the pages, mouthing the syllables. After a month, Mary felt that she had the gist of the story. Excited, she tried to repeat it to a nurse, but her agitation only earned her an extra dose of meds.
Three days later, when again she was able to read, the book was gone from the little library. And this caused Mary to speak her first full sentence in six months: “Where . . . is . . . that . . . book?”
“Which book, dear?” asked a new aide who didn’t know her.
“Bible stories . . . black.” Mary struggled, but got it out.
“Hey, Agnes, Mary’s talking!” shouted Nurse Dumfries, the administrator, who was passing through the floor when she heard the unfamiliar voice. Agnes and two other workers scooted over to hear for themselves.
“Mary, you’re speaking—wonderful!” said Agnes, the nurse who had replaced Iris.
Mary grew more and more exercised. “WHERE IS IT?”
“She’s missing some book of Bible stories,” the aide explained.
“Oh, Mary, honey, that book isn’t good for you. It got you overexcited, so we had to give you a shot. We discarded it. There are lots of other books.”
Again Mary wanted to howl, but she didn’t. It didn’t matter. She knew the story by now, and although the book hadn’t gotten all the details right, it had reminded her. And she knew something else. There would be no keeping her here now. Something had to happen, and if it didn’t, she would kill herself, and that would bring it all around again, with a different outcome. She wandered off, oblivious to the nurses’ pleas to “Talk more, Mary! Say something else!”
“Well, it’s something. First time!” Agnes exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Nurse Dumfries. “But I wish the mission would stop slipping those religious books and tracts in here. They make them crazier than they already are. Do you have any idea how many Jesus Christs we’ve got in here this week?”
“No, but Cyrus told me this morning that as the Messiah, he could damn well have French toast whenever he wanted,” Agnes admitted. “And real maple syrup.”
Mary spoke no more, but she thought. She remembered a time before the accident they said she’d had, even vaguely recalled where she was going at the time of the wreck, but not the ground squirrel that had loped beneath her wheel, nor the plummet itself. And, more important, she remembered before—a very long time before. Yes, one way or the other, things would change. They had to, now; they couldn’t keep her there. As she lay and played herself to sleep, she took a little pleasure instead of mere relief from her sex. And why not? Spring was coming, as the nurse said. And with it, a real release, she felt sure, from the stinking, the sad, the unthinkable situation she’d endured for all these months.
It had to come. If not soon, by some agency, she would fashion her own escape. For to live on here among the lost, having found herself, would be intolerable. All right for some. A few adaptable and clever residents even managed to make some sort of satisfied accommodation. They ignored the worst of it, sleeping there but living lives largely outside the home thanks to shoe leather and the Denver Tramway Company pass. But that was not for Mary. There was nothing on the streets of Denver for her. As she became more and more sentient, she grew less and less capable of shutting out the despair around her. Her only conceivable solutions were departure, denial, or death; and denial was not going to work. Mary wrapped her pupal sheets around herself and slept the most peaceful sleep in what seemed like hundreds of years.
Then one day in March, the snow melted gray and ran brown down the gutters, and Denver entered its ugliest time. But a Chinook wind warmed that day, and a green thing precociously poked up into the vacant lot behind the center—a tumbleweed shoot. Mary saw it and recognized, with the sharpest sense since that first wail, a remnant of something that felt a little bit like hope.
9
“Spring!” announced Mead, alarming Francie Chan, his lab partner. That morning he’d seen something that looked like a swelling bud. He brought it into the lab, placed it in a beaker of water on his desk, and already it had unfurled into a small leaf smelling of balsam. “Spring,” he said again more softly, carried back for the moment to a cottonwood-lined acequia outside Albuquerque. The word sounded almost foreign.
That igneous autumn in New Haven had passed quickly; then came in its place a kind of cold Mead had never known in New Mexico. Riding on particles of dampness, it penetrated his clothing and joints like frost fingers in a sidewalk. He was used to an arid chill, not this gelid breath between the ribs. Shifting between overheated buildings, the dank outside air, and his “all-season beach cottage” that wasn’t really winterized for anyone but seals or penguins, he caught a bronchitis that clutched his thorax like a robber fly and wouldn’t let go. He couldn’t stop coughing without whiskey, and the hitchhike out to Branford became a slog in the freezing slush.
Christmas came cold. Mead spent Christmas Eve lonely in his lab and Christmas Day with the Winchesters, his only invitation. He decided after the break to move into New Haven. At first he had thought his fellowship enormous. He soon found that the high tuition and East Coast prices—no free coffee refills at Dunkin’ Donuts, even—eroded his checking account like dust in a downpour. He couldn’t afford the cheapest apartment. He was bewailing the fact one afternoon to Francie, who was finishing up that semester. “Maybe you should take my studio,” she said. “I’ll be moving out soon.” Mead had heard that Francie used a room in the building as a printmaking studio. “Come on,” she said, leading him down the hall and up a fold-down ladder, and gave him a tour. When his eyes adjusted, Mead beheld a tiny, high-ceilinged round room in one of the twin castellated towers of Osborn Lab. He moved in a week later. This was not strictly legal, but generations of ecology students had camped here or used it as Francie had, as an auxiliary space for their activities. The hexagonal stone walls were still hung with her wonderful silk-screened prints of Rocky Mountain wildflowers and scenes.
The tower seemed romantic, warmer than Mead’s beach cottage, and convenient to both his lab and the museum. Plus, the price was right. By waiting late to scale the steep steel ladder to the turret, he could keep his occupancy discreet. And the move soon prompted an additional boon. Early in the new year, Winchester called Mead into his office. “James,” he said, “are you still curious about the mild scent emanating from the room down the hall?” Mead didn’t consider the stink mild, but he had grown accustomed to it. “Come along,” Winchester continued, “and let me introduce you to some truly remarkable and amenable creatures. It’s time to broaden your responsibilities, in any case. This little ceremony should be put off no longer.”
Mead kept up with Winchester as well as he could as the professor ate the long hall with his stride, opened one outer door, then one inner one on which were posted dire warnings in his hand: DO NOT INTERFERE WITH THE LIGHTS IN THIS ROOM UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. As soon as they entered the lab, a great shuffling arose as the occupants of dozens of cages scattered in alarm or expectation. The odor was stronger here—not bad, just strong, sweet, feral. “What are they?” Mead asked.
“Blaberus giganteus, the giant cave roach. Surely you recognize them from anatomy lab? And a few other species of blattids.” Then Winchester opened one of the cages and Mead beheld a score or so of the most massive roaches he had ever seen. True, he had dissected roaches nearly as large in an entomology lab, but he’d never seen one alive. His gaze must have betrayed his wonderment.
“We’ve worked on many aspects of these animals’ biology,” Winchester replied to Mead’s unspoken question. “But their behavior is poorly known. They are relatively easy to keep and breed, and they
