Fever

One

A cold January morning tentatively fingered its way over the frigid landscape of Shaftesbury, New Hampshire. Reluctantly the shadows began to pale as the winter sky slowly lightened, revealing a featureless gray cloud cover. It was going to snow and despite the cold, there was a damp sting to the air; a sharp reminder that off to the east lay the Atlantic.

The red brick buildings of old Shaftesbury huddled along the Pawtomack River like a ghost town. The river had been the support, the lifeblood of the town; it sprang from the snow-laden White Mountains in the north and ran to the sea in the southeast. As the river coursed past the town, its smooth flow was interrupted by a crumbling dam and a large waterwheel that no longer turned. Lining the riverbanks were block after block of empty factories, reminders of a more prosperous age when New England mills were the center of the textile industry. At the extreme southern end of town, at the foot of Main Street, the last brick mill building was occupied by a chemical operation called Recycle, Ltd., a rubber, plastic, and vinyl recycling plant. A wisp of acrid, gray smoke rose from a large phallic smokestack and merged with the clouds. Over the whole area hung a foul, choking odor of burnt rubber and plastic. Surrounding the building were enormous piles of discarded rubber tires, like the droppings of a gigantic monster.

South of the town the river ran through rolling, wooded hills, interspersed by snow-covered meadows and bordered by fieldstone fences erected by settlers three hundred years before. Six miles south of the town the river took a lazy curve to the east and formed an idyllic six-acre peninsula of land. In the center was a shallow pond connected to the river by an inlet. Behind the pond rose a hill capped by a white-framed Victorian farmhouse with gabled roofs and gingerbread trim. A long winding driveway bordered with oaks and sugar maples led down to the Interstate 301 heading south toward Massachusetts. Twenty-five yards north of the house was a weather-beaten barn nestled in a copse of evergreens. Built on piles at the edge of the pond was a miniature copy of the main house; it was a shed turned playhouse.

It was a beautiful New England landscape, like a January calendar scene, except for a slight macabre detail: there were no fish in the pond and no encircling vegetation within six feet.

Inside the picturesque white house, the pale morning light diffused through lace curtains. By degrees the gathering dawn gently nudged Charles Martel from the depths of a satisfying sleep. He rolled over onto his left side, enjoying a contentment he’d been afraid to acknowledge for the past two years. There was a sense of order and security in his life now; Charles had never expected to experience this again after his first wife had been diagnosed with lymphoma. She had died nine years ago, leaving Charles with three children to raise. Life had become something to endure.

But that was now in the past, and the awful wound had slowly healed. And then to Charles’s surprise, even the void had been filled. Two years ago he had remarried, but he still was afraid to admit how much his life had changed for the better. It was safer and easier to concentrate on his work and the day-to-day necessities of family life than to acknowledge his newly regained contentment and thereby admit to the ultimate vulnerability, happiness. But Cathryn, his new wife, made this denial difficult because she was a joyous and giving person. Charles had fallen in love with her the day he met her and had married her five months later. The last two years had only increased his affection for her.

As the darkness receded, Charles could see the placid profile of his sleeping wife. She was on her back with her right arm casually draped on the pillow above her head. She looked much younger than her thirty-two years, a fact that initially had emphasized the thirteen years’ difference in their ages. Charles was forty-five and he acknowledged that he looked it. But Cathryn looked like twenty-five. Resting on his elbow, Charles stared at her delicate features. He traced the frame of her provocative widow’s peak, down the length of the soft brown hair to her shoulder. Her face, lit by the early morning light, seemed radiant to Charles and his eyes followed the slightly curved line of her nose, noticing the flare of her nostrils as she breathed. Watching her he felt a reflex stirring deep within him.

He looked over at the clock; another twenty minutes before the alarm. Thankfully he lowered himself back into the warm nest made by the down coverlet and spooned against his wife, marveling at his sense of well-being. He even looked forward to his days at the institute. Work was progressing at an ever-increasing pace. He felt a twinge of excitement. What if he, Charles Martel, the boy from Teaneck, New Jersey, made the first real step in unraveling the mystery of cancer? Charles knew that it was becoming increasingly possible, and the irony was that he was not a formally trained research scientist. He’d been an internist specializing in allergy when Elizabeth, his first wife, had become ill. After she died he gave up his lucrative practice to become a full-time researcher at the Weinburger Research Institute. It had been a reaction against her death, and although some of his colleagues had told him that a career change was an unhealthy way to work out such a problem, he had flourished in the new environment.

Cathryn, sensing her husband was awake, turned over and found herself in an enveloping hug. Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she looked at Charles and laughed. He looked so uncharacteristically impish.

