You Lost Me There

by Rosecrans Baldwin

  Sometimes, I noticed, Lucy’s age showed through her face: trembling where the skin stretched over her cheekbones. But she did look more wrung out than normal. Probably she’d been suggesting as much to me for weeks. Sara always said it was a hindrance of mine, that I expected people to tell me what they needed.

  Lucy picked up her laptop.

  “I just don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

  “You’re being melodramatic.”

  “Who says we’re on the right track, and not the guys at GSK? Why not the guys at GSK? Don’t you ever think this could be a multimillion-dollar mistake?”

  I laughed but regretted it. “Lucy, you’ll get your drug. Most likely, the mice will turn out smarter afterward.”

  “I’m telling you, I just don’t know anymore.”

  “Know what?”

  Lucy twirled a hand around her head, indicting me, the lab, the air particles. “I am trying to explain that I am very, very tired.” She was daring me to break away. She leaned forward and lowered her voice, “Listen to me.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Take a nerve cell.”

  “A nerve cell.”

  “Take the membrane, the ion channels. Potassium goes out, sodium flows in. A little negative on the inside, a little positive on the outside.”

  “Right.”

  “So the potential remains reliable. Lively in public, a cynic on the interior, but pretty stable on the whole.”

  “Lucy, I get it—”

  “Now, apply a charge in just the right place. Give a jolt. What happens?”

  “The gates open.”

  “The gates fly open. All kinds of things get through. The balance goes out of whack.”

  I waited for part two.

  “Remember park ranger Terry? Do you know what he said when he broke up with me this week?”

  “I thought you weren’t going to see him again.”

  “That part of me is missing. However I’m built, I lack something that everyone else has.”

  As if a film previously applied to her face had slipped off.

  “Lucy, you can’t listen to that. This creep doesn’t know the first thing about you.”

  She stared at me for a moment. “I really need some girlfriends. I mean, forty-one. Forty-one. Where are my children? My mother asked me that on the phone last night, like I’d lost them recently.”

  We both laughed. I reached out my hand but she managed in getting up to duck her shoulder. Lucy left the door open on her way out and I watched her go: her shoulders flattening, her knobby hiking sneakers treading silently down the hall.

  I sat very still for a moment, staring out the window. Fog was in the treetops. Two dead roaches lay on top of the radiator. Sitting on top of a stack of laboratory equipment catalogs was my lost address book. I weighed it in my hands like a fish.

  I dialed Sara’s only sibling, her sister, Miriam, in Kansas City. She picked up on the second ring. We exchanged pleasantries. After a few minutes I snuck in my question with a lie that Betsy was having memory lapses. We were bringing her in for some cognition tests and needed to confirm that we had the correct versions for some of her stories. How did Miriam remember the night Sara and their mother fought, the night Sara almost ran away?

  Miriam backed up Betsy’s account. It was the night of Sara’s play at the high school, her starring role. Probably because she was nervous for Sara, their mother had drunk more than usual before going to the auditorium. During a quiet moment in the second act, she’d vomited in the front row. Back home, the fight was terrible. “Singed the wallpaper off, from what I remember.” At the high point, Sara punched her mother in the mouth and ran out in tears, vowing never to return. She bought a bus ticket for California, in fact.

  I asked if Miriam was sure. Hundred percent, she said. “Look at any family portrait afterward. Mother never smiled with her mouth open again. She needed two front teeth replaced.”

  We made conversation a few more minutes, because yes it had been too long, particularly for family. And didn’t I remember those nice vacations we’d taken together, the one that winter to Baja. And didn’t I remember what fun we’d had. And didn’t I remember. And perhaps if ever I was near Kansas City, I always had somewhere I could rest my feet.

  Yes, I said, of course, of course I remembered.

  Neurologically, though, it made perfect sense. Combining the degree of my knowledge of Sara’s early life with, in this case, a lack of specific recollection (I hadn’t been there, after all) made for a plausible case of misattribution. I could have told Miriam as much off the bat.

