World and Town (13 page)

“Anyway, the work will go on.” He sets his hands on his thighs as if preparing to move out of its way.

“
One cock dies, and others crow.
”

“As the Chinese say.” He pauses. “If that’s a consolation, to know how replaceable one is.”

“It’s good to change gears, Carter.” She hears tenderness in her voice and wonders if he hears it, too—wonders if he’d want to hear it. “And you knew all along this moment would come.”

“Did I?”

“You said it about your father. That a moment comes when you’re past your prime—when your challenge is to accept it with grace.”

“I said that?”

“That and ‘The greater the man, the greater the fool he can make of himself at the end.’ ”

“Ouch.” With his head bent, he is all shining scalp. “I do feel I at least did all the science I had it in me to do,” he says, finally. “What I didn’t do was simply beyond my capacity.”

“And isn’t that something? To be able to say that?” She is trying to help.

“If only everyone could, you mean.”

“I didn’t say that, Carter.” She says this firmly.

Still, he plunges on. “You know, Hattie, I’m sorry about what happened. That we had that misunderstanding.”

That misunderstanding.

“And that you left academia in the end,” he goes on. “Left research.”

It’s the knees of her own yoga pants that catch her eye now—blue. “You knew. You saw me go.”

“Yes and no. I knew, but I couldn’t watch.”

Outside, it’s dark enough now that, though she can still see woods, the room is reflected in the window, too, so that she and Carter look for all the world like forest spirits, superimposed on the moving tree mass. How companionable they look! Chatting with no particular animus, it seems, about something the blue jays said.

“I don’t blame you for what happened,” she says. “You did what you had to do. What you were trained to do.”

“You blame me for other things.”

The floor is cold.

“You might have asked what happened to me,” she says, finally—trying not to be
testy
, but the words are what they are. “Once you turned around.”

“I thought you’d be in touch.”

“You mean you assumed you’d stay in my picture whether or not I stayed in yours.”

“I was in a position to help.”

“And didn’t you always help when you could.”

“So you do blame me for what happened. That I didn’t go to bat for you when that job came up.”

Her chest tightens; she cannot respond.

“In any case, I did wonder, you know—my father, too. Where you went.” He looks at her as if to keep her from disappearing again. “You joined Amy Fist’s lab, didn’t you?”

“So you knew.” She wills herself to breathe.

“You guys were pretty hot for a while. Beat us out for a few grants, if I recall.”

“Until Guy LaPoint told that review board that Amy was running a women’s shelter, not a lab. That we were more about Title IX than about science.”

“Good old Guy LaPoint Blank, as we called him.”

“Your enemy turned hit man.”

He shrugs. “Whom you confronted at a conference, I heard.”

“I did.”

“The Fist must have loved that.”

“She said it had nothing to do with justice. She said an interest in justice showed itself in one’s judgment. Of which I showed none. She said I showed indignation, which was something else altogether.”

He laughs. “Leave it to Amy to eat her own young. And then what? Didn’t she leave science?”

“She did. Saying it was a boys’ club and always would be.”

“A fine Fist jump from unsupported assertion to groundless speculation.”

“Carter.”

“All right, all right. It was a boys’ club.”

“Is, Carter. Is.”

“Is. All right. Though there’s been progress, you know. You and Amy were ahead of your time.”

Hattie’s turn to shrug; she tries. “She left to write a screenplay about Barbara McClintock. And I left to help her.”

“But let me guess. No one in Hollywood knew what a transposon was or much cared, either.”

“It was before Barbara got her Nobel.”

“Bad timing.” A nod. “And then?”

“Then I went to teach at a private school and married and had Josh.”

“You dropped out.”

“Got myself a new web of significance.”

He clears his throat. “My mother would have gone hunting for you, I’m sure,” he supplies, “had she not gotten depressed.”

“It didn’t by any chance depress her that hunting down missing foreign students was her job, did it?”

A pause. “I don’t know if you realize this, Hattie, but she was hospitalized on and off for years.”

Hattie stops. Sweet Mrs. Hatch? With her symphony work and her four-handed piano music and what Dr. Hatch used to call her maddening equanimity?

