Page 8 of The Botanist's Assistant
Margaret is now sure he’s labeled her a crank.
How many times has that happened in her life? Her ungainly body, her plain face, her fussy ways, seem to invite people to dismiss her. Even in science, where objectivity is supposed to rule, she finds herself being cataloged as odd or unimportant and then ignored. Four months ago, she’d stood in a reception line for a wealthy inventor turned philanthropist, practicing what she would say to the famous man. When she’d put out her hand, however, and said, “Your advances in electron microscopy have changed the face of science, sir,” he’d turned to the next person in line—a young and attractive postdoc—and said, “And what’s your name?” as ifMargaret had neverspoken. Margaret is a large person. Would he have missed a Sasquatch standing in front of him? Would he have been offended by a compliment regarding his contribution to knowledge? Margaret thought not.
“You should also know there’s a bottle of atropine, which is extracted from theAtropa belladonnaplant, in the locked cabinet in our lab,” Margaret continues.
“As I said, why don’t we let the coroner handle this?” Bianchi says. “The university and I want a finding as much as you apparently do. Right now, however, it’s pretty clear from what’s been said by your colleague and his wife that Professor Deaver’s heart defect may have finally caught up with him. My grandpa died the same way. He was watching the Bears play the Packers, stood up to get another beer and, boom, he was gone. Hit his head too. Just like your boss.”
“But what about the other things I mentioned? The Diet Coke, which he never drinks, the note on his computer indicating a possible appointment. Plus, the missing cocktail glass.” Margaret is feeling desperate. “Do you think someone would feel their heart start to beat wildly and take the time to wash out a glass and put it away somewhere? That makes no sense. Someone else must have been there.”
“Our investigation is underway, Ms. Finch.” Bianchi now sounds as if he’s explaining quantum physics to a nursing home patient. “We’re doing all we can. There are procedures and protocols that must be followed. It’s not like on TV. We can’t wrap everything up in sixty minutes, which is what everybody expects now. You need to be patient and let us do our job.”
“But you’ll look intoAtropa belladonna, won’t you?”Margaret asks, but the only reply is the sound of empty air. Bianchi has hung up.
“Well,” Margaret says.
She reaches into the pocket of her skirt and pulls out a small black notebook.
It looks as if she may have to do this herself.
6
Taking Note
Margaret pencils the date inthe notebook,March 14, and writes:5:15 a.m. Realized possibility of A. belladonna (atropine) poisoning due to condition of J. Deaver’s fully dilated pupils and appearance of office. Overturned items, jacket on floor, partially unbuttoned shirt, windows open despite cool weather, Diet Coke bottle. Where did cocktail glass go?
Margaret has been keeping this kind of daily data log for thirty-four years, ever since the day she destroyed not only her life but the lives of those around her.
It happened the summer after her sophomore year of college. She’d come home, so intent on becoming a research scientist that she’d brought with her a stack of books on chemistry, biochemistry and plant identification, which her biology instructor had recommended. Reading books in the noisy, two-bedroom, one-bath house her family rented, however, was like settling down with a book inside a glass-recycling warehouse.
Her mother, June, was never a quiet person. A groundskeeper at one of the town’s several gated developments, she’dreturn home dirty, tired, and grouchy after a long day of mowing grass, trimming bushes and spreading fertilizer. It was hard work and not without its dangers—two years earlier she’d toppled off a ladder and broken her arm.
She’d clang her hard hat onto the kitchen table and shout, “Where’s dinner?” which would usually set off a loud round of expletives and, sometimes, thrown objects between her and her second husband, Gordie, whose chore it was to cook. Finally, he’d relent and heat up cans of soup or roar off to get pizza.
Gordie, whose sporadic employment had landed him the kitchen duties, spent most of his days either riding or working on the half dozen Harley-Davidson motorcycles he kept in the garage. He was a bearded, beefy man with a coat of dark hair covering most of his body. He favored muscle T-shirts, Levi’s jeans and heavy leather boots. His voice was as loud as the mufflers he modified on his bikes. Similarly noisy men clomped around the garage and through the house most days. He was always going off on beer runs. Grocery runs, not so much.
Margaret’s sister, the fourteen-year-old Grace, only added to the din and chaos of the home. She was obsessed with fashion, beauty and music in that order and ran with a group of girls who smoked, used so much eyeliner they resembled a herd of raccoons and seemed almost proud of their terrible grades—unlike Margaret, who had always been a straight-A student.
Grace would blast music and dance around the house when Gordie’s biker friends were around, trying to charm them out of cigarette money and sneaking sips of their beer.If Margaret so much as mentioned that she should hang around people her own age, Grace would spit, “You’re just jealous because you’re not pretty,” and turn the music even louder.
Margaret decided that, when she was on her own, she would live in a house so quiet and neat, the only thing she’d hear would be birdsong.
When the terrible thing happened, however, Margaret longed for the chaos and noise to return. She’d started her data notebook right then, penciling in all the details of the day that she could remember. Perhaps she could fix what was broken. It turned out she couldn’t. Still, she’d continued the practice. There was a cardboard box full of the little notebooks in a corner of her closet.
She’d tried to stop a few times, reminding herself that she’d never been called on to report the exact time of something important, a bomb explosion or bank robbery, for instance. She didn’t live that kind of life. Yet, not recording the daily data made her feel anxious, like her skin no longer fit right.
Besides, wasn’t that what scientists did? Record data?
She pauses, then takes up her pencil again.
March 14, 9:07 a.m. Informed Officer Bianchi of poison possibility. Requested toxicology screen.
Maybe this time it will help.
7
The Laugh
Later that morning, they fileinto an amphitheater-style lecture hall, the professors seating themselves in the front rows, with the staff, postdocs and grad students filling the seats behind them. In a university, everybody knew exactly where they stood in the college hierarchy and, thus, exactly where they should sit.
