SUCCESS

 

Dr. Jim lost his job at the University at the unripe age of 36. As brilliant as he was (and this was one brilliant man), his eccentricity had mushroomed during his tenure, and in the end this made him a liability. In his early years at the U he had published extensively, dozens of papers, all of them notable and a few truly groundbreaking. Then, abruptly, he stopped. Not for lack of results or new ideas (or, for that matter, requests from eminent journals for a submission—any submission—he might deign to send their way), but because, in his words, he had better things to do with his time.

“Better? Meaning what, exactly?” the chairman of his department had asked.

“Meaning I can’t be bothered with publishing papers. Meaning the answer is bigger. Meaning I have an idea how it all fits together. All of it. Molecule, cell, person. There’s a Unifying Theory of Life, and I get a glimpse of it sometimes, and I feel it sometimes, too, in my body, a tingling, a premonition, but I can’t feel it, or see it, for long. Holding on to it is like balancing a pin on my forehead. I need practice. I need time. I can’t be interrupted. Grant applications are an interruption. Bench work is an interruption. Thinking up one new experiment after another gets in the way. I’m not interested in data collection anymore. I need to do research of a different kind.”

These were not the words of a man who valued his pro­fessional career, and certainly not of a man who lived to please his employers. Still, the University indulged him. His work was too respected and important not to. But after several years of escalating complaints from colleagues and students—he was rude; he was unprofessional; he was unapproachable; he was monstrous; he was grandiose—they cut him loose.

Over the next year reports trickled in of continued erratic and unpredictable behavior (spending sprees, e-mail rants, public and professional diatribes), and at length he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. All such admissions require a diagnosis, and his, provisionally, was Mania, of the sub-type Accelerando, of the sub-sub-type Non Fugax. Mania Accelerando Non Fugax, known commonly as Flaming Man Disease. By this point he had been flaming for quite some time and had burned many bridges: he’d spent all his money, lost his home, his professional standing, his friends, and, finally, his wife.

There was some disagreement among the psychiatrists as to his diagnosis. There were features that didn’t fit the classic definition of FMD, one being that he had no history of mental illness. Another: there was no family history of it, either. Most troublesome of all (and most problematic, diagnosis-wise), he didn’t respond to medication. And FMD did, reliably. If not one drug, then another. And if not a single drug, then a combination of drugs: two, three, sometimes four of the bad boys, what they liked to call a cocktail.

But two, three, four had no effect on Dr. Jim. No matter what he took or was forced to take, he remained the man who first was wheeled down the corridor: wild-eyed, wacky, savage at times, brilliant at other times, hyperactive, insomniac, volatile, and unreachable, as detached from his care­givers as a hinge torn free of its door.

A meeting was held regarding what to do next. When a treatment that is known to succeed one-hundred percent of the time does not, there are basically two choices, as his panel of clinicians well knew:

1. Question the diagnosis.

2. Question the treatment.

In the best of all worlds, the questioning should proceed in that order, but time was short, the budget was tight, and there were other meetings to attend and other patients to cure. And while diagnosing a tricky illness was always satisfying, discovering a new treatment, for those impatient to get on with things, was an order of magnitude more satisfying: it was the difference between building a rocket and flying a rocket, between Sherlock and Santa.

A combination of electric, magnetic and sonic shock, both extra-corporeal (at a distance) and intra-corporeal (by means of a cranial stimulator, linked wirelessly with esophageal and anal emitters), delivered in asynchronous “swan-neck” pulses over a period of hours, was settled on. (The idea, basically, was to shock the bejesus out of him and hope for the best.) The night before he was to enter the pantheon of brave and nameless medical pioneers (in this case, as the first to receive a treatment that would later, god help us, become the standard of care), he was shaved, showered, and dutifully prepared.

At nine o’clock he was seen nervously pacing his room. He looked agitated. His eyes were as wild as ever and he appeared to have no idea who or where he was.

At ten o’clock he was seen lying on his bed.

At eleven o’clock he was still lying on his bed, but this time his eyes were closed.

At midnight the room was empty. It was as if he’d vanished into thin air.

The alarm was raised. Patients were roused from sleep. Every inch of the hospital was searched. Eventually, the police were called in, but they had no better luck than the hospital staff in finding him. A day went by, then another. His disappearance fueled rumors among the patients of alien abduction, interdimensional travel, suicide, homicide, and your basic institutional foul play. A meeting was scheduled to squelch these rumors, but the night before, the third night of his disappearance, an orderly and a nurse slipped into his now vacant room for a quick one.

It was dark, and they didn’t see the shape stretched out on the bed. Didn’t know there was a shape, much less a human one, until the nurse, straddling the orderly’s hips, arching back and uttering a crescendoing series of deep-throated moans as he acrobatically and prestidigitationally multitasked her voluptuous external and internal parts, felt the touch of flesh on her shoulder blade. She let out a yelp.

The orderly, fully aroused, delivered his package, then eased her down to the floor. Hurriedly, they reassembled themselves, then flicked on the light. Lying on the bed, freshly shaved and in a natty new set of threads, was Dr. Jim. His eyes were closed, as though to spare them the embarrassment of having been seen. Neither of them believed he was asleep.

The nurse smoothed her rumpled scrubs, cleared her throat and said his name. His eyelids fluttered open and he turned his head. He looked surprised to see them, or at least he acted surprised, along the lines of “what a nice surprise,” as though theirs were an unexpected but welcome visit. Pointedly, he didn’t act crazy.

He sat up in bed, and he and the nurse had a conversation. It was lively, amicable, comprehensible, and sane. In short, nothing like previous conversations he had had. What it wasn’t was informative. Dr. Jim offered no explanation for where he’d gone or what had happened. When asked, first by the nurse and later, repeatedly, by a procession of psychiatrists, he professed ignorance. But clearly something had.

He was changed in nearly every way, from his appearance, which was no longer slovenly, to his manner, which was no longer like a relationship gone bad. His voice was calm and composed. His speech was clear, his reasoning logical and precise. He looked his interlocutors in the eye when he spoke. His facial expressions were appropriate ac­­companiments to what he said. He smiled when a smile was called for, knit his brows when a difficult question was asked. His behavior, which, at best, had been bizarre, and at worst, menacing and provocative, could have been lifted from Emily Post.

He was, in short, an exemplary patient. A civilized, approachable man and a credit to his—the human—race.They observed him for a week, tested him, retested him, then let him go. With no job, no house, and no wife, he pretty much had to start from scratch.

Fast-forward five years. Dr. Jim has a new wife. He has a new house, a modest two story post-and-beamer with a basement and a fenced-in backyard. His dream of finding and elucidating the Unifying Theory of Life on Earth is very much alive, as is his faith that the answer lies in the biological sphere, and further, in the molecular biological sphere, to wit, the gene, the epigene, and the perigene, the so-called holy trinity of creation and life. There are, of course, other spheres, non-biological ones, along with non-biological answers, and these, he assumes, will make themselves known when the time is right.

For now his hands are full. There’s the house to take care of. There are his daily visits to the basement. There’s his wife, Carol, a stellar woman of unparalleled beauty and intelligence. And of course there’s the dream, which occupies center stage.

For the past four years, Dr. Jim has been working feverishly to put his dream into words, to make it concrete, comprehensible, and readable, so that others can know it, too. He no longer uses a lab of his own, has no need of a lab—his mind is a lab, and it pullulates with thought experiments. In addition, he culls through the work of others. He has learned the rudiments of half a dozen languages, reads extensively, and keeps in touch with researchers around the globe. His name can still open doors (though with roughly equal frequency it closes them); to avoid awkwardness or misunderstanding he mostly uses a pseudonym: Dr. Jean Marckine, a play on the great Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, unjustly disdained and discredited in his own time and for many years thereafter, and presently in the process of being rehabilitated. And soon, if Dr. Jean Marckine has anything to say about it, to be raised to the pedestal upon which he belongs.

Dr. Jim is writing a book. Already it’s more than five hundred pages long. The first three hundred pages describe, in the briefest possible terms, the gene, a hopeless but necessary task. The next two hundred concern the epigene, and he is far from done. The complex of histone, protein, and DNA, the shifting chimera of amino and nucleic acids, forming and breaking covalent and ionic bonds like on-again, off-again lovers, deserves a book of its own. For if the gene is the key, the code of life, the epigene is the hand that turns the key, the force behind the code. The epigene cradles the gene, it gives structure and organization and flexibility to the genome. Elucidating it has been his life’s work, up to now.

Of late the going has been slow. Some days he sees clearly and writes up a storm; other days his vision is clouded, cataracted, and he produces little of worth. The epigene will not give up its secrets lightly, and the closer he gets, the more it seems to resist his efforts. Now and then he feels as if he’s in a dogfight, much as he feels when he goes downstairs. But it will yield to him: in time it will yield completely. Of this he has no doubt.

The perigene, he hopes, will also yield, though the when and the how are less certain. The task confronting him is so much greater and will therefore require commensurately greater, deeper, and more profound levels of imagination and thought. For as the epigene is to the gene, so the perigene is to the epigene: more complex by far, cryptic, Delphic, cosmic, grand, and elusive. It will be the final section of the book and its crowning achievement, the centerpiece of the Unifying Theory of Life.

He can’t wait to get started on it and at the same time is almost afraid to begin, a paradox common to all great endeavors and forays into the unknown, and the perigene most certainly is this. Its existence, far from being the subject of a healthy debate, is on nobody’s radar, nobody’s tongue. It’s a mystery of the most mysterious sort—one that is never mentioned, never acknowledged, never discussed. One might say it’s his own conceit and creation.

To which he would respond: not a creation but a prediction, along the lines of gravity, relativity, and the Higgs boson. The perigene is a fact of life and law of nature, merely waiting for the proper experiment to be observed firsthand.

But that’s in the future. His present task is to do justice to the epigene, which is taking all his considerable mental muscle and then some. In periods, like now, when the going is slow, frustratingly so at times, calculated, or so it feels, to bleed a man of his confidence, he gives thanks for the two pillars of his life, without whom he would almost certainly crumble:

*** First and foremost, his wife Carol, an impeccable woman of energy, stability, self-discipline, and mental prowess. She heard him lecture once when she was in graduate school, was duly impressed, ran into him years later as a post-doc, and from there things evolved. Like him, she values the life of the mind, but she’s not apt to go overboard and lose her mind—to impulse, say, or whim, or folly. She’s as balanced as a judge, as organized and orderly as a statistician. She’s driven, but not to distraction, has a clear vision of her future and feet that are planted firmly on the ground.

*** Second and also foremost, the creature downstairs, who is nameless. He gives himself no name, and Dr. Jim is not about to give him one either. Providing him a name would be like bestowing on him a quality he lacks, legitimizing and at the same time compromising him, robbing him in a sense, like offering a man a suit of clothes in exchange for the man himself.

