States of Motion

by Laura Hulthen Thomas

  A détente of sorts. Maybe the flu would do them both some good. Marlin went to fetch the coffee. Sam had the pot of caffeinated and was filling his own cup.

  “I told Ben I’d warm up the customers.” Marlin reached for the pot.

  Sam clowned clutching the carafe to his chest. “No way. I’m gonna warm up the fox in the corner.”

  “Hey,” Marlin protested, but in a flash Sam was down the aisle and leaning over Marlin’s girl. Marlin fumed as Sam aped the waitress’s trick of splashing coffee into the cup from a foot above the table in an amber cascade. What an idiot.

  “There you go, Miss.”

  “That’s nice of you,” she said. Her clear voice carried across the dining room. “But I’m leaving. I didn’t want any more coffee.”

  “I’d like some,” one of the insurance guys called.

  “Cool your jets,” Sam told him. Then he said to the girl, “So you like that painting? The nude?”

  Even saying nude out loud to that beautiful young woman would cripple Marlin with embarrassment and desire both, and here Sam was, making a joke of the word. But the girl was unflappable. “I think it’s his best work.”

  “Well, I’d hate to see his worst,” Sam said. “What does he do, lop off the heads?”

  “How about that coffee?” The insurance guy snapped his fingers.

  Sam walked over to his table and banged the pot down. “Here you go, buddy.”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Marlin said. Sam grinned at him. Ben emerged from the kitchen with the couple’s order. Marlin crossed the room to fetch the pot from the agents’ table and nudged Sam hard as the jerk headed back to his table. The girl in the corner stood up, gathered her coat. Marlin wanted to cash her out, but by the time he had returned the pot to the burner Ben was already at the register taking her ticket.

  “Everything OK?”

  “Marvelous,” she said.

  “Thanks for the article.” Ben handed her the change. “Great publicity for us.”

  “Oh, was it in today’s paper?” Marlin stammered. He was standing next to Ben. Because the register stand was narrow, it meant he was also standing close to the girl. Too close. She was looking at him again, and he saw her eyes were brown. Deep, almost black, like the nude’s darkest lines.

  “Front page of arts and entertainment,” the girl said. “My favorite artist. And my first byline.”

  “Why don’t you take it?” Ben said.

  It took both Marlin and the girl a moment to figure out what he meant. “The nude?” she asked.

  “Yeah, why not? Dad, go take it off the wall.” Now it wasn’t a young girl’s gaze piercing him from across a room, but his son’s hard look a breath away.

  “Thank you, but I can’t accept it.”

  “Go get it, Dad.” Ben’s voice rose. Marlin flushed and looked away.

  The girl rested her hand on Marlin’s arm as if he had made a move to get the painting when in fact he hadn’t moved a muscle. It was all he could do not to smother her fingers with his own. “Please don’t. I appreciate the offer, though. I understand you painted the watercolors. They’re nice.”

  She looked at him warmly as she complimented his hobby. It was the same gaze as ever, deliberate and glowing, but its core was friendly, not intimate, a look bestowed on an old geezer who painted pleasant pictures of birds.

  He refused to imagine what his son saw.

  The girl pocketed her change and left. Sam grabbed his coat, nudged Marlin hard and winked on his way out the door. Ben disappeared into the kitchen, scraped at the grill, although there were no more orders. One of the insurance guys refilled his coffee at the burner. Marlin followed his son reluctantly. No choice now but to confront the accusation Ben had lobbed with the nude, but when he saw his son’s sweat-drenched flush, his tottering movements over the hot grill, he hesitated. They couldn’t talk now. Ben was sick. Nothing would be said in just the right way. They’d have to wait until this flu had passed.

  Marlin drove home to find the Sentinel on his stoop. He took the paper into the kitchen, leafed through it to the arts and entertainment section, found the article on the artist’s big Paris opening and the related box feature on the nude in the diner. He read the byline. Olivia Bell. He closed his eyes, saw again her friendly gaze, felt the wince of embarrassment. What a fool he’d been to think she could possibly want him.

