Pressure Drop (42 page)

“An obstetrician, by training. But research was his love. He spent most of his time in the lab.”

“What sort of research?”

“He specialized in fertility. Like my father.”

“Your father was an obstetrician too?”

“He never practiced. He taught and did his research.” She turned to Nina. “My father developed the first fertility drug ever used.” Nina heard the pride in her voice, and wondered if there were tears in her eyes, but all she could see were shadows. Mrs. Standish cleared her throat. “That was in 1922,” she continued in her normal voice.

A normal voice, Nina thought, that she had heard before. And was it normal? It occurred to her that English, as perfectly, even stylishly as Mrs. Standish spoke it, might not be her first language. “Where was this?” Nina asked.

“Where was what?”

“Where your father did his research.”

“Various universities and institutes,” Mrs. Standish replied. “Whoever would pay.”

“Was it marketed?” asked Nina, wondering where all the money had come from.

“Marketed?”

“The fertility drug.”

“Not really ‘marketed,'” Mrs. Standish said. “It was used experimentally and of course that led to the development of all the modern fertility drugs.”

“That sounds important,” Nina said. “What was his name?”

“Do you mean my father?”

“Yes. Is he still alive?”

Mrs. Standish pushed away the remains of her sandwich and stood up. “My father died in the war,” she said. “And his name would mean nothing to you. He never got the recognition he deserved.” She walked to the window. “Look at that,” she said.

Nina turned. There was nothing to see but driving snow. She checked her watch. Almost nine. She finished her water but left most of the sandwich Mrs. Standish had made for her. “Did any of your children go into obstetrics too?”

The skin of Mrs. Standish's forehead drew itself down into a V. “Happy is my only child,” she answered. “And no, he did not. His inclinations were artistic. They are artistic, I should say. I don't suppose inclinations would change, even in his circumstances, do you?”

Mrs. Standish no longer gazed out the window. She was looking at Nina, and now the firelight shone on her eyes, hard and blue.

“I really don't know,” Nina said.

Mrs. Standish snorted. It was unsettling, like seeing royalty do something vulgar. Perhaps Mrs. Standish saw this reaction on Nina's face. She returned to the table, sat down and sipped her water.

“Some wine?” she said.

“No thanks.”

“I could get a bottle from the pantry.”

“Not for me.”

“I won't bother then,” Mrs. Standish said, staring at the miniature flames dancing inside a diamond on her finger.

“Did your son end up pursuing an artistic career?”

“In a way. He studied music and became a critic. A published critic.”

“Who did he write for?”

“Various newspapers and magazines.”

“Freelance?”

“Is there anything unworthy about that?”

“Not at all. What sort of music did he cover?”

“Popular,” said Mrs. Standish. The word seemed to displease her.

“Is the sweater for his child?”

“Sweater?”

“The one you're knitting. I thought it might be for your grandson.”

“Grandson?”

“Because it's blue.”

The V deepened in Mrs. Standish's forehead. “Happy never married.” She was looking at Nina again, her eyes once more in shadow. “Not that he was homosexual or anything like that—he's had girlfriends. But none suitable.” Her water glass was three-quarters full. She drank it down in one swallow. When she spoke again her voice was quiet. “There was no hurry, you see. A man can marry at any time. As opposed to a woman. Reproductively speaking, I mean.” She paused, and her voice was stronger when she added: “But I probably don't need to tell you that.”

“It's why I went to the institute.”

Mrs. Standish nodded. Then she was silent. A log crackled in the fire. Mrs. Standish raised a hand and smoothed the V from her forehead. Nina tried to imagine her as a grandmother, and could: the kind of grandmother who might have tea at the Carlyle, and own a house in the South of … A strange idea began taking shape in Nina's mind, but before she could examine its implications, or even see it clearly, Mrs. Standish said:

“Tell me something about your family, then. We've exhausted the subject of mine.”

“There's not much to tell. My father worked in a bank and my mother taught school. They're both dead and I don't have brothers or sisters.”

“But you're still young. How did your parents die?”

“Cancer.”

“Cancer?”

“There were other complications at the end. But basically it was cancer.”

