‘To PETA.’
Varya stares. She thinks of the notion of having the wind knocked out of you, but that isn’t right: it has not been knocked but suctioned.
‘But Annie,’ she says. ‘Annie checked your references.’
‘I had my roommate pose as a Chronicle editor. She knew how badly I wanted to meet you.’
‘We adhere to the strictest ethical standards,’ says Varya. Her voice is brittle with useless rage.
‘Maybe so. But Frida wasn’t doing very well.’
They stand halfway down the mountain. Behind them, two postdocs walk toward the main facility, eating forkfuls of takeout.
‘You’re blackmailing me,’ says Varya, when she is able to speak again.
‘I didn’t want to. But it took years to figure out who you were. The agency was no help at all, they knew you didn’t want to be found, and all my records were sealed. I spent everything I had on a trip to New York and I pored over the birth certificates at the county courthouse for – for weeks. I knew my birthday but not which hospital you’d gone to, and when I found you, when I finally found you, I couldn’t –’
It comes out in a rush and now he inhales deeply. Then he sees her face. He swings his backpack around to reach inside and emerges with a folded piece of white cloth.
‘Hanky,’ he says. ‘You’re crying.’
She had not noticed. ‘You carry a handkerchief?’
‘It was my brother’s, and our dad’s before that. Their initials are the same.’ He shows her the tiny embroidered lettering, and then he sees her pause. ‘It’s clean. I haven’t used it since the last time I washed it, and I always wash it in hot water.’
His voice is confidential. She knows then that he has seen her as she is, in the way she does not want to be seen, and she swells with shame.
‘The thing is I have it, too,’ Luke says. ‘I noticed it in you right away. Mine doesn’t have to do with contamination, though. I’m afraid I’ll hurt someone – that I’ll kill them accidentally.’
Varya takes the handkerchief and wipes her face, and when she emerges she thinks of what Luke said – that I’ll kill them accidentally – and laughs until he joins in and she begins to cry again, because she understands exactly what he means.
She drives to her condominium in silence while Luke follows behind. As she climbs the stairs, she hears his footsteps behind her, feels the weight of his body, and her stomach wedges in her throat. She rarely brings anyone into her condo, and if she’d known he was coming she would have readied it. But there is no time for that now, so she flicks on the lights and watches as he takes it in.
The condo is small. Its decoration is a balancing act that aims to reduce her anxiety as much as possible. She chose pieces that both enhance and obstruct visibility: her couch is leather, for example, dark enough that she can’t see every speck of fuzz or dirt, but smooth enough that – unlike a nubbly, patterned fabric – she can easily skim it for anything egregious before sitting down. Her sheets are a dull charcoal for the same reason; the white sheets in hotels are so bare a canvas that she nears hysterics every time she checks the beds. The walls are devoid of artwork, the tables without linens and so easier to clean. The drapes are drawn, as they always are, even during the day.
Not until she sees the condo through Luke’s eyes does she remember how dark it is, and how ugly. The furniture is not aesthetically pleasing, because she does not choose it for aesthetic reasons. And if she did? She hardly knows what her taste would be, though once she passed a shop in Mill Valley that specialized in Scandinavian décor and saw a dove-gray sofa with rectangular pillows and slender, walnut legs. She stared for thirty seconds, a minute, before she remembered that the fabric would be terrible to clean, that she would be able to see every hair and stain, and that, most of all, it would be grossly painful to get rid of it if she ever became convinced of its filth.
‘Can I get you something?’ she asks. ‘Tea?’
Tea is fine, Luke tells her, and sits on the couch to wait for her, dropping his backpack at his feet. When she returns with two mugs and a ceramic pot of Genmaicha, he has his knees pressed together and the tape recorder in his lap.
‘Can I record us?’ he asks. ‘So I can remember this. I don’t think I’ll see you again.’
He knows the trade-off he has made; so he accepts it. He has caught her and will make her speak but has earned her resentment in return. Still, she has made a bargain, too: she chose to be his mother, and so she’ll answer him.
‘Okay.’ Her face is dry and the fury she felt at the lab has been replaced, for the moment, by resignation. She is reminded of the monkeys, the ones who have screamed themselves hoarse and give their bodies over to be studied with vacant acceptance.
‘Thank you.’ Luke’s gratitude is genuine: she can feel it reaching for her, and looks away. ‘Where and when was I born?’
‘Mount Sinai Beth Israel; August 11th, 1984. It was eleven thirty-two in the morning. You didn’t know that?’
‘I did. Just checking your memory.’
She brings the mug to her mouth, but the tea is scalding, and her eyes water.
‘No more tricks,’ she says. ‘You’ve asked for my honesty. I deserve yours in return. You don’t have to be suspicious of me; you don’t have to try to catch me in a lie. I could not forget this – any of this – if I spent my life trying.’
‘Fair enough.’ Luke’s gaze drops. ‘I won’t, anymore. Forgive me.’ When he looks at her again, his cockiness has been peeled away. What remains is sheepish, shy. ‘What was it like, that day?’
‘The day you were born? It was sweltering. The window of my room looked out over Stuyvesant Square, and I could see women walking by, women my age, in cutoffs and crop tops, like it was still the seventies. I was enormous. I had a rash down my front and sweat in every possible crevice. My feet had swelled so much I wore slippers in the cab to the airport.’
‘Was anyone with you?’
‘My mother. She was the only one I told.’
Gertie by her side, murmuring. Gertie with a washcloth and a bucket of ice water; Gertie who bellowed at the nurses every time the air conditioner stopped working. Gertie, who has kept her secret all these years. ‘Mama,’ said Varya, wildly, after she gave the baby over. ‘I can’t talk about this again, not ever,’ and since that day Gertie has not raised the subject. All the same, they talk about it constantly: for years, it was the lining to every conversation, it was a weight they carried heavily in tandem.
‘What about the father?’