What Jackie wanted wasn’t a kiss; it was full-on spit swapping.
The next day over coffee, she laughed it off. “Sorry if I got a little crazy last night, hon.”
I never told Patrick about that.
“Whatcha thinking about, babe?” Patrick says, startling me and sending a peeled Roma tomato squirting against the backsplash.
What am I thinking about? Maybe where Jackie Juarez ended up, whether she decided to convert, or whether she ended up in one of the camps along with the rest of the LGBTQIA crowd. My money’s on the camp.
Reverend Carl dreamt up the idea, which was a hit with the Pure Majority until they balked at the idea of putting gay men and lesbians in cells with each other. It would be counterproductive, they argued; think what they’d get up to. So Reverend Carl modified his plan and decided to pair one woman and one man in each cell. “They’ll get the idea soon enough,” he said.
Of course, the camps are only a temporary thing, “until we get on track,” in Reverend Carl’s words.
The camps aren’t camps at all; they’re prisons. Or they were prisons before the new executive orders on crime were signed. There isn’t much need for prisons anymore, which isn’t to say there’s no crime. There is, but the criminals don’t need to be put anywhere, not for long.
I answer Patrick after cleaning up the red mess of tomato on the tile. “Nothing.” Pulse. Ding. You’re out, kiddo. The clock’s hands have decided to move at a snail’s pace since our telephone rang.
He gives me a kiss on the cheek. “Another few minutes, and everything’s going to be back to normal around here.”
I nod. Sure, it is. Until I find a cure.
TWENTY-TWO
Dinner, despite my best efforts at my mother’s sauce, is a disaster.
Sonia isn’t here, but in her room. I stayed with her for an hour after Thomas of the dark suit and dark attitude came and removed the counters. He did have a time with Sonia’s because she wouldn’t stop wriggling away. She even bit his hand on the second try. No blood, but Thomas yelped like a surprised puppy and cursed under his breath on the way to his car.
“It’s all right, baby. You can talk now,” I said, soothing her when we were alone in her room.
She said one word: “No.”
“You don’t have to go to school anymore,” I said. “We’ll have our own classes here at home. We’ll read stories. And when I’m at work, you can watch cartoons over at Mrs. King’s house.” I hated the idea of Sonia spending even a minute in the company of Evan and Olivia King, but I hated it less than sending her back to PGS.
Everything lately seems to be a choice between degrees of hate.
At the mention of school, she started bawling again.
“You don’t really like it there, do you?” I said.
She nodded.
“Use your words, Sonia.”
She sat up and pressed her lips together. At first, I thought she was playing the tough girl—as tough as a six-year-old can be when she’s swathed in pink sheets and surrounded by stuffed bunnies and unicorns. She was only getting ready.
“I was going to win tomorrow!” she said, and her mouth clamped shut again. I could almost hear the click of a steel key turning in its lock while she looked longingly at her naked wrist.
Finally, Leo poked his head in the doorway. “Sauce is bubbling, Mom. A lot.”
“How about turning off the gas?” I said, wondering how I was going to work, teach Sonia, and deal with a household of incompetent males over the next several months. Then, turning back to Sonia, I said, “We’ll work on a different kind of prize tomorrow, okay? Let’s go eat.”
She only shook her head and grabbed hold of Floppy the Bunny.
At the table, it’s Steven who puts words to my worries. “How’re you going to teach Sonia and work and take care of the house, Mom?” he says around a mouthful of pasta. “We still don’t have any milk.”
In my mind, I take hold of him by the collar and shake him until he’s dizzy. In reality, I say, “You could ride your bike over to Rodman’s and buy it yourself. Or you could walk to the 7-Eleven.”
“Not my job, Mom.”
Sam and Leo bury their noses in bowls of pasta.
Patrick goes red. “Steven, one more word like that and you can leave the table.”
“You need to get with the program, Dad,” Steven says. He takes another bite—a shovelful, really—and leans forward on his elbows. One finger pokes the air. “See, this is why we need the new rules. So everything can run like it’s supposed to.”
He doesn’t seem to notice that I’m staring at him as if he’s from outer space. “Take me and Julia—”
“Julia and me,” I say.
“Whatevs. Me and Julia have it planned out. When we get married and have kids, she’ll take care of that house stuff while I’m at work. She loves it. I’ll make the decisions, and Julia will go along. Easy-peasy.”
I put my fork down, and it clangs against the rim of the plate. “You’re too young to get married. Patrick, talk to him.”
“What your mother said,” Patrick says. “Way too young.”
“We’ve talked about it.”
“You’ve talked about it,” I say, still not eating. “How exactly do you do that on Julia’s one hundred words a day? I’m curious.”
Steven sits back, done with his second bowl. “I haven’t talked about it with Julia,” he drawls. “I’ve talked about it with Evan.”
My blood is beginning to boil. “Does Julia get a say?”
There’s no response from my son, only a bewildered look, as if I’ve suddenly begun speaking in tongues. We stare at each other across the table like strangers until Patrick interrupts.
“Let it go, Jean. No sense in fighting about it. He’s too young, anyway.” Then he looks over at Steven. “Way too young.”