“What’s going on in that little mind of yours?” she asked, smiling.

“I’ve just been watching you.”

“Wonderful! I’m sure I look my best,” said Cathryn.

“You look devastating,” teased Charles, pushing her thick hair back from her forehead.

Cathryn, now more awake, realized the urgency of his arousal. Running her hand down her husband’s body, she encountered an erect penis. “And what is this?” she asked.

“I accept no responsibility,” said Charles. “That part of my anatomy has a mind of its own.”

“Our Polish Pope says a man should not lust after his wife.”

“I haven’t been. I’ve been thinking about work,” Charles teased.

As the first snowflakes settled on the gabled roofs, they came together with a depth of passion and tenderness that never failed to overwhelm Charles. Then the alarm went off. The day began.

Michelle could hear Cathryn calling from far away, interrupting her dream; she and her father were crossing a field. Michelle tried to ignore the call but it came again. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and when she turned over, she looked up into Cathryn’s smiling face.

“Time to get up,” her stepmother said brightly.

Michelle took a deep breath and nodded her head, acknowledging that she was awake. She’d had a bad night, full of disturbing dreams which left her soaked with perspiration. She’d felt hot beneath the covers and cold out of them. Several times during the night she thought about going in to Charles. She would have if her father had been alone.

“My goodness, you look flushed,” said Cathryn, as she opened the drapes. She reached down and touched Michelle’s forehead. It felt hot.

“I think you have a fever again,” said Cathryn sympathetically. “Do you feel sick?”

“No,” said Michelle quickly. She didn’t want to be sick again. She did not want to stay home from school. She wanted to get up and make the orange juice, which had always been her job.

“We’d better take your temperature anyway,” said Cathryn, going into the connecting bath. She reappeared, alternately flicking and examining the thermometer. “It will only take a minute, then we’ll know for sure.” She stuck the thermometer into Michelle’s mouth. “Under the tongue. I’ll be back after I get the boys up.”

The door closed and Michelle pulled the thermometer from her mouth. Even in that short a time, the mercury had risen to ninety-nine. She had a fever and she knew it. Her legs ached and there was a tenderness in the pit of her stomach. She put the thermometer back into her mouth. From where she lay she could look out the window and see her playhouse that Charles had made out of an ice shed. The roof was covered with new-fallen snow and she shivered at the cold scene. She longed for spring and those lazy days that she spent in that fantasy house. Just she and her father.

When the door opened, Jean Paul, age fifteen, was already awake, propped up in bed with his physics book. Behind his head the small clock radio played a soft rock and roll. He was wearing dark red flannel pajamas with blue piping, a Christmas gift from Cathryn.

“You’ve got twenty minutes,” Cathryn said cheerfully.

“Thanks, Mom,” said Jean Paul with a smile.

Cathryn paused, looking down at the boy, and her heart melted. She felt like rushing in and swooping him into her arms. But she resisted the temptation. She’d learned that all the Martels were somewhat chary about direct physical contact, a fact that initially had been a little hard for her to deal with. Cathryn came from Boston’s Italian North End where touching and hugging was a constant. Although her father had been Latvian, he’d left when Cathryn was twelve, and Cathryn had grown up without his influence. She felt 100 percent Italian. “See you at breakfast,” she said.

Jean Paul knew that Cathryn loved to hear him call her Mom and gladly obliged. It was such a low price to pay for the warmth and attention that she showered on him. Jean Paul had been conditioned by a very busy father and seen himself eclipsed by his older brother, Chuck, and his irresistible baby sister, Michelle. Then came Cathryn, and the excitement of the marriage, followed by Cathryn’s legal adoption of Chuck, Jean Paul, and Michelle. Jean Paul would have called her “grandmother” if she wanted. He thought he loved Cathryn as much as his real mother; at least what he could remember of her. He’d been six when she died.

Chuck’s eyes blinked open at the first touch of Cathryn’s hand but he pretended sleep, keeping his head under his pillow. He knew that if he waited she’d touch him again, only a little more forcibly. And he was right, only this time he felt two hands shake his shoulder before the pillow was lifted. Chuck was eighteen years old and in the middle of his first year at Northeastern University. He wasn’t doing that well and he dreaded his upcoming semester finals. It was going to be a disaster. At least for everything but psychology.

“Fifteen minutes,” said Cathryn. She tousled his long hair. “Your father wants to get to the lab early.”

“Shit,” said Chuck under his breath.

“Charles, Jr.!” said Cathryn, pretending to be shocked.

“I’m not getting up.” Chuck grabbed the pillow from Cathryn’s hands and buried himself.

