Death Qualified (14 page)

    "No," Barbara said.

    "It isn't. It implies reciprocation.

    You want something in return for doing good, you expect it. That's the basis for what passes as altruism most of the time. You'll be rewarded, if not in the here and now, then in heaven. But always there must be a reward."

    "Well, maybe that's one way of interpreting it," Tawna said, but her tone said she did not believe it.

    "What would you do, Barbara?" James asked. "Maybe grant the veil of ignorance to every living being.

    A true veil of ignorance. Every action of every person would be just, because you would never know the recipient.

    Male, female, young, elderly, black, white, American, Brazilian, none of that would enter into any decisions.

    If the action was just, it would be just for anyone alive, not just a select few."

    "That's frightening," Nell said, nearly in a whisper.

    "Justice without mercy is more frightening than anything I can think of."

    "In my world justice and mercy would never be linked.

    Mercy implies one with power having pity on one without power. In my world that dichotomy would no longer exist."

    "Utopia," James said, sounding relieved.

    "Suddenly, although we banished the philosophers, we are in the philosophical Utopia."

    Frank laughed.

    "Well, my thoughts of Utopia include the idea of a warm bed and pleasant dreams. Bobby, ready to make tracks?"

    "I'll get your bread," Nell said. Then she turned to Barbara.

    "Want to walk over to my house with me?"

    Nell gave Tawna and James a hug and a kiss, and then kissed Frank's cheek, and she and Barbara left the group.

    They walked in silence for half the distance.

    "You're a lawyer, too, aren't you?" she asked.

    "Your father mentioned it a couple of times."

    "Was, maybe I still am. It's hard to say."

    "Can I come talk to you tomorrow? Something you said.. .. You reminded me of something Lucas said a long time ago. And then I forgot again. I want to think it through, try to remember it all, and then talk to you.

    Would you mind?"

    Barbara recognized the feeling that enveloped her not as resignation, but as despair.

    "All right," she said slowly.

    ELEVEN

    nell arrived shortly after one the next day. Barbara and Frank had already finished lunch and were having coffee when she walked from the woods between Prank's house and Doc's. She was in jeans and sneakers and a T-shirt, carrying an armload of books; she looked like a schoolgirl.

    Today she appeared shyer than she had yesterday when she had the children with her, and again at the cookout, as if then she had been playing the role of mother and had found security with it; now she was alone and vulnerable.

    Barbara had not had a good night; fir trees filtering the air had not helped. Now she regarded this young woman with a careful neutrality.

    "Hello. Another beautiful day, isn't it?"

    Nell nodded and said hello. She put the books on the table and sat in the chair Frank motioned to.

    "Coffee? We're just finishing lunch. Still some fruit salad." Frank looked at her, questioning. She accepted coffee and turned down food. It soon became apparent that she needed the coffee simply to keep her hands busy with something. She fiddled with the spoon and stirred and stirred the coffee.

    As they waited for her to start, Barbara realized with irritation how much she had picked up from her father over the years. His motto was to let the one who wanted to talk be the one to start, to point the direction.

    Finally Nell put down the spoon and looked at Barbara, addressed her.

    "Last night when you were talking about the veil of ignorance, I began to think of a different phrase, a veil of innocence. Oh, we can't restore it, I know that, but the kind of innocence that children have kept coming to mind. And I began to think of Lucas, when I saw him that time up on the ridge. He had it restored." She looked puzzled, almost pleading with Barbara in some unfathomable way.

    Now she turned to Frank, including him, where a moment ago she had excluded him. She drew in a deep breath and said, "He didn't kill that girl. I know he didn't."

    Frank looked at her over his glasses, then poured him self more coffee.

    "Just tell us what you're getting at. We'll go on from there."

    "Yes. I thought it through last night after the party. At first, it was just this flash of denial, something I knew as well as I know I didn't shoot him, but I realized that isn't enough. And I don't know if I can say enough to convince anyone else." She began to stir the coffee again; this time Barbara reached over and removed the spoon from her fingers. Nell looked embarrassed, but she set her shoulders and began.

    "I met him the first year we were in college. We were freshmen together, in several of the same classes, and we liked each other from the first." She clasped her hands in her lap and looked down at them.

    "We were living together six months after we met. I brought him home with me, and Grampa liked him, and he was excited about the forest here, and the river. We made a little dam on Halleck Creek and swam in the water, and we went mushrooming together, and hiked. Everything was new to him. You know, he grew up on the desert, with junipers and some pine forests in the mountains but nothing like over here.

    You saw how Travis was last night talking about going out with James to watch him take care of animals? Excited, everything new and wonderful. No value judgments, no reservations, just accepting everything. That's how Lucas was. We were both so happy. Everything was beautiful and funny and exciting. And that's how he looked that last day. His eyes were laughing, he was laughing all over, filled with the same kind of excitement and happiness. He couldn't have been like that if he had done something so horrible."

    Barbara regarded her thoughtfully.

    "You say that quality was restored, and that means that after the early years it was gone. What happened?"

    Nell got up and walked to the low railing on the terrace, then turned to face them, outlined against the distant tree, with the gleaming water vanishing among them.

    "Frobisher happened," she said in a low voice.

    "Emil Frobisher killed something in him, and it came back to life for that instant, and then...."

