A Perfect Life (27 page)

“Willie.” I meant to say more, but for the fourth time that day I started crying.

“It's okay, Jane. Whatever it is, it's okay. Whatever you decide, I'll see you through it. If you want to have the baby, we'll take care of it. Or I'll raise it myself. If you want to have an abortion, that's not what I would choose, but I'll go there with you. Or maybe you had it done already? You're sitting there feeling miserable, and there's no one you can tell? Whatever it is, I'll be there in two hours.”

“I want,” I said. “I want . . .”

“Whatever it is, Jane.”

“I want you to take the test.”

“Whew.” The same explosion of breath I had heard from Achiro, like someone being punched in the gut. “Got me there. Suckered me into that one. Should have seen it coming. You've been planning that one a long time.”

The truth was, I hadn't planned it at all, any more than I had planned to take advantage of my sister's sympathy. “Will you take the test?”

“I can't. Jane. It would go against everything I believe. Look, I promised you, no lectures. It's okay for you—you
want to know. But I don't. How could I kill something just because it has my same genes? That would be like saying I wish they'd killed me. I said I would take care of it. And I don't just mean now.”

“What if you're not there? What if neither of us is there to take care of this child? And who's going to take care of
us
?”

“Whoa,” he said. “You've already got both of us dead and buried. You've just got to trust that somebody is going to be there to take care of whoever needs taking care of.”

“Why? Why do I have to trust that?”

“Because that's what faith is. That's the way human beings are. They take care of each other.”

“I can't have a baby knowing that it's going to get sick.”

“So you still are pregnant? Jane? What you just said, you're still pregnant?”

I took a breath. “Yes, I'm still pregnant.” I knew without seeing him that he had closed his eyes and raised his fist.

“Okay,” he said. “Yes. I'd like to come down and talk to you.” He was trying not to spook me, like a police officer coaxing a distraught woman from a ledge.

I wanted him to be with me right now. But the decision about the baby needed to be mine. What if he promised he would marry me and raise the child, then changed his mind? I didn't want to see him until I knew my results. It took all my self-control to tell him, “Next weekend. You can come down Saturday, for Laurel's concert. We can talk about it then.”

“Won't that be too late?”

“Please.”

“But if you need me in the meantime—”

I need you now. Just come. “
I'll call you,” I said.

“Right,” he said. “Jane? What I told you on the island, I still mean it.”

I thought of that cup in the bathroom. What if I followed the instructions, mixed all the chemicals, and the little ring that meant you were pregnant didn't appear? “You're lying. You were mad as hell at me for not calling. You didn't love me. You wanted to wring my neck.”

“I loved you
and
I wanted to wring your neck.” He must have been nervous—his laugh came out that bray. “I meant to ask, what's up with little Mickey?”

“Mickey? The homozygote?”

“Yeah, how's our little homozygote? How's the bugger doing?”

“Well.” I drew it out. “I think he's expecting, too.”

The first thing that Monday morning, I called the clinic in Brookline and arranged an abortion for the following week. I wasn't sure what I would do, but I wanted the appointment, just in case. Then I biked to the lab, hoping Vic would be in Washington. But of course he was there. He wore a suit—not the old one, whose sleeves were too short, but a new gray tweed tailored with a much more substantial person in mind. A new garment bag was hanging from his door. He stood beside his desk, sliding manila folders into an attaché case. I went about my business as unobtrusively as possible, but someone came up behind me—I heard the squeak of new shoes.

“How are you holding up?” Vic asked. Vivian Gold, the lab's technician, scurried in and out with boxes of supplies. I could tell she was trying to overhear our conversation. “That was one rough press conference. I've never known questions to get so personal. I should have guessed. I should have found some way to save you.”

I would get over it, I said. I would be more prepared the next time.

“Good,” he said. “I'm glad to hear that.” He tightened his tie until the knot kissed his Adam's apple. “I have to admit, I was wondering what you would do about the test.” He cleared his throat so many times I worried that the tie might be choking him. “You still haven't . . . have you?” He flapped one hand to wave away his question. “You don't have to tell me. But I hope you don't mind if I suggest someone you might talk to.” He handed me a card. Helen Bausch-Tannenbaum, M.D., Ph.D. “She's the psychologist who's agreed to serve on our committee. She's on the staff at MacLean. Harvard Medical faculty, top drawer. If you want to talk to her, just say the word. I doubt she would even charge you. We're trying to get a sense of how to go about counseling people in your position.”

My position,
I thought. Even if I took the trouble to explain
my
position
to this Helen Bausch-Tannenbaum, what would she advise that I hadn't yet considered? I told Vic I didn't want to talk to anyone right then, I just needed time to think.

