enry is 36)
Clare: Kendrick leads us through a maze of carpeted, drywalled, acoustical-tiled
hallways and into a conference room. There are no windows, only blue carpet
and a long, polished black table surrounded by padded swivel chairs. There's a
whiteboard and a few Magic Markers, a clock over the door, and a coffee urn
with cups, cream, and sugar ready beside it. Kendrick and I sit at the table, but
Henry paces around the room. Kendrick takes off his glasses and massages the
sides of his small nose with his fingers. The door opens and a young Hispanic
man in surgical scrubs wheels a cart into the room. On the cart is a cage covered
with a cloth. "Where d'ya want it?" the young man asks, and Kendrick says, "Just
leave the whole cart, if you don't mind," and the man shrugs and leaves.
Kendrick walks to the door and turns a knob and the lights dim to twilight. I can
barely see Henry standing next to the cage. Kendrick walks to him and silently
removes the cloth.
The smell of cedar wafts from the cage. I stand and stare into it. I don't see
anything but the core of a roll of toilet paper, some food bowls, a water bottle, an
exercise wheel, fluffy cedar chips. Kendrick opens the top of the cage and reaches
in, scoops out something small and white. Henry and I crowd around, staring at
the tiny mouse that sits blinking on Kendrick's palm. Kendrick takes a tiny
penlight out of his pocket, turns it on and rapidly flashes it over the mouse. The
mouse tenses, and then it is gone.
"Wow," I say. Kendrick places the cloth back over the cage and turns the
lights up.
"It's being published in next week's issue of Nature," he says, smiling. "It's the
lead article."
"Congratulations," Henry says. He glances at the clock. "How long are they
usually gone? And where do they go?"
Kendrick gestures at the urn and we both nod. "They tend to be gone about
ten minutes or so," he says, pouring three cups of coffee as he speaks and
handing us each one. "They go to the Animal Lab in the basement, where they
were born. They don't seem to be able to go more than a few minutes either
way."
Henry nods. "They'll go longer as they get older."
"Yes, that's been true so far."
"How did you do it?" I ask Kendrick. I still can't quite believe that he has done
it.
Kendrick blows on his coffee and takes a sip, makes a face. The coffee is bitter,
and I add sugar to mine. "Well," he says, "it helped a lot that Celera has been
sequencing the whole mouse genome. It told us where to look for the four genes
we were targeting. But we could have done it without that.
"We started by cloning your genes and then used enzymes to snip out the
damaged portions of DNA. Then we took those pieces and snuck them into
mouse embryos at the four-cell-division stage. That was the easy part."
Henry raises his eyebrows. "Sure, of course. Clare and I do that all the time in
our kitchen. So what was the hard part?" He sits on the table and sets his coffee
beside him. In the cage I can hear the squeaking of the exercise wheel.
Kendrick glances at me. "The hard part was getting the dams, the mother
mice, to carry the altered mice to term. They kept dying, hemorrhaging to death."
Henry looks very alarmed. "The mothers died?"
Kendricks nods. "The mothers died, and the babies died. We couldn't figure it
out, so we started watching them around the clock, and then we saw what was
going on. The embryos were traveling out of their dam's womb, and then in
again, and the mothers bled to death internally. Or they would just abort the
fetus at the ten-day mark. It was very frustrating."
Henry and I exchange looks and then look away. "We can relate to that," I tell
Kendrick.
"Ye-ess," he says. "But we solved the problem."
"How?" Henry asks.
"We decided that it might be an immune reaction. Something about the fetal
mice was so foreign that the dams' immune systems were trying to fight them as
though they were a virus or something. So we suppressed the dams' immune
systems, and then it all worked like magic."
My heart is beating in my ears. Like magic.
Kendrick suddenly stoops and grabs for something on the floor. "Gotcha," he
says, displaying the mouse in his cupped hands.
"Bravo!" Henry says. "What's next?"
"Gene therapy," Kendrick tells him. "Drugs." He shrugs. "Even though we
can make it happen, we still don't know why it happens. Or how it happens. So we
try to understand that." He offers Henry the mouse. Henry cups his hands and
Kendrick tips the mouse into them. Henry inspects it curiously.
"It has a tattoo," he says.
"It's the only way we can keep track of them," Kendrick tells him. "They drive
the Animal Lab technicians nuts, they're always escaping."
Henry laughs. "That's our Darwinian advantage," he says. "We escape." He
strokes the mouse, and it shits on his palm.
"Zero tolerance for stress," says Kendrick, and puts the mouse back in its
cage, where it flees into the toilet-paper core.
