Double Helix (14 page)

“Rarely.” Dr. Wyatt snorted. “Face it, Kayla: Most people are idiots and everything they do bears that out.”

“But sometimes—”

“No, no. I know something about this, because you find it in every field of endeavor. Mark my words: You'll waste the summer looking for treasure in that slush pile, but you won't find it. Just like, back when I used to teach, I'd look and look for signs of real intelligence, real originality, real thought, in my students' work, but most of the time it just wasn't there. The best you could get was a dull combination of memorization and regurgitation. Like from a clever monkey.” A look of distaste passed over his face, and then he shrugged. “Of course, that's a useful lesson, too. You might as well learn it now, Kayla. It will save you time in the long run. Teach you not to waste time on fools.”

“You're so cynical!” said Kayla.

“No,” Dr. Wyatt said mildly. “I'm realistic.” He turned to me. “Be honest, Eli. Haven't you found what I say to be the case, in the admittedly short time you've been on this earth? Aren't most people unable to string a logical thought together, unable to express themselves coherently, unable to do much of anything with competence and clarity—let alone with originality?”

I hesitated. Secretly, I had sometimes had similar thoughts about a lot of my classmates. And about teachers, too, to be truthful. I'd been impatient sometimes, when people seemed particularly clueless. But I didn't feel that way about everybody. And I didn't quite know what Dr. Wyatt was driving at. Or why he was suddenly watching me so closely, with such intensity. It made me feel uncomfortable. I wanted to say something to please him, but I wasn't sure what it would be. Wouldn't just agreeing with him be—well, monkeylike? Especially since I really didn't know what I thought?

“The people I've been working with at Wyatt Transgenics seem very smart,” I temporized. “Larry Donohue and Mary Alice Gregorian.”

Dr. Wyatt made a sweeping-away motion with one hand. His eyes were very bright, suddenly. “People who have skills that you don't have often seem smart at first,” he said. “It - doesn't mean anything. Think beyond that. Think more broadly. How often are you genuinely impressed with someone? Tell me the truth. How often do you think,
This person is superior to me
?”

After what felt like a pause that went on too long, I shook my head. “I don't know if I've
ever
thought that, exactly, but—”

“You have never thought anyone was superior to you.”

I felt as if I were suddenly standing on ground that was about to crumble beneath my feet. He'd twisted my words around. That was not what I'd said. “Well, I think
you
are superior to me!” I retorted. “Obviously.”

He didn't say anything, but he liked that; I could tell. Reassured, I went on. “Dr. Wyatt, listen, I haven't really thought much about this. But I know that it doesn't matter if I'm better at some things than other people are. That just makes sense. People have different talents. People contribute different things to the world. Like . . . I'm not musical. I have nothing to give to anybody there. Somebody else has to give to me. You hear what I'm saying?”

There was a long, long pause. Then: “Oh, yes,” said Dr. Wyatt softly. “I hear you, Eli. I hear you quite plainly. I also hear that you lied a minute ago. You
have
thought about this. You've thought about it quite often, I judge. You've thought quite often about superiority. And—given your mother's situation—no doubt you've thought a lot about genetics and destiny as well. The way that genetics enforces one's destiny. The way that one cannot escape. Am I right?”

I was unable to speak. Unable to move.

“Of course I'm right,” said Dr. Wyatt. He smiled cheerily. “More eggs?”

I DID NOT STAY, after all, to play tennis with Kayla. As soon as breakfast was over, I said bluntly that I had to go; I had to visit my mother at the nursing home. I looked Dr. Wyatt in the eye as I said it. Then I turned to Kayla and said, “My mother has a genetic disease called Huntington's. It causes mental and physical deterioration and eventually insanity, beginning sometime in middle age. It can't be treated or cured.”

One or both of them began to say something, but I didn't listen. I walked as rapidly as I could out of Dr. Wyatt's house and down the street and around the corner, and there I found a bush and threw up behind it.