“Of course,” he said. “I just didn't want you to feel I was leaving you high and dry. I'll be spending Mondays and Tuesdays in Washington, and the rest of the week up here. I'll do everything in my power to find places for anyone who's not happy with my switching gears this way. Not that you'll have any trouble. Your only problem will be to make the best choice. My advice is, listen to all the offers, then go where you think you'll be able to do the best science.”

Already I had been approached by the directors of several labs. The prospect that I might be flown out to the Salk
or find myself discussing my requirements for lab space with the director of the Rockefeller Institute, or even here, at MIT, left me short of breath. Although I couldn't help thinking that if I learned I had the gene, I might not want to spend the last years of my life cooped up in a lab, even if it were the Salk.

“At least I don't have to worry about finding someone who's willing to take in Susan,” Vic said. “It's best for her, I think.” He lowered his voice, although Susan hadn't come in. “Her personality might be an advantage, as a lawyer. With her background in genetics—mark my words, DNA testing for paternity and rape will be the coming thing—she might make quite a career.” Vic glanced around the lab. “Where's Yosef? Where's Lew?”

I hadn't seen Lew in days. And it seemed like tattling to reveal that Yosef probably was home with a hangover. I tried changing the subject. “Maureen should be getting a million offers, too, shouldn't she.”

“She hasn't told you?”

“Hasn't told me what?”

He lifted his hands. “She got shafted. It's heartbreaking. We got the news Friday. A paper arrived at
Nature
with basically the same results, about the parasites.”

“But who—”

“Some Peruvians at the university down there. They claim they came up with the result independently. But that's a lot of . . . It's just not very likely. The paper looks like something someone threw together in one afternoon. Maybe someone at the public health department leaked
Maureen's idea. Maybe they wanted it to be a Peruvian scientist who gets the credit.”

“What's she going to do?” The shrillness of my voice set a rack of beakers chattering on their shelf.

“What can she do? It's not as though we have proof of any wrongdoing. I went far enough, telling Matthew Quinburn I thought there had been foul play. He said, ‘Oh, tut, tut, that's not a very sporting way to respond to a competitor.'”

It couldn't have happened, could it? Those two trips to Peru, all those hours in the lab, that brilliant intuition . . . “I'll go over there right now,” I told Vic.

He seemed relieved. If there was anything he could do to help Maureen feel better, I should let him know. “And, Jane?” he said. “Remember, if you ever want to talk to someone, to Dr. Tannenbaum . . .”

“Doctor who?”

“Dr. Tannenbaum. The psychologist.”

“Oh, right. I have her card.”

He crossed his arms. “I seem to have started a number of things without thinking how they might turn out. If I've caused you any harm—”

“Vic,” I said, “no matter what happens, I won't blame you.” I meant what I said. Then why did I assume that if Laurel tested positive, she would blame me?

“Is there anything else wrong? You seem, well, I can't quite put my finger on it.” He lowered his gaze to my waist.

“I'd better go,” I said. “I'm worried about Maureen.”

He rummaged through his pockets as if he had left his talent for giving comfort in that other suit back home. “I'll
see you later in the week. There's a number on my desk . . . it's where I'll be in Washington, in case anyone needs me.” But he sounded as if he guessed that no one would.

Maureen lived in a dorm for MIT students a decade younger than she was, but the apartment lay within wheelchair distance of the lab and was built to be accessible. I took the elevator to the seventeenth floor and walked down a cinder-block hall carpeted with what appeared to be Astroturf. When I knocked, no one answered. Maureen had given me a key for emergencies. I knocked again and then went in.

The air inside was rank. Scattered around the living room were cardboard plates, white cartons oozing oily sauce, chewed samosas, and wads of rice. Maureen's collection of shoes lay strewn about the floor, as were her underpants and her leggings. “Maureen?” I called. “It's me.” I drew back the bilious orange drapes that came with the apartment. In the bedroom off the living room I found the empty wheelchair. A lump Maureen's size lay beneath the red silk quilt. I sat on the mattress. “Vic told me what happened. God, I don't know how they could do that to you. Maybe you could prove they stole the idea. Maybe you could get someone down there in the public health department to admit they sold you out.”

Maureen groaned and rolled over. Spikes of yellow hair were matted to her skull. She smelled like spoiled cheese. “It's not just that. It's everything.” I reached out, but she thrashed away. “He won't come! He won't come!”

“But I thought he was coming down here this weekend. He couldn't make it?”

“The asshole won't live here. He came to visit me so we could work things out. I just assumed . . . There are thousands of jobs here for someone with his qualifications. He could find a job in government. Or as a lobbyist. Or he could work for some kind of fish business. There are a lot more things he can do down here than I can do up there!” She snapped her head back and forth. “But he won't. He says he can't leave that stinking little fishing town of his.” Her voice curdled into something ugly. “‘
They're my people. They depend on me. My roots are there.'
Christ, when I hear people talk about their roots, I want to vomit.”