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” says Hattie. “No, I didn’t know. I’m sorry. And how is she now?” If she’s even alive—Hattie’s braced to hear that she’s missed, not just Reedie’s death, but Mrs. Hatch’s, too.

“Better. It took the docs years to get her meds right, but they finally did. Of course, it’s been hard for her, watching her friends die. For a while there she was going to two funerals a month. But now they’re all dead, so that’s over with. And people do make a fuss when you hit ninety-eight. She’s finally a celebrity in her own right, now that she’s losing her marbles. Her skin cracks in the winter like a dairy farmer’s.”

“Your poor mother. I’m so sorry—I’ve been remiss. I …”

“You were young and confused.” He waves his hand, and this, too, comes to seem like a distant past with no real power now. “Never mind, Hattie. We lived. Though you really think we should’ve gone looking for you. That I should’ve.”

She thinks of Lee and Joe—what she would have done.
Come back. Come back
. “You don’t?”

He clears his throat again. “I suppose it’s not clear to me what the point would have been, Hattie. Forgive me for saying so. But it’s not as though we had a spare professorship for you.”

“And that would have been the point, of course.”

“Didn’t you need a job?”

“What’s more, you assumed, as you said, that I’d be in touch.”

“If you needed something. Yes.”

“Help, you mean—career help. If I needed career help.”

“Yes.”

“I was an associate of yours.”

“Weren’t you?”

His reply is quick, but he does not seem surprised that Hattie’s is not. She runs a finger along an unlashed rib.

“You’ve wasted time in such a concerted fashion,” she says finally.

He stands.

“You know who you remind me of?” she says. “My mother. Religiously getting rid of her religious past.”

“You can’t be angry with me still.”

“Am I angry?”

“It was impossible, Hattie.” He leans on the shallow sill.

“I’m delighted to see how you reached your conclusion,” she says. “Whatever you’re talking about. Which I’m sure I don’t know.”

“I’m talking about us, Hattie. You and me and what we were and weren’t. Mainly weren’t, I think you’ll agree.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Hattie.” He turns and throws his hands up. “You can’t back away from a real talk now.”

“I’m too old for this, Carter.”

“You’re not too old. Hattie. Look at me.” His silhouette on the window is large and dramatic now, like a shadow puppet’s. “You just haven’t forgiven me and never will. You and Meredith and Maisy. None of you.”

“
Bú duì.
”

“You think I put you on the altar of research.”

“
Bú duì.
”

“You think I was a mindless whore who saw nothing but his work. His immortal work.”

“
Bú duì.
”

“You think my lab was my world, in which you were never more than a guest. And now, on top of everything, I’ve come back. What is he doing here, you want to know. Just when you’ve gotten your own little world set up. Your dogs, your friends, your house.” His silhouette is scarily still. “Well, now you know how it feels.”

“To be disturbed, you mean?”

“To be torn, Hattie. Torn. As in torn asunder.”

“I think I already knew that.”

The windows are old; she can hear the wind outside them, blowing.

“Did you,” he says. “Then tell me. Was it Joe who taught you to stonewall or has your old sweet reticence just hardened into something mean?”

She stares at the boat a moment—that crosshatch of shadows.

“If you want to know why Meredith left you, Carter, I can tell you,” she says, finally.

He broods.

“If you want to know why Maisy won’t speak to you, I can tell you that, too.” She loosens the laces of a walking shoe and pulls up its tongue. “Why no one forgives you. I can tell you.” She stretches down to the floor with her leg and seats her heel with a little wiggle.

“Can you,” he says, glaring. “Can you. Well, I can tell you why, too. Because you don’t want to.” He steps toward her. “Because it’s useful and familiar and pays more than moving on. That’s why.”

