A Fierce Radiance (47 page)

“Did you tell Dr. Lind?”

“No, we were too busy playing checkers.”

“You can tell him later, then.”

“Okay.” He rested his head against the back of the chair. “I’m tired.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Why don’t you take a nap. I’ll help you back to bed.”

He didn’t object, so Claire knew how tired he must be. After he snuggled into the covers, he said, “Can Lucas come to visit?”

“I’ll ask. They’ll probably say no. I don’t think dogs are allowed in hospitals.”

“Lucas isn’t a dog. I mean, he isn’t
just
a dog.”

“I’ll try my best.”

Charlie fell asleep, and Claire kept watch over him.

By dinnertime, he was deaf.

O
n the upper floor of her father’s Fifth Avenue apartment, Claire stood at the windows overlooking the park and shivered in the damp March chill. On account of rationing, even this building, home to the wealthy few, had been forced to cut back on heating fuel. She pulled up the collar of her sweater, even though she wasn’t supposed to move.

Charlie was drawing a portrait of her. He sat in bed with the pad propped on his bent legs. In turn, Miss Blake, his drawing teacher, did a portrait of Charlie while he worked. Miss Blake was an earnest young woman who, in her flowing skirt and embroidered blouse, seemed to brim with artistic enthusiasm. Charlie was Miss Blake’s first deaf pupil, and her way of dealing with him was to explain her lessons in a slow, soothing voice, which, of course, Charlie couldn’t hear. Instead he intuited her meaning from her gestures and examples. Miss Blake visited three times a week. Rutherford had already purchased an easel so that when Charlie became stronger, he could paint in oils on the terrace.

Claire’s father had received his wish: when Charlie was discharged from the hospital, he and Claire came here to live. Even Lucas joined them. Claire felt she had no choice. Everything was easier to manage at her father’s. The recovery time for double pneumonia was months in the best of circumstances. Now with the deafness, most likely Charlie couldn’t return to his old school. Rutherford had hired a sign-language
teacher, math and English teachers, and a science teacher. Nurses were on duty twenty-four hours a day, although mercifully Charlie was almost well enough to dispense with them. Specialists had been brought in from up and down the East Coast to evaluate the feeble hearing he still had and to recommend treatment. Some of these specialists hazarded a guess that gradually a portion of his hearing would return, while insisting that this was something the family could only hope for, not plan for.

Claire and her father were united. She felt as if she’d grown up all over again while Charlie was hospitalized. Her anger toward her father had dissolved. Most nights after Charlie fell asleep, Claire and her father had an after-dinner drink in the library. They talked quietly of Charlie’s hardships as well as his hard-won victories. They discussed his teachers’ goals for the next day. They read for an hour or so before bed and listened to the news on the radio. In the war, the tide had begun to turn, according to the commentators.

The war seemed far away. Irrelevant, even, to their concerns. Claire and her father enjoyed a simple routine, and it was enough. No grand gestures were necessary in their day-to-day companionship. They were united by their love for Charlie and their belated love and understanding for each other. Most families Claire knew had been decimated by war and illness; her family had finally come together.

MaryLee took care of running the house. Due to rationing, merely shopping for food consumed hours each day. Charlie had lost so much weight that he looked skeletal. MaryLee knew the black marketeers in food on the Upper East Side. She knew how to find the best cuts of beef, the ones the butchers kept behind the counter for people like her. Owing to MaryLee, Charlie had steak every night for dinner. He enjoyed the most delicious cakes and cookies, because MaryLee knew where to buy sugar and cocoa. She brought home canned fruits and vegetables and even real butter in abundance. She made Charlie cheese omelets and bacon every morning for breakfast. Up and down Madi
son Avenue, up and down Lexington Avenue, MaryLee conducted her searches, buying only the best, regardless of price controls or ration points. Mr. Black (as everyone called the black market) was at her beck and call.

Rutherford told MaryLee to take all the time she needed, to spend whatever was necessary, as she traveled the paths of Mr. Black. For once Claire didn’t pass judgment on the privileges of wealth. Charlie couldn’t get penicillin when he needed it, in this he was equal with others, but now that he was among the wounded, she wanted him to have filet mignon and fudge cake all of his days.

Claire turned her head and studied her son. Did he still hear in his dreams? Did he remember the sound of her voice? She was afraid to ask him. All his life, she’d tried so hard to protect him, and Emily, too. But in the end, she’d failed them both.