“Oh, yes you are,” said Cathryn, as she yanked the covers back.

Chuck’s body, clad only in his undershorts, was exposed to the morning chill. He leaped up, pulling the blankets around him. “I told you never to do that,” he snapped.

“And I told you to leave your locker-room language in the locker room,” said Cathryn, ignoring the nastiness in Chuck’s voice. “Fifteen minutes!”

Cathryn spun on her heel and walked out. Chuck’s face flushed in frustration. He watched her go down the hall to Michelle’s room. She was wearing an antique silk nightgown that she’d bought at a flea market. It was a deep peach color, not too different from her skin. With very little difficulty, Chuck could imagine Cathryn naked. She wasn’t old enough to be his mother.

He reached out, hooked his hand around the edge of his door, and slammed it. Just because his father liked to get to his lab before eight, Chuck had to get up at the crack of dawn like some goddamn farmer. The big deal scientist! Chuck rubbed his face and noticed the open book at his beside. Crime and Punishment. He’d spent most of the previous evening reading it. It wasn’t for any of his courses, which was probably why he was enjoying it. He should have studied chemistry because he was in danger of flunking. God, what would Charles say if he did! There had already been a huge blowup when Chuck had not been able to get into Charles’s alma mater, Harvard. Now if he flunked chemistry… Chemistry had been Charles’s major.

“I don’t want to be a goddamn doctor anyway,” Chuck snapped, as he stood up and pulled on dirty Levi’s. He was proud of the fact that they’d never been washed. In the bathroom he decided not to shave. He thought maybe he’d grow a beard.

Clad in a terrycloth lava-lava, which, unfortunately, emphasized the fifteen pounds he’d gained in the last ten years, Charles lathered his chin. He was trying to sort through the myriad facts associated with his current research project. The immunology of living forms involved a complexity which never failed to amaze and exhilarate him, especially now that he thought he was coming very close to some real answers about cancer. Charles had been excited before and wrong before. He knew that. But now his ideas were based on years of painstaking experimentation and supported by easily reproducible facts.

Charles began to chart the schedule for the day. He wanted to start work with the new HR7 strain of mice that carried hereditary mammary cancer. He hoped to make the animals “allergic” to their own tumors, a goal which Charles felt was coming closer and closer.

Cathryn opened the door and pushed past him. Pulling her gown over her head, she slipped into the shower. The water and steam billowed the shower curtain. After a moment she pulled back the curtain and called to Charles.

“I think I’ve got to take Michelle to see a real doctor,” she said before disappearing back behind the curtain.

Charles paused in his shaving, trying not to be annoyed by her sarcastic reference to a “real” doctor. It was a sensitive issue between them.

“I really thought that marrying a doctor would at least guarantee good medical attention for my family,” shouted Cathryn over the din of the shower. “Was I wrong!”

Charles busied himself, examining his half-shaved face, noticing in the process that his eyelids were a little puffy. He was trying to avoid a fight. The fact that the family’s “medical problems” spontaneously solved themselves within twenty-four hours was lost on Cathryn. Her newly awakened mother instincts demanded specialists for every sniffle, ache, or bout of diarrhea.

“Michelle still feeling lousy?” asked Charles. It was better to talk about specifics.

“I shouldn’t have to tell you. The child’s been feeling sick for some time.”

With exasperation, Charles reached out and pulled back the edge of the shower curtain. “Cathryn, I’m a cancer researcher, not a pediatrician.”

“Oh, excuse me,” said Cathryn, lifting her face to the water. “I thought you were a doctor.”

“I’m not going to let you bait me into an argument,” said Charles testily. “The flu has been going around. Michelle has a touch of it. People feel lousy for a week and then it’s over.”

Pulling her head from beneath the shower, Cathryn looked directly at Charles. “The point is, she’s been feeling lousy for four weeks.”

“Four weeks?” he asked. Time had a way of dissolving in the face of his work.

“Four weeks,” repeated Cathryn. “I don’t think I’m panicking at the first sign of a cold. I think I’d better take Michelle into Pediatric Hospital and see Dr. Wiley. Besides, I can visit the Schonhauser boy.”

“All right, I’ll take a look at Michelle,” agreed Charles, turning back to the sink. Four weeks was a long time to have the flu. Perhaps Cathryn was exaggerating, but he knew better than to question. In fact, it was better to change the subject. “What’s wrong with the Schonhauser boy?” The Schonhausers were neighbors who lived about a mile up the river. Henry Schonhauser was a chemist at M.I.T. and one of the few people with whom Charles enjoyed socializing. The Schonhauser boy, Tad, was a year older than Michelle, but because of the way their birthdays fell, they were in the same class.

