World and Town (31 page)

She was careful around Carter, though, and he around her. They’d learned their lesson; they put their prefrontal cortexes to work. The most they ever allowed themselves in the way of anything personal was a reference, every now and then, to possibilities not bestowed upon them by evolution. For while life was, of course, brilliantly adaptable—no one denied that—they shared an appreciation for how many genetic accidents became fixed over time. What it meant to have been shaped by particular circumstances and narrow goals, for millennia—what it meant to have had our structures adapted and readapted, but never fundamentally redesigned
.

“
Why don’t we have three eyes?” Carter would wonder, sometimes, on the phone. “Why should we be bilateral because our ancestors were bilateral?
”

Or, “Why can’t we see behind us?
”

Or, “Why can’t we see infrared?
”

Or, “Why can’t we echolocate?
”

To which she would reply, “Some things are not given to us.
”

Then he would pause; and, well, Hattie would have to admit that there were whole years where she more or less lived for those
moments of saying nothing. Even after she married Joe and had Josh, she still heard them—as Joe knew, of course. She had no secrets from Joe. And mostly, he would just hold her tighter then—wrapping her in his long arms, and kissing her face in a circle. Sometimes, though, he would go out for a walk with the dogs; and once when he asked her what she heard when they made love, and she didn’t answer, he went on to ask her what she saw, and who. Who? And when she didn’t answer that, either, he went and slept on the couch for a week. Even when he was sick, he would ask her. Groggy, his voice raspy from his breathing tube, he would ask, Are you going to look up Carter Hatch when I’m dead? Never mind that she hadn’t seen Carter for decades by then. The sicker Joe got, the angrier he got—not unlike a child separating from his parents, Hattie thought. She understood. And yet still, it was hard to hear. Be kind, she would tell him as he slept. Please. Give me your kindness to remember, not this
.

But he could only give what he had. You should have married Carter, he’d say. Why didn’t you marry Carter?

As if she could have married Carter! When Hattie was too old for Carter. When Hattie was too short for Carter. When Hattie had no taste. When they were too like brother and sister, when Hattie was impossible. When she didn’t see where he was coming from; when she didn’t see where others were coming from. When she didn’t see how things worked. What the world was
.

“
Don’t you see?” Carter would say. “Don’t you see?
”

There was a Nobel laureate next door to the Hatchery; Hattie was not nice to him because of his prize. Neither was she nice to his minions when they treated students the way they had been treated
.

“
You forget that you yourself will only be a minion, as you put it, for a while,” Carter said. “Do not overinvest in this cause.
”

And: “Not every grievance is founded, you know. What’s your evidence?
”

And: “You identify too much with the trod-upon. It’s an outsider’s outlook.
”

But she could not help seeing what she saw—people treated as expendable. “They make themselves part of the picture, then just get airbrushed out,” she said
.

Carter shrugged. “This is a lab, not an experiment in living.
”

“
You sound like El Honcho.
”

“
I don’t care who I sound like, and may you learn not to care, either.
”

They had different ideas about integrity. She believed it something in the person; he thought it something in the work. Not that there weren’t lines you couldn’t cross—there were, absolutely. Still, he thought it important to understand where you had leeway; he thought it better to be effective than noble
.

“
You’re like Meredith,” he said once. “More interested in how the world judges you than in what it becomes.
”

And: “It’s a kind of vanity.
”

And: “There’s no doing right without doing wrong.
”

And, once: “You’re not on trial.
”

“
Interesting,” she said
.

“
It’s important to know your position from yourself,” he said
.

“
Is it.
”

“
Miss Confucius, enough.
”

She was in training in his lab for now, he would say. When the day came for her to go, she should go. And, they hoped, if they played their cards right, maybe come back as an equal, someday. If not to the university, then at least to the region
.

“
We have to be able to have lunch,” he said, several times. “You must agree to be sure of that.
”

And of course, she would promise, though she would not have taken either his word or hers too seriously had he not hesitated over his hummus and pita one day and added, thoughtfully and deliberately, “I’ll help you.
”

“
If you remember, you mean,” she laughed
.

But he didn’t reach for a carrot stick as she thought that he would. Instead, he looked her square in the eyes and said gently, “I’m going to do everything I can.
”

And when she laughed again, he said, “Hattie.
”

And, “Don’t laugh.
”

To which she replied, “I’m just trying not to cry, Carter.
”

And when he put his sandwich down, and wiped his hand, and took her hand for a moment, she accepted it. And when she got an offer at a far-off lab, she accepted that, too. And when a job opened up in his department, he let her know right away
.

“
This is just right,” he said. “You go away and then you come back. Perfect.
”

Hattie made the shortlist; her job talk was a hit. But then Guy LaPoint began to call Hattie Carter’s mistress; and when the department chair sought out people’s opinions, as he liked to, Carter did not speak up for her
.

The job went, in the end, to Guy’s protégé
.

“
I thought you were going to help me.” By special dispensation, Carter and Hattie were actually talking, for once, out loud on the phone
.

“
People thought it was true,” said Carter
.

“
But it wasn’t.” Hattie fingered the nubs of her bedspread. “People see what they see, Hattie. You know that. What they’re primed to see.
”

“
But I’m not your mistress.
”

“
There was no use insisting.
”

“
Because we are construing creatures, you mean?” she said
.