“Wrong again, Dad. A guy from the Department of Health and Welfare came to our school today. Major assembly. He talked about how next year they’re rolling out a new program. Get this: ten thousand bucks, full college tuition, and a guaranteed government job for anyone who’s married by eighteen. Boys, of course. And another ten thousand for each kid you have. Pretty sweet, huh?”
Sweet as snake venom, I think. “You’re not getting married at eighteen, kiddo.”
A smile works its way onto Steven’s face, only a touch of a smile that isn’t joined by his eyes. It’s really not a smile at all. “You don’t have anything to do with it, Mom. It’s Dad’s decision.”
Maybe this is how it happened in Germany with the Nazis, in Bosnia with the Serbs, in Rwanda with the Hutus. I’ve often wondered about that, about how kids can turn into monsters, how they learn that killing is right and oppression is just, how in one single generation the world can change on its axis into a place that’s unrecognizable.
Easily, I think, and push out my chair. “I’m going to call my parents,” I say. I tried yesterday and got no answer. This morning, no answer. Before dinner, no answer. It will be late over there, nearly midnight, but I want to talk to my mother.
It’s been way too long.
TWENTY-THREE
On Thursday morning, I put on a suit for the first time in more than a year. I had to climb up into the attic for it, forage through the boxes I’d stuffed with my better clothing in the days after Sonia and I were fitted with our counters. I hardly remember what I was doing, only that I had to keep my hands busy at trivial tasks. Otherwise, they would have found their way into walls or windows.
The outfit I choose is beige linen, for the heat. There’s barely time to press out a year’s worth of wrinkles and get my act together before the doorbell rings. Patrick lets the man in, and I recognize him instantly.
It’s Morgan LeBron, from my old department, the all-too-young and completely incapable little shit who took over Lin’s position. No
wonder the president agreed so quickly to my conditions; Morgan is an idiot who doesn’t know he’s an idiot. The worst kind.
He steps in and holds out a manicured hand. “Dr. McClellan, I’m so happy to have you on my team. So happy.”
Of course you are.
And it’s his team. Not the team, not our team.
I take his hand. I’ve always had a firm grip for a woman, and shaking hands with Morgan is a bit like shaking with a newborn kitten. “I’m happy, too,” I say. Pussy.
“So,” he says. “Shall we get to business? I’ve got some paperwork for you to sign, and we’ll need to set up a direct deposit to your husband’s account. Whew. Hot in here.”
“The AC’s on the fritz,” I say. “We can go into the back room. There’s a window unit in there.” No sense in asking why my paychecks will go to Patrick’s account; all my money has been sitting there since last year. Words, passports, money—even criminals get two out of three. At least they used to.
I lead him through the house, stopping at the kitchen to refill Patrick’s and my coffee and pour Morgan one of his own. He takes it with three spoons of sugar and a fat inch of milk, which I remembered to run out for last night after the disaster of a dinner with Steven and Sonia’s meltdown. She seemed to brighten a little when Olivia King came to pick her up, possibly because I told her Mrs. King had a cartoon cable channel and would bake some cookies today. Possibly, the smile on my daughter’s face had to do with the lavender counter on our neighbor’s wrist. Something normal.
The first set of papers Morgan takes out of his briefcase is a contract, a noncompete agreement (as if I had any other job prospects), a nondisclosure agreement, and a work-for-hire acknowledgment. This last is a five-page-long reminder in legalese that all of the work I create belongs not to me but to the government. I take the pen Morgan offers and sign everything without reading, wondering why they even need a signature, since they’ll do what they want in any case. Patrick signs the direct deposit forms and hands them over.
I do, however, note the compensation terms: five thousand dollars a week and a bonus of one hundred thousand if I complete the cure by August 31. The bonus is reduced by ten percent for every month after this date. So there’s incentive to work fast, in a way, but the sooner I’m done, the sooner the metal counters go back on Sonia’s and my wrists. I know they will eventually; it’s only a matter of time.
“Perfect,” Morgan says, removing a machine from his briefcase. The slim black object is like an iPhone, only larger. He sets it on the coffee table between us. “Security check.” He presses a button, swipes, and enters my name. “Thumb is one, index finger two, and so on. Just follow the instructions and hold your finger to the screen until you hear a beep.”
Naturally, they’d want a fingerprint check. I do as I’m told, and after the machine scans my left pinkie, Morgan picks it back up and waits. “This will only take a few seconds. If you’re cleared, we can unlock your files and head over to my lab.”
Again with the “my.” I wonder how much of my work—my and Lin’s work, that is—will wind up with Morgan’s signature on it.
“Okeydokey,” Morgan says when the machine pings. “You’re clear.” He turns to Patrick, who has been holding a set of keys in his hand throughout the signing-and-fingerprinting party. “Sir?”
Patrick leaves, and doors start to open. First his study. Then the metal file cabinet next to the window. Then the closet where I suppose my laptop and files have been living for the past year. While he’s gone, Morgan shuffles through another set of papers. “Here’s the team,” he says, handing me a copy. At least he hasn’t said “my” again. If he did, I might have to slap him.
