Izzy was still unsteadied when Dr. Grind was around. If he was near her, Izzy would force his gaze, staring at him until he truly looked at her, and she would quickly search for some small clue that he had relented, would give himself to her, but she could find nothing in his demeanor other than the apologetic sadness that seemed to glaze his expression these days. His boyishness, so unreal and disconcerting at times, was finally starting to give way to his actual age, stubble that roughened his face, a pale grayish hue around his eyes. She promised herself that there would be no more outbursts on her part. She had made her intentions known, had embarrassed herself; if something was going to happen, he would be the one to do it.
One morning, while Izzy was preparing lunch for the children, Dr. Grind came in, asking if Jill had been in the kitchen. Izzy shook her head and returned to her work, expecting him to move on, but he lingered in the doorway, and she looked up and smiled.
“We’re doing some more research,” he admitted. “Jill and I aren’t quite sure what to do anymore; it’s not like Patricia will want any further data from this project, but we can’t just sit around, waiting for the end. Pretty soon, we’ll lose the kids; it hurts to think about it. We’re trying to do all we can in the meantime.”
“What kind of research?” Izzy asked him.
“Oh, we resurrected an old experiment. Do you know about the marshmallow experiment?” he inquired.
Izzy nodded. She had watched clips of it on YouTube, had wondered how Cap would have reacted to the experiment.
“We tried it the fourth year. It was not a success, or not in the obvious ways. The children could not hold off from eating the marshmallow, not a single one of them. A lot of them simply assumed that, no matter what they did, they would still be rewarded. It was a problematic experiment at a key time in our work here at the complex. We tried it the following year and got the same results. I made a call to discontinue the experiment. And . . . I hid the results from Brenda Acklen.” Dr. Grind shrugged when Izzy showed surprise. “It was not my finest moment. But I didn’t want anything to prevent the work we were doing from moving forward. It seemed like such a silly experiment, and I’ve come up with dozens of reasons why the testing itself is quite flawed and not really predictive of anything.”
Dr. Grind thought for a second, debating something, and Izzy tensed, waiting for whatever he said next.
“With Jody, who was such a beautiful boy, so sweet and open to the world, I gave him everything that he wanted, even before he knew that he wanted it. I know part of it was because of my own upbringing, and I didn’t want him to ever feel the lack of something, but I spoiled him, we both did. Even when my own research and my work with children said otherwise, preached limits, I couldn’t do the same with my own son. And he was wonderful. He turned out to be a perfectly well-adjusted child.” Dr. Grind pulled up short, obviously recognizing the fact that Jody was no longer alive and was forever that child Dr. Grind remembered. Izzy let him contemplate the loss.
“So maybe I just did the same for these children, knowing it would be okay,” he said, wincing in a way that mixed happiness and sadness, a look that Izzy understood well.
“Still,” Dr. Grind continued, “the outcomes of the experiment were a sore spot for us. So today we gathered the children and we performed the test again.” He paused, looked over at Izzy, who smiled.
“How did they do this time?” she asked.
Dr. Grind smiled, but there was little emotion behind it. Izzy could sense that he had started this conversation because he needed to talk about it, but he had wanted to talk to Jill, not one of the parents. But Izzy was the only one here, and so he continued.
“They were able to wait the full time. Every child easily waited in order to get the second marshmallow.”
“Well, that’s great,” Izzy said. “It’s progress.”
Dr. Grind paused for a moment and then said, “When we gave them the second marshmallow, to go with the one already on the plate, I noticed that a few of the kids didn’t eat either marshmallow. So I asked them why, and they said that they wanted to hang on to them. That, since they were leaving the complex soon, they wanted to save everything for when they might really need it.”
“Was Cap one of those kids?” she asked him.
“He was,” he replied.
Izzy kept herself from crying by sheer force of will; she reminded herself that this was her kitchen, her space, and no one else had more power in here than she did.
“He’s losing so much,” she admitted to Dr. Grind. “I guess I understand his thinking.”
“I suppose I do, too,” Dr. Grind said. They stood in silence, and then, just before Izzy once again made a fool of herself, Dr. Grind nodded and then walked out of the kitchen.