by Lisa Tucker
“About what?”
“This. Tonight.”
“How is it any of Matthew’s business?”
“I felt like it was the right thing to do. Since you and he…” Ben ran his hand through his hair. “He told me he had no problem with us having dinner, but I confess I’m a little baffled at your reaction. If there’s something going on between the two of you, and I’ve walked into the middle of it…” He sat up straight. “I’m sorry, I’m in over my head here. I think I’d better go.”
His expression was clearly confused, and utterly miserable. She was very confused herself, but she knew she’d just been horribly rude.
“Wait.” She leaned forward, willing him not to bolt before she explained. “I’m the one who needs to apologize. In my work, I have to talk to lots of people who are evasive, but that doesn’t give me an excuse to treat you this way.” When he still looked unsure, she impulsively reached for his hand. “Please, Ben. I promise, I won’t do it anymore.”
He finally relented, and she let go of his hand, feeling mortified that she’d grabbed it in the first place. She’d never done any of this with a man she was attracted to. Was she trying to screw this up? Is that what Matthew wanted, to make her feel bad?
She vowed to avoid any talk of the past for the rest of the evening. Ben cleared his throat and suggested they order a bottle of wine. They agreed on Chianti and then sat in silence, studying the menu, or pretending to, until the bottle arrived a few minutes later. After Ben finished half his glass in one gulp, he said, “I hate evasiveness myself. Manipulation of any kind seems like a pointless waste of mental energy.” He took another drink and finally smiled. “I sense you’re very good at what you do.”
“I’ve been called a bulldog, and worse.”
“I read several of your articles this morning. I was impressed. Work like yours is what keeps science honest.”
She knew she was blushing; she hoped it was so dark he couldn’t see. She was so nervous now; maybe he was, too. Maybe that’s why they said fine to everything the waitress suggested: bread and cheese, linguine with red clam sauce, scampi, rolled veal, mushroom ravioli. When the food arrived, the table was covered with plates, but it wasn’t awkward. Ben’s suggestion that they just share everything charmed her. She’d met so many germ-phobic men lately, but of course this medical genius wasn’t one of them.
While they ate, they talked about what it had been like for him, becoming suddenly famous for his vaccine. He’d been in London for years working on it; he told her a lot about his experimental process, which sounded shockingly difficult, requiring a patience for repeated failure she knew she’d never have. He was patient about answering her questions, too, even though he’d probably heard them all a hundred times, and some, embarrassingly, were basic biochemistry she’d forgotten since college. He also told her about the last few months: all the traveling and interviews, speeches around the world, photos and TV, being called the “new Jonas Salk,” and so on. “I wish I could clone another me to do this part. Let this me get back to working. I miss my lab. I even miss the mosquitoes.”
She laughed. “I’m sure the mosquitoes miss you, too.”
Ben laughed with her. “If they had any sense, they’d thank me for going after the parasites and saving their species from DDT.”
Amelia felt shy as it struck her that she was sitting with the first person in the history of the world to discover a vaccine against a parasitic disease. “Even if the mosquitoes don’t understand,” she said softly, “humanity does. Humanity thanks you.”
“Humanity doesn’t need to thank me.” He exhaled. “This has been so surreal, knowing millions of strangers suddenly believe I’m more than I am.” He took a bite of linguine. “I think that’s one of the reasons I was looking forward to tonight. You’re part of my past, before all this happened.”
Naturally, her vow to avoid talking about the past went out the window then. They were talking about college, and Ben had had three glasses of wine; maybe that’s why he felt comfortable enough to tell her he’d had a crush on her freshman year. “We sat next to each other in bio. Most of the students hated that course because Hauser made no secret that he felt premeds were ‘money-grubbers with no interest in the topic.’ Remember?”
“Definitely.” She laughed. “Hell Hauser.” Though even Professor Hauser had respected Ben; he’d made a point of telling the whole class that Ben was the only one of them who would ever be a true scientist. It was a cruel thing to do, since Ben was already unpopular, but maybe Hauser had been right. Judging from her and Matthew, he certainly was. After a minute, she said, “Did you ever tell Matthew about this crush?”
