A better world, p.9
A Better World, page 9
Rachel answered, and Anouk shook her head, sure that Daniella was feigning her witlessness. Linda felt a flutter of gratitude. She’d been hungry for helpful direction. By that standard, tonight was already a success.
“Do you all put offerings on your altars?” Linda asked.
“Every week! It’s more about ritual than belief, like mistletoe and Christmas trees,” Daniella said. She tossed this out like a stock line she’d repeated many times before.
“You should do it,” Rachel said. “Everybody does it. I’m an atheist and I do it.”
“Absolutely do it. It’s what makes us Hollow. All company towns have specific cultures. Ours is more ornate, but it’s really not much different than Palo Alto or Buenos Aires,” Daniella said.
“You’re forgetting the birds. The birds are weird,” Rachel said.
“Riiight?” Linda asked, her wine kicking in, her East Coast coming out. She was glad when everyone laughed, even Anouk. Rachel saluted with her wineglass.
“You’d think they could fly, at least,” Daniella said. “The birds, I mean. Not the citizenry.”
“—New meaning to the word shitstorm,” Rachel said.
“—It’s everywhere,” Linda said. “The dayworkers must clean the stuff constantly.”
“Stop!” Anouk said, but without much annoyance. “The caladrius is a regal creature.”
“—Fine,” Rachel said. “But nobody needs to freeze like Jesus Christ is on the cross when one of them wanders in front of a car. The Festivals could use some sprucing, too. Less competitions and weird rituals, more booze.”
“I’ve agreed to that! I told you, this Beltane thing excites Keith too much. I want him to rest. You have my vote!” Anouk said.
“—Rachel’s making some changes once Anouk’s dad retires. Well, she will if she gets Lloyd’s CEO position. Lloyd’s set to take over as chairman. But Parson will remain honorary leader, and Anouk will always be first lady around here,” Daniella said, this last part clearly for Anouk’s benefit.
“If being the operative word. Lots of people want to be CEO,” Rachel said. “Now that we’ve bored you with nothing you care about, would you like to hear about the clinic—?”
“—Right!” Daniella interrupted. “We should tell you about that. Jack Lust said you’re at the hospital. Do you like it?”
Linda imagined Jack leafing through her résumé, felt a funny crawl down her spine and then around, into her gut: exsanguinator. “I do! Dr. Chernin only has openings for one half-shift a week. I’d like more work but there aren’t spots.”
“Chernin,” Rachel mumbled. “A tower of Jell-O.”
Linda raised an eyebrow; Daniella redirected: “Forget that job. Kids here don’t get sick. You’re better off with us. You’ll have something to do.”
“A few get sick,” Anouk corrected, “but it’s usually outsider children carrying epigenetic trauma. The rest of us live until our telomeres are gone, usually into the triple digits.” She looked to Linda, seeming to expect agreement from the scientist of the house.
“Sure,” Linda said, and she knew she should stop there, but the wine had loosened her tongue. “Just because environmental damage is heritable doesn’t mean outsiders are an inferior species. I mean, have you ever read The Time Machine? It’s possible that damage, though undesirable in the short term, promotes resilience over generations.”
Anouk clapped her hands together. “A scholar! I knew it! I’ve been in a wasteland with these two philistines. Linda, you must study with me.”
“What’s a philistine? It sounds like a horse,” Daniella said, and Linda silently agreed with Anouk; Daniella was playing dumb. But it was funny.
“It’s a person who eats trash,” Rachel said.
“What?” Anouk asked, aghast.
“That sounds right,” Daniella joked.
“Did you want to interview me now?” Linda asked.
Everybody laughed, even Linda. This was going much better than she’d expected.
“Don’t think of this like a job interview. We’re desperate for a doctor, and we’ve only got three candidates. Jack already called in your references. Dr. Fielding of the Kings Children’s Clinic says ‘hello’ and ‘come home,’ by the way. But don’t go home. You’re the front-runner. The other two are in their eighties, and they’ll be part time if they do it at all. You’d basically have to flip a table to mess up. It’s really just a question of whether this is a fit, for you and for us. So I guess we’ll just dive in. Linda, why did you become a doctor? What makes you interested in pediatric medicine?”
