Easter Island (30 page)

“They went back to Hanga Roa early,” he says, searching the landscape. His eyes fall on Alice, now crouching on the crater’s rim. “Please,” he calls to her.

“Alice shouldn’t be running around at this time of day, she’ll have heatstroke. You know that. Allie dear, come here and sit.”

But Alice’s head sways, her shoulders tense, and a blush spreads across her forehead.

“Allie?”

Alice stands and begins to walk down the outer side of the crater, dragging her feet, shedding whispers and snatches of sentences like petals that catch in the breeze and float back to Elsa.
Beazley . . . I help . . . oh, no, too much all alone for Alice . . .

“What on earth’s upset her?” asks Elsa.

“How should I know? Maybe you startled her? You said you were going to meet us back at—”

“Why is she running off? Allie! And what on earth is wrong with you, Edward? Why are you looking at me like that? Al-
ice!”
Elsa stands on the rim, looking down at her sister. Alice is almost at the bottom of the hill, at the post where her pony is tied. “I’m going to get her.”

“Have you gone mad, Elsa?” Edward asks, his face red and belligerent. “For goodness’ sake, you’ve just come from a leper colony. Go disinfect yourself!” Something violent has risen in his tone. “Go!” he says, and then he, too, strides away, down the hill, without looking back, after Alice.

18

In May of 1968 Thomas and Greer packed up their Madison apartment, their lab, said good-bye to their friends and colleagues, and moved to Massachusetts. Harvard had given Thomas the Asa Gray Chair in the Department of Biology. But he still wanted to teach the same intro lecture he’d taught at Wisconsin, believing ardently in the need, and his own unique ability, to free students of scientific romanticism. He still sliced open the section of strangler fig in the second week of class and gave the speech Greer could recite in her sleep.
(Nature isn’t always beautiful . . . )
His Magnolia Project was now known worldwide, and Harvard was paying good money for his scientific celebrity. He and Greer bought a duplex in Cambridge, walking distance to his lab, and a house in Marblehead, where they spent weekends, holidays, and summers when they could. But true vacations were rare for them. Work was too much a part of their life, so they assembled a makeshift lab in the basement of their house, with a refrigerator, centrifuge, microscope, and acids. Greer, who had been given only a research assistantship, found most of her work could be done there. She preferred this to the university’s cold halls and the endless buzz around Thomas’s new lab.
Professor Farraday, I’d love to hear about the conference in ’fifty-three, what it was like to pioneer this field. Professor, I remember reading about your work when I was an undergraduate. I never dreamed I’d meet you, let alone work for you.
Thomas’s celebrity generated an anxious energy in the lab, the new post-docs and grad students competing for his attention. The camaraderie of Madison had vanished, so when Thomas drove back to Cambridge, Greer often stayed in Marblehead to work.

Jo had taken a research assistantship at the University of Minnesota (
It’s not Cuba,
she wrote,
but at least it’s far from Madison
), but Bruce Hodges had moved east with them, installed as an assistant professor and research partner in Thomas’s lab. Bruce was thrilled to be back at Harvard, where many of his old friends had settled.

Greer missed Jo, and felt, at times, a sense of abandonment in Jo’s disappearance from her life. She had few friends in the new department. There were no women, and the men primarily saw her as a conduit to Thomas, hoping she’d put in a good word. Her only pal was Constance McAllister, a marine biology post-doc whom she’d met one day in the ladies’ room. They developed a nice hallway friendship, arranging a few coffee breaks in the lounge, leaving each other jokes taped to the bathroom mirror—
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate
, or:
How many evolutionists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One, but it takes six million years.
Constance was from Boston, however, and spent most of her free time with her mother and the eccentric aunt for whom she’d been named. Or else she disappeared to Woods Hole for weeks at a time, allowing little opportunity to take the friendship further.