“Sure. We lived on the same dorm floor; we talked about you all the time. He was openly competitive—you know how Matt is. Even though I met you first, he said he was more ‘driven.’ A week before homecoming, he wanted to bet who would end up taking you, him or me. I pointed out that it wouldn’t be either of us since we hadn’t even managed to talk to you yet. ‘A minor detail,’ Matt said, ‘statistically insignificant.’” Ben laughed. “I know we sound like science nerds, because that’s what we were. Neither of us had really had a girlfriend in high school. You were our female ideal: a pretty girl who was also serious and smart.”
She flushed with pleasure, though she knew Ben was wrong about Matthew. Even in high school, he’d had girlfriends. He was never a science nerd. A science slut, maybe.
“Since you know Matt,” Ben said, “you won’t be surprised to learn that when the two of you got involved—what? seven years later?—he still had to remind me he won.”
When Ben laughed again, she did, too. She even said, trying to get into the spirit of this, “And I’m sure he didn’t take it back when we broke up.”
Wrong move. “Matt was devastated about that for a long time.” Ben’s voice was quieter, a little sad. “I know he tried to get back together with you; this was a few years ago. He didn’t tell me what happened, just that it didn’t go as he’d hoped.”
“It wasn’t serious. We were thrown together at a conference. A stupid mistake.”
“I’m sure you’re right, but Matt was a mess for months afterward. Quite honestly, when I talked to him yesterday, I was afraid he still had feelings for you, but he insisted he’d moved on. He also said if I held back from this on his account, he would come to New York and force me to play racquetball.” Ben shook his head. “He knows how I feel about that. He always slams the ball so hard, I’m sure one of us will end up in the ER.”
“It’s completely over between us,” she said, lightly but firmly.
“You might even say we’re enemies now, since part of my work is uncovering his company’s unethical practices.”
“I noticed. The first Google hit was your editorial about Astor-Denning’s profit last quarter and their declining budget for R&D. I’m sure Matt read that, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s read everything you’ve written. He probably sees it as a challenge, trying to outwit you, but I know he doesn’t think of you as an enemy. Matt would never hurt you, but you should hear the stories he’s told me about rivals at work. He’s ruthless with his enemies, but he can’t help it. Playing to win seems to be coded in his DNA.”
Ben’s tone when he talked about Matthew was so obviously affectionate—even the way he called him “Matt,” which no one else ever did. It was all so strange, but oddly appealing, like the candles flickering on the tables, making everything look softer.
They’d already moved their chairs together. Now he took her hand and held it securely in his while they waited for coffee. She didn’t want to push him to see Matthew the way she did, but she couldn’t help asking one more question.
“I read an article about ethics and your vaccine. You were so careful, choosing a company in India to do the manufacturing, refusing all the Big Pharma offers to buy the patent, even though you could have made millions.” She paused. “You and Matthew are leading such different lives. I wonder how you’ve stayed friends.”
“Matt works in a corrupt industry, but a lot of good scientists work in pharmaceuticals. They’re not the problem. Certainly not Matt.”
“You sound very sure.”
“Remember sophomore year, in genetics, when the prof decided we were all mature enough to follow the honor code and have take-home tests? The first test, I was approached by more than half the students in the class. They all wanted me to let them copy my answers, and they were willing to pay from fifty dollars to five hundred. But two people who didn’t try to use me to cheat were you and Matt.”
“I never cheated on anything.”
He smiled. “Somehow I knew that. But Matt impressed me, too. He was the only guy in our dorm with a full-time job. He had to do all his studying when he got home from work, in the middle of the night. The poor guy took cold showers to wake up and still had to pinch himself repeatedly to stay alert in morning classes. But he wouldn’t cheat.”
“Perhaps he’s changed,” she said, as evenly as she could manage.
