Chapter 28 A Leaf Turned
A Leaf Turned
Calvin comes back from lunch chattering about how tofu tastes better than he thought it would and going on about barbecue- and jalapeno-flavored sunflower seeds until Margaret has to ask him to stop.
It will take some getting used to, the new Calvin, although the last time he tried to quit smoking it lasted all of one day.
If six times is the charm to quit a bad habit, then there will be at least four more attempts.
Still, as Calvin packs up his messenger bag to leave for the day, she tells him she is proud of him for taking such a big step.
“Thanks,” he says, then pauses. “You know, you’re the first person who ever said they were proud of me. Not my mom. Not my dad. Not even my grandma, and grandmas are supposed to say those things, right? You’re a good person, Margaret. I wish my mother had been more like you.”
Margaret swallows the sudden catch of emotion in her throat. “Thank you, Calvin.”
Calvin’s eyes shine and he scrubs a hand over them. “Whew, must have gotten a whiff of petroleum ether or something.”
“Or something,” Margaret says.
Calvin clears his throat a few times. “As long as I’m working on self-improvement. There’s something I need to tell you.”
“Go on.”
“You, um, probably don’t know this but, um, some people call you Big Bird behind your back, including me.”
“I’ve known that for a very long time.”
Calvin’s eyebrows lift. “And you don’t mind?”
“Of course I mind, but what people call you isn’t what you are.
Am I an eight-foot-two yellow bird who can roller-skate and write poetry?
” she says. “Do I live in a large nest?” (Although perhaps her small house high on a hill in the woods might be considered just that.) “No, I am just a scientist who happens to be tall and large-boned, and when you don’t fit a mold, people must find a way to set you apart so they can assure themselves they are the normal ones. ”
“When I was in eighth grade, kids started calling me Tubby McChubby.”
“That’s certainly an unpleasant moniker.”
“Tell me about it. The principal told my parents they should put me in private school because of the bullying. I ended up at St. Sebastian’s. It’s an all-boys Catholic high school, and, well, that’s a whole other story.”
“And yet, here you are, a scientist working in a lab that may find a new treatment for cancer one day.”
“I never thought of that.”
“Look at yourself in a new light, Calvin, and you might be amazed at what you see.”
A sudden smile crosses Calvin’s face and he slings his messenger bag over his shoulder.
“You know what? You’re right. I think I’m going to go home and go for a run.
Instead of turning over one new leaf, I’m going to turn over a whole bush-load of them.
Maybe I’ll have a salad for dinner. You’re the best, Margaret. ”
Margaret watches him go out the lab door, his hand raised in a salute and a jauntiness in his step.
“Just don’t hurt yourself,” she calls after him.
What has she inspired?
Margaret gives one last read through the grant application, tweaking a few words here and there to be more precise.
What laypeople might call scientific mumbo jumbo is actually a language designed for accuracy and understanding.
Although, maybe if scientists’ papers were written more like mystery novels—research, after all, is about finding answers to puzzling questions—more people would be interested in science.
Finally, Margaret closes the document and glances at her watch.
She has ten minutes before her workday ends.
She types “Joe Torres journalist Spain” into the search line and there is the article, datelined “Barcelona, Spain.” It’s a long story and she reads it, a hollow feeling growing inside her.
How cruel the world is. How corrupting the need for power and money.
The poor whistle-blower had only been trying to right a wrong.
No wonder Joe had to escape that world. There are other stories he’d written too: one about an Army chaplain in Afghanistan, another about a landslide in Nepal.
What a life he’d led. So different from hers.
At five forty-eight, she shuts down the computer, notes that she will need to order more nitrile gloves and Kimwipes, turns off the lights and gives one last glance to the room.
This is also her nest, a place where she can be herself: eccentric, odd, a large yellow bird.
Whatever people want to call her, this is where she belongs.
Outside, a warm west wind has sprung up, flapping Margaret’s skirt and lifting her hair as she walks to her truck.
The weather is changing. Perhaps a warm spell that will be good for the Early Girls she planted.
As she approaches the truck, she sees a rectangle of white paper fluttering from beneath a windshield wiper.
She frowns. It can’t be a ticket. Her truck is perfectly centered in her assigned spot and her parking permit is up to date.