A question, at last. Linda had prepared something trite. Instead of that safe story, the truth spilled out. “You all know Glamp, don’t you?”
Everyone but Anouk nodded, so Linda explained. “It’s a drug that was marketed to poor, rural communities when I was growing up. It was made of papaverine and pure THC. Those are the active ingredients in opium and marijuana. They said it wasn’t addictive. But it was. Worse than fentanyl. They didn’t just sell it at pharmacies; they sold it at supermarkets. They recommended it for babies with colic. They called it a health supplement, which was how they avoided FDA regulation. I don’t know who the manufacturers paid off. They obviously paid somebody.
“My parents were academics. They were nervous people, you know? Always worried, freaking out practically, about global warming and equality and stupid crap they saw in the streams. They used to get each other so worked up, and I remember thinking: Why not just worry about dinner? I’m hungry and I’d like dinner.
“It made them vulnerable. They took Glamp for anxiety. And then they couldn’t stop… I was protected in a lot of ways. I had a roof. I had a community where people knew me.”
She looked around, worried again. No matter how freely they talked, these were sheltered women. Maybe they couldn’t handle this. But she’d been alone for months. With the spotty signal, she didn’t get to talk on her device with old friends. She didn’t get to decompress Monday mornings with Dr. Fielding, either. Her feelings had built up. They needed a place to go.
“This is heavy, and I don’t mean to be heavy,” she continued. “But I want you to understand that my decision to be a doctor wasn’t arbitrary. Medicine isn’t lucrative. I could have gone into pharmacology or data analysis like my husband. I became a doctor because of everything I saw when my town fell apart. Glamp hurt so many people. I wanted to help them. I’ve only ever worked in clinics. I thought this break from that, since I moved here, would be a relief. Like I said, I’ve seen a lot, and it was often a burden. But I miss the work. I don’t like being idle. I don’t like spending a whole day at some rich hospital just to oversee the application of a butterfly bandage—no offense to PV intended. I want my kids here. I want them at the rich-people hospital and the rich-people everything. But it’s a big world outside this Bell Jar. Aside from family, medicine is my purpose, and I want to help that world. If you have an opening, I hope you’ll try me out.”
Everyone was quiet. Linda worried. “I’m not always so serious. I’m not a killjoy.”
“I like serious killjoys,” Rachel said. “I married one.”
“Well, if we’re going to bare our souls, me next!” Daniella said. “I’m an outsider, too. You probably guessed because I don’t talk like everybody else. I grew up in Vegas. My third-grade teacher was awful. Taught us nothing and never in a good mood. He was too lazy to grade papers, so it was always group projects…”
She raised her hands, indicated her own face and body. “I always looked like this. I never had an awkward phase. You’d think it’s all advantages, but you’d be wrong. It’s too much attention. It makes you a little crazy. And it’s not all good attention. It’s mostly bad. People used to try to buy me off the street from my mom. Not just foreigners… The decent people give you space. They hate you because they assume you have everything they want. They assume you’ve never had to work. But they give you space. The problem is, space leaves room for the monsters…
“Anyway, somebody’d followed me to school in third grade. I think he worked at one of the casinos? Or was he a parking attendant? I don’t know. I purposely forgot. He broke into my classroom. My crappy teacher came right out in front of me. I don’t know how he knew I was the target, but he did. He took the bullet for me. I played dead underneath him. It’s a blur, what happened after that. I think one of the guards finally took him down, or he shot himself? There’s a definitive answer, but I really don’t remember.
“I was lying there, nose to nose with this poopy teacher—Mr. Angle, like isosceles or scalene. We called him Mr. Scaley. Only eight-year-olds would come up with something like that… I remember it being wet and warm underneath him. Who knows if it was blood or urine. Is that awful? I shouldn’t have said that! Linda, you broke me open like a coconut! Anyway, I promised myself, when it was happening, that I’d get out of Vegas. Out of places where I could be followed around, or if I did get followed, at least I’d be in charge… Rachel had some really bad things happen to her, too.”
