The Humanity Project

by Jean Thompson

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Art. I mean, if you’re sorry.”

  “Ah, shit happens.”

  More gloomy silence. Christie got up and cleared the table, set the dishes in the sink, and started washing up. She wished she knew what it was he wanted her to say so she could say it and be done with it, and him. But that wasn’t a charitable thought, when the guy was so clearly miserable. She said, “Maybe you could make it up with her. If you want to.”

  “I don’t think she’d be very interested in that.”

  So it was as she’d guessed: Beata was the one who’d ended things. “Care to say what went wrong?”

  “I guess I’m just crude and insensitive.” Art laughed unhappily.

  “Ha-ha,” Christie echoed, but she didn’t rush to say, Oh no you’re not, as she was meant to, because she was tired, and Art probably had behaved in some way as to merit complaint, and then, because the hair on the back of her neck was prickling, she whirled around from the sink to find Art nuzzling up against her, his mouth grazing her ear, his hands patting her up and down in a tentative, hopeful fashion.

  “Art!” She pushed him away. She grabbed a spatula and flapped it in his face. “What the hell?”

  “Take it easy with that thing.”

  “What is the matter with you, have you lost your mind? Are you drunk?” She raised the spatula again and he retreated.

  “I’m sorry, I guess I’m just . . . Shit.”

  “I’ll say.” Christie folded her arms. So much for the new Art.

  “I really miss Beata.” He was mumbling now, his head drooping.

  “Well what does that have to do with me? With groping me?”

  “Not groping,” he protested.

  “Your girlfriend breaks up with you, so you grab the next available woman?”

  “I didn’t grab you either,” Art said, sounding cross. “I was being affectionate.”

  “Any old port in a storm, huh?”

  “Now that’s not fair. You know I always liked you.”

  She knew. “I wouldn’t use that as an excuse.” She had to give up being angry with him. He was too pitiful. “Honestly? It’s kind of insulting. Who wants to be the rebound assault victim?”

  “I miss her perfume. You know how she always wore that stuff that smelled like peaches?”

  “Well go tell her that! Call her up! Ask her how her day went, and how she’s feeling, and what’s new, and then listen to what she says!”

  “You think that would work?”

  “What do you mean, ‘work’? Act like you’re interested in her as an actual person. Or act that way with the next woman you take up with. Thank you for the soup, I’ll put the pot outside your door.”

  “So what would I say? If I called her? How would I start?” Christie gave him an incredulous look. “All right, sorry, I’ll see you around, we’re cool, OK?”

  “And check up on your daughter!”

  The door closed behind him. Christie heard his feet on the outside stairs, then on the floorboards over her head, Art walking back and forth for a time, and then nothing.

  • • •

  The conference was scheduled to begin Friday afternoon and go through Sunday morning. On Friday, Christie dressed up in her new finery, and the least amount of makeup Imelda would let her get away with, and drove out to the seminary where the Foundation had rented space for the event. The seminary was a complex of basilicas and stone chapels, set up in the San Anselmo hills. Its white spires rose from the trees and wisps of morning fog like a fairy-tale castle. The weather was chilly, but not miserable, the view from the broad terrace was green and tranquil, and Christie took heart. She’d prepared, and then overprepared, and everything was in place, and in forty-eight hours or so it would all be over and she could worry about something besides name tags and honorarium checks and whether or not anyone would actually show up.

  The famous author was not due to speak until Saturday night, the main event. Imelda was going to attend his bookstore reading in the city tonight and keep an eye out for any vindictive ladies or problem behaviors. And at some point tomorrow, Mrs. Foster would arrive and be installed in the reception suite that had been set aside for her use, where she would welcome selected notables and accept tributes. The board members had been invited, of course, and Mrs. Foster was expecting her unpleasant daughter, Leslie. But there was really no point in being nervous about her or anyone else, Christie decided. No one was likely to pay Christie the slightest attention, a minor functionary stumbling around with a clipboard.