  I’d learned early on with Sara that marriage wasn’t science. Both evolved, both went through cycles. Science grew through fine-tuning, one scientist turning up with an idea about nature, then a little later someone else saying in fact it’s like this, here’s my data, and down through the line, fully documented in the literature. But a marriage had no literature. There was no microfiche for arguments. There was only he said, she said. A picture postcard of what happened.

  My father gave me one piece of advice on my wedding day: to remember the wife’s always right. I recalled telling Sara about it later in the beige hotel room, and how we laughed, both of us so happy, secure knowing that our marriage wouldn’t be the norm, wouldn’t be anything like the families we’d come from.

  I drove back to Somesville just after midnight, packed my bag, and set the alarm clock for five a.m. My mind was dull and clouded when I fell asleep, nervous and clear when I woke. By morning, rainstorms had swept over the island and shoved the fog out to sea. Gulls cawed with the sunrise. I stopped for coffee in Seal Harbor, where the crowd at the gas station was mostly contractors, about a half-dozen guys with sunburned necks. The other neuroscientists probably purchased their soy chai lattes elsewhere, I figured.

  There was an island legend people told about that gas station and a certain celebrity neighbor. Martha Stewart comes down one day to get gas, the story goes, and she asks the station clerk, can I use the phone? The clerk politely informs her there’s a pay phone outside, that the house phone is for employees only. Stewart lives up the hill in the old Ford estate, to get home it’s only a minute to her driveway, but Martha’s not going anywhere. Martha says she’s got no change and she really needs to make a call. The clerk tells her again about the difference between the house phone and the pay phone, that it’s been store policy for more than thirty years. By now the line is backing up. Martha’s upset. She’s Martha Stewart. She’s never been treated like this before. She says to the clerk: Do you know who I am? Do you realize who you’re talking to?

  At which point, an elderly gentleman steps out of line, taps Martha on the shoulder, and says, “Excuse me, but I’m David Rockefeller. And I use the pay phone, too.”

  And he hands her a quarter.

  At seven in the morning, campus was empty, the lab deserted. I sat at my desk and did nothing. My thoughts were tied to others further back, and those bound to ones even deeper, stored under wraps in unused rooms. The sun filled my office with soft yellow light. I scowled at the parking lot. I closed the blinds and booted up my computer. The newest message in my in-box said it had been sent at four a.m.:

  From: belletter@umich.edu

  To: vaaron1118@yahoo.com

  Subject: No shit

  I won a contest. I’m having a chapbook published. I WILL BE A PUBLISHED AUTHOR. Bring champagne. No funny stuff.

  When Lucy got in, I asked her to inform everyone I wasn’t to be disturbed. For lunch, I grabbed two Diet Cokes and a bag of Fritos, and in a spree of work I conducted several conference calls, edited an article for Lucy, reviewed some résumés, and answered enough e-mail so that I’d be caught up when I returned from New York. At five-thirty, I left for the airport.

  I was saying good-bye, hearing wishes of good luck, when I dashed back to my computer. I stared at the screen.

  “Can’t make it, going to New York for a conference, congratulations,” I type
d.

  Rather than SEND, I clicked DELETE.

  I jogged out of the lab, down the stairwell, through the quad, past the maintenance building to the parking lot with the sun on my back, my suit bag flapping on my arm.

  “Sir, I need to look through your bag.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Please lift it over the barrier, thank you. Now, I’m going to ask you several questions about your luggage. I need you to answer them to the best of your knowledge. In this bag, do you have any liquid—”

  “No, no.”

  “Sir, I am required by federal airline safety regulations to ask you these questions.”

  “I know. All right.”

  “Do you have any liquid or perishable items in this bag?”

  “No.”

  “Whose bag is this?”

  “What?”

  “Whose bag is this?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “Sir, who packed this bag?”

  “I did.”

  “When was it packed?”

