“Oh, that’s good,” Sissy breathed.
“Fucking right it’s good!”
Sissy laughed. Marianne never cursed and it would do her good to loosen up. She’d had a bad year—a really bad year, which made Sissy feel guilty because her own year had been so good. Not that Marianne’s year hadn’t been good professionally, because it had. The foundation had this great new office in Midtown Manhattan, thanks to Jonah Stubbins’s money. Stubbins had kept his word about the donation being anonymous, so they hadn’t had any grief over that. They had more speeches than ever. Marianne had been heckled just as much but not attacked, not since Notre Dame.
But her personal year—not so good. Her daughter-in-law, Connie, had died of cancer. Sissy didn’t have a daughter-in-law, of course, but if she had, she’d have been devastated, just like she’d be if one of her sisters or sisters-in-law died. Not that they were all that great, especially Jasmine, but they were family. Devastated!
Marianne had gone to Connie’s funeral, and so had her daughter Elizabeth (someone else Sissy didn’t much like), but since then the Jenners hadn’t gotten together even once. Weird. Marianne felt it, Sissy knew she did, but she just didn’t go to see either Ryan or Elizabeth, and they didn’t come to see her. If it were her family, Sissy would have been charging over to each of them, trying to fix whatever was wrong. Even for Jasmine.
Maybe Marianne shared her grief with Harrison Rice. But Sissy had the impression that things weren’t too good there, either—not that Marianne ever said anything to Sissy about it. Not Marianne’s style.
So it was good to see her so happy. Sissy leaped from her chair, flipped on her music, and grabbed Marianne’s hand. It felt hot. They danced and bumped to “Lovin’ That Racket” until Marianne dropped, panting and sweating, into one of Stubbins’s deep, cushioned chairs.
“So tell me,” Sissy said.
“Well—just let me catch my breath a sec—well, it’s good. You know we have the protein that gives humans, most humans anyways, immunity to the disease. Harrison isolated the gene sequence for that protein, grafted it onto a vector, and finally succeeded in incorporating it into the mouse’s genome. The exposed mice show no sign of infection. It’s not germ-line modification, of course, and it’s almost certainly not dominant, but it’s a first step toward germ-line recombination or methylation epigenetics.”
Sissy, listening carefully, tried to sort this out. “You mean that Dr. Rice found the protein that protects humans from spore disease and—”
“We already had that protein, Sissy. Before the Denebs left.”
Sissy wasn’t sidetracked. “And put it into—deer mice?—so that now the mice breathe spores and don’t die?”
“Exactly!”
“And now Dr. Rice thinks that maybe he can get mice to pass that immunity onto their babies?”
Marianne sobered a little. “That’s a big step, though. Really complicated, if the gene doesn’t happen to get into sperm or eggs by itself and turn up dominant.”
“What are the chances of that?”
“This close to zero.” Marianne held up two fingers so close together that no light passed between them. The fingers trembled. Drops of sweat shone on her forehead.
“Are you feeling all right? That looks like more than just dancing and—”
Marianne turned her head and vomited onto the floor.
“You’re sick!” Sissy cried.
“Just a… cold…”
“It’s not.” She brought Marianne a towel from the bathroom and a glass of water, and then felt her forehead. “You’ve got a fever.”
“It’s just a cold. Sissy, stop that, you don’t have to clean up after me.”
“It ain’t going to clean itself up,” Sissy said, and knew that the words were Mama’s. “Just sit there a minute, and then I’m taking you home.”
“I’m not—”
“Yes, you are, so don’t argue with me.” Some people had more smarts than sense.
Marianne smiled faintly. “Someday you’re going to make a great mother, Sissy.”
“Well, I hope so.” She got Marianne into the car (“Really, I’m not an invalid!”) and drove her home. As soon as Marianne unlocked the apartment door, she dashed into the bathroom and threw up again. Sissy waited. The shower sounded, and Sissy sat down to wait some more.
She’d been to Marianne’s place before, but not often. Once, almost a year ago, Marianne had invited her and Tim to dinner. Neither had anything to say to Dr. Rice, or him to them. He was nice enough, Sissy supposed, but science was the only thing he could talk about. Not even about his little granddaughter, although Sissy tried. Marianne told her later that the baby cried all the time and Harrison thought there was something wrong with her and so didn’t want to talk about it. Which left zero to talk about. The four of them never got together again, which was fine with Sissy. Dr. Rice was a great man, but he kind of had a stick up his ass. In Sissy’s opinion.
The shower was still going. The apartment was neat but sort of drab. No fancy lampshades or bright pillows or any of the cute animal statues Sissy and Tim had on their coffee table, just a pile of printouts. Sissy picked up the top one.
The article was hard to read, even the little part in front called the abstract, but Sissy plowed on. A drug had been “fast-tracked” to see if anything could be done about all the crying babies and deaf babies being born. The drug didn’t help the ones with bad hearing, but it calmed down the ones who cried because their hearing was too good—could hearing be too good? Well, yes, if everything felt jackhammer loud all the time. Poor babies. Only Marianne had already told Sissy that when the babies were brought into soundproof rooms and music was played loud, they didn’t cry. Still, parts of their “auditory cortex” were too big or too deformed and nobody knew how that worked, just like nobody knew why a little while ago Marianne’s grandson Colin had just all at once stopped crying all the time. Just stopped. Also—
Well, look at this—of course the drug stopped the babies crying! It was a kind of tranquilizer! It probably stopped them doing anything, turned them into zombie babies….
“Sissy, I’m sorry, you shouldn’t be reading that.” Marianne stood in the doorway to the bathroom, wiping her mouth.
“No, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize!” Sissy jumped up and then wasn’t sure what to do next.
“It’s okay.” Marianne gave her that rare, sweet smile, and wobbled on her feet.
“Come on, sweetie—let’s get you to bed. I think you have a flu.”
“I don’t have time for the flu!”
“The flu don’t give a damn,” Sissy said, and heard Mama again in her own voice, but now that was okay because Mama had had her good points along with the rest of her, and one of them was taking care of sick people. Just like Sissy was going to take care of Marianne now.
It wasn’t flu. Maybe food poisoning, because when her stomach had emptied completely, she felt a little better. Sissy left. Marianne lay in bed, slept, woke. Much later she heard Harrison open the front door, drop his coat on a chair, and turn on the living room light. “Harrison?”
“Why are you awake?” Harrison said, silhouetted in the bedroom doorway against light from the living room.
“I don’t feel well.” Marianne glanced at the bedside clock: 1:42 a.m. Almost unheard of for Harrison, who rose before roosters and retired before full starlight. “Were you celebrating?”