You've thought quite often about superiority
.

As I straightened, I caught the eye of a little boy—perhaps five or six years old—who was standing in the small front yard of a nearby house. The child moved forward a few steps and stared down with great interest. “Puke!” he said.

“Sorry,” I said. “Look, if you'd like to go tell your parents, maybe they'll have something I can clean it up with. Uh—a shovel, maybe. And a garbage bag.”

The boy turned and ran inside his house. I felt jumpy, odd, nervous—wanting to leave but also feeling fixed to the spot because of the child. A couple of minutes later the boy reemerged, still alone, but holding a red plastic toy shovel and a folded plastic trash bag. I had him hold open the bag for me while I cleaned up. Together, we tied off the trash bag and deposited it in a barrel.

“There,” I said. I squatted and looked the boy in the eye. “Thanks,” I said.

“After you puke, you feel better,” said the child wisely.

“Right,” I said. “Bye now, kid. And thanks.”

“Bye now, man.” The boy was smiling at me sunnily. “Come back sometime. We can play.” He held out his hand, and I took it and we shook, gently.

I got up, feeling his gaze still on me, feeling his longing that I would stay and play. For a moment, I wished I could. I did think about going up to the house to find the boy's parents or guardians, whoever. They needed to understand that any jerk who came by and puked could be this kid's friend for life. It was a dangerous world; adults were supposed to protect their children, and these folks were not being watchful.

But I didn't have the strength to go talk to adults right now. So instead I said pedantically to the boy, “Now, remember, you really shouldn't talk to or play with strangers like me. Haven't your parents told you that?”

The hero-worship faded from the boy's face and was replaced by a kind of betrayal. And a scowl. He nodded. He backed away from me until he reached the safety of his front steps.

I felt sick again but I didn't know, either, what else I could have said or done. So much for superiority.

I trudged to the nearest subway station and waited on the platform for a long time for a train. I kept thinking about the little boy . . . and then, all at once, I was aware that I wanted my mother. Not really, of course . . . not that woman in the nursing home. But . . . my mother. The mother she'd been when I was five or six.

The feeling filled me, and I let the next train come and go, and then went around the platform to the other side, and without thinking or planning, went in the other direction, away from home, toward the nursing home, a couple of hours before I was due there.

Maybe it was encountering the little boy. Or maybe, subconsciously, I wanted to make true the lie I had told Dr. Wyatt and Kayla. Or—maybe—it was something more mysterious. In any event, I was there by eleven o'clock, and the moment I walked into my mother's room, and saw my father sitting by her bedside, I knew why I was there. It was happening at last, and I—I had come to bear witness, to be with my father, and to say good-bye.

I watched the back of my father's head for a time. My mother was lying still for once, eyes closed. Sleeping, perhaps. I hoped. Finally I said, “Hey,” softly. I knew, somehow, that my father knew I was there.

And maybe—wasn't it possible?—my mother did, too.

My father moved his head, but didn't really turn. “I've been calling your cell phone,” he said.

“I had it off,” I said. “I'm sorry.” And I was. After a moment my father nodded, and with his foot pulled the second chair closer.

“Sit,” he said. “It's almost time.”

I sat next to him and I looked at my mother's face, and then at my father's impassive one, and we waited.

It wasn't a surprise, of course. We—my father and I—had been told a while ago that my mother was nearing the end of her life. She couldn't talk anymore, in any way. The wild, uncontrollable flailing of her arms and legs, which had embarrassed her so hugely, which had been so scary and dangerous to her and to others, had quieted down to shivers and shakes. “A few weeks, at most,” the doctor had said. But he had said it months ago, last fall, and she had hung on, and somehow . . . somehow I had put it out of my mind. And now it was time.

You could feel it, in the room with us. Death.

I was choked with fear.

