A Fierce Radiance

by Lauren Belfer

  Rutherford opened his eyes and his eyes filled with tears. He tried to stop the tears, but he couldn’t. Tears were pouring down his cheeks. “It was a miracle. A miracle, Dr. Stanton.” He couldn’t stop weeping. He and Stanton were both struggling to function, right at the edge. He turned away from Stanton. He pressed his palms against his eyes. He breathed deeply. He had to get a grip on himself. He had to talk about something else, get himself back in control. Get himself back to business. Yes, business. Again he took a deep breath. Slowly his sense of self-possession returned. He was coping, yes, he was.

  “I’ll tell you something, Stanton.” He took out his handkerchief, blew his nose, pretended he had a cold. “Claire doesn’t know this yet. But once the drug is ready and we’re marketing it, I’m going to turn over 50 percent of the profits to a foundation. Name it after Charlie. A medical foundation. Like the Rockefeller Institute, only smaller. Although who knows what could happen, once this medication takes off. Maybe we could create a foundation to compete with the big guns.”

  In Rutherford’s still-damp eyes, Jamie saw a glint at the prospect.

  “You’ll be on the board of directors, I’m hoping. I’m asking. Begging you. Help me with this. I’ll need your help, figuring out how to distribute the money, what diseases to target. I’m doing this as a gift for Claire. To make up for, well, to make up for things in the past, a lot of things, even though some of them couldn’t be helped.”

  Stanton stared at him. Rutherford was virtually confessing to him: he wanted to be just like Rockefeller and Carnegie and all the rest. Do whatever it takes, wresting what you want from the world, then redeem your conscience by giving back a half that still leaves half behind, still leaving you a millionaire many times over.

  “You should go upstairs and visit my grandson. You’ll get a happy surprise, I can assure you. He’s doing great. No feeling sorry for himself, not that boy. He’s like his mother, and his grandfather: not just making the best of whatever comes his way, but bending it to his own will. I’m proud of him.”

  “Let me ask you something,” Jamie said. “Where did the medication come from?”

  “What do you mean?” Rutherford was puzzled by the non sequitur.

  “The question is simple enough. Your prized product, isn’t it? Guaranteed of success, no matter what the side effects? Ceruleamycin, that’s what you’re calling it, right?”

  Jamie watched Rutherford staring at him in confusion. Was it possible that Rutherford had no idea of where the medication came from? Jamie wondered. “You must know where it came from. That’s the sort of fact a man like you would know without having to look it up.”

  “Where it came from? It came from the lab.”

  “Before it was in the lab. What was its history before it was in the lab?”

  “I suppose there are records that say. I can ask someone to investigate.” The Harvard Club. Water buffaloes staring at him. A decrepit stuffed elephant. Nick Catalano, offering Rutherford the discovery of a lifetime—from Syracuse, the city of his birth. None of this was James Stanton’s business.

  “Where was it collected?”

  “There must be two thousand soil samples in that lab.”

  “Two thousand samples—but this is the one that works. Maybe the only one that works. Is it from Central Park? From Claire’s backyard? Or maybe it’s from my sister’s lab. From a sample she collected when she was visiting our childhood home.”

  “You know very well that these substances can come from anywhere. You can find the same thing in a million different places.”

  “I happen to know that Ceruleamycin has the same chemical structure as a substance my sister was working on before she died.”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing. Somebody else could have discovered it, too.”

  Jamie knew this was true. But he was compelled to push on: “My sister wasn’t suicidal, and she wasn’t the sort of person who has accidents.”

  Slowly Rutherford said, “Anyone can have an accident.” He paused. He thought back. The coroner had ruled that Tia Stanton had an accident. Rutherford recalled speculation about suicide, but the ruling was accidental death. “Your sister’s death was a tragedy,” he said. “But an accident.” Was Stanton denying the report? If he didn’t believe it, why hadn’t he challenged the report months ago?

  Rutherford put himself back to last summer. He’d had a dozen irons in the fire, a finger in every pie, as he always said, and he wasn’t missing dessert, not ever. And the pie that excited him most then was the same one that excited him the most now: antibacterials from soil. His staff was collecting samples from around the world. Nick Catalano was selling, Rutherford was buying. Privately, to be sure, but so what?

  Slowly Rutherford put the facts together for a theory. He had a rule to live by: always remember, in your secret heart, that two plus two equals four. Even when businessmen, politicians, and adulterous husbands all around you add two plus two and proclaim they’re getting five. True enough, you too might, now and then, find yourself publicly proclaiming that two and two makes five. But you could allow yourself that luxury only if, in your heart of hearts, you recognized and accepted the truth. Had Nick Catalano murdered Tia Stanton for this medication? Was there proof? Rutherford put Stanton off. “Accidents can happen. Anywhere. Without warning. That’s what makes it an accident.”

  Jamie could hold back no longer. Within himself he’d lost the battle of resistance, and now that the barricades were down, he couldn’t control the force within him. “Your people killed my sister,” he shouted in anger. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shouted in anger.

