“He’s being just amazing,” Jenny said firmly. Of course Laura was crying. She was almost too empathetic. Her tears made Jenny feel tough and weather-beaten—pitiably hardened. “He’s being very, very strong.”
In the back of her mind, the last few conversations she had had with Laura about Jeremy echoed shamefully: her complaints and frustration with his ailments, her irritation and lack of sympathy. Another person—Laura, for instance—might have aired her guilt over these and taken solace in confiding and being reassured: How could you know? Who doesn’t feel irritated at their husband these days? But Jenny did not air her dirty laundry, not even with such a good friend. She would not take the bland and reassuring platitudes her own confessions of guilt would elicit.
Laura wiped her eyes and sniffled. “Well, you’re amazing, Jenny,” she said. “And you have to promise to ask for help whenever—I’ll try to think of the right things, but I know I won’t always, so promise you’ll ask—”
“I know. I know.” Jenny scooped Colin out of his chair and onto her lap. He was not going to eat any more. This was clear. “I appreciate it.”
For a moment they were silent. From the play area, Miranda’s voice could be heard making ominous vrooming sounds with a truck. And on Jenny’s lap, Colin began to squirm and fuss.
“Do you want me to hold him for a minute?” Laura asked. And as if in response, Colin lurched forward and grabbed at Laura’s water glass, spreading a pool of liquid over Miranda’s abandoned crayon scrawls and dripping down onto Jenny’s lap.
She handed him over to Laura, who began immediately to coo and speak in baby talk that made him smile. Jenny dabbed a napkin at her wet lap. “So I’m sure you heard from Elise that Neil is back,” she said.
“Neil? Oh, right—yes. Yeah.” Laura tossed her hair and looked nervously over at the play area. “I know. I ran into him, actually. On the street a little while ago. I was going to tell you—I mean, that’s part of why I was calling, and then I didn’t hear back from you—”
There was something guilty and practiced in Laura’s response. She was a terrible liar. She had probably had lunch with him or something. And suddenly, in light of everything, the whole situation seemed so maddeningly, humiliatingly ridiculous to Jenny—the idea that everyone was scurrying around behind her back in fear of upsetting her, and probably talking about what a stupid concept it had been from the start to use Neil’s sperm and then expect him to remain forever out of her life, and perhaps worst of all the fact that it did upset her and it had been stupid, and meanwhile her husband had cancer.
“It doesn’t matter, you know,” she said frostily. “It’s fine. Neil can do whatever he likes and see whoever he likes. I’m not some sort of monster, you know.”
“Oh, I know!” Laura protested, looking even guiltier. “I just wouldn’t want you to think—” She stopped and colored slightly.
Jenny looked at her expectantly.
“I mean—I know it’s sensitive, your whole agreement, and it must feel weird having him just resurface here and not be in touch with you even though I know you don’t really want him to be in touch with you…”
Jenny frowned and looked over at the play area. It struck her suddenly, as Laura said it, that maybe in fact she did perversely want Neil to be back in touch with her. That if he was going to come out of the weird incognito existence he had created for himself and enter problematically into the normal orbit of her life, of Colin’s life, despite everything she had erected against this possibility—he might as well be in touch with her. She felt, in some deep-down way, betrayed because he hadn’t.
“Honestly, Laura,” she said, “it doesn’t matter. And whatever Neil is or is not doing is really not important to me. I mean, he could come see Colin, for all I care.”
“Of course! Of course! Oh, God. Jenny—I’m sorry.” Laura’s eyes welled up again, and on her lap, Colin looked up at her with a serious, searching expression. “Oh it’s okay.” She bounced him a little and tried to smile. “You’re such a sweet little man and here I am upsetting you. Maybe you’d better go back to your mama. I’m sorry, Jenny.” She shook her head, handing the still-transfixed Colin back over the wreckage of the table. “I just can’t say anything right today.”