Cathryn stepped out of the shower, pleased that her tactic to get Charles to look at Michelle had worked so perfectly. “Tad’s been in the hospital for three weeks. I hear he’s very sick but I haven’t spoken with Marge since he went in.”

“What’s the diagnosis?” Charles poised the razor below his left sideburn.

“Something I’ve never heard of before. Elastic anemia or something,” said Cathryn, toweling herself off.

“Aplastic anemia?” asked Charles with disbelief.

“Something like that.”

“My God,” said Charles, leaning on the sink. “That’s awful.”

“What is it?” Cathryn experienced a reflex jolt of panic.

“It’s a disease where the bone marrow stops producing blood cells.”

“Is it serious?”

“It’s always serious and often fatal.”

Cathryn’s arms hung limply at her sides, her wet hair like an unwrung mop. She could feel a mixture of sympathy and fear. “Is it catching?”

“No,” said Charles absently. He was trying to remember what he knew of the affliction. It was not a common illness.

“Michelle and Tad have spent quite a bit of time together,” said Cathryn. Her voice was hesitant.

Charles looked at her, realizing that she was pleading for reassurance. “Wait a minute. You’re not thinking that Michelle might have aplastic anemia, are you?”

“Could she?”

“No. My God, you’re like a med student. You hear of a new disease and five minutes later either you or the kids have it. Aplastic anemia is as rare as hell. It’s usually associated with some drug or chemical. It’s either a poisoning or an allergic reaction. Although most of the time the actual cause is never found. Anyway, it’s not catching; but that poor kid.”

“And to think I haven’t even called Marge,” said Cathryn. She leaned forward and looked at her face in the mirror. She tried to imagine the emotional strain Marge was under and decided she’d better go back to making lists like she did before getting married. There was no excuse for such thoughtlessness.

Charles shaved the left side of his face wondering if aplastic anemia was the kind of disease he should look into. Could it possibly shed some clue on the organization of life? Where was the control that shut the marrow down? That was a cogent question because, after all, it was the control issue which Charles felt was key to understanding cancer.

With the knuckle of his first finger, Charles knocked softly on Michelle’s door. Listening, he heard only the sound of the shower coming from the connecting bathroom. Quietly he opened the door. Michelle was lying in bed, facing away from him. Abruptly she turned over and their eyes met. A line of tears which sparkled in the morning light ran down her flushed cheeks. Charles’s heart melted.

Sitting on the edge of her eyelet-covered bed, he bent down and kissed her forehead. With his lips he could tell she had a fever. Straightening up, Charles looked at his little girl. He could so easily see Elizabeth, his first wife, in Michelle’s face. There was the same thick, black hair, the same high cheekbones and full lips, the same flawless olive skin. From Charles, Michelle had inherited intensely blue eyes, straight white teeth, and unfortunately a somewhat wide nose. Charles believed she was the most beautiful twelve-year-old in the world.

With the back of his hand he wiped the wetness from her cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” said Michelle through her tears.

“What do you mean, sorry?” asked Charles softly.

“I’m sorry I’m sick again. I don’t like to be a bother.”

Charles hugged her. She felt fragile in his arms. “You’re not a bother. I don’t want to even hear you say such a thing. Let me look at you.”

Embarrassed by her tears, Michelle kept her face averted as Charles pulled away to examine her. He cradled her chin in the palm of his hand and lifted her face to his. “Tell me how you feel. What is bothering you?”

“I just feel a little weak, that’s all. I can go to school. Really I can.”

“Sore throat?”

“A little. Not much. Cathryn said I couldn’t go to school.”

“Anything else? Headache?”

“A little but it’s better.”

“Ears?”

“Fine.”

“Stomach?”

“Maybe a little sore.”

Charles depressed Michelle’s lower lids. The conjunctiva was pale. In fact, her whole face was pale. “Let me see your tongue.” Charles realized how long it had been since he’d done clinical medicine. Michelle stuck out her tongue and watched her father’s eyes for the slightest sign of concern. Charles felt under the angle of her jaw and she pulled her tongue back in. “Tender?” asked Charles as his fingers felt some small lymph nodes.

“No,” said Michelle.

Charles had her sit on the edge of the bed, facing away from him, and he began to draw up her nightgown. Jean Paul’s head came into the room from the connecting bathroom to tell her the shower was free.

“Get out of here,” yelled Michelle. “Dad, tell Jean Paul to get out.”

“Out!” said Charles. Jean Paul disappeared. He could be heard laughing with Chuck.

