Snakewoman of Little Egypt

by Robert Hellenga

  Walking across campus, Cramer—everyone called him “Cramer”—and I talked about how what you saw through a microscope was always messier than the diagrams in the textbook. Over coffee in Seymour Union, he explained his “translocation” project. He needed someone who wasn’t afraid of rattlesnakes. He had two other grad students lined up, but they were in fact afraid. He was worried about them. He needed someone he could count on.

  “What makes you think I’m not afraid of rattlesnakes?” I asked.

  “A little bird told me,” he said.

  Claire, I thought. I should never have told that story to Claire. But then, why not?

  In the fall, Cramer went on, a local farmer had discovered a relict population of rattlesnakes on one of his woodlots and had called the biology department. He wanted the snakes out of there. If the bio department wanted them, they were welcome to them. Otherwise he was going to dynamite the den. Which was illegal. Cramer could have gotten an injunction, but what was the point? He’d wanted the snakes, he’d scrambled to get the money, and now the funding was in place for a five-year study

  “You’ll find timber rattlesnakes—Crotalus horridus horridus—in thirty-one states,” he said. “You’ll find them along the upper Mississippi in southeast Minnesota and southwest Wisconsin, and in the Mississippi River Valley, where you come from. But you won’t find Crotalus horridus horridus in central Illinois, which is why this relict population is important in the herp community.”

  He wanted to capture the snakes when they came out of hibernation in the spring and translocate them to a new denning area. This was the exciting part. Rattlesnakes always went back to the same dens. How would they choose a new den? We’d implant them with radio transmitters and follow each snake. Cramer had no idea how many snakes there were.

  “Could be any number, I said. “And you’ve got to figure on other kinds of snakes too. Maybe twenty, thirty. We used to catch them in winter. Down in Egypt they don’t always hibernate. They just kind of snooze.”

  We had a second cup of coffee and I asked him about the Miller-Urey experiment. Could you do it in the basement?

  “No way. Too dangerous. You’ve got hydrogen, you’ve got ammonia. You could have a bad explosion.”

  “It doesn’t sound too hard in the book.”

  Cramer sketched the apparatus on a napkin. “You’ve got your gases mixed with water here, in this big flask at the bottom. Hydrogen, ammonia, water, methane. You’ve got to be very careful.”

  “How do you get the gases in the flask with the water?”

  “You pump the air out of the flask to create a vacuum, and then you hook up your hydrogen or whatever to this valve at the top and open the valve.” He added a hookup for a vacuum pump to the sketch on the napkin.

  I nodded.

  “You heat this up and it goes up to this big flask at the top and hooked up to electrodes. You turn on the juice and it zaps the mixture.”

  “That’s your lightning, right?”

  He nodded. “The gases are forced down this tube on the left into a cooling condenser. Then the liquid that’s left runs down to the bottom. You open this valve and you’re ready to sort out what you’ve got with a paper chromatogram. I believe there’s a graph in the original paper.”

  “And you wind up with amino acids?”

  “Right. You’ve got some other stuff too, but the amino acids are what got everybody excited. Organic compounds—the building blocks of life—coming out of nonorganic matter.”

  “Pretty amazing.”

  “But don’t try it at home, okay?”

  I said I wouldn’t.

  “For a while everyone thought that Miller had a great experiment but that he got the composition of the original atmosphere of the earth wrong. The geologists wanted life to begin in volcanic gases, but they were forgetting that if the earth is formed out of chondrites—stony meteorites—slightly different gases are going to evolve. No one did the calculations to predict the earth’s early atmosphere. Now they’re using computer codes for chemical equilibrium to analyze what happens when the minerals in meteorites are heated up and start to react with each other …”

  He suddenly interrupted himself. “Sorry. I’ve been gassing on.”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “Miller just had a stroke,” he said. “Last month. He’s in a nursing home. He should have gotten a Nobel Prize. Harold Urey didn’t put his name on the paper because he already had a Nobel Prize and he wanted Miller to get one.”

  “That was very nice of him. Did he get one?”

  “Nope. I’ll send you a copy of the paper. I think it was in Science, fifty-three or fifty-four.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “What are you taking next term?”

  “Bio two-thirty.”

  “What else?”

  “French one o two. Western Civ two. Fiction Workshop.”

  “You had some chemistry?”

  I shook my head. “I had a chemistry course in high school, but they didn’t offer it on the Hill.”

  “Drop one of your other classes,” he said. “You need General Chem. Sign up for Debra Hamilton’s section.”

  I had to laugh. “You’re very serious.”

  “Sorry. Look, come back to the office with me. I can give you some stuff to look at for your hot-snake certificate. We’ll get started on the training program during the break. There’ll be a lot of paperwork too.”

  We sat in Cramer’s small office in George Davis Hall, across from my biology lab, for an hour, going over the requirements for my hot-snake certificate and talking about the evolution of snakes from labyrinthodonts, which means that the enamel on their teeth is folded in on itself, like a labyrinth. I didn’t understand everything, but I understood that as far as Cramer was concerned science has revealed a universe more wonderful and fantastic than anything you can read about in the Bible or in Greek mythology. You didn’t have to look up at the night sky to see this universe. You could see it in the Miller-Urey experiment—the building blocks of life arising out of hydrogen. You could see it in the lab, looking at a lowly flatworm under a dissecting microscope, or you could see it in the tooth of a snake. I was standing on the threshold of this world. Right where I wanted to be.

