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“Oh you have got to be kidding me.” Her voice echoes through the empty lab, its frustration turning back into Mary’s ears.
Spoiled results. Again.
Look – Mary understands perfectly that science is a series of failures. It’s been in every scientific philosophy class she’s been forced to take: science is all about falsifiability; attempts to disprove. Experiments are most interesting when they go awry.
But, she thinks bitterly to herself, she probably should have picked a different avenue in which to express her intelligence, because failure doesn’t really sit right with her. Her high school teachers were right – law would’ve been a better choice. Even she can admit her morality is fluid – and after all, she can argue her way out of anything.
Well, except the results sitting, completely off-base, in front of her.
Science forces her to fail. And she hates it – but she’s not that oblivious. She knows why she’s in it. She knows why she’s in genetics. She knows exactly why she’s desperately searching for a viable genomic mismatch scanning technique – and, currently, completely screwing it up.
When you encounter a particular kind of brilliance at a young age, no other ever genuinely appeals. So sure – she would’ve excelled at law, or politics, or business, but none of it would have meant anything. Really, there was no option other than his.
Well, zero, again. Her mental counter’s still ticking, though she’s less aware of it recently. She’s been exceptionally busy the past few weeks trying to get everything organized for her hybridization trials – and now, the fruits thereof lie pathetic and incorrect in front of her.
“Shit.” She says, resigned. She leans her elbows on the table, face in her hands.
“Not what you were hoping for?”
The male voice makes her start, and she lifts her head to glance up. Khakis and polo shirt under a white lab coat, sleek clipboard, smarmy grin – great. Valiantly, she refrains from rolling her eyes at Patrick Brown.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” she responds, standing up and starting to clear away her equipment.
Patrick shrugs, placing his clipboard too close to her materials. “You were distracted by your results. Which, ah,” he glances across the table. “Don’t look too promising.”
Why Yale? Why this school full of endlessly pretentious trust fund brats?! Why here?!
“Looks can be deceiving,” Mary snaps, grabbing the papers and placing them in her folder. Of course Patrick Brown would be working on the same damn thing as her – she did pick it first, but that counts for nothing if he’s the one to make it work.
“You know,” Patrick says in a conspiratorial tone, as if he’s bestowing a grand secret upon her, “you’ve got no hold. You need a base set of DNA to work from.”
Mary’s inner monologue screams at his arrogance while her brain frantically runs through her method – and damn it: he’s right. Is it that simple?!
“How’s yours going?” she asks, more out of self-preservation than curiosity, as she starts packing her bag.
“Oh,” he smiles, clicking his pen. “Worked the past three times. Just here for some fine-tuning.”
Shit.
“Relax,” Kris holds out the bottle for her to take it. “It’s going to be fine.”
“What are you talking about?!” Mary snaps. “That idiot figured it out before me! I’m going to have to pick an entirely new angle for my thesis. Trelawney’s going to have my head on a platter – he’s been vouching for me since I started and fucking Patrick Brown --- ”
“Mary!” Kristen shouts, cutting her off. She waves the vodka in Mary’s stunned face. “Take a fucking drink, will you?! It’s going to be fine.”
They’re sitting on Kristen’s balcony, sun setting; drained vodka-lemonade on Mary’s coaster, fresh one on Kristen’s. If she was in a better mood, Mary would be noting the scent of lilac that keeps floating up to them on the breeze, the lush green of New Haven’s trees – but she’s furious. And Kristen’s laissez-faire perspective – not to mention the booze – has a lot more work to do before that changes.
“You know what,” Kristen sighs, unscrewing the cap. “I’ll just do it myself.” She tops Mary off, generously, and reaches into the cooler at their feet for the lemonade. “You need to calm down, kid,” Kris continues. “Can you really not continue the research? Wasn’t your technique different from shitwad’s anyway?”
Mary smiles despite herself and shrugs, accepting the drink. “Sort of. But it doesn’t matter. Awards and funding don’t go to second place.”
“Jesus,” Kris splashes extra vodka into her glass. “Here’s to the chaotic hell of literature. The science world is a shitshow. So what are your options?”
Mary drinks, deeply, then sighs. “Well, I had a meeting with Trelawney scheduled Thursday anyway, so I guess I’ll ask him then.”
“Do you have any thoughts?” Kristen stretches her legs out in anticipation of a long answer she’ll only half-understand.
Someone shouts something incomprehensible as Mary’s gaze drops to her drink. It’s Friday, spring, and gorgeous – the night’s just beginning, and not only for the two of them on the balcony. “I don’t know.” A surprised cough gets lodged in Kristen’s throat, and Mary’s eyes dart over. “What?”
“Sorry,” Kristen sips her drink, wiping her eyes, a light taunt in her voice. “I just can’t believe you don’t know the next step.”
