Part 9 (1/2)
”If only everyone could, you mean.”
”I didn't say that, Carter.” She says this firmly.
Still, he plunges on. ”You know, Hattie, I'm sorry about what happened. That we had that misunderstanding.”
That misunderstanding.
”And that you left academia in the end,” he goes on. ”Left research.”
It's the knees of her own yoga pants that catch her eye now-blue. ”You knew. You saw me go.”
”Yes and no. I knew, but I couldn't watch.”
Outside, it's dark enough now that, though she can still see woods, the room is reflected in the window, too, so that she and Carter look for all the world like forest spirits, superimposed on the moving tree ma.s.s. How companionable they look! Chatting with no particular animus, it seems, about something the blue jays said.
”I don't blame you for what happened,” she says. ”You did what you had to do. What you were trained to do.”
”You blame me for other things.”
The floor is cold.
”You might have asked what happened to me,” she says, finally-trying not to be testy, but the words are what they are. ”Once you turned around.”
”I thought you'd be in touch.”
”You mean you a.s.sumed you'd stay in my picture whether or not I stayed in yours.”
”I was in a position to help.”
”And didn't you always help when you could.”
”So you do blame me for what happened. That I didn't go to bat for you when that job came up.”
Her chest tightens; she cannot respond.
”In any case, I did wonder, you know-my father, too. Where you went.” He looks at her as if to keep her from disappearing again. ”You joined Amy Fist's lab, didn't you?”
”So you knew.” She wills herself to breathe.
”You guys were pretty hot for a while. Beat us out for a few grants, if I recall.”
”Until Guy LaPoint told that review board that Amy was running a women's shelter, not a lab. That we were more about t.i.tle IX than about science.”
”Good old Guy LaPoint Blank, as we called him.”
”Your enemy turned hit man.”
He shrugs. ”Whom you confronted at a conference, I heard.”
”I did.”
”The Fist must have loved that.”
”She said it had nothing to do with justice. She said an interest in justice showed itself in one's judgment. Of which I showed none. She said I showed indignation, which was something else altogether.”
He laughs. ”Leave it to Amy to eat her own young. And then what? Didn't she leave science?”
”She did. Saying it was a boys' club and always would be.”
”A fine Fist jump from unsupported a.s.sertion to groundless speculation.”
”Carter.”
”All right, all right. It was a boys' club.”
”Is, Carter. Is.”
”Is. All right. Though there's been progress, you know. You and Amy were ahead of your time.”
Hattie's turn to shrug; she tries. ”She left to write a screenplay about Barbara McClintock. And I left to help her.”
”But let me guess. No one in Hollywood knew what a transposon was or much cared, either.”
”It was before Barbara got her n.o.bel.”
”Bad timing.” A nod. ”And then?”
”Then I went to teach at a private school and married and had Josh.”
”You dropped out.”
”Got myself a new web of significance.”
He clears his throat. ”My mother would have gone hunting for you, I'm sure,” he supplies, ”had she not gotten depressed.”
”It didn't by any chance depress her that hunting down missing foreign students was her job, did it?”
A pause. ”I don't know if you realize this, Hattie, but she was hospitalized on and off for years.”
Hattie stops. Sweet Mrs. Hatch? With her symphony work and her four-handed piano music and what Dr. Hatch used to call her maddening equanimity?
”Oh, I'm so sorry,” says Hattie. ”No, I didn't know. I'm sorry. And how is she now?” If she's even alive-Hattie's braced to hear that she's missed, not just Reedie's death, but Mrs. Hatch's, too.
”Better. It took the docs years to get her meds right, but they finally did. Of course, it's been hard for her, watching her friends die. For a while there she was going to two funerals a month. But now they're all dead, so that's over with. And people do make a fuss when you hit ninety-eight. She's finally a celebrity in her own right, now that she's losing her marbles. Her skin cracks in the winter like a dairy farmer's.”
”Your poor mother. I'm so sorry-I've been remiss. I ...”
”You were young and confused.” He waves his hand, and this, too, comes to seem like a distant past with no real power now. ”Never mind, Hattie. We lived. Though you really think we should've gone looking for you. That I should've.”
She thinks of Lee and Joe-what she would have done. Come back. Come back. ”You don't?”