The Hot Flash Club (3 page)

3

MARILYN

As Marilyn steered her Subaru toward Logan Air-port, her mind was fractured in three directions. First, she had to concentrate on driving; second, she yearned to be back in the lab; third, she was overwhelmed with emotion because her beloved older sister was leaving after a week’s visit, and she didn’t know whether she was more sad than glad.

She loved Sharon—she
adored
her. She always had. But Sharon was so bossy and judgmental! And Sharon had something on her mind—Marilyn could tell. As a paleobiologist, Marilyn could usually hide from the modern world, but she could never escape her sister’s opinions.

Sure enough, from the passenger seat, Sharon announced, “Marilyn, I have something to say to you.”

“So,” Marilyn said, “say it.” Inwardly, she sighed.

Probably, Sharon was going to criticize the way Marilyn looked.
Sharon
looked fabulous, with her hair tinted blond and sliced in a chic blunt bob. Her black pantsuit was flattering and smart, her nails professionally shaped and French-tipped. Marilyn’s dowdy academic appearance made Sharon
crazy
, Marilyn knew, but the ancient, long-dead creatures she loved to study didn’t care that her gray hair was yanked back into a practical bun, nor that her sweater and slacks were twenty—or was it thirty?—years old. From Marilyn’s scholarly perspective, thirty years was brand-new.

Sharon shifted in her seat to face Marilyn. “Frankly, I’m worried about Teddy.”

“Teddy!” Marilyn glanced at her sister in alarm. “Why?”

“I don’t like his fiancée. I don’t trust her. I think she’s after Teddy for his money.”

Relief made Marilyn laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. Lila’s father’s a successful plastic surgeon! He’s got his own clinic just west of Boston!”

“Marilyn. Listen to me. You know I love Teddy. But have you
looked
at him?”

“Of course I have! I look at him all the time!”

“All right, then, picture him in your mind’s eye. Then picture Lila. What’s wrong with this picture?”

Marilyn thought. “Nothing. Lila’s a lovely girl.” “No, Marilyn. Lila’s not a ‘lovely girl.’ Lila is a drop-dead knockout beauty who wears Versace and Manolo Blahniks.”

“What’s your point?”

“Oh, honey—” There was genuine anguish in Sharon’s voice.

They reached the airline terminal. Marilyn found a space at the departure curb and angled into it. “Want me to come in with you?”

“No. Just
listen
.” Sharon unfastened her seat belt and aimed her determined glare at her sister. “Marilyn. I love Teddy. I
adore
Teddy. But, honey, Teddy is—” She took a deep breath.

“What? Teddy’s
what
?”

“A geek. Teddy is a geek.”

Marilyn stared at her sister, a red tide flushing her face.

“A nerd,” Sharon said. “A twerp.”

“All right, all right, I get the point.” Marilyn chewed her lip, then brightened. “But you know, Sharon, Teddy looks
just
like his father, and I fell in love with Theodore.”

Sharon closed her eyes, seeming to pray for courage. When she opened them, she reached out and angled the rearview mirror toward Marilyn. “Yes. That’s true. And look at yourself.”

Marilyn stared at her reflection, puzzled.

“And please recall what you’ve spent your life looking at,” Sharon continued, reaching over the backseat to gather up her scarf, purse, and overnight bag.
“Dead
bugs.”

“Trilobites,”
Marilyn corrected with quiet dignity. Sharon never had respected her life’s work. Opening her door, she said, “I’ll get your suitcase from the trunk.”

Standing behind the car, buffeted by fumes of passing buses, taxis, and cars, the two sisters scowled at each other.

“I know you’re angry with me,” Sharon said. “But I had to say this. I’m afraid Lila’s marrying Teddy for his money.”

“I’ve told you. Lila’s family has plenty of money.”

“Do they? Perhaps they did, but do they now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that a lot of people have lost a ton of money in the stock market in the past year. I mean that you and Teddy and Theodore think that it’s normal to sit around the dinner table discussing genetic alterations that will make the corn borer’s stomach explode, but in fact, that’s not what most people consider dinner conversation. I mean that you fell in love with Theodore even though he’s short and fat and bald, because you truly live the life of the mind and don’t realize you go around looking like an extra from
Lord of the Rings
. I mean you love Theodore because you understand and admire his work. But Lila Eastbrook doesn’t have a
clue
about Teddy’s work, and she never will. Her deepest thought’s about Chanel’s newest lipstick shade. Marilyn, if you don’t watch out, your son and my nephew will get his darling heart broken,
and
Lila will make off with a lot of that lovely money you’ve forgotten you have.”

