She wouldn't get rid of him otherwise. She slowly sat in her chair.
“Are you familiar with DNA mapping?” he repeated.
“A little,” she said.
“Good.” He leaned back in his chair and templed his fingers. “We haven't located a happiness gene or an unhappiness gene. We're not sure what it is about the physical make-up that makes these things work. But we do know that it has something to do with serotonin levels.”
“Get to the part about Millennium Babies,” she said.
He smiled. “I am. My last book was partly based on the happiness/unhappiness model, but I believe that's too simplistic. Human beings are complex creatures. And as I grow older, I see a lot of lost potential. Some of us were raised to fail, and some were raised to succeed. Some of those raised to succeed have failed, and some who were raised to fail have succeeded. So clearly it isn't all environment.”
“Unless some were reacting against their environment,” she said, hearing the sullenness in her tone, a sullenness she hadn't used since she'd last spoken to her mother five years before.
“That's one option,” he said, sounding brighter. He must have taken her statement for interest. “But one of the things I learned while working on human potential is that drive is like happiness. Some children are born driven. They walk sooner than others. They learn faster. They adapt faster. They achieve more, from the moment they take their first breath.”
“I don't really believe that our entire personalities are formed at birth,” she said. “Or that our destinies are written before we're conceived.”
“None of us do,” he said. “If we did, we wouldn't have a reason to get out of bed in the morning. But we do acknowledge that we're all given traits and talents that are different from each other. Some of us have blue eyes. Some of us can hit golf balls with a power and accuracy that others only dream of. Some of us have perfect pitch, right?”
“Of course,” she snapped.
“So it only stands to reason that some of us are born with more happiness than others, and some are born with more drive than others. If you consider those intangibles to be as real as, say, musical talent.”
His argument had a certain logic, but she didn't want to agree with him on anything. She wanted him out of her office.
“But,” he said. “Those with the most musical talent aren't always the ones on stage at Carnegie Hall. There are other factors, environmental factors. A child who grows up without hearing music might never know how to make music, right?”
“I don't know,” she said.
“Likewise,” he said, “if that musically inclined child had parents to whom music was important, the child might hear music all the time. From the moment that child is born, that child is familiar with music and has an edge on the child who hasn't heard a note.”
She started tapping her fingers.
He glanced at them and leaned forward. “As I said in my message, this study focuses on success and failure. To my knowledge, there has never before been a group of children conceived nationwide with the same specific goal in mind.”
Her mouth was dry. Her fingers had stopped moving.
“You Millennium Babies share several traits in common. Your parents conceived you at the same time. Your parents had similar goals and desires for you. You came out of the womb and instantly you were branded a success or a failure, at least for this one goal.”
“So,” she said, keeping her voice cold. “Are you going to deal with all those children who were abandoned by their parents when they discovered they didn't win?”
“Yes,” he said.
The quiet sureness of his response startled her. He spread his hands as if in explanation. “Their parents gave up on them,” he said. “Right from the start. Those babies are perhaps the purest subjects of the study. They were clearly conceived only with the race in mind.”
“And you want me because I'm the most spectacular failure of the group.” Her voice was cold, even though she had to clasp her hands together to keep them from trembling.
“I don't consider you a failure, Professor Cross,” he said. “You're well respected in your profession. You're on a tenure track at a prestigious university—”
“I meant as a Millennium Baby. I'm the public failure. When people think of baby contests, the winners never come to mind. I do.”
He sighed. “That's part of it. Part of it is your mother's attitude. In some ways, she's the most obsessed parent, at least that we can point to.”
Brooke winced.
“I'd like to have you in this study,” he said. “The winners will be. It would be nice to have you represented as well.”
“So that you can get rich off this book, and I'll be disgraced yet again,” she said.
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe you'll get validated.”
Her shoulders were so tight that it hurt to move her head. “'Validated.' Such a nice psychiatrist's word. Making me feel better will salve your conscience while you get rich.”
“You seem obsessed with money,” he said.
“Shouldn't I be?” she asked. “With my mother?”
He stared at her for a long moment.
Finally, she shook her head. “It's not the money. I just don't want to be exploited any more. For any reason.”
He nodded. Then he folded his hands across his stomach and squinched up his face, as if he were thinking. Finally, he said, “Look, here's how it is. I'm a scientist. You're a member of a group that interests me and will be useful in my research. If I were researching thirty-year-old history professors who happened to be on a tenure track, I'd probably interview you as well. Or professional women who lived in Wisconsin. Or—”
“Would you?” she asked. “Would you come to me, really?”
He nodded. “It's policy to check who's available for study at the university before going outside of it.”
She sighed. He had a point. “A book on Millennium Babies will sell well. They all do. And you'll get interviews, and you'll become famous.”
“The study uses Millennium Babies,” he said, “but anything I publish will be about success and failure, not a pop psychology book about people born on January first.”
“You can swear to that?” she asked.
“I'll do it in our agreement,” he said.
She closed her eyes. She couldn't believe he was talking her into this.
Apparently he didn't think he had, for he continued. “You'll be compensated for your time and your travel expenses. We can't promise a lot, but we do promise that we won't abuse your assistance.”
She opened her eyes. That intensity was back in his face. It didn't unnerve her. In fact, it reassured her. She would rather have him passionate about the study than anything else.
“All right,” she said. “What do I have to do?”
First she signed waivers. She had all of them checked out by her lawyer—the fact that she even had a lawyer was yet another legacy from her mother—and he said that they were fine, even liberal. Then he tried to talk her out of the study, worried more as a friend, he said, even though he had never been her friend before.
“You've been trying to get away from all of this. Now you're opening it back up. That can't be good for you.”
But she wasn't sure what was good for her any more. She had tried not thinking about it. Maybe focusing on herself, on what happened to her from the moment she was born, was better.