The Corrections: A Novel (29 page)

“You guys are dreaming,” the heckler persisted at a shout, “if
you think the American people—”

“Honey,” Finch interrupted with the advantage of her lapel mike and
amplification, “the American people support the death penalty. Do you
think they’ll have a problem with a socially constructive alternative like
this? Ten years from now we’ll see which of us is dreaming. Yes, pink
shirt at Table Three, yes?”

“Excuse me,” the heckler persisted, “I’m trying to remind
your potential investors of the Eighth Amendment—”

“Thank you. Thank you very much,” Finch said, her emcee’s smile
tightening. “Since you bring up cruel and unusual punishment, let me
suggest that you walk a few blocks north of here to Fairmount Avenue. Go take a
look at the Eastern State Penitentiary. World’s first modern prison,
opened in 1829, solitary confinement for up to twenty years, astonishing suicide
rate, zero corrective benefit, and, just to keep this in mind,
still the
basic model for corrections in
the United States today
. Curly’s not talking about this on CNN,
folks. He’s talking about the million Americans with Parkinson’s and
the four million with Alzheimer’s. What I’m
telling you now is not for general consumption. But the fact is, a
one-hundred-percent voluntary alternative to incarceration is the opposite of
cruel and unusual. Of all the potential applications of Corecktall, this is the
most humane. This is the liberal
vision
: genuine, permanent, voluntary
self-melioration.”

The heckler, shaking her head with the emphasis of the unconvinceable, was
already exiting the ballroom. Mr. Twelve Thousand Shares of Exxon, at
Gary’s left shoulder, cupped his hands to his mouth and booed her.

Young men at other tables followed suit, booing and smirking, having their
sports-fan fun and lending support, Gary feared, to Denise’s disdain for
the world he moved in. Denise had leaned forward and was staring at Twelve
Thousand Shares of Exxon in open-mouthed amazement.

Daffy Anderson, a linebacker type with thick glossy sideburns and a texturally
distinct stubblefield of hair higher up, had stepped forward to answer money
questions. He spoke of being
gratifyingly oversubscribed
. He compared the
heat of this IPO to
Vindaloo curry
and
Dallas in July
. He refused
to divulge the price that Hevy & Hodapp planned to ask for a share of Axon.
He spoke of
pricing it fairly
and—wink, wink—
letting the
market do its job
.

Denise touched Gary’s shoulder and pointed to a table behind the dais,
where Merilee Finch was standing by herself and putting salmon in her mouth.
“Our prey is feeding. I say we pounce.”

“What for?” Gary said.

“To get Dad signed up for testing.”

Nothing about the idea of Alfred’s participation in a Phase II study
appealed to Gary, but it occurred to him that by letting Denise broach the topic
of Alfred’s affliction, by letting her create sympathy for the Lamberts
and establish their moral claim on Axon’s favors, he could increase his
chances of getting his five thousand shares.

“You do the talking,” he said, standing up.
“Then I’ll have a question for her, too.”

As he and Denise moved toward the dais, heads turned to admire Denise’s
legs.

“What part of ‘no comment’ didn’t you understand?”
Daffy Anderson asked a questioner for a laugh.

The cheeks of Axon’s CEO were puffed out like a squirrel’s. Merilee
Finch put a napkin to her mouth and regarded the accosting Lamberts warily.
“I’m
so
starving,” she said. It was a thin
woman’s apology for being corporeal. “We’ll be setting up some
tables in a couple of minutes, if you don’t mind waiting.”

“This is a semi-private question,” Denise said.

Finch swallowed with difficulty—maybe self-consciousness, maybe
insufficient chewing. “Yeah?”

Denise and Gary introduced themselves and Denise mentioned the letter that Alfred
had been sent.

“I had to
eat
something,” Finch explained, shoveling up
lentils. “I think Joe was the one who wrote to your father. I’m
assuming we’re all square there now. He’d be happy to talk to you if
you still had questions.”

“Our question is more for you,” Denise said.

“Sorry. One more bite here.” Finch chewed her salmon with labored
jawstrokes, swallowed again, and dropped her napkin on the plate. “As far
as that patent goes, I’ll tell you frankly, we considered just infringing.
That’s what everybody else does. But Curly’s an inventor himself. He
wanted to do the right thing.”

