Organisms adapt to their environments. Of necessity, most of the time. They also adapt to their own needs, often with a certain whimsy, you could almost say perversity. Take, for instance, the modified third claw on the hind foot of one of Lesje’s favorite dinosaurs, the medium-sized but swift and deadly Deinonychus. This third claw does not, like the other two, touch the ground; therefore it was not used for walking or running. Ostrom, the noted authority and discoverer of Deinonychus, speculated from its position and its shape (sickle-curved, razor-sharp) that it was used for the sole purpose of disemboweling. Deinonychus’s front legs, proportionately longer than those of Tyrannosaurus or Gorgosaurus, held the prey at a suitable distance; Deinonychus then stood on one foot while using the third claw of the other foot to slash open the stomach of the prey. A balancing act; also an eccentric way of coping with life, that is, the capturing and preparation of food. Nothing else even close to Deinonychus has yet been unearthed. It is this eccentricity, this uniqueness, this acrobatic gaiety, that appeals to Lesje. A kind of dance.
She has watched this innocent though bloody dance many times from the immunity of her treetop, which today happens to be a conifer. There is nothing in sight at the moment, though; not so much as a pterosaur. William has frightened everything away. He wanders below her among the bulbous-trunked cycad trees, ill at ease. Something is wrong; this isn’t what he’s used to. The sun is strange and there are odd smells. He hasn’t yet realized he’s in a different time.
Not realizing is his adaptation. Lesje is his environment, and his environment has changed.
William also sits at a card table, eating the Betty Crocker Noodles Romanoff Lesje has just dished out for him. She herself doesn’t feel like eating right now. He’s bombarding her with gloom: pollutants are pouring into the air, over three hundred of them, more than have yet been identified. Sulfuric acid and mercury are falling, metallic mist, acid rain, into the pure lakes of Muskoka and points north. Queasy fish rise, roll over, exposing bellies soon to bloat. If ten times more control is not implemented at once (at once!) the Great Lakes will die. A fifth of the fresh water in the world. And for what? Pantyhose, he says accusingly, fork dripping noodles. Rubber bands, cars, plastic buttons. Lesje nods; she knows, but she’s helpless. He’s doing it on purpose.
At this very moment, William continues relentlessly, birds are eating worms, and stable, unbreakable PCB’S are concentrating in their fatty tissues. Lesje herself has probably been incapacitated for safe child-bearing due to the large quantity of DDT she has already stored in her own fatty tissues. Not to mention the radiation bombardment on her ovaries, which will almost certainly cause her to give birth to a two-headed child or to a lump of flesh the size of a grapefruit, containing hair and a fully developed set of teeth (William cites examples), or to a child with its eyes on one side of its face, like a flounder.
Lesje, who does not want to hear much more of this right now, truthful though it may be, counterattacks with the supernova theory re: the extinction of the dinosaurs. Eggshells grown so thin the young could not hatch, due to a dramatic increase of cosmic radiation. (This theory is not in good repute at the Museum, which favors a more gradual hypothesis; nevertheless, it gives William something to think about. It could happen here. Who can tell when a star may explode?) Lesje asks William if he’d like a cup of instant coffee.
William, glumly, says yes. It’s this glumness of his, the disappearance of his customary buoyancy, that constitutes the adaptation. Like a dog sniffing the air, he senses the difference in Lesje; he knows, but he doesn’t know what he knows. Hence his depression. When Lesje brings in the coffee he says, “You forgot I take cream.” His voice is plaintive. Plaintiveness isn’t something Lesje associates with William.
Lesje sits down in her easy chair. She wants to ruminate, but if she goes into the bedroom William will take it as an invitation, he’ll follow her and want to make love. Lesje doesn’t wish to do this right now. (Problem: copulation of Deinonychus. Role of the third claw, sickle-shaped, razor-sharp: how kept out of the way? Accidents?) Despite the fact that every cell in her body has grown heavier, is liquid, is massive, is glowing with watery energy, each nucleus throwing out its own light. Collectively she blinks like a firefly; she’s a lantern, a musky signal. No wonder William hovers, priapic, anxious because she’s twice locked the bathroom door while taking a shower and once told him she had a bad case of heartburn. Awkward William bumbles, June bug against the screen.
