Ann Patchett - State of Wonder

Rodrigo said something to Barbara and she squinted at him slightly when he spoke, as if she were translating each word separately and then reassembling them into a sentence in her head.

“Nos?”

“Dr. Swenson,” he said.

“Yes, of course,” Barbara said, looking almost relieved. “You’re looking for Dr. Swenson.”

“People don’t look for us,” Jackie said.

“That’s because nobody knows where we are,” Barbara said, and then she laughed. “That makes it sound like we’re hiding.”

Marina tried to put this couple together in her mind with Dr. Swenson. She tried to picture the three of them standing together in the same room. She could not. “I’ve left letters for you.”

“For us?” Jackie asked. “At the apartment?”

“At Dr. Swenson’s apartment building. I left them at the desk.”

At this point Rodrigo got the ladder and climbed up towards the ceiling to get a box of dryer sheets. The hierarchy in which different items were desired, needed, and sold, could clearly be charted based on what was closest to the ceiling and what was closest to the floor. Dryer sheets appeared to be hovering on the edge of obscurity for everyone in Manaus save Barbara Bovender.

“All the mail goes straight into a box,” Jackie said. “Annick picks it up when she comes into town.”

“Or she doesn’t,” Barbara said. “She isn’t very good about the mail. I’ve told her I’d open it for her, sort it all out, but she says not to bother. I think at the heart of it she just doesn’t care.”

Jackie turned then to face his wife. Was she his wife? The Bovenders could have been siblings or cousins. The general resemblance they bore to one another was striking. “She has a lot on her mind.”

Barbara nodded, half closing her eyes, as if she were considering all the many weights Dr. Swenson had to bear. “It’s true.”

“We have a postbox,” Jackie said. “That way when we get to the next town they’ll forward it on.”

“Are you leaving?” Marina asked.

“Oh, we will, sooner or later,” Barbara said. She looked over at Rodrigo who now had the box of dryer sheets in his hand. “We’re always leaving. We’ve stayed here longer than anywhere.”

Somehow Marina was hoping she didn’t mean Manaus. She couldn’t imagine how she would last out the week. “In Brazil?”

“No, here,” Jackie said, and held up his open hand as if he meant to say that they had spent an endless stretch of time in Rodrigo’s store.

Barbara then got a serious look on her face and tilted the slender rack of her shoulders towards Marina. “Do you know Annick?”

Marina hesitated so briefly that neither of the young people saw it. “I do,” she said.

“Well, then you know. Her work is so important—”

Jackie interrupted her. “And she’s been really good to us, my God.”

“It’s not like I think we’re helping her,” Barbara said. “We’re not scientists. But if she thinks we’re helping her, if there’s anything we can do to contribute, then it’s not a problem for us to stay for a while. It’s not a problem for me anyway. I can do my work anywhere. It’s really harder for Jackie.”

“What do you do?” Marina said, using the pronoun in the plural.

“I’m a writer,” Barbara said.

Jackie raised his hand and ran his open fingers through his hair. “I surf,” he said.

Harder, yes. Marina thought about the bath-warm water of the Rio Negro inching along towards the Rio Solimões so that they could flow together into the Amazon. She was planning to ask him something about this, how surfing constituted work or how he planned to solve the current problems of his employment, when the only other person she knew in Manuas came through the open door. When Milton saw the three of them together he was extremely pleased. He had left his suit in the closet at home and was dressed for the weather. All his light cotton clothes were neatly pressed. “Perfect!” he said. “You found each other without me.”

Marina extended her hand to the driver. Because she knew him to be a problem solver she was especially glad to see him again. “I was just out taking a walk.”

“A bad time of day for walking but this is very good,” Milton said. “I am relieved. I have been telling them to go to your hotel.”

Jackie had wandered off to pick up the store’s lone can of tennis balls. It seemed that there was nothing Rodrigo hadn’t thought of. Barbara in turn shot her eyes to Milton who seemed startled by the severity of her glance. “I’m sorry,” he said, before he knew what he might be apologizing for.

Barbara sighed and tried to brush a medium-sized insect off the front of her sundress. It was hard-shelled and black and the tiny spikes on its legs held stubbornly to the fabric but she seemed not to notice any of this. She put her thumb beneath her index finger and gave the bug a single, dislodging flick. “You’ll forgive me,” she said to Marina, who imagined she would. “Part of what we try to do is keep Annick hidden — from the press that comes down, from other doctors and drug companies trying to steal her work. You never know who someone really is no matter what they tell you.”

“I am terribly sorry,” Milton said.

“The press comes here?” Marina said.

Barbara looked at her. “Well, they will once they hear about her research. They did before we got here. What really matters is that people shouldn’t distract her. Even people with very good intentions.” She was trying to be firm but she lacked experience.

“Dr. Singh works for Vogel,” Milton said in an attempt to make up for his indiscretion. “She and Dr. Swenson are employed by the same company. They sent her here to—” He looked at Marina but he had to stop there. She hadn’t told him why they’d sent her.

“Vogel”—she looked at Marina—“I’m sorry but that is my point exactly. Vogel is the worst. All they want to know is what her progress is. How can she be expected to do her work if she’s constantly being monitored? This is science. This may change the course of everything. She can’t just stop and meet people. Do you know that you’re the second doctor that Vogel’s sent to see her since Christmas?”

“I do,” Marina said. If she were in any way inclined to have compassion for the girl she would have stopped her then, but at the moment she did not. Jackie had come back now and he kept the can of tennis balls in his hand. Maybe he wanted them. Maybe he knew a court nearby where they could play.

“You know Dr. Eckman?”

“We worked together.”

Barbara shrugged her pretty shoulders which were gold along the tops and gold down her arms. “Well, if he’s a friend of yours, I’m sorry. He’s a perfectly nice guy but he was a huge distraction. He hung around here forever, always asking questions, always wanting to go along. He was a distraction to my work. I can’t even imagine what he must have been like for Annick.”

“He took me birding,” Jackie said.

“I tried to explain to him that Annick didn’t have the time, but he wasn’t going to go until he saw her. She finally came and picked him up. For all I know he’s still out there.”

“He isn’t,” Marina said. “Or he is. He’s dead.” It wasn’t the girl’s fault of course, not any of it, but Marina found her sadness transposed itself easily into anger.

Jackie put down the tennis balls then and took Barbara’s hand in a gesture of sympathy or solidarity. She watched the color drain from the girl, from her face, her neck, all the blood was rushing to her heart. Even the gold receded from her shoulders.

“Dr. Swenson buried him at the research station where she works. She told us that in a letter. She sent us very little information about his death, but, as you say, she’s busy. Dr. Eckman’s wife wanted me to come down to see if I could find out what happened. She wants to know what she should tell their children.”