  She set about unloading the boxes of programs and posters. The posters had turned out nicely. They were full-color, printed on glossy stock, and showed a cluster of tiny buildings, like a Monopoly town, beneath a perfect, vaulting blue sky. The sky was meant to suggest, in a tactful, secular fashion, the Infinite. One of the tiny buildings was a bank, with Greek columns, and tiny figures walking in and out, carrying fat little bags with dollar signs on them. Printed across the sky:

  INVESTING IN OUR BETTER SELVES

  a gathering and an inquiry

  exploring the relationship between economics

  and personal virtue

  The best-selling author was billed as giving one of his standard talks, “Aspirations to the Divine.” Which more or less suited the conference theme, at least closely enough, since most of the audience would be there to gawk and get a whiff of those lower aspirations. There were more speakers and discussion groups, among them: “Learning from the Rural Poor of India.” “How Nonprofits Can Profit.” “What We Talk About When We Talk About Wealth.” And “Hard Times and Social Pathology.”

  The first conference attendees began arriving after lunchtime. They had the look of people who would enjoy spending a free weekend in serious-minded discussions. Some of them might have been earnest graduate students, given to eccentricities of jewelry and footwear. Some of them were a good deal older and more prosperous-looking, friends of Mrs. Foster, perhaps. (A discreet fund-raising effort was going on all weekend.) Christie and one of the office interns greeted people and found their names on the list and passed out name tags and programs. The keynote speaker, an eminent biologist who had written a book on human evolution, would take the floor at three o’clock. After he spoke, there would be a question-and-answer session, followed by a reception. The guests would mingle over plastic cups of wine, platters of cheese, olives, roasted baby artichokes, purple grapes, hummus, pot stickers, and cookies.

  Then, both energized and sated, people would go home and return the next day for more speakers, workshops, “lunch on your own,” a buffet dinner, and the marquee event of the conference, the talk by the adulterous, spiritual-heavyweight author. Sunday morning there would be a meditation session in the seminary’s beautiful chapel, followed by coffee and pastries, and some wrap-up discussion sessions organized around the topic “Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit: Toward a Better Marketing Plan.”

  Things got off to a good start. Some attendees weren’t going to show up until Saturday, but some fifty of them, enough to make a crowd, arrived for the first speaker, and chatted among themselves in a good-humored way in the lobby. The eminent biologist arrived on schedule and Christie took his coat and handed over the white envelope containing his honorarium check, made certain there was water at the podium and that the microphone worked, herded the audience inside to sit down, welcomed everyone “to the first installment of what we hope will be a thoughtful, invigorating time of learning, discussion, and fellowship,” introduced the biologist, listed his many honors and accomplishments, led the applause, resumed her seat in the second row, and fell asleep.

  She hadn’t meant to. But she was tired, and the chair was comfortable, and the biologist had a soothing way of speaking. Christie woke in a panic, hoping she hadn’t snored. No one was sitting near her, and fortunately her head had fallen forward rather than tilting back. She str
aightened and discreetly checked her mouth for drool. Some of what the biologist had said while she slept clung to her ears without her taking in its meaning: the biological basis for social behavior, and highly social species needing bigger brains, and the altruism of vampire bats, of all things, and was there an altruism gene? “The same authority,” the biologist was saying now, “equates altruistic, that is, cooperative, groups with virtue, and selfish, that is, competitive, individuals within groups, with sin. Although he is careful to say he regards this as an oversimplification.”

  Christie wished she’d been able to stay awake and follow the argument, but she had no chance now, since the intern came in to summon her outside so she could deal with somebody who was insisting they had already sent in their registration fee, and after settling that, she had just enough time to go back in and start the question-and-answer session, then out again to oversee the caterer, then back in as the questions were starting to straggle so she could thank them all so much and please join us for refreshments. The intern was in charge of the wine, and making sure that no one was overserved.