Greer was content to work primarily in Marblehead; she had her books, her pollen, her radio, and when Thomas returned from Cambridge, she had him all to herself.

Just before they left Wisconsin she’d completed her dissertation, and now had her Ph.D. The department, as promised, made no mention of the incident, and she was able, without any trouble, to change her topic to the broader field: the floral biogeography of isolated landmasses. If she wanted her degree, she had no choice. The only trouble was with Jo, who had read Thomas’s paper within hours of Greer’s committee meeting. When they had met for dinner that night outside on State Street, Jo stared at her across the red-checkered tablecloth, tapping her fork, waiting for Greer to speak.

“Look, it’s only appropriate that I let you be the first to tell me what you think,” Jo said. “But if you don’t say something soon, I’ll be forced to give you my opinion.”

Greer took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to think.”

“All right, then.” Jo set the fork down. “Do you want to know what I think? Do I have your permission to speak freely?”

“Jo, you can always speak freely.”

“Well, then, get ready, ’cause I’ve got shit to say. You understand, don’t you, that your sweet old husband, your dearest Jackass in the Pulpit, has used your work and passed it off as his own in a national journal. He’s ruined your dissertation, humiliated you in front of your colleagues, and has gotten you to do his grunt work, impeccably, for five years while he flew all over the country playing big-shot scientist.”

Greer steadied her hands on the table. “No one in his position does the grunt work. They all get lab assistants.” She knew she sounded defensive.

“They don’t all get you for a lab assistant. They don’t all get your work. Jesus, Greer. Please, tell me you’re angry, tell me you’re fucking furious, or I’m going . . . well, I’m going to have to smack you.”

But there was something good in Jo’s anger. With each step Jo climbed toward rage, Greer felt herself descend toward composure. “I’m upset,” she said.

“Upset?” Jo’s eyes traveled the neighboring tables in desperation. “Somebody get me some smelling salts. You,” she said, eyebrows arched, “are unconscious.”

“It’s not as simple as you think. I’ve been over this for hours in my head. It’s complicated.”

“I’m ignorant, then. I don’t see any complications.”

“Jo, Thomas and I have been working together for five years. I’ve been gathering data for him, in
his
lab, for five years. I used that data for my dissertation, the same data I knew he was using. I should have realized.”

“The data doesn’t matter. It’s the analysis. The equation. That’s not shared property.”

“I know. But we talked about this stuff. Cross-water dispersal. Magnolia population thresholds, beetle populations, the time lapse. All of it.”

“So you talked with him about your dissertation.”

“It’s just that it’s hard to know what was mine and what was his. He had ideas, I had ideas, we talked about them. For God’s sake, he asked me to read his paper. How do I know who borrowed from whom?”

“Are you really asking yourself that?”

Greer suddenly felt tired. She had used up her small store of arguments and clearly could not subdue Jo’s anger. She wished now that Jo had been there for all those talks. Then she would understand why it wasn’t easy. Greer thought of asking Jo simply to leave her be, but knew she would take that as an admission. Finally, she said: “Yes, I really am asking myself that.”

“I’m sorry, but you seem to be stuck in a goddamned swamp of denial here.”

“I’m sure it looks that way to you.”

“You’re forgetting that I work in that lab, that I know Thomas’s research, and that I read your dissertation. I’ll tell you this much, you can deny what happened all you want, but I know, and I’m not going to keep quiet.”

“Jo, this is for me to deal with.”

“You’re not dealing with it.”

“You weren’t there. You weren’t there for our conversations. I know you’re trying to protect me, but you . . .” Greer looked at Jo, who was leaning toward her across the table, her eyes red. What was it in her face? Greer didn’t want to move toward something she could never retreat from, but hadn’t Jo always been waiting for Thomas to mess up? She had never liked him, she refused to. “Jo, you have your own bias here.”

“So let a committee decide. Let an objective group of outsiders evaluate the situation.”