An eye roll and an almost-smile, and Mary drinks again. “I’ll figure it out.”
“I bet you will,” Kristen says, “and it’ll be a fucking disaster for Patrick Brown in the process.”
Mary shrugs. If she had her way, Patrick Brown would be strung from the rafters, violently, with that shit-eating smile finally wiped off his face; but that’s too much, isn’t it? So: “I can’t believe we were allowed to both be working on the same thing, honestly. It was a disaster from day one.”
“Well, that’s Yale for ya, ain’t it?” Kris gestures vaguely, bitterly, towards campus. “Pit the best and brightest against each other as fervently as possible with as much at stake as fathomable and just go, man, just go go go. Rip out their throats, boys and girls, leave no one unscathed – you’re Yalies.”
“Can I ask you something?” Mary reaches for the vodka; she’s not finished her drink, but the sun’s about set and the dark is sparking electric.
“Obviously,” Kristen tips her glass in Mary’s direction, expecting a top-off.
“Why'd you even apply to Yale if you hate it so much?”
Kris barks out a laugh, then snaps her mouth shut. “Oh come on, Mare. Short answer: I knew I could get in.”
“Long answer?”
“There isn’t one.” Kristen glances out at the undergrads making the most of their last weekends of the semester. “Any university would have its share of pretentious fuckwits, y’know? And the name looks good.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“What about you?” Kristen turns in her seat, curling her legs beneath her. “I mean, I know some of the story – ” Mary’s head snaps so quickly towards her that Kristen stops. “Just what you’ve told me. New England family royalty?”
Oh, right. That is what she told her. A lie, way back when they were first getting to know each other. I’m a legacy; this school has generations of my family in its pages. Crawford’s an easy name to find.
“That’s not exactly true.”
“Excuse me?!” Kris leans her head forward.
“It’s not exactly true,” Mary reaches out to put a hand on Kris’ arm. “I didn’t know you yet.”
“Well, get explaining,” Kristen feigns hurt, dramatically knocking back her vodka.
You’re doing this? No need for a deep breath. “My dad had a friend when I was growing up, and they worked together so he was over a lot.” Mary carefully calculates her pauses; one too long might add more significance than she’s prepared to explain right now, one too short implies there’s something to rush past. “He was Yale royalty. I don’t know if he was a legacy, but he had massive clout with the Science faculty. So…it made sense.” There. Just enough to whet an appetite, but not enough to suggest –
“Uh,” Kristen’s eyebrows are in the middle of her forehead. “You’re going to have to elaborate on that a little more, darling.”
Shit. “What do you mean?”
Kristen clears her throat. “Okay, for starters – who is this guy that can singlehandedly affect a Yale admissions committee?” She’s ticking of items on her fingers. Shit. Mary drinks deep. “Why do you care where he went? Why would it make sense to go to Yale just because he did? What history does your family have with him that he’d be willing to go to bat for you?”
Mary’s silent, staring.
“Don’t try to gloss past shit with a Lit student,” Kristen tilts her head with a winking smirk.
She can salvage this. “What do you want me to answer first?”
“The first one.” The sun is setting fast. “Who the hell is he?”
No deep breath necessary. “Chet Wakeman,” Mary answers, his name in her mouth shooting thrills through her body. “He did his undergrad here in Biochemistry, in the sixties, then did some genuinely groundbreaking work in genetics in grad school.”
“And then all that top-secret government jazz with your dad,” Kristen starts putting pieces together, thanks to previous alcohol-infused conversations.
“Right,” Mary confirms. “And until recently he was in California making a mint in biotech.”
“So…a big science deal,” realization dawns on Kristen, “like Harold-Bloom big.”
“Bigger,” Mary isn’t sure it’s true; she knows nothing about literary criticism, but getting out of this conversation intact requires it.
“Okay, decent networking connection,” Kristen acknowledges, “but that’s really all?”
“That’s it,” Mary shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “I hated Brown, and I knew if I had a letter from him I could get into Yale.”
No, no, no: no. You desperately tried to get into Yale for your undergrad without telling him, wanted to do it on your own so you could show him you were on the same level, and when that rejection letter came you broke. Brown became your first choice, had always been your first choice, but it was horrible and there was nothing for you there and when it came time for grad school it was the last chance you had to show him and so you sucked it up and made that call and –
Here you are.
“Well,” Kristen’s eyes are a bit clouded, but Mary ignores it, “To both of us knowing we could get into Yale.”
Cheers. Drink. Repeat.
Where... Mary’s eyes open, suddenly: she’s standing straight, leaning on the balcony. Head spinning. What time is it? She tries to step away but holding the rail seems like a really good idea, right now, so – she stays still. Fuck. She’s drunk, like she hasn’t been since New Year’s.
“Mare, come back!” Kristen is shouting from inside. She sounds like she’s lying down. “You can’t leave on that!”