The team leader, of course, is Morgan LeBron himself. There’s a short bio after his name, including a reference to his latest position: Chair, Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University. Underneath, the rest of us are in alphabetical order: first Lin Kwan, and her credentials, which include the word “former”; then me, also “former.” Each instance of that word is a poke in the eye.
But I’m not ready for the gut punch that follows.
The third surname on the list is Rossi. First name, Lorenzo.
TWENTY-FOUR
It’s been so long since I’ve used my laptop, I’m worried it might not power up, that a year of nonuse will have sent it into the same dormant silence I fell into. But it’s obedient, like an old friend waiting for a phone call, or a pet sitting patiently at the door until its owner comes home. I trace a finger over its smooth keys, wipe a smudge from the screen, and collect myself.
A year is a long time. Hell, when the FIOS in our house went down for two hours, it seemed like the end of the world.
Eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours is a lifetime longer than two, which is why I need a moment before I walk out of this house, start the Honda, and follow Morgan to the lab where I’ll be spending three days a week from now until I finish fixing the president’s brother.
Also, I need a moment to sift through my files, the ones I copied and kept at home so I didn’t have to lug the same shit back and forth to my campus office. There are reports I don’t want Morgan to see, not until I can speak to Lin.
The bottom folder is the one I want, the folder with the red X on its front flap. Patrick has already gone to work, and Morgan is out in his Mercedes making phone calls, likely gloating to Reverend Carl about what a fantastic team he’s put together, which leaves me here in the paneled room with its humming window air-conditioning unit and—I don’t know—about five million pounds of books. They don’t weigh that much, but the teetering piles of texts and journals are like academic mesas littering the rec room.
We haven’t used the sleeper sofa in a year and a half, not since the last houseguest came to visit. No one really visits anymore. There’s no point. We tried it once, a dinner party for some old friends I’d met when Steven was still in diapers, but after an hour of the men talking and the women staring into their plates of salmon, everyone decided to go home.
I pry up the corduroy-covered cushion next to me and slip my red-X folder in among a few cracker crumbs, a stray piece of popcorn, and some spare change.
This “it,” encased in a dull manila folder rubbed shiny by my own hands, is the work that will, when I’m ready, reverse Wernicke’s aphasia. I’ve thought about finding a more permanent hiding place for it, but given the year’s worth of crap I find beneath the sofa cushions, I don’t see the need.
No one, not even Patrick, knows we had passed the brink from “close” to “finished,” although I believe Lin and Lorenzo suspected.
The day before Thomas and his Taser-carrying men came for me the first time, I had been winding down a lecture on linguistic processing in the posterior left hemisphere—the area of the brain where temporal and parietal lobes meet. Wernicke’s area, and the language loss that accompanies damage to this complex cluster of gray matter, was the reason most of my students signed on for this seminar, and on that day the room was packed with colleagues of colleagues, the dean, and a few out-of-town researchers intrigued by our group’s latest breakthrough. Lin and Lorenzo sat in the back row as I talked.
They must have seen the gleam in my eyes when I moved through the slides of brain imagery on the projector, zooming closer to the target area. The serum we would use wasn’t mine. Repairs would happen naturally with the aid of an interleukin-1 receptor antagonist, a drug already widely in use to counter the effects of rheumatoid arthritis, and infant stem cells, which would increase the plasticity of the subject’s brain, encouraging rapid repair and rebuilding. One of my contributions—our contributions—involved pinpointing the exact locus of application without affecting the surrounding areas of cortical tissue and causing further damage.
We had another ace up our sleeves. One Wednesday morning last spring, when the cherry blossoms had exploded into photogenic candy and Washington had beg
un to flood with its annual onslaught of tourists, Lorenzo pulled me into his office.
Of course, he kissed me. I can still taste the bitter espresso on his lips. Strange how a kiss can turn bitter into sweet.
He kissed deep and hard, as lovers do when kisses are stolen or come with a price, but then he broke away and smiled.
“I’m not done yet,” I said.
His eyes swept up and down, from the widow’s peak on my forehead all the way to my black pumps, the ones I had started wearing to work instead of my more comfy loafers. “Neither am I,” he said. “But first I’ve got a surprise for you.”
I did like Lorenzo’s surprises. I still do.
While I floated down from my kissing high, he pushed files and journal articles aside on the desk until he landed on whatever he was looking for. “Here. Check the numbers for me.”
The stats looked good. Fine p values showed significance; solid chi-squares and experimental design told me he knew his statistics shit. I took in the data as if they were water and manna sent to a deserted Robinson Crusoe.
“You’re sure?” I said, checking over the data.
“Positive.” He stood behind me, his arms circled around my waist, creeping up like five-legged spiders to my breasts. “Of a few things.”
We hadn’t done it on campus, not the big It, not the holy grail of physical intimacy, only kissed and run our hands over each other’s bodies behind the locked door of Lorenzo’s office. Or mine. Once, he followed me into the faculty washroom and—I’m ashamed to say it—made me orgasm with nothing but a finger. After seventeen years of marriage and four kids, it didn’t take long.
He must have felt the heat growing in me, because he let go, let me read through the reports.
“Holy shit,” I said. “You isolated the protein?”
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