Double Helix (2 page)

I remembered, all right. I remembered, for reasons I'd never told Viv—and never would, either.

I stared up the stairs at him. He at least was wearing a suit—a cream-colored linen suit, with a beige shirt. His fit him better than mine did me. I was suddenly very conscious of my ankles, sock-clad but otherwise exposed to the world in the gap between the hem of my father's pants and my shoes.

Then Dr. Quincy Wyatt lifted one hand and beckoned. And, though I made no conscious decision to move, I found myself walking.

I crossed the reception area. I mounted the stairs. I felt his gaze on me, piercing, bright, interested. And when I reached the mezzanine, I stood quite still—it didn't even occur to me to put out my hand in an offer to shake—and he examined my face for two full minutes. I stood patient as a statue as his eyes took me in, missing—I knew—nothing. Not the ill-fitting suit, not the bulge of the book in my pocket, not the backpack dangling from my hand. Not even—I'd have sworn—a grain of my skin.

The most acute mind on the planet,
he'd been called.

I wondered if he could see my soul. My lies to Viv. The drunken disaster I'd been that endless horrible spring night, after it had become clear to my father that no college acceptances or even rejections had arrived, and I told him the truth: They would not, because I had applied nowhere.

I thought that maybe I wouldn't mind if Dr. Wyatt could see everything.

At last, he nodded. “Eli Samuels,” he said again. There was a tone to his voice—as if I were a specimen now satisfactorily labeled and classified—that reinforced my idea that he understood me better, somehow, than anyone else ever had, or would.

“Hello, Dr. Wyatt,” I said. The words came out a little croaked; I had to clear my throat. And then I heard myself add inanely: “Here I am.” I wanted to disappear; I felt so stupid.

But: “Indeed, Eli Samuels,” said Dr. Wyatt. “Here you are.”

Then he smiled directly at me. He smiled the way Viv's mother does when I come home with Viv after school. The smile caused his cheeks to lift into little mountains on his face. And somehow I knew that I didn't need to be nervous or afraid anymore.

I smiled back. I was too relieved to do it well.

Dr. Wyatt lifted his steel cane a fraction of an inch from the floor, just enough to gesture with it. “Come with me into my office,” he said, and turned. He limped a little as he moved, but he used the cane deftly, and I followed him in the same way that, as a child, I'd toddled confidently after my mother.

DR. WYATT'S OFFICE WAS NOT what I would have expected. First, the placard beside the door said only: Quincy Wyatt. No “President,” no “Chief Scientist”—no simple “PhD,” even. Then we stepped inside, and I felt my eyebrows literally lift with surprise.

The room was the size of a large closet. It had no windows. Two cheap folding tables were set against the walls, the right-hand one heaped with teetering stacks of papers, journals, and magazines. The stacks covered the entire surface except a dusty little clearing around a framed photograph of a gorgeous catamaran. The left-hand table held a computer monitor and keyboard, two opened bottles of root beer—both half full—and a large canister of Tinkertoys with a few sticks and spools scattered out on the table. The single chair was a standard office swivel, but with a dangerously jagged piece of metal where one of its arms ought to be.

“We'll need another chair,” said Dr. Wyatt. I wanted to offer to get it—he used a cane to walk, after all—but I didn't know where to go, and I didn't want to offend him, and anyway he was back again in an instant, wheeling a maroon chair that looked considerably more comfortable than the one already in his office. It also possessed both arms. He pushed this chair in my direction and I caught it.

“Sit down, young Eli,” he said. His tone was one of command—I thought of how he'd beckoned me up the double-helix staircase a few minutes ago—and I felt a moment of reflexive rebellion. But after I'd maneuvered the chair into the office between the folding tables, I did sit.

After all, no one had forced me to keep this appointment. I had come of my own free will, come in this silly suit and tie, because I wanted—hoped—

I contained myself.

Dr. Wyatt closed the door and moved his chair directly in front of it before sitting down himself. Then he looked at me, and I looked back at him—the large head, the squat body in the expensive linen suit—and felt shame and anxiety descend fully upon me again.