From Dr. Jim’s Diary:

Wednesday, October 14th. Wake up, roll out of bed, throw on some clothes, go downstairs. He’s waiting for me, as usual.

We fight.

I win.

Hunker down with Chapter Seventeen (Epigenetic Control of Transcription). Progress slow, then sudden. Inch inch inch along, then leap ahead.

Very much like evolution.

Which had a middling good day.

Thursday, October 15th. Wake up, stagger out of bed, take a leak, stop in the kitchen for a mini-bowl of Mini-Wheats, then down to the frigid basement. There’s a twisted hairline crack developing in the concrete floor. Resembles a helix, smashed and flattened like a bug on a windshield. The bars of the cage are icy cold.

He looks sleepy. I’m unimpressed. He has a million looks.

We fight.

I win.

Get stuck on the idea of the histone as a spool of thread. Perseverate. Get nowhere. Rescued by Carol, who takes me to lunch.

Tuesday, October 20th. Get downstairs later than usual on account of last night, when Carol came to bed after I was half-asleep and made it known by lying absolutely and unnaturally still and quiet that she was not about to fall asleep anytime soon but was determined not to make me pay the price for that, bless her heart, although if I, of my own free will, chose to wake up in order to find out what was bothering her, not that I need to know everything, or that she even wants me to, but it’s a relief to talk and have someone listen, or even pretend to listen as long as it’s convincing (and why that is I don’t think anybody knows for sure . . . question: does talking upregulate genes, leading to more talking, and is this Lamarckian, i.e., inheritable? Will future generations of upregulated talkers increase their affinity for oxygen so they don’t turn blue in the face, or talk themselves to death? Will listeners similarly upregulate their listening genes? Crazy people often talk—and listen—to no one, and no one wants to be like that, but I digress), then that would be a mark in my favor. It’s the little sacrifices that keep the marriage ship on course.

So we talked, and after that we made love. Carol was a hellcat, which talk can do to a woman. She tore off my clothes, then pushed me down, sat on my chest, and raked my sides with her nails. While she was doing that, she bent over and poured her tongue into my mouth, soft and sweet as honey, then hardened it and rammed it at my throat, like I was ramming her. She bit my neck, then moved south and had a go at my nipples. I wasn’t complaining through any of this, except when she got carried away and took the poor little nubs between her canines. I yelped then and she stopped, no blood drawn.

Woke in the morning with the sun on my face. Still wiped out from the previous night, but do what I have to. He’s standing on the other side of the cage when I stumble down, big and tall and hairy, puffed out in the chest like a bag of Cheetos. He smiles that toothy smile of his, looking smug, and sensing an advantage, takes a step forward. The punk. Trying to get me to make a false move. That, and pull me down to his level. That low-ass level of his. Daring me to dirty my hands.

Thing is, I got no problem with that level. I like that level. He of all people should know.

We fight. Boom boom. It’s over in an instant.

I’m buzzing with energy when I get upstairs, but for some reason it doesn’t translate into progress on the book. This is becoming more and more of a daily occurrence, and I can’t begin to describe how frustrating it is. It’s not like the epigene isn’t known. It’s been studied and characterized in a fair amount of detail, and while it’s true that I’m breaking new ground, it shouldn’t be this hard. The damn thing should be there for me, but I keep hitting a wall, and I know it’s a wall of my own making. Can’t see over it and can’t quite punch through it. As if something besides the epigene is at work, raising and thickening the wall, making it impervious to me. This, I’m convinced, can only be one thing: the perigene, its commander-in-chief.

So elusive. So potent. Taunting, humbling, and, so far, defeating me.

Carol’s in the kitchen when I come downstairs from a wasted morning in my study.

“How’s it going?” she asks.

I grunt my displeasure.

She motions toward the basement. “How about down there?”

I shouldn’t have to tell her that conversation’s off-limits.

There’s an awkward moment, then she hands me a king-size box. “I bought you something yesterday.”

Inside is a brand-new shirt with a matching tie and a crisp new pair of pants. The woman is devious.

“A little pick-me-up,” she says. “That’s all.”

“Dress for success” is one of her mottoes. Meaning, do something for yourself, and your self will thank you. She’s very Lamarckian that way.

“You might want to shave, too.”

It’s been a few days. I see where she’s going with this.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her.

“I’ll wait,” she says.

I end up doing the whole works—shave, shower, shampoo, new duds. Half an hour later I return to showcase the updated product.

“How do the pants fit?” she asks.

“Perfectly.”

“You look good.”

“I feel good.”

She nods, as though this were obvious. “I’m going to be gone for a couple of days. There’s a conference I need to attend. It’s a last-minute thing.”

“I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll call.”

She’s standing by the window that overlooks our weedy and neglected yard. Usually she keeps the curtains drawn because she hates how it looks. She hates clutter and chaos of all sorts, whether natural or man-made. You’d think we’d get out there and do something about it, but neither of us has had time.

Today, for whatever reason, the curtains are open. I find myself staring.

“See something?” she asks.

“I don’t know. I had a thought.”

“Which was?”

“The weeds. Look at how they grow—higher and higher, as though reaching for something.”

“The sun.”

“In their case, yes. But something else could reach for something else.”

“Such as what?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You going to cut them down?”

“The weeds? I might.”

“Do you know how happy that would make me?”

“Put something else in their place.”

“Anything would be better.”

“Not just anything.”

She gives me a look. Her eyes like diamonds. Her short blonde hair (which is how she wears it, having no use for the long and messy curls nature gave her) rimming her perfect face like a nimbus.

“You had a glimpse of something,” she says. “What?”

I shrug.

“C’mon. You did. What was it?”

“It’s gone.”

She comes up and punches me on the arm. “It’s not gone, bozo.”

She tightens the knot on my tie, straightens my collar and smoothes my shirt. Making me neat and tidy, folding me—like the stuff she brought in the box—into the right shape, bringing order to chaos, bringing me, that is, into her own special universe, accepting no less. In response, I throw back my shoulders and straighten my neck, as if rising to her expectations, and in a flash it comes to me, like a bolt from above: the epigene is a marriage. It’s the union of two separate and complementary entities, two lovers—gene and protein—in an ever-changing dance. And if all goes as it should, an ever-changing harmony. It’s a piece of work that’s never finished, like a building under continual construction and remodeling. One small alteration—to the histone, say, the protein scaffold—and the entire complex changes. If one were to build the epigene, represent it visually, in space, it would be a structure of constant self-adjustment and shifting shape, with a default of perfect balance. It would be mobile and highly internally interactive. A thing of perfect logic and supreme beauty.

A ballroom of coupling and uncoupling molecules.

A church, wedding form and function. A reflection, however pale, and a conduit, however hidden at this point, to the Highest Power, The Unifying Principle of Life.

This is the epigene, and I can demonstrate it.

And the perigene? The Highest Power itself?

That comes next.

All this occurs to me in the blink of an eye. Carol, my delivering angel, smiles a knowing smile, takes me by the shoulders, turns me around and gives me a gentle shove in the back.

“Go get ’em, champ.”

* * * * * * * * *

It’s a huge relief to use his body instead of his head. He spends a good week clearing out the yard. Gets rid of junk, pulls weeds, digs up roots, cuts down shrubs and the one small, disease-ridden tree. When he’s done, there’s a clearing about half the size of the house’s footprint.

For the next stage, he’s jotted down some notes and drawn up a preliminary design. The idea is that the structure will be a bridge to the book. When completed, it will loosen his tongue, unblocking whatever it is that has him at such an impasse, and the rest of the epigene section will write itself. That’s the plan, and why the hell not? Man had hands long before books, and he used them quite nicely to express himself. Caves were painted long before the Dead Sea Scrolls were inscribed. Pots were thrown. Figurines were sculpted. Cairns and henges were built to communicate complex ideas, only much later transcribed with ink and pen. All of which merely goes to show what every monkey knows: the spatial brain underlies the speaking brain, just as the roots and trunk of a tree prefigure its crown. Dreams and wordless visions traffic between the two, and Dr. Jim intends to take advantage of this by writing his dream and his vision in space.

He’s no Michelangelo. But what he lacks in expertise, he makes up for in panache. He uses bought, found, and scavenged materials—from copper pipes to plastic tubes, from lengths of wood to auto parts (axels, shafts, and rods), from moving gears to strips of sheet metal, from circuit boards to computer screens—basically anything he can get his hands on. These he attaches and assembles in whatever way seems most suitable and appropriate: by bolt, nail, glue, duct tape (naturally), wire, rivet, weld. A fat extension cord snakes from the house to power the electronics as well as the small motors that move the various ball joints, winches, chains and gears. The years he spent in his uncle’s machine shop, daydreaming and slaving away, are finally rewarded. In a month, his creation stands five feet tall and ten feet wide. It moves with a ceaseless, jerky, rickety-rackety energy, some­how managing not to tip over. It resembles a spastic, multi-limbed robot that can’t make up its mind what to do with itself. That, or a primitive, possibly alien, probe. It also resembles what it is: a junkyard raised by its bootstraps. To Dr. Jim, however, who knows that the epigene is comprised of molecules at least as odd-looking and diverse, it’s just the beginning of his life-sized model of reality.

He works nonstop, from dawn to dusk, breaking only when Carol happens to come out. He loves her visits, which never fail to take him by surprise, so absorbed is he in his project. He loves her fearless eye and supple intelligence. He loves how she keeps her distance, allowing him his freedom, and at the same time finds ways to encourage him. He loves her face and her body, and how, on occasion, usually at his instigation, that face and that body attach themselves to him.

She, in turn, loves to see him being productive again. She loves to watch him from the kitchen window, half-hidden, before she leaves for work. His boundless energy. His brain. His hair, which is lengthening, and the way he tosses his head to get it out of his face. His shirt (she makes sure he wears a clean one every day) stained with sweat. His facility with tools. His creative bursts. It’s as though, through this new, sideways endeavor, this temporary substitution of one form of expression for another, he’s been unchained.

Like Hercules, she thinks proudly.

Like Samson.

Like that animal . . . what’s its name? The one with three heads. The dog, straining at its leash. Cerberus.

But no. That would not be her Dr. Jim. Dr. Jim has freed himself of his leash.

Cerberus would be someone else.

Carol’s Diary:

Carol’s diary is blank.

 

* * * * * * * * *

Carol, née Schneeman, now James, took her degree in anthro­pology, with a minor in biology, and parlayed these into a doctorate in one of late-century academia’s favorite inventions, the hybrid career. Hers is called ethnobiology, and her particular area of interest is inheritance, specifically the interplay between individual inheritance and group inheritance, between genetic and non-genetic modes of transmission of human information and behavior. The dance, as she likes to say, between molecules and memes. She teaches and does research at the local university, and unlike her formidable husband has no trouble fitting in and getting along.

