A Fierce Radiance

by Lauren Belfer

  Nick wondered, Am I looking so forlorn, standing here alone at the doorway, that Oretsky felt compelled to provide companionship? Probably so.

  “Mademoiselle Stanton adored cookies. Did you know?”

  “Yes, I did know,” Nick said, although he’d never had the opportunity to learn this about Tia.

  Outside, another man watched Claire Shipley. This man leaned against the gates of the park, smoking a cigarette. His funeral suit was rumpled and shiny at the elbows but presentable enough. He and his suit had never yet been thrown out of a funeral. Marcus Kreindler, New York City detective. He’d spotted Claire Shipley earlier, during the memorial service. He recognized her from a photo on James Stanton’s desk in his residence rooms. When he spotted the photo, he’d asked Stanton who she was. Stanton had explained with an enthusiasm that made him seem young and in love—even though he was, what, thirty-eight years old. Kreindler remembered his own young-and-in-love days, almost forty years ago. Agnes. He felt a surge just thinking about that time. They were in love still.

  Anyway, he saw the photograph, and lo and behold, here was Claire Shipley in front of him, tall, slim, brown hair in a smart wave, pale and chic in a stark, working-girl sort of way.

  He bore a grudge, he was the first to admit. Not against poor Claire Shipley, who seemed disoriented and had wisely chosen to return to the park and find a bench in the sun to rest on. No, his grudge was against the imbecile who’d tormented her. Andrew Barnett. He made sure Barnett noticed him in the church. Let him know that somebody was looking over his shoulder; no harm was done and possibly a lot of good. As of yesterday, Kreindler was officially off this case. The government had taken over. The government would insist on a public ruling of accidental death, to stop a police investigation that might delve into confidential areas. Then Barnett would do his own investigation to try to figure out what had really happened.

  Of course a ruling of accidental death might even be correct. Except that Kreindler was haunted by those footprints on the path. He had to bide his time, he knew. Keep his eyes open, stay out of trouble. He found a bench from which he could watch the woman, far enough away so that she wouldn’t particularly notice him. He took a bag of peanuts out of his jacket pocket, ate some, threw a few to the squirrels.

  After about ten minutes, the woman seemed to get a grip on herself. She took out her compact, checked her makeup. Reapplied her lipstick, always a good sign in a woman who’d experienced a shock, in Kreindler’s view. She stood. A striking physique, if a bit boyish for his taste, but still. She smoothed her hair. Seemed to take a deep breath. Very pretty. She walked back into the Meetinghouse.

  Kreindler was curious as to why, of all the people Barnett might have approached after the funeral, she was the one he sought out.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I’ll just bugger off for a while then, James,” said David Hoskins in the lab. “Give you some time to yourself.” He put his hand on Jamie’s shoulder. “You need to talk, just come and find me.”

  David was close to tears, Jamie could see that, but David offered his support without asking for any in return. That alone felt like a gift. Jamie didn’t have to confide his feelings to David to know that David understood and offered him comfort.

  “Thank you, David.” Jamie hoped the simple phrase expressed the extent of what he felt. Before today, they’d always been Stanton and Hoskins to each other. The switch to first names created an intimacy that Jamie appreciated. It was, he reflected, like the move from vous to tu in French, or Sie to du in German. What made him suddenly think of that? he wondered. In the past few days, strange facts had been coming into his mind, things he hadn’t thought about in years.

  “Lovely day, at least.” David traded his lab coat for a suit jacket and hat. “She would have enjoyed that.”

  The Institute’s memorial luncheon had ended an hour before. Jamie had wandered the grounds by himself afterward. Such a rush of events and people passing before him these past days: he needed time to catch up with himself. The gardens were in full bloom. The plane trees were coming into their glory overhead. Remembering the years they’d walked these grounds together, he’d sensed Tia all around him. He’d finally come here, to Tia’s lab, the place where she’d felt most at home.