“Frankly,” Gary said, “the right thing might have been to offer
more.”

Finch’s tongue was probing beneath her upper lip like a cat beneath
blankets. “You may have a somewhat inflated idea of your father’s
achievement,” she said. “A lot of researchers were studying those
gels in the sixties. The discovery of electrical anisotropy is generally, I
believe, credited to a team
at Cornell. Plus I understand
from Joe that the wording of that patent is unspecific. It doesn’t even
refer to the brain; it’s just ‘human tissues.’ Justice is the
right of the stronger, when it comes to patent law. I think our offer was rather
generous.”

Gary made his I’m-a-jerk face and looked at the dais, where Daffy Anderson
was being mobbed by well-wishers and supplicants.

“Our father was fine with the offer,” Denise assured Finch.
“And he’ll be happy to know what you guys are doing.”

Female bonding, the making of nice, faintly nauseated Gary.

“I forget which hospital he’s with,” Finch said.

“He’s not,” Denise said. “He was a railroad engineer. He
had a lab in our basement.”

Finch was surprised. “He did that work as an amateur?”

Gary didn’t know which version of Alfred made him angrier: the spiteful old
tyrant who’d made a brilliant discovery in the basement and cheated
himself out of a fortune, or the clueless basement amateur who’d
unwittingly replicated the work of real chemists, spent scarce family money to
file and maintain a vaguely worded patent, and was now being tossed a scrap from
the table of Earl Eberle. Both versions incensed him.

Perhaps it was best, after all, that the old man had ignored Gary’s advice
and taken the money.

“My dad has Parkinson’s,” Denise said.

“Oh, I’m very sorry.”

“Well, and we were wondering if you might include him in the testing of
your—product.”

“Conceivably,” Finch said. “We’d have to ask Curly. I do
like the human-interest aspect. Does your dad live around here?”

“He’s in St. Jude.”

Finch frowned. “It won’t work if you
can’t get him to Schwenksville twice a week for at least six
months.”

“Not a problem,” Denise said, turning to Gary.
“Right?”

Gary was hating everything about this conversation. Health health, female female,
nice nice, easy easy. He didn’t answer.

“How is he mentally?” Finch said.

Denise opened her mouth, but at first no words came out.

“He’s fine,” she said, rallying.
“Just—fine.”

“No dementia?”

Denise pursed her lips and shook her head. “No. He gets a little confused
sometimes, but—no.”

“The confusion could be from his meds,” Finch said, “in which
case it’s fixable. But Lewy-body dementia is beyond the purview of Phase
Two testing. So is Alzheimer’s.”

“He’s pretty sharp,” Denise said.

“Well, if he’s able to follow basic instructions, and he’s
willing to travel east in January, Curly might try to include him. It would make
a good story.”

Finch produced a business card, warmly shook Denise’s hand, less warmly
shook Gary’s, and moved into the mob surrounding Daffy Anderson.

Gary followed her and caught her by the elbow. She turned around, startled.

“Listen, Merilee,” he said in a low voice, as if to say,
Let’s
be realistic now, we adults can dispense with the nicey-nice crap
.
“I’m glad you think my dad’s a ‘good story.’ And
it’s very generous of you to give him five thousand dollars. But I believe
you need us more than we need you.”

Finch waved to somebody and held up one finger; she would be there in one second.
“Actually,” she said to Gary, “we don’t need you at all.
So I’m not sure what you’re saying.”

“My family wants to buy five thousand shares of your offering.”

Finch laughed like an executive with an eighty-hour work
week. “So does everybody in this room,” she said.
“That’s why we have investment bankers. If you’ll excuse
me—”

She broke free and got away. Gary, in the crush of bodies, was having trouble
breathing. He was furious with himself for having
begged
, furious for
having let Denise attend this road show, furious for being a Lambert. He strode
toward the nearest exit without waiting for Denise, who hurried after him.

Between the Four Seasons and the neighboring office tower was a corporate
courtyard so lavishly planted and flawlessly maintained that it might have been
pixels in a cybershopping paradise. The two Lamberts were crossing the courtyard
when Gary’s anger found a fault through which to vent itself. He said,
“I don’t know where the hell you think Dad’s going to stay if
he comes out here.”

