Whatever Lola Wants (8 page)

“It suits you,” he said.

“Come on, let's get out of this grim place.”

They left the station. He said, “What've you been doing since you got here?” just as she said, “How was the time with your sister?”

“Okay,” he said. “She'll come to visit me.”

“And I've been walking. All around the town.”

Was he hungry? They found a perfect small café, sat at a sidewalk table, ate a sandwich au jambon, drank a beer. They walked all afternoon, down Strasbourg and Sebastopol, past Le Marais, down to the river. They talked all afternoon, more stories of their lives, their families, their hopes. She showed him the favorite bits of Paris she'd found, la Sainte-Chapelle, Gothic logic and intent pushed to its limits, stained-glass medallions exquisite in color and design; the magnificent capitals in the Salle des Gens d'Armes of the Palais de Justice; the walk along the Seine by the Jardin des Tuileries. At the end of the afternoon they found another quintessential café, ordered a bottle of wine and a croque-monsieur. They talked of what they would each do in their lives, knowing without knowing they were testing each other's futures to find a means for bringing these together. This fall he'd help his father at the Grange, later take courses at the University of Vermont, probably the Ag School. She had to get her doctorate specifically in philosophy before she could do anything else. Why? Because if you want any clout in this world you have to doctor other people's inferior philosophies—as much as most people have a philosophy in the first place. At Harvard she'd get her credentials, her union card, so to speak. In moral philosophy. She was going to doctor people's souls? She didn't know if she believed in a soul in any standard sense, but there was an aspect of people's bodies—because after all mind is body—which housed the source of their ethical stances.

They had finished the wine bottle. Their hands held each other's across the little table. Milton was saying, “Over the summer we—” when suddenly Theresa whispered, “Oh no!”

“What?”

She glanced at her watch. “It's nearly eight. You've missed your train.”

He grinned. “I know.”

“Oh Milton. I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. I don't have to be in Freiburg till the day after tomorrow and there's a morning train. At nine.”

She squinted at him. “Did you plan this?”

He shook his head. “No. Honest. It just”—he shrugged—“seems to have happened.”

“What'll we do? I don't think I can sneak you into my hotel, the concierge's a monster.”

“We can get a hotel.”

“Without luggage? With passports with different names on them?”

“Then we'll keep on walking.”

They walked all night, they talked all night; they held each other tight. Paris never closes. Before dawn they found their way to Les Halles, the great fruit and vegetable market, already bustling with farmers in from the fields, the freshest tomatoes and lettuces, artichokes and carrots, seven varieties of beans and four of peas, and onions and scallions and early potatoes and more, and more. Another perfect café, hot onion soup and fresh bread. A banquet.

They walked along rue de Rivoli to the Place de la Bastille, down the rue de Lyon to the Gare de Lyon. Over the summer he would come to Lyon to be with her, she would visit him in Freiburg. “After that …” They would talk of such things over the summer.

He exchanged his old ticket for one on the present train. He bought a book for the trip. They found his platform, his car, his seat. They went back out onto the platform. Milton said, “Luckiest thing, each of us from our private parts of the world getting on the same boat.”

“Not luck. We made it happen.”

“We did. We organized it. Together. We created the possibility.”

A call from the conductor for all passengers to be on board. Theresa and Milton kissed, then just held on to each other. A squeal as the train began to move. Milton squeezed her tight, let go, jumped onto the rolling car. He turned and waved, blowing her another kiss. She waved back as the train pulled away. Her eyes were wet. Her fingers found the pendant, the bloodstone, hanging on its chain. She stroked it lightly. She cried half her way back to her hotel.

•

I stopped there, for two reasons. First, because they were newly in love. I knew what would happen, at least in the short run—their meetings over the summer, their wedding in the fall. No doubt wonderful for Milton and Theresa, but watching the early stages of love can get cloying. Second, and more importantly, something else was going on at the same time. Someone else's memory, and the corner of my eye had caught it.

“You saw a lot back there,” said Lola. She looked wistful.

“A bit.”

“The memories of both of them.”

Lola was right. “Yes.” I'd blended them in my mind.

“Is there more?”

