Intuition (36 page)

Fifteen minutes later, Jacob found her, and the sight of the crimped ecru wool on Marion's desk stopped him in his tracks. He had intuited where she'd gone, and thought to bring her coat as well, but he stood stricken in the doorway of her office, almost afraid to cross the threshold.

She said nothing to him, but kept on pulling at the wool. With a weird, meditative fascination she watched her stitches disappear.

“Forgive me,” he said.

She didn't even want to look at him. Nevertheless, she let the knitting go and sat back in her chair. Ann had been partly right when she'd considered Marion unforgiving. Marion did not have an easygoing nature. She did not take the world lightly, or bend easily to other people. Still, she forced herself to consider her husband where he stood in the doorway. She understood his belief in her—his dark, fraught, critical faith, so different from Sandy's. Even in her anger, she understood his ambition for her and his restless, unacknowledged jealousy.

“Forgive me,” he said again.

She sighed and stood up and took her coat from him and said, “I'm sure I will.”

4

S
ANDY DID
not go to the annual cancer meeting in San Francisco that May, but he pretended he didn't care. He went so far as to tell Ann he'd regretted all the time he'd spent away from the family in the past several years, and this was one of the main reasons he'd given up the lab and its attendant conferences. And she accepted the explanation with only the slightest quirk of an eyebrow.

Once, at night, he turned in bed and wrapped his arms around her. He held her tightly, and she kissed and tried to comfort him. She didn't need to ask what was wrong. She knew he simply missed the lab; he missed playing the research game. More than anything, he missed Marion.

“She can't be having an easy time of it,” he told Ann as she flipped pancakes for Sunday brunch. “She isn't really a good collaborator—for most people.”

“No,” Ann said.

“It's not in her nature,” Sandy said. “She's too quiet, and secretive,
and . . .”

“Selfish,” Ann supplied wickedly.

Sandy stared at her for a moment, shocked, and then chortled. “That's right, just a little too selfish.”

Ann's birthday often fell on the weekend of the conference, and this year, because Sandy was home for it, the girls came in from school and cooked a grand family dinner. Louisa prepared poached salmon, and Charlotte served up new potatoes and perfect asparagus. But Kate ran into trouble with the cake and threw away her first attempt in despair. Dessert was delayed, and served at last as a trifle layered with strawberries and whipped cream, and much teasing on the side.

“There was probably a time when they taught baking at Hill,” said Sandy.

“I'm sure they did in the nineteenth century,” said Kate.

“Well, maybe they should reinstate the class,” said Sandy.

“Very funny,” Kate said coolly, although, in fact, she'd shed a few tears in the kitchen.

“You picked an ambitious recipe,” Ann murmured.

“We tried to talk her out of it,” said Louisa.

Kate shrugged. “It looked interesting.”

Ann leaned over and kissed her, and pushed the hair out of her eyes. She itched to brush it and tie it back. There was a boyfriend now, a tall, gawky kid Ann had met exactly once. From what Charlotte said, Ann gathered that Stephen was very smart, and very rich, and very wild. Kate couldn't deny these first two accidents of birth, and had tried to explain about the third. The facts were, however, that Stephen had been suspended a couple of times from school. It seemed he would be graduating, but he was taking the year off afterward to travel in Italy. Ann was delighted that Kate's friend would not be going with her to Brown. Theirs, Ann thought, was a separation devoutly to be wished. Of course, Kate felt differently about the matter, but like her father, she tried not to let her disappointment show.

Sandy was in good form. He had just accused Charlotte of cowardice for not applying to medical school, and was now laughing at Louisa for taking intensive Russian.

“What happened to Robert Hooke?” he demanded. “What happened to early modern English biologists?”

“I'm not doing Hooke anymore,” Louisa said.

“That's a shame.”

“Why? You told me Hooke was a waste of time.”

“Weasel, it's all a waste of time,” Sandy told her. “At least with Hooke you knew the language.”

“But I know what I want to do now,” Louisa said. “I know what I want to study.”

“And what's that?” Ann asked her.

“Lysenko,” she announced triumphantly.

“Jesus,” her father groaned. “He wasn't even a scientist.”

“Yes, he was.”

“He was Stalin's tool.”

“That's the whole point!” Louisa's eyes were shining. “He set back plant genetics a hundred years, not to mention ruining the Soviet agricultural economy and causing—”

“I thought you were looking for scientists to admire,” Ann said.