On the contrary, the job is nearly a perfect match. She likes being part of an institution, likes the stability, the structure, the hierarchy, the clear expectations and tiered chain of command. Having rules frees her from having to waste time ruling herself, and knowing her role frees her to inhabit that role fully. She’s a star on the rise and has been steadily climbing the academic ladder. Her sights are set on tenure, and a decision on whether or not she receives it will be made before the year is out.

The chances are good, but there’s no guarantee. The field is small and highly competitive, and budgets everywhere are tight. What she needs is another publication. And not just any publication, but something exceptional, to put her name squarely on the map.

She has no dearth of ideas and has made a list of the seven that excite her most. She has put in countless hours of preliminary research, drawn up detailed outlines, including a meticulous inventory of the pros and cons of each. She is nothing if not conscientious, which for her is merely another word for doing the job.

She has set herself a deadline of December 1st, so she’ll have the winter break to get a jump start. By the end of November she has whittled the list to three topics. She saves then e-mails the list to herself, intending to have a final look at it that night. If necessary, she’ll sleep on it and come to a decision in the morning.

Arriving home, she finds her husband hard at work, and she takes a moment to watch him unobserved. The piece is growing, in both size and strangeness. No surprise there. Nor is she surprised by her reaction to it: amazement and indigestion. The thing has not yet reached above the fence, and they have an agreement that he will stop before it does. The question is, will he honor the agreement? And how far is she willing to go to enforce it if he doesn’t? A clash seems inevitable, which she’d prefer to avoid, not for fear of conflict so much as for the chaos of emotion that is sure to follow in its wake. As a preemptive measure, a sort of prophylactic antidote, she goes inside and straightens up the house. Afterwards, she feels better, and better still after swigging down a healthy helping of antacid, its viscousy chalkiness dulling the burn like a protective coat of paint.

Fortified, she’s able to turn a calmer and less partisan eye on the mad chimera of her husband’s fevered brain. She asks herself if good science can truly come of bad, or at least undisciplined, art. She herself could never work this way, but she herself is not the subject.

The man who is has his own trippy way of thinking when he’s doing science (conceiving and designing experiments, for example), or when, like now, he’s doing science once removed. He appears to work at random, but she knows this isn’t the case. He has a plan, even if he can’t articulate it. He’ll execute it, and once it’s done, he’ll know what it was to begin with. (This would be like working backwards for her.) His eccentricity looks eruptive, even slapdash, but it bears the stamp of an interior design.

She can kind of see what he’s getting at, the spiraling core of pipes and tubes, which must represent strands of DNA, the chunkier lattice of wood and metal surrounding it, like a supporting structure, each section moving and bending through hinge and ball-and-socket joints and rotating gears, smoothly at times but mostly not. Herky-jerky and spastic, like a newborn’s twitchy limbs, but less every day, also like a newborn. Self-corrective and decidedly interactive. It’s his vision of the epigene, which they’ve talked about, and which, in fact, is on her final list of topics. Not his vision of it, but hers.

The epigene, so her thinking goes, is not simply a biological phenomenon, it’s a model for how change of any sort—on an individual level and on a larger scale, a societal scale—occurs. And how the different levels of change influence one another and interact. It can be used to describe and predict political, cultural, biological, psychological, anthropological and sociological transformations (any and all of which, she suspects, can be given eigenvalues). Potentially, a powerful tool. And it hasn’t been written about, not in the ethnobiology literature, which means the field is wide open.

She sleeps a dreamless night, which is how she likes them, wakes early, and intercepts her husband before he disappears downstairs. This is critical, because once he does that, any meaningful conversation is pretty much a lost cause.

“Can we talk for a minute?” she asks.

He steals a glance at the basement door, gives a curt nod.

“It’s about me,” she adds in the interest of full disclosure.

What he wants most is to get to work. Second-most is for his Carol to be happy.

“You know what I was before a scientist?” he asks.

It’s not the best beginning, but she plays along. “What’s that?”

“I collected beetles. Studied them, labeled them. Like Darwin. Raised some, too. Left the collection to my science teacher when I graduated high school.”

“And you tell me this because . . .”

“There’re three skills you need to be a successful collector. One, you need to be curious. Two, you need to be patient. Three, you need to be able to pay attention.”

She gives him a look, like “are you kidding me?” Then one of her eyebrows rises, just the one, which she can do only if she doesn’t try. If she does try . . . nothing. It’s controlled from somewhere beyond her control, like a tic but with a beautiful, arching purpose, and it happens once in a blue moon, when curiosity, skepticism, and annoyance intersect.

“So this is what? Yes, you’ll listen to me? Or yes, you’ll observe me and take notes?”

“I’ll give you my thorough and undivided attention.”

She knows he’s capable of this. For how long is always the question.

“Thank you. I could use your help.”

She leads him to the living room, which has a pair of windows, one facing the street; the other, the yard. The latter is a potential distraction for him, but less of one than the door and stairway to the basement, which are like the siren’s call. He can only resist them for a certain amount of time, mainly, she assumes, because he doesn’t want to resist. If he did want to but couldn’t, she would worry that something was seriously wrong.

He takes the sofa, placing his back to the window overlooking the yard, and makes eye contact with her.

It’s a gesture of sincerity on his part, and feeling bullish—provisionally—about the upcoming conversation, she lowers herself into an armchair. “I’m coming up for tenure soon.” Pauses, can’t tell if his look is expectant or blank. “You know that, right?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“I’ve decided to write a paper on the epigene. My side of it, my version. A view through the ethnobiological lens.”

“Interesting.”

“I’d like to pick your brain.”

He half-turns his head toward the window and makes a flourish with his hand. “There it is.”

“Will it bother you? My writing about it?” She means before he does.

“Not at all. Pick away.”

She summarizes what she’s read: the epigene is a dynamic system. It’s in a state of continual flux, but every so often something gets fixed in place. A molecule is attached at a certain spot, and this causes a permanent change.

“Correct,” he says. “Relatively permanent.”

“And this is different and distinct from a change—a mutation, say—in the DNA. Which is what people usually think of when they think of permanent genetic change.”

“Not molecular biologists.”

“Normal people,” she says.

“A benighted bunch.”

She pushes on. “And the reason this molecule is formed, then attached, can be due to a number of factors. Hormones, for example. The environment. Stress.”

“Yes. The engine of progress, fortunately, has many triggers­.”

“And this change can be inherited.”

“For a generation or two. In certain cases more.”

“So evolution can be fast, not slow. It doesn’t need eons to manifest itself.” The idea is as exciting now as when she first heard of it.

“It’s always fast, when it happens.”

“What I mean is, it doesn’t have to be random. It can be responsive and even purposeful.”

Purpose, he would say, is a human concept. Evolution of whatever stripe conforms to the laws of chemistry and physics, not the laws and needs of man. But that’s a discussion for a different time and place. Fundamentally—biologically, that is—she is right.

“Expression is the key,” he says. “Everything else is just wishful thinking. A change in the epigene or even the DNA sequence does nothing if it doesn’t result in other changes: transcriptional or translational changes, in RNA expression and protein synthesis. Otherwise it just sits there, like a train in the station. Only when the train starts moving does it actually become what it is. Only then does it deserve the name train.”

“I like this,” she says. “Random mutation is so . . . so . . . random. So passive. So gloomy. It cheers me up to know we can do something. We can adjust. We do adjust.”

“Constantly.”

“I like the idea that we’re in active conversation with everyone and everything, whether we know it or not. We’re participants, not bystanders. We can control who we are and who we become.”

“To a degree,” he says, then adds, “Control appeals to you.”

“Self-control, yes. And I like that we’re not complete pawns in the game. That we have something to say about our destiny. I like it because I like it, and I like it even more because it’s true.”

“You’re an idealist.”

“I’m an optimist,” she offers as an alternative.

“I’m one, too. But realistically, there’s only so much we can do.”

“Of course. We’re only human.”

He grins. “Will you mention Lamarck?”

“I will. How could I not? Epigenetics should have a footnote with his name attached.”

On this they agree. It wasn’t called epigenetics back in those explosive eighteenth and nineteenth century days of observational science, but rather the inheritance of acquired traits, a controversial theory, the most famous example of which was the progressive lengthening of a giraffe’s neck so that it could reach higher leaves and thus out-compete its fellow giraffes. Such a trait, so the thinking went, was passed on to its progeny. A fair number of scientists held this opinion in an often heated and partisan debate, but it was only one arrow Lamarck’s remarkable quiver. His observations and conclusions about the natural sphere were seminal. He was among the first to believe—and demonstrate—that the world was an orderly place, built and governed according to immutable natural laws. This was before Darwin, who later paid homage to him.

As Dr. Jim does now. “A towering figure, Jean-Baptiste. A gifted scientist.”

“He deserved better than he got.”

“He bore the cross, it’s true. You’ll point this out?”

“I’ll state the case. It’s not total chaos down here. We’re not doomed to some predetermined fate. If people want to believe otherwise, there’s not much I can do. But if it was me, I’d take heart.”

“Lamarck did. It pleased him to know there was structure. Structure and purpose. He liked a world like that.”

To Carol it seems the most human of desires and beliefs. How could anyone live with the inevitable highs and lows of life, the swings and shifts of fortune, not to mention mood, without stable ground to stand on and without purpose?

“Who wouldn’t?” she says.

“He liked his giraffes getting taller to reach those leaves. His waterbirds developing webbed feet to improve their swimming. These were useful adaptations, and usefulness was rewarded.”

“In Heaven and on Earth,” she replies, a reference to the world in which he and everyone else of his time lived, the world of religion and the tug-of-war between religion and science.

“Heaven? Is there such a place?”

“He was Catholic. I’m sure it was useful not to antagonize the Church.”

“Antagonism is who we are. Rise and fall, push and pull, positive and negative feedback. Contradiction defines us.” His eyes drift toward the kitchen, and his attention shifts. “We’d be nothing without it,” he adds under his breath.

It’s a reference, she assumes, to his visits downstairs, and it’s as close as he’ll come to mentioning them. Although, when she thinks about it, it could be a reference to almost anything, and in fact, his attention has veered again, this time back to the yard, where his gaze is now fixed. In profile the changes in his face are more pronounced, the thickening of the muscles along his jaw, the roughening of his cheeks with their now ubiquitous stubble, the deepening of his eye sockets and paradoxical prominence of his eyes. He looks, oxymoronically, both nourished and underfed, replete and hollowed out, a man of wealth and of hunger, sybarite and victim of his own fanaticism, at this particular moment in intense communion with what he’s built.