Miranda chose that moment to come barreling back toward them, waving a dingy rag doll. “Look, look, Mama! Dora! I find Dora!”
“Oh, look at that, sweetie!” Laura said, scooping her up and burying her face in Miranda’s hair. Miranda pressed her cheek against Laura’s chest and held her as though they had just, together, emerged from some exhilarating and risky trial. Jenny felt an odd jealousy rumble in her chest—would she ever inspire such fierce love in Colin?
“Do you want to show it to Colin?” Laura said, when at last Miranda pulled away and squirmed to the ground.
Miranda stopped midflight and turned to look at Jenny and Colin doubtfully.
“What have you got, hon?” Jenny asked, forcing a smile.
“Dora,” Miranda said. She extended the limp doll toward Colin, who turned his head away and made a whiny sound of protest.
“He not care,” Miranda announced gravely.
At home, Jenny broke one of her major parenting edicts. She did not put Colin to bed “drowsy but alert.” She rocked him. She held him in her arms and swished soundlessly back and forth in the glider, feeling the weight of his little head against the crook of her arm. It was almost pitch-dark in his room. The last light of day was obliterated by the powerful blackout shades on his windows, and he did not sleep with a night-light. There was only the glow of the humidifier power button, illuminating a circle of carpet in a bright ghoulish green.
Jenny couldn’t make out her son’s face or the contours of his little arms alongside his body—he was simply a small, solid mass with a round head pressing its new, soft spray of hair against her skin. She could feel the breath moving in and out of his body and hear the tiny purring, almost mewing sound he made as he fell asleep. And it was so beautiful. She felt she could sit there, in his room, in this chair, all night: why had she never done this before? She had been so proud of his ability to be laid in his crib wide awake and put himself to sleep with no more than a little squawk or two. Who had time to sit around rocking a baby in the dark? she always said. And in the early days, when he was first born, she had listened to podcasts while she nursed him so as to avoid the blank stretch of time this entailed. But right now, with Jeremy lying next door, the specter of death like a dark and inescapable balloon tethered to his toe, she wanted to just rock, thinking of nothing but the feel of this baby in her arms.
When she entered her own room, Jeremy lay reading a thick book, with a picture of a stern-looking Indian man on the cover, entitled Heal Yourself.
“Do you need anything?” Jenny asked, and Jeremy looked up, his reading glasses sliding down his nose.
“No. What happened? You were in there a long time.” It sounded almost accusatory.
“Nothing—it’s fine.” Jenny turned to the wall and began to take off her clothes. “I just wanted to—” She cut herself off, shocked to find herself tearing up. Behind her, she could hear Jeremy pick the book back up again. She took a breath and stepped out of her skirt, pulled over her head the sensible nightgown she had bought when Colin was born.
Then she lay down and pretended to read while internally she ran through a litany of logistics until she had drowned out the fear erupting in her mind. She would need to hang the curtains in the bedroom for Jeremy’s recovery—there was nothing colder than a room with blinds and no drapes. She should call Jeremy’s mother and dissuade her from coming for as long as possible, and she would have to work out some new hours with Maria. Plus there was health insurance to be dealt with and follow-up appointments to be scheduled. Gradually the march of these details stamped out her gathering panic.
“What time did they say they would start the chemo?” she asked later, when they were lying in the dark, Jeremy on his side with the Posturepedi
c back-support pillow curled along his spine, and Jenny on her back. She felt unsure in her new role as cancer-wife, like a person with a prosthetic arm trying to make it normal, trying to think of it as her own.
“Sometime before noon,” Jeremy said.
“That’s helpful—” Jenny started to say sarcastically, but stopped herself.
There was a rustling of sheets and covers as Jeremy turned to face her. The pillow remained between them like a squishy cartoon fence. He had to lift his head to see over it.
“Have you told Eric yet? About me?”
“No.” Jenny sighed.
“You’ve got to do it.”
“I know.”