“My God,” said Mrs. Standish. She seemed upset. “Is there a lot of cancer in your family? In the past, I mean.”

“Not that I know of.”

Mrs. Standish's shadowy eyes regarded Nina for a long moment. “Good,” she said. Then she checked her watch. “Look at the time.”

“I know.”

They both faced the window, and saw what they had been seeing for hours. “I'm afraid I retire rather early,” Mrs. Standish said. “You'll have to stay the night.”

“I really couldn't.”

Mrs. Standish smiled her complicated smile. Firelight glowed on her even little teeth. “Is there an alternative?”

Nina pictured her rental car buried in snow, the local roads impassable, the route to the city closed. There was no alternative.

“We have a nice little guest room in the north wing,” Mrs. Standish said. “It's all made up.”

She led Nina along a long hall, up two flights of stairs and down another hall to a corner room with one set of windows facing the road and another overlooking the south wing. It was a pretty room, with floral-printed furniture and curtains and a four-poster bed. “The lavatory is through there,” said Mrs. Standish. She folded down a corner of the eiderdown and patted the pillow. “Sleep well,” she said, going out and closing the door.

Mrs. Standish's footsteps faded away. Nina went to the window that faced the road and watched a world that might have been created by Jackson Pollock, using only black and white. She sat on the bed, sinking into the soft feather mattress. It made her think of Europe. So did the prints on the wall—landscapes that were all dark skies, except for the occasional tiny rustic at the bottom. She opened all the drawers and closets and cabinets in the room, hoping to find a radio or television, something to connect her with the world outside the storm. All she found were wooden hangers, a book—
The Sorrows of Werther
, but in the original—two towels, a bar of soap from the Plaza Hotel and a business card. A scuba diver was on his way to the bottom of the card; bubbles outlined in blue floated toward the top. “
Zombie Bay Club
,” read the card. “
N. H. Matthias, P.O. Box 9, Blufftown, Andros Island, the Bahamas. Tel. (809) 555–9865
.”

Nina went into the bathroom. Everything that could be gold-plated was, including the frame of the mirror over the sink. In the mirror Nina saw a purple bruise spreading beyond the borders of Mrs. Standish's butterfly bandage, and a streak of crusted blood that ran all the way to her jawbone. Why hadn't Mrs. Standish mentioned the blood, or even appeared to notice it? Nina splashed cold water on her face, washing the blood away. The bruise remained.

Nina took off her shoes and lay down on the bed, leaving her clothes on. She pulled the eiderdown over her body, but didn't get between the sheets. They were nice sheets, silk with a pattern of tulips and bluebells, but Nina didn't want them around her. She switched off the bedside light and closed her eyes. On the inside of her eyelids waited a Jackson Pollock in black and white: the state of her mind. It was too confusing to sort out. Clinging to one fact, Mrs. Standish's promise to help, Nina tried to sleep.

She tried for a long time, lying in the soft bed in the enormous house, listening to the little world of her own breathing and the big world of the storm, firing snow pellets at the windows. Then she stopped trying. That didn't work either. Nina got up.

She stared out one of the windows facing the road. She couldn't see it. All she could see was the storm. Then the glass misted under her breath, blurring even that. It was due to the mist that Nina wasn't sure whether she saw a sudden yellow glow coming from the direction of the road. By the time she rubbed the mist away, the glow, if it had existed at all, was gone.

Nina stood by the window for a while, waiting for the glow to reappear. Then she gave up. She lay down on the bed again, pulled up the eiderdown. This time she couldn't even keep her eyes closed. She got up, looked out the window, saw nothing but the storm; then peered through the curtains covering the other windows, those facing the closed-off wing.

And Nina saw green light shining through a window on the ground floor. Not bright, but steady: she closed her eyes, looked again, and it was still there.

Nina watched the green light. Minutes passed. Nina knew what she had to do long before she did it.