She is straightening up, half shod, her weight on her shoeless foot, when he grasps her, hard. How large men are—she had forgotten—the mass of them; his hands are iron hands, crushing her shoulders. She rocks back—throws the shoe but misses—her mouth grazing his warm shirt as he suddenly lets go, pulling the light cord so hard the pocket knife leaps. Then how loud her heart, and how loud his footsteps on the gravel—louder than the wind—everything pouring through the open door, everything blowing and rattling; everything louder in the dark. She breathes, circling a shoulder. The other one. Tests her bad ankle. She hears his heavy steps on his porch—those boots. Then her hand jumps—that light!—the Turners’ flood-lights—her hand instinctively shading her eyes thanks to her superior colliculus—the same quick-response center that enables frogs to catch flies, she used to tell her kids. The yard is lit up like a football stadium; her retinas need time. But there—now she can see again. How weird the light, though, and how cold the blowing air, almost as cold as the floor. Her walking shoe has gotten kicked under the stool. She bends down, shaking, and dumps the sawdust out.

A
call! Will everything involving her child remain an event forever? Josh does e-mail to say what country he’s in. What he’s working on for the radio—he tells her that, too. An autistic boy who managed to wander over the border from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, only to clean disappear, for example—that’s one story Hattie won’t forget. She almost wrote back then to say that she could imagine how the boy’s mother must feel—how nothing could be worse than realizing your child has vanished. But in the end she just said what a great story it was.

“This is Josh.”

As if she might not realize. But all right. He has a new girlfriend, he reports. Well, not so new, actually. Actually, he’s been seeing her for two months, but hadn’t wanted to say anything until he could tell how it was going. Now, though, he can divulge that she’s a journalist—a stringer right now, but with real prospects, he’s sure. A diplomat’s daughter, a third-culture kid. Went to school in the States, but her parents are Chinese-Brazilian. She has three passports.

“Wonderful.” Hattie buries her fingers in Annie’s soft scruff. “What’s her name?”

“In English?”

“Sure.”

Serena, age twenty-three.

“A little young?”

Silence. Maybe she shouldn’t have said that? Or is it just the connection?

“I thought so, but she thinks my thinking about that is outmoded,” he says, finally. “Dinosaur that I am at thirty-two.” He is going to meet her parents in Delhi.

“Are you nervous?” Annie gives a play bow, then runs off; Cato and Reveille lie at Hattie’s feet.

“Serena says I should just try not to drool. Which you did teach me, I told her. Of course, it wasn’t easy,” he goes on. “But I did learn.”

Hattie laughs. Though the banter—she sometimes wonders if Josh doesn’t hide behind his banter the way he hides behind his reporting. If it isn’t a species of talking without talking—of being tough. When he was little, he and Joe would retreat to the woods for weeks at a time—a wonderful thing, except that Joe would sometimes take a retreat from the retreat, leaving Josh alone for a day or two. Hardening him, Joe said. Insisting that Josh could handle it, even when he was just nine or ten. And Josh used to insist he could handle it, too, never mind that he could fit three pairs of socks in the hiking boots Joe got him; his backpack hung down to his knees. He insisted he liked being left alone like that.
I did, Ma, except the time a snake came. I did
.

As for what Serena likes: “She’s crazy about Pushkin—she loves Pushkin. She says it was worth learning Russian just to read Pushkin.”

“And where’s home for her?”

“She doesn’t have one, really, but thinks my thinking about that is outmoded, too.”

Hattie moves some copies of
Nature
off her reclin-o-matic. “Didn’t Pushkin have a home?”

“That’s what I said. I told her I thought we were programmed to be faithful to a place. Like storks with their—what’s that German word?”

“
Ortstreue.
” A Carter word.

“
Ortstreue
. Thank you.” His on-the-air voice. “I told her you developed different relationships. But she says how do I even know, when my parents could never settle down, and now look at me.”

“That was your father.”

He pauses then, as he always does, at the mention of Joe. And for a moment, they share the short silence; it’s like a hallway they both use.

“She says we have Listserv to keep in touch with people,” he goes on, “and that we journalists are like a floating village anyway. You ever see those? In Cambodia?”

“I have new neighbors from Cambodia.”

“No kidding. And here I just did the decimation of the catfish in the Tonle Sap.”

Would he have said more about his new girlfriend if she hadn’t brought up her neighbors? Anyway, she explains about the trailer. The Chhungs.

“But you like the girl—this So-PEE.”

“I like them all. But the girl, especially. Yes.”

“Let me guess. The daughter you always wanted.”

Joe’s bluntness.

“Though why would you want a daughter when your son is everything you’d ever dreamed of?” he goes on.