Three Weeks in December (9781609459024) (3 page)

In spite of whatever pressures he was under, Preston seemed to have a certain kindness, a certain patience. He took a moment to cross each ‘
t
' with a careful swirled line (a line feminine enough to make Jeremy wonder why he had chosen engineering). And after the job had been proffered and accepted, Preston had taken the time to pen a last letter to him, a short but considerate warning that building a bridge and railroad in Africa would not be the same as in New England. Here the terrain and weather were more treacherous. Preston wrote that when trying to explain a task to the coolies, there were communication difficulties and, frequently, a lack of understanding of simple safety procedures. Here, human labor was cheaper and easier to procure than shipping in steam cranes from overseas, thus the larger and more dangerous operations were performed by large numbers of men attempting to act in concert.

Accidents happened here, Preston wrote. There was also malaria, blackwater fever, sleeping sickness, parasites, sepsis, and the way the smallest cut festered in the humidity of the rainy season. Even the wild animals would take their toll.

Here, Preston wrote, many would die.

 

W
hy you?” asked her mom first thing.
“Mom.” Max spoke as always in a monotone, but the speed of her words increased. “I'm a month from the end of my postdoc. I won the Ashe prize. I'm a . . . ”

“Don't get upset. It's a genuine question. There must be a hundred established ethnobots in the area who'd leap at this chance.”

“What do you mean by established and in the area?”

Her mom was accustomed to Max's need for terms to be defined. “They've discovered drugs which have reached the market and they live in New England.”

Max's eyelids flickered once. Fast as a computer screen redrawing. “Sixty-seven,” she said.

Numbers to her mom had never been that compelling. “Fine, there are sixty-seven other ethnobots in the area. Some of them are world-renowned experts. Why'd they choose you?”

“I'm cheaper.” Max offered.

Her mom cocked her head at her. Her hands on her hips. Her freckled hands, her tired skin. “Something about this is fishy.”

Researchers had many theories about the cause of Asperger's. One was that the cause in the brain at all, but in the gut. It was postulated that the intestines might be imperfect at breaking down food particles, that they might leak into the blood all sorts of things they shouldn't, including molecular compounds similar to opiates. The person's nerves jangling with a morphine-induced intensity.

Certainly for Max as a child, sensation seemed to pour in as an uncontrolled flood, shimmery and overpowering. Eyes averted, body rocking, she'd kept her hands curled tight all the time, protecting her fingers, all those tender nerve endings. She learned to pick things up by pinching them between her wrists. Glass was the worst to touch, like an eel shivering fast up her nerves, so cold. Visually, the worst were people's faces, chaotic and rubbery, their eyes strobing with intensity. She preferred to be alone, far from others, spinning the wheel of a toy, its spokes twinkling. Predictable. Controllable. She'd do this for hours.

As a child, she panicked when anyone got too close—the heavy flesh, a huffing presence overwhelming her. She'd wallop at the person with her fists. Wide-eyed panic.

She didn't talk at all until she was four, before that only squealed in inarticulate rage or laughter. Then in August just after her fourth birthday, she said her first words, strung together a whole sentence. “Mom smells nice.” She was looking away of course, at the ground. Her mom whooped and grabbed her in a hug. Max flailed. There was a muffled crack. Her mom grabbing her nose, the blood spurting.

They'd taught each other compromise. The way they shared closeness was by sitting side by side on the couch, a foot of distance between them, hugging the other person's empty winter coat. Her mom's coat was corduroy and smelled like her: a sort of salty maple syrup. Max would press her face into it. She murmured, “Love love love.”

And so her mom learned to sit beside her only child, not touching her or looking her in the eye. She tried very hard. However, sometimes she got a little hunched, holding her daughter's parka, hiding her face in the folds. Sometimes sitting there, she was silent for long enough that even Max would understand, get up and walk fast from the room.