Charles percussed Michelle’s back somewhat clumsily but well enough to be convinced that her lungs were clear. Then he had her lie back on her bed, and he drew her nightgown up to just below her nascent breasts. Her thin abdomen rose and fell rhythmically. She was thin enough for him to see the recoil of her heart after each beat. With his right hand, Charles began to palpate her abdomen. “Try to relax. If I hurt you, just say so.”

Michelle attempted to remain still but she squirmed beneath Charles’s cold hand. Then it hurt.

“Where?” asked Charles. Michelle pointed and Charles felt very carefully, determining that Michelle’s abdomen was tender at the midline. Putting his fingers just beneath the right ribs he asked her to breathe in. When she did, he could feel the blunt edge of her liver pass under his fingers. She said that hurt a little. Then with his left hand under her for support, he felt for her spleen. To his surprise he had no trouble palpating it. He’d always had trouble with that maneuver when he was in practice and he wondered if Michelle’s spleen wasn’t enlarged.

Standing up, he looked at Michelle. She seemed thin, but she’d always been slender. Charles started to run his hand down her legs to feel the muscle tone, then stopped, noticing a series of bruises. “Where’d you get all these black-and-blue marks?”

Michelle shrugged.

“Do your legs bother you?”

“A little. Mostly my knees and ankles after gym. But I don’t have to go to gym if I have a note.”

Straightening up again, Charles surveyed his daughter. She was pale, had minor aches and pains, a few lymph nodes, and a fever. That could be just about any minor viral illness. But four weeks! Maybe Cathryn was right. Maybe she should be seen by a “real” doctor.

“Please, Dad,” said Michelle. “I can’t miss any more school if I’m going to be a research doctor like you.”

Charles smiled. Michelle had always been a precocious child and this indirect flattery was a good example. “Missing a few days of school in the sixth grade is not going to hurt your career,” said Charles. “Cathryn is going to take you to Pediatric Hospital today to see Dr. Wiley.”

“He’s a baby doctor!” said Michelle defiantly.

“He’s a pediatrician and he sees patients up to eighteen, smarty pants.”

“I want you to take me.”

“I can’t, dear. I’ve got to go to the lab. Why don’t you get dressed and come down for some breakfast?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Michelle, don’t be difficult.”

“I’m not being difficult. I’m just not hungry.”

“Then come down for some juice.” Charles lightly pinched Michelle’s cheek.

Michelle watched her father leave her room. Her tears welled up anew. She felt horrid and did not want to go to the hospital but worst of all, she felt lonely. She wanted her father to love her more than anything in the world and she knew that Charles was impatient when any of the kids got sick. She struggled up to a sitting position and braced herself against a wave of dizziness.

“My God, Chuck,” said Charles with disgust. “You look like a pig.”

Chuck ignored his father. He got some cold cereal, poured milk over it, then sat down to eat. The rule for breakfast was that everyone fended for themselves, except for the orange juice which Michelle usually made. Cathryn had made it this morning.

Chuck was wearing a stained sweater and dirty jeans, which he wore so long that he walked on the frayed bottoms. His hair was uncombed and the fact that he hadn’t shaved was painfully apparent.

“Do you really have to be so sloppy?” continued Charles. “I thought that the hippie look was passé now and that college kids were becoming respectable again.”

“You’re right. Hippie is out,” said Jean Paul, coming into the kitchen and pouring orange juice. “Punk is in now.”

“Punk?” questioned Charles. “Is Chuck punk?”

“No,” laughed Jean Paul. “Chuck is just Chuck.”

Chuck looked up from his cereal box to mouth some obscenities at his younger brother. Jean Paul ignored him and opened his physics book. It occurred to him that his father never noticed what he wore. It was always Chuck.

“Really, Chuck,” Charles was saying. “Do you honestly feel you have to look that bad?” Chuck ignored the question. Charles watched the boy eat with growing exasperation. “Chuck, I’m speaking to you.”

Cathryn reached over and put her hand on Charles’s arm. “Let’s not get into this discussion at breakfast. You know how college kids are. Leave him be.”

“I think I at least deserve an answer,” persisted Charles.

Taking in a deep breath and blowing it out noisily through his nose to punctuate his annoyance, Chuck looked into his father’s face. “I’m not a doctor,” he said. “I don’t have to adhere to a dress code.”