  But Sarah had wanted him. He hadn’t been wrong about the meaning of her gaze across a room.

  He’d been attracted to Sarah ever since she’d married Ben, but after his retirement freed him to spend his days at the diner, Marlin had fallen in love with her beyond all reason. He loved her so much that he came to resent that Ben had her, when he, Marlin, was so much the better man for her. Marlin never ignored her as his son did. He could even cook better than Ben, he’d proved it to her. When Marlin took over the home cooking from Lily, Sarah used to compliment his food in the bright, teasing way she had that made him flush and want to say something fun, meet her eyes, and hold them and then do it, just do it, walk over as if she belonged to him already; take her arms, brush her lips with his, and from there it would happen without restraint or misgiving. All in a moment, everything would change.

  He thought about kissing her for years until he realized he had to stop it, and the only way to stop was, in fact, to kiss her. By that time, he and Lily rarely made love, and when they did, his thoughts of Sarah were so intense and lovely, made Lily feel as he knew Sarah must feel, tight and vital and—he had to admit it, old geezer—young, that he would lose himself, move hard. Eventually he would hurt Lily. He had to have Sarah, the vast safe cloak of sex, where nothing happened suddenly and nothing was ever taken away.

  So he waited. Eventually the greasy buildup of endless fry-cooking forced them to close for cleaning, and why not update the place while they were at it. They shut the diner down for two weeks to work. Marlin and Ben installed new flooring and fixtures while Sarah cleaned. Her efforts were mostly in the kitchen. The nude she had just purchased stood propped against the sideboard, where Marlin could see it on the frequent trips to the restroom coffee and his fussy prostate were causing lately. By then the marriage was clearly strained. Sarah did not want to be in the same room with Ben much, was even avoiding Marlin. The sun of her flirtation had cooled a bit. Marlin found out later that the fertility treatments were failing, that they were on the brink of divorce. But he was ignorant of this as he removed his watercolors from the walls and stripped grease from the paint in fussy black balls that stuck to his nails. He was relieved that she was out of view when Ben was around, because he could hardly control himself anymore. He was glad for the strained relations. He liked to think that she’d come to realize he was the better man for her, and he felt no qualms about his wishing this were so. He even ceased to think of Ben as his son, but as a man standing in the way, refusing to accept what everyone else knew to be the truth.

  And finally came the day, when the sluggish sun burned hot and the space, although air conditioned, was as steamy and close as tiles firing in an oven, that Ben took the afternoon off to pick up new tables for the dining room. Sarah did not go with him. Marlin read much into this. He was more encouraged when she abandoned the kitchen work to paint with him. By then the grease was stripped, the walls spackled and primed. It was just a matter of coating with the eggshell color Marlin had chosen, a rich echo of her skin. They did not speak, did not look at each other. The space was completely private. Ben had papered the windows for the renovation. So easy to lay his roller in the tray and wind his arms around her before she had a chance to push him away, if that’s what she was going to do. She stood close to him, bending to dip into the paint tray, and it was as if she had the same impulse, because she straightened with a queer, tense smile, came up empty handed, arms at her sides, and she was looking at him.

  He couldn’t believe it. He had thought all along that he would have to wait until she wasn’t expecting him, but here she was, sweating with the h
eat of the room, brilliant and soft and no longer as young as she had been when he first loved her. It wasn’t graceful or even very loving. He was too rough, although he knew he didn’t have to be. He may have hurt her. He would never know, she never made a sound.

  It was only one time. Afterward they were never alone again. Sarah worked in the kitchen for the remaining week of the renovation, hung the nude when the place reopened, packed Marlin’s painting of her bleak backyard away in the back with the boxes and mops. She still flirted a little, but she avoided being alone with him whenever he tried to engineer it.

  Maybe he had hurt her. Maybe she just came to her senses. Nothing changed in either of their lives, except to make him want more. More of her. More sex. It was the start of his obnoxious horniness. At first, when he was hurt and lonely for her, he wondered if she really had loved him. Eventually it occurred to him to wonder if she was hoping to become pregnant by him and spend their lives hiding it. But he didn’t believe it of her, not really, considering the irrevocable disorder it would have created. It wasn’t Sarah’s way to risk everything and emerge messy. But if that was her plan, it had not worked. She didn’t get pregnant for at least another year.

