Man Camp (11 page)

Lucy navigates the maze of space that makes up the biology department: ten floors of offices, labs, and libraries; corridors humming with activity; machines that shake, shift, and spin in order to separate, grow, and divide their contents. She passes a special freezer tank, home to hundreds of tissue samples and millions of cells, and makes a quick stop at the cold room to deposit a brown lunch bag full of Adam’s favorite delicacies beside some incubating proteins.

Lucy’s Pavlovian plan is to follow every mention of Tuckington Farm with a treat: dairy cows, a slice of apple with Brie; silos, some champagne; tractors, a heartfelt kiss; and so on. She hopes that Cooper’s assertion about men wanting to please women is right, and that Adam will want to please her
without
a lot of questions. The office picnic, conceived of before dawn, is designed to facilitate this instinct in her boyfriend.

Decorated in institutional furnishings, Lucy’s office is drab and depressing save for the old slate blackboard behind her desk. On it is a large graph Adam drew in blue chalk two years ago on the day he first told Lucy that he loved her. His graph illustrates how their love will grow over time: a solid, straight line traveling upward in perpetuity. Lucy chalked her own love theory on top of his in red: a soaring peak followed by a long, slow descent.

“I’ll prove you wrong,” Adam said, and at the time, she almost believed he would.

Back then, Lucy found Adam’s forgetfulness and social awkwardness charming, proof of his brilliance. Now, she just wishes he’d keep a to-do list and pay more attention. She wants him to start behaving like the male of any nonhuman species—proud like a peacock, powerful like a bull, possessive like a blue milkweed beetle—and prove to her he’s the best man for the job of her mate.

Lucy puts some daisies in a mug, lays a blanket out on the floor, and tries to will herself into a romantic mood. But the image of Adam the night before, reading an economics book in striped boxer shorts and droopy black socks, his stomach relaxing out over his waistband, is stuck in her mind.
Why is this what
I’m settling for?
she wonders.
Why not for the poet who wrote movingly
of his love for me, or the millionaire who wanted to pamper me, or any number of balding men who were willing to work harder because they had to?

A knock pulls her out of her thoughts and Adam’s face peeks around the door. She’s struck by how handsome she finds him; each time it surprises her anew.

He looks pleased at the sight before him: Lucy stretched out on the sofa in a soft, gray sweater with a curious smile on her face. But he instantly becomes nervous, as if calculating whether he’s forgotten an important date. “What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion,” she says, getting up to kiss him. As their lips touch, she runs her fingers along the back of his neck into his hairline, activating goose bumps. “It just occurred to me that we haven’t had an office picnic in forever,” she says, pressing her body against his, hoping to remind him of their last office picnic, months ago now, when they ended up making achingly quiet love on the floor, oblivious to the activity just on the other side of her door: scientists hunching over microscopes, cells growing under the sterile hoods of incubators, petri dishes rocking back and forth on swaying apparatuses.

Lucy excuses herself to retrieve their picnic from the cold room and when she returns, brown bag in hand, she can tell that her embrace has had its intended memory jolt. She hands him a bottle of champagne to open, sits on the blanket, places a slab of Brie on a hunk of bread, and feeds it to him. She runs her fingers through his hair and watches Adam’s eyes close in pleasure.

“Honey,” she says softly, tracing a line of kisses along his jaw. “I’d like us to go to Tuckington Farm next month for a vacation.” She puts a Dixie cup of champagne to his lips.

“Sure, baby,” he says, blissed out, waiting for the next morsel of food or kiss.

Sure, baby?
Lucy thinks.
That’s all there is to it?
She feels a bit like Dorothy from
The Wizard of Oz
upon learning she’s had the power to get back to Kansas all along. Why has she spent so many years trying to give men what they want and accept them as they are? Apparently, everyone else knows it doesn’t work like that. It’s about negotiating and bargaining and sex; even Cooper said as much.

“Great,” she says, stroking his shoulders. “We’re going to have a fantastic time.”

“Mm,” Adam agrees, still in his love daze.

“Cooper says we’ll be in time for calving,” she tells him. “And Martha’s going to bring some of her FirstDate guys along for a little postgrad work.”