The look is not deceiving. He’s enchanted by what he sees, especially his latest addition: a tetrad of pulleys fused together, a kind of block and tackle, which represents the four-pronged histone unit of the epigene. Through one of the pulleys he’s threaded a cable, which represents a chromosome. The histone both protects and holds the chromosome firmly in place, but below it, between it and a second tetrad of pulleys, the cable is more open and exposed, more accessible and also freer to move, like a running loop of rope. Chromosome-wise, this is where the action is. Where genes transcribe themselves, communicate with other genes, make RNA and proteins.

He’s built, in short, an epigene within the epigene, a microcosm of the whole, a kind of fractal. His paltry skills as an engineer and sculptor don’t come close to capturing what the real McCoy represents and does, what it’s capable of. Such a cunning design, the epigene. Such a beautiful, pliant system. But what next? What next?

The question casts a shadow on his sunny state of mind. He doesn’t have the answer, and his love affair with what he’s done is pierced by doubt. He feels a heaving in his chest, and all at once he’s drowning in a sea of negativity and dismay. It happens like that: full of himself one moment, fighting for air the next. Presto chango. Snappety-snap. It’s a cold, dark place he’s fallen into. A bottomless, watery prison if he doesn’t get out. It takes every ounce of will to resist the descent. He has to get downstairs, throws a glace towards the kitchen, struggles to his feet.

A hand stops him.

“Stay,” says Carol. “Please. Just a few minutes more. Then I’ll let you go. This is really helpful.”

Her hand is manacled around his wrist, and he glances at it, then bares his teeth. Immediately, she lets go and quickly threads her fingers through his. He’s trembling, and she steadies him with a firm, reassuring grip. She’s iron to his quicksilver, ground to his jagged downward burst. At the moment she’s also a force greater than the siren call. But not for long.

“A minute or two. Max.”

“What were we talking about?” he asks in a gravelly voice.

“Lamarck.”

He nods, waits, searches her face.

“Will you sit?” she asks.

He sits.

“You said he was a gifted scientist,” she prompts.

“A true scientist,” he replies after a lengthy silence.

“True? In what way?”

“Not everything he did or said was right. But his effort was right. His passion. I count him as a colleague.”

The similarities between Lamarck and her husband have not escaped her. She has certain concerns about this, which must be handled delicately, and she asks herself if now is the time.

“He had a passion for truth. Is that what you mean?”

“For reason, I would say.”

She accepts his correction, though it makes her just a tad uneasy. Passion can submarine reason, just as certainty can masquerade as truth.

“Do you know he had no money when he died? His family had to beg for the funds to bury him. Couldn’t afford a private grave and had to put him in a rented one.”

“He was dead.”

“Still.”

“Private. Rented. What’s the difference?”

“I’m sure it felt different to his survivors. Especially when he was kicked out after the lease expired.”

“Great men suffer. It’s the same old story. He was brilliant but ahead of his time. His views were not accepted.”

“Are yours?”

He doesn’t miss a beat. “They will be, when I make them known.”

She doesn’t doubt it, though she does wonder how long this might take. Two hundred years, as it took for Lamarck, would be on the long side for her.

Not that she’s impatient, though she does worry a little about money, because her husband at the moment is making absolutely none. Her income supports them both. A non-issue if she gains tenure. If she fails, they will have to cut their expenses drastically, maybe even sell the house. Live in a trailer, not the worst thing. Revert further and live in the woods.

She could make it. That said, she’d rather have money than not. She likes what it does. Likes having what she needs when she needs it. Likes being able to support Dr. Jim in his quest. She’d prefer not having less of the stuff, though if it came to that, she’d survive.

She’s been poor before. She grew up poor. Nothing was ever handed to her on a platter. All that she’s gained has been the result of her own hard work and dedication.

It’s because of this that she values hard work, and it’s one of the reasons she values and respects her husband. No one could work harder than he does. And if it comes to pass that he finishes what he’s building and goes on to publish his epic book, and it makes no money, she’ll be disappointed because he will be, but otherwise she’ll be okay. She understands that poverty for some men and for many women is the price of eccentricity. It’s the cost of being different, the joy and sorrow of being ahead of one’s time. It’s not financial poverty that concerns her. It’s not poverty of spirit: her husband has spirit to burn.

“Did Lamarck have friends?”

“I have no idea,” he replies.

“He had a family.”

“Yes.”

“A wife. Children. They lived together in a house.”

“I assume. You know as much about this as I do.”

“I wonder how he felt when he couldn’t provide for them. I wonder if he doubted himself. I wonder if he got depressed.”

He drums his fingers on his knee, glances toward the kitchen. He really needs to get to work.

“Your point?”

“You’ve never talked to me about what happened before we met. After you were fired by the university.”

“I was never depressed.”

“You were hospitalized.”

“That was a different man. That wasn’t me.”

She takes a moment to process this claim. Her husband is many things, and he operates according to his own set of rules and values, but dishonesty has never been one of them. And from the look in his eyes, he’s not being dishonest now.“Aren’t there sometimes recurrences?”

Her questions are driving him further from where he needs to be, which right now is down in the basement. He fidgets, shifts, drums, then gets to his feet.

“Is that what this is about?”

Is it? She isn’t sure. She began the conversation talking about herself.

“I may not get it.”

“Get it?”

“Tenure.”

“You don’t need tenure.”

“I want it.”

“Lamarck had it, and look where he ended up.”

“You had it, too, and look at you.”

He doesn’t answer, as if to say what possible difference does it make, and instead begins to pace. He has a powerful urge to flee, when something out the window catches his eye and stops him. The epigene-in-miniature atop his creation is glowing like an ember, as though the rising sun has singled it out and set it on fire. It goes from liquid red to liquid gold, then all at once the light appears to gather and condense. He can barely look, it’s so intense.

He hears a hum, then feels a vibration.

“It’s powering up,” he mutters.

“What?”

He points, spellbound.

She follows his finger.

“It’s opening,” he whispers.

“What’s opening?”

“The door. The path.”

“Look at me,” she says.

He doesn’t respond, forcing her to repeat herself. “I said look at me. I’m talking to you.”

Of anything on Earth, her voice, at that moment and in that way, is perhaps the only thing that could reach him. It combines concern with authority, solicitude with resolve, the verbal equivalent of a one-two punch, and the woman, make no mistake, is a force to reckon with. With a shudder he wrenches himself free of his vision, as free as he can be, and makes eye contact with her. Knows that he needs to re-establish a connection. Desperately tries to recall what they were talking about.

“You would have liked him,” he says.

“What?”

“You would have liked him.”

“Who? Lamarck?”

He nods.

For a moment she’s bewildered, as if he’s pulled a fast one on her, a rope-a-dope trick. She can’t believe the man, but of course she can. He’s done his best to give her his undivided attention. It’s been heroic, really, how well he’s done. But there are some things a man like Dr. Jim cannot resist. Some things a woman like Carol, née Schneeman, now James, cannot resist, either.

Pedagogy, for example. That, and a parting shot.

“Did she?” she asks.

“Did who?”

“Did Mrs. Lamarck?”

* * * * * * * * *

Energized by the conversation and her husband’s interest and support, Carol dives headlong into her subject, tentatively titling her paper “Toward an Epigenetic Future: Beyond Randomness.” To her the epigene represents hope: for the future of her species (possibly for all species, though this is beyond the scope of her piece) and for the future of the planet. People change in response to what’s going on around them. That’s the message and the fact. They change not merely on the surface but inside, intrinsically: as the environment changes, as the culture changes, as the world changes. This has always been the case, but the new idea (or not so new but new to her) is that this doesn’t have to rely on random chance. It doesn’t have to be glacially slow. It doesn’t have to be passive. Quite the opposite: it’s an interactive and highly participatory act.

Most exciting of all, the change can be passed on to future generations and built upon. Little by little or quickly, in great bold leaps. It’s the answer, if not the antidote, to cynicism, complacency, and helplessness, which infest and plague so many. Another nail in the coffin of the Luddites and the fatalists who fear and despise progress. People adapt, adapt positively, adapt swiftly. This is what the epigene means to her. It’s a metaphor, of course, but it’s more than a metaphor, too. She can feel this in herself. She’s changing—on the deepest levels—and it seems to be happening, in part, in response to her grasping and grappling with this new idea, working it, following its threads, making intuitive leaps, doubling back, finding ways around apparent dead ends. She feels as if she’s tussling with some wild and beautiful animal, making it more beautiful and useful by taming and disciplining it.

She is changing in other ways, too. In response to her environment, for example, her work environment, where the pressure is mounting to get tenure and get it now, while it’s within her grasp, and while she’s at it, do all the ancillary stuff: publish, teach, administer, procure grants, be exceptional, be more than exceptional, be a star, and if not a star then a pretty damn bright planet. Pressure translates to stress, which has well-known biological effects. Some are epigenetic, and not all of these by any means are deleterious. Being the optimist she is, she has every reason to believe that the positive changes she’s undergoing will benefit any future offspring she may choose to produce (currently an open question). It’s not just optimism: there’s growing evidence that the stress responses of the current generation of children in the nation are blunted, a splendid adaptation, given the exponential growth of sensory and immunologic assaults on their beleaguered defense systems, and proof once again that you can only pound the tip of a nail so much before it becomes dull.

Her home environment is affecting her as well. Being with her husband, listening to what he has to say, watching him change physically and emotionally as his strange—and strangely compelling—sculpture takes shape, wondering where it will all lead and who or what is doing the leading. Is he in control, or is this, as she sometimes fears, a wild-goose chase? How she thinks and feels about him is changing, and this, of course, is changing how she thinks and feels about herself. If she had to guess, she’d say the same is true of him. Change begets change.

A marriage, she decides, is epigenetic. Structured, orderly, fluid at times, unpredictable at other times, and at all times interactive: it’s like the very thing that’s growing in their yard.

Which, by the way, has risen above the fence line. Not by a lot, but enough to get her attention. She’s been so absorbed in her paper that it’s been weeks since she’s given it more than a cursory look. She and her husband have been immersed in their respective projects to the exclusion of all else, like two children at parallel play, the difference, of course, being that these two children are married. How perfect, she thinks, to be as childishly self-absorbed as her husband. How much this helps her understand him. And how much this understanding will help him, in turn, to see the light when she reminds him of his promise.

 

From Dr. Jim’s Diary:

Friday, November 27th. Wake up, head hurts. Take a leak, catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. Can that be me? Is this Halloween? A circus? Who let that guy in the house?

The effort of trying to figure that one out only makes my head hurt worse, and I throw a couple of aspirin down my throat, then take one of those other, blue-green, pills, which I shouldn’t, but who’s going to stop me? Down in the basement the cage door is unlocked. No worry about his escaping: a beaten animal knows its place.

He’s sitting on the bench when I enter. I don’t have to tell him to get up.