“Leave on what?” Mary slurs under her breath, drawing a complete blank. What had they been talking about? What time is it? No one’s outside. The moon is shining white and the sky seems warm; Mary turns her face to the heat. Stumbles. The door falls open against her weight. Kristen is on her back on the living room carpet, the bottle empty beside her.
“Good,” Kris says, opening her eyes as she hears Mary come in. “C’mere n’ lie down.”
Mary obliges, kneeling, then lying carefully on her side. She wants to sleep. She’s so tired. What did she leave on? “What were we talking about?” she asks, gingerly, trying to enunciate.
“You w’r gonna tell me about who – who keeps fucking you over in your...” Kris trails. “Your pretty li’l head. All the time.”
“What?”
Kristen groans and rolls over, making bleary eye contact with Mary. “Who th’fuck is this guy you're so 'bsessed with, Mary?”
Oh, no. “I – ”
“Y’ve been putting this off and off but you gotta tell me,” Kristen says, a note of seriousness under the vodka. “You can’t keep hiding it anymore.”
It’s the alcohol. She has to blame the alcohol. Why else would she be opening her mouth, heart thrilling, and saying: “Chet.”
It’s out.
The first time she’s said it to anyone, in all the decade she’s been feeling it: Chet Wakeman stitches her together. She is chaos, flying parts, without the thought of him. He has drawn her path, pressed her whole, without even realizing what he’s done.
And now –
“The – the guy who wrote your letter?” Kristen seems to sober; props herself up on an elbow. “The...”
“Yeah,” Mary can’t quite meet her eyes. She turns onto her back, feeling let loose. “Him.” It’s getting too hot. And she can’t go back on this now – it’s out, it’s said, and shit – the reality of it is vivifying.
“D’you...do you see him often?” Kristen sounds wary; concerned.
“No,” Mary squeezes her eyes shut, raising a fist to press against her forehead. “Never. The last time was...years. I was nineteen, maybe. It got...too hard.”
“He’s married?”
A natural assumption, but: “No.” But I thought – I thought. I thought there was something between us. And nothing came of it. And it tore my heart to see him and know he wasn’t...
“Wh...” Kristen sits up. “He’s gotta be...old, though.”
“Older than me,” Mary retorts. “Yeah. In his 40s.”
“Shit.”
They’re quiet. An old Bowie record in the background. Mary is trying not to move, not to engage in any physical sense with the reality at her disposal, as if she could stop it from playing out, pull everything back into her head where it was safe, where it made sense –
It sounds so ridiculous to say it out loud.
“Do you...” Kristen seems almost stone sober, now; perhaps in comparison. “Do you think you have a chance, Mare?”
Something tickles the back of her throat. This is just fucking fine, isn’t it: cut to the quick, there, Kristen – who can’t know how many times Mary has asked herself that same damn question, silently, running four-year-old memories on loop, was that glance just a fraction too long, did it mean something, has she ever meant anything? “God. Of course not,” she whispers, shaking her head, trying to sound flippant but for the first time she knows –
I can’t possibly.
“Then...why do you do this to yourself?” Gently. Mary opens her fist; covers her eyes. “What’s the point?”
Oh the point, you ask? The point. The point is she knows nothing. She’s a waste of DNA. She has the genetic potential to be a goddamn queen and she’s running herself into the wall, over and over, because she doesn’t have the knowledge base of her pathetic father and his...friend. And if she had that – if she could just crack into that secret, if she had any idea – something else would happen. She’d flourish. She knows it.
She always flourished when he told her what possibilities might come. And it would be so easy to brush it off as hero worship, but she knows it’s not that – it’s something that arcs and leaps between their bodies when they are in the same room, that drives her fascinations and dreams when they aren’t. And they aren’t, anymore – they aren’t anything. And that’s harder to deny than ever.
But the point is: hold to him. Because he’s her way up. Somehow.
Except it’s starting to seem less. And less. And less like a possibility, and more like an excuse to get shitfaced and ignore her actual problems. Her family is in shambles, her thesis is a disaster, she’s wasting every iota of her potential, but if she can be focused on, desperate for, a man who hasn’t been in touch in months –
“Running on fumes,” Mary mumbles.
“Huh?”
Mary opens her eyes and sits up. Deep breath. “There is no point,” she says, sharply. Traps closing around her words. “This ends. Tonight.”
The hangover lasted a full day: Mary and Kristen watched bad movies and drank club soda, successfully avoiding vomit, if not conversation. To Mary’s utter humiliation, Kristen remembered everything – and pressed. The story came out, in its Cliff-notes version: everything too charged to be normal. Where could this possibly go? Kristen asked, and Mary couldn’t answer.
