“She’ll be home at 4:30.” They sat in the study. Palmer had the handsome carriage of a doctor—clean shaven, a tanned, lined face and wavy hair layered with silver and dark locks. “But shall we get started?”
That afternoon, Johnson had taken off work. Kate had brought some clothes she’d picked up for him at Pierre Cardin, which he changed into at the apartment. He absently petted the soft corduroy of his fitted camel-colored blazer. She had also bought him two pairs of smoky gray wool slacks, slightly flared as was the fashion, and a mulberry-colored V-neck sweater, which he wore along with a crisp white oxford shirt. He slid the buttery soles of his new leather loafers on the Persian rug, feeling like a child at church as Kate lit a cigarette in the leather-backed chair opposite him.
Papillary serous cystadenocarcinoma. A form of ovarian cancer, she had explained to him over dinner that night. A late-stage diagnosis from a routine checkup. She was dying as soon as she knew. It seemed so strange that she could be so composed, a black-stocking leg dangling over a knee, her hair tucked neatly into a bun, as she inhaled and exhaled through her nostrils, a half smile, reassuring, for him. The faintest frailty had begun to show, like ivy in a crack—strands of grey hair, a fold of fabric by her waist that had been filled with flesh previously. She worked four days a week at the museum, the other reserved for doctor’s appointments, treatment. How many months would the vacuum inside her continue to grow, suck in her cheeks, the fat from the bone, the moisture from her eyes?
“Do you think there is more of this herb, in your friend’s family?” Dr. Palmer sat at his desk, palms spread on the blotter, the placid expression of a poker player.
“It’s possible—I don’t know. I’m going to visit him.” Johnson looked at Kate. “If that’s all right.”
“Of course.” She touched the top of his hand, withdrew. He thought he felt the tremor of her fingers, but perhaps it was the medication, the barbiturates he’d seen in the plastic amber tumbler in her purse. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
There was a knock at the study door. The cook brought tea on a silver service. She was followed by a young, dark-haired girl in plaid schoolgirl jumper, white knee socks, and patent leather Mary Janes. She did not carry herself with the slinking shyness of a grade-schooler; she strode to the left side of Palmer’s desk, piercing him with her dark eyes before gazing at them like they were curiosities in a shop window.
“My new parents?” She clasped her hands at her waist as the cook set out the tea. Johnson concentrated on the steaming liquid filling the china rather than look back at her, eyes dull blades.
“No.” Dr. Palmer stood up. “This is Kate Strauss and her friend, Calvin Johnson. Calvin Johnson has a lot in common with you, I think you’ll find.”
“How old are you?” She walked to him, grabbed his palm and ran her fingers over its smoothness.
“I’m 53.” He leaned forward as she looked in his eyes, touched his chin with clinical dispassion.
“You are baby. According to Palmer, I am 169 years.” She stepped back, hands on her hips, rocking with pride. “I come here in 1964. I am in the last grade of your schooling here, and then what do I do? I am nine-year old girl in body, not mind.”
“Ela’s been asked to stay on full-time at my institute after high school, for observation, but she’d like to go home.” Palmer leaned back in his chair, playing with a pen. “My wife, frankly, thinks this is a good idea. Of course, I’m reluctant to let Ela return to Poland unless…”
“You have another subject,” Kate answered. She looked at Johnson. “Of course, it’s preposterous. Calvin can’t be a lab rat.”
“I’ll do it.” He took her hand. If Polensky could not cure him, perhaps he could cure Kate.
“He’ll think about it,” Kate said, blowing on her tea.
“The herb you get from Poland, Dr. Palmer say,” Ela spoke to Calvin. “Where from Poland?”
“I don’t know. A fellow gave it to me during the war. I don’t know where he got it from. Named Polensky. From Baltimore.”
Her eyes widened. She nodded to Palmer. She plopped on an overstuffed chair by the fireplace with a Chips Ahoy! and her tea and attacked them hungrily.
The room was not quite what he imagined for a girl—green walls onto which were painted murals of trees and forest creatures, glowing eyes and sharp claws grasping tree limbs. A thick brown shag carpet covered the floor. There were no toys, no dolls, but of course, she was not a girl. It was easy to forget until she looked at you, until she spoke. Ela sat on the canopy bed munching on her final Chips Ahoy! Her shoes, no bigger than his hands, rested against each other on the floor. She had explained to him about the lightning, the herb—burnette saxifrage—Stanley’s mother Safine, they understood now, taking it to America. Johnson filled in the rest. Stanley to Johnson. It all seemed so random, so unremarkable in the cosmic scheme of things. They had not saved lives, heralded a new age. They couldn’t even hurt themselves. The origin of the herb’s magic didn’t bring them closer to God, any god, but it did not push them closer to hell. They remained suspended, the frame in which the gyroscope spun wildly before them.
