In the past, Adam had always succeeded in discharging his duties as a parent by tearing himself away from the lab to be at home for dinner. There, he showed a genuine interest in his daughter’s homework and waited until she was planted at her computer—and a telephone—before returning to work.
Knowing Toni would herself be buried in her upstairs office at least until the eleven o’clock news, it had long been Adam’s practice to call about ten-thirty to give her some indication of whether he was running out of strength, or had been sufficiently inspired to spend an all-nighter.
Lately his inspiration seemed to be in high gear. Not only did Adam stay out till dawn, he was sometimes too carried away to phone and forewarn his wife.
Charlie Rosenthal, the innocent if concerned bystander, thought Adam was “living like an ostrich.”
Adam lowered his head. “Maybe,” he murmured. “I just need time to work things out.”
“Come on, I think you’ve been living on borrowed time already. Do you honestly believe Toni doesn’t suspect? I mean, suppose she suddenly dropped into the lab and saw Anya working there?”
“She’s never seen Anya,” Adam interrupted quickly.
“Well, considering the girl hangs around you like a necklace, it wouldn’t take her more than fifteen seconds to figure out what was going on. Besides, Adam, you’ve never screwed around before. Adultery just isn’t your scene. Something in you wants this to come out in the open.” Charlie’s voice took on an almost conspiratorial tone. “Have you got any contacts in Hawaii?”
“What?”
“I’m serious. Let’s get a copy of the Medical Directory and see if we can come up with somebody who might give Anya Avilov a job.”
“But why?” Adam protested, trying a new strategy to evoke his friend’s sympathy. “Have you ever thought of her feelings?”
“Yes,” Rosenthal admitted. “But when you consider that one of your options will definitely mess up at least three people’s lives—and since I know how crazy you are about your daughter—I’d say you have to go for the greater good.”
“You’re talking like a cold-blooded scientist,” Adam snapped.
“And you, my dear professor, are talking like a hot-headed moron. Of all the times in your life, this is when you should be most objective and analytic. Let Avilov go. Let her go where she really has a shot at starting over.”
He paused and then, with a tinge of suspicion, added, “Or are you also starting to feel possessive about her research talents?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Come on—you yourself told me she’s learning immunology like a whiz kid. Even coming up with ideas of her own. If you didn’t keep leaning on her to work in the lab, she’d have more time to study and requalify as the doctor she already is.”
“Dammit, you’re implying that I’m a selfish shit.”
“You are,” Charlie stated curtly. “And you’re on the slippery slope to disaster.”
Adam had been jolted by Charlie Rosenthal’s blunt admonitions. During the weeks that followed, he exercised superhuman self-restraint. Though they resumed their Wednesday night telephone conversations, he did not visit Anya. He did not even invite himself along when she went with other members of the staff to the cafeteria for a quick lunch. And yet he sensed that with every look at her, his resistance was eroding.
Anya, herself consumed with guilt, was convinced that she deserved no more. And accepted that though her moments of intimacy with Adam had been the happiest of her life, they were now definitely at an end.
It had been nearly two months since Anya Avilov had begun working in Adam Coopersmith’s immunology lab. Naturally, she had started with tasks as menial as washing test tubes, preparing animals, and the like. But she was a quick study and assimilated scientific material at an astonishing pace. In less than a month she was promoted to the data section, collating the results of various experiments on a computer that would thereafter be hers alone.
It was nearly seven o’clock on a Wednesday evening, in the depth of winter darkness, when Adam noticed her closing up for the day, shuffling papers into a folder to work on that night. In an instant he was at her side, his own coat draped over his arm.
“How are you getting home, Anya?” he asked as casually as he could.
“The usual way,” she replied. “Number sixty-six to Harvard Square, and then the seventy-one, which takes me practically to my doorstep.”
“That sounds worse than a forced march to me,” Adam remarked. “Why don’t you let me give you a lift? It’s practically on my way. Besides, it’s dark and cold and the streets are icy.”
She pondered for a moment and then smiled. “I’d be very grateful.”
He was silent during the first part of the ride, stealing occasional glances at his passenger. She seemed shy and reticent, but more beautiful and desirable than ever. He knew he could not simply drop her off.
As they were nearing Watertown Square, he inquired, “Have you got time for a quick bite?”
She hesitated for a moment and then asked deliberately, “Have you?”
“Uh, yes. My wife’s in Washington today.”
Anya made one further halfhearted attempt to discourage him. “That means your daughter must eat—”
He tried not to think of Heather, for whom Wednesday dinner was special since she had him to herself. Suppressing his qualms, he responded, “I can just give the housekeeper a call … she’s used to my coming home from the lab at all hours.”
Anya smiled. “In that case, why don’t we go by the market and I will buy a few things and make something simple.”