Nina opened the door of her room. She walked down the hall. The lights had been switched off, but the faint luminosity of night, even such a starless and moonless one, came through the windows and lit her way. She reached the stairs and started down, silent in her stocking feet. Nina descended two flights and entered the long corridor. It had no windows; she walked on in total darkness, feeling her way with her hands. Many rooms opened off the corridor, great spaces full of shadows that seemed to move under her gaze, although she knew they were only pieces of furniture. She came to the dining room. Embers glowed in the fireplace, bright enough to reveal Zulu, asleep on the rug. Nina froze. Zulu shuddered, but he didn't wake up. Perhaps he thought her smell was only part of a bad dream. Nina tiptoed by.

At the end of the hall there were more windows. By their light, Nina saw a closed door. She turned the knob; the door swung open without a squeak: Mrs. Standish was too rich to have squeaky doors. Ahead Nina saw a flight of stairs leading up into darkness, and a corridor beside it. She was in the south wing.

Nina walked along the corridor. Her feet felt thick carpet; would there still be rugs in the closed-off wing of a house? She didn't know. She had never been in a house with wings before, except as a tourist. Ahead she saw a faint green glow.

It escaped through the crack under a door on her right, not far away. Nina stopped before it, listening. She heard nothing. She put her hand on the knob. Slowly, she turned it, slowly pushed open the door.

On the other side was a room. Nina could see clearly: a wall monitor lit everything green. A green line moved across the monitor, rose to a peak, fell, moved, rose, fell, moved to the end of the screen, reappeared at the beginning, rose, fell. In the center of the room stood a bed. Wires ran to the bed from the monitor, and from other machinery as well. On the bed lay a fair-haired man, with an eiderdown, much like the one in her room, pulled up to his chin. An IV feeding bag hung over him and he had a breathing tube in his nose. The eyes of the fair-haired man were open. They gazed at the ceiling. It was a white ceiling, separated from the white walls by a gilded molding. A spider web clung to the underside of the molding. A fat spider, green in the light of the monitor, stood motionless on the wall.

Nina stepped into the room, moved toward the bed. She made no effort to be quiet now, but the fair-haired man continued to gaze at the ceiling. Nina stood beside the bed and looked down at him. His face was very thin, but it was a fine face, with blue eyes as beautiful as Mrs. Standish's, but softer.

“Happy?”

The blue eyes gazed at the ceiling.

37

Dying was just like living, full of surprises. When he thought he finally had dying down to a system, a functioning arrangement made up of the in-crowd—components one, two and three—and the outsiders, the walking talkers—Mother, Fritz, Dr. Robert—who should appear but a stranger in the night, saying: “Happy?”

The stranger was in his sights. A green stranger, but he knew that that was because of the night. Nights were green when you were dying. Just another surprise.

The stranger had beautiful dark eyes. There was something familiar about those eyes, full of powerful, painful emotions, barely under control. Or was he reading too much in them? Probably. He had never been a good judge of things like that, and why would he be any better now, under the control of Dr. Robert and his drugs?

Lobsters? Did the green woman have something to do with lobsters? There was a scandal. PCBs. Had she poisoned the ocean with PCBs? He didn't think so. The woman was still looking down at him.

Say something
.

“I'm Nina.” The woman spoke, almost on cue. She had a lovely voice. “Can you hear me? Your mother says you can.”

And then he remembered—not the lobster story, but the kidnapping story:
I want my baby back very much
. How sharp his memory was! But why not? Memory was the sole task of component number three.

The dark eyes watched him. They were so different from the eyes of Mother, Fritz, Dr. Robert: they hid nothing. Or if they hid something, they did it so cleverly he didn't know, which was just as good. Or was it? Damn. His mind was wandering now, spinning uselessly like a motor when the gears were stripped. Don't spin. Look at the woman. A special woman, that was obvious. And one who had spoken to him at the very moment he was hoping she would. A suitable woman, Mother? That would depend on her background. He gazed into her dark eyes but could tell nothing about the woman's background.

Talk to me
.

But now the woman didn't speak. She looked down on him for a few more moments: they were gazing into each other's eyes, weren't they, like lovers or something? And then she backed away, out of the circle of his sight, beyond his horizon. He heard her footsteps moving away, but he didn't hear the door opening or closing. Instead he heard paper rustling.