  “This morning. Last night.”

  “When specifically was it packed, please?”

  “Excuse me? Last night.”

  “Sir, I am required to ask these questions. If you cannot answer them to our satisfaction, we have the right to deny your boarding privileges.”

  “Deny my boarding privileges.”

  “Who packed this bag?”

  “I said, I did. Last night.”

  “Has any person, strange or familiar, approached you since you packed this bag?”

  “You realize what a ridiculous question that is.”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  “Forget it. No.”

  “No, you have not been approached by anyone?”

  “Right. No one has approached me.”

  “Sir, has anyone offered you anything to bring on this flight?”

  “No.”

  “Have you or anyone—sir, what is this?”

  “That’s a gift. Excuse me, what are you doing, that’s for a friend of mine.”

  “Wrapped presents are forbidden. We are required by federal law to unwrap any wrapped items. In particular, when I asked you, do you have any liquids—”

  “I said it’s a gift. My friend’s in the wine business, I’m bringing him a bottle of wine. I don’t understand.”

  “Sir, may I remind you, when I asked if you had any liquids or perishables in this bag, you said no.”

  “Oh give me a break. It’s a sealed bottle, I would need—you think I’ll endanger the flight with Pinot Noir?”

  “Sir, please, if you will lower your voice, I need you to calm down.”

  “Ma’am, I am calm.”

  “Right now I need you to lower your voice. If you will not lower your voice, we will conduct this interview elsewhere.”

  “Well, I can’t believe this.”

  “Sir, are you going to calm down?”

  “I am perfectly calm.”

  “Sir, will you calm down?”

  “What do you want me to say? I am calm. Can I at least go put it in my car?”

  “Put what?”

  “The bottle. The wine.”

  “It will be confiscated here at the airport, but you may claim it upon your return with proof of receipt. Now, do you have any other liquid or perishable items in this bag?”

  “No.”

  “Very good. Thank you, sir. Stan, can I get a wand check? Sir, if you will step out of line, we need you to remove your jacket, belt, and shoes.”

  The aging conference in New York was eight hundred strong, elite scientists from around the world presenting findings in brief slots and accepting awards, making speeches, picking from melon platters during breaks, and shaking hands. We were both priests and mongrels, musical prodigies with degrees in proteomics and chemists with Psy.D.’s, we cutthroat, graying Alzheimer’s researchers, each of us guarding secrets we might sell someday to Big Pharma and use to buy vacation homes for ourselves and a board of executives. Really, it was more a gathering of old friends, folks from NYU who used to work down the hall, men and women I’d known my entire career and whose children were doing interesting things with biofuels to save the world, people who shared a common interest and the same lumps and frustrations and budget cuts, for whom it mattered on a deeply personal level what progress we made.

  Saturday, we broke for lunch and blinked in the daylight. I joined a group going out to an Italian restaurant off Fifth Avenue, former colleagues and lab mates from NYU, and sat next to Georgia Rhodes, wife of Sandy Rhodes, who’d recently transferred to Duke. Georgia, who proceeded to drink too much wine and tell me she was sad she hadn’t seen me in so long. “Now, how is Sara?” she asked. “Has she ever met that Colin Farrell? I swear, Victor Aaron, where are you keeping her?”

  Sandy gave me a look and took one of his wife’s hands. She said, “What’d I say, don’t you apologize for me, why are you always apologizing when no one’s done anything wrong?”

  I gave my presentation in the late afternoon and caught up with people afterward until I needed to meet Russell for dinner, leaving my friends to their orange decaf carafes. I was sad to leave. The heat was hanging around Washington Square, snared under the trees. Everyone was sweating. Boys going by me wore white T-shirts to their knees, like communion dresses. My plan had been to walk to dinner for a little exercise, but after fifteen blocks my jacket was wet, plus I was lost where once I’d known every corner.

  And was I really preferring to spend the evening with Russell?