Adam’s eyes pop open at the mention of FirstDate. “Ugh. It’s so pathetic that men would sign up for that,” he says.

Lucy stands up quickly, hitting her funny bone against the corner of the table. “It’s not pathetic,” she says, rubbing her elbow. “They just need a little help. No shame in that, right?” She walks over to the blackboard. “You still think your graph is right and mine is wrong?”

“The truth probably lies somewhere in between,” Adam says. “Our love is probably more like the stock market. We have ups and downs, rallies and adjustments, but overall, there’s a strong upward trend.”

Lucy smiles and hopes he is right.

CHAPTER 8

“On the one hand, we’ll never experience childbirth. On the other hand, we can open all our own jars.”

Bruce Willis

COOPER IS WAITING for the campers and counselors just outside baggage claim at the Roanoke Regional Airport, where he greets them warmly: kisses for Lucy and Martha, handshakes for recruits Simon Hodges, Kurt Becker, Walter Sherman, and Bryce Carroll, and insider handshakes for Jesse and Adam, whose special status he acknowledges with a knowing look. Wearing old blue jeans, a flannel shirt, and a well-worn leather jacket, Cooper tosses the men’s bags onto the flatbed of his truck, hurrying them along so they’ll have daylight for the drive. The Manasseh Valley, home to Tuckington Farm, is due west beyond the walls of the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains.

The truck, an enormous Dodge pickup with an extended quad cab, two sets of doors, and double wheels in the rear, couldn’t be less inviting. It’s dented and covered in mud, with grimy windows and two bench seats that look as though they might comfortably seat six. There are nine in their group.

Ready to step up as the alpha male, Kurt says, “There isn’t room for all of us in there,” and announces that he’s going to rent a car.

“No need to do that,” Cooper tells him, flinging the last of the bags on board. “The girls will be riding with my mother. She’s running a little late on her errands, but she’ll be here soon.”

Cooper hustles Lucy and Martha toward the designated meeting spot just inside the terminal, guiding them with a hand on each of their elbows. When Lucy glances back and sees Adam looking bewildered by her hasty departure, she tries to slow down, upset that she hasn’t had the chance to explain what’s going on to him, but Cooper keeps them marching forward at a steady clip. Martha also looks over her shoulder to check on her brother. He’s fine, leaning against the truck, un-characteristically oblivious to its dirt, a result of the antianxiety medication that enabled him to get on the plane in the first place.

It was Cooper’s idea to separate the men and the women early on, an idea that Lucy hadn’t been too happy about, but one he convinced her would be psychologically advantageous. “We won’t be able to bond if I can’t get them outside of their comfort zone and in touch with their survival instincts,” he told her over the phone. “It’s just how it works with men.”

But now that they’re back inside the terminal and Adam’s out of sight, Lucy gets anxious. “Isn’t Adam going to get suspicious about why he’s riding with the campers and not with us?”

“I’ll be with him, Lucy. I’ll make sure he thinks he’s a counselor, don’t worry,” Cooper says, still holding her elbow. “If you really want to help him, you have to stop being so protective.”

Annoyed, Lucy wriggles out of his grasp and wanders back toward the doors to watch the men through the glass. Cooper takes advantage of the moment to talk to Martha. “I don’t think I’ve ever been gladder to be me than I am at this moment,” he says, smiling at her.

Staring through the sliding glass doors, Lucy wonders if Adam is upset with her. He appears to be doing okay, though, chatting with Walter, the obnoxious camper who distinguished himself by hitting on the flight attendant. She feels like a mother spying on her child at the playground, but when she catches Walter maneuvering Adam into the truck first so he can save a window seat for himself, the blood rises to her cheeks. Adam occasionally gets carsick, after all. And what if the first lesson he learns at Man Camp is how to be a womanizer?

“He’ll be fine, Luce,” Cooper says gently, talking to her in the reassuring tones of an older brother. “No more security blankets, remember? Adam is in Man Camp now.” He smiles. “I’ll see you ladies at the farm.”