Nonetheless, I moved to the other side of the bed and took my mother's other hand in mine, feeling how it trembled. And then my father reached out across the bed and we held hands. He was trembling along with her. So was I.

Then, quietly, though she had not been quiet in many, many years, my mother simply was no more. I cannot describe it except to say that there is no mistaking the sudden emptiness. There is no mistaking that moment of change.

Dr. Wyatt had proclaimed to me that there was really no such thing as the individual human consciousness, no mysterious “something” or essence that made a human a human. And only a few minutes ago, I would have sworn that there was - really nothing left of the person who had been Ava Louise Lange Samuels, even though she was still alive.

But—now that she actually had died, I could feel the difference. Something had changed. Something had departed. Something—someone—was now missing from the world. Viv would call it a soul. I—I didn't know what to call it. I only knew it had been there, and was no longer.

I heard my father exhale. His fingers tightened on mine, and I returned his grip. I didn't look up, though. I closed my eyes. I lifted my mother's hand to my cheek. Just for a second. Then I put it back down on the bed, by her side.

I TOOK THE FOLLOWING few days off from work, not because I wanted to—it would have been a relief to have something concrete and impersonal to do for hours every day—but because my father asked. My mother had long ago signed a form to donate her body to scientific research, so there wasn't to be an actual funeral, but a memorial service was scheduled for Thursday morning, at a chapel at the Harvard Business School. Many of my mother's old colleagues and friends would want to come, my father said. My mother had been very impressive, and very admired, once.

“I know,” I said. It was the day before the memorial service, and we were walking by the river.

“Do you?” said my father.

“Yes.”

“I wonder. She was an extraordinary person. Just—uncommon. Her life wasn't all tragic. There are many things to celebrate about it.”

“I know.”

“I'm not sure you do. I think there's no way you really can know. You won't let yourself. That's what I most regret, I think.”

I contained my impatience. My father's backward-tending musings seemed to me to accomplish nothing, though I knew I had to be there to hear them since that was what he wanted. That was okay. Just so long as I didn't have to cough up similar thoughts. I didn't have any. I didn't want to look back. I - couldn't understand why he hadn't used up all these thoughts long, long ago.

In many ways my mother had been dead for years, hadn't she? And all these friends and colleagues who were supposedly going to celebrate her life tomorrow—I hadn't noticed them visiting her these last years. Or even calling us, or providing support to my father in any way.

He had been—we had been—alone.

But I wasn't going to get enraged about that now. There was just no point. It was over. I felt my pace speed up a little anyway. I couldn't help it. But after a few seconds, I adjusted it back down so that my steps matched my father's again.

And we plodded on.

We'd been taking long walks together every day. I wasn't sure that my father found my presence a comfort—we continued uneasy with each other, and I kept my thoughts to myself—but he kept asking me to come out, and of course I did. We would walk and walk, and occasionally my father would make pointless comments like the ones he'd just made. And other times I would say, “Dad? Are you okay?” and he would say, “Fine, and you, Eli?” and I would say, “Fine.”

We did not talk about the future—our future, and how things would now change—though I was aware that that conversation would have to occur. I wanted it to. After the service, maybe, he would speak up. I wondered if he would be honest with me about our financial situation. About the debt that, surely, there'd be some hope of overcoming now that there - wouldn't be any new bills. I wondered if he would be thinking about dating other women—of remarrying, even. His whole life could change, if he wanted.

He was free. Did it matter to him? Had he realized it yet? He must have. He must have been longing for this for years. Why couldn't he say so? Did he think I wouldn't know? Wouldn't expect it? Wouldn't understand?

Did he think I was selfish enough not to want freedom for him?

I ventured a glance at him as we trudged. His face, in profile, was down-turned, unreadable. He was fifty-two years old. He had thrown so much of his life away. Was he planning to salvage what was left? To indulge, finally, in wine, women, and song? He deserved all of that. He'd been good to her. To me. He could have a full life now, a new life. He ought to want it.