  But I was standing on the threshold of Claire’s world too.

  In Claire’s world we took a cab from Union Station to Marshall Field’s. A first for me. The cab. Marshall Field’s too. It wasn’t what it used to be, Claire said, when she was a girl, when it had defined Chicago as an international city.

  When I’d gone to a big city, which wasn’t often, it had been Paducah or Evansville, except when I went to St. Louis with Warren while I was waiting to go on trial, when we saw An American in Paris, which I knew now had been shot on a sound stage at the MGM studio in Los Angeles. Except for a few establishing shots.

  We walked up and down State Street looking at the Christmas displays in the big windows, and then down a side street over to Wabash Avenue, under the El tracks. I tried not to act too unsophisticated, but Field’s was overwhelming, a world in itself.

  We had coffee on the third floor where we could look at the big Christmas tree in the Walnut Room. Children were lined up to speak to a fat Santa, and I thought for a minute that Claire had forgotten that she was a forty-year-old woman and that she was going to get in the line. She remembered coming as a child and hadn’t lost her enthusiasm. She reminded me, just a little, of the dog playing with the Frisbee. Joie de vivre.

  In the elevator we ran into an old friend of Claire’s, who asked how her writing was going, and then on the ninth floor, we ran into Jean-Paul from my French class. “Jean-Paul,” I shouted. He didn’t look up and I thought maybe I’d been mistaken, but it turned out he hadn’t recognized himself in French, though he was wearing his beret. He was with his mother and his younger sister and I was really pleased to see a familiar face. “Enchanté,” he said. “Enchantée,” I replied.

  We picked out a b
asic wardrobe on the ninth floor, which was very pricey, but not as pricey as the 28 Shop, which had a private elevator entrance at 28 East Washington. Claire’s advice was to get a few really good things, and the saleswoman, who also recognized Claire and asked about her writing, agreed with her. Everything was an investment. A winter coat was an investment. A suit was an investment. A black dress was an investment. So was a white shirt and a good black leather purse and black leather pumps, and a sweater set and on and on.

  “A suit,” I said, “what would I do with a suit?”

  But Claire couldn’t understand the point of the question. “A suit is like a coat of armor,” she explained. “You wear it to protect yourself. Or to attack, depending.”

  I tried on a couple of suits and confronted myself in the triple mirrors outside the dressing room.

  “A suit is more than the sum of its parts,” Claire said. “You can match the jacket and the skirt up with different items and wear them separately. It can be the foundation of your basic wardrobe. Once you’ve invested in a good basic wardrobe you can update it each season—a new scarf, a new pair of shoes, a new purse.

  “I can’t recognize myself in a suit,” I said.

  “That’s because you still need to define your personal style,” the saleswoman said. “Your ‘look.’ ”

  “Do you want to attract attention or deflect it?” Claire asked. Good question. “Do you want to stand out or fit in?” Good question.

  “Do I really need a ‘look’?”

  “Everybody needs a look,” Claire said. “You don’t have to be Audrey Hepburn to need a ‘look.’ Besides, you’ve got a ‘look’ whether you want to or not. Everybody’s got a look.”

  I had never seen Audrey Hepburn in a movie, but I knew who she was, and I’d read an article about her “look” in one of the magazines at the checkout counter at Hy-Vee. Any woman could achieve this look by flipping out her hair, buying large glasses, and wearing little sleeveless dresses. Hmm.

  Claire had a look: subdued elegance. My French teacher had a look: flashy. Some of the students in my French class had a look. (Some didn’t.) Jean-Paul had an existential look. Cramer had an L. L. Bean look. My Western Civ prof, Professor Henry, had a rumpled professorial look. Jackson? I didn’t think Jackson had a look, at least not one I could put a name on. At home he sometimes wore a safari jacket, but he had an Italian suit too and a Bruno Magli leather jacket.

  My look in Naqada had been long house dresses; on the Hill it had been a medium blue jumpsuit, and at TF it was jeans and a man’s shirt. “You’re dressing fifteen years too young,” Claire said. “You and your clothes are speaking different languages.” And maybe she was right, maybe it was time to branch out a little. I had an unfocused idea of what I wanted, but I couldn’t explain it to Claire and the saleswoman.

  After a struggle over the suit, which I didn’t buy, I got into the swing of things and started spending all the money I’d saved by not buying a suit. Like Earl saving money by buying a johnboat instead of a fancy bass boat and figuring he’d saved the difference. But to be fair, Earl was not interested in possessions. But I was, at least at the moment. Claire thought that the fitted sexy clothes I was drawn to were too risky, so we compromised. Back to investments: A little black Audrey Hepburn dress was an investment. A cashmere sweater was an investment. A strappy dress was an investment because I could wear it under a tailored jacket. A small Balenciaga bag was an investment. A pair of Ferragamo heels was an investment. And it always paid to buy quality.