The eyes of the father and the older son met. Chuck said to himself: “Take that, you smart-ass son-of-a-bitch, just because you got good grades in chemistry you think you know everything, but you don’t.” Charles examined the face of this son of his, marveling how much arrogance the boy could manufacture with so little basis. He was intelligent enough but hopelessly lazy. His performance in high school had been such that Harvard had rejected him, and Charles had a feeling that he wasn’t doing well at Northeastern. Charles wondered where he, as a father, might have gone wrong. But such musing was made difficult by the personality of Jean Paul. Charles glanced at his other son: neat, easygoing, studious. It was hard to believe that both boys had sprung from the same genetic pool and grown up together. Charles’s attention returned to Chuck. The boy’s defiance had not altered, but Charles felt his interest in the issue wane. He had more important things to think about.

“I hope,” said Charles evenly, “your appearance and your grades have nothing in common. I trust you are doing all right at college. We haven’t heard much about that.”

“I’m doing all right,” said Chuck, finally dropping his eyes back to his cereal. Standing up to his father was something new for Chuck. Before he’d gone to college, he had avoided any confrontation. Now he looked forward to it. Chuck was sure that Cathryn noticed and approved. After all, Charles was a tyrant with Cathryn as well.

“If I’m going to drive the station wagon into Boston, I’m going to need some extra cash,” said Cathryn, hoping to change the subject. “And speaking of money, the oil people called and said they won’t deliver until the account is settled.”

“Remind me tonight,” said Charles quickly. He didn’t want to discuss money.

“Also my semester tuition has never been paid,” said Chuck.

Cathryn looked up from her food and glanced at Charles, hoping he would refute Chuck’s allegation. Semester tuition amounted to a lot of money.

“I got a note yesterday,” said Chuck, “saying that the tuition was way overdue and that I wouldn’t get credits for my courses if it weren’t paid.”

“But the money was taken out of the account,” said Cathryn.

“I used the money in the lab,” explained Charles.

“What?” Cathryn was aghast.

“We’ll get it back. I needed a new strain of mice and there was no more grant money until March.”

“You bought rats with Chuck’s tuition money?” asked Cathryn.

“Mice,” corrected Charles.

With a delicious sense of voyeurism Chuck watched the discussion unfold. He’d been getting notes from the bursar for months, but he’d not brought them home, hoping for a time when he could bring it up without his performance being at issue. It couldn’t have worked out better.

“That’s just wonderful,” said Cathryn. “And how do you expect we are to eat from now until March after Chuck’s bill is paid?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Charles snapped. His defensiveness was coming out as anger.

“I think maybe I should get a job,” said Cathryn. “Do they need extra typing at the institute?”

“For Christ’s sake. It’s not a crisis!” said Charles. “Everything’s under control. What you should do is finish that Ph.D. thesis of yours so that you can get a job that uses your training.” Cathryn had been trying to finish her thesis in literature for almost three years.

“So now it’s because I haven’t gotten my Ph.D. that Chuck’s tuition isn’t paid,” said Cathryn sarcastically.

Michelle stepped into the kitchen. Both Cathryn and Charles looked up, their conversation momentarily forgotten. She’d dressed herself in a pink monogrammed sweater over a white cotton turtleneck, making her look older than her twelve years. Her face, framed by her jet-black hair, seemed extraordinarily pale. She went over to the counter and poured herself some orange juice. “Ugh,” said Michelle, taking a taste. “I hate it when the juice is filled with bubbles.”

“Well, well,” said Jean Paul. “If it isn’t the little princess playing sick to stay home from school.”

“Don’t tease your sister,” commanded Charles.

Suddenly, Michelle’s head snapped forward with a violent sneeze, sloshing juice from her glass to the floor. She felt a surge of liquid come from her nose and she automatically leaned forward, catching the stream in an open palm. To her horror, it was blood. “Dad!” she cried, as the blood filled her cupped hand and splattered to the floor.

In unison, Charles and Cathryn jumped up. Cathryn snatched a dish towel while Charles picked Michelle up and carried her into the living room.

The two boys looked at the small pool of blood, then at their food, trying to decide what effect the episode had on their appetites. Cathryn came running back, pulled a tray of ice cubes from the freezer, then rushed back to the living room.

“Ugh,” said Chuck. “You couldn’t get me to be a doctor if you paid me a million dollars. I can’t stand blood.”

“Michelle always manages to be the center of attention,” said Jean Paul.

“You can say that again.”

“Michelle always manages to…” repeated Jean Paul. It was easy and fun to ride Chuck.

“Shut up, stupid.” Chuck got up and threw the remains of his Grape-Nuts down the disposal. Then, skirting the blood on the floor, he headed up to his room.

After four mouthfuls, Jean Paul finished his cereal and put his dish in the sink. With a paper towel, he wiped up Michelle’s blood.

“Good gravy,” said Charles as he went outside through the kitchen door. The storm had brought a northeast wind, and with it the stench of burnt rubber from the recycling plant. “What a stink.”