  They had shared one moment. Now they shared worry, and it was all they shared. Perhaps, afterward, Ben became more distant, more preoccupied. Perhaps Lily was wise to it. She fell ill more often, spent more time away from him, and finally ceased to make love to him altogether, like the tightening of a faucet head after a prolonged leak. And then the baby was born, and that one reckless, lovely time with Sarah felt like the ghost of another life altogether. Fading, almost able to be forgotten, if only Marlin could stop thinking about her when he looked at that nude.

  Until his son’s angry command to give the damn thing away.

  Marlin folded the paper and went upstairs to check Lily. Her eyes were closed, her chest’s rise and fall a dreadful shudder. The easel stood close to the bed’s foot. The junco watercolor cast a shadow over the slope of her legs under the quilt. He’d pulled the easel into the west corner by the wardrobe before bed the previous evening. He was certain it still stood out of the way when he’d left her that morning. Had she moved the junco to a viewing place, picked out each glaring amateurish flaw as a distraction from the struggle to breathe?

  Now that she was so deeply asleep he could fold back her quilt without waking her. He could ease her fragile limbs from her soaked nightgown, peel away the flu’s terrifying cloak. Pose her like a nude. Tuck her legs to expose the curve of her thigh. Prop up a shoulder, a hip, arrange her hollow breasts and loose belly. Would he paint her as if he were looking out the window at a natural scene, render exactly what he saw? Or would he exaggerate her fallen limbs, her flaccid breasts, and the faint silvery gashes on her belly? Would he make her nipples ugly brown moles, chop off her fingers, gouge out her eyes and mash her nose?

  Which of the two nudes would be more familiar to him?

  Lily opened her eyes; glossy, distant, almost gone.

  Marlin moved the easel back to the corner, turned over the junco to its blank side. He touched her brow and then fetched the thermometer. He stood over her and watched her wince with her breathing. He felt his clear, untroubled breath as if it had a scent and a taste of its own, tidy, pure, and free. It was shameful how well he felt.

  If she noticed he’d removed the easel she didn’t say. She shook her head at the glass wand he tried to slip between her lips. “Don’t bother.”

  “I think we should know how high it’s gone.”

  “It will pass.”

  “I’m calling the doctor.” His voice was thick with fear. Lily would hear, as she always had, the selfishness behind the worry. Her chest constricted as she pressed back into the pillows. Her gaze at him wasn’t right.

  “Don’t.” She coughed, her shoulders bearing the brunt of spasms, and he backed away despite himself. “Marlin. If I die in this bed there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. So quit worrying. Give Sarah a call. Check on the baby.”

  “Ben’s sick now.” Another selfishness. No point to the comment other than to prompt Lily to reassure him.

  “He’ll be fine.” Lily soothed him dutifully. “Go call Sarah.”

  “Why? Ben will be there soon.”

  “You two can worry yourselves sick together. Do you both some good.” She reached for his hand. He moved closer to take it. Her fingers were dried petals in his palm, powdery and fragile. She coughed violently again, the force of it bending her back off the bed. “Go on,” she said, and her gaze was distant, and her powdery hold on him was no longer so weak. “You can’t avoid her forever. She’s your grandson’s mother.”

  Then it wasn’t the flu dimming her gray eyes.

  He swallowed hard against the lump of fear in his throat that should be shame. “Let me wait,” he pleaded, “until you’re well.”

  Lab Will Care

  Neither scientist nor trainee, Emily managed others’ inspiration. She oversaw the care of the lab equipment and animal husbandry. She conditioned mice and recorded results. During the boom in Alzheimer’s research funding, she sorted out the need for space, and she just as efficiently managed the lab’s recent sharp downturn. For a decade, the Abel lab’s steady gains in the understanding of the hippocampus, the ruler of memory, had nurtured new Alzheimer’s therapies. The same decade of the war on terror had steadily siphoned Abel’s funding. Now Emily fit scarcity to discovery, square peg, round hole.