“But I think corrupt scientists are far more interesting—from a policy point of view, don't you?” asked Louisa. “You can look at the interplay of science and politics, and you can watch the corruption of the scientific process. And now the Soviet archives are really starting to open up—it's virgin territory! Once I know the language I can go to Russia and I can get into stuff no one has even looked at for forty years!”

“Or you could actually do some science yourself,” Sandy said. He could not understand why anyone would turn down that opportunity—to engage in scientific problems firsthand. His own hours in the lab and in the office with Marion had been the happiest and most important of his life. He'd understood she could not keep working with him; he'd broken off with her himself. And yet, strangely, he still had trouble understanding that their partnership was over. He actually dreamed that they were working together still. Wonderful, detailed dreams. He was eating his sandwich in the office, and she was stirring her blueberry yogurt with a plastic spoon. She was carrying her umbrella, just in case, and they were walking up Oxford Street in the sun. They were debating the language in a new grant proposal, puzzling over unexpected results, celebrating a new victory, scooping Agarwal.

But Sandy was not going to collaborate on great discoveries; he was going to tend rich patients instead. He was not going to know the thrill of the chase anymore; he was going to raise money. He knew all that as soon as he woke up.

He had hoped for so much better. Now he was left to himself, where he had wanted to surpass himself. Caught short. And he grieved for Marion. He put up a good front, but he missed her more than even Ann would ever know. He wondered when he'd pass a day without thinking of her. He was fifty-two years old and he'd seen more of death than most people. Still, despite all his experience, he'd never felt a loss like this before. He'd been unsinkable. As an oncologist he'd counted on his ability to do much and reflect little. Now, suddenly, he saw that he was not invincible, that he could not achieve everything he desired, that his opportunities were finite, that death would come to him too.

And they had just begun. After twelve years, they had really barely started. He had never imagined that their time would end. He was not accustomed to ending anything that he enjoyed. If he delighted in one concert at the symphony, he would go to others. He had season tickets; he would hear great music endlessly. If he ran once in the Boston Marathon, he would run again. He ran each year and gloated as the qualifying times for his age group grew easier. He was accustomed to succeeding, and he had succeeded. He'd fully expected to marry a lovely, brilliant woman, to live in an exquisite house, and to send his daughters to the finest, most expensive schools. It had never occurred to him that he might not realize all his plans. He had achieved everything he had imagined, except great science. That had been his best dream, and he could not make that dream come true alone. Now, without Marion, he saw before him an ocean of possibility, but no vessel to carry him; he could only stand helplessly, looking out to sea.

Later that night, he went to see Kristen Braverman in the hospital. The new treatments were not working; she had been readmitted, and she was afraid.

She told him she had trouble falling asleep because she was afraid she would not wake up again, and he reassured her, telling her many other patients had trouble sleeping. He told her this difficulty was natural, an altogether common complaint. Then his voice choked up. The words came out in a hoarse whisper. He coughed and pulled himself together. He would not break down there next to Kristen's hospital bed; he owed her more than that.

These conversations were harder now. His optimism, once unassailable, was now not quite so grand. He could still rely on his ego and his arrogance, but he could not scoot from one bedside to the next quite as fast. The trouble was, he looked at his patients and he saw he was like them. He was waiting, as they were, watching and hoping for some progress, some new breakthrough. He was no longer a researcher himself, no coinvestigator, and he sat, instead, with the ones suffering. Like them, he had to put his faith in other people. He had always been good at motivating patients to accept the protocols of treatment, the pain, the complex and sometimes useless procedures. It was far more difficult for him to accept his own limitations, to express an optimism once removed and faith in research no longer in his power.

Still, that night he tried not to let his sadness show. He pushed the heavy hospital curtain to one side, and the night sky pressed in upon the glass. Curving streets and city lights glittered impassively below.

He gave Kristen his speech—the same speech he'd given her husband months before. He pointed at the picture window, in the general direction of Cambridge, and he began to tell Kristen in the grandest terms about the cancer research being done. “They're working on the problem,” he told her. “They're working on the problem all the time.” And he tried to sound confident, defiant even. He tried to banish death from the room. But he did not use the royal
we
anymore when he spoke about research. A wistful quality, a most ineffectual humility, had crept in. “The smartest person I have ever known is working on these problems,” he told Kristen. “If anyone can find a new therapy, she can. In fact, I know she will.”