  The biologist was a pro at these things. He held his glass of wine without actually drinking from it, and chatted with anyone who had a mind to chat. As Christie approached the little group around him, a woman was saying, “I appreciate that you left enough room in your thesis for the possibility of a Supreme Being.”

  “One must always leave room for possibilities,” the biologist said diplomatically. “Although I think you’d find that for many biologists, genetics are their version of God.” He saw Christie and smiled at her, twinkling. She had the horrible intuition that he’d probably seen her sleeping.

  “Is accumulating money an example of individual selection?” an intense young man asked. “That is, a selfish and even sinful trait?”

  The biologist considered this. “It could be looked on as a survival skill.”

  “So it’s survival of the richest, then.”

  “Evolution is more complicated than that. And of course, it can take millions of years, we can’t see it from close up. As Darwin said, ‘Individuals do not evolve, but populations do.’”

  “But we want to,” Christie said. “I mean I’d want to. Evolve into something better.” Immediately, she felt stupid for opening her mouth.

  The biologist smiled and put his wineglass down. “A faster ocean swimmer. A louder singer of mating songs. A keener hunter. Who wouldn’t aspire to that? Now I hope you’ll excuse me, I have an early appointment tomorrow.”

  Saturday was the big day, with more attendees, more speakers, more of everything. None of Christie’s feeble confidence after Friday’s session had survived the night. Today would be the day she’d be exposed as incompetent, ineffective, insufficiently ardent about the transformative powers of big-time money. She met Imelda for an early breakfast at a coffee shop in San Anselmo. Imelda looked her up and down. “Not bad,” she pronounced. “You know what that jacket is screaming for? A statement necklace.” She herself was wearing one of her snazzy suits, eggplant-colored, with a vermilion blouse. Christie asked her how the famous author’s bookstore appearance had gone.

  “I don’t suppose I could talk you into getting a manicure. Would that be pushing my luck? It was fine, he’s done this kind of thing a million times. He has this very theatrical delivery, very hammy, you know, grabbing the podium and casting his eyes to heaven. People ate it up. His little girlfriend was there. She has the strangest hair, it looks like she put it in a waffle iron.”

  “He’ll be here for the dinner, then he gives his talk. Were there press people?”

  “Oh yeah. Video cameras, feminist bloggers, indie reporters. He got a few pesky questions. But really, the guy is slick. He managed to say he was praying for guidance and he hadn’t done anything wrong, both.”

  Christie finished her coffee, gathered her bags, and told Imelda to call the caterer and see if they couldn’t get a couple of trays of sandwiches to supplement the dinner, in case there were reporters expecting to be fed. “What’s the matter with you?” Imelda demanded. “Quit trying to button that, it’s supposed to stay open. You look like a million bucks. Why you so sad-faced?”

  “I don’t know, it’s this whole thing.” She wasn’t even sure what she meant, thing. The conference? The Foundation? The foggy muddle of her life? “Here we start off trying to do something positive and worthwhile and good, and we get thrown off track by all the petty, sordid stuff. Like this ridiculous man and his girlfriends. Why should anyone care? People are disgusting.”

  “People are people, you worry too much. Like my husband says, ‘On the sixth day of creation, God must have had a hangover.’” Not for the first time, Christie found herself wondering about Imelda’s home life. “Come here a minute.” Imelda leaned over the table and smudged something beneath Christie’s eyes. “Concealer.”

  By the time Mrs. Foster arrived in the late morning, the conference was rolling. Who would have thought so many people would sign up and pay out money in order to hear about the economics of virtue? But they did, they had, or it was likely that some of them just wanted to gawk at the famous author, now famous disillusionment. There were a number of inquiries about whether he had yet arrived, and disappointment when Christie told them not until this evening.

  Still, the mannerly crowds filled the lecture rooms and workshops. From the main entrance, where she waited for Mrs. Foster, Christie heard applause and laughter coming from behind the closed doors. Then, just as Mrs. Foster’s huge, champagne-colored Lincoln eased up to the curb, the sessions ended and the conferees emerged, looking pleased, chatty, ready for the next scheduled event. She couldn’t have arranged a happier backdrop.