Lucy and Martha watch as Cooper and the men prepare to leave. It’s obvious even from this distance that they are nervous, trying to impress one another and establish some sort of pecking order. Kurt is having an animated conversation on his cell phone, no doubt barking orders to some underling back in New York on how to handle whatever strategic strikes and insurgencies occur in his absence. Bryce is busy rearranging his Louis Vuitton leather suitcase, wedging it between two other bags so that no part of it is in contact with Cooper’s filthy truck. Simon has a map of the region spread open on the hood of the vehicle and is dragging his finger along the route they’ll be taking over the Alleghenies, listing historically significant sites to an inattentive audience. And it looks like Walter is tapping out messages on his BlackBerry, though he could be playing with his GameBoy or downloading porn, all the while reserving his seat by sitting half in and half out of the truck.

“Ready, fellas?” Cooper shouts over the noisy rattling of the Dodge’s diesel engine. Beside him in the front are Jesse and Kurt, with Bryce, Simon, Adam, and Walter packed tightly in the back. “If it’s okay with y’all, I’m going to do my best to avoid the city.”

“What city?” Bryce whispers to Simon. “There are only four real cities in the world: New York, Paris, Rome, and London. Roanoke is barely a village.” He kicks a greasy tool that has slid out from under the front seat and looks at his shoe to see if he dirtied the toe. “Any chance we pass a Starbucks en route?”

Ignoring the question, Cooper rolls down his window and watches with some amusement in the rearview mirror as Bryce’s hands fly up to protect his hair from the wind.
He must be the metrosexual,
Cooper thinks.

Walter brags to the campers about a segment he produced for NBC on Amish farmers. “Once you’ve spent two weeks in rural Pennsylvania using a walking plow pulled by a team of horses, pretty much all other farm life seems cushy.”

“I hope that’ll be the case for you,” Cooper says, smiling. He drives with one hand on the wheel and the other hanging out of the truck, hammering a ditty on the door that he’d like to play on his guitar for Martha:
Lavender blue, dilly dilly, lavender green / If
I were king, dilly dilly, I’d need a queen.
In no time, he has them on State Route 311, a two-lane road edged by forests of oak, maple, and walnut trees, which starts flat but soon undulates in the hilly countryside. “Hang on,” he tells them, stepping on the gas and passing traffic with little concern for oncoming vehicles, inadvertently whacking Jesse in the knee with the gear stick each time he shifts into second or fourth.

Simon, silent up until now, clears his throat and leans forward from the backseat to announce that he’s spent the last few weeks reading up on the Manasseh Valley region and its history. “I tell you this merely to inform you that I’ve become something of an expert on all things Appa-LAY-chian, should any of you have questions.”

Cooper winces at Simon’s Yankee pronunciation and corrects him gently: “We say Appa-LAH-chian around here.” His voice is kind and patient.

“Oh, yes. Right. Of course,” Simon says, clearing his throat again, a nervous tick. “I just love local dialects. Are you aware that the language here has its roots in Elizabethan English?” With another few coughs, Simon is off and running, talking a steady stream about the virtues of Southern phraseology. “One of my absolute favorite things is the charming use of double negatives for emphasis. It’s so classical Greek.”

The group exchange glances charged with the solidarity that comes with finding a common enemy.

Feeling queasy from the hills and turns, and bored by Simon’s pontificating, Adam shuts his eyes and drifts off to the comforting land of equations, where he considers the variables necessary to do a cost-benefit analysis of Martha’s new business venture. He has little information to go on other than the knowledge that the participants in the trial run are paying approximately five hundred dollars each (for airfare and food), and that the goal of the program is to make the men more successful with women. Assuming it works, the most important number Adam needs to determine is the money saved by
having
a girlfriend versus
trying to secure one.
To do that, he calculates the cost of “early” dating (arguably the most expensive time in any relationship, with its requisite fancy dinners, cabs, flowers, and gifts) and compares it with the costs of being in a relationship (when it becomes acceptable to do things on the cheap, like rent a video and order in Chinese food). He makes an educated guess at the overall reduction in the number of dates that a “graduate” of the program will have to go on before securing a mate— three—and he plugs that into his calculations. As much as he hates to admit it, if Martha can shave just three or more women off a man’s dating portfolio before meeting Ms. Right, the potential to optimize the return on his investment will more than justify the hefty tuition she hopes someday to charge.