“Uh, yeah,” Rachel said, in a way that indicated really bad things was an understatement, and also that she wasn’t inclined to share.
Tears welled in Linda’s eyes. The pressure of this move and now this interview had made her too sensitive. Still, it seemed to her that the three of them represented an ocean of people, and they were the only ones who’d come out, and survived. What was happening with her patients right now? What about all those people she and Russell had known over the years, who’d disappeared through cracks, as if the world weren’t solid, but a sieve?
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Linda said.
“Me too. But it’s over.”
“Yes,” Linda said, looking around the pretty glass room.
“I’ve seen lots of things, too,” Anouk said. “I’ve been through bad things. It can be hard, even in the Bell Jar. I know that’s difficult to believe.”
“It’s not,” Linda said.
Anouk lowered her voice. “Daddy says other people haven’t had my advantages and it’s not right for me to complain. I put my feelings in my writing.”
“I’ll have to read it,” Linda said, her judgment against Anouk lifting just a little. Big Daddy, chairman of BetterWorld, son of its founder, sounded like a pill.
“And we do help!” Daniella jumped in. “We have everything we need for our pediatric clinic. The space, the equipment, the legal. The office even has airlock filtration, so it’s practically as clean as the Bell Jar. The only problem has been staff. We can’t hire from the outside because BetterWorld isn’t contracting any new people. We have to cull from our existing pool. Ideally, you’ll see patients a few days a week. As we grow, you’ll hire staff and manage the place, or hire a manager if you’d prefer to spend your time with patients. Once the position goes full time, you’ll be tenure track for a golden ticket. Of course, all that’s contingent on results and success, so that we can plead our case to BetterWorld’s board of directors and Anouk’s dad. They’re the ones with the wallet.”
“This all sounds great. What does success look like?” Linda asked.
“Healthy kids!” Daniella said.
“Can I get a look at the clinic?” Linda asked.
“I’ll send the entire prospectus Monday,” Rachel said. “We were just getting the details together before you came.”
“You don’t have to worry about safety, even though the facility is located beyond the walls. We’ll make sure you’re protected,” Daniella said.
“That’s not a problem,” Linda said. “I’m used to being outside.”
“You’d be surprised how fast you get un-used to it,” Daniella said. “The rest of us will discuss your application and get back to you. But this is all very auspicious. Propitious? Whatever it is, you can go ahead and get your hopes up. In the meantime, hazing’s for suckers. Yours is over. Once people know you’re with me, the invitations will rain down.”
“And me,” Anouk chimed. “People care what I think, too. It’s not just because of my dad. It’s because of all my literary awards.”
Rachel looked up, realizing she was expected to say something. “I have no time to hold your hand. But good luck.”
Linda laughed. “Thanks! I’d appreciate any help you can offer,” she said. There was no way that acceptance in this crazy town would come so easily. There had to be more to the test than this. But if these women could help just a little, she was grateful.
* * *
Linda would look back on that evening and identify it as a watershed. If it had continued uninterrupted, her family’s success in Plymouth Valley would have been assured. Reviews would have been passed, assimilation achieved. But that’s not what happened, because a young brunette rolled open the stained-glass doors, disrupting everything.
“Daniella!” the brunette cried, her voice so jarringly high pitched that Linda winced. “I thought that was you!”
Very, very slowly, Daniella’s full lips spread into a smileless grimace, like a macaque before it attacks. “Gal Parker,” she pronounced.
Gal issued prayer hands, shined a sheepish grin. She was a heavyset, light-brown-skinned woman. Overweight wasn’t a common look in PV, making her the unicorn of body types.
“ActHollow’s Saturday meeting! What a crazy coincidence! I was just getting some takeout,” Gal cried, breathless and excited and vibrating with youth. “I was afraid I was gonna have to leave here without saying good-bye!”
Nobody answered. The pause was too long. Linda scanned faces, saw that Anouk appeared openly annoyed, her eyes narrowed, her chin receding like a turtle’s into her ugly shawl.