  Claire arranged for the dresses, skirts, blouses, sweaters, purse, and shoes to be sent to her parents on the north side, along with Claire’s leather suitcase and my canvas duffle bag. We ate, unencumbered, at a deli on the seventh floor. “We just need a few more things,” Claire said, “which we’ll find on Rush Street. I’m going to treat you to some lingerie.”

  Claire asked the cab to let us out in front of the John Hancock building, on Michigan Avenue, so she could point out her father’s office, on the thirtieth floor; the former site of the Playboy offices a block to the north; and Water Tower Place, across the street to the south. But I couldn’t take it in. I’d never spent so much money in my life. I didn’t want to look in another shop window.

  We walked over to Rush Street, which runs on a diagonal, to a shop called Département Féminin that specialized in slightly naughty underwear, which Claire called lingerie. Claire was going to treat me. I’d never seen anything like Rush Street. We could have gone to a nude dancing show in the middle of the afternoon. Therewere nightclubs and sex shops and restaurants. The women on the street could have been Playboy bunnies. Some of them were, Claire said. She’d had a Playboy bunny for a babysitter when she was little.

  I had to admit that the thought of wearing French satin panties under a pair of old jeans was exciting, like having a naughty secret. I grew up in a world where underwear didn’t matter and was not discussed. But it wasn’t underwear that caught my attention. It was the dress in the window. It was what I’d been looking for all day without knowing it. The tag said CAMI–CACHE-COEUR–SKIRT.

  “That’s it,” I said. “That’s what I’ll wear to the party.”

  “Restrain yourself,” Claire said, shaking her head. “You can’t possibly wear something like that to the party.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a summer dress. You can’t wear a summer dress on New Year’s Eve.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  Once again, Claire couldn’t understand the question.

  The woman who waited on us explained, in a strong French accent: Chicago winter weather was so depressing; she wanted it to be spring; so she put a summer dress in the window. Her long curly hair was held back from her shoulders by a curved tortoiseshell comb.

  Claire wasn’t buying it: “That means it was left over from last spring.”

  The woman shrugged.

  I said something to her in French: “Je le veux.” I want it.

  “Of course you do,” the woman said, and then switched to French. I couldn’t follow her very well, maybe not at all, but I’d cut Claire off at the pass. It took me a while to grasp that a cami–cache-coeur–skirt was not one thing but three separate items: a white spaghetti-strap camisole, a wraparound blouse, and a pale putty-colored skirt.

  “On peut porter cela pour le New Year’s Eve?”

  “Le réveillon du nouvel an. Mais oui.”

  “See,” I said to Claire. “I know this upsets you, but it’s what I want to do.”

  Claire started to argue but apparently thought better of it.

  I tried on all three pieces and this time I thought I recognized the sexy, vibrant person in the mirror. I bought the camisole, the cache-coeur, and the putty-colored skirt, and some scarves, which the French woman showed me how to tie in different ways, and something called a débardeur, which is a kind of tank top. Claire treated me to some sexy panties and a lace teddy, and we were finished.

  Claire’s parents lived on Bellevue Place just around the corner from Département Féminin, in a four-story townhouse. Elegant. I’d never seen anything like it. Gray brick with black shutters. Ivy growing around the windows. A big curved window in the front full of plants the size of trees. A wrought-iron fence enclosed a tiny yard. The huge wooden door looked like the door to a castle.

  Claire’s mother answered the door. She was smaller than Claire, but she had the same big eyes, the same chestnut hair, the same subdued elegance. There was nothing subdued about her greeting, though, and I soon felt right at home as we opened the packages from Marshall Field’s and reviewed the day’s shopping—though not at home enough to model the clothes from Département Féminin.

  By the time I’d packed the clothes back in their boxes, I was feeling a little queasy and was glad to have a room of my own so I could lie down for a bit. Claire and I took our bags up in an elevator. An elevator right in their front hall. I felt sick to my stomach. I was sick to my stomach.

&
nbsp; I dozed off for a while and then Claire and Claire’s mother and I walked down to the Oak Street Beach—past Ann Landers’ apartment in a high-rise at the end of the street. We walked along the edge of the water. The buildings along the Outer Drive were spectacular. Where did all the money come from? And Lake Michigan, another first for me, was spectacular too. It was good to walk with Claire and her mother, talk girl talk, or woman talk. But it was Claire’s father who understood me better than the women.

  “It’s not too late to take all this stuff back,” he said at dinner. He was a large man, a senior partner in a law firm. His name was Konrad.

  “Why on earth would she want to do that?” Claire’s mother asked. “She’s bought some lovely clothes.”

  Konrad laughed. “Buyer’s remorse. Happens to everyone. Used to happen to you all the time. Besides, she’s taken a beating in ShoppingKart-dot-com. You too,” he said, turning to Claire.

  “Daddy,” Claire protested.

  Buyer’s remorse. I breathed a sigh of relief. I was glad there was a name for what I was going through. I started to feel better right away.

  That night Claire came to my room in her nightgown. I slept in the nude. I kept the sheet up over me. Claire lay down beside me.