  “Of course ‘my people’ didn’t kill your sister!” Rutherford couldn’t help shouting, too, even though he knew, and warned himself, that generally a voice so quick to express anger was masking guilt. “That’s ridiculous!” He couldn’t stop himself from shouting because this was more than business. What Stanton was saying would ruin everything he’d built, including and especially his newfound relationship with Claire. He would never allow his bond with Claire to be broken. Nothing would be allowed to come between them now.

  “Then tell me where the medication came from.” Jamie’s family, gone. His sister’s legacy, her greatest accomplishment, gone. And for what? For a millionaire to become even richer and then give half the money away, as if that would make everything better? As if that would bring Tia back? What was the use of her life? Of any of their lives? His parents, dead of influenza, his sister, his patients, young men in the military forces of every nation, dead. This was the only meaning he could grasp at: his sister had discovered a substance that could ease the anguish of others, and it had been stolen from her. “It’s a simple question. Give me a simple answer.”

  “You need to go home and get some sleep,” Rutherford said, struggling to make his voice calm. “Take Claire out for lunch and then go home and get some sleep.”

  The months of frustration, the months and years of rigorous self-discipline—all Jamie’s facades crumbled. He didn’t have the strength to hold himself in check. “Did you hire someone? Or were you just waiting with the fee after it was over? Who was it that you paid?”

  “This is my business, let me deal with it.” He should have seen this coming, Rutherford chastised himself. He should have thought of this possibility long ago. He’d let his enthusiasm carry him away.

  “That’s your justification?”

  “Stop! Be quiet! Don’t shout.”

  They turned. Claire stood on the stairs, gripping the handrail. She was distraught, eyes bleary from crying, hair wild. “You’ll upset Charlie with your fighting.” The sun was pouring through the stained glass window at the landing behind her. It glinted off the gold leaf on the Renaissance paintings of the Holy Family along the wall. “What’s he supposed to think when he hears you two like this?”

  The men were struck silent by her mistake. For a long moment, they said nothing. They had to be delicate now. How fragile she was. How would she re
act when she realized what she’d said? Jamie wanted to console her. He took three steps toward her, but he couldn’t take the ten more that would get him to the staircase and into her arms.

  “Sweetheart,” Rutherford said. “We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to raise our voices.” How much had she heard? “Of course we have to stay calm for Charlie’s sake.” He wouldn’t correct her. Never. “We forgot. We’ll be more careful from now on. We won’t upset Charlie, not ever.”

  “What were you arguing about?” she asked.

  Okay, maybe she didn’t hear much or even anything, Rutherford hoped. Maybe she heard the tone without registering the words. He had to be steady now. “Business, the war, so many problems we’re trying to deal with.”

  Jamie studied this woman, the love of his life, standing before him. He felt her anguish. Ten steps, to reach her. He pictured his sister in his memory, saw her happy, laughing at some joke in the lab. Saw her body laid out in the morgue, a different kind of lab. He watched himself, as if he were separate from himself, identifying her body. Her face was perfect, her body broken.

  Here was his terrible dilemma: to deny his own family and a possible ugly truth in order to be with Claire, or to ask Claire to credit a possible ugly truth and deny her family to be with him. “Your father ordered my sister’s death, did you know?”

  “What?” she asked blankly.

  “If he didn’t directly order it, he set up the circumstances that led to it. Created an atmosphere that condoned it. And he’s going to profit from it. Hugely.”

  “I don’t understand.” Frowning, she looked from one to the other.

  “What do you mean? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Ask him to explain it to you.”

  She glanced at her father but said nothing.

  “Go ahead, Claire. Ask him.” He regretted this as soon as he said it—his baiting of her. How could he do this, to the woman he loved? But how could he take it back?

  Father and daughter looked at each other. Claire’s beloved face, filled with confusion. She was innocent. Of that Jamie had no doubt. He’d wounded an innocent.

  Jamie couldn’t tolerate her pain. Without conscious thought, he turned and walked to the elevator. Pressed the call button. The elevator seemed to take an hour to arrive. He sensed Claire staring at his back. Finally the elevator door opened. He stepped in. He greeted the elevator operator. He was lost. He didn’t know where he would go or what he would do, once the elevator reached the ground floor. He didn’t turn around to see his almost-family watch him go.

  After Jamie left, after the elevator door closed behind him, Claire didn’t move. She stared at the elevator door. What had just happened? She couldn’t understand. What had he been talking about? She’d seen him, she’d heard his words, but she couldn’t figure out what he’d meant. She sat down on the stairs and wrapped her arms around her legs. She rested her head upon her knees.

  Now her father was beside her, easing himself, with a sigh at the effort, to sit on the staircase, one step down from her. She was concerned for her father. He needed to get some exercise, if he was so stiff that he could barely manage to lower himself to the steps. When he was ready to get up, she’d offer him her arm to help him, offer it in some imperceptible way, so he wouldn’t realize that she’d noticed his weakness.

  “Ah, I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said.

  “Did you understand what he was talking about?” she asked.

  “He thinks my medical company had something to do with his sister’s death.” He kept his voice calm. No denial. No defense. No outrage. “He believes his sister was murdered and that I may have caused or condoned her death.”

  “He couldn’t have said that.”

