, desperate for guidance; Frank the oracle, a role he'd come to enjoy.
It was obvious to him that Neil was jealous. He'd known Paulette first, and Frank had taken her out from under his nose. Frank understood this and didn't care. More than that: he took pleasure in Neil's resentment, accepted it as his due. He saw Paulette every weekend, phoned her nightly from his and Neil's apartment, not caring what his buddy overheard. His flirtations with half a dozen Radcliffe girls withered from neglect. He returned from dates to Neil's questions—those probing, scientifically curious questions—and answered them in rich detail. Paulette was a virgin, but playful; she would let him touch her anywhere, passive in his arms. Frank had encountered such females before and knew how to handle them. With the right approach, her resistance could be overcome.
Neil let him blather on this way until he began to feel ridiculous.
Well, then what? Neil asked finally. Say she gives in. You're her first.
What happens when someone else catches your eye?
The question startled him. Tapeworm had always applauded his conquests.
That won't happen. Frank knew it a moment before he said it: I'm going to marry her.
Their wedding at Holy Cross Cathedral seemed to him a scene from a movie, a complicated pageant to which he'd been invited as an afterthought, a last-minute guest. Neil was his best man, the only familiar face in the crowd. He produced the ring at the crucial moment; at the reception he danced dutifully with the bride. Neil was a stand-up guy, a gentleman, Frank's closest friend since Blaise Klezek, the surrogate brother of his childhood. He believed this for years, right up until the bloody final month of his marriage, when Paulette savaged him with the truth.
They'd been arguing over Gwen, fights that had become habitual. We should have her hearing rechecked, Frank said. It's been nearly a year. I want to make sure there's no change.
It seemed to him a reasonable request. Hearing abnormalities were common in Turner girls. Paulette knew this as well as he did.
But to his astonishment, his wife had exploded. As usual, there was no predicting what would set her off.
Her hearing is fine! Don't you think I'd notice if she weren't hearing properly? And then, her usual refrain: Why are you always looking for trouble? Why can't you let anything be okay?
Finally she'd exhausted his patience.
For Christ's sake, Paulette! I just want to know what we're dealing with.
That's the difference between you and me. You hide your head in the sand. I want to know the truth.
It was this phrase that had set her off. Oh, really? she said, with a smile that made him nervous. I beg to differ. There's plenty you don't want to know. You've never shown much scientific curiosity when it came to me.
And what was that supposed to mean?
You weren't my first, she said. Neil was. He loved me.
If she had made a lifelong study of his neurology, she couldn't have placed the hit better. Traffic halted along his neural pathways. A flood of hostile chemicals bathed his brain. She watched him intently as she said it, her eyes blazing. God knew how long she'd been waiting. Through every late return, missed dinner, forgotten anniversary; every time he'd insulted her brother or disparaged her father or ogled a waitress in a restaurant, she must have held the words in her mouth, savoring them, waiting for the optimal time.
His face burned; blood pulsed in his hands. Windsor, he said.
She nodded once, resolutely.
And in that moment, Paulette freed him. Their marriage was a sack of miseries he'd thought never to escape. She was insecure and jealous, vain and neurotic. Unmoved by logic, she judged him guilty of offenses he committed only in dreams. For years this had been their unhappy baseline, an unfortunate set of givens that Frank had accepted completely—so blind, so foolish was his love for her. He had watched her fail their daughter in critical ways, crippled by her own shame. For months their marriage had dangled by a thread. Now Paulette—he saw this clearly—had handed him a knife.
Frank slashed the thread.
He had never cared about marrying a virgin. A woman's past didn't trouble him; before they'd met, Paulette could have serviced the entire Harvard crew for all he cared. But she had given herself to only two men, and this implied a similarity between them. In her eyes, he and Neil Windsor were peers, equals. Not merely interchangeable; they had, in fact, been interchanged. It was a notion Frank could not tolerate. For years he'd watched Windsor soar—the top-drawer publications, the big finds. Envy gnawed at him. What had saved him, always, had been Paulette—the one achievement Windsor couldn't top, the ultimate prize.
The Harvest was crowded at lunchtime, beards and tweeds, wool skirts and pearls, a few decent suits—the business school—and students on good behavior, their parents picking up the check. At the bar Frank saw Otto Mueller from the med school and gave a cursory wave. Normally he'd have stopped to chat, poke around a bit—Mueller was on the SAB of Protein Therapeutics and loose lipped when he'd had a few. Not today, though. Not today.
He spotted them at a table near the window, his wife and Neil Windsor, Paulette in a cream-colored suit, like a midlife bride. He watched her a moment, the sun catching her necklace. It was the sort of delicate jewelry she'd always favored, a plain gold chain fine as a nerve. She hadn't seen him, and it felt luxurious to watch her unobserved. Her face lit at something Neil said and the smile cut Frank like a scalpel, in its precision nearly painless, but not quite.
He approached the table. Paulette noticed him over Windsor's shoulder. "Frank! What are you doing here?" She looked puzzled, a little alarmed.