  The first person out of the car was Leslie Hart, who looked around her as if she was a Secret Service agent on alert for snipers. “Good morning,” Christie said. “How nice to see you again.”

  Leslie stared at her. “Oh, it’s you. Could you get my mother a Coke or something? She was feeling a little carsick.”

  “Certainly.” Christie stepped around the front of the car to greet Mrs. Foster. She wondered if Leslie had been confused by the makeup and clothes, or was just being rude. Then the boy, Conner, stepped out from behind the driver’s seat to open Mrs. Foster’s door, and Christie had her own moment of slack-brained staring. It had not occurred to her that he’d be here, although it should have, and she had not anticipated that he too might have been made to dress up, or how good he would look in an ordinary jacket and tie, all sulkiness and dark gold skin, like a statue come to life. Down, girl. He looked at Christie and then away, and Christie thought that there might be more they could say to each other but not now, as he helped Mrs. Foster out to the pavement and stood aside. Both of them were servants, in their different fashions, supporting the grand enterprise of Mrs. Foster’s wealth.

  Mrs. Foster was wearing oversized tortoiseshell sunglasses. She turned her head slowly this way and that, taking in the crisp sunshine and the purposeful crowds. “My goodness. What a lot going on. Did we do all this? How extraordinary.”

  Christie escorted her to the reserved room, with Leslie Hart trailing behind, sent the intern for Cokes and a coffeepot, then back again for the tomato juice that Leslie wanted instead. She got both of them settled in comfortable chairs. “What is this place?” Leslie said. “A monastery?” She took off her hat, black and strangely shaped, like a small lampshade, and Christie saw that she was doing a new thing with her hair. She’d changed the color from gold to platinum and cut bangs. It looked unconvincing, like a wig.

  “It’s a theological seminary,” Christie said. “Presbyterian. Ecumenical. They’ve all been very nice.”

  Leslie picked up a program. “What are these? ‘Who Put the Nature in Human Nature.’ ‘The History of the Sin Tax.’ ‘I Am a Fugitive from a Hedge Fund.’”

  “Those are some of the scheduled speakers. Would you be interested in att
ending any of the talks?”

  Leslie tossed the program aside. “No thank you. How are you feeling, Mom? How’s your tummy? Do you need more ice in that?”

  “I wish you’d stop fussing, Leslie dear.” Mrs. Foster sat with her feet on the floor and her handbag in her lap, like the Queen of England on a reviewing stand. “Where’s Conner? He wasn’t going to stay with the car, was he? We should call his phone. Maybe he got lost trying to park.”

  “Oh please don’t worry about him. Are you hungry yet?” To Christie she said, “She doesn’t eat enough. Her clothes just hang on her.”

  “Tiresome child,” said Mrs. Foster. “I’m fine. Everybody wants to fatten me up like a beef cow.”

  Christie didn’t know why they were snapping at each other, unless it was that Leslie Hart felt it necessary to reclaim her mother from everybody else circling around her. Luckily, two of Mrs. Foster’s friends showed up and settled in to talk, and Christie was able to make her escape.

  After this next session they would break for lunch, and most of the attendees would head into town to eat. Christie went back to the registration table and tried to tidy up and clear the decks. She took some of the speakers in to meet Mrs. Foster, as well as the seminary’s marketing director, and a few others who needed to be thanked or solicited. A journalism instructor at one of the community colleges had sent his class to write articles about the conference and a dozen of them were wandering the seminary grounds with homemade press passes around their necks, helping themselves to the free snacks and mostly interviewing one another. A lady with hearing aids in both ears complained about the acoustics. As Christie was enunciating, loudly, her sympathy and concern, Conner came in at the front entrance and looked around. Christie pointed around the corner to the suite.

  He came out again after the hearing aid lady had departed. “Hey.” Christie flagged him down.