We face each other. We’re the same height now. I’ve grown (success adds inches) and he’s shrunk. You could say I’ve cut him down to size.

We fight. I beat his pathetic self. Afterwards he seems even smaller than before. He also appears more naked, which is odd, because he doesn’t wear clothes, hasn’t from the get-go. Maybe it’s his hair, which used to cover every inch of his body. Now it’s patchy and thinned out, like a sick and mangy dog’s.

Carol’s in the kitchen when I come up, a cup of steaming coffee in her hand. She smiles when she sees me, but then a shadow crosses her face.

“Something wrong?” I ask.

“You look like hell.”

“I feel great.”

“Is that right?” She wrinkles her nose.

“Got a problem?”

She fans the air in front of her face. “You smell.”

“Of course I smell. It’s the smell of human.”

“A particular human.”

“You no like?”

“The human, yes. The smell, no.”

“Too bad.”

She compresses her lips. “What you mean is, ‘You’ll get used to it,’ delivered in a helpful and encouraging, which is to say, a warm and affectionate voice. ‘Too bad’ is so cold and antagonistic.”

“I’m sorry you’re not happy.”

She considers this, first with an inward look, then an outward one at me, as if trying to see past some particularly ugly packaging to the gift underneath.

“You’re changing,” she says at length. “Sometimes I’m happy about it. Sometimes not.”

“Be happy.”

“Like you.”

“Like me. That’s right.”

“Until you’re not.”

It may be the truth, but it feels like an accusation. “I don’t see that happening. I’m not a guy that gets depressed. What’s to be depressed about?”

“You make it sound like it’s a choice.”

“Why would anyone choose to be depressed?”

“The point, I think, is why wouldn’t they choose not to be?”

Talk talk talk. Choice is overrated. Things exist or they don’t. I have a smell? Damn right I have a smell. It’s called the smell of success.

“I couldn’t be happier. You know why? I’m firing on all cylinders. In here,” I pound my chest. “Upstairs,” I pound my head.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“You should be glad. It’s a beautiful thing. We live in a beautiful time. Beautiful minds, beautiful ideas, beautiful place. It’s a miracle to be alive. I’m more than happy. I’m ecstatic.”

“You’re in a zone.”

A zone, is it? As in something with limits? That ends? I shake my shaggy head.

“I’m not. The zone is me. It’s not going away. Like the smell. It’s who I am. Same goes for what I’m building and discovering, and all the good that’s going to come of it, how much it’s going to change how people think, how much smarter and better they’ll become, how much better off and happier, and how it’s going to usher in a new age, a golden age, new, improved, and constantly improving—”

“The Golden Age of Dr. Jim?”

“Why not?”

She’s checking out my hands, which are down at my sides and, strangely, still bunched into fists, like the residue of something, an indelible mark. She’s got a curious look on her face, as though puzzling through what this means, which is one of the reasons I love her. She’s interested in the what and the why of things, she’s observant, and she doesn’t jump to conclusions.

Not that any conclusion she or anyone might draw would have an effect on me. I’m above and beyond—immune to, you could say—the tyranny of opinion.

“The sky’s the limit,” I tell her.

“In the Age of Dr. Jim.”

“That’s right.”

“Where fists rule.”

“Fists are good.”

She makes a pair of her own, turns them one way then another, regarding them with the same curious and observant expression. After a while she unfurls her fingers, then clenches them into claws. She studies these as well, then pulls them back as far as they’ll go, fingertips and nails slightly raised, tendons on the backs of her hands in sharp and tense relief, as though readying for action.

“Grrrr,” she says.

“That’s the spirit.”

She swipes at the air, left-right-left, makes a hissing sound, bares her teeth. Her eyes flash, then settle on my face.

“Got a sec?” she asks.

“Got a lifetime. What’s up?”

She turns to the window and points with her chin. “That.”

“You like?”

“We had an agreement.”

“It’s nearly done.”

“I’m willing to talk. I can be flexible. I’ll listen to reason.”

“Do you like it?” I repeat.

The question hangs in the air like a coin toss suspended in glass.

“Does it matter?” she answers at length.

“Of course it does.”

“Why? Are you building it for me?”

“I wouldn’t be building it without you, that’s for sure.”

She looks shocked. Then skeptical.

This wounds me, as it should. Skepticism is a dagger to the pure of heart. The innocent, for some reason, are always the first to be accused.

“Why are you looking at me that way?” I ask. “Have I done something wrong? Without knowing? Again?”

Rhetorical questions, of course, and we both know she’d be better off not answering. She could change the subject—to the weather, the neighbors, the news—to anything else, but she’s smarter than that.

She apologizes.

Then she rubs it in by kissing me. “That’s so nice to hear. You know I wouldn’t be writing what I’m writing without you, so it goes both ways. And the answer’s yes—I do like it.”

Being immune to opinion does not, apparently, mean being immune to praise. I feel a wave of happiness, then pride, and I take her in my arms, pressing her hard against me. I want to crush her, I love her so much.

“Easy,” she says. And then, “I have a favor to ask.”

“Don’t tell me. You want to be there when I finish. On the day. The hour. You want to be part of it. You want to celebrate my victory.”

“Okay,” she drawls, as though taken up short and trying her best not to disappoint me. “Now you want to hear the one I was going to ask? Don’t go up any higher. Go out if you want to, fill the whole yard if you like, just don’t go up.”

“You’re saying size doesn’t matter. It’s not what’s important.”

“I’m saying control yourself.”

“You’re right. It’s not. I don’t have to go up. I can go out. I can go in. In is up.” The meaning of this—the full, ecstatic meaning—explodes on me with the force of revelation. “Up is up, too. Up and up. And up. And away. Up and away.” What a hoot! What a miracle! Another explosion, this time of laughter. “Grab your hat, there’s a storm coming, it’s going to blow us to smithereens, but the coast is clear. Clear sailing ahead if you don’t go up. Go out. Go in. In is up, and up is in—”

“Stop.”

I hoist her in my arms and twirl her around.

“I said stop!”

Her voice is like the crack of a whip, and I have no choice.

Once she’s down, feet planted firmly on the floor, she crosses her arms over her chest and squares herself to me. “I need you to promise.”

“Your will is my command.”

“I also need you to be serious.”

I raise my hand and pledge to her. “Not an inch higher. Not an angstrom. Not a snowflake. I swear to you. I promise.”

* * * * * * * * *

Carol has her work cut out for her, trusting him to keep his word. She’ll believe it when she sees it, or rather when she doesn’t see it, doesn’t see the piece get higher, and she learns how much harder it is and how much longer it takes to be convinced by the absence of something than by its presence, in this case the absence of something happening rather than by its occurrence. It’s the difference between not and not not, similar to the task of carving out and then maintaining silence in a world defined by noise. But as the weeks go by and he’s true to his word, she begins to relax. This, in turn, allows her to devote her full energy to her paper, a good thing, seeing as how she’s scheduled to deliver a preview of it at an important conference in two weeks.

She has it well mapped out, all save one new idea she’s been wrestling with. It’s a bit beyond what’s known and established on the subject, right on the cusp of the plausible. It’s sure to be controversial, which is precisely what she’s aiming for. Academics love a good debate, and an aspiring academic could hope for nothing better than to be the center of one.

What she doesn’t want is to be laughed off the floor. She needs to run it by someone first, and the someone she has in mind is her husband. Who knows more than he does about the subject? Who, when he chooses, can listen with more intelligence? Who won’t pull any punches and be sure to speak his mind? When it comes down to it, there’s no one she trusts more.

Rising early one morning, she whips up a batch of pancakes, which will slow if not stop him, and has them ready when he comes downstairs.

He’s barely awake. His hair is matted and snarled, as it has been for weeks. His beard is becoming a bush. He half-shuffles, half-lurches into the kitchen, where he stops, raises his head, and sniffs.

“Pancakes,” she announces.

Half a minute passes before he eyes the basement door. It’s a record. The power of scent.

She pulls out a chair. “Have a seat.”

He doesn’t move, and she doesn’t insist.

“I’m going away next week,” she reminds him. “For my conference. To deliver my paper.”

He shifts on his feet.

“I’ve been toying with something. Can I run it by you?”

“Can it wait?” He edges toward the door.

She opens her mouth to say no, but his hand is already turning the knob. The door opens, then he disappears, as if falling into a dream, she thinks.

 

From Dr. Jim’s Diary:

Wednesday, Jan 4th. The darkness at first is thick, but my eyes like darkness, they’re at home in it, and they adjust quick. The smell of the cellar is abrasive and sharp, and in seconds I’m fully alert. I take the last stairs in a single leap, land like a cat, straighten, look. He’s cowering in a corner. What a pitiful excuse for a man. No threat to me or to anyone, and yet at the sight of him my blood boils. Why this is I can’t say. But I can say this: he won’t fight anymore, not unless I make him.

Which I do.

Boom boom, and it’s over.

I almost feel sorry for him.

But I don’t. Why should I? Does the cherry feel sorry for the pit?

Fact is, as he crumples to the floor, I’m elated.

* * * * * * * * *

“I’m going out on a limb,” says Carol, after her husband has surfaced. He’s sucking down the cakes as if he hasn’t eaten in weeks. “I’m speculating that an identical epigenetic change can happen to many individuals in a narrow window of time, possibly simultaneously. And this can cause a recognizable change in culture and society in their lifetimes. It doesn’t have to wait for the next generation to manifest itself. It can happen now, as we speak. In real time. Real-time evolution. Not engineered, but natural.”

He gulps down a mouthful, goes for another. “Why are you saying that?”

“I believe it, that’s why. Or I’d like to.”

It’s part instinct, part intuition, part hope. It’s also part giving her esteemed colleagues something to chew on, and part poking said colleagues in the ribs. “The question is, am I going to sound ridiculous?”

He doesn’t answer, leading her to suspect the worst.

“I could leave it out. Stick to what we know.”

“And what is that?”

“The epigene is a blueprint for change. It’s a paradigm for both stability and adaptation, most notably for individuals, possibly for larger groups. It’s biologically based, but it has much broader implications. One of the best and most powerful is that it’s future-oriented.”

She stops, fearing from his wandering expression that she’s lost him. Or lost his support. So she brings it back home, using his own words so there can be no doubt or misunderstanding.

“The epigene is key.”

More seconds pass without his responding, enough of them for her to realize how important this is to her, how much his opinion matters. At the moment, however, he’s focused on what’s in front of him, a fine thick cake from the pan, which he folds in half, then in quarters, smothering it in syrup, then stuffing the fat, dripping wedge in his mouth, chewing and swallowing it, it seems, in a single act, then wiping his chin and lips with the back of his hand, then licking the hand clean. With a belch he settles back in his chair, and finally, at long last, turns his attention to her.