  Sara and I had expected to miss Manhattan when we left, but we both caught movers’ amnesia. We fell in love with Maine and also with each other again, our older, more demure selves. We shared a feeling of being evacuated. It was a team effort. We didn’t swap our leather jackets for parkas, but we invested in proper boots. “I like the winters,” I told Sara one night in bed, the two of us staring at the ceiling, “how everyone waves on the road.” “When you’ve got a couple hundred people trapped on an island, you get to know the faces.” “Sure, and even if they don’t recognize you, they still wave.” “Who else but a neighbor would be on the island in January?”

  It took me ten minutes to find a pay phone. Russell told me where to go. I passed the address to the cab driver, then asked him to roll up his window.

  All those years schlepping to the lab as the doughnut guys hauled their carts into place, walking home at night past the drug dealers, I must have blocked out the smell.

  Hoofer hits it big, but lacks the girl. Eventually gets his cake and eats it too. Donald O’Connor never got the credit he deserved.

  For nearly two hours I didn’t speak, just played Sara’s game in my head. Russell ran the show once we were seated, somewhere below Houston Street, deep downtown, behind an unmarked door where a dining room had been decorated to look grimy, authentically though improbably a hundred years old. A brand-new artifact, though more like an English hunting lodge than a Tammany slum.

  “If you believe this, she prefers it doggie style,” Russell said, pushing himself away from the table, balling up his linen napkin. “She prefers it, she gets off on it. You think I say no when she insists?”

  Russell had sufficiently recovered from the last girl to find a new one, a Ukrainian blond, Larysa, he said, with chipped teeth and breast implants, who worked as a hostess for one of his clients. After the coffee he was still focused on how she liked it, how she took it, he put it, going into details to show off his good fortune for discovering a woman who didn’t mind facing away from him during sex.

  “Look at me,” he said, yawning, one hand up in the air behind his head, “here I am, thinking we need variety.”

  “Maybe she’s lying,” I said.

  “What? Why would she do that?”

  “So moneybags won’t dump her, possibly?”

  He gave me the finger. “So, Connie wants to see you tomorrow.” “Yeah? Where do I meet her?”

  “How should I know?”

/>   He pulled out a cell phone from his jacket and handed it to me. “What now?” snapped a girl’s voice a moment later.

  “It’s Uncle Victor. Are you always so rude?”

  “Oh my God, Victor, how are you?”

  Russell watched me, drumming his fingers.

  “I heard you’re buying me coffee tomorrow.”

  “Totally, oh thank you, but are you sure? I don’t want to bother you at all.”

  “Honestly, it will be a treat,” I said. “Where do I find you?”

  Outside, Russell lit a cigar, and I was shocked by the tightness of his blue jeans. We watched young people go in and out of bars like so many fireflies. Next to them, we were artifacts, though probably not of a mold they’d ever grow into. Russell said he wanted another drink and led me to a wine bar. Afterward, he suggested a strip club near Wall Street. Half an hour later, I was staring through a fish tank behind rows of liquor bottles, behind which naked girls were bending over to touch their toes. Russell rented us a private room and we spent twenty minutes with a girl Regina’s age wearing a rhinestone-encrusted thong, with a face like wet cement. I felt a crying episode coming on. Of all the places, I thought angrily, sitting on my fists.

  The girl asked when she finished, would we like to have again, bik boyz? Behind her was a large ATM. Its green sign was the brightest thing in the room.

  I caught a cab and Russell leaned in through the open window, jacket sleeves scrunching up on his forearms. The street smelled like urine and cabbage.

  “This isn’t for me,” I said.

  “It’s not like we all have our own private dancers.”

  “Good night, Russell.”

  “You know what I mean?”

  “Why don’t you go home.”

  He looked up the street. He laughed. “I mean, a girl doesn’t need a pole to know what she’s doing.”

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. We’re finished. Are you pleased? Is that enough?”

  Fuck you, I said quietly. Fuck you.