    Frank had not moved, hardly seemed awake he was so still, and Barbara waited also. She had seen people tell astonishing things that they had not intended to bring up at all, simply because someone had to fill in the silence.

    "Emil Frobisher was a professor at the university," Nell said finally, and she returned to her chair, picked up the coffee that had become cold, and put it down without tasting it.

    "Lucas and I had married that summer, and I was pregnant, and it was still wonderful. Then Frobisher put an ad in the paper. He wanted volunteer subjects for an experiment in perception. He was willing to pay, and we decided to go for it. We wanted a last weekend at the coast before I got too big. Anyway, I didn't work out for the experiment, but Lucas did, and he was more or less hired as a regular for Frobisher. And for a long time that was all right, nothing changed. Travis was born and Lucas was crazy about him, about being a father. He was so proud and still so happy. But he was putting in more and more time in Frobisher's lab, and he began to talk about a time when he would be a real assistant, and maybe something even more important, a coworker on some project. Frobisher was encouraging him to think this, and he was changing, week by week, month by month he was changing."

    "You objected? Didn't you see this as an opportunity for him?" Barbara asked when Nell stopped talking. Now that the direction had been indicated, she was free to keep things moving.

    "I objected," Nell said bitterly.

    "Lucas simply wasn't like that a researcher, I mean. He didn't really like school, didn't like having to study, do papers, any of that.

    I did most of his papers for him, or they wouldn't have been finished. He was smart enough, but not interested.

    Not a scholar, or a brain, as we used to say. Anything abstract bored him, math bored him, science bored him."

    She looked helplessly from Frank to Barbara.

    "I'm not trying to make him out to be an idiot, or dumb, not sub normal, just not like that. And yet there he was talking about being a colleague of Emil Frobisher, a coworker on his project." She shook her head.

    "It just didn't make sense, unless they were using him in some way, feeding his vanity to keep him interested. When I said something like that, he exploded and said I was jealous. That was our first argument."

    "How long did that go on?"

    "For two years. Then Frobisher got an offer from Walter Schumaker." She looked at them uncertainly.

    "He got the Nobel Prize for some work in mathematics fifteen years ago, I guess. Anyway, he was the big time. He had read a paper by Frobisher and got in touch with him; he said they were working on the same material and should work together. Frobisher talked Lucas into going with him. He promised that Lucas would get advanced degrees out of the work, a doctorate, even, if he stayed with it. I tried to see Frobisher myself, but he was always busy, or some where else, and it never worked out. I tried to call him and never got through, and he never returned a call. In the end, Lucas went with him to Colorado."

    "Travis was what? Two?"

    Nell nodded and got up again, this time to pace back and forth with restless energy.

    "Nell," Barbara said slowly, as if testing each word, "is it possible that Lucas was simply not ready to be a husband and father? That he was still growing up and not ready to settle into married life?"

    "No. I could have understood that. Before he left he said they were going to change the world, that he was going to be part of the biggest change in all human his tory, that what they were doing would make people like gods. He believed that. He was excited about it, and scared, too."

    "Okay. He left. Was there any possibility that you could have gone with him?"

    "No. That was one of the things I wanted to talk to Frobisher about, but Lucas said that the work would intensify to the point where we'd never be together, and it would be too hard on Travis, and on me. What he was really saying," she added dully, "was that we'd be in his way, hinder him."

    "Did you keep in touch when he was away?"

    "Oh, yes. I wrote every day or at least twice a week, and he called pretty often. And then he came home, when Travis was five. And he was like a stranger. At first, it was the old Lucas, but within a day or two, he was a stranger. He wanted to cut down the walnut trees to raise money for the project. They had run into financial trouble, and Schumaker was talking about leaving. We fought again that time, and he took off again." She shrugged slightly and sat down once more.

    "This time when he was gone, you didn't hear from him? Is that right?"

    She nodded.

    "Nothing. I wrote like before, but in just a few weeks my letters started coming back. He had moved, no forwarding address. When I knew I was pregnant, I sent registered letters, and his father did, and we both tried to call him through the university. No number for him." She looked at her hands, again tightly clasped in her lap.

    "I could have hired a detective to find him, I guess, but ... I thought he just wanted out of our lives, that he had made that decision, and what would be the point of tracking him down? I wouldn't have asked him back if he wanted out."

    "He abandoned you and your children," Barbara said.

    "Why didn't you divorce him and get on with your life?"

    Nell seemed to hunch her shoulders and draw herself into a tighter little mass.

    "I don't know."

    "I think you do. And it's something we'll have to know."

    Nell glanced quickly at Frank, away again.

    "I ... I

    thought that if I just waited, after enough years, he could be declared dead. Legally dead, I guess I mean."

    Barbara studied her and finally shook her head.

    "Were you afraid of him?"

    "No! He wouldn't have hurt me! It was...." She looked at Frank again.

    "One time, over at Doc's, we were all talking about a custody fight that was in the news. You probably don't remember, but I asked you if a parent could ever deny the other one visitation rights, and you said in some cases, of proven molestation, or criminal offenses, or if a morals case could be made. There might have been others, I don't remember. But I knew that I didn't dare raise the issue with Lucas. I didn't want him to claim visitation rights. I thought that if I started divorce proceedings he would have to know, and he would demand visitation."

    "You were afraid for Travis?" Barbara asked in surprise.