Conundrum (19 page)

“One chance, Lis. And I don’t want hollow assurances. I want something in writing from her lawyer by next week. Something that says if we start paying her for the property, then she signs over the title
now
.”

“Okay.”

I knew I would have to do the only thing I hadn’t yet done. I would beg. Beg my mother—for the sake of my marriage, and for the sake of our entire family. Shower her with gratitude, expose my utter need, my dependency on her, my desperation. And I wouldn’t have to exaggerate, for my desperation at that moment was very real. If I failed, the consequences were unthinkable. I would either lose Jeremy, or I would lose my family. No two ways about it.

Jeremy picked up his plate and the empty bottle of beer. He tipped his head and studied me. “I’ve been very patient, Lis. All these years. I’m not one to complain and you know it. I’ve put up with more crap than most men would tolerate. A lot of guys I know would do some damage to a mother like yours. I’ve never said an unkind word, threatened her, treated her unfairly. I’ve put a clamp on my mouth time and time again. Well, she’s pushed me far enough. And I’m not budging, not anymore.” He narrowed his eyes. “If it means I have to walk out and never look back, then
.
 
.
 
.
that’s what I’ll do.”

Lines from my father’s letter ran through my mind. He had hung on so long to a bad marriage, ran off to do shameful things that ate him up with guilt. What had my mother done to make my father so miserable, to make him want to leave—to want to die? How could a woman wield such power over a man?

I looked into Jeremy’s angry, pained eyes and
realization struck me
. Without a doubt, I knew. It had nothing to do with manic depression, with feelings of unworthiness or bad blood or horrible childhoods. It stemmed from something more essential, more basic. The very character and core of a man could only take so much. When men acquiesced and compromised over and over, they were like logs tumbling in turbulent water. The bark eventually wore thin and stripped away, their confidence and personality
smoothed
into compliance, leaving a drab piece of driftwood. Every day, they lost a little more of what defined them. That’s how Jeremy looked to me, at that moment.

I thought then of another famous poem, by Shelley, one Raff had especially liked to recite, due to its strong emotional content—and because he couldn’t resist enacting the ocean vomiting up the scores of pirate ships that the deep kept trapped in its holds.

“
Unfathomable sea! whose waves are years. Ocean of time, whose waters of deep woe are brackish with the salt of human tears! Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow claspest the limits of mortality! And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore. Treacherous in calm and terrible in storm, who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable sea?
”

I pictured some future day, Jeremy and me as survivors, scavenging through the wreck
age
of our lives vomited up by the sea onto the shore, searching for broken scraps to reclaim from the throes of my mother’s insouciant tossing. In the end, stripped of memory, years, strength, health, we would both become bare bones, bleached by salt and sun, our objections erased by the unforgiving, relentless elements. I saw us picking at the tidbits of memory, the color and flavor leeched away, bland and unnourishing. They would be all we would have to fare on. Not enough pieces left to build a shelter, to harbor a hope, to stave off fear. Only splinters small enough to lodge under the skin, but still able to cause festering and infection. I would only be able to gather what memories I could
hold
in my hands, finding the pieces light, weightless, without substance. How easy it would be, then, to throw them into the wind and let the brisk ocean breeze catch and carry them back into the sea, leaving my hands bereft of any memory worth clutching.

At that moment, I
imagined
I could cry an ocean of salty tears. Yes, my mother was both treacherous in calm and terrible in storm. And undeniably, an unfathomable sea. Her demands never ceased, her hunger never abated. Jeremy was right. We had to draw a line and stand firm on it, a borderline
,
as Joni Mitchell called it. Some mark of in
between. Regardless of the outcome. We would just have to salvage whatever we could and hope it would be enough.

I felt
as if
I had momentarily blinked and my world disintegrated
in that instant
I wasn’t looking.

“
I lay down golden in time, and woke up vanishing.
”

Chapter
12

When I arrived at Ed Hutchinson’s home at eight a.m., he met me at the door in a ratty flannel bathrobe and wearing brown corduroy slippers. I suppose I expected him to be old, the way he sounded on the phone, but his face surprised me. Despite being ravaged by disease, his was a handsome face, with few lines, and with strong cheekbones and chin. His stature suggested he once carried more weight, that he had been muscular and dashing, in a Rock Hudson kind of way. Two bronze eyes looked me over
,
and I couldn’t help but sense an overt lechery in his welcoming grin. He carried himself erect and poised, about six foot two, and his hair was thick, ruddy brown. He gestured me in, coughing all the while, and told me to find a chair and wait while he dressed.

I entered his den and took in the dark mahogany furnishings, the heavy drapes and thick carpeting, the many framed certificates and awards on the walls. Those slips of
paper
testified to a man devoted to scientific advancements, dedication to his company, and faithful service in the military. In contrast to the abundant number of academic accolades was the glaring absence of any personal or family mementos. Only one small framed photo sat on his desk, showing a young and dashing Hutchinson with his arm around a girl, perhaps twelve, smiling for the camera. Did he have a wife? Was this a photo of his daughter?

I heard his footsteps and sat in a wide leather chair across from his desk.

“Come, you can help make some coffee while I show you something,” he said, picking up a stack of periodicals off his desk. He had put on a pair of Levis
(that apparently used to fit him but now sagged below his waist)
and a plain white T-shirt, but remained in his slippers.

I followed him into the kitchen as he
alternately
coughed and wheezed. He reached for a can of Folgers on the counter and pointed at the coffeemaker. “You do know how to make coffee, don’t you, honey?”

