Page 5 of The Botanist's Assistant
What kind of person talks about sports when a great man is dead?
The officer clears his throat and assumes a serious face. He asks Calvin for his full name, title, birth date and cell phone number, which he records in his notebook. Margaret then supplies her own name, title, birth date and number, but she suspects by the officer’s puff of breath as he writes her information that he’ll never call. For a woman her size, it’s surprising how often people act like she has nothing to say and, sometimes, like she isn’t even there.
“What about next of kin?” the policeman asks Calvin.
“A wife, no kids. The dean’s assistant will have the information at her desk. I need a cigarette anyway. I’ll show you.”
The two men stride off and Margaret is left alone in the hallway, an empty, echoey feeling now building in her chest.
How could such a bright light be snuffed out like that?
How would they carry on?
The image of Professor Deaver’s lifeless body fills Margaret’s mind. He looked so vulnerable, so innocent. So alone. All that beautiful, brilliant energy dissipated, never to be gathered the same way again.
Sudden tears sting Margaret’s eyes and she swallows them away. Crying never helps anything. No, it’s better to stiffen your back and soldier on. She learned that a long time ago.
From outside comes the sharp squawk of a blue jay, as if it,too, is lamenting the loss. Perhaps that is what she should do: let out a screech of unfairness, of shock and of grief. Natureoften has the answer to life’s troubles. Don’t seedlings rise from the ashes of a forest? Don’t herbaceous perennials come back year after year?
Margaret takes a deep, shuddering breath and gives a last look into Dr. Deaver’s sanctum.
What will happen now?
4
Tea and Cookies for One
Margaret is at the sinkwearing a rubber apron, a face shield and gloves. Outside, darkness pushes against the lab windows. Inside, fluorescent lights turn everything sharp and angular. Her eyes burn with exhaustion.
She is finishing up the dishes Zhang neglected, now having to use chromic acid because he’d left the glassware unwashed for so long. She works carefully. More than a few grad students have ignored her instructions and found themselves slinking out of the lab wearing clothes so riddled with acid holes they looked as if they had been attacked by an army of moths.
Margaret has been in the lab since the coroner’s van pulled away with Dr. Deaver’s body. Everyone else has disappeared, gone home or decamped to a nearby tavern, which she heard a grad student mention as she stood numbly watching Dr. Deaver take his last ride from campus. She, however, went back to work. Busyness is how Margaret copes with trouble, with loss and grief and guilt. She’s had lots of practice with it,although it’s not something she talks about to anyone. Her life is nobody’s business.
So far, Margaret has labeled and rearranged bottles of solution into their proper spots, inventoried the lab’s supply of pipette tips and sample jars and is now completing Zhang’s dishwashing chore. She’s just surveying the rack of clean glassware and removing the face shield and rubber apron when someone clears their throat. Margaret turns.
A man is standing just inside the lab door.
He is tall with dark-brown hair and wears a khaki shirt tucked into faded blue jeans. A huge disfiguring scar runs down the side of his face and into his shirt collar.
“Yes?” Margaret asks.
She is too numb, too exhausted, to be frightened.
“Sorry, I didn’t think anybody was going to be here,” the man says. “I can come back.” His forehead creases. Then: “Are you all right, ma’am? Has there been an accident?”
Of course there’s been an accident, Margaret thinks.A genius has died.And who is this man to question her?
“Everything’s fine,” she snaps.
The man seems to consider this.
“Not to contradict, but that’s a lot of blood for being fine.”
The man tilts his head and Margaret looks down. Her lab coat, washed a pristine white each weekend, is covered with large, expressionist smears of blood. Dr. Deaver’s blood.
Before Margaret can wonder where the loud humming is coming from, she feels her legs begin to noodle. All at once, she is sitting on the floor. Someone is crouching near her.
“Let’s lie you down,” a voice says.