The email I'd sent to him—a man I didn't even know. The begging undertone. I hadn't been able to bear to think of it, but now—

Okay, wait. I had options. I could take control of this situation immediately. Get the embarrassment over up front. I could almost hear myself speaking.

Dr. Wyatt, about that email. Let me just say that I've been under some stress. Family stuff. My mom is
—I searched for a good, neutral word—
sick nowadays, but when I was a kid, she mentioned you . . . and I got drunk one night—just that once, my father and I had just had a fight about something—plus I'd found this stupid letter that made me angry at him, and the letter mentioned you . . . and I've always been interested in biology . . . and I'm putting off college . . . and anyway, I wrote that email asking for a job. It was an impulse and a bad one. I'd like to apologize. I know it was out of line
.

Would that work? Or would all the half-truths and evasions be obvious? Viv I could deceive—she loved me, she was willing to be deaf, dumb, and blind when I needed her that way—but a stranger, a scientist . . . Or maybe it would be better if I waited to hear what he had to say first. Maybe that would actually give me more control.

Sometimes—no, often—I hated being a teenager. Hated not having the full control I wanted. Even by the time you're eighteen, adults don't take you seriously. Even at eighteen, you're considered a kid.

All these thoughts flashed through my head in seconds, but I could feel Dr. Wyatt watching me the whole time, and it was uncomfortable. I felt a bead of sweat form on my forehead near my hairline, and I prayed it wouldn't trickle embarrassingly down. The tiny airless office, this narrow chair, my borrowed suit—I felt trapped.

Why didn't he say something? Was it to force me to speak first? I wouldn't.

And this chair was too short.

Well, to hell with that. My hands reached beneath the office chair and located the knobs to adjust it. I pressed and prodded, and miraculously the chair shot up to its full height. My knees shifted from chest level to a more normal position. Suddenly I could breathe more easily, and the panic receded.

“Better?” said Dr. Wyatt conversationally.

I nodded.

He leaned forward. “I'm wondering, Eli: How tall are you exactly?”

Now this was a conversation I had practically every day, and was quite comfortable with. “I'm six foot seven.”

“And you're only what—eighteen?”

“Yes.”

“What does your doctor say about your final height?”

I shrugged as if I didn't know. But the truth was that I - didn't like to say because people make too much of it. And maybe because my mother used to do imitations of Dr. Kaplan for her friends.
Get ready, Mr. and Mrs. Samuels, he's headed for seven feet. But with a little luck there'll be college basketball scholarships, which will more than compensate for the clothing and shoe bills
.

Dr. Wyatt was squinting at me. “Six eleven,” he muttered. “But not seven feet.”

I felt shock at his near-accuracy. He barreled on like some long-lost uncle: “How about school? You're about to graduate here in Cambridge? It would be public school, right? Rindge and Latin High?”

“Yes.” Hope surged in me. He was acting like this really was some kind of job interview.

“How'd you do? All A's? Are you the valedictorian, Eli?”

“No.” I felt a secret spurt of satisfaction.

“Salutatorian, then?”

I was astonished. “Uh, yeah . . .”

“Well, don't tell me you couldn't have been valedictorian if you wanted. You held back—why? Do you have some guilt at having done well in the genetic lottery?”

I blinked. What a very strange way to put it—and how had he guessed that I had, in fact, held myself back?

Viv was to be class valedictorian. She was thrilled. And as for me, well, anything Viv wanted, assuming it was in my power to give, she would get. Even if, as in this case, she couldn't know I had given it. It was one of my secret rules to help things go well with us.

“That's my own business,” I said.

Dr. Wyatt reached across the table for the Tinkertoy canister. He dumped some of its contents out and said, “Well, whatever your reasoning, it was a foolish move. You shouldn't let any award or recognition slip away, particularly not out of some misplaced delicacy about others' feelings. Awards can be useful to you. And people simply accept, though they don't necessarily like, the plain fact that intellectual resources are distributed unequally.” He shrugged. “That's life, Eli.”

I didn't know what to say.