Their eyes meet. She feels a jolt, then a quiver. He gets it. Yes. He understands what she’s saying. He understands, and he agrees. She couldn’t be happier.

But then he speaks.

“The epigene is nothing. It’s dogmeat. It’s yesterday’s news. The perigene is everything. It’s all-encompassing. All change that has or will occur derives from and is contained in it. All being and all possibility. It and it alone is key.”

She gapes at him. “The epigene is dogmeat?”

“Don’t talk to me about the epigene. It pollutes my ears. All eyes should be on the perigene. It’s the source, the nexus, and the crux of existence. It’s Heaven’s Guiding Hand. Heaven’s Crucible. Heaven’s Heaven.”

“You don’t believe in Heaven.”

“I’m building Heaven.”

His eyes gleam, demonically one might think, and she feels what can only be described as an epigenetic shift, which pricks her like a pin as she glimpses a future that may not include the man she adores.

She’s too shaken at first to reply, but then she gathers herself and finds her voice. It’s not the steadiest, but it’s steady enough.

“Fine then. Be my guest. Build it.”

Easy to say, he thinks as he hurries into the yard, and not, in fact, that hard to achieve, not when the fire is raging. It helps that he’s had more than a mere glimpse of his celestial wonder, that he knows, for example, that the perigene occupies another plane of existence. Another dimension? Another universe? The jury’s still out on exactly what and where, but here on Earth, in his representation of it, it exists above and beyond what he’s already built. Obviously, then, to depict it properly requires that he build more, and to this end he’s constructed an ingenious internal ladder that spirals as it rises, nicely echoing the spiraling DNA portrayed by his cables, pipes, and ropes. The ladder projects well above the current peak of the project, which means it is well above the fence. From the top rung, were he so inclined, he could enjoy a fine view of the neighborhood, not to mention the neighbors, all of whom have fenced-in yards of their own. But he has no interest in them. All his attention is focused on the task at hand. Currently this involves welding ten-foot lengths of copper pipe on end and in parallel to a steel plate base, then welding the base to the quartet of pulleys at the top of the structure . . . in effect, projecting the parallel pipes into space. At the topmost end of each pipe he’s bolted a swiveling, laptop-sized screen, remotely programmed and controlled. Rising together, the pipes resemble a line of stout reeds and also a cross-section of the Golgi apparatus, which is to say, a system of transport tubes. Two way transport in Dr. Jim’s fervid and frothy imagination: from the epigene upwards, carrying information to the perigene, which is yet to be built, and to the epigene downwards from the heavenly p, which lies somewhere in the ether above, and from which vantage it conceives, conducts, and conveys its divine and masterful plan to its genetic and epigenetic underlings. The screens have been partially covered with duct tape (the stickum and glue of impatient inventors and freethinkers) in the shape of an ellipse, leaving a narrow slit exposed. When they light up, they look like eyes, and once the program starts, they’re always going on and off, always blinking, for what self-respecting perigene would ever sleep? What man, for that matter, who every day is drawing closer to the realization of his dream, every day inhabiting it more, would sleep? Not Dr. Jim. Sleep is the furthest thing from his mind. Not that he could if he wanted to: the need, it appears, has been blasted from his brain. And thank goodness for that. To close his eyes now, on the cusp of his epiphany, with his perigene a heartbeat away, would be insane.

For altogether different reasons, Carol isn’t sleeping either. Her husband is unraveling, and their marriage is hanging by a thread. Couldn’t he have waited? she asks herself. Couldn’t he have chosen his words with more care? Her confidence is shaken, and the conference is now less than a week away.

She moves to a separate room, which helps. This suggests to her that distance is a good thing, and she takes a room in a motel, which helps more. During the day she’s in her office, honing and polishing her presentation, defending it against attack, both expected and outrageous, such as his, so that by the time of the conference she feels prepared for just about anything.

The hour arrives. Her paper is met warmly enough, and in one quarter—the activist, anti-social Darwinism bunch—she brings down the house. That evening, at one of the myriad parties spawned by such conferences, she’s approached by a colleague who had the pleasure of hearing her speak. A good-looking guy with all the right moves and a tongue that could charm a dead fish, it’s clear within minutes what he’s after.

And why not? She’s a prize. She’s a catch. It’s the biological imperative at work.

Her pants feel suddenly too tight around her hips: biology.

The heat rises to her face: biology.

Riot and rebellion lift their lecherous heads. There’s a creature that wants out.

Law and order respond.

It’s a bad career move for her.

She has a husband.

That husband is a jerk.

Infidelity is no sin, but recklessness, in her book, is. Not so much because it hurts people, which it does, but because it makes a mess of things. That’s the heart of the crime. It opens the door to chaos, mayhem, and unnecessary complications. Not to mention uncertainty, which is never a good thing.

So she tells the guy thanks, but no thanks, and excuses herself.

Later, in her room as she’s readying for bed, still buzzing from what might have been, she takes a moment to study her face in the bathroom mirror. She’s a natural blonde and has never thought to be anything but. Blonde and short-haired—for her entire adult life has always worn it short. She likes the compact, helmeted look, likes being tidy and meticulous, likes knowing that not one hair will stray from its place from the time she wakes up to the time she lies down at night. Not a hair or a thought. So the idea that she could grow her hair out, that she should grow it out, and not only that, she should dye it, comes as something of a shock.

She has a glimpse of how she might look. Suppresses a giggle. Stretches her arms. Arches her back. Thinks of her mother. Husbandless and as poor as Mrs. Lamarck. What traits did Mom acquire in her life? What traits did she pass on? Can an inherited trait be gotten rid of, short of being engineered out or waiting for eons until it rids itself on its own? Is she right when she postulates, as she has, that its expression can be willfully, mindfully, purposefully controlled?

It’s the subject for more than a single paper. A book, perhaps, but it won’t be written tonight. Her bed is waiting, neatly made, and she slides in, appreciating the starched, crisp covers. She’s a neat, crisp package herself, no loose ends, nothing wasted, and she’s had a productive and rewarding day. And there’s more to come.

She, too, keeps a diary, of a different sort from her husband’s, a kind of counterpoint to her language-heavy, idea-dominated, scrupulously governed life. She doesn’t use pencil or pen. Her entries, you could say, are more like dances, storms, music, free-form collages. Her current volume (and there’s a box full of others) is sitting on her bedside table. Propping herself on a pillow and pulling her knees to her chest, she rests it against her thighs and opens it to a fresh page. She stares at the pure white rectangle, letting her mind empty, waiting for the moment of inspiration to make itself known. Tonight it comes quicker than usual, primed, perhaps, by the evening’s events, but it’s no less delicious for that, no less ecstatic, revealing, or fun. Nor is she less herself as she utters a deep-throated moan, then rakes the page with her nails and rips it to shreds.

The conference is in every way a success for her. By week’s end, after being wined, dined, and courted by no fewer than three eminent deans, followed by a hastily arranged meeting with her own departmental chair, who had not failed to notice the vultures circling what he considers his own personal ace-in-the-hole, she feels high as the moon, confident that her dream of tenure is all but assured. Her thoughts turn homeward, to her husband. After a week of separation, her feelings toward him have softened. She can live with their intellectual disagreements. The question is, can she live with him?

She recalls what attracted her to him in the beginning, the very eccentricity, self-absorption, and independence of thought that feels so petty and selfish to her now. But she doesn’t have to feel this way. As far as self-absorption goes, he’s no worse than she is. Or not much worse. He’s only being himself, just himself, and when all is said and done, who else could he be?

He’s a man, and men are meant to build . . . how many times has she heard this said? How many times has she written it off as myth, nonsense, bromide, self-aggrandizing, self-perpetuating, male chauvinist, testosterone-induced, delusional crap? But why? There are lines of distinction. She can personally attest to this. Women are meant to bear children, tell stories and, if all goes according to plan, get tenure. (Although the child-bearing part, she’s been told, appears to be changing. This, according to a fellow ethnobiologist she met at the conference. There seems to be an uptick in the number of women worldwide who no longer have an interest in bearing young, or whose interest is muted by other, stronger desires and plans. This, in response to environmental pressures, demographic changes, and a rising tide of prosperity and feminism. From Europe to Japan to Singapore to Taiwan, the birthrate has fallen below the death rate for the first time in a century. Not a bad thing, necessarily, and certainly not bad for her thesis.)

She decides she can live with his precious perigene. More precisely, she decides she would rather live with it than not live with him. The decision relieves her of a great weight, and she returns home on a wave of optimism, eager to see him, only to find that his creation has grown substantially in her absence and is now visible a block away.

Not only has it grown in size, there are now pieces of paper attached to it in a variety of shapes, colors and sizes, some of them quite large. There must be thirty in all, and he’s attached them in such a way that they move freely in the breeze, fluttering like flags. But ridiculous-looking flags, stiff and slapdash, like something coughed up by a demented Betsy Ross, making the whole thing, which once had a certain integrity, if not beauty, look ludicrous.

She pulls into the driveway, climbs out, and as she nears the front door, she gets her first hint, not of the meaning of this new addition of his, which would be too much to expect, but of its effect. Nailed to the door is a rather large piece of butcher paper with a rather explicit message to her and her husband signed by a neighbor.

The idea that someone, without her permission, would drive a nail into her house is offensive. The idea that the message is directed at both her and husband, i.e., that there’s no distinction made between the two of them, is embarrassing. The idea that her husband is provoking such an attack is a test.

She tears the paper from the nail and enters the house. The place is a mess, which only reinforces what she already knows, that her husband is besieged by the forces of chaos and needs help. Order needs to be restored, and who better to restore it than herself?

 

From Dr. Jim’s Diary:

Sunday, January 15th. He’s standing when I enter, head up, shoulders thrown back, a steady light of intelligence in his eyes. The cage door is open, but he’s making no attempt to escape.

“Going somewhere?” I ask.

He smiles, then opens his arms as if to invite me in and embrace what we both know comes next.

Trying to disarm me, the little shit. And for a second he does. Then I get a grip on myself, and we fight, although to call it that is a joke. I punch and he receives, not bothering to punch back or defend himself. Afterwards, though, I feel like I’ve gone twenty rounds. My legs and arms are heavy, as if I’ve been leeched of my vital fluids. It’s all I can do to drag my sorry ass upstairs.

Carol’s in the kitchen. The shock of seeing her revives me. “Where did you come from?”

“I live here.”

“You left.”

“That’s right. For my conference.” She frowns. “You didn’t think I’d walked out on you, did you?”

The truth—that I haven’t thought about her at all—would doubtlessly upset her. To tell the truth, she already looks upset.

“I’m glad you’re back,” I tell her honestly.