But she went home that night plainly certain: it can’t continue. This obsession is interfering not only with her present, but with her future. Thank god the meeting with Trelawney hadn’t been the next day – she would have been a vodka-soaked mess, and Mary Crawford is not a vodka-soaked fucking mess. She can’t be. But he does this to her – unequivocally, exclusively, him.
The breeze against her back stops suddenly as she enters the building housing Trelawney’s office. As she starts up the staircase, she shivers; the heat is off, and it’s much chillier outside than it was Tuesday.
“Ms. Crawford!” Trelawney’s British accent rings down the hall as she enters his office. “Right on time.”
Mary smiles, reaches to shake his hand. “How are you, Alan?”
“I'm well, thanks,” he returns the smile warmly, going back to his armchair. His portly, elderly body rests comfortably in the cushions. “Have a seat. Thanks for coming.”
“I actually,” Mary sits gingerly on the other chair, “was hoping to speak to you about my lab results.”
“Sure, sure,” Trelawney looks distracted, fumbling through a pile of colour-coded folders on the end table beside him. “But before that, I have something...” he selects a red unmarked folder and places it in his lap. “Something rather exciting to propose to you.”
Mary’s taken aback – exciting? For someone who can’t even get a GMS technique together? She maintains a cool expression while confusion crackles at her insides.
“Richard J. Roberts – you’ve heard of him?” Trelawney looks at Mary expectantly.
Mary nods instantly. “Of course. He’s doing amazing work at Oxford – his studies on gene splicing are unbelievable.”
A satisfied smile from Trelawney. “Precisely. Well.” He leans forward, his smile becoming almost conspiratorial. “He’s been looking for students to undertake some work with his most recent theory.”
Her heart stops. “Sorry, do you mean…”
Trelawney nods. “He’s looked through all the profiles of the genetics students at Yale, and he’s very impressed with yours.”
Still no pulse. “Really?”
To be wanted. To be actually wanted to succeed, to excel; to be chosen out from many – and it’s not just Chet she’s thinking of, here; it’s every man that’s stood in her way, every male figure she’s tried to impress, every blood relative ----
“Really,” Trelawney smiles. He shuffles through the papers, double-checking, then closes the folder and hands it to her. “All the information is here. Take a look, at your leisure, and get back to him in the next week. It will, of course, mean moving to London to complete your PhD.”
“Oh,” Mary says, with a mixture of emotion she can’t quite parse, keeping the folder closed. “A transfer?”
“Essentially,” Trelawney replies, “but it’s something we don’t really do unless you’re cherry-picked.”
Mary’s heart flushes.
“It will be taken care of, for you,” he continues. “Just keep me in the loop. Now – what was it about your lab results?”
Ring.
Even the results hadn’t been an issue. Trelawney had waved his hand, suggested another method, and excitedly returned to the topic at hand.
Ring.
Three days later. Extensive conversation with Trelawney, with those she gave a shit about in her cohort, with Kristen. Everyone said the same thing.
Ring.
Take it. Take the opportunity. Only an idiot would turn it down. Go.
So: one last phone call.
“Hello?” A gruff, familiar voice answers the phone.
“Hi, Dad,” Mary says primly.
“Mary?” Eric sounds mildly surprised to hear from her. “Is everything alright?”
“Better than alright, actually.” Something slides open in her: this is exciting, and she wants to rub all of it in his face. “I have some pretty big news.”
“Really?” Mild curiosity. Has he ever been anything but mild with her?
“I’ve been selected for an exclusive research assistantship,” she can’t help the pride in her voice, and actually – she milks it. “Not one that was publicized or even mentioned, working with one of the top scholars in my field. He’s favoured for the Nobel Prize this year, actually.”
“Congratulations,” Mildly impressed. “Who is it?”
“Dr. Richard Roberts,” Mary waits an intentional beat, “at Oxford.”
Dead silence on the other end.
“Dad?”
“Oxford,” he repeats. “You’d be moving to London?”
“Yes,” she answers, “in August, probably permanently.” And oh that permanently strikes a chord, but she’s done with this; what is there to stay for?
“Hm,” his reaction, as always, is muted to the point of being unreadable.
She waits a moment longer than she otherwise would. “Well, I just wanted to let you know.”
“Mary,” his tone is sharper than usual. “I think we need to speak in person.”
Her exasperation must be evident across states. “Why, Dad? What can’t you say right now?”
“Just…it’s important.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’ve already accepted. I was just calling to – ”
“Trust me.” Her father sounds desperate. Or: mildly so. “You’ll want to hear this. When’s the earliest you can come to Ellsworth?”
What could I possibly want to hear from you? She wants to snap, but inside she’s shrieking with possibility. Is he finally going to let her in?!
“Early June, I guess,” she answers, reaching for her agenda. “Yeah. June 9th would work.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll be in touch.”
Mary hangs up, twisted insides and ---
Zero.
Let me in.