“
Hattie.
”

“
Because our brains can’t be stopped from editing out the ambiguous and unexpected in favor of the ‘predicted’ and ‘coherent’?
”

“
Insisting would have only further reinforced what they thought, Hattie. Moved it into their cortical storage. You know that. Once there’s an established mental framework …
”

“
Don’t people ever change their mind?
”

“
Hattie.
”

“
What would it have cost you to say something, Carter? You have tenure.
”

“
Hattie.
”

“
Did you really just not want to piss Guy off? Is he that dangerous?
”

“
Hattie, stop.
”

“
I know. I never have understood these things.
”

“
No, you haven’t.
”

“
And why shouldn’t you see by the light of your interests, right? It’s how we’re made. As the Chinese say, ‘If it has milk, it’s the mother.’ 
”

“
Miss Confucius. Stop.” He sounded as though he were sixteen again, and upset over his guitar. “Stop.
”

“
You said you would do everything you could,” she said
.

“
I did,” he said. “Stop. I did. I promised.
”

She stopped
.

“
El Honcho thinks I’m in love with you,” he said
.

“
Does he.” She closed her eyes
.

“
I don’t see what more I could have done,” he said
.

• • •

T
he blue car bumps down the driveway; Sarun and Sophy emerge from the trailer to greet the driver, a buxom woman in a flippy red dress. She looks like a magician’s assistant, but no—she’s the magician: From her trunk she produces a computer monitor and a keyboard. A printer, a hard drive. Cables. Everyone is smiling.

“A present!” says Sophy later. “Can you believe it? Someone was giving the whole setup to the church, and they, like, thought of me right away!”

She and Sarun have used computers before, as some of their friends in their old town had them, and the library did, too. But to have their own!

“We’re going to have e-mail!” Sophy twirls and dances, her face turned like a daisy to the sky.

She is especially excited about hearing from her sisters. Not that Sophan and Sopheap haven’t been writing letters, they have. However, the letters have been short and not very interesting. Their e-mails, Sophy hopes, will say a lot more.

And sure enough, when she reports back in a few days, it is to say that her sisters are writing about all kinds of stuff—what they’re wearing, and what their foster parents are like, and what they think of the other kids. And how much they wish they could IM but how that’s not allowed. They can’t even do that much e-mail, really, because they’re limited to ten minutes per kid per day, and though the foster parents don’t read every single thing, they can.

“So there’s a lot they can’t write,” concludes Sophy, sitting in Hattie’s kitchen. “Like how much they want to get out of there. They can’t write that.”

Still, her eyes shine. No smirky commas today; Hattie feels her own spirits soften and lift.

“You can’t believe what Sopheap is eating,” Sophy goes on. “They have, like, eggs every single day. Like boiled eggs and scrambled eggs and egg salad. For a change they have peanut butter—she says she’s just waiting to get a peanut butter omelet for breakfast.”

Sophan, meanwhile, is living in a pasta palace—meaning, like, spaghetti, tortellini, fettuccini, ravioli! She signs her name Sophani! As for Sophy, she, in turn, tells them about Annie, and about Sarun, and about the trailer, and about how cold people say it gets up here in the winter, though it might not anymore because of global warming. That’s if it doesn’t get colder instead, which it could also, people say, she’s not exactly sure how, but it could. Also she tells them what happened with their dad’s back, and how much she misses them, and how much she likes the church. Because the church up here is not like the church down where they are.

“Like I told them how there’s all this great food,” she says. “Not just pasta and peanut butter. And great stuff to do.” And what she’s learning in Bible class—she writes about that, too. The Good News. “It’s hard to get by e-mail, I think,” she goes on. “But maybe they will one day. Like all of a sudden it’ll just click. That’s what Ginny says.”

Hattie stands to make coffee—setting the kettle on the stove and turning the gas to high, but then lowering it so flames don’t start lapping up campfire-style; some adjustment’s off.

“Do you mind if I pray before my cookie?” Sophy asks Hattie’s back. “Because we were just talking about that at church—how some of us are shy about praying in public. I know this isn’t public, really. But I’m trying to practice.”

“Of course, you can pray,” says Hattie. “Did I ever tell you my mother was a missionary? We prayed before every meal.”

“In China?”

Hattie nods.

“Except she was American, right?”

“Yes.”

“So you prayed in English?”

“Yes.”

“Cool.” Sophy slips off her flip-flops so she can knead Annie’s tummy with her feet; her toenails are all purple now. “I mean it would have been okay if you prayed in Chinese, too. Either way. I’m just glad.”

“Because you’ve been worried, haven’t you? That maybe I’m not with Christ.” Hattie starts to pour hot water over the grounds in the paper cones, only to run out. She refills the kettle partway and sets it back on the stove.

Sophy nods. “We were talking in Bible class about how important it is to keep a wall around our belief. Like how the devil goes looking for weak spots, and how fast the wall can fall, and how important it is to know, like, where our gaps are.”

Gaps. Walls.

“Well, I’m Christian,” Hattie says, still standing. “And my mother’s family are as God-fearing as they come. Lots of ministers and deacons. The women all sing in the choir.”

“Do you go to church?”

“I do. I go to the Unitarian church every Sunday, just about.”

“What about your mother?”

“Was she with Christ, you mean?”

Sophy nods.

“Yes. But, you know, my mother eventually found that she could not go on converting people. And I guess I inherited some of her feeling that we could not rightly go on thinking that my father’s whole family and most everyone else we knew were going to hell as they deserved because they refused to accept God’s pardoning grace—that baptism was the only door to a sanctified life. It was just so hard to believe God could really have set things up that way. As if all that mattered was whether or not they were with Christ—as if that were more important than the people themselves, and if they were good.”

Sophy’s face is blank, as if stuck between thoughts; the kettle whistles.

“Does your church teach that, too?” asks Hattie, turning. “That your mom and dad and brothers and sisters are all damned?”

Sophy bestirs herself enough to scratch Annie around her ears. “Ginny says that we can forgive and turn the other cheek and stuff, but that we can’t be soft on salvation.”