“Partly with you, partly with me,” Denise said.

“You’re never home,” he said. “And Dad’s on record
as not wanting to be at
my
house for more than forty-eight
hours.”

“This wouldn’t be like last Christmas,” Denise said.
“Trust me. The impression I got on Saturday—”

“Plus how’s he going to get out to Schwenksville twice a
week?”

“Gary, what are you saying? Do you not want this to happen?”

Two office workers, seeing angry parties bearing down, stood up and vacated a
marble bench. Denise perched on the bench and folded her arms intransigently.
Gary paced in a tight circle, his hands on his hips.

“For the last ten years,” he said, “Dad has done
nothing
to take care of himself. He’s sat in that fucking blue chair and wallowed
in self-pity. I don’t know why you think he’s suddenly going to
start—”

“Well, but if he thought there might actually be a
cure—”

“What, so he can be depressed for an extra five years and die miserable at
eighty-five instead of eighty? That’s going to make all the
difference?”

“Maybe he’s depressed because he’s sick.”

“I’m sorry, but that is bullshit, Denise. That is a crock. The man
has been depressed since before he even retired. He was depressed when he was
still in perfect health.”

A low fountain was murmuring nearby, generating medium-strength privacy. A small
unaffiliated cloud had wandered into the quadrant of private-sphere sky defined
by the encompassing rooflines. The light was coastal and diffuse.

“What would you do,” Denise said, “if you had Mom nagging you
seven days a week, telling you to get out of the house, watching every move you
make, and acting like the kind of chair you sit in is a moral issue? The more
she tells him to get up, the more he sits there. The more he sits there, the
more she—”

“Denise, you’re living in fantasyland.”

She looked at Gary with hatred. “Don’t patronize me. It’s just
as much a fantasy to act like Dad’s some worn-out old machine. He’s
a person, Gary. He has an interior life. And he’s nice to me, at
least—”

“Well, he ain’t so nice to me,” Gary said. “And
he’s an abusive selfish bully to Mom. And I say if he wants to sit in that
chair and sleep his life away, that’s just fine. I love that idea.
I’m one-thousand-percent a fan of that idea. But first let’s yank
that chair out of a three-floor house that’s falling apart and losing
value. Let’s get Mom some kind of quality of life. Just do that, and he
can sit in his chair and feel sorry for himself until the cows come
home.”

“She loves that house. That house
is
her quality of life.”

“Well, she’s in a fantasyland, too! A lot of good it does her
to love the house when she’s got to keep an eye on
the old man twenty-four hours a day.”

Denise crossed her eyes and blew a wisp of hair off her forehead.
“You’re the one in a fantasy,” she said. “You seem to
think they’re going to be happy living in a two-room apartment in a city
where the only people they know are you and me. And do you know who that’s
convenient for? For
you
.”

He threw his hands in the air. “So it’s convenient for me! I’m
sick of worrying about that house in St. Jude. I’m sick of making trips
out there. I’m sick of hearing how miserable Mom is. A situation
that’s convenient for you and me is better than a situation that’s
convenient for
nobody
. Mom’s living with a guy who’s a
physical wreck. He’s
had it
, he’s
through
, finito, end
of story, take a charge against earnings. And still she’s got this idea
that if he would only try harder, everything would be fine and life would be
just like it used to be. Well, I got news for everybody:
it ain’t ever
gonna be
the way it used to be
.”

“You don’t even want him to get better.”

“Denise.” Gary clutched his eyes. “They had five years before
he even got sick. And what did he do? He watched the local news and waited for
Mom to cook his meals. This is the real world we’re living in. And
I
want them out of that house—”

“Gary.”

“
I
want them in a retirement community out here, and
I’m
not afraid to say it.”

“Gary, listen to me.” Denise leaned forward with an urgent goodwill
that only irritated him the more. “Dad can come and stay with me for six
months. They can both come and stay, I can bring home meals, it’s not that
big a deal. If he gets better, they’ll go back home. If he doesn’t
get better, they’ll have had six months to decide if they like living in
Philly. I mean,
what
is wrong with this?”