A Fierce Radiance (14 page)

“Mrs. Shipley, it’s James Stanton. At the Rockefeller Institute.” He felt a peculiar self-consciousness with Claire, and it threw him off his stride. He was accustomed to being in charge, both of himself and others. But with her…at least he hadn’t added the “doctor” title to his name.

“Oh. Dr. Stanton.”

Well, she hadn’t forgotten him. “Please, call me Jamie.”

“Yes. Jamie. And do please call me Claire.” She tried to push the sleep from her mind, to wake herself up for him—the very man she’d been thinking about in empty moments.

“Thank you for calling.” What made her say that, she chastised
herself. There was no reason to thank him for calling. She was reacting to him in unfamiliar ways.

“I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Not exactly.” She and Charlie had returned home from her father’s around nine. She’d made a fire in the living room, and they’d sat in the upholstered chairs on either side of her small fireplace, with its plain mantelpiece, to begin their evening ritual of reading aloud, alternating chapters. They were making their way through Arthur Ransome’s
Swallows and Amazons
. After three pages, Charlie had fallen asleep, a testament to his mother’s reading-aloud skills. He was curled in his chair, a blanket over his legs. Claire had drifted into semisleep herself, even as she contemplated taking Lucas for a final walk and getting Charlie upstairs to bed. “I just put my son, and nearly myself, to sleep by reading aloud.”

He appreciated her self-deprecating humor.

Then she remembered: she had to tell him about the cancellation of the story. Best to get it over with, before she started worrying about the proper way to tell him. “I’m glad you called. I got word this afternoon that my penicillin story was canceled. I’m sorry. Sometimes this happens, and no explanations make it okay.”

So, he thought, the war had caught up with them both. He paused to find the proper reply for news that must have upset her. “I’m not surprised.”

“You’re not? Why?”

“The government must have intervened. The director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development must have contacted the editor of your magazine and stopped publication.”

To Claire, this seemed a little too high level, a little too cloak-and-dagger, to be true. “Why would he do that?”

“The government’s created a project for the mass production of penicillin for the military.”

“For the military? Bedpans and milk bottles?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but, well, it’s all we’ve got.” He heard himself echoing Vannevar Bush. “In any war, more troops die or are incapacitated from infection than from actual wounds on the battlefield. Hundreds of thousands of troops jammed together on ships and at makeshift military camps, syphilis and gonorrhea rampant, men living in muck as they fight their way across foreign soil. Wounds gaping on the battlefield, hemorrhaging flesh pressed against dirt and shredded clothing, gangrene and staph and all the rest seeping in despite the best efforts of battlefield medics.”

He realized he was lecturing her. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t stop himself. These were the facts he was mulling over in his mind and sharing them with her, hearing them said aloud, brought him a sense of perspective.

“At Pearl Harbor, the burn victims numbered in the thousands. Infection is the greatest threat to their survival. With penicillin we’ll be able to save lives and get those men back onto the battlefield while the enemy’s hospitals are overflowing.”

She knew next to nothing about these issues, and she was grateful for the lecture. “How come you know so much?” she asked, as a way to urge him to keep talking.

“I’m being called to Washington to interview for a job with them—which apparently I’ll get. Unless I turn out to be a Communist.”

“Will you turn out to be a Communist?” Was he saying that he’d be leaving town before they had a chance to get to know each other?

“I’d be surprised if I did.”

“Well, that’s a relief, I suppose.” Following the code, she kept her tone light, not revealing her disappointment. “What’s the job?”

“I’ve been named the national scientific coordinator.”

She caught an edge in his voice that revealed his doubts. “Sounds important. Congratulations. Are you happy about it?”

“Yes, of course…” With his sister, he was always the strong one. With his peers, he always maintained a professional objectivity, wry,
ironic, cynical, the guilty-until-proven-innocent tone that he and his colleagues cultivated among themselves to survive the constant presence of death in their lives. But here was a secret: he wished someone who loved him would say, don’t worry, you can do this. You’ll face this problem and wrench success from it. How long was it since he’d experienced, or needed, such reassurance? How long since he’d allowed himself to be vulnerable around another person, to feel the combination of friendship, attraction, and mutual support that he defined as love? For reasons he didn’t understand, he felt vulnerable around Claire Shipley. This feeling was simply an instinct. In fact, they barely knew each other. He recognized that he shouldn’t let his emotions jump ahead too quickly. “The job’s a great honor, I’ll put it that way.”