“Look Mom, so far as I know this Rwandan expedition is the only one out there. Ethnobotany is dead. It's either this or I'm going to end up working for the fragrance industry. You want me to spend my life finding botanical sources for room deodorizers?” What she looked at was her mom's elbow. She worked to memorize the way the skin at the elbow—when the arm was held straight—folded into a sort of boneless nose. In Rwanda she might need to replay this image. “This is a heart med. It'll save lives.”

Her father. Mostly what she remembered was that he had sat peacefully—so fundamentally different from every other human she knew—that she could ease her way into his lap. He didn't move much, certainly not unexpectedly, didn't seem to feel the need to talk. Never patted her on the back. Content to just hum to himself, something quiet and repeated, predictable, lost in his own thoughts. The research said her differences were probably inherited, popping up in the family for generations. It was possible he'd been like her, a trifle alien on this planet. For whatever reason, she could sprawl across him, relaxed, as she couldn't with other people. She used to rub the wood beads he wore round his neck. They were old and smooth to the touch. If she scratched at one with her nail and sniffed, she could catch the slightest scent of a spicy sweetness like cinnamon. She never asked to wear the beads; at that age she couldn't imagine the necklace could come off of him. That it could exist anywhere apart from his dark skin.

Her mom sat down at the computer. She didn't flinch from anything, not anymore. She was worn down as a rock pulled from the sea. All weaknesses battered away. “I don't like the way you described these men.” She began to type. “Let's see what's going on here. Uganda, did you say?”

“Rwanda.”

Her mom was inexact, emotional, no head for details. But when Max was young, she'd saved her: fighting with the school to get the best help and working with Max at home, sheer persistent effort. Max had told her that on six different occasions. Speaking in her flat voice. “Without you,” Max had said, “I would have shot myself with Grampie's 45.”

(Especially in high school she'd thought about the gun a lot. Loved the smell of its gun oil. The barrel tasted pretty good too. On her tongue it was unmoving.)

The first time she'd said this, her mom had reacted a bit like an aspie, turned her gaze away, face stiff. Then she'd locked herself in the bathroom.

Now her mom was clicking through web pages, head tilted back to see through her bifocals, scanning the words. Research was how she'd gotten assistance for Max in school, found treatments, an appropriate diet and meds. She put together the treatment plan herself. But right now she didn't have much time. The plane left tomorrow, the lab equipment was already packed.

Normally each morning at 6:58, Max would sit down in her cobalt chair at her cobalt kitchen table to take her first bite of oatmeal. She appreciated cobalt, the way it twinkled cool in the back of her eyes. She didn't add brown sugar or raisins to the oatmeal because they would taint the texture and color.

Tomorrow morning at 6:58 she would be sitting in an airplane—the only food offered: a tray of highly adulterated substances. She would be flying off to another continent for an undetermined amount of time, to live with strangers. Everything about this unsettled her, especially the speed with which it was happening. Still Roswell and Stevens had insisted on how quickly corporate espionage could outflank their lead. If that happened, she would spend her life researching deodorizers.

She noticed she was rocking slightly. She stopped. Inhaled, taking her time, filling her lungs from the bottom up, calming her body. In her life, she'd gone through a lot. She knew well how much she could deal with.

She started packing. Ten pairs of identical gray stretch pants, cotton and soft. Ten pairs identical gray T-shirts, form-fitting. It wasn't that she wished to reveal her body. No, if she could, she would erase her physical self from the vision of others entirely. Create some sort of stick-figure representation, a generic avatar holding a plant and a microscope. She preferred gray because it was the most unobtrusive. A cloudy haze, a fog. Because she wore the same near-uniform day after day, over time it stopped bothering her. Took up no part of her mind. The material was stretchy so the wind couldn't brush it against her skin, jarring her. When she was a child, her mom had to wash new clothes twenty times before Max would pull them on. As an adult, Max discovered eBay. Secondhand clothing came pre-softened. She just had to wash the scent of the previous owner out, pack it in a drawer with some fresh rosemary for two weeks and it was ready. In an essential way it ceased to exist.