"Look at what the cat dragged in."Windsor stood, beaming, and shook Frank's hand."Pull up a chair."
Frank eyed him levelly.
"What's the matter?" said Windsor."You look like hell."
"He hasn't been feeling well," Paulette explained.
Because he felt like it, Frank bent and kissed her, his lips grazing her cheek. He had not touched her in twenty years. She still wore the perfume whose name he couldn't remember, though over the years he'd bought her bottles of it. It smelled like nothing in nature, no flower he recognized. It smelled only like Paulette, a thought that nearly reduced him to tears.
Frank noticed the leather folder at Windsor's elbow. He had paid the check, of course. As though he and Paulette were on a date.
"I'm sorry to run, Frank, but I have an appointment downtown."
Paulette glanced at her watch."Hair," she explained.
Windsor rose. "Dear girl, it was a pleasure to see you," he said, taking her in his arms.
Their embrace was brief, socially appropriate. There was no reason for Frank to burn. No longer any marriage or family, any fr
iendship or youth or love or innocence, any honor or sentiment left to justify it.
There was no reason to stand quickly, knocking back the flimsy chair, and chuck Neil Windsor on the shoulder, with the false friendliness of an angry bully. But Frank did this anyway, and Jesus, did it feel good.
Heads turned in their direction. Frank, smiling, bent to retrieve the overturned chair. "Bring my friend a cup of coffee," he told the waiter."Sit," he told Windsor."Let's catch up."
Paulette eyed him nervously."Frank, is everything all right?"
"Right as rain, dear." He reached for her hand and pressed it briefly to his face."You run along now. I'm going to have a visit with our friend Neil."
He watched her go, her slender legs, the swell of her hips. "She still looks good," he told Windsor, who'd obediently taken a seat.
"Don't you think she looks good?"
"Frank, what's the matter with you? Are you drunk?" Windsor looked concerned, his brow furrowed.
"Jesus, listen to you. You're like an old woman." Frank smiled.
"How was the meeting?"
"The Academy?" Windsor patted his sparse hair, as if making sure it was still there. "Well, it was eventful. As I'm sure you've heard."
"Why'd you do it?" Frank's heart pounded slowly, the final spasms of a dying thing. With his last strength he would reach across the table and break Windsor's arm.
"Do what?" Windsor looked stricken. "My God, Frank. You think I challenged you?"
"Can we admit that we've always been competitive? The publications, tenure, Progen." He paused."Paulette."
"Paulette," said Windsor, as if the rest didn't matter. As, in fact, it didn't."What about her?"
"Oh, come off it," Frank said."Don't bullshit me. I know." He felt swollen with outrage. He had carried it for years, a sturdy mass lodged in his innards, actively growing. Over the years it had invaded his mus cularis mucosae, his submucosa, his muscularis propria. The malignancy was stage B, he judged. Infiltrating, but without metastasis.
Windsor blinked twice, rapidly."She told you? When?"
"A long time ago."
"Oy. Thank you," he told the waiter, who'd appeared with coffee.
"So all these years—Frank, I'm speechless. Why didn't you say something?"
Frank stared ahead, avoiding Windsor's eyes. He focused very deliberately on the life moving around them, the diners chewing and swallowing, the scrape of cutlery, the waiters serving drinks. "Why didn't I? Jesus, Weisberg. You were my best man. My best friend. You should have told me, at the very beginning. But you never said a word."
"My God, what should I have said?"Windsor lowered his voice.
"I loved her; I was crazy about her. Would you really have wanted to know that? And what did any of it matter, if she didn't love me back?"
"She didn't," Frank repeated, in the interests of clarity. Of getting the facts straight.
"No. Look, amigo: it was forty years ago. We're all old now and neither one of us has her. The End."
Frank nodded. The End, the End.
Windsor stirred his coffee. "Now this other business. The Academy. You really think I did that? Knifed you in the back?"
Frank stared at him, doubt prickling his skin. "You knew the whole story. The postdoc, the phony data. I spilled my guts to you. And Grohl has kept a lid on it; nobody else has any idea. So if you didn't challenge me, who did?"
Windsor sipped his coffee."Know a guy named Alan Manning?"
Frank frowned, trying to place the name.
"Well, he knows plenty about you. The data, and the girl who got suspended. He implied that she was a scapegoat."
Frank blinked."He said I falsified data?"
"No, not exactly. Just that you were probably aware of it, or should have been. And I'm here to tell you, my friend: you should have been. "
"She must have told him," Frank said slowly. "Manning was her mentor at Baylor. I hired her away from him."
"Seems like he took it personally."
"She has that effect on men."
Windsor smiled crookedly."Don't tell me. I don't want to know."
"Nothing happened," Frank said, profoundly ashamed—of how little he understood of the world's workings, of the fierce conviction with which he could be wrong.
"Don't say anything to Paulette," he added. "About the girl. She would misunderstand."
"Believe me, that is not a conversation I want to have."Windsor rose."This has been fun, Frank, but I have a plane to catch."