“I’ve known him for twenty-one years. I know how ambitious he is, and I hope he does become CEO. I’d love to have at least one pharmaceutical company run by someone who will do the right thing.”
The coffee arrived, but Ben didn’t let go of her hand as he told her about his schedule for the next day. His first appointment was at 7:45; he’d agreed to do an interview at NBC. Every hour after was booked, until a speech at 7:30 with Bill Clinton.
“ TheBill Clinton?” she said.
“I know. It’s a tremendous honor, but I still wish I could get out of it. The problem is that all these appearances are generating huge contributions for the foundation. I have to do as many of them as I can.”
The foundation was brand-new, but Amelia knew it had been set up by a medical charity with a spotless reputation and given Ben’s name. Their mission was nothing less than the worldwide eradication of a scourge that killed millions of people a year and left children blind and brain-damaged. Amelia had seen the horrible pictures of toddlers with malaria. She’d donated to the foundation herself after she read that it would take at least $3 billion to vaccinate every at-risk child—an enormous challenge.
She was even more impressed with Ben, but a little disappointed because she assumed he was telling her about his schedule to explain why he had to get back to the hotel. She was wrong about that, but she’d been wrong about so many things that night and in the last week that she gave up trying to predict what was happening to her. When Ben suggested walking her home, and then came upstairs without any prompting, she forgot all about Matthew. But the next morning, when he left with only a vague promise to see her again, she felt awful, sure she’d done something wrong but unable to figure out exactly what. It was a week and a half before he called, from the airport; he was just back from Brazil, on the way to London, with one night between—could he come over? Again, they spent a wonderful night together; again, he left without saying when he’d be back. It went on like this for months: a day or two with her, a week or more away. She wondered if Matthew had known this would happen, and if that was why he got them together, hoping if Amelia’s self-esteem suffered, her work would, too.
She worked harder than ever, though it was true that her confidence had never been lower. She felt like they were perfect for each other, but he never said he loved her, never talked about the future beyond his work. She reminded herself that he was a cautious person, as patient with his life as with his science, and that he was going through such a crazy time, trying to deal with fame, cut off from doing the experiments that really mattered to him. But she was thirty-nine years old. She still dreamed of being a mother. She worried that this would never change. She didn’t understand why he didn’t want to be with her all the time.
When he finally told her he did, the first week of July when he came back from Toronto, she couldn’t help it; she began to cry. “Of course I want you with me.” Ben was holding her in his arms, kissing her hair. “You’re my soul mate.”
The months after that were the happiest in Amelia’s life, as she crisscrossed the world with this amazing man. She didn’t even hate Matthew anymore: How could she, when the man she adored was so clearly fond of the guy? She could always tell when Ben was on the phone with him because his voice was relaxed and he laughed so often. When she asked what was so funny, Ben often said, “I don’t remember.” Matthew himself just seemed to crack him up.
Ben thought it was obvious that Matthew had played matchmaker because he cared about them. “He knew what I was going through after Karen and I broke up, alone, facing all that publicity. He called you to give me hope.” He smiled. “It worked, too.”
Amelia believed this, but she could never quite believe that Matthew was trying to be nice to her, though Ben made a strong case for his view that Matt wasn’t her enemy. “If he wanted to hurt you, it would have been so easy. He could have destroyed your career before it got started if he’d gone public with the fact that you’d lived with him right up until you started the think tank. To this day, if he let anyone in the media know about your former relationship, it could seriously damage your credibility.”
This was so obvious, it stunned her that she’d never thought of it before. Especially if Matthew released the details of Palm Beach, every article she’d written about Astor-Denning could be spun as meaningless, just the ravings of a scorned, jealous woman.
“But Matt has been extremely careful both outside and inside his company to make sure no one knows about your past. He feels strongly that he will never let you be punished for being with him.”