Since Charlie’s deafness, Claire found herself increasingly attuned to the everyday sounds around them, the sounds Charlie could no longer hear. The call of the newspaper boys on the avenues. The honking of car horns. The neighing of horses as they pulled the early-morning milk carts. These common sounds, which she’d barely registered before, pounded into her ears now because Charlie couldn’t hear them. Some sounds she feared: What if Charlie were alone when an air raid siren alerted the city to an attack? What if he were alone when someone screamed a warning of “fire”? How would he survive?

“You moved!” Charlie said. “You’re not supposed to move.”

She looked out the window again, the park a blur from the tears that too often filled her eyes. His voice still sounded like himself. How fortunate this difficulty came relatively late in his childhood, after he could speak fluently and already knew how to read. So said the chief audiologist, Dr. Greene, by way of consolation.

“Just a few more minutes,” Charlie said. He made an effort to be disciplined, even though he sometimes thought he was going to explode with impatience. He wanted to go outside and play stickball.
He wanted to take Lucas to the park. But Dr. Lind said he wasn’t well enough.

In the month since his hearing left him, Charlie’s other senses had become more acute, as if doors were opening in his mind. The scent his grandfather gave off, of cigars and a spicy aftershave. The light, flowery perfume that told him his mom was nearby. The aroma and taste of food. Bacon and warm chocolate pudding were more luscious than he’d ever experienced. At night he could see better in the dark. The softness of Lucas’s undercoat upon his fingertips, the scratchiness of the wool blanket. These sensations were like a mystery unraveling. Sign language was like magic, secrets expressed in the turns of his hands and in the shapes of his fingers.

All this was more than he could share with the grown-ups around him. Not when they stared at him with sad and frowning looks of worry, thinking he didn’t notice. Or when they seemed to take a deep breath at his door and put on a special smile just to get the courage to talk to him.

“You can see the picture in three minutes,” he told his mother. “Not one second sooner.”

W
hile Claire posed for Charlie’s drawing lesson, Jamie left the hospital and made his way down the path beneath the trees toward the gate of the Rockefeller Institute. He planned to walk to Edward Rutherford’s apartment. It was a long walk, and he wanted the time alone to think.

Months ago, as he’d arranged, Tia’s friends had gone through her apartment and dealt with the bureaucracies of death for him. Beth had sent him three boxes of items she thought worth saving. Tia’s life, reduced to three cardboard boxes. Not surprisingly he’d put off opening them. But now that he was in New York for a few weeks, he’d decided to go through them. Beth had mentioned that the boxes included some scientific mementoes.
Memento
wasn’t the word he
would have chosen for Tia’s scientific work, but of course Beth was trying to be kind.

The mementoes turned out to be notations on the chemistry of the blue substance that was obsessing Tia before she died, the one she’d told him about the final time they’d seen each other. Why Tia had kept these notes at home, Jamie didn’t know. Sometimes his sister was an enigma to him. At any rate, this morning he’d completed a chemical analysis comparing the medication Charlie had received with the substance his sister had discovered. The two were identical.

Chance, or theft? Theft or—and—murder? He couldn’t put off confronting Rutherford about the origins of the medication any longer. Nevertheless, he was filled with misgivings. He wished he could pass off the job of confronting Rutherford to someone else. Maybe Andrew Barnett could finally prove his worth and step in to figure out the truth. Or Marcus Kreindler.

He wasn’t about to start accusing others of murder, least of all Claire’s father. Obviously Rutherford had not murdered Tia, not by his own hand, at least. And yet…Jamie had been learning a lot recently about the business of medicine. The companies were developing penicillin for the government, but soon the cousins would be for sale. For reasons Jamie couldn’t quite follow, these natural products—the cousins—would have full commercial patent protection, a sleight of hand he’d realized long ago was useless to resist. The medications would sell for whatever price the market would bear—and the market would bear a lot. Who wouldn’t give everything they owned to save their husband or wife or son or daughter?

Jamie paused at the top of the path leading to the main gate. He looked around at the Institute, his home. The research buildings, the hospital, the opulent gardens. Spring was at hand. The half-frozen soil smelled rich and fertile. Crocuses perked up here and there, miniature shocks of white and purple.

He and Tia had blinded themselves to the truth directly before
them: here they were, congratulating themselves on working at the Rockefeller Institute, where altruism reigned. But what funded the Rockefeller Institute? The ill-gotten gains of the Standard Oil Trust. Its exploitative tactics, its threats, and the execution of those threats.