  Leaving, David shut the door behind him. Jamie was alone. But Tia was still with him. Not a ghost—he didn’t hold with any of that. But he continued to have a kind of spiritual sense of her, that she was in the next room, testing soil samples. He strode through the penicillin room into what he’d come to think of as the cousins’ room, but of course she wasn’t there. And yet, everything was in place, as if she would return in just a moment. A cut-crystal vase, their mother’s, sat on the table, filled with white, fallen tulips. He remembered his mother filling that vase with daffodils for the dining table of their home on Delancey Place.

  The time was going on five o’clock. The room, although facing north, was bright with natural light. Jamie stood before the long windows, to see where the light was coming from. Sunlight was reflecting off the windows of the New York Hospital, several blocks north, and flooding the lab. This light had a peculiar quality, brilliant but diffuse, without a glare. Again Jamie had the eerie sensation that Tia had simply stepped out to get a cup of coffee. She’d soon be back. He only had to wait for her.

  Stop, he told himself. She wouldn’t be coming back. When he forced himself to face up to this stark truth, however, he felt that he’d betrayed her: by trying to accept that she was gone, he’d be guaranteeing it.

  Of course she hadn’t killed herself. Suicide was out of the question. She’d had an accident. Accidents came out of nowhere. Her death was a chance event. That was the definition of an accident, wasn’t it? What was the Latin derivation? He’d taken Latin in school. Accidens. From accidere, to fall. He reeled at the connection. Why was he even remembering such things?

  One of his colleagues at the luncheon, he didn’t know who, had indulged a doctor’s trick and injected hothouse cherry tomatoes with vodka, creating portable Bloody Marys. He hadn’t been eating properly, and at the luncheon, he’d had more of those cherry tomatoes than he should have. He was beginning to feel light-headed and sick. He needed some solid food.

  He sat down to pull himself together. He studied the room. What would happen to these soil samples, lining the walls in floor-to-ceiling shelves that Tia had custom-designed with the Institute carpenter? At the luncheon there was talk of Jake Lind taking over here, at least for the duration of the war. David Hoskins was too knowledgeable about penicillin to be working on the so-called cousins. Hoskins was needed elsewhere. Lind had a heart murmur and had been rejected by the military, so he’d be sticking around, making him the logical choice to continue Tia’s work. Jamie couldn’t bear the idea of these soil samples going untested, Tia’s life work consigned to a trash heap.

  He’d already asked Beth, her college roommate, to take care of Tia’s small apartment, have the contents appraised for taxes, keep what she and Tia’s friends wanted, and give the rest to charity. This was an imposition, he knew, but Beth’s husband had recently signed up for the military, and Beth was on her own. Nowadays people left behind on the home front regarded such impositions as gifts: the gift of being useful. Jamie knew he could trust Beth.

  The lab, however, was his responsibility, and his duty, to keep and preserve as best he could. He got up and went to Tia’s bench, as it was called by scientists, the table where she’d been doing her most recent work. The current notebook was closed, the sample jars neatly waiting. Tia was organized and methodical. He opened the notebook to see her handwriting. To read at random. To hear her voice through her words.

  As he paged through, seeing the failure of this or that substance, he remembered her talking about a sample she’d been having some success with. He should have been thinking of that first, he chastised himself, not recalling it just now. He’d had so much on his mind, he hadn’t focused.

  In his imagination, he
placed himself at what turned out to be their last lunch together. The last time he saw her. A picnic on the lawn, during one of those warm spring days before the leaves are out but when the daffodils are already blooming and you want to be basking in the warmth. So there they were, outside on the lawn with the sun glaring in his eyes and no shade anywhere because the trees were still bare of leaves. Tia was laughing at him as he explained his discomfort to her. They had to get up; he couldn’t stand the glare anymore. Finally they found a bench where they could sit with their backs to the sun.