She pulls a folded half sheet of paper from under the wiper and holds it open against the breeze.
On Anita Allshouse’s desk. Your welcome.
Despite the spelling error, the note lifts Margaret’s mood.
Purdy has apparently followed through, giving Margaret more time to do what needs to be done before the inevitable happens. She’ll have to thank her tomorrow, clandestinely, of course.
Margaret refolds the note and starts to stuff it into her skirt pocket when her fingers touch something plastic and round. She pulls out the object. It’s the navy-blue button Joe found in Dr. Deaver’s office. She’d forgotten about it.
A gust of wind shoves at her and she gets into her truck. She puts the button in the glove compartment and the note in her purse. She will keep one and dispose of the other.
There certainly will be a lot of information to put in her data notebook tonight, including the fact that when she arrives home, Tom is sitting on the porch with another dead gopher lying at the front door.
“Well, well,” she says.
She changes her clothes and takes care of the dead rodent, Tom watching intently and seeming to question why she wouldn’t want to feast on the delicious specimen that has been presented to her.
“I’m having an egg salad sandwich for dinner, since I had a nice curry for lunch at Joe’s house,” she tells the cat. “He’s an interesting man, but he certainly has his demons.”
It feels good to not talk to herself but to confide in someone who will keep private anything she says.
“Why don’t I mash up the other hard-boiled egg for you and save the cat food for later.”
The cat tilts his head at her.
“Fine,” she says and lets out a small sigh. “Cat food it is, but I can’t keep feeding you that fancy-gravy brand. I’m going to need to find something less expensive. I’ll check the supermarket on Saturday and stock up if it’s on sale.”
Has she just decided the cat will stay?
She eats dinner at the kitchen table, the wind picking up in intensity and making pine branches brush against the back wall of her house.
The lilac bushes rustle, the roses bow their buds.
Last winter, a storm blew in from the northeast, sending a large gray pine falling across the driveway and blocking her exit as she headed for work.
She’d gotten out her chainsaw, cut the tree into rounds and rolled them off to the side.
She arrived late to the lab with her boots muddy and a few wood chips stuck in her hair.
“Your talents are endless, Finch,” Dr. Deaver said after he’d commented on the wood chips and she’d told him about the tree. “Remind me never to doubt you,” he said.
And, yet, now here she is doing exactly that to him.
She takes her plate and water glass to the sink and washes them along with the cat’s bowl. She sweeps the floor, noting the small tangle of cat hair (nothing like what Gordie and his friends used to shed), then sits down with her book. She has five chapters to go.
The cat leaps up and curls next to her on the couch. She excuses herself and returns with a towel, which she lays on the cushion. “Let’s keep the cat hair off the upholstery,” she tells it. The little animal seems not to object.
It’s while she’s sitting in bed noting the day’s final entry in her data notebook that an image arises: a navy-blue sweater she’d noticed a certain person wearing in the breakroom yesterday. Did it have all its buttons? She writes:
9:45 p.m. March 27, Rachel Sterling, biochemistry, possible mistress JMD? Blue button, visit to grief counselor? How to find out?
She sets her alarm four minutes earlier than normal. Enough time to feed the cat and send it off, which allows her to arrive at work precisely at seven forty-five the next morning. It’s Friday. She wears a dark skirt and her California poppy blouse.
At eight thirty-five Calvin limps in.
“I may have done too much,” he groans. “I could barely get out of bed this morning.”
“You went for a run?”
“I don’t know how people do it. All that sweating and pounding the pavement just to wind up where you started. Plus you wouldn’t believe the chafing. I—”
“That’s enough, Calvin.”
“I’m not sure I can sit down.”
“Why don’t you do the dishes, then we’ll do the final confirmatory tests for Dr. Deaver’s paper. You can do all that standing up.”
“Thanks, Mags.”
“Margaret, please,” she corrects. What did she do to deserve such an abbreviation? She is not a type of flashlight or the Multiagent and Grid Systems journal.
“Sorry,” Calvin says. “I think all this nicotine is making me woozy.”
“All this nicotine?”
“Two patches plus nicotine gum. I chewed three pieces on my way to work. Do you think that’s too much?”
“I think moderation may not be your strong suit. Perhaps cut back a little on the nicotine. Perhaps jog a shorter route too.”