“You’ve been here one week, you’ve seen Lila and Teddy two times, and you’ve deduced all that?”

“Honey, I’m a headhunter. It’s my business to size people up quickly.”

“Well, what can I
do
?”

“Stall when they talk about the wedding. Convince them that next spring would be better than this fall. Get on the Internet, check out how Eastbrook’s clinic’s doing. Discuss it at dinner some night with Lila, see how she reacts. I’ll think about it and call you when I come up with some better ideas.”

“I just can’t believe this.” Marilyn twisted her hands together.

“Don’t look so worried. We’ll work it out. I wouldn’t mention it if I didn’t love Teddy so much. I want only the best for him. You’ve got to admit that your marriage with Theodore has lasted so well because you’re both scientists. Don’t you want a marriage like yours for Teddy? I mean, just imagine. Once they’re past the first sexual frenzy, what will Lila and Teddy even be able to talk about?” Sharon glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to run, or I’ll miss my plane. I’ll call you tonight. Love you.” She hugged her sister tightly, kissed her cheek, then grabbed her suitcases and rushed into the terminal.

Marilyn stood gaping as her sister strode away. All human DNA was 99 percent the same. Only 1 percent of one’s DNA was different from any other human on the earth. How could it be, then, that she and Sharon, who shared not only the nature of DNA but the nurture of the same parents, the same home, the same education, could have turned out so differently? Life was such a mystery. In a microscope—

A horn blasted through her thoughts.

“Lady! You gonna stand there all day?” an irate cabby yelled.

Marilyn blinked. What? Where? Forcing herself to focus, she remembered where she was and what she had to do. She got into her car and drove away from the terminal. She longed to head for the university and the refuge of the lab, where she was working on the meticulous extraction of a trilobite from a slab of Ordovician shale.

Instead, she drove to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Its hushed, eccentric opulence always provided an atmosphere where she could think.

As she drove she tried to look at the situation logically. First of all, she reminded herself, consider the source: Sharon was a loving sister, married for years, with her own thriving business and two grown, married children. She loved Marilyn and her family, so it was not with malicious intent that Sharon had stirred up this hornet’s nest in Marilyn’s heart.

Blunt, practical, and honest, Sharon was a superb problem solver. Marilyn, in contrast, was dreamy-minded in an intellectual way. She tended to let the teakettle rattle dry as she stood two feet away, field glasses in her hands, watching crows feed in the backyard. Fortunately, her husband was just as preoccupied with his own thoughts about the mysterious puzzle of genetics. In fact, over the past few months, Theodore had taken to eating most of his meals out because it took too much time from his work to drive home to eat. Fine with Marilyn, who was delighted to be released from the kitchen; she had more time for her own research.

Neither Theodore nor Marilyn had ever longed for riches or the luxurious life money could ensure. It was a passion for the scientific process that had driven Theodore to discover how to alter the gene of a parasite that killed expensive exotic fish so that the gene self-destructed before it could harm the fish. When a pharmaceutical company that sold, among other drugs, preventive medicine to the aquarium industry, bought Theodore’s formula for a staggering sum, Theodore and Marilyn had laughed and popped a bottle of champagne. Then they’d wandered back to their work, leaving the champagne to go flat. Their colleagues urged them to take a trip to some exotic place, but the thought of being away from their work horrified them, as did the suggestion that they dislodge their books and papers from their Victorian house near the university simply to move to a more prestigious address. They’d spoken, briefly, about hiring a housekeeper, so that Marilyn would have more time for her lab work, but her teaching was only part-time at the most, and they were terrified by the very thought of someone moving their papers and books around. In the end, they decided to send their laundry out and live with dust and clutter.

Teddy took after both of them. When Teddy turned twenty-one, Theodore had given him a seven-figure check, as he did when Teddy won his doctorate in genetic biology at Harvard. Teddy had thanked his father, then stuck the money in the bank and continued to live in a rented apartment near MIT. He was too busy with his own research for frivolous matters, and his parents understood that completely.