“He expects you to move up there? What does he think you'll do, become a lobsterman?”

She pulled herself up. She wore a black bra and black panties. I could see the way arthritis had twisted her hips, as if someone had wrung her pelvis. “One minute he's saying he can't live without me. The next, I'm not worth giving up that stupid mayor's job or that stupid job at that stupid library.”

Maybe she could get a job at the Jackson Lab, I said. Bar Harbor wasn't far from New Jerusalem. Maybe Paul just assumed she could work there.

“An hour's drive on those windy little roads? What am I going to do if I get stuck in the snow? Besides, why would I want to work in a mouse lab? I'm a molecular biologist. I don't like working with anything whose cage you have to clean.” She clawed at her scalp. Several spikes came uprooted. I had always thought this was a figure of speech;
no one would actually tear out her hair. “How the hell would I even get around that town? There isn't a decent sidewalk. If you want anything, you have to get in the van and drive.”

I reminded her that she would have someone to help her.

“I don't know what I would have!” She started crying again. “I don't know if he really cares where he lives, or he's just using this as an excuse.”

I told her she was wrong. Paul was the one who had proposed to her, hadn't he?

“Sure he proposed. He's probably one of these guys who gets off on the idea of fucking a crip. Don't look so shocked. There are plenty of guys like that. It's exotic. It makes them think they're great guys—hey, they don't mind if their girlfriend's in a wheelchair. Then they start to think what it would really be like to have to deal with the wheelchair all the time, and, like, if they had a kid, they might have to do a lot of the day-to-day taking care of it.”

Paul wasn't that kind of guy, I said.

“You don't think so?” She wiped her eyes, leaving mascara on the sheet. “I don't know what to think anymore. Like Yosef says, it's a cosmic plot. Who do you know who's had more rotten luck than me?” She slapped the headboard. “How could so many shitty things happen to one person?”

I shrank back, as if my own good fortune had come at her expense. “Come on, we'll go to the lab and call what's-his-name, in Lima, the one who runs all those free clinics. He's a good guy, and he loves to gossip. He probably knows what happened. And if he doesn't, he'll help us find out.”

“Never mind that. It would have been nice. Really nice. But that's not what I was in it for. We found the parasite.
No one else is going to go blind. The people whose opinions count know I did the work. But, Jane, the whole reason I didn't take the time to fly down there and find those parasites myself was Paul. If I don't end up with him, after all of this, I swear . . .”

“All right, so there must be something you can do about him
.
If he loves you, there ought to be a way.”

“You sound like a cue for a song-and-dance number.”

“It beats lying around this pigsty in your underwear.”

“What, singing?”

“No, doing something.”

She ran the edge of the quilt between her knuckles. “Fine. I'll
do
something. I'll drive up there. What that will accomplish I don't know. But if you think I should
do
something, I'll hang out around town and see if I can imagine spending the rest of my life there. I'll ask him straight out why he's gotten cold feet, and I'll be able to see his face when he answers me. Only, you're going to have to drive up there with me, Miss Do-Something, because I don't have money to take the plane and I can't drive eight hours by myself.”

Sure, I thought, why not. If we drove up to New Jerusalem, Maureen would know she had done everything she could to convince Paul to marry her. As for me, I was too scattered to do anything much in the lab. And there was something up there, in New Jerusalem, or maybe on the island, some information I lacked, an important piece of data. One of the samples didn't fit.

I asked Maureen when she wanted to leave. She fluffed her hair. “I'll need a few hours to put myself together. I
ought to call him and let him know we're coming. But he'll only talk me out of it. Let's just go. We'll leave this afternoon. About one?” She swung herself into her chair, then rolled across the putrid shag to the bathroom. I gathered up her shoes and tossed them in the closet. I threw away the cartons of rancid food, stuffed the dirty clothes in the hamper. “Need anything at the store?” I called. “Or at the lab? You okay in there?” Steam swirled about the bathroom. In the shower stall, Maureen was slumped on her plastic chair, water beating against her shoulders. “Maureen?” I said. “I know things seem bad now. But you're attractive. You're smart. You're funny. If worse comes to worst, you'll find someone else.”

She spoke without lifting her head—I barely could distinguish her voice from the shower's hiss. “Yeah. I'm smart. I'm funny. And I don't have itty-bitty flippers instead of arms. I should be happy to be alive. I'm lucky to have a career. I'm lucky not to be sitting on a street corner in a little wooden cart begging for change. I'm greedy to want a kid. I'm greedy to want a nice guy to love me and cuddle up with me at night and make sure I don't fry if there's a fire.”