Gary Braver - Elixir

Chris turned to Jenny. "Please don't be insulted, but I've really got to get back to the lab. We've got some time-sensitive tests, and my assistant is home in bed with the flu. It's lousy timing, I know."

If Jenny was offended, she didn't let on. In a good-natured voice, she said, "No-o-o problem. You go attend to your tests or whatever. We're here until Sunday. You'll get enough of us. Besides, you're going to save the world from cancer, right?"

"We're hoping."

Bull! Wendy thought. The apricot synthesis was a bust. It was that damned New Guinea flower that he was running back to.

"That's much more important than sitting around chewing the fat," Jenny continued. "Besides, your wife and I have a lot of boring sisterly stuff to catch up on."

"Jenny, listen, I'm sorry. Really. And Abby." He gave her a hug and kissed the baby on the head.

Then he turned and kissed Wendy on the forehead. "Happy birthday," he whispered. "Sorry."

Wendy looked into those impossible eyes and nodded, but she said nothing.

"Get going, get going. You're wasting precious time," Jenny sang out. "And she prefers Abigail."

Artfully, Jenny had let him off.

After a second glass of wine; Wendy felt better, although she was still disappointed and a little hurt that Chris had cut out on her birthday. No other project at the lab had consumed him so much. Nor had given him such profound satisfaction. And that's what bothered her even more than his absence. It was as if he were having an affair with some dark half-sister of Mother Nature.

When the baby was ready to go down, Wendy led them upstairs. She always felt a little self-conscious about her house when Jenny visited. It had that "lived-in" look, while Jenny kept her place obsessively neat-so much so that you felt as if you'd offend the furniture by using it. As they headed to the guest room, Jenny unconsciously straightened out pictures on the wall or rearranged table items. It was more than an aesthetic reflex. Jenny was positively harassed when things were out of place. Even as a child she had manifested an inordinate obsession for order. She would spend hours arranging things in her room-dolls, books, toys. One day when Jenny had nothing to do, Wendy found her at her desk lining the hundreds of seashells they'd collected over the years into a perfect spiral-the smallest ones in the center moving outward to the largest ones.

On the way Wendy showed Jenny the office she had made for herself out of the spare bedroom. Beside a new IBM PC and printer lay the nearly completed manuscript of a mystery novel she was writing. Her dream was to write herself out of Carleton High's English Department where she had been for eighteen years. By now she was burned out and tired of explaining things to kids.

"If I Should Die. Good title," Jenny said, riffling through the manuscript.

It was the first of a trilogy centered on a feisty forensic psychologist. Wendy hadn't thought out the plot of the sequels, but she had the titles: Before I Wake and My Soul to Take.

"You amaze me, Wendy. I can't tell a story at gunpoint."

Wendy chuckled. "I've had those days."

She watched as Jenny flipped through the manuscript. It had been over a year since they had last visited each other. Since her pregnancy, Jenny had put on weight. Yet unlike Wendy, who was still a size eight, Jenny had always been inclined toward plumpness. Because she avoided the aging effects of the sun, her skin was remarkably pale and creamy. She had their mother's deep brown eyes and dark hair which she wore in bangs and straightly cropped about her neck. With her bright round face and green-and-red plaid jumper, she looked like a Christmas pageant choirgirl.

Something on a page caught her eye. "Ceren Evadas! You put that in here."

"The old line about writing what you know."

When they were girls, Wendy would spin stories for Jenny at bedtime. It was how she forged her big-sister role while polishing her storytelling craft. One of the stories was about two girls who invented a secret hideaway where they could go to escape monsters. She named it "Ceren Evadas"-pronouncing it "serene evaders"-an anagram of Andrea's Cave near their summer lodge at Black Eagle Lake in the Adirondacks. Whenever they got the urge, they would whisper "Ceren Evadas," then take off to the cave. At the end of her novel, the heroine took refuge from the bad guys in such a childhood hideaway.

"What a pleasure it must be creating stories and characters and situations. You have complete control-like playing God."

And the good guys win, and bad guys don't, Wendy said to herself. And children don't die of cancer.

"Too bad real life's not like that." Jenny's face seemed to cloud over and she lay the page down.

"Are you okay?" Wendy asked.

"Me, of course, I'm wonderful. Oh, look at all the pictures." Something was bothering her, but Wendy didn't push.

Jenny moved to a small group of old family photos and picked up the one of Sam, Chris's father. He was posed beside Dwight Eisenhower. "How is he doing?"

Wendy shook her head sadly. "He's fading."

Samuel Adam Bacon-onetime American ambassador to Australia, professor of history at Trinity College, and great raconteur-was now living out the rest of his life in a nursing home in West Hartford, Connecticut. Two years ago he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. His mind, once strong and lucid-a mind that had helped draft important trade policies between the United States and the Pacific nations-had begun to bump down the staircase to nothingness.

"Such a shame. How's Chris handling it?"

"As well as can be expected. Sam is only sixty-four." What she didn't mention was that behind Chris's grief lay fear of the same fate. Every time a name slipped his memory or he misplaced his keys he was certain his own mind was going.

They moved into the guest quarters-what used to be Ricky's room. Chris had dug up the old crib from its hiding place in the cellar, reassembled it, and moved it back in for Abigail. While Wendy watched, Jenny changed the baby and tucked her in. Her hair was like fine silk, and she had big, round, inquisitive blue eyes. Wendy took one of Abigail's naked feet and chuckled lightly. "Her toes look like corn niblets," she said, and let her mind trip over the possibilities.

Jenny seemed to read her thoughts. "Why don't you have another one?"

"Because I don't think I'm ready for another baby. I'm not sure I even want another one."

"Wendy, it's been three years. It's time to move on. Time to start afresh. Chris would love to be a father again."

That was true. Since Jenny had gotten pregnant, he had suggested they do the same. "But I am forty-two, you recall."

"That's not old. A woman up the street from us had her first at forty-five. Look what you're missing. Abigail's the best thing that's happened to me."

Of course, Jenny hadn't always felt this way about children, because her first daughter, Kelly, now fifteen, had had problems since age five when her father died. By seven she required professional help. Today she was being treated for depression and drug abuse. Abigail was a second start for Jenny, who for years had declared that she would never have another child. "They just grow up and break your heart," she had said. Then, by accident, she got pregnant and would have sought an abortion had her second husband Ted not protested. For nine months she was nearly dysfunctional with anxiety. Then Abigail was born, and something magically snapped as Jenny embraced motherhood with pure joy.

The baby made a little sigh as she fell asleep. Then while they stood silently over the crib and watched, Jenny said in a voice barely audible, "Kelly tried to kill herself."

"What?"

"She tried to commit suicide."