“What a shit hole of a place to live,” said Chuck.

Charles’s frayed emotions bristled at the impudence, but he refrained from saying anything. It had already been a bad enough morning. Setting his jaw, he tucked his chin into his sheepskin jacket to keep out the blowing snow and trudged toward the barn.

“As soon as I can, I’m going to head for California,” said Chuck, following in Charles’s footsteps. There was about an inch of new snow.

“Dressed the way you are, you’ll fit in perfectly,” said Charles.

Jean Paul, bringing up the rear, laughed, his breath coming in concentrated puffs of vapor. Chuck spun and shoved Jean Paul off the shoveled pathway, into the deeper snow. There were some angry words but Charles ignored them. It was too cold to pause. The little gusts of wind felt abrasive and the smell was awful. It hadn’t always been that way. The rubber plant had opened in ’71, a year after he and Elizabeth had bought the house. The move had really been Elizabeth’s idea. She wanted her children to grow up in clear, crisp air of the country. What an irony, thought Charles, as he unlocked the barn. But it wasn’t too bad. They could only smell the plant when the wind came from the northeast and, thankfully, that wasn’t very often.

“Damn,” said Jean Paul, staring down at the pond. “With this new snow, I’m going to have to shovel my hockey rink all over again. Hey, Dad, how come the water never freezes around Michelle’s playhouse?”

Leaving the piece of pipe against the door to keep it open, Charles looked out over the pond. “I don’t know. I never thought about it. Must be something to do with the current because the area of open water connects with the inlet from the river, and the inlet isn’t frozen either.”

“Ugh,” said Chuck, pointing beyond the playhouse. There on the apron of frozen mud surrounding the pond was a dead mallard. “Another dead duck. I guess they can’t stand the smell, either.”

“That’s strange,” said Charles. “We haven’t seen ducks for several years. When we first moved here I used to hunt them from Michelle’s playhouse. Then they disappeared.”

“There’s another one,” cried Jean Paul. “But he’s not dead. It’s flopping around.”

“Looks drunk,” said Chuck.

“Come on, let’s go help it.”

“We haven’t much time,” cautioned Charles.

“Oh, come on.” Jean Paul took off over the crusted snow.

Neither Charles nor Chuck shared Jean Paul’s enthusiasm, but they followed just the same. When they reached him, he was bending over the poor creature who was in the throes of a seizure.

“God, it’s got epilepsy!” said Chuck.

“What’s wrong with him, Dad?” asked Jean Paul.

“I haven’t the faintest idea. Avian medicine is not one of my strongest subjects.”

Jean Paul bent down to try to restrain the bird’s pitiful spasms and jerks.

“I’m not sure you should touch it,” said Charles. “I don’t know if psittacosis is carried by ducks.”

“I think we should just kill it and put it out of its misery,” said Chuck.

Charles glanced at his older son, whose eyes were glued to the sick bird. For some reason Chuck’s suggestion struck Charles as cruel even though it was probably correct.

“Can I put it in the barn for the day?” pleaded Jean Paul.

“I’ll get my air rifle and put it out of its misery,” said Chuck. It was his turn to get back at Jean Paul.

“No!” commanded Jean Paul. “Can I put it in the barn, Dad? Please?”

“All right,” said Charles, “but don’t touch it. Run up and get a box or something.”

Jean Paul took off like a rabbit. Charles and Chuck faced each other over the sick bird. “Don’t you feel any compassion?” asked Charles.

“Compassion? You’re asking me about compassion after what you do to all those animals in the lab? What a joke!”

Charles studied his son. He thought he saw more than disrespect. He thought he saw hatred. Chuck had been a mystery to Charles from the day he reached puberty. With some difficulty he suppressed the urge to slap the boy.

With his usual resourcefulness, Jean Paul had found a large cardboard box as well as an old pillow. He’d cut open the pillow and filled the box with the feathers. Using the collapsed pillow as a protective rag, he picked up the duck and put it into the box. As he explained it to Charles, the feathers would both protect the duck from injuring himself if he had another seizure and keep it warm. Charles nodded his approval and they all climbed into the car.

The five-year-old red, rusted Pinto complained as Charles turned the key. Because of a series of holes in the muffler the Pinto sounded like an AMX tank when it finally started. Charles backed out of the garage, slid down the drive, and turned north on Interstate 301, heading toward Shaftesbury. As the old car picked up speed, Charles felt relief. Family life could never be made to run smoothly. At least in the lab the variables had a comforting predictability and problems lent themselves to the scientific method. Charles was growing less and less appreciative of human capriciousness.

