Andrea Barrett - The Middle Kingdom

‘The what?’ I heard one student whisper.

Walter must have heard him too, because he winced at the idea that his new students were already forgetting his old work.

‘A new ecosystem,’ said a woman behind Walter. ‘But not a reservoir and its watershed. Something else.’

Walter looked over his shoulder. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Page. It’s great to see you.’

Page — of course she was there. I’d hardly seen her since the day I’d dropped out of school, but Walter had always made sure that I knew of her progress. She’d returned to his department as an assistant professor, after two years doing a fellowship at Yale, and she’d cut her hair to celebrate her new job. A spiky, asymmetric cut, short and clipped on one side, swinging low across the other cheek. She made me feel old.

‘Page,’ I said. We smiled politely at each other. ‘Good to see you again.’

‘You too,’ she said. She turned and reached behind her, seizing the arm of a young man who was gazing out the window. ‘Have you met Hank Dwyer?’ she asked. ‘You two have a lot in common — Hank took five years off before he went to college, and then he decided to be a biologist after doing some work for Paul Glover. You remember that owl project? That’s what got him started. Hank’s a senior this year.’

I felt the blood rushing up my neck. Where did Page find these men? Hank had huge hands and a big nose but was gorgeous anyway: twenty-five or so, tall and blocky, with streaky hair and thick straight eyebrows and green-gold eyes shot with copper, like a cat’s. But it wasn’t his features that got me — he sent out a force, a beam, some light like a laser that caused everything to well up in me, all the longing I’d tamped down since Randy. All I’d missed with Walter, which I thought I’d learned to live without. A voice in my head, just above my left ear, said. This, this, this. Him.

I managed to stutter hello and then looked at Walter, and when I did I saw something interesting: Walter was uncomfortable. Walter was twisting the buttons on his shirt. ‘Page,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘This is your student?’

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘With some luck. Hank’s still an undergraduate, but I’m hoping to snag him for our program.’

‘Wonderful,’ Walter said, still gazing at Hank. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

Hank edged closer to Walter. ‘Dr Hoffmeier,’ he said shyly. ‘I’ve read all your papers. I’m very interested in your work.’

The surest way to Walter’s heart. ‘Why don’t you join us this summer?’ Walter asked. While the other students shifted places, Walter told Hank about his plans. ‘We need an untouched environment,’ he said. ‘Preferably not too far from the university, preferably with some water. We’ll do a more complex model than we did at the Quabbin. More factors, more data. Better algorithms. A much better computer.’

The rest of the students chimed in then, suggesting various ecosystems. Swamps, forests, urban environments, another lake, a mountaintop. Someone started taking notes on a cocktail napkin. Hank listened to everyone, turning his head from voice to voice and tugging occasionally at his turtleneck. I stood at the edge of the group, wondering what he’d look like without his clothes.

‘I know a great place,’ Hank said. ‘If you’d be interested. There’s this swamp where I used to live — my family’s place is at the tip of it, and we own part of the acreage. And I’m sure we could get permission from the families that own the rest. It’s just sitting there, worthless land. Completely unspoiled.’

‘Really?’ Walter said. I could almost hear what he was thinking. Completely unspoiled — that was Hank, the kind of student Walter hadn’t had in years. He often complained how his current students worried about jobs and grants and salaries. ‘They’re all so petty,’ he’d say. ‘We never worried about those things.’ Never remembering how he’d never worried because he’d never had to. His generation of scientists had come up when money flowed like water and universities were expanding, when anyone halfway good had a job and a lab for the asking. Five-percent mortgages, easy tenure, automatic grants; Walter and his peers could afford to be idealistic. They could afford to look puzzled when their students dropped out or left for higher-paying jobs. ‘If they’d worry less about money,’ Walter would say, ‘and more about science …’

And here was Hank, as innocent as if he’d lived his life on a raft. They bent their heads together then; Hank gave directions to his swamp and Walter wrote them down. I took another look at Hank — a long, hard look — and I moved closer to Walter and said in his ear, ‘You know, I’ve been thinking.’

‘What about?’ he said. Cool, stiff. He couldn’t imagine I’d be interested.

‘This new project?’ I said. ‘If you decide you want to do that swamp, I could help you, like in the old days. Remember?’

‘Of course I do,’ he said. He softened instantly and moved his hand in a slow spiral down my spine.

‘I could take a little break from fixing up the new house,’ I said. ‘I could help you instead. Really pitch in.’

‘You’d do that?’ he said. ‘For me?’

‘Sure,’ I said. I felt strangely sad that he’d forgiven me so easily. Had that been all he wanted? A little attention, a little concession to the importance of his work, an offer to bend my life a bit toward his? I hated myself for all the times I’d withheld it.

What I didn’t understand at first was that Walter was also enamored of Hank. Not that he would have admitted it; not that anything happened, or would ever happen, between them. The chemistry that flowed between them was intellectual, not sexual, but I had seen Uncle Owen and Dalton together and I knew that smile, that quickening of the eyes. I knew, from my days at the Quabbin, how irresistible Walter found an eager student.

The project came together more quickly than Walter could have dreamed, and soon we were making field trips almost every day to the swamp that Hank had offered. Page and Tyler Robertson were both involved, as well as Hank and two of Walter’s students and three botanists Walter had recruited. And me: I kept my promise to Walter and I set my latest house aside for a while so I could be part of Walter’s team. In the afternoons we gathered at the lab and then traveled out to the swamp, Page and Tyler in one car, the students piled in a red van, me and Walter and Hank in my Subaru. Walter drove and Hank sat next to him. I sat in the back with a stack of field guides, brushing up on my taxonomy and listening to Walter’s enthusiastic comments. They were directed toward Hank, not me.

‘We’ll divide the area into sectors,’ Walter said. ‘Since it’s so complex. Work in concentric circles, from the water through the cattails, then up through the drier land to the limestone talus. We’ll run some percolation tests, define the boundaries of the microclimates and determine how the communities overlap. Then see how they change with time and rainfall and changing pH and the nitrate runoff from the fields …’

He was thinking out loud, noodling with words, and Hank sat openmouthed and listened. I thought I knew how Hank felt. Excited that all this knowledge was opening to him; flattered at Walter’s focused attention; determined to deserve it. Walter was seductive in high gear, and I was so jealous of what was passing between them that I felt sick. One afternoon I leaned over the car seat and touched Hank’s arm, interrupting Walter’s monologue.

‘What are you going to start with?’ I asked Hank.

‘The birds,’ he said shyly. ‘Because that’s what I know. I’ll do a census for each sector, then determine the nesting sites while the birds are breeding. Then I guess I’ll work on capturing some specimens so we can determine the food web. Figure out who’s feeding on what and when — there’s so much stuff I want to do.’