“I’m glad, too.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“So I see. Too busy to shower. Too busy to shave. Too busy to change your clothes. Too busy to clean up after yourself.”

“I’ve been working.”

“I see that, too.” She glances out the window. “It’s getting bigger.”

“Bigger and better.”

“No. Not better. Not even close to better. It’s an eyesore. This has to stop.”

Her voice is like a cage; her expression, the day of judgment.

“Take it down,” she says. “Do what you intended to do. Write the damn book. Or don’t. Just stop.”

“What book?”

“We had an agreement. Nothing above the fence.”

“I’ll raise the fence. I’ll levitate it.”

“You’re offending people.” She thrusts a ragged piece of paper in my face. It’s from the guy next door.

What he has to say makes me laugh. “He’s a moron.”

“He’s our neighbor.”

“Fuck him.”

“That’s one way to handle it.”

“It’s none of his business.”

“I disagree.”

“It’s none of your business, either.”

She gives me a long look, then nods, as if this settles something. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

* * * * * * * * *

They start the night in the same bed, but once Carol’s asleep, Dr. Jim slips out and heads to the patch of grass in the yard beside the ladder at the center of his creation. This has been his bed for several days. It’s where he feels most himself, which is not to say most at ease, because he’s far from that. He’s too driven and excited to be at ease, as if someone has a foot on the gas, and not only that, they’re doing the steering. It’s a high-octane, exhilarating ride, and even though there’s a cliff ahead, and after the cliff a field of razor-sharp rocks, and after the rocks a team of horses just dying to tear him limb from limb, he wouldn’t trade it for anything. A few more days, a few more visits to the basement, and the mighty perigene will be his. Besides, cliffs and rocks are for mortals, and horses, especially wild ones, are kin.

Needless to say, this is no time for sleep. All systems are on full alert, antennae tuned to maximum reception, and he spends the night conversing with the moon and stars, absorbing all he can and channeling what he learns to the task at hand. When not in conversation, he’s pacing the yard like an expectant father. Carol’s reappearance couldn’t have come at a better time: she has stuck with him for the long gestation and now she’ll be present for the birth. He faces east, exhorting the night to end so that he can get to work.

Daylight comes at last and he rushes inside, only to find a lock on the door to the basement. A shiny new hasp, mocking him like a smiley face with its rictus of false goodwill. He’s sickened, wounded even, but hardly deterred. The only real question is how to remove it: slowly and carefully with a screwdriver, sparing the door and the trim, or instantly, with a hammer and crowbar, using brute force? It’s another one of those questions that answers itself.

Carol’s waiting when he emerges from his lair. It’s no time to talk. His business is outside. But when he attempts to brush past her, she blocks his way.

“You going to clean that up?”

Islands and splinters of wood litter the floor. He could care less, but to avoid a quarrel he kicks them downstairs.

“That’s not cleaning,” she says.

He locates the lock on the floor, hanging limply from its hasp, picks it up, and thrusts it in her face. “Since when did the Nazis arrive?”

Her face curdles.

“The Enemy is here,” he spits.

“No. The Enemy is not here. Reason, however, is.”

It’s sad almost. How little she understands and how out of touch she is. With him and with reality.

“Reason? You want reason?” He hurls the lock at the window, somehow missing it and hitting the wall instead.

She won’t be intimidated. “Having a tantrum, are we?”

“I won’t be squelched.”

“And I won’t live like this. I can’t. Enough is enough.”

This, he feels, couldn’t be less true. Enough is never enough.

“I’ll leave,” she adds.

“You did leave.”

“For good.”

For good? What could this possibly mean? he wonders. His good? Hers? Fleetingly, he feels as if he can breathe freely again. The next moment, though, he’s consumed with rage at being dictated to. He wants to grab her, shake her, teach her, make her one with him and his just fury, until she understands and retracts what she said. He so wants her to understand. He loves her that much, he aches with love, and she loves him, and lovers don’t leave each other, they don’t, lovers are inseparable.

The rising sun catches his eye, interrupting his train of thought. A shaft of light shatters the pale morning sky like a bell ending the round. He hears a call, and instantly, the quarrel is forgotten. He’s being summoned, and his terrible rage at his wife becomes an ecstatic rage to get outside. He can no more resist it than the flimsy lock could resist him. He has no reason to resist and every reason to consent, every possible reason to surrender and embrace the promise that lies ahead.

* * * * * * * * *

The sun circles.

The sun sets.

The sun rises.

The sun sets.

The slippery moon appears.

From his grassy bed, Dr. Jim gazes upward through the lattice of his creation. Beyond the winking eyes and eye stalks, the spiraling tubes and strands of metal, the phalanxes of pipes, and the knobby, nodal block and tackle, he spies a tufted, popcorn cloud, drifting past the moon like an exploded ribosome. The speed of its drift is a fraction of the speed of his minnow mind, which darts about restlessly. He senses the approach of something vast, not a predator but a storm of some sort, and leaping to his feet, he races to his ladder. He climbs quickly, through the forest of copper Golgi tubes and their caps of cyclopic screens, swiveling like searchlights on their mounts. As he passes, one points at him, seemingly at random, then another points, and another, until all ten are fixed on his face, ten eyes trained on him, ten adoring, hungry, acolytic eyes, urging him higher. He hurries upward, until he’s standing on the topmost rung, which coincides with the topmost addition, the sum and crown of his creation. Another burnished coil of pipe, shoulder-wide, speaking for all three elements of the grand design: the spiraling gene, the resilient, spring-like epigene, and the angelic perigene, rising and expanding like a whorling halo.

He thrusts his head and shoulders through it. The nighttime sky is dazzling and takes his breath away. The air is charged. The stars feel it and chatter in excitement. The moon feels it and grins. Ribbons of energy burst and sizzle across the sky.

He raises his arms in delight. Laughing, he welcomes the storm, invites it to channel itself through him. As he fills with it and as the force of it grows, he realizes something new. He’s not merely channeling, he’s the channel, too. The linker and the link. There is no distinction between creator and creation, between do and is.

From nowhere and from everywhere he hears a crack, then a splintering sound. The air above him quivers, then rips in half. A slit appears, like the pupil of a cat’s eye, but a cosmic cat. He has a glimpse of what lies beyond, and his mind soars.

The glimpse lasts a mere fraction of a second. But a fraction of a second, a fraction of a fraction, is more than enough time to know the perigene in all its splendor. More than enough time to feel the glory and perceive the universal web connecting all things. More than enough for absolute and total bliss.

For one life-affirming fraction of a second, Dr. Jim is fully informed, and then reality sets in. The force sustaining him, suspending him, as it were, on a cloud, cannot, it seems, overcome an insistent downward pull. This, he dimly understands, is the pull of gravity, to which, had he been asked just moments before, he would have said he was immune. As he accelerates past the broken rung of the ladder on which he was standing, he has no time to be disappointed in its failure to do its job. If he’s going down, which he certainly appears to be—down, as in free-falling—he should make the most of the time he has left. Why fear the ground that’s hurtling like a rocket towards him? Why fear injury, pain, death, the unknown? He’s just had a glimpse of the unknown, and with the speed of light he has another, and suddenly he’s in hysterics. His throat and mouth are like brass. He could be a trumpeter, splitting the air with raucous sound, braying and shrieking the final, wild, delirious notes of his last and greatest song.

From Dr. Jim’s Diary:

Thursday, January 19th. Sleep, or something like it. Wake to gray light, shivering and wet. Head pounds like a drum. Stumble through maze of pillar, pipe, and post to a door. Door leads to another door, which leads downstairs. Gate of bars at the bottom, open as a trap. A man inside, waiting. We face each other. No fight left.

He helps me sit.

“You’ve had a tumble,” he says gently. “I’m Dr. Jim. You are . . .” He hesitates. “My guest.”

He strokes my head, then retreats beyond the swinging gate, shutting it behind him. The clang and clank of the bolt are like a wake-up call, a helping hand of a sort.

He gazes at me through the bars. His eyes are misty. His expression is raw with pity, gratitude, and relief.

If I could speak, I would, but I’m hollow inside. Depleted. Dark days ahead. But not forever. Voiceless now. Defeated now. Nearly invisible. But not dead.

* * * * * * * * *

The first order of business is to get his feet back under him; next, to survey and explore. Damage has been done, but then there’s always damage. The question is what to do about it.

This depends, principally, on how bad it is and whether or not it can be fixed. Some things are too broken to be fixed. Some broken things, once fixed, are as good as new. Or nearly as good. Some, depending on what material you started with, are better.

Dr. Jim has never been what anyone would call a fixer. He’s more a slash and burn, leave the past behind, the best is yet to come kind of guy. So it’s no surprise, as he stands beside his midden heap of a masterpiece, his tour de force of bric-à-brac and dream, that he decides, with scarcely a moment’s hesitation, to tear it down. The surprise is why. He misses Carol, and when something is broken—a plate, say—and one half not only needs the other half for completion but fits it perfectly, it’s senseless not to glue them together, a disservice to both halves not to recreate the whole.

The decision made, he throws himself into the task like a man possessed. In a week the thing is lying in a pile on the ground. The last bolt is barely out of its socket when he calls Carol with the good news.

Her reply to him is short and sweet. She meant what she said. She’s not coming back. She wishes him the best. Case closed.

He waits a few days, then calls again. And again in a month. In so many of life’s pursuits—from research to weight loss to treasure hunts—doggedness is rewarded, but in this—his pursuit of Carol—it is not. She doesn’t answer his calls and doesn’t reply to his messages. Undiscouraged, he continues to reach out, if for no other reason than to hear her voice. It’s a beautiful voice, and while the recording never changes, each time he calls he hears something new and special in it. Up until the day there’s a different voice, informing him with cold proficiency that the number has been disconnected.

So much for fixing.

Time plods on. At length he has the debris in the yard hauled away. Then he brings a chair outside and sits. It’s early spring, and then, seemingly overnight, it’s summer. The outline of his sculpture has disappeared: the grass that was crushed by it has regrown and filled in, joined by the stalks and heads of dandelions and other weeds. Ants troop along the ground. He identifies two species, as well as several kinds of beetles, including old friends Polyphylla decemlineata, Stictotarsus eximius, and Loricaster rotundus. He remembers his collection, idly wonders if it has survived, and if so, if its spirit has survived with it, the spirit of observing and collecting, and by doing so, honoring the greatness and the miracle of life’s diversity on Earth.

He sits and he sits, watching, listening, observing himself as the emptiness slowly but surely fills, until the day finally comes when he’s sat long enough, and that’s day one, the day that he begins, or more precisely, begins to finish what he started so long before.

* * * * * * * * *

A year later he puts the final touches on his opus, the crowning achievement of his career. On a whim he googles Carol, thinking what the hell, she might want to know. He finds her at a nearby university, a place known far and wide for its hallowed halls, distinguished faculty, and otherworldly endowment, and shoots her an e-mail with a tracer attached.