  And then Tia began to talk about her hints of success with a new substance. It was produced by a mold that she’d collected in the woods near their grandparents’ house. This link to their childhood was too good to be true, she admitted, but there it was, and it made her happy. They both knew that keeping track of where a sample was collected was basically a way to keep the samples organized. Granted, the location could help tell you what type of food the mold might like to eat, and what range of temperatures and sunlight it had adapted to, but once you found a substance that actually worked, you didn’t need to go back to the same location and dig up an entire truckload of soil to cart to your lab. No, you simply needed to grow the mold in the lab, and then analyze and develop the antibacterial mechanisms involved.

  This substance from the Crum woods, Tia said, was easy to produce. In test tubes, the substance worked against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. It controlled infectious agents that penicillin missed and worked better on the ones penicillin did fight. She was in the process of testing the substance on mice. Thus far, these tests had been successful. Very much so. But of course the substance could lead to a dead end, just like all the rest. It could turn out to be highly toxic, with serious side effects in humans. It could cause allergic reactions, anaphylactic shock. She’d repeated this, about the dead end, as if she were trying to convince herself. As if she were forcing herself to hold back her enthusiasm.

  The substance had a number. That’s how she talked about it at their lunch. By the number. Tia was meticulous in her record keeping. If he could remember the number, he’d find everything, and her work could continue.

  The number. Again he placed himself at that picnic. She’d been eating a chicken salad sandwich. He couldn’t tolerate chicken salad, after the daily lunches in Washington. He had ham and cheese. The number. It was in the mid-six hundreds—he remembered being struck by the fact that she’d tested well over six hundred substances. Her voice. He had to hear her voice. He was sitting there beside her, listening to her voice.

  “Wait till you see it, Jamie. It’s such a beautiful blue.”

  “Tia, you know the color doesn’t matter.”

  She was laughing. “You’re going to be very surprised.”

  “I guess I will be.”

  “I know I shouldn’t say this, Jamie, but 642 could be what we’ve been looking for.”

  There it was: 642. What we’ve been looking for.

  He searched through her notebook. Nothing about 642. He started again, at the first page. Leafing through more quickly now. Nothing.

  Then he saw: pages had been cut out. Probably with a razor. He ran his index finger down the sharp edges.

  He strode over to the shelves to find the original soil sample. Meticulous, she always was. 640, 641, 643, 644. Sample 642 was gone. He opened the incubator. The refrigerator. He went through the stack of old notebooks on the counter. His search had to be as meticulous as her work. He couldn’t give up. There had to be something. Something left behind. Everything else was in perfect order. This made the absence clearer.

  What he found in the end was what he started with: nothing. Someone had gotten here before him.

  “Jamie, there you are.”

  His best friend, Nick. Come to find him. Jamie’s friends and colleagues were taking too much care of him.

  “We got worried that you had a few too many of those bite-size Bloody Marys. Organized a search party to find you. Wouldn’t want you to stumble—” Nick stopped, realizing what he was about to say.

  “I’m all right,” Jamie said. Should he tell Nick what he’d discovered? Sound the alarm, accusations flying? He felt too tired, and too drunk, he now realized, to know what to do. He looked around. He’d wreaked minor havoc during his search.

  “So, uh, you going to stay here for a while?” Nick asked.

  Jamie caught Nick surveying the room, no doubt wondering about the open incubator, the notebooks tossed about.

  “Just a few minutes. I’ve got to get downtown. Dinner with Claire. I’ll be all right, Nick. Really.”

  “Okay.” Nick held up his hands, palms outward, as if to say, I’ll accept that, I’ll make myself scarce. “I’m here if you need me.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  Still Nick didn’t leave, obviously debating the right course.

  “I’ve got someplace to go, I’ll be fine, Nick.” Then Jamie realized: maybe Nick was the one who needed reassurance. Maybe Jamie had been remiss in not thinking more about his friend and probing whatever understanding Nick might have had with Tia. “Nick, you sure you’re okay?”

  Nick smiled thinly. “Now is not the time for you to start worrying about me.”

  “I’m happy to worry about you. Any time.”

  “I’ve got work to do,” Nick said. “Fills all the empty places, doesn’t it.” Nick wasn’t asking a question, and Jamie understood what he meant. Nick turned and left.