There was the distant sound of wheels on the road below, at the bottom of the hill. It struck Jenny suddenly as lonely, even a little dangerous, how much space there was around them. It was so different from their place in the Back Bay.
“Do you like it here? Do you sleep better with less noise?” she asked, and she could sense Jeremy frowning beside her, noting the non sequitur.
“Sure.” He rolled onto his back. But then, as if on second thought, he shifted and propped himself on one elbow again, facing her.
“It’s good, Jenny,” he said. “You did right to get us out here. It’ll be a good place.”
And in the moment that she let herself meet his eyes, she felt the movement of so many dark shapes and unspeakable questions between them. She wanted to take each and shine her usual bright light of common sense and optimism upon it. She wanted to speak of all these uncertainties and pluck them from the darkness where they lurked menacingly, waiting to be named.
But with what language? They were the province of art, music, literature, or religion. And these did not belong to her. Or to Jeremy, for that matter. So she just lay there. “I hope so,” she said finally, and her voice was tinny and inadequate. But it was all she had. It would have to do.
18
IT WAS UNUSUAL FOR ELISE to find herself sitting on the ruched leather sofa in Harold Rangen’s office. She had a great deal of autonomy in the lab, and Harold, who was the head of it, was more the type to drop in on people unannounced than to call “meetings” in his cushy MTV Cribs-style office with its huge, inelegant pieces of furniture and black marble desktop.
But this morning he had called her in.
“Licorice?” he asked, opening a wooden box full of fancy rhombus-shaped black candy. His nervous manner and lack of eye contact did not bode well for what he had to say.
Elise waved it away. “This is about Ula?” She had told Harold about her pet project from the beginning, and, while he had not been thrilled, he had agreed to look the other way. Now that she had succeeded—now that Ula was producing milk (and milk with a very high plasma protein content), Elise had entrusted him to offer the report to corporate.
“Well, it’s about our research in general. And about Ula as it applies to that,” he added as Elise frowned.
“Harold,” Elise said. “I don’t need a lot of frills. It’s me. What’s the deal?”
Harold’s fingers hesitated over the glistening contents of the box for a moment and then withdrew, empty, having apparently reconsidered the effect of conducting the meeting with a two-inch square of bitter, chewy sugar in his mouth. He popped the lid shut with reluctant finality.
“Well, everyone is impressed by your research—and your dedication, of course. And they recognize that you have a real gift for exactly the kind of science we are all about here at the Pharm—”
“Mm-hm,” Elise said impatiently.
“And they are eager—really, really eager—to encourage that—no, sorry, let’s be real here—to use that to best advantage, but—but—” he held up a hand in anticipation of her interruption. “They don’t see the development of this protein as the best use of that.”
Elise had braced for this, but it did not render her any less annoyed.
“Do they understand the data? Ula’s rate of production is off the charts—it could just be her, but—Do they get that? And the bare minimum adaptation of the formula it took to get—”
“They do.” Harold nodded gravely. “The thing is, the data are not the defining variable for this decision.”
“Ah.”
“They have Genron’s corporate objectives to follow and the company-wide protocol—I mean, you know this a supportive place for scientists, this is a great place to do truly first-in-field research, but—but there is a process by which that research gets directed—we’re not a university lab. We’re not just following whatever we want…”
Elise rolled her eyes.
“…and we’re working within a given space—”
“And this line of research is not in that space? It’s developing a plasma protein—isn’t that what we’re all about?”
“I mean within a given market space. Look, Elise, Genron has no plans to develop the market for any drug using the protein Ula produces. It can be used to treat…what? A disease five thousand people worldwide suffer from? Mostly in third-world countries?”
“Oh,” Elise said sarcastically, surprised by her own anger. “And so it’s not worth it—not worth this minimal adaptation of our existing platform to help them. This no-sweat-off-our-backs—”
“Elise.” Harold looked irritated. “I know it’s hard to put aside something you have invested time and energy into, but to be honest, I’m surprised that you’re…surprised by this. You know the rule—Marketing develops the market, we develop the product. Not the other way around.”