As soon as we get home I am on the phone to Dr. Montague, babbling about
immuno-suppressants and internal bleeding. She listens carefully and then tells
me to come in next week, and in the meantime she will do some research. I put
down the phone and Henry regards me nervously over the Times business
section. "It's worth a try," I tell him.
"Lots of dead mouse moms before they figured it out," Henry says.
"But it worked! Kendrick made it work!"
Henry just says, "Yeah " and goes back to reading. I open my mouth and then
change my mind and walk out to the studio, too excited to argue. It worked like
magic. Like magic.
FIVE
Thursday, May 11, 2000 (Henry is 39, Clare is 28)
Henry: I'm walking down Clark Street in late spring, 2000. There's nothing too
remarkable about this. It's a lovely warm evening in Andersonville, and all the
fashionable youth are sitting at little tables drinking fancy cold coffee at Kopi's,
or sitting at medium-sized tables eating couscous at Reza's, or just strolling,
ignoring the Swedish knickknacks stores and exclaiming over each other's dogs. I
should be at work, in 2002, but oh, well. Matt will have to cover for my afternoon
Show and Tell, I guess. I make a mental note to take him out to dinner.
As I idle along, I unexpectedly see Clare across the street. She is standing in
front of George's, the vintage clothing store, looking at a display of baby clothes.
Even her back is wistful, even her shoulders sigh with longing. As I watch her,
she leans her forehead against the shop window and stands there, dejected. I
cross the street, dodging a UPS van and a Volvo, and stand behind her. Clare
looks up, startled, and sees my reflection in the glass.
"Oh, it's you," she says, and turns. "I thought you were at the movies with
Gomez." Clare seems a little defensive, a little guilty, as though I have caught her
doing something illicit.
"I probably am. I'm supposed to be at work, actually. In 2002."
Clare smiles. She looks tired, and I do the dates in my head and realize that
our fifth miscarriage was three weeks ago. I hesitate, and then I put my arms
around her, and to my relief she relaxes against me, leans her head on my
shoulder.
"How are you?" I ask.
"Terrible," she says softly. "Tired." I remember. She stayed in bed for weeks.
"Henry, I quit." She watches me, trying to gauge my reaction to this, weighing
her intention against my knowledge. "I give up. It isn't going to happen."
Is there anything to stop me from giving her what she needs? I can't think of a
single reason not to tell her. I stand and rack my brain for anything that would
preclude Clare knowing. All I remember is her certainty, which I am about to
create.
"Persevere, Clare."
"What?"
"Hang in there. In my present we have a baby."
Clare closes her eyes, whispers, "Thank you." I don't know if she's talking to
me or to God. It doesn't matter. "Thank you," she says, again, looking at me,
talking to me, and I feel as though I am an angel in some demented version of the
Annunciation. I lean over and kiss her; I can feel resolve, joy, purpose coursing
through Clare. I remember the tiny head full of black hair crowning between
Clare's legs and I marvel at how this moment creates that miracle, and vice versa.
Thank you. Thank you.
"Did you know?" Clare asks me.
"No." She looks disappointed. "Not only did I not know, I did everything I
could think of to prevent you from getting pregnant again."
"Great." Clare laughs. "So whatever happens, I just have to be quiet and let it
rip?"
"Yep."
Clare grins at me, and I grin back. Let it rip.
SIX
Saturday, June 3, 2000 (Clare is 29, Henry is 36)
Clare: I'm sitting at the kitchen table idly flipping through the Chicago Tribune and
watching Henry unpack the groceries. The brown paper bags stand evenly lined
up on the counter and Henry produces ketchup, chicken, gouda cheese from
them like a magician. I keep waiting for the rabbit and the silk scarves. Instead
it's mushrooms, black beans, fettucine, lettuce, a pineapple, skim milk, coffee,
radishes, turnips, a rutabaga, oatmeal, butter, cottage cheese, rye bread,
mayonnaise, eggs, razors, deodorant, Granny Smith apples, half-and-half, bagels,
shrimp, cream cheese, Frosted MiniWheats, marinara sauce, frozen orange juice,
carrots, condoms, sweet potatoes...condoms? I get up and walk to the counter,
pick up the blue box and shake it at Henry. "What, are you having an affair?"
He looks up at me defiantly as he rummages in the freezer. "No, actually, I
had an epiphany. I was standing in the toothpaste aisle when it happened. Want
to hear it?"
"No."
Henry stands up and turns to me. His expression is like a sigh. "Well here it is
anyway: we can't keep trying to have a baby."
Traitor. "We agreed.."
"...to keep trying. I think five miscarriages is enough. I think we have tried."
"No. I mean-why not, try again?" I try to keep the pleading out of my voice, to
keep the anger that rises up in my th