Ann Patchett: State of Wonder

“And the problem is that this drug which you’ve been saying for a year now is all but sitting on the doorstep of the FDA doesn’t exist? It’s not that Dr. Swenson isn’t bringing it back from Brazil. You’re saying there’s nothing to bring back.” Mr. Fox was too old for her. He was five years younger than her mother, a point her mother would have been the first person to bring up had Marina been inclined to tell her about the relationship.

“I don’t know that. That was the purpose of the trip. We needed more information.”

“So you sent Anders out on some sort of reconnaissance mission? Anders Eckman? How was he qualified for that?”

“He was meant to be our ambassador. He wasn’t hiding anything, there was nothing to hide. His job was to explain to Dr. Swenson the importance of her finishing her portion of the project. Since she’s been down there she’s disconnected herself, from—” Mr. Fox stopped and shook his head. The list was too long. “Everything. I’m not entirely sure she possesses a concept of time.”

“How long ago did you last hear from her?”

“Not counting today’s letter?” He stopped to do the math in his head though Marina suspected he was only stalling. “It’s been twenty-six months.”

“Nothing? In over two years you’ve heard nothing? How is that possible?” What she meant was how was it possible he had let this go so far but that was not how he heard the question.

“She doesn’t seem to feel she’s accountable to the people who have been funding her work. I’ve given her a kind of latitude that any other drug company would have laughed at, and should laugh at. That’s why she agreed to come with us. Her money is deposited monthly into an account in Rio as per our original agreement. I’ve paid to have a research station built and I don’t even know where it is. We sent the whole thing down on a barge, freezers and tin siding, roofs and doors, more generators than you could imagine. We sent everything to set up a fully operating lab and she met the barge in Manaus and got on board and took it down the river herself. None of the workers were ever able to remember where they dropped things off.”

“If Anders found it, it wouldn’t be impossible to find.” Dr. Swenson would never see herself as accountable to Vogel, any more than she would think of herself as working for them. She might develop a drug for the purposes of her own curiosity or the interest of science, but it would never occur to her that her work was the property of the people who signed the checks. Anyone who had spent a thoughtful hour in her presence could have figured that much out. “So pull the plug. Cut the money off and wait until she comes out.”

Mr. Fox, who had been holding the remaining and mostly full glass of scotch an inch off the table, now set it down. The look on his face meant to say that she understood none of it. “The project needs to be completed, not abandoned.”

“Then it won’t be abandoned.” Marina closed her eyes. She wanted to sink into the red wine, to swim in it. “The truth is I don’t want to talk about Dr. Swenson or Vogel or drug development anymore. I know I’m the one who brought it up but I was wrong. Let’s just give the day to Anders.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Mr. Fox said in a tone that was free of concession. “This isn’t the time to talk about it, and tomorrow won’t be either, nor will the day after that. But since the day is rightfully Anders’ I’ll tell you this: in finding Dr. Swenson we not only have the chance to solve Vogel’s problems, but we could resolve some of the questions about Anders’ death as well.”

“What questions?”

“Believe me,” he said, “there will be questions.”

She wondered then if he felt it too, that the blame would come to him eventually. “You’re not going to Brazil,” she said.

“No,” he said.

It was this terrible light that made him look old, the scotch and the heavy weight of the day. She wanted them to leave now, and when they got back to Eden Prairie she would take him home with her. She blamed him for nothing. She leaned across the table of this dark, back booth and took his hand. “The president of the company doesn’t go off to Brazil.”

“There is nothing inherently dangerous about the Amazon. It’s a matter of precautions and good sense.”

“I’m sure you’re right but that doesn’t mean that you should go.”

“I promise you, I’m not going. Annick Swenson wouldn’t listen to me. I realize now she’s never listened to me, not in the meetings, the agreement letters, the contracts. I’ve been writing to her ever since she left — no e-mail, no texting, she does none of that. I sit down and put it all on paper. I’ve been very clear about her obligations and our commitment to the project. There’s been no indication that she reads my letters.”

“So what you need to find is someone she’ll listen to.”

“Exactly. I didn’t think that through when I sent Anders. He was affable and bright, and he seemed to want to go, which counted for a lot. I only thought it needed to be someone from Vogel, someone who wasn’t me.”

Oh, Anders! To have been sent off on a mission you were never right for. To be regarded after your death as an error of judgment. “So now you’ll find the right person.”

“You,” he said.

Marina felt a small jolt in the hand he was holding, as if something sharp had briefly stabbed through him and into her. She took back her hand and rubbed it quickly.

“She knows you,” he said. “She’ll listen. I should have asked you in the first place. You were the board’s choice, and I made the case against you. I told them I had asked you and you had refused. It was selfishness on my part. This time we’ve spent together—” He looked up at her now but for both of them it felt almost unbearable and so he dropped his eyes. “It’s been important to me. I didn’t want you going off. That’s my guilt, Marina, sending Anders instead of you, because you would have gotten it done.”

“But he died ,” she said. She didn’t want to turn back the clock and choose between Anders and herself, to think about which one of them was more expendable in life’s greater scheme. She was sure she knew the answer to that one. “You would have rather it had been me?”

“You wouldn’t have died.” He was utterly clear on this point. “Whatever Anders did, it was careless. He wasn’t eaten by a crocodile. He had a fever, he was sick. If you were sick you would have the sense to get on a plane and come home.”

Marina didn’t approve of the introduction of culpability on Anders’s part. It was bad enough that he was dead without it being his fault. “Let’s leave poor Anders out of this for a minute if we can.” She tried to grab hold of logic. “The flaw in your argument is that you think I know Dr. Swenson. I haven’t seen her in—” Marina stopped, had it been that long? “Thirteen years. I know her thoughts on reproductive endocrinology and to a lesser extent gynecological surgery, and not even her current thoughts on either of those things, her thirteen-year-old thoughts. I don’t know her . And as for her knowing me, she doesn’t. She didn’t know me then and there is no reason to think she would suddenly know me now. She wouldn’t remember my name, my face, my test scores.” Would Dr. Swenson know her? She saw Dr. Swenson raise her eyes to the lecture hall, sweep past the faces of all the students, all the residents, year after year after year. There could be hundreds of them in a single class and over the years that quickly added up to thousands, and yet for a brief time Dr. Swenson knew Marina Singh alone.

“You underestimate yourself.”