"I'm sorry," said Frank. "I shouldn't have accused you. I had no right."
"You have no idea."Windsor grinned."I'm the idiot who nominated you."
Frank covered his eyes with his hand.
"I'm a new member. I'm supposed to sit there quietly, behave myself, raise my hand when I want to take a piss. Instead I go out on a limb and nominate a schmuck like you."
"Goddamn," Frank said."This looks bad for you."
Windsor shrugged."What are they going to do? It's like being on the Supreme Court: they can't unload me. Like I can't unload you."
chapter 9
For most of her life, Paulette had loved Sundays. As a little girl she'd walked to the corner store with her father early in the morning, to get the newspapers before church. For some reason her brother and sister were excluded from this ritual, and for Paulette this was half the pleasure. Her father bought the Sunday Globe and, every week, a lottery ticket. The ticket was a secret between them. Paulette was to tell no one, especially not her mother, a promise she had never broken. Later they drove to Concord for Sunday dinner at Grandmother Drew's, a crowd at the adult table: Aunt Doro and Aunt Tess and their husbands, Paulette's parents and grandmother, her maiden aunt Grace. And, at what was called the young people's table, were Roy and Martine and Paulette, their cousins Trudy and Peter and Gabby and Abigail and Dick.
As a young bride she'd found Sundays glorious. To her initial displeasure, Frank refused to attend mass with her, but this had its compensations. Sunday was the one morning of the week when he would linger in bed instead of springing up at dawn and racing to the lab.
He would make love to her early, before she was quite awake, and fall back to sleep afterward clutching her, a lover's embrace. For this she would miss a year of Sunday masses, and did. Billy—she was sure of this—had been conceived on such a morning. She'd been accused, by her mother and Martine, of favoring her eldest, and Paulette supposed it was true. Billy was her Sunday baby. Of all her children, he had been conceived in the greatest love.
Later, her marriage ended, her children gone, it was on Sundays that Paulette most felt her aloneness. In the Sunday Globe she read about a massive antiques show in southern Maine, two hours' drive away. The long drive had been a selling point, a way to fill the empty hours. The size of the show overwhelmed her, the crowd and commotion, the hundreds of vendors showing their wares. The buyers were men and women of all ages: some expensively dressed, others down and out. Most, like her, were alone. That year she went to shows in Framingham and Brattleboro and Derry and Hartford, in Bristol, Rhode Island; in Katonah, New York. She bought copies of Kovels' and Warman's, studied photographs and price lists. When she learned about the Mount Washington Glass Company, based in New Bedford, a bell of recognition sounded inside her. New Bedford! Clarence Hubbard Drew! In a real way these plates and vases seemed connected to the Drews, to the family she'd once had. Her husband and children had deserted her, but her ancestors weren't going anywhere.
She made her first purchase, the Mount Washington biscuit jar, at a price she now knew to be exorbitant. She'd suspected this at the time, but found herself unable to bargain with the seller. In a year haggling would become second nature to her, but at the time she'd been too embarrassed to speak. Her family had never discussed the price of anything.
It was Donald Large who'd taught her to speak up, to ask for what she wanted, to admit wanting of any kind. Who had lovingly provided for her future; who in a real way looked after her still.
Bless Donald. He had left her better than he'd found her, in every possible way.
Since his death, more lonely Sundays. Drinking her tea, she scanned the paper. Recently she'd developed an interest in politics. For years she'd had virtually no idea who was running the country; since the Kennedy assassinations she'd found the whole business too painful to contemplate. Now she followed obsessively the career of Madeleine Albright, who'd been in Martine's class at Wellesley: ambassador to the United Nations, the first female secretary of state. Reading about these achievements, Paulette felt keenly her own wasted potential. At Wellesley she'd studied French and art history, planning to graduate with both majors. Then she'd met Frank, and hadn't graduated at all.
Now she cherished her tenuous connection to Madeleine Albright, who was not merely an eminent diplomat but also elegant and feminine. How different from awkward Janet Reno, the spinster attorney general, who seemed not to own a lipstick. Reno with her boyish haircut, her unflattering baggy suits, her flat, matter-of-fact voice.
My heavens, Paulette thought.
The attorney general was much older and more than a foot taller, but in other respects the resemblance was uncanny. She was an aged, lanky version of Gwen.
Like Gwen, Janet Reno refused to present herself in the way women were expected to. She was not feminine. To Paulette that word had always seemed complimentary, like romantic or decorative; though in actual fact, none of those words was necessarily positive. To Paulette feminine meant something very specific—a womanly appearance, not just dressing and hairstyling but a way of walking and speaking, of moving through the world. But why, exactly, were these things important? What was the actual point?
The point was to attract men.
And once a man had been secured, to marry and have children. Mothers too were feminine: as a matter of reflex they smiled at babies, their own and other people's, and cajoled them in a sweet singsong voice. That voice was useful for soothing and encouraging children; but Paulette was struck by how many women of her own age, their families grown and gone, still spoke in these dulcet tones.