He knew Marion was not missing him in the same way. She had the work. She'd have no time for mawkish thoughts, and he was glad of that. He imagined her, far away in San Francisco, in the white and gold ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel. The room was crowded with colleagues and competitors, and she was about to overturn all the accepted theories about breast cancer. She was going to unleash glorious, dazzling, saber-rattling results.

In fact, her talk was not nearly so well attended. This was no keynote address. She was speaking in a small conference room to an audience of forty-five researchers, among them Art Ginsburg and his posse. Marion noticed Ginsburg, and then Robin on his left. She saw them both instantly. Ginsburg had deeper pockets than Marion, the more formidable reputation, the more aggressive approach. Still, he was not above competing with her. He often set his students to work on problems she and her own postdocs were pursuing. An omnivore and magpie of a scientist, he collected anything that glittered. Now he sat in wait for her in the audience. She worried her results were unimpressive, and at the same time feared her work was good enough for him to steal. How he must have enjoyed taking Robin under his wing, bringing Marion's own researcher over to his side. Robin sat primly with her notepad on her lap, and she looked right at Marion, daring her to meet her eye.

What do you want? Marion asked Robin silently. You had your hearing and your media coverage. You had your claims examined thoroughly, proved and disproved, and then corroborated by other labs. What do you want now?

Robin did not know exactly what she wanted, but she knew what she wasn't going to get. Marion was constitutionally incapable of apology.

Robin would not be forgiven for turning against the lab, for showing Marion such disrespect. She had always known that. You were with Marion or you were against her, and Robin couldn't help enjoying her position next to Ginsburg, flanked by students from Ginsburg's huge lab. She couldn't help feeling a slight rush, in the moments before Marion's talk, as she joined the others with their longbows raised, Marion's new data in their sights. And then, of course, Robin felt ashamed of such bloodthirsty thinking, and annoyed with herself for such pettiness.

Marion looked tiny behind the lectern. Her voice was small, her manner stiff. She had trouble with her transparencies, and Ginsburg rolled his eyes. Five minutes into the talk, he was looking at his watch. Robin felt almost protective of the woman up there in the navy suit. She wanted to run up and adjust the overhead projector. She wanted to cup her hand behind her ear and signal Marion to speak louder. She wanted to save her former mentor somehow. She saw how much Marion hated public speaking; she knew Marion wished Sandy were standing there in her place.

Marion was forcing herself to slow down and speak clearly, pale with the effort. Robin felt a tenderness toward her, even though Marion had been entirely unfair to her. There was a kind of triumph in that, too, in being strong enough and independent enough to feel charitable. She had idolized Marion once, and wanted to emulate her. Now she saw Marion through Ginsburg's eyes, and she looked fussy and nervous. Robin had never detected in her what Ginsburg could smell a mile off; she had never understood Marion's fear.

How much more dramatic then, how stunning when Marion came to her new results on metastasis. Suddenly, as she unveiled her new data, she cast all her uncertainty off. Now Ginsburg sat up and listened, and the conference room hushed. All the researchers in the room seemed to draw closer. And now Marion's quiet voice grew stronger; her detailed disquisition resolved itself into three main points. She was not charismatic, but her ideas were. And when she launched her propositions, she was the archer, shooting arrows into the audience; each of her statements incisive, brilliant, and characteristically self-critical.

Ten hands flew up as soon as Marion finished speaking. A hundred questions seemed to fill the air, Ginsburg's among them. Robin was jotting down a small query of her own. She was so absorbed, her hand shot up in front of everyone.

And Marion viewed her audience with some satisfaction, although she did not forget the poor beginning she'd made in the first half of her presentation. She glanced at the raised hands and enjoyed the interest in her work, although she still begrudged the lost days she'd spent traveling. She took a sip of water and watched Ginsburg scribbling furiously, and then gazed at her former postdoc, her rebellious child with her hand raised. What do you need now? Marion asked herself. Strange, she'd never posed the question that way before. She'd always considered what her postdoc demanded, what she did or did not deserve. What did she need? That was the puzzle, but as was so often the case, framing the question properly went a long way. What did she need? In that calm, clear, nearly joyous moment after her talk, the answer began to come to Marion. Ah, yes, of course, she thought with some surprise. And she called on Robin.