  “He did say it, sweetheart.” Keep it simple. As if she were a little girl. A child, younger than Charlie.

  “But that’s not true.”

  “I know, darling.”

  They sat without speaking. Claire imagined Jamie leaving the building. In her imagination, she followed him along the street. Where was he going? Along Eighty-first Street, a line of town houses, returning to the Institute? Or had he crossed Fifth Avenue to the museum, where she could find him amid the Rembrandts and Vermeers? They would pretend that nothing had been said, pretend that she hadn’t seen him in many days and now they were simply happy to be together, looking at their favorite paintings. She’d take him to see Woman with a Pink. The woman’s husband was portrayed in the companion painting which hung beside her. This painting was called Man with a Magnifying Glass. Perhaps the husband was a scientist, like Jamie. The pink carnation: the symbol of marriage and love. Of love within marriage.

  “He’s been in the war,” Rutherford said. “Who knows what he saw there. Things you and I can never imagine. He was wounded. That might have mixed his mind up a little. He’s not himself yet. He still needs time to recover.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Don’t worry, honey, I’ll find out what he was talking about. It can’t be true. After all, the police said his sister had an accident.”

  She nodded.

  Rutherford patted Claire’s hand, trying to reassure her, to slow her down to the here and now, the moment by moment—that was the way to get through this. Meanwhile his own mind was racing, putting the pieces together, identifying the questions, searching for answers, planning his next move.

  Minutes passed, and still they sat together. Claire felt safe here. Her father was right: it was the war. Jamie had been wounded, probably more badly than he ever let on. Slowly, amid her father’s paintings by Giotto and Cimabue, amid the angels and the golden-haloed saints, she realized that the man she knew and loved might have died in North Africa after all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Claire hung up the phone. It was 8:30 AM. Each day for a week she’d tried to reach Jamie, leaving a message with the switchboard operator at the Institute. Each day he never phoned back. She knew she wasn’t missing any return calls: here at her father’s, someone was always home to answer. She couldn’t go to the Institute and wait at the gates until she saw him. Or was that exactly what she should do? He was the love of her life—or so she’d thought. What was the proper way to fight for him? Maybe she had no means to fight for him. He had to return by choice, not battle.

  From her upstairs bedroom at her father’s apartment, she looked out the window to Central Park. The trees showed the pale green of spring. She imagined him, wherever he was, waking up, showering, shaving, putting on his naval uniform, beginning his day.

  She couldn’t keep leaving telephone messages for a man who wasn’t going to reply. His silence was his clear response anyway. Gradually Charlie was getting better. Soon he’d be well enough for Claire to return to work. She’d resume her life as if it had never been interrupted by a man named James Stanton. She slipped off the emerald ring he’d given her and put it in the back corner of her bureau.

  And so the days passed, and then weeks, and months. The war dragged on, with steps forward, here and there, for the Allies. Admiral Yamamoto, commander of Japan’s navy, was killed in an Allied ambush. The Axis powers were defeated in North Africa. German U-boats no longer destroyed Allied shipping in the North Atlantic. But the Germans still controlled Europe, and Americans were fighting island by island across the Pacific.

  And still Claire had no word from Jamie. Her father was right: Jamie had been wounded in the war, in more ways than they knew. Eventually she stopped noticing how much time had passed since he’d left her. As Charlie grew stronger, Claire returned to work part-time. Rutherford resumed his usual schedule, traveling and scouting business opportunities. The family rebuilt itself on new terms, like so many other families that had been torn apart by the war.

  When summer came, Charlie was well enough to go to a sleep-away camp in the Adirondacks. Reports of running races and tennis matches filled his first letter home. Claire missed him even as she felt relieved by his happiness at camp. In his letter, he told her to say hi for h
im to Uncle Jamie. So many dads and step-dads and uncles and brothers were far away; for now she wouldn’t have to explain to Charlie that she no longer saw Jamie.

  With Charlie at camp, her father left New York on an extended business trip to the West. MaryLee and Maritza took their yearly vacations. Rather than stay on alone in the rambling Fifth Avenue apartment, Claire moved back to her own home on Grove Street.

  And that’s where she was on a warm day in July 1943, soon after the Allied landings in Sicily, when Claire answered the door at four in the afternoon and found Dr. Jake Lind standing on the front stoop with a Japanese man.

  Although Dr. Lind had warned her about the visitor on the telephone, Claire wasn’t prepared. The man was about five-foot-five and carefully dressed in a threadbare, shiny suit with vest and a panama hat, the straw frayed. His wide face was somber. Claire hesitated without even realizing that she was hesitating. She’d never been introduced to a Japanese person. She’d never been to a Japanese restaurant. On Hudson Street, a Japanese man owned a lapidary shop, but Claire had never been inside.

  Wartime propaganda portrayed the Japanese as monsters. After Pearl Harbor, Life magazine had run a picture essay comparing in detail the racial characteristics of the Chinese, our friends, and the Japs, our enemies, so Americans wouldn’t confuse them.

  The man standing next to Dr. Lind, hat in hand now in a gesture of politeness, didn’t look like a monster. Yet for the first time in her life Claire found herself wondering what the neighbors would think.