Jamie remembered an occasion when old John D. Rockefeller himself visited the Institute a few years before his death. Rockefeller was a gaunt old man who handed out small change and grinned with a leer at the pretty young nurses. The staff welcomed him, vied for the opportunity to get near him, this renowned multimillionaire who made their jobs possible. No one mentioned how he’d made the money that made the jobs possible, no battle too small, no upstart too insignificant to crush. Rumor was that he’d stop at nothing, literally nothing, to get what he wanted. But he always made certain his own hands were clean.

And Rockefeller wasn’t the only one. How easily the robber barons had turned themselves into paragons of beneficence. In a few generations, their names had gone from being feared and reviled to being lauded. Meanwhile, they were married, had children, lived amid their families, who apparently loved and admired them despite their business reputations.

Was Rutherford’s sense of competition as fierce as old man Rockefeller’s had been? Did he have spies at every research center around the country, on the lookout for the next breakthrough? Someone at the bottom of this chain could have pushed Tia, with Rutherford learning about it only later, if at all. In that case, Rutherford had done nothing but set the tone.

Jamie greeted Mr. Hodges at the gate and turned north on York Avenue. Charlie’s deafness added another layer of complexity to Jamie’s concerns. He couldn’t shake the idea, irrational, he knew, that he and Tia bore responsibility for Charlie’s deafness. This was like a knife in him. It made him dread facing Claire. And yet Charlie would be dead now if he hadn’t received the medication. Choices no one should have
to confront. Surely he could have stolen penicillin from somewhere, and Charlie would still be able to hear. Could have, should have, if only…untaken alternatives beset him.

He hadn’t told Claire that he was in town. If he arrived and she was out, that was fine. He’d visit Charlie. He hadn’t seen them since Charlie was released from the hospital.

Here he was. Eighty-first Street and Fifth Avenue. Across the street was the Metropolitan Museum. He hadn’t been to the museum in years. Maybe he should go now. What was the current exhibition? He should have checked the newspaper this morning. The doorman announced him.

“Who answered the call?” Jamie asked.

The doorman hesitated. Clearly this wasn’t a question he was usually asked. Maybe he heard some connotation Jamie hadn’t intended.

“The housekeeper,” the doorman replied. “But they’re all at home.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.” So, everyone there. Everyone to greet, and with what? His suspicions, his regrets, his love.

The elevator operator took him upstairs, and let him out in the Gothic hallway lined with tapestries. He stood for a moment, getting his bearings. Trying to remember where to turn.

“Dr. Stanton!”

Edward Rutherford approached him from the dining room, a coffee mug in his hand. Jamie knew that Rutherford used the honorific of
doctor
out of respect and appreciation. He heard both in Rutherford’s voice, and this made Jamie feel simultaneously unworthy and wary.

“Welcome!”

Business papers were arrayed on the dining room table; Claire had written that her father was often working at home these days.

“What a wonderful surprise. Does Claire know you’re in town? Wait until you see the progress Charlie’s making. You’ll be amazed and impressed.”

Jamie found himself shaking hands heartily with this man who stood to profit, and handsomely, from the death of his sister, whether he’d ordered her death or not.

“I think Claire is upstairs posing for a drawing lesson. I did my part yesterday. Go on up, no need to waste your time with me.”

Jamie felt Rutherford’s charm. He sensed no guilt or despondency, only security and optimism.

“I want you to know that you have my sympathy, for, for”—Jamie suddenly felt at a loss, stumbling over his words—“for the unforeseen side effects.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Rutherford brushed the idea aside.

“No, no, I don’t understand—” Jamie stopped, uncertain of what he didn’t understand. Or rather, he understood so little, doubted so much, that he didn’t know how to begin to express himself.

“You’re not blaming yourself, are you?” As Rutherford studied Stanton’s tone and expression, he was taken aback. He realized that Stanton must be doing exactly that: blaming himself. Stanton looked terrible. Well, he’d never really had a chance to recover from his war wounds. He looked beyond exhausted. Dark circles under his eyes. He’d lost even more weight. His skin still had a grayish cast. He must have been torturing himself about Charlie’s deafness for weeks. Rutherford and Claire had been living with Charlie and witnessing his progress every day. They’d had time to get some perspective. That was Stanton’s problem. He hadn’t had any opportunity to gain perspective. Once he did, he’d realize that there was no need for pity, not for themselves and not for Charlie. For now, Rutherford saw that his duty was to reassure Stanton.