“Let's leave Milton and Theresa for a bit. There's another memory from back then …”

•

Beth Cochan put
the phone down. She watched Johnnie bounce a ball against the wall of the garden shed down the grassy slope. She tossed back the last half inch of her schooner of Tanqueray and didn't pour another because it wasn't noon yet. She called, “Johnnie!”

Johnnie walked slowly up to the house. “Hi.”

“Your present's waiting. At my lab.”

After a couple of seconds he said, “Please, can you bring it?”

“You want it?”

He nodded again, hesitant.

“We have to go get it.”

He looked away from her. “What is it?”

“You'll see.” She laughed lightly.

He thought for a while. “Can we just get it and come right back home?”

They drove in her open-top red and white Bel Air through hazy spring sunlight down to the lab in the old factories. The city had redone the mill yard, Joe Cochan had told his son, since textiles were in deep decline. Johnnie saw rolls of wool sliding down a steep brown hill. The city gave us a first-rate deal, Joe had said, half rent for a decade. So Joe, six years back, had moved Cochan Pharmaceuticals from Montreal over to Sherbrooke. He'd gutted the old weaving and cutting and sewing sweatshops and built laboratories. A lab for Beth too, as well equipped as the others, best of its kind in North America. CochPharm filled up a quarter mile of mills.

Johnnie hated going inside, through the new pine doorway down the long white corridor to his mother's lab. Nothing really scary, logically he knew this, no chemicals making smells, nobody cutting up monkeys. “Dogs and cats! And juicy rats!” the kids shouted at him. His teacher Mrs. Strong made them stop shouting. She wasn't on his side but she did say clearly, “Be mature, fourth graders are mature.” No cats or rats in his mother's lab.

A year ago, he'd made himself get brave about the insects. He had hated crawly spiders and their sticky webs, old webs filled with dry, dead bugs and new webs perfectly shaped, the huge spider in the middle. He hated sow beetles and ants and all those little bugs you could feel creeping up your bare back and into your hair, those and the slimers, worms and slugs with their goober trails. But bugs were what his mother worked with. All over the place in big cages in her lab. She thought they were great. And Johnnie admired his mother. So he had taught himself to like the bugs. Well, not really like, just get along with. The beetles were kind of okay, and the bees he'd actually come to think were nearly all okay. He could handle them now, let them crawl over his fingers and hands. His mistake had been to brag about this to his friend Alan.

Alan's eyes went wide. “On your hands?”

“Sure.”

“Liar!” Alan shivered.

Johnnie wasn't insulted. The bees liked him, he knew this. And he could control them. “I'll show you.” He swore Alan to secrecy about what he'd see.

Next afternoon they took a bus down to CochPharm, ambled past the secretary—“Hi, Johnnie!” “Hi, Miss Judy!”—along the white corridor to the elevator and down to his mother's lab. If she was there he'd ask her to help. She'd let him play with two or three bees, some of the ones not in sterile caging. If she wasn't there, so much the better. He'd get a dozen out, show Alan this was the real thing. Johnnie didn't lie. Not usually and really not now.

The lab was empty, not even his mother's assistant around. Great.

“It's cold here,” said Alan.

Johnnie led Alan past the centipede caging, the termite nests, the earwigs. To the big bee enclosure. Hundreds. Buzzing. Crawling on the wires. They looked longer and thinner than three weeks ago. They must've grown.

Alan said, “Wow!” and looked impressed.

Johnnie felt an instant of doubt. He didn't want to mess up some experiment here. He'd take just a few bees for only a couple of minutes, then put them back. Only Alan would know but he'd sworn he'd never tell. Johnnie rolled up his sleeve, unlatched the mesh door, slowly reached his hand in, his arm to his elbow. He brushed the side of the cage with the edge of his palm and a dozen bees fell into the cup of his hand. He brought his arm out, and closed the door. He was careful like he should be. The bees buzzed. A couple flew a little and fell back into his hand.

Alan stared, kept away from the hand, said, “Gee, Johnnie, be careful.”