“What’s wrong with us?” He sat on a desk chair made for a grade-school girl, his knees almost grazing his ears. “Is Palmer helping you?’
“He knows nothing.” Ela shook her head derisively. “If he cannot put numbers on a sheet and make sense, it is not real. And if he cannot make money from it, it is not important. The herb with your Stanley—it is what is left of the only herb. The bewitched herb, the one my mother gave me so long ago. If you could get it to me, perhaps I can figure it out yet.”
“You don’t want Palmer involved?” He scratched his ankle. He thought of Kate, the years he was robbed of her, the years he would be robbed of yet. “Can we test it on others?”
“Too dangerous.” She shook her head. “It is not clear how we upset the order of the world, but we do, and more people will upset the world more.”
“I can’t watch her die.” He pleaded with her, as if she held the key to Kate’s fate. But she didn’t; Stanley did.
“This is only the beginning for you.” Ela stared at him. Her eyes softened, a glimmer of moisture on her rims, before they returned to that vacant place. “You wait until your first hundred years.”
“What are you going to do with the herb?”
“Take it back to Poland.” She pointed at him. “You get the herb. You take me to Poland. We will go back to Reszel, and I will have what my mother had to make tinctures. No one will bother us.”
He did not mention to her that the little village she had remembered from her youth did not even exist, possibly, especially after the Nazis decimated most of Poland. But he had no other plan. If they found the herb, it should go to the person who knew the most about it, he thought.
“How will we get to Poland?”
“The Palmers do not want me here anymore. Mrs. Palmer is scared, think I will put spell on her. They do not understand what I want. I don’t want to make miracle drug for Americans. I want to die. I miss my mother. I miss Ferki.”
“All right, then.” He slapped his hands together, stood up gingerly from his semi-squat. The chair had not broken, and he smiled. A chair made for him. “I’ll see if I can find old Stanley and the herb. You get us some plane tickets to Poland. Get us three now, okay? I think there might be one more.”
“There is one more of us?” Ela looked at him incredulously. “How do you know?”
“Stanley might have taken it, you know,” he said. But that was not what he was thinking. He was thinking of Kate, immortal, warm-fleshed, her hand in his as they ordered sirloin tips from the stewardess. “Just try to get three in case.”
“I can’t, in good conscience, let you do something like this.” The car lurched along in Sunday evening traffic to Penn Station. He had not told Kate about Ela’s plan. It was best to spring that on her last. That when he saved her, made her immortal, he hoped she took to Eastern Europe. Kate drew a line on her upper and bottom lips before filling it in dark red. “Who knows what Palmer will want to do to you at the Institute? Blood tests, then experimental surgery? It’s a slippery slope.”
“If there’s anything I can do to…help you.” He stared at the buildings, the New Yorkers on the sidewalk. They walked through him, their orbits collapsing into his, and he would always know their pains and joys. The solace of humanity is that pain is temporary. There is always death. But that pain had to go somewhere. He wondered if it went to people like him, like Ela.
“Calvin, I’m scared.” She clenched his hand. He could feel the bones in her fingers, her wrist. He tried to remember if he had always felt them so starkly. “My legacy here…I’m not nearly finished at the museum. My boys…one is still in college. I want to see them get married, have their own children.”
“I’ve got nothing to lose.” He placed his hand on her thigh. Even in her fear, he desired her. He would rip open his throat so that she could crawl inside, live in him, a pupae, until his or her transformation was complete. “I’ll find Stanley Polensky. I’ll get the herb, and this will fix itself.”
“Your optimism is always endearing.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “But do you expect him to believe you, just give you his knowledge, or the herb, if he even has it?”
“I don’t know.” He smelled her hair. She always smelled of young, fresh flowers, but also of propriety. “You did.”
“I’m not the best sample from which to draw.” The cab pulled up to Penn Station. She had given him money for a ticket, for expenses. More than he thought he needed.
“Why don’t you have dinner with me?” He kissed the top of her head. “Or we could get a hotel…”
“I’m having dinner with my husband. I really need to get going. It’ll take an hour to get uptown.” She sat up straight, dabbed the corner of her lips with her pinky finger. He dimly expected, in some way, that she would be here for him, in New York, even in dying, when he got back. And, to come back, he still needed to believe it.
“I love you, Kate.” He took her face in his heads. Her lips seemed fuller as he pressed them to his. Disappointment? Resignation? Possibly medication. “I won’t be long, I promise.”
“Hurry back, darling. Be safe.” She smiled, ran her hand the length of his face. Then, he watched the back of her head, exposed in the window of the cab, disappear uptown.