Claire sensed his insecurity. “I feel positive, well, almost positive, that whoever made this decision didn’t put all the possible names in a hat and just happen by chance to come up with you as the best person for the job.” She stopped, waiting for him to reply. When he didn’t, she added, “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a lottery.”

How did she do it? he wondered. How did she reach exactly the right tone to reassure him without patronizing him? He had no choice but to take the job, yet discussing it with her made him feel more settled inside himself. More in control. “Thank you for your vote of confidence.”

“When the story was canceled, I was afraid I’d let you and your sister down. And Patsy Reese and her children. I thought the story would redeem his death. That sounds self-serving now that I say it, but even so.”

“We’ve all been let down. But officially the test was a success. The medication worked. There were no side effects. We simply didn’t have enough of it to save the patient’s life. Anyway, there’s no redemption for that kind of death, except for the work we do to prevent the next death and the one after that.” He paused. “I’m sure you still miss your daughter.” He wanted to know this. In fact, he wanted to know everything there was to know about Claire.

“Yes.” Although Claire was often shocked by memories of Emily, she rarely talked about her. She’d learned to stop talking about Emily because of the looks of pity she’d begun to receive from her friends. Not pity for Emily, but rather pity for her, Claire, because seven years had passed and still she hadn’t been able to separate herself from Emily’s memory. “She’d be almost eleven now.”

“What was she like?”

So Claire talked about Emily. About simple scenes captured like snapshots: Emily on the sofa, paging through a book; at the beach, building sandcastles. Claire spoke also of her own guilt, of what she could have done, might have done, to stop Emily from tripping on the sidewalk, to better wash her injuries, to save her life…if only, if only, alternatives pressing into her thoughts over and over, too late.

“I think the same, too, sometimes. For the patients I’ve lost.”

“But you shouldn’t,” she said. “This is your work.”

“I mention this only to say that the guilt is both natural and unnecessary.”

She was grateful for that. Grateful for once to be understood, rather than be told she was being obsessive, those friends who didn’t have children shaking their heads as if to say, why can’t you just move on?

They were both of them too familiar with death, Stanton thought.

“So,” Claire said resolutely, to bring them back to the present, “our dinner next week will be a celebration of your new job. Or at least a chance to take note of it.”

An idea came to him. “No need to wait. I happen to be free right now.” Nothing wrong with asking, he figured. He felt awash with desire for her. “I can be there in, say, half an hour.”

She knew what he was proposing. She also knew how easy it would be: get Charlie situated in his bedroom upstairs, and when Jamie arrived, take his hand and lead him to the guest room downstairs. She’d make sure he was gone by morning. Charlie, who usually slept late on Sundays, would never know. She glanced at her son, curled up and asleep
in the living room. Yes, she’d be very happy for Jamie to come over. She longed to be close to him, to caress her fingertips across his back.

But no, she wasn’t going to invite him tonight. Step by step, that’s how she wanted to play this. She wanted to give them a chance, at least, to build more than a series of meaningless trysts.

“That’s a terrific idea,” she said. “You keep on with ideas like that, and you’ll go far. I’m sure of it. But tonight’s not good. Feel free to ask me again, however.”

“I will.” The postponement only increased his desire for her. “It’s not an idea I’m likely to forget.”

“I should hope not.”

I
t was 10:30
PM
, and Edward Rutherford was alone. He was a multimillionaire enjoying, to all appearances, a quiet evening at home, relaxing in his library with the
Wall Street Journal
, sipping a cognac. The library was silent. The sound of Fifth Avenue traffic never intruded, not even during rush hour. His library…wood paneling, drinks cart, leather-bound books kept dust free within their glass-doored cabinets, and over the mantel a Constable landscape of sheep and shepherds with an endless horizon. Here he could relax. He could never relax in the parlor with its Bavarian-castle atmosphere, although it was a terrific place for entertaining men as rich or richer than himself, especially when he was trying ever-so-subtly to convince them to invest their money with him.