Elise was silent.
Harold tipped his chair back and put his feet up on the desk in a stagy gesture of comfort. It did not look natural, or comfortable. It occurred to Elise, through her anger, that he might have taken a management class that instructed him to strike such a pose at a time such as this.
“I know this is your baby…” he began.
“It is certainly not my baby,” Elise snapped.
“…but the main thing is you’re doing excellent work here. Top-notch. And they know that. Everyone knows that. And if you can keep it up”—he lowered his voice conspiratorially—“I think you’ll be pleased come year-end.”
“Mm,” Elise sniffed. “Well,” she said, standing, “I’m sure there are other labs that would be interested in using this research as a foundation.”
“Elise.” Harold dropped his feet to the ground, his face reddening. “That is absolutely not an option. Do you really think you could share research that rests on this much proprietary science? I’m letting you off easy here for having even started down this road in the first place, but if you”—he seemed to become slightly breathless in the heat of his urgency—“even so much as share one shred of this research, Genron will not hesitate to take you to court.”
Elise could feel the blood mounting to her face.
“I have seen it happen, and it ain’t pretty.”
It took Elise a moment to regain her composure. She could feel her heart beating in her ears.
“I see.” She nodded icily.
“You’re a talented scientist, Elise,” Harold said. “Don’t turn into some radical over this.”
Elise fumed the whole way home, stopping for gas and for flowers in order to slow her progress and give herself better recovery time. This would not be the right day to come home with a cloud over her head: they had a birthday dinner to go to—Chrissy’s sister’s. The whole Noyes clan in all its bustling good spirits would be there. But Harold’s alternately apologetic and strong-arm tactics remained tangled around her like the beginning of an unraveling thread. Clearly, she had been naïve. She knew Genron did not support scientific digression. This was the difference between the for-profit and nonprofit world—Genron was driven, after all, by the bottom line. Somehow, though, Elise had imagined her own practical assessment of the benefits—the minimal adjustments to the existing science and the incredible promise of these first results—could be a proxy for the company’s. But this had been hubris. She coul
d admit this. And the self-delusion of this confidence was disturbing.
Ordinarily she would have called Jenny. What is this? she would have railed at her. Bureaucratic blindness? This is why American science is falling behind—the great corporate quashing of innovation for the sake of profit. Or she would have tried to persuade her of the benefits of continuing the research—she would have argued for the moral necessity of pursuing this research, and gotten nowhere. She would have searched for more practical-minded, innovative arguments for how, ultimately, even such a tiny market could be turned into a piece of the profit puzzle. Jenny had a powerful voice. If she could be swayed, she could sway others.
But given the present circumstances, Elise did not do this. And there was, in a way, some relief that accompanied this. Because if Elise really thought about it—if Elise really imagined the conversation they would have—she knew what side Jenny would take. It was the elephant that had stood in the room between them ever since Elise had joined Genron. And their friendship was the reason Elise did not want to look at it.
When Elise arrived home, Chrissy and the boys were ready to go. Chrissy had packed a bag of homemade sesame noodle salad, wine, and mini-Playmobil sets for each of the kids. And she had dressed the boys in their cutest Angela Noyes–knit sweaters and baby jeans, and put her own hair back in a pretty, turquoise-studded clip. The whole scene made Elise, on top of everything else, feel like resting her head against the steering wheel and going to sleep. But instead, she climbed out and handed Chrissy the flowers, scooped up the boys, and tried to be normal and warm and unembittered.
This did not fool Chrissy. “What’s wrong?” She frowned. “I know my family can be—”
“It has nothing to do with the party,” Elise said.
Chrissy raised her eyebrows. Nigel looked up at Elise searchingly. “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine,” Elise said, shaking her head against his warm, soft hair. “Just give me a minute.”
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