At ten, she heads for the breakroom, where she downs a quick cup of coffee from her thermos—the new Mr. Coffee seems to do its job more efficiently and properly than her old brewer—then heads for Purdy’s desk.
The assistant is dressed in a silky blue blouse and tight skirt with a long silver necklace that dives into her cleavage. A stack of pink phone messages is fanned in her hand.
“Wait outside,” she mouths and goes into the dean’s office, closing the door behind her. Is Purdy’s desk even more cluttered than it was before? One must wish to break a habit before even a small crack can appear.
Margaret checks her watch. She has seven minutes before her break ends. She goes outside and sits in the bench by the front door, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She is not a fidgeter, a foot tapper, a squirmer. Controlled patience is the secret to scientific discovery.
When Purdy comes out the building’s front doors five minutes later, Margaret starts to rise, but Purdy gives a slight shake of her head. “Count to ten, then follow me around the corner,” she mutters as she passes.
Margaret counts out ten seconds just to be sure. Purdy’s request didn’t specify a fast or a slow count.
“We can’t be seen talking together,” Purdy says when Margaret arrives.
Students walk past, some hurrying, some looking as if they just stumbled out of bed. Margaret is pretty sure one young man is still in his pajamas. Nobody even glances at them, even though the sight of two women—one very large and one small—huddled near a Leyland cypress might be notable.
“Why can’t we be seen together?” Margaret asks.
“Because if the dean finds out your termination papers are with Anita Allshouse, he won’t remember seeing us talking together and suspect I was helping you.
Then he’ll believe me when I tell him it was the luck of the draw.
Even though it wasn’t. Between you and me, the dean’s been acting paranoid ever since the whole Dr. Deaver–poison thing.
Oh, and I put you on the guest list for the Susan Olinsky reception next week.
You can introduce yourself and tell her what you’re doing.
That way, you’ll have an in when you need to find another job.
” Susan Olinsky ran a giant biomedical research company in Silicon Valley.
“I’m not sure why you’re doing all this, but I appreciate it,” Margaret says.
“It’s just that I don’t like seeing people thrown away like garbage when they don’t deserve it.”
Margaret doesn’t consider herself garbage, but she nods in agreement. “May I ask you a question?”
“Is it about Dr. Deaver?”
How to navigate the question? Reveal too much to a known gossiper and every thought you have will be cannonballed into the world. Keep quiet and you’ll never learn about the dark undercurrents that run through companies, bureaucracies and even universities.
“In a way,” Margaret answers. “I want to consult with a biochemist about next steps in the lab and, well, you know my feelings about Dr. Blackstone.”
Purdy nods vigorously.
“I’m thinking about Rachel Sterling. What can you tell me about her?”
Purdy frowns. “I know everybody falls all over themselves around her. I know she acts like she’s some big shot. Like nobody’s good enough for her.”
Margaret thinks of Sterling in the breakroom eating a cup of instant ramen. It certainly didn’t seem like something a big shot would do.
“I think she and Dr. Deaver may have discussed his work,” she says.
“Wait, are you saying…?” Purdy leans toward Margaret. “What have you found out? What do you know?”
“Only that she seemed upset about Dr. Deaver’s death.”
“As in, they may have had a relationship?”
“I’m not saying that.”
“What if they did and that’s why Veronica Ann poisoned him? Is that what you’re thinking?”
“I’m thinking no such thing,” Margaret says, even though she is.
“Will you tell me if you find out they were, you know…” Purdy makes an unmistakable gesture with her fingers.
Margaret grimaces. “I will let you know.”
“It’s always the spouse, you know,” Purdy says. “I heard he was going to divorce her. She had motive. Isn’t that what they say on TV?”
“I don’t have a TV.” Margaret glances at her watch.
This conversation is too close for comfort.
“Sorry, but my break is over. I have to get back to the lab. Data to record, solution to mix. Thanks again for everything you’ve done.
” She raises a fist. “Girl power,” she says, which comes out weakly and with an accidental question mark at the end.
Purdy doesn’t return the gesture and Margaret turns to leave.
“You’ll let me know what you find out?” Purdy calls after her. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s happening.”
Margaret lets out a long breath at her narrow escape.