Greer’s hands flew up at this and knocked over her water glass. “What objective group of outsiders? Professor Jenks? Is it not already completely clear to you that nobody would believe in a million years Thomas borrowed even a punctuation mark from me?” She let the glass remain on its side, water spilling across the table and dripping onto her lap. “It wasn’t for a moment a question in anyone’s mind that
I
used
his
ideas.”

“That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a question in your mind. Or a certainty. Jesus, Greer.”

The waiter appeared at that moment, slow and cautious, clearly aware his customers were engaged in a heated debate. He quietly righted Greer’s glass and swept a thick towel across the table. He asked if they had decided on their dinner.

“Lasagna,” said Greer without looking up.

“Same,” said Jo. “And a bottle of red wine.”

“We have a Chianti . . .”

“Anything,” said Greer. She unfolded her napkin and attempted to dry herself. She rubbed at her skirt, her hands happy to be occupied, and tried to avoid Jo’s stare.

“You know, we should have been celebrating tonight.” Jo’s voice sounded far away, like a voice struggling over a tangle of telephone lines. “We should have been ordering champagne. You deserve champagne, Greer. The best champagne in the world. You really do.” Greer dropped the napkin and looked up. Jo’s eyes had filled with tears and now fixed themselves on the tablecloth. “Fuck.”

“Please don’t, Jo.”

“I’m sorry.” Jo wiped roughly at her eyes with the back of her hand. “You just don’t know how much I care about you. How much this kills me.”

“I know,” said Greer. And then, tentatively, “I think I know how you feel.”

“Do you?” Jo said. “Do you really know?”

“I know, Jo. I guess I’ve always known. But . . .”

“You love a man who steals your dissertation. And here I am, ready to do anything for you, and . . . well, what a fucking world.”

“He didn’t plagiarize, Jo. You’ve got to understand.” Saying it felt good. It calmed her. “He didn’t plagiarize.”

Jo shook her head. “I just want to know what you’re going to say to him when he gets back. ‘Congratulations on your paper, honey?’ Yeah. Congratulations,” she spit out, “let me give you a big wet kiss.”

“Jo.”

“Let me see if I can’t give you five more years of my life and work so that you can have your name in
Nature.
” Jo was looking into the distance, talking to herself now.

“Stop it, Jo, I don’t—”

“Because I’ll do anything my husband asks? Because I’m just a stupid little woman?”

“Jo!” Greer nearly screamed this. People at nearby tables turned to stare at the two of them, dressed for celebration, disheveled by anger.

Jo stood. “I’m sorry, Greer. I can’t help you right now. I’m going to go.”

“You’ve got to trust me.”

“I know.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

“Good,” said Jo, folding her napkin into smaller and smaller squares and setting it neatly on the table. She straightened her fork, slid her water glass to its original position, and pushed in her chair. She then looked at the spot where she’d been sitting and nodded slowly, as though satisfied, or saddened, by how easily she’d managed to erase all traces of herself. In the blue light of the streetlamp Jo seemed paler than usual, almost ill. “You’d have been better off with Castro,” she said.

Greer couldn’t look at her. “I’d have gone to Cuba with you.” She wanted her words to be sweet, but she knew they sounded like an ending. “Jo,” she said, as if she were calling to a ship on the horizon, so far-off she only thought to whisper.

Then Jo turned and walked slowly up State Street, and Greer watched her best friend disappear into a sea of strangers.

The truth was Greer didn’t exactly believe everything she had told Jo. It wasn’t that she had tried to lie, but she had needed to play devil’s advocate and to see how well the devil fared. The committee meeting still seemed a nightmare from which she was waiting to awaken. She reread her paper, she reread Thomas’s, she wandered through the lab replaying their conversations—too many to keep straight—and in the end came up with only this: Thomas couldn’t have
stolen
her equation. He wouldn’t have offered to let her read his paper if he’d been
hiding
anything. The whole thing was simply an awful coincidence.