But how is it that Nate has failed to appear? He was supposed to phone on the seventeenth; he’s two days late. She makes excuses to waft past the phone in case it rings, she stays in when she would otherwise go out, goes out when she can no longer stand it. She should have given him the phone number at work; but he could get her easily through the switchboard if he wanted to. Could it be that he’s already phoned, that William has answered and, divining everything, has said something so vicious or threatening that Nate will never phone again? She doesn’t dare ask. She doesn’t dare phone Nate, either. If Elizabeth answers, he’ll be displeased. If one of the children answers he’ll also be displeased. If he himself answers he’ll be displeased too because he’ll know it could just as well have been one of the others.
Lesje takes refuge in work. Which was once the perfect escape.
Part of her job involves the education of the public on matters pertaining to vertebrate paleontology. Right now the Museum is developing a dinosaur media kit for schools, which will include film strips and taped commentary, as well as booklets, posters and guides to the Museum’s exhibits. It’s hoped that this kit will be as popular as the sale of the models of Diplodocus and Stegosaurus (grey plastic, made in Hong Kong) and of the dinosaur coloring book indicate it will. But how much to tell? What for instance, of the family lives of the dinosaurs? What about their methods of egg-laying and — delicate subject, but always of interest — fertilization? Should these be ignored? If not, will the various religious and moralistic parent-action groups now gaining strength object to this material and boycott the kits? Such questions would not normally have occurred to Lesje, but they have occurred to Dr. Van Vleet, who has asked her to look into them and to propose some solutions.
Lesje closes her eyes, sees before her the articulated skeletons of the Museum exhibits, wired into a grotesque semblance of life. Who could possibly object to a copulation that took place ninety million years ago? The love lives of stones, sex among the ossified. Yet she could see how such gargantuan passions, the earth actually moving, a single nostril filling the screen, sighs of lust like a full-blast factory whistle, might be upsetting to some. She remembers the Grade Four teacher who threw out the toad eggs she’d brought to school. She’d hoped to describe to the class how she’d seen them being laid, in a ditch, the huge female toad gripped by a male so small it looked like a different animal. The teacher listened to this recital solo, then said she didn’t think the class really needed to know about things like that. As usual Lesje had accepted the adult verdict and watched mutely while the teacher carried her jar of precious toad eggs out of the room to flush them down the girls’ toilet.
Why didn’t they need to know about things like that? Lesje now wonders. What do they need to know about? Probably not much. Certainly not the questions that occur to her at times of free-ranging speculation. Did dinosaurs have penises, for instance? A good question. Their descendants the birds have cloacal openings, whereas some snakes have not only one penis but two. Did the male dinosaur hold the female dinosaur by the scruff of the neck, like a rooster? Did dinosaurs herd, did they mate for life like geese, did they have harems, did male dinosaurs fight each other at mating season? Perhaps that would help to explain the modified third claw on Deinonychus. Lesje decides not to raise these questions. Dinosaurs laid eggs, like turtles, and that will be that.
William says he’s still hungry and is going into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. This is an expression of dissatisfaction with Lesje’s ability to meet his requirements: Lesje knows it but doesn’t care. Ordinarily she would make the sandwich for him, since William has always claimed to be one big thumb in the kitchen. He will manage to break something out there or cut his finger on a sardine can (William, foe of cans, nevertheless has a periodic hankering for sardines that must be catered to). There will be wreckage and carnage, wounds, mutterings and curses; William will emerge with a tatty sandwich, blood-smeared uneven bread, sardine oil on his shirt. He will display himself, he’ll wish to be appeased, and Lesje, she knows, will do this. In the absence of Nate, who has offered, when she comes to think of it, nothing at all. A wide plain. A risk.
The phone rings and William gets to it before Lesje is even out of her chair. “It’s for you,” he says.
Lesje, chest gripped by a fit of shallow breathing, seizes the phone.
“Hello,” says a woman’s voice. “This is Elizabeth Schoenhof.”
Lesje’s throat closes. She’s been found out. Grandmothers converge on her, holding out her guilt, their grief.
But far from it. Elizabeth is merely inviting her to dinner. Her and William, of course. Nate and Elizabeth, says Elizabeth, would both be very happy if they could come.