Marilyn showed her pass, entered the Gardner, and settled on a bench in the sunny courtyard, filled with statuary and, today, a plethora of lilies and azalea. Hidden deep in the pots, beneath the leaves and showy blossoms, unseen minuscule creatures were busily going about their everyday work, waving their antennae, crawling, chomping, defecating, tunneling, mating—

Teddy. Her son. Her wonderful brilliant son.

What had Sharon called him? A dweeb. A nerd. A
twerp
.

Rather unkind, but not inaccurate. Like his father, Teddy was portly, was losing his hair, and wore heavy, black-rimmed glasses. Yet it had never occurred to any of them that he could be unattractive. He’d always had girlfriends. He’d had a steady girlfriend in high school, dear little Ursula, who
was
ursine in appearance, squat and burly, low to the ground, with beady dark eyes, thick dark hair—on her arms and legs as well as her head—and an incipient mustache. Ursula played field hockey and the violin. Recently she’d married another violinist and moved somewhere in the Midwest.

In college, there had been several girls. Candy had been Marilyn’s favorite, and Teddy had seemed very serious about their relationship, but after getting their doctorates, Candy had gone off to work for NASA while Teddy stayed on at MIT.

After Candy, there hadn’t been anyone long-lasting until Lila. Even so, Teddy was not
repulsive
. He was not
obese
.

Still, it was possible that Sharon had a point. Marilyn took off her horn-rimmed glasses and chewed on them as she thought. All Teddy’s former girlfriends had been, if not homely, exactly, then certainly dowdy. Marilyn was dowdy herself, as Sharon never failed to remind her, but she couldn’t get her mind to dwell on the mysteries of clothing, hair, and lipstick. Heaven knew that her beloved trilobites, dead in their rock coffins for 500 million years, didn’t know or care what Marilyn looked like as she bent over them, abrading away, with exquisite care, the dust of ages from their long, thin, cockroachlike bodies.

Marilyn’s fingers twitched, longing to get back to work. She rose and walked through the museum, telling herself to stay on the subject for just a little longer.

Now: Lila. What was different about her from Teddy’s other girlfriends?

Most obvious: Lila was really beautiful. Even Marilyn had noticed that. Marilyn looked at the flamenco dancer in Sergeant’s painting and decided that Lila, though fair and petite, had the same flashing intensity. Yes, Lila was glamorous, but so what?

True, Teddy hadn’t met Lila the same way he’d met his other girlfriends, in a science lab. Where had they met? Marilyn searched her memory. Hadn’t they—oh, yes. She remembered. Lila had tripped and fallen in the Bread & Circuses parking lot. She’d been wearing high heels. One of the heels had snapped off. For a moment she thought she’d broken her ankle. Teddy had been on his way to his car, and he’d seen her fall, and helped her up, and taken her for coffee. They’d liked each other at once and started dating, and now they were engaged.

Could Lila have targeted Teddy and fallen on purpose?

That was just ridiculous. She mustn’t let Sharon’s doubts turn her into a suspicious harpy.

I mean, Marilyn asked herself, how would Lila even know that Teddy was wealthy?

Well, she answered herself, there was that write-up in the
Boston Globe
.

Marilyn paused in front of the tapestry hanging across from the steps to the second floor. Medieval, it depicted a rustic village scene, with peasants and farmers and cows and trees, and at the bottom, a pair of rabbits mating. A lusty scene, and lust was good. Certainly she had enjoyed it all those years ago, when she and Theodore had fallen in love. If they no longer felt lust for each other—and Marilyn couldn’t actually remember the last time they’d had intercourse—it could have been years— they always had so much reading piled next to their beds—if they no longer felt lust, they certainly did feel great affection for each other. Marilyn thought she and Theodore had a satisfactory marriage. She’d always assumed the same would be true for Teddy.

Teddy might not be handsome, but he was brilliant, and kind, and good-natured, and sweet, and often funny. He was her darling son, even if he was twenty-nine years old.

What if Sharon was right? What if Lila was after Teddy for his money? What if she was marrying him only to divorce him? Oh, what a dreadful thought. Marilyn knew she mustn’t let herself bury her head in the literal sand of her work. Somehow she had to find out about Lila and her family.