  The lab’s survival now depended upon the conquest of fear. Abel’s latest grant supported post-traumatic stress research. Emily instilled, and then extinguished, fear in mice. In the lab such feats were systematic products of biological prompts. The why of the fear response was the concern of the neuroscientist, Abel, and the postdocs studying under him. Although fear had chiseled the rules of her life, Emily would only be an adjunct to its cure.

  In a Spartan room adjacent to the conditioning lab, she used a computer monitor to observe the freeze response. Her presence in the lab, even out of sight, would disrupt the mouse’s instinct. So Emily positioned a camera above the test cage and watched the isolated mouse scamper in a black-and-white video frame. She programmed a tone to coincide with a wave of electrical shocks conducted through the cage floor’s metal grid. One or two rounds of shock were all it took to imprint fear. When she played the tone without the shock, the freeze response ossified the body in its last pose. A tail curled in curiosity and a neck craned in casual investigation were captive to an exquisite stillness until the tone ceased, the threat passed.

  After the fear response was ingrained, it was time to decondition. For two days, she would chime the single note without the shock and record how long it took for the mouse to become unafraid. With time, learned fear could be unlearned. But the mouse retained a shadow terror that could be measured neurologically. Original fear never leaves the subconscious. If fear of a musical note couldn’t be erased, Emily didn’t hold Abel’s hope for erasing the psychological pain of war or trauma. Anyway, she didn’t want to think about what might be left exposed in the memory if terror’s linchpin were removed.

  The animal-husbandry staff was in charge of feeding the mice, filling water dispensers, cleaning cages. But the cage room across from the conditioning lab was reserved for Lab Will Care. Only the researcher cared for these mice, who matured without ever being touched. Successful conditioning required them to be handled for the first time as adults. Once acclimated, mice behaved like cats. Rubbed their bodies to her skin, eyes glittery, drunk on her touch. Ten days was enough to train the mice to come to her open palm, rely on her by sight, by smell, by sensation. Today Emily was halfway to acclimation with her current subject. After five days, the mouse still skittered restlessly under her methodical stroking of his back and belly. Like the observation room, the acclimation lab was designed to be neutral. White walls, white tile, white plastic shelves overflowing with equipment. From the far wall, a clock’s second hand slid quietly from moment to m
oment, the hushed tick the only sound besides Emily’s breathing and the click of the mouse’s claws on the steel tabletop when she set him down. Emily scooped him up again, a soft bundle of brown with a white belly. She was practicing the motion of delivering him to the conditioning cage and removing him again, training him to accept without fear the sweeps of changing altitude. In a few more days, the mouse would trust her hand as he would trust a flying carpet’s spell.

  She carried the mouse back to Lab Will Care, set him gently in his cage. Soon her essence would bedrock his sense of security, and then the fear conditioning could begin.

  Emily crossed the hall to another cage room that housed the mice who had completed their conditioning. Imprinting fear had altered their neurological patterns. These patterns could now be recorded. Fear would have substance as waves on a monitor, the effects on the hippocampus as visible as a web of veins under the skin. Emily pulled on a pair of gloves, scooped up her subject, carried him to the euthanizing table. She snapped his neck and from there worked quickly to preserve the animal’s brain, the hope of peace it might reveal.

  After she packed the brain in dry ice, a grayish ball no bigger than her thumb, Emily peeled off her scrubs, threw them in the hamper by the security door, and made her way through the basement hallway. She rode the elevator to the Life Sciences Institute’s top floor and entered the walkway crossing the lobby’s lofty glass atrium. Through the curtain wall at the building’s entrance, traffic wound down the street, glittering metallic under a high sun whitewashed by the cold. Smokers huddled around the building plaza’s concrete planters as if the frostbitten remains of azaleas were warming fires. Ash trickled from bright scarves and heavy winter coats. Below Emily, a crew wheeled banquet tables on squealing dollies to the atrium’s center. The screech echoed in the ceiling above her. The soaring, glassy space amplified disturbance like a touchy microphone.