The apartment seemed to have undergone a metamorphosis, with new living room wallpaper matching new curtains. There was a large, cheery Miró poster, its bright colors clearly reflecting the purchaser’s change of mood.
And the bookshelf was nearly full.
Since there was still a shortage of furniture, they were forced to sit cross-legged on the floor and eat from the coffee table.
At first conversation was awkward.
“How’s your work going?”
“I love it.” She smiled. “Your main project is very exciting. How could anyone have ever imagined that simple progesterone could have such immunosuppressive effects?”
“Actually, the drug’s been around for so long, the medical community’s kind of taken it for granted,” Adam commented. “Back in ’seventy-three, a Paraguayan doctor named Csapo ran a pretty cruel experiment. He had removed the ovaries from women at various stages of pregnancy, and demonstrated that those who had them taken out after nine weeks could still carry their babies to term—though unfortunately for the last time.”
“That’s terrible,” she sympathized. “But it does prove why your progesterone therapy is only needed for the first trimester.”
“Maybe,” he acknowledged. “But there is still the remote possibility of side effects. So I won’t be home free until I synthesize it—then maybe rearrange the molecules. I hope the work they’ve given you isn’t boring.”
“On the contrary,” she countered with fervor, “It’s an education just being in a room with so many creative people. Even the brief time I spent with Dmitri’s colleagues in the academy taught me to distinguish a mind that’s not merely good, but great. And you, Adam, are the most brilliant person I’ve ever met.”
He smiled. “Well, while we’re dishing out compliments, even though we’ve only worked together for a few weeks, I can tell you have wonderful scientific intuition.”
She blushed. “You flatter me.”
“It’s still true,” he insisted. “And another thing,” he continued, moving closer to her, locking her eyes with his own gaze. “I love you, Anya.”
“And I love you,” she responded. “But what can we do about it?”
“We can give in to our feelings. We’ve been apart too long—I can’t bear it anymore.”
She did not try to move away as he took her in his arms, though there was a split second during which she had to let down the last of her defenses.
The hours they spent together in the tiny Watertown apartment were the most blissful Adam had ever experienced. It was not only that he filled a desperate void in her life, but he was also enthralled by her indescribable maternal quality, which satisfied a need he had never acknowledged before.
He had now crossed the Rubicon.
Late one Sunday afternoon, he reluctantly left Anya’s embrace and, as he dressed himself, murmured, “I can’t go on like this.”
“Adam,” she whispered, “believe me, I understand. If you told me this was the last time we would see each other, I would grieve. But I would accept it.”
He turned and said passionately, “No, Anya, it’s just the opposite. My life has boiled down to a single desire—to spend the rest of it with you.”
As he walked slowly down the porch steps, the icy weather awakened both the inner and the outer man. It made him realize that he was a moral coward. Counter-balancing the resolve he had so bravely displayed before Anya was the fear of hurting his family. And saying what now had to be said.
As he was putting his key in the lock of his car door, Adam heard the persistent ringing of his cellular telephone. He clambered in and grabbed it.
“This is Dr. Coopersmith,” he gasped, lungs burning from the cold.
“Where in God’s name are you?”
It was Toni, in a fury.
He stalled for time by saying, “Take it easy, I’m on my way back.”
Toni ignored his reply and fulminated. “Heather waited in the cold for nearly an hour.”
“Heather?”
“Yes, Adam. You may remember taking your daughter to ice-skate this afternoon. You were supposed to meet her outside the Watson Rink at four. I don’t know what time zone you’re in, buddy, but my watch says nearly six o’clock. You claimed you were going to the lab while she skated,” Toni went on. “I called but nobody had even seen you. So I got into the car and picked her up myself.
“Don’t try to fabricate an excuse. Tell me the truth. It can’t be worse than what I’m thinking. What the hell have you been doing?”
This jolted him into breaking silence. “Toni,” he mumbled hoarsely, “we’ve got to talk.”
“Okay, talk.”
“No—not like this. Face-to-face.”
“Adam, don’t take me for a total fool,” she stormed. “I know there’s someone else in your life. And since she seems to have such a hold on you that you’d let your own daughter freeze to death, you’d better stay away.”
Her sudden silence puzzled him, until he could discern her weeping softly. At last she managed to say, “Just tell me where to send it.”
“Send wh-what?” he asked with a slight stammer.
“The subpoena, dammit,” she raged through her tears. “I’m calling the best divorce lawyer in our firm to have him nail you to the wall.”
“Don’t I even get a chance to speak in my own defense?”
“Of course, Adam,” she replied bitterly. “As soon as the court fixes a date.”
He hung up in a state of shock, swept off his feet by the cyclone of Toni’s justifiable anger. And yet he also felt a curious relief, because he would no longer be preoccupied in trying to find the courage to tell his wife.
But now something terrible overwhelmed all other thoughts: Oh God, Heather. How could I do this to you?