“All right!” he shouted. “No music!” He switched off the radio. The two boys had been fighting over which station to hear. “A little quiet contemplation is a good way to begin the day.”

The brothers looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

Their route took them along the Pawtomack River and they got glimpses of the water as it snaked its way through the countryside. The closer they got to Shaftesbury, the more intense the stench became from Recycle, Ltd. The first view of the town was the factory’s smokestack spewing its black plume into the air. A harsh whistle shattered the silence as they came abreast of the plant, signaling a changing of shift.

Once past the chemical plant the odor disappeared as if by magic. The abandoned mills loomed on their left as they proceeded up Main Street. Not a person was in sight. It was like a ghost town at six forty-five in the morning. Three rusting steel bridges spanned the river, additional relics of the progressive era before the great war. There was even a covered bridge but no one used that. It was totally unsafe and kept up just for the tourists. The fact that no tourists ever came to Shaftesbury hadn’t dawned on the town fathers.

Jean Paul got out at the regional high school at the northern end of town. His eagerness to start his day was apparent in the rapid way he said good-bye. Even at that hour a group of his friends were waiting, and they entered the school together. Jean Paul was on the J.V. basketball team and they had to practice before classes. Charles watched his younger son disappear, then pulled the car out into the street heading toward I-93 and the trip into Boston. They didn’t hit traffic until they were in Massachusetts.

For Charles, driving had a hypnotic effect. Usually his mind trailed off into the complexities of antigens and antibodies, protein structure and formation while he operated the car by some lower, more primitive parts of his brain. But today he began to find himself sensitive to Chuck’s habitual silence, then irritated by it. Charles tried to imagine what was on his older son’s mind. But try as he could, he realized he had absolutely no idea. Snatching quick looks at the bored, expressionless face, he wondered if Chuck thought about girls. Charles realized that he didn’t even know if Chuck dated.

“How is school going?” asked Charles as casually as possible.

“Fine!” said Chuck, immediately on guard.

Another silence.

“You know what you’re going to major in?”

“Nah. Not yet.”

“You must have some idea. Don’t you have to start planning next year’s schedule?”

“Not for a while.”

“Well, what course do you enjoy the most this year?”

“Psychology, I guess.” Chuck looked out the passenger window. He didn’t want to talk about school. Sooner or later they’d get around to chemistry.

“Not psychology,” said Charles, shaking his head.

Chuck looked at his father’s cleanly shaven face, his broad but well-defined nose, his condescending way of speaking with his head tilted slightly back. He was always so sure of himself, quick to make judgments, and Chuck could hear the derision in his father’s voice as he pronounced the word “psychology.” Chuck worked up his courage and asked: “What’s wrong with psychology?” This was one area in which Chuck was convinced his father was not an expert.

“Psychology is a waste of time,” said Charles. “It’s based on a fundamentally false principle, stimulus-response. That’s just not how the brain works. The brain is not a blank tabula rasa, it’s a dynamic system, generating ideas and even emotions often irrespective of the environment. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah!” Chuck looked away. He had no idea what his father was talking about, but as usual it sounded good. And it was easier to agree, which is what he did for the next fifteen minutes while Charles maintained an impassioned monologue about the defects of the behavioral approach to psychology.

“How about coming over to the lab this afternoon?” said Charles after an interval of silence. “My work has been going fabulously, and I think I’m close to a breakthrough of sorts. I’d like to share it with you.”

“I can’t today,” said Chuck quickly. The last thing he wanted was to be shepherded around the institute where everyone kowtowed to Charles, the famous scientist. It always made him feel uncomfortable, especially since he didn’t understand a thing that Charles was doing. His father’s explanations always started so far above Chuck’s head that he was in constant terror of a question which could reveal the depths of his ignorance.

“You can come at any time at all, at your convenience, Chuck.” Charles had always wished he could share his enthusiasm for his research with Chuck, but Chuck had never shown any interest. Charles had thought that if the boy could see science in action, he’d be irresistibly drawn to it.

“No. I got a lab and then some meetings.”

“Too bad,” said Charles. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Yeah, maybe tomorrow,” said Chuck.

Chuck got out of the car on Huntington Avenue and, after a perfunctory good-bye, walked away in the wet Boston snow. Charles watched him go. He looked like some late-sixties caricature, out of place even among his peers. The other students seemed brighter, more attentive to their appearance, and almost invariably in groups. Chuck walked by himself. Charles wondered if Chuck had been the most severely hurt by Elizabeth’s illness and death. He’d hoped that Cathryn’s presence would have helped, but ever since the wedding, Chuck had become more withdrawn and distant. Putting the car in gear, Charles headed across the Fenway toward Cambridge.