Page 49 of The Botanist's Assistant
“I’ll just have water,” she tells Veronica Ann.
The inside of the house is just as Margaret might have imagined. It is both sleek and tasteful, with vaulted ceilings, beautiful Scandinavian-style furniture and interesting art.She especially likes the living wall of staghorn fern, dracaena, peperomia, palm and ivy that graces the dining area.
Veronica Ann tosses her gardening gloves by the front door and walks across the blond hardwood floor to a built-in bar. She pulls the band from her ponytail and shakes her hairloose. If it wasn’t for her thinness, she would be a very attractive woman.
“Sit anywhere,” she orders, and Margaret chooses an armless leather chair, which, for all its apparent handsomeness, is astonishingly uncomfortable. How to get up and change seats without proving Veronica Ann’s statement about her fussing over details as Dr. Deaver did?
Margaret squirms in an attempt to find a more comfortable position but the chair is as unyielding as a rock. Veronica Ann arrives with Margaret’s water in one hand and what looks to be a gin and tonic in the other.
Veronica Ann drops onto a white couch with a low back. “Now,” she says, “what’s this about Neville?”
Margaret holds the glass of water, unable to decide whether to risk a sip. She really is thirsty, but she can’t get the idea of the poison garden out of her mind. She wipes moisture from the bottom of the glass, sets it on the hardwood floor and relates the whole story: the need for more samples to complete work necessary to submit Dr. Deaver’s paper and Neville saying he was only collecting the leaves because Veronica Ann had asked him and now wanted to charge fifty dollars a leaf, a sum the lab could not afford.
Veronica Ann takes a small blue pill from a cloisonné box on the end table next to her and swallows it with a large gulpof her drink, but not before Margaret glimpses the slight smile of pleasure at Neville’s threat. Margaret is pretty sure now there is something between Veronica Ann and Neville, some untold story. Perhaps Dr. Deaver isn’t the only one who may have strayed.
“So, I was hoping you might email Neville and tell himthat you would appreciate it if he kept our earlier agreement and supplied us with leaves at the former rate,” Margaret concludes.
Veronica Ann’s reply is as sharp and loud as a hammer driving a nail into wood. “No.”
“No?”
How could a scientist not support scientific research even if her husband was trying to divorce her?
Veronica Ann finishes her drink in one long pull and goes back to the bar to make herself another. Either the woman is as thirsty as Margaret is or the downing of multiple drinks in quick succession is something she regularly does. And what kind of pill did she just take? Usually pills and drinking are not a good combination. Margaret’s freshman college roommate proved that point by washing down several diazepam with tequila shots one evening and had to have her stomach pumped.
Margaret licks her dry lips and addresses Veronica Ann’s profile as the woman prepares another cocktail. “I’m sure Dr. Deaver must have told you how important those leaves are to the work we are doing. That a compound in the leaves binds to cells’ cytoskeletons and prevents them from dividing, which has implications for cancer treatment.”
Margaret’s explanation is drowned out by the loudscooping of fresh ice into Veronica Ann’s glass. She then pours gin until the glass is nearly full, adds a splash of tonic and squeezes in a slice of lime. She turns.
“I know all that. I’m a chemist, remember. In fact, I was the one who mentioned the possibility of the leaves containing a bicyclic peptide to Jon.” She comes back to the couchand takes a long draw from her drink. “He came home one night with this ridiculous story about some professor who brushed against the bush and ended up melting down in front of a hundred and fifty people. I said that I wondered if the bush’s compound had any relation toUrtica dioicaor toKerria japonicaand what its properties might be and he rushed back to the lab.” She shrugs. “I know what the research means, and still: no. I won’t help you get the leaves.”
For a woman who likes her life simple and ordered, Margaret’s last two weeks have been anything but that. Surprises have come like machine-gun fire. Now it seems Veronica Ann Deaver—rather than Blackstone or even Dr. Deaver—may have been the one to realize the potential of the stinging bush. In one way, Margaret is relieved and in another way she is shocked. Why wouldn’t Dr. Deaver credit his wife for the idea that led to his discovery?
“Dr. Deaver never mentioned the idea for our research came from you,” Margaret says, thinking Veronica Ann has every right to be angry.
“Of course he didn’t.” The woman takes another long drink, then rattles the ice cubes in her glass. Her words are beginning to slur. “If there’s one thing Jon loved, it was the spotlight. He needed the attention. He needed to be adored. It’s why I decided there wouldn’t be a funeral. To sit there andhave to listen to people go on and on about what a saint he was, was more than I could stomach. He was certainly smart—one of the most brilliant people I know—and there wasn’t a more competent person in the lab or one who believed in science as a tool to help humanity, but he wasn’t this paragon ofperfection like people thought. He was complicated and needy and often difficult. We were good together until we weren’t.”
“So, you were the one who got the leaves?”
Veronica Ann’s right eyelid twitches and she presses a finger against it.
“Neville and I went to college together. He was my first real boyfriend. We were madly in love but he wanted to go back to Brazil after college to live in a hut in the jungle and I wanted a career. We broke up our senior year and then I met Jon and, well, look at how my career turned out.” She waves her glass at the room. “I’m basically a housewife now.” A final long gulp of her drink. “Neville and I reconnected on an alumni trip I took to the Amazon two years ago and Jon persuaded me to ask him to supply the leaves. Then Jon filed for divorce. He was going to ruin me. You know he had a mistress, right?”
Margaret wishes she didn’t have to know what she was about to know. “Lillie?”
“Of course not. Jon wasn’t an idiot.”
The answer is a relief but a small one.
“He was going to leave me and take everything. The only thing he cared about was himself and his research. He accused me of not supporting him when that’s all I did. I gave up everything for that bastard.” Veronica Ann crashes herempty glass down on the end table next to the cloisonné box and stands. She sways as if she might fall backward, then steadies herself with one hand on the couch’s armrest. Her eyes are unfocused.
“I don’t care what other people think,” Veronica Ann says. “I’m glad he’s dead.”
She blinks a few times, then weaves off toward a long hallway. She lifts a hand as if about to shoo away an annoying fly. “I’m going to lie down. You can let yourself out. And don’t come back.”
With that, Margaret is alone in Dr. Deaver’s house, questions filling her mind and a feeling of dread building in her chest.
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