Dr. Wyatt picked up a red Tinkertoy stick and fitted it into the central hole of a wooden spool. He placed the spool flat on the table, with the spoke sticking up, and regarded it. Without looking up, he continued: “What are your college plans?”

“I'm taking a year off. Then I'll go to college.”

He had attached a second wooden spool to the top of the red stick. “Where will you go?”

Viv was going to Brandeis. Very near. “I don't know yet. I'll apply this year.”

Dr. Wyatt scowled. “You have to go to college. Biggest mistake of your life not to. You should go to a good one, too.”

I could have mentioned Bill Gates and other wildly successful non-graduates, but why bother? “I know,” I said calmly. “I do plan to go.”

“And this year off? You'll do what with it? Travel?”

“No.” I was going to visit my mom as often as I could stand to, and see lots of Viv; that was all I knew for sure. “I need to get a job. I was actually hoping that—” I took a deep breath. “I'd like to work here. If . . . if that's possible.”

“Ah.” Dr. Wyatt had made a double-wheel kind of structure with the Tinkertoys. The spoke was green. The structure seemed to have his total attention. “You got A's in chemistry and biology ?”

“And physics.”

A pause. Then, calmly, easily: “All right, then. You can work here for the year. It will look great on your college applications. You'll like the work—it'll be low-level, but you'll see interesting things. And I'll enjoy having you around. We can talk from time to time.”

This was what I wanted. But still, my mouth dropped open with shock. And I thought, maybe, maybe if I worked here, if I talked to Dr. Wyatt from time to time, I could find some way to ask—to find out—

“Well ?” Dr. Wyatt prompted. “Would you like that, Eli? It's not every kid who has the opportunity to work at Wyatt Transgenics. Most of our employees—even the lab workers—have master's degrees. Doctorates.”

“I would like it,” I said. It was true. Everything else aside—my God! Wyatt Transgenics!

“Then that's settled.” Dr. Wyatt pushed the finished Tinkertoy structure away and stood up. “Let's get you down to Human Resources. We can probably pay you something nice.”

“But—”

“What?”

“But why would you want to hire me?”

Another pause.

Then: “I knew your mother,” said Dr. Wyatt. “Years ago.” And now he was, indeed, looking at me straight on. “I knew both your parents, but especially your mother. Ava Samuels. Nice woman. I knew she'd had a son named Eli, so I knew who you must be immediately, when I got your message. So of course I'd like to do your parents' son a favor.

“But we won't talk about your parents, Eli. Your mother. There is no need to. We both understand the situation, eh?”

I stared at him. His linen suit. His big head. His eyes, mere pinpricks behind the black-framed glasses. Slowly his words sank in, and as they did, I felt something. I felt relief, and comfort, and security, of a kind that I hadn't experienced—except maybe when I held Viv close—for years.

Even if I didn't understand what he meant by “the situation.”

“Do you want a job, then?” said Dr. Quincy Wyatt.
The
Dr. Quincy Wyatt. “Is it a deal?” He stuck out his hand, as he had not done less than an hour ago when we met.

I did not hesitate. I put my hand in his, and we shook, firmly.

OUTSIDE THE IMPOSING MODERN brick-and-glass cathedral that was Wyatt Transgenics, it was a perfect May afternoon. I decided to walk the three miles home, following the pedestrian path along the Charles River until I could turn off onto Western Avenue and up into deepest Cambridgeport.

I was so filled with incredulous exuberance that I wished I - could run. But even though I'd taken off the jacket, the fact that I was wearing my father's suit made running a bad idea. I stuffed the tie in my backpack and walked fast instead.

I was going to be a lab assistant at Wyatt Transgenics, starting the Monday after graduation. That was in two weeks. Unbelievable. Unbelievable! I couldn't have planned it even if I'd tried . . . or anyway, not so perfectly. It was a form of adulthood, sooner than I'd dared hope for. Adulthood—and control. Power over my own destiny.

Viv would keel over with happiness when I called her. What a bonus for me that was. It had worried her so much that I - wasn't planning for college next year.
It's just not like you,
she'd said mournfully.