Her mom was reading, intent. “There's a travel advisory for the northwest corner of Rwanda. Where are you going to be?”

“The closest town is Gisenyi. I'll be in the national park near there.”

The clacking of keys.

When people met Max, she passed as normal, at least at first. More than passed. In Maine, she was exotic. Men's heads tended to track her on the street, until at times she worried she might be dressed or moving inappropriately. Even women refocused as she walked by, their bodies going still.

Of course once the men or women actually interacted with her, talked with her, their reaction changed. The flatness of her voice, the way she didn't look at them. The subtle social signals she missed. After a while the men stopped leaning in as close, their voices got less warm and confiding. It took differing amounts of time, depending on how much each had hoped. The women caught on more quickly. Their words would drag a bit as they puzzled it out. Then they'd spot the final clue. There'd be this pause. A silent adjustment.

Each year she got a little better at her imitation. Each year it took longer for strangers to figure out she was different. She found it easier, if she was going to have any sustained interaction with a person, to announce her difference in the same sentence as her name. It cut down on misunderstandings.

In high school, she spent a lot of her spare time reading biographies about early botanical researchers living among tribes, Schultes among the Kiowa, Spruce among the Yanomami. Working not to offend, the researchers sipped from a gourd of fermented saliva or tried to sit like the natives did, crouched on their heels for hours at a time. She pictured their struggles at mastering the social rules. She would flip to the pictures and stare at the photos of the white man wearing a grass skirt next to diminutive tribal folk. She was like them, a stranger in costume working to fit in.

She'd gone into ethnobotany because of these biographies.

“Gisenyi? I think that's in the area with the travel advisory,” said her mom. “Did they mention there was trouble there?”

“Roswell and Stevens? No, they didn't.”

Her mom was clicking through the BBC's archives. “I don't trust them.”

Max packed her oatmeal and rice. She'd be able to get bananas there. Pale food calmed her. Pale food, only one ingredient, not even salt added.

“Well, it says here there's been some recent violence. Just across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo. People attacked. A few deaths.” Her mother peered closer at a photo, confused, then jerked back. “Jesus. How can they print pictures like that?” She held a palm against her chest. “OK, OK. Let me find a map.”

Max counted the aseptic boxes of tofu. She didn't know how many weeks she'd be gone, how long it would take to find the vine. She could always have more tofu sent. The keyboard clicking in the background.

“Here we go,” said her mom, peering at the map she'd found. “Your research station is in the Virunga mountains? Just north of Gisenyi?

Max nodded.

“Right. You're basically in the Congo.”

Max stepped forward, surveyed the map, then the inset box about scale. “No, I'll be inside Rwanda's borders by 3.5 miles.”

“That's what I said. Basically in the Congo.”

“What were the incidences?”

“The articles don't say much. Nothing at all in the American press. The BBC has a few paragraphs. The Congo was recently in some civil war. There are UN soldiers stationed there now, but the peace is pretty fragile. There have been several separate attacks. They seem to be primarily directed against whites who live in the area.”

On the map, Rwanda was such a tiny country. The Virunga mountains wedged in the corner under the looming monolith of the Congo.

“Any of these attacks in Rwanda itself?” Max asked.

“Not that I could find. But the embassy is clearly worried.”

Her mom pushed back from the computer, staring at the screen. She was gnawing on a dry piece of skin on her thumb. When she was younger, working to raise Max on her own, she used to rip whole cuticles off. Ragged wounds along each fingernail. “The men you met with—” she trailed off.

“Roswell and Stevens. The company's called Panoply.”

“They worry about legal stuff, don't they?”

“These days, what company doesn't?”

She tugged on the piece of skin with her teeth, her voice a bit muffled. “You know what I think? If the violence moves over the border, the two of them don't want to get sued for sending someone who's white into a situation where their skin color could put them in danger.”

She turned toward her daughter. Max kept her eyes on the map.

“They chose you because they think in Rwanda you're going to blend in.”

Neither of them commented on the likelihood of that.