“Can I join?” Gal didn’t wait, just pulled the free chair to the space opposite Daniella, like a second head of table. “Can I have a glass, too?”
“Gal, this is private,” Daniella said. “You’re too busy, I’m sure.”
“Busy with what?” Gal asked. That high-pitched voice seemed put-on and babyish.
“Packing?” Rachel asked.
Gal shot Rachel a wounded look. “I don’t leave ’til Monday, and the only thing that belongs to me is my kids.”
Daniella looked about to chastise Gal. But then, as if Gal were a ball of infinite energy that would bounce and smash against everything in the room unless carefully handled, she stopped.
Gal turned to Linda. “You’re the new doctor. My wife worked at the clinic, but she moved away. Daniella must be interviewing replacements. Did they tell you it’s informal? They love saying that. But nothing’s informal here. It’s all on the permanent record.”
“Gal, I don’t want you scaring her,” Daniella said. “Come back another time.”
“Am I scaring you, Linda?” Gal asked. Her cheerful voice turned scratchy with bravado. Though she was acting casual, she’d clearly summoned her last shreds of courage to walk into this room. She was shaking, her forehead damp with sweat.
“I don’t know?” Linda answered.
“Really, Gal,” Daniella started. “It’s not the time—”
“See? She doesn’t mind.” Gal grabbed Anouk’s half-filled water glass, topped it with wine, then sat back down and sipped the diluted pink result.
“Delicious!” Gal pronounced. She looked past glaring Anouk to Daniella. “To the chosen ones!”
“Gal,” Daniella warned, in a way that seemed to mean: Shut up and go away. But Linda had the feeling that unless physically forced, this woman wasn’t going anywhere.
Quietly, with glances and nods, Daniella, Rachel, and Anouk seemed to decide something. They chose not to make a scene. Instead, like this was a middle school cafeteria, they moved their chairs closer to Daniella, leaving Gal with extra space.
“What does everyone think about Principal Jackson?” Daniella asked, once they’d all settled. Her voice was intentionally soft, so that it would be hard to hear on Gal’s end.
Meanwhile, having gotten a seat at a table where she wasn’t wanted, Gal lost steam. She shot pleading looks at the rest of them, which went unrequited.
The waiter came with bruschetta and more wine. Linda slowly sipped, reminding herself to pace it out. Two glasses of mead was a lot for her, and this stuff definitely had more than the 2 percent alcohol of mead.
Just as Daniella was announcing that while she liked Principal Jackson, she was worried the woman lacked connections to the honors track at BetterWorld University, Anouk erupted. “I just, I cannot countenance this!” she cried with the over-the-top passion you might expect from Joan of Arc at the stake.
“Why don’t you take notes?” Daniella countered, calm and without missing a beat. “Sit by me so I can help edit. Linda, would you mind?”
“What?” Linda asked. The wine had made her slow.
“Switch places,” Rachel hissed. Then, in an even lower whisper: “Anouk’s tweaking!”
“Oh.” With more effort and dizziness than she’d have liked, Linda got up. Anouk lifted her butt, scooted into the next chair, then—carefully—Linda walked around her and sat.
“Thank you,” Anouk whispered. “Rudeness is very hard for me. I find it a kind of violence and I cannot abide it.”
Gal watched all this transpire. Said nothing, just got more maudlin. She hunched over her glass, clutching it close as a faithful pet. What the hell was this about?
“Perhaps if Jackson had more business background,” Daniella said.
Anouk jotted this, and seemed calm now that she had a pen in hand. “I saw her résumé. She’s been a principal in Palo Alto for ten years, but she’s originally from an outside town in Mississippi. Born in one of those flood towns. It’s a marvel she’s alive. Those kids are like fish in barrels. But I wonder if that kind of background doesn’t attest to grit?”
“It’s nothing against her,” Daniella said, and Anouk kept jotting. They’d forgotten that the subject of the new principal’s qualifications was invented and were taking it seriously. “I come from outside. But I’m not a principal. Does she know how to write recommendations?”