  Jamie listened to Nick’s footsteps retreating. Heard the outer door open and close.

  He was alone once more.

  At midnight, Claire rested her head upon the curve of Jamie’s shoulder after they’d made love. She stretched her legs against his and kissed the underside of his jaw. She knew he couldn’t escape the pain of Tia’s death, but she wanted to show him the reasons for pushing on. When he’d arrived in the early evening, she’d made dinner and served it outside, in the garden. Charlie was at Ben’s for the night, a treat all-around. Finally they’d talked about the events of earlier that day, and about memories of Tia. Claire didn’t tell him about Barnett’s approach to her; she didn’t want to burden him, and besides, she could tell him later, if Barnett bothered her again. Their lovemaking was long and quiet.

  Jamie massaged the back of her neck. Smoothed his hand down her spine. Jamie loved this room. He loved the way the moonlight came through the long windows, illuminating her hair, her back, as she lay stretched out upon him. This room, this woman…he felt safe here, at peace, defenses unnecessary. He wanted to let himself drift into sleep.

  But he couldn’t. He had a mental list of pressing matters he needed to discuss with Claire. What he’d discovered at the lab. The extended trip he would embark on tomorrow, which he hadn’t focused on until this evening. His thoughts about their future, his and Claire’s. He didn’t want their future to be an item on a list, but it was. He was having trouble summoning the energy to begin. To begin meant bringing tomorrow into this room, instead of simply being here, in the moment, the two of them alone in all the world.

  “I’m going away,” he said finally.

  “You’ve been away before,” she said, lifting her head from his shoulder only a little, so that he could hear her.

  She sounded dreamy. He didn’t want to wake her from her dream.

  “We’ll celebrate your return,” she said, “in the usual way.” She pushed more closely against him, although he’d thought she was as close as anyone could be to another. He tightened his arms around her, even though he was already holding her tight.

  “This is different,” he said. “I could be away for a long time.” For now, he’d be traveling from lab to lab across the country. He didn’t want to tell Claire that when enough penicillin was available, he’d go overseas for clinical field trials, following the front lines, wherever they were. He wanted to spare her that worry. “I’ll write to you. I’ll try to get an address for you to write to me. With luck, I’ll be passing throu
gh New York now and then, but I just don’t know. And you’ll be traveling, too, I suppose.”

  “Yes.”

  Claire pushed herself up on her elbows, upon his chest. She gazed into his face.

  No one had ever looked at him that way, with such frankness, with such love. Her expression was clear to him in the moonlight.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I can’t say. I mean, I’m not allowed to say. It’s classified.” This was too much now, the look on her face. He couldn’t tolerate it, when he might not see her again for weeks or months. He separated from her and sat at the edge of the bed. She leaned against his back, put her arms around his neck.

  Their moment of seclusion from the outside world was gone. He would have no time to catch up with himself, no time to mourn, no time to learn what had actually happened to Tia. In this way, he was a soldier, too. He would have to do his mourning on airplanes and trains, at lab benches and in hospital wards and during endless meetings. His sister’s death was part of the war, too, although that was no consolation. Was it a consolation for anyone, that their sisters or brothers, husbands or wives, sons or daughters, died in the cause of the war?

  He had to tell Claire about the substance missing from Tia’s lab. He had to tell someone, and she was the person he trusted most. But he needed time to consider. His mind was teeming with implications. Had someone, knowing Tia was dead, gone to the lab and taken this one substance and no other? Or had someone pushed Tia from that path, and then gone to take it? Not much effort would have been necessary, to push her. Surprise was all that was needed. One moment, she would be there. The next moment, she would be gone. No drama at all. He breathed in sharply.

  “What is it?” Claire said, her face pressed against the back of his shoulder.

  He pulled her arms around him. He didn’t want to look at her while he told her. He’d lose control if he looked at her. He couldn’t let that happen. Not now, not about this, not when he’d be leaving in the morning. She said nothing, waiting for him.