She deletes it within the hour, probably the minute she saw it. At noon a week later he sends her another, which she deletes at 4 p.m. Probably after coming back from an afternoon lecture. Probably—once again—as soon as she laid eyes on it.

Still. Four hours compared to one.

He knows he’s a fool. The question is, how much of a fool, to consider this progress?

* * * * * * * * *

Carol’s Diary:

Carol thumbs through her diary, surveying the torn, slashed, shredded, mangled, hanging-by-a-thread, pages. What a pleasure, after a long day like today, to make a new entry. Afterwards, though, she feels an unexpected emptiness, as though something is missing that shouldn’t be. She can’t quite put her finger on it, other than to call it “peace of mind,” which is far too vague to be helpful.

This happens on a succession of nights, and on each of them she falls asleep, fully expecting she’ll wake in the morning with a workable answer. But she doesn’t, and finally, after a particularly restless night, she wakes with a new feeling. Or rather the same feeling, subtly amended: it’s not, to be precise, that she’s missing something she had, but rather that she’s missing something that, prior to getting those stupid e-mails from her ex, she didn’t have. Something, in other words, that previously didn’t exist and now does.

How fascinating, she thinks . . . to an ontologist. How infuriating to her.

It’s the news of his book and his offer to give her a sneak preview. Dangling the bait. She wouldn’t be much of a scientist, not to mention an epigeneticist, if she weren’t curious. Say what you will about the man, he’s always been an exceptionally deep and original thinker. It would be a feather in her cap, professionally speaking, to get a first peek. Who knows—if he’s true to his word about her being an inspiration (she remembers this clearly), she might find her name in the list of acknowledgements.

The more she considers, the more she thinks, Why not? It’s not as if he’s asking for anything. It’s no slight on her character, no affront to her dignity, no encroachment on her sovereignty or disrespect to her person that he wants to share the news. If anything, it’s an opportunity.

From irritation to interest. From annoyance to cautious optimism. How the mind enlarges. Some say it’s a pendulum that swings equally forward and back. Rubbish, says Carol. The mind either shrinks or grows, regresses or advances.

Only a fool would not consider this progress.

* * * * * * * * *

As the day of their meeting approaches and finally arrives, Dr. Jim is beside himself with excitement. A normal excitement, he feels. He checks himself in the mirror, checks the time, the mirror, the time, a non-sustainable activity that he interrupts with nervous glances out the window. She said two o’clock, and it’s ten minutes past. So many possible reasons for this, but unlike her. Her voice sounded different, too, throatier, more muscular, as if fashioned by a hitherto unknown and unplumbed equation. After hanging up, he found himself wondering if there was a new man in her life. He searched the Internet, which didn’t have the answer but did have an alternate one. Two separate papers described anatomic changes to the female larynx (and a subsequent deepening of speech) as said females ascended various corporate and non-corporate ladders. So the voice thing could be due to that and not some guy, which relieved him somewhat.

At eighteen past the hour, an SUV pulls into the driveway. He rushes to the front hall, and when the doorbell rings, flings the door open.

Perched on the threshold is a woman who, at first glance, he barely recognizes. She has long black hair that flies from her head in an explosion of curls. Deep-red lipstick and deep-red, miter-shaped nails. A long-sleeved black knit dress. Bracelets on both wrists. A silver barbell eyebrow ring. Eye shadow the color of smoke.

She’s grown, it appears, both in size and in stature. An imposing package.

He invites her in and escorts her to the living room, which he has swept, vacuumed, dusted, and straightened within an inch of its life. Thinking this will please her, as it used to.

Without comment, she sits.

“You look well,” he says.

“Different, you mean.”

“Different, yes. But also well.”

She inclines her head. “I am. Very.”

“Your work agrees with you.”

She assumes he knows what it is from having reached her online and seen her various postings. “I love my work. I love being tenured. I love being able to do what I choose. Within limits, of course.”

“Limits agree with you, too.”

“If you say so.” She pushes a bracelet up until it’s tight on her forearm, like a bridle choking a snake. “I love being able to call the shots. Not all of them, obviously. There’re plenty of hungry fish above me in the chain, but in my little school, my fiefdom, I’m boss.”

“As you should be.”

“I completely agree.”

“You’re secure.”

“I’ve always been secure. Now I have security.”

He wants to ask if she’s happy, knows it would be a mistake. “Have you been writing?”

“I have. It’s what I was hired to do. Among other things.”

“About what?”

“You don’t know?”

“I saw you’ve written a book.”

It sounds like he hasn’t read it. She didn’t expect that he would and in fact has prepared herself not to be bothered by this. Which is not to say she isn’t.

“Yes. It’s the one I was working on when you were . . .” She stops, rephrases. “Before you started on yours.”

“How has it done?”

“It’s gotten some play in the press. Mostly the academic press, but not exclusively.”

“Has it been well received?”

“Very well. I’ve become something of a celebrity. The high priestess of cultural epigenetics. A lightning rod for visionaries, idealists, crackpots, and the suppressed.”

“The suppressed?”

“Yes. I tell them to express themselves. That’s something I learned from you.”

“Do they listen?”

“Actually, I tell them they’re expressing themselves all the time, whether they know it or not. The epigene, it turns out, is key. That’s where expression begins. I know you don’t agree, but there it is.”

She’s right: he doesn’t. Her statement is not only true but prescient. His own book contains a long and detailed argument against this very point of view. It stops short of being a diatribe, though she might not agree, especially given what he’s titled the epigene section—“High Hopes, Diminishing Returns”—which she won’t possibly miss if she has even a cursory look. Now has to be the worst conceivable time to give her the opportunity. A quarrel is the last thing he wants.

So what is it with him? Pride? Boastfulness? Ingenuousness? The desire to share something precious with her? His natural and troublesome impulsivity, aka the uncanny ability to shoot himself in the foot? What is it that makes him blurt, “I’ve written a book, too.”

“Yes. You said.”

“Would you like to see it?”

“Now?”

“Why not?”

He leaves and returns with a tome as thick and heavy as a brick. It’s got a clear plastic cover, beneath which is the title page. She reads it aloud:

“The Halo, Not the Helix: The Science and Promise of Perigenetics.” She raises an eyebrow. “It’s a science, is it?”

“An evolving science. Feel free to have a look.”

She riffles through the pages, pausing every now and then—at section and chapter titles, or at one of his winsome little hand-drawings that are sprinkled throughout the work.

“Take it home if you’d like.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I’d welcome your opinion.”

“You want me to read it?”

“I insist. I’d love to hear what you think.”

She hides her pleasure at this. “I’m extremely busy these days—you know how it is. I may not get to it for a while.” She pauses. “Quite a while. I’m really up to my ears with work.”

This is payback, pure and simple, for his not reading hers. In truth, she’d like nothing better than to dive into it at once. She can’t wait to see where his prodigious intelligence has taken him. Knows there’ll be plenty to chew on. Expects to be inspired, challenged, irritated, and galvanized.

“Take your time,” he replies with equanimity. “It’s good to have a full plate. I’m always happiest when I’m busy.”

He’s so different from how she remembers. Patient, attentive, engaging.

“What’s up next for you?” she asks, warming to him.

“Next?”

“Yes. What’s your next project? I assume you have a next project. Actually, I assume you’ve already begun.”

He smiles.

She laughs. “I’m right, aren’t I? Want to tell me what it is?”

He won’t meet her eyes.

“C’mon. Tell.”

“It’s hard to put into words.”

“Shall I guess?”

“If you like.”

She rattles off a series of ideas and projects, each one a little more provocative and outrageous than the last. When she’s done, he shakes his head.

“None of those.”

She leans forward to study him more closely, as though to read his mind. The light from the street catches his face in such a way as to make him look young, boyish even. All the boys she’s ever known have had double, or triple, lives. It feels pointless to continue guessing.

“I give up.”

“It’s not an easy thing for me to say.”

She gets a tightness in her chest, as though something hurtful is on the way. This infuriates her, to fall prey like this, and she rises quickly, weight on the balls of her feet, prepared in an instant to walk out. At the same time, unconsciously, she claws her hands at her sides.

“Spit it out,” she says.

He nods decisively. But as the seconds tick away without his uttering so much as a peep, the tension mounts.

Finally, he summons his courage and breaks the silence. “Would you ever think of trying again?”

Her eyes widen. Her ears, she decides, are playing tricks on her.

“Trying again?”

“Coming back.”

“And doing what? Getting remarried?”

They’ve been divorced a year. Swiftly, he calculates what to say next.

“Not necessarily that. Just trying again. Trying to do better.”

Shock gives way to a peal of laughter. “You want me to come back? To you? To a man who works every minute of every day? Yet somehow, at the same time, defines the word unsteady? A man with more moods than a mood ring. A man not merely divided in his attention but divided against himself.”

She’s spoken the unspeakable. He would never have allowed this before, but he’s hardly in a position to tell her to shut up.

And now that the gates are open, she’s not about to hold back. “Do you know what it’s like? I’ll tell you. It’s like living with three people in the house. Someone is always the odd person out. Always. If you live alone, you get lonely sometimes. If you’re a couple, you fight and make up. If there’re three of you, there’s always a third wheel. Someone’s always out in the cold. Three is the absolute worst.”

“I take it that’s a no.”

She begins to reply, pauses, purses her lips. “To a threesome, yes.”

At first he doesn’t understand. Then it hits him. It’s an impossible request. Yet she’s such a commanding presence. Maybe he can do it. Maybe, with her help.

“I can’t promise,” he says.

“Can’t promise what?”

He makes a gesture to include the two of them. “You and me. Just us.”

She frowns, then pulls out her phone and types in a message. Moments later, the side door of the van slides open and a woman steps out. She has short blonde hair, a pale complexion, and a stiffish, self-conscious gait, as though balancing something breakable on her head that could, with the slightest misstep, fall and shatter.

“Recognize her?” Carol asks.

She does look familiar. The hair at the back of his neck must think so, too, because it stands on end.

“A friend of yours?” he asks.

“More than a friend.”

“Should I be jealous?”

“I can’t answer that. I will say it’s not why she’s here.”

“Are you trying to teach me a lesson? Is that it?”

“Why don’t you meet her and then decide.”

“Decide?”

Is he that obtuse? She has the urge to order the woman back into the van and slap Dr. Jim across the face. Not without affection. She would never slap a man she didn’t like or respect.

She glances around the room, then up towards the ceiling, imagining the upper floor. In her mind she’s measuring the house. She has to decide, too.

She turns her eye on Dr. Jim. “We’re not that different, you know.”

“Decide what?” he asks.

Measuring him, measuring herself. “If there’s room.”