“It's easy. Here.” He reached his arm toward Alan. Alan jumped back, stepped away. Johnnie followed, slowly. Now Alan knew Johnnie wasn't a liar. Alan was scared. Johnnie walked faster. Alan was running! Johnnie followed—

From the corridor just outside, footsteps, two people, and he heard his mother: “You rotten louse! You goddamn louse!” And his father: “Stop it! Stop it now!” And his mother: “How can you get it on with that thing?! How?” And his father: “Beth, for pitysake—” And his mother: “She's a shit-crawling roach!”

Alan stared at the door. Johnnie's feet wouldn't move. Who was a roach? He could barely see the bee enclosure across the lab, it was that far away. The lab door opened. He stuck his hand and all the bees into his pants' pocket.

Beth spotted them. He could see she was upset. She shouted, “What're you doing here?”

Then Johnnie screamed. And again, again. And again; he drooped to the ground, clutching his thigh and groin.

Beth rushed to him. “What? What?!” She turned to Alan. “What's going on?”

Alan, white, crying, “The bees—”

Johnnie screamed again, “Aaiieeeeee!” His hand in his pocket? Beth pulled it out. Her wasps! Four, five— She pulled his pants off, his underpants. She counted quickly. Three bites visible, thigh, penis, scrotum—

Did he need a birthday present so much, was it worth all this? But they always gave him good presents. A tenth-birthday present would be special.

His mother said, “You'll be fine, Johnnie.”

He said, “I'm a little scared, just a bit.”

It'd be good for him to go into the lab again, she knew this. “It's a great present,” she said. He didn't respond. She said, “There's no risk.” And asked, “Even if there were, isn't it worth some risk to get a great present?” She smiled, she knew he could be brave.

The wasps were long gone, she'd told him so. They passed through doorways. The corridor. The elevator. She pressed the down button. The doors opened. He stood still. Get what on with what thing? He'd asked her that later. Only once. She'd given him a silent stare, turned, and went away. Now she took his hand and stepped inside. He had to follow. The doors closed.

She felt his reluctance. She could understand it. But she had to rid him of those fears. From long past. She patted his short black hair. His ears stuck out too much. He was a good-looking boy. Except for the big ears. Could she find a cure for floppy ears? Sam should have given her a chance. Half a chance. She could've found a cure for anything.

She would let Johnnie's hair grow, make the ears less rabbity. Much more handsome.

The doors opened. Subdued light, a kind of brown-orange. She walked toward dark double doors, pulled one open, stepped inside.

He'd not been here since the wasps. Before the wasps he'd been afraid of bugs of all sorts but he'd taught himself to be brave. After the wasps the fear returned, doubled, tripled. Bigger than ever, little creeping oozy biting things in his nose and under his fingernails, scratchy things in his underpants. Could he be brave now? He felt the chill beyond the doorway.

“Come on,” she said.

Dark, and little cages. Humid like thin cold steam. The floor looked slimy.

She stopped by a package a couple of feet high, maybe three feet wide, covered in brown paper. She turned on a lamp.

He heard a tiny click. “Aren't you cold?”

“No,” she laughed brightly, “never in my lab.”

He pointed to the package. “Is that it?”

She smiled. “Open it.” He reached— She slowed his wrist. “But gently.” If he liked it, played with it, she'd reward herself from the refrigerator, her secret stock.

He heard more clicks. He undid the tape and the paper fell away. He drew in his breath and pulled back. The biggest bug he'd ever seen. A stuffed bug.

She stroked its thorax, ribbed shiny brown, a loving touch. “Allomyrina dichotomous. See its wing cover, how it's divided into two parts? That's dichotomous. Like the first leaves out of a bursting bean seed.” She ran her fingertips along the shell. “It's a coleoptera, from Taiwan. Feel it, Johnnie, it's soft.” She reached for his hand. He drew it away. “It's cloth and plastic, fur, it's soft. Here.” She pulled him toward it, the insect of her one-time successes.

His shoe slid along the floor. He had to touch this monster. Yes, it was soft. The body, even the wings. But the legs were hard, hairy.

“Here, look at the front legs.”

Not legs but fingers, like pincers. Antennae like the horns of a buck deer. Hairy too, and damp. He pulled back. More little clicks. His throat had gone tight.