“Sure. How strong do you want it?” He waved at me while trying to calm another attack, giving me a go-ahead to make it however I wanted. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t drink the stuff, but I could handle a neighborly cup. Even so, I kept the brew a little on the weak side.

He looked me over before collapsing into one of the dining chairs. “You sure look like your dad, you know that? Same dark eyes and hair, same nose. Not much of your mother in you, from what I can tell.”

I guessed the husbands that had worked together at Penwell in my father’s department had all known each other. Maybe they had barbecues or company picnics. Talked about their wives and children, shared photos. I found mugs in the cupboard and filled two with coffee. I brought them to the table and sat across from Ed.

“You want some nondairy creamer? There’s some on the counter. Sugar’s over there too.”

“Black’s fine,” I said. “I appreciate you letting me come over.”

“Nice to have company. Especially someone as pretty as you.” He smiled again and let his eyes roam over my body. If he hadn’t been ill, I would have considered making excuses and backing toward the door. His gaze was just plain rude. “Who wants to sit and visit with someone at death’s door? It’s no fun, I can tell you.” He sipped his coffee
,
and that seemed to soothe the raspiness out of his voice. “So, you have questions about your dad. Ask, and I’ll tell you what I can.”

I decided to get to the point. I didn’t know how long he’d last before a coughing episode would make talking difficult. He seemed much less distressed than he was on the phone the day before. “You mentioned something about an experiment, in San Diego. I asked my mother and she said my dad had volunteered, and that the experiment was dangerous. Do you remember anything about it? Who else may have participated?”

“You know, I thought about that after we hung up. And I looked through my newsletters and bulletins. Nothing. I know there was a project going on down there. I can’t recall who headed it, what it involved.”

“Was that common—asking people to volunteer for assignments outside their normal jobs? Was Penwell connected with the government or the military?”

“We handled a lot of government contracts, but the employees were all hired by Penwell, a private corporation. Your dad too.”

“Well, how did that experiment in San Diego get advertised? Would they have posted a notice on a wall, or sent a memo?” If it had been top secret, how would they recruit? Take each man aside privately and lay out the details? If my mother was right and the whole thing had been covered up, surely they wouldn’t have publically posted this mission for all to see.

Ed Hutchinson sucked in air
,
and his throat rattled. He shook his head. “Sorry, honey, I just don’t remember.”

“Do you know anyone else who participated and came back sick? Did anyone else in the company get leukemia or die soon afterward?”

Again he shook his head, but his eyes avoided mine. There was clearly something he wasn’t telling me. I thought about my conversation with my uncle and the question of secrecy. Had Hutchinson sworn not to tell? What did it matter if he told, now that he was dying? Now that twenty-five years had passed?

“Hey, I thought you’d like to look through some of these annual reports. Some stuff about your dad in there.” A deliberate change of direction. I made a note to get back on topic once I heard him out. He flipped open one magazine-sized brochure to a page with rows of photos, arranged like a school yearbook.

“Here’s your dad. Handsome fella. Always had to push the girls away.” I looked at Ed’s strange expression. What did he mean by that remark? What girls? I turned back to the page and studied my father’s face. He was handsome, smiling for the camera. I thought it strange that I would always envision my father at thirty. Unlike my mother, whose aging face erased my memory of her younger self. When I looked through photo albums and saw pictures of her with us kids, when we were in elementary school, I barely recognized her. But my father would never grow old in my mind.

He would have been
about
my age in this photo. That realization gave me a start. He would be my contemporary, my classmate. And someday in the not-too-distant future, I would be old enough to be his mother. He suddenly seemed way too young to have died, and too young to have fathered three small children. I could barely picture myself with the maturity to handle that much responsibility.

Ed placed another opened magazine before me. A large black-and-white photo showed my father standing next to a young Ed Hutchinson and two other men. They posed in an airplane hangar, with a half dozen giant aircraft in the background. But next to them stood some cylindrical dark objects, about two feet wide and six feet tall. I read the caption. “Penwell scientists display the new sleek design of the SNAP 3.”

“What’s SNAP?” I asked, studying Ed’s face in the photo. There was something strangely familiar about him. Had I seen a photo of him and my father somewhere else, maybe long ago? I surely had seen him before. I pulled over the first brochure he had shown me and found his photo two rows above my father’s. Maybe it was his resemblance to Rock Hudson that clicked—the lingering movie star aura about him. Talk about a hunk. Most of the other men in the pictures looked like your typical college nerd—glasses, goofy haircuts. Like they were too wrapped up in their research to ever look in a mirror or comb their hair. But Ed Hutchinson could have been a poster boy for the all-American heartthrob.

“SNAP? That was a big project we all worked on in the late
fifties
. Your dad was instrumental in its development. Stands for Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power. Generators that created electricity from radioactive decay. The first one launched into space in 1961, aboard a Navy transit spacecraft. They used the RTGs—radioisotope thermoelectric generators—on most all the spacecraft: the Apollo missions, the probes, Viking, Pioneer, Nimbus. They were especially useful for craft that traveled too far from the sun to employ solar panels. But the RTGs had other uses: powering lighthouses, remote sensing stations. Even though the thermocouples were reliable and long-lasting, the RTGs turned out to be inefficient, and after a while the SNAP program was dismantled. You can still find defunct RTGs in old lighthouses in Russia, although there are some rotting in the sea. Like the one aboard Apollo 13. It’s lying somewhere in the Tonga trench, in the Pacific Ocean. Who knows how much radiation could be leaking into the water from these things right now
?
”