Chapter 4 Tea and Cookies for One
Tea and Cookies for One
Margaret is at the sink wearing a rubber apron, a face shield and gloves. Outside, darkness pushes against the lab windows. Inside, fluorescent lights turn everything sharp and angular. Her eyes burn with exhaustion.
She is finishing up the dishes Zhang neglected, now having to use chromic acid because he’d left the glassware unwashed for so long.
She works carefully. More than a few grad students have ignored her instructions and found themselves slinking out of the lab wearing clothes so riddled with acid holes they looked as if they had been attacked by an army of moths.
Margaret has been in the lab since the coroner’s van pulled away with Dr. Deaver’s body.
Everyone else has disappeared, gone home or decamped to a nearby tavern, which she heard a grad student mention as she stood numbly watching Dr. Deaver take his last ride from campus.
She, however, went back to work. Busyness is how Margaret copes with trouble, with loss and grief and guilt.
She’s had lots of practice with it, although it’s not something she talks about to anyone. Her life is nobody’s business.
So far, Margaret has labeled and rearranged bottles of solution into their proper spots, inventoried the lab’s supply of pipette tips and sample jars and is now completing Zhang’s dishwashing chore.
She’s just surveying the rack of clean glassware and removing the face shield and rubber apron when someone clears their throat. Margaret turns.
A man is standing just inside the lab door.
He is tall with dark-brown hair and wears a khaki shirt tucked into faded blue jeans. A huge disfiguring scar runs down the side of his face and into his shirt collar.
“Yes?” Margaret asks.
She is too numb, too exhausted, to be frightened.
“Sorry, I didn’t think anybody was going to be here,” the man says. “I can come back.” His forehead creases. Then: “Are you all right, ma’am? Has there been an accident?”
Of course there’s been an accident, Margaret thinks. A genius has died. And who is this man to question her?
“Everything’s fine,” she snaps.
The man seems to consider this.
“Not to contradict, but that’s a lot of blood for being fine.”
The man tilts his head and Margaret looks down. Her lab coat, washed a pristine white each weekend, is covered with large, expressionist smears of blood. Dr. Deaver’s blood.
Before Margaret can wonder where the loud humming is coming from, she feels her legs begin to noodle. All at once, she is sitting on the floor. Someone is crouching near her.
“Let’s lie you down,” a voice says.
Margaret starts to protest, but the idea of curling up on the floor and taking a nap sounds exactly like something she wants to do.
She closes her eyes as capable hands maneuver her head to the ground, slide something under her knees to elevate them above her heart and tug off her gloves. Warm fingers take hold of her wrist and settle on her pulse point.
“What have you had to eat or drink today?” the voice asks.
Margaret considers. “Oatmeal?”
Is that the wrong answer?
“I want you to stay still, take slow deep breaths and I’ll see what I can find,” the voice says. The command is oddly soothing.
Margaret does as she’s told. The floor is hard but cool. Maybe she will stay here all night.
There are footsteps, the clack of cupboard doors opening and closing. The voice is back.
“I couldn’t find anything, but I have some tea and cookies in my cart. Do you think you’re OK to try to sit up?”
Margaret opens her eyes. The man is kneeling next to her. The scar on his face is a network of white ridges against pink skin. Like bare-root roses. A name tag on his shirt announces Joe and, under it, the word Custodian.
He must be a fairly recent hire. The former janitor had looked close to a hundred years old, which is why Margaret sometimes took it upon herself to come in on Saturdays and clean the breakroom.
So what if people complained about the coffee tasting faintly of vinegar on Monday?
Did they not understand how much mold could grow in warm, damp environments like coffeemakers?
She senses the janitor waiting on her answer. Suddenly, she feels ridiculous lying on the floor. She is not some helpless baby.
“I’m fine now,” she says, and starts to get up.
“Slow,” says this Joe fellow. “How about we just sit for a while.”
Margaret thinks: What’s with the “we”?
But there’s the custodian, Joe, pulling a thermos and a small sandwich bag of cookies from his janitorial cart and plunking down next to her.
He smells like floor wax and bleach. Margaret rearranges her skirt around her legs, crosses her ankles and takes a sip of tea.
It’s hot, wonderful. She eats a cookie while he watches.
She doesn’t like people watching her eat but she supposes it’s the price one must pay when someone finds you splayed on the floor and decides to help.
“Better now?” this Joe asks.
“Yes. The tea was very good.”
“You’re working late.”
Margaret looks at her watch. How did it get to be nine fifteen p.m.?
“I need to leave.”
She thinks of the forty-five-minute drive home. At least there won’t be traffic. Although what does it matter? She probably won’t sleep anyway.
Joe tips his head toward her coat. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Margaret starts to say no. She’s not the kind of person to talk about herself, to broadcast her troubles or let her feelings show. Somehow, however, Margaret finds herself telling this Joe fellow about Dr. Deaver and how she found him and that she has no idea what comes next.
Joe is quiet for a few minutes. “You know what they say about war?”
Margaret shakes her head.
“That the first casualty is always the plan you make. I think maybe it’s better to wait and let things spool out. Sometimes, an answer comes. Sometimes, it doesn’t. But time always moves on, which means we do too.”
He stands and holds out a hand. “Here, let me help you up. I’ll walk you to your car.”