MARTHA GUESSED WRONG when she imagined that Cooper’s mother would have apple-round cheeks, hair tied back in a loose bun, and smell vaguely of cinnamon and brown sugar. Beatrice, who pulls up in a silver Saab convertible, is whippet thin, dressed in snug jeans and a plunging sweater.

“Lucy Stone!” Beatrice calls as she gets out of her car. “Is it possible that you’ve grown more beautiful since I saw you last?” She kisses the air next to Lucy’s cheeks. “I don’t know how I can ever forgive Cooper for letting you get away!”

Get away?
Martha thinks.

Lucy blushes, unsure of how to respond. She’s only met Beatrice on one other occasion, the night of Cooper’s graduation, and, if she recalls correctly, Beatrice was anything but subtle in expressing her displeasure over Lucy’s presence at their family gathering. “It’s good to see you again, Beatrice,” Lucy says. “I’d like you to meet my best friend, Martha McKenna.”

“So, you’re Martha,” Beatrice says, stepping back to give her an appraising look, which reveals that Martha is
not
what she was expecting. “But I was sure Cooper said that you were an actress.”

“I am,” Martha says, desperate to come up with an interpretation for the comment other than that Beatrice doesn’t think she’s pretty enough to be an actress. “It’s nice to finally meet you.” Martha takes Beatrice’s right hand in both of hers, a gesture that is meant to be warm, but comes across as supplicating.

Of course it is,
Beatrice smiles back. Then she turns back to Lucy. “Cooper has kept me updated on your every move over the years and I can’t wait to hear all about your fascinating career. It must be so fulfilling to do important work.” She glances at Martha, who nods agreeably.

Beatrice opens the trunk of the convertible, which is jam-packed with groceries, and places Lucy’s computer bag inside. “I’m afraid the rest will have to go in the back with you,” she says to Martha.

WHEN ADAM OPENS HIS EYES, they have left the Catawba Valley, passed into the Jefferson National Forest, and are starting to cross the three huge ridges that separate Virginia from West Virginia, climbing and descending on roads that are a jumble of switchbacks and S curves. He looks at the compass that’s fixed to the dashboard. The pointer keeps changing directions, often indicating that they’re heading due east, back the way they came. Every few miles they get stuck behind a huge lumber truck, piled high with chained-down logs four feet wide at their trunks.

“I don’t even want to know what would happen if one of those logs came unchained,” Jesse says, slurring slightly from his antianxiety medication. Without a seat belt for the middle passenger, Jesse lists back and forth, unable to steady himself, even with both hands on the dashboard.

“We’d be sorrier than a cow on its way to McDonald’s,” Cooper says, stepping on the accelerator, trying to get around one of the hulking trucks. The Dodge’s diesel engine cranks up slowly and the men hold their breath, praying no cars are coming in the other direction. Occasionally, the truck drivers politely pull over onto the shoulder to allow traffic to pass, but often there isn’t a shoulder and more often the drivers aren’t polite.

Kurt and Walter, who occupy the two passenger-side window seats, find themselves looking down steep escarpments onto the roofs of houses hundreds of feet below, drops that start just a few yards from the wheels of the truck. Every so often, there’s a patch of aluminum guardrailing that’s either dented or completely torn through, but most of the time there’s nothing between the truck and the precipitous drop. Walter put his GameBoy down miles ago, and clutches the armrest as he counts the markers, crosses and flowered wreaths in varying states of decay, memorializing where people have gone off the road and, presumably, to the hereafter.

On the other side of the road, the land rises straight up in great sheets of shiny rock. There’s roadkill everywhere, more than any of them has ever seen on all their trips to the Hamptons combined: deer, groundhogs, skunks, possums, and other unrecognizable carcasses. Warning signs dot the road: WATCH OUT FOR FALLING ROCKS, BLIND CURVE, DEER CROSSING, NO PASSING. But Cooper ignores all of them as he speeds over the mountains, straightening out curves by crossing the double yellow lines.