The clock on the mantel was ticking. Was he really listening to the sound of the clock ticking? Yes, he was. At least he’d convinced Claire and Charlie to stay for an early dinner. Ever the trooper, MaryLee had managed to add to the meal she’d planned for him alone, and they’d brought the dining room to life with jokes and teasing. How he loved the sound of their voices in the apartment, the thump of Charlie’s feet as he raced up and down the stairs, Claire helping MaryLee with the dishes.

Claire and Charlie had changed his life, no doubt about it. Once even the dog, Lucas, had come for a visit, much to Charlie’s pleasure. Rutherford hadn’t encouraged a repeat of the dog visit: with his exuberant rolling around on his back, Lucas had left tufts of fur imbedded in the parlor’s Persian carpets. MaryLee was still vacuuming up dog fur weeks later. Nonetheless, the annoyance was more than worth the sight of Lucas chasing Charlie around the apartment and vice versa. If Claire and Charlie came to live here, he’d get accustomed to dog fur. He’d buy MaryLee a new vacuum cleaner or better yet commission an inventor to design a better one. A specialty vacuum, with a dogfur attachment and an artist’s rendering, Norman Rockwell-style, of Charlie and Lucas side by side. A boy and his dog, in profile. No dog-owning prospective vacuum-cleaner purchaser would be able to resist, not after Rutherford’s sales experts got on board.

He sighed. He felt his loneliness most keenly at the end of their visits, this evening more than ever, since he’d confessed to Claire his hope that they would move here for the duration. At least she hadn’t rejected the idea outright. He’d try again at the next appropriate moment.

What to do with the hours before bed? He could fill his now-empty evening by going to one of his clubs and drinking too much. Then he’d feel even worse in the morning. He could go to a different kind of club, for a woman. But he wasn’t in the mood. He’d received a few dinner party invitations for tonight, formal events where, as an unattached man, he’d no doubt have been seated between two eligible ladies, but he’d turned down the invitations on the chance that he’d have Charlie for a second night.

When Charlie and Claire left early, he’d decided to use the time productively to catch up on his reading. For his work, he regularly reviewed at least fifteen technical journals, as well as dozens of newspapers and magazines. This was a great time to be in business. New industries were being developed overnight for the war effort. Hundreds
of previously unforeseen needs had to be met, and new companies were being established to meet those needs. He was already doing deals with the navy for new types of refrigeration. The navy was building a lot of ships, and every one of those ships needed refrigeration. He was investigating a small company that was poised to become a big company by manufacturing quartz crystal oscillators, which were a breakthrough in radio transmission. On the back burner he had—

Ah, it was useless, he couldn’t concentrate. His thoughts kept getting invaded by images of Claire and Charlie, and poor little Emily, whom he’d never known. In photographs, Emily looked like Claire at that age; once at the house downtown, he’d been looking through a photo album and had actually mistaken Claire for Emily playing in the snow in Central Park. “Look at Emily in the snow,” he said. Claire came over and glanced at the photo. “That’s
me
,” she said, laughing, maybe even a little proud that she and her daughter looked so much alike, but he’d been embarrassed.

He stared at the small Turner watercolor framed and propped on the end table beside his chair. A ruined castle with three cows staring at their reflections in a lake. Very serene.

He didn’t feel serene. He regretted that he hadn’t fought for Claire years ago. He could have, should have fought for her. Now his guilt made him nervous around her. He stumbled over his words, repeated himself. He was desperate for her approval, or at least her acceptance. He found himself second-guessing just about everything he said to her—everything important, that is. Sure, he could joke about the smaller stuff, binoculars and bird watching. But he wanted to share more than that. He was glad he’d been able to advise her on Luce and the penicillin story.

He wanted her forgiveness. How could he earn it? What could he give her? She wasn’t the type to value diamond necklaces or sable coats. He could pay to fix her leaking roof, but that didn’t seem dramatic enough; he resolved to do it anyway, because Charlie (and Claire,
too, naturally) shouldn’t be living in a damp house with a leaky roof. If there was no direct gift he could give her, maybe he could do some charitable work in her name. Who wouldn’t like that? Yes, maybe he was on to something with the charity idea. The point was, he needed Claire and Charlie so very much.