This certainly didn’t sound like the Matthew she knew, but whoever he was didn’t really matter anymore. As she told him the first night on Grand Cayman, she was ready to put the past behind them. It was true; her focus was the future, now that she had her secret news. She hadn’t intended to keep it a secret from Ben, but she kept waiting for the best time to tell him, and they were so busy that the best time kept eluding her. She planned to tell him on their vacation to the Caymans, but this was before they arrived at the hotel and discovered that Matthew was there, too. Ben was as surprised as she was, though he blamed himself, saying he must have misunderstood what Matthew had in mind when he suggested that they spend the weekend on the island.
Amelia didn’t know that Ben and Matthew had been there before, scuba diving. When she told Ben she’d never gone diving and had no interest in learning, he said he wouldn’t dive, either. They still had to hang out with Matthew, though. But it wasn’t that bad. If anything, Amelia was surprised by how hard he tried to make sure they had a good time. He took over driving the rental car since both she and Ben found it stressful driving British style, on the “wrong” side of the road. He made all the reservations at the best restaurants, where they ate delicious local favorites like conch fritters and mahi-mahi while looking out on the most gorgeous beaches she’d ever seen in her life. He took them to see George Town and Hell rock formations and her personal favorite, the lovely Butterfly Farm. On Saturday night, when Ben was a little tipsy, he told Amelia that Matthew was always like this. “He’s my big brother. He looks out for me.”
Matthew was sitting across from them, and he raised his eyebrows. “Big brother? You’re four months older than I am, not to mention that I look younger, am in better shape, and can still beat you at arm wrestling.”
Amelia was a little embarrassed when Ben insisted on arm wrestling right then, in the hotel bar, but she knew that boys will be boys and men will be boys, too, occasionally. That was the other reason she didn’t tell Ben her secret while they were on Grand Cayman: he did seem weirdly younger and less mature when he was around Matthew. He always had, but it didn’t bother her because she knew he’d change back as soon as they were on the plane.
She ended up blurting out that she was pregnant on the flight to Paris. His reaction to the news was to cry, which touched her more than anything he could have said, because she’d reacted the same way.
It had been almost ten years since Amelia’s gynecologist had informed her that the irregular periods she’d had since she was in grad school meant she didn’t ovulate like other women. Though it wasn’t impossible for her to get pregnant, she’d have to take fertility drugs and even then, it might never happen. Yet here she was, pregnant without even trying. It felt like a gift or even a miracle; certainly the only thing she hadn’t had to struggle for in a very long time.
They spent most of the flight discussing the changes they would make to get ready. They would stay in the States for at least a few years. Ben said he was already talking to several university labs and the NIH; obviously, he’d have his choice of positions. He was dying to stop traveling anyway, and his foundation could get along without him for a while, though of course he would still have to do some appearances, like the EU conference. The topic, medical care in the third world, was obviously important to him, and the sponsor, Astor-Denning, was important to Amelia, especially after they’d consistently refused her application to be on the bioethics panel. But now that Ben had gotten her added to the roster, she would force AD to be honest about their real agenda here: to push Galvenar onto the World Health Organization’s list of “essential medicines.” Her staff had been working for two years on this investigation, and now they knew the truth about the “grassroots group” Pain Matters, which had more than ten thousand members and was the most vocal proponent for AD’s “miracle drug,” both in the United States and around the world. She felt a little bad for Matthew, for Ben’s Matt anyway, but he had to understand that if AD wanted to sponsor a “hippie-dippy, crunchy-granola, do-gooders’ conference”—as he called it, even to Ben, who found it funny—then they had to deal with at least some crunching noises from the do-gooders.
In Paris, she and Ben decided to celebrate her pregnancy by staying at the Ritz, Amelia’s favorite hotel. It was Monday night; she was taking a bath in the lovely white marble and gold bathroom, humming, while Ben was talking to someone on the phone. When she came out in her peach robe, he’d just hung up and was standing by the desk. She walked over to hug him, but before she could, he asked her what she was planning to talk about at the panel.
