“I came here to participate in an open, honest inquiry,” said Sandy, “and what I've found is nothing more than a show trial, a witch hunt in which a few unlucky researchers are held up on display—hostages to Representative Redfield's assault on scientific research in America. We have come here, American citizens and one Chinese national, seeking a chance to prove our innocence and clear our names. Instead, we've suffered hostile questioning, an outrageous Secret Service inquiry, and repeated attempts to turn our personal papers, and even our private jokes, against us. All this in the name of public accountability. Mr. Redfield, you have talked a great deal about a culture of deception in scientific research today. With all due respect, sir, I feel compelled to question the culture at this hearing: a culture of governmental interference and intimidation, a culture of hatred, ignorance, paranoia, and suspicion I can only liken to McCarthyism.”
Redfield was listening now. Everyone in the room was listening. In vain, Houghton-Smith whispered in Sandy's ear. In vain, Ann prayed silently for her husband to collect himself, but Sandy had not finished. He was violating protocol, almost certainly damaging his own cause, but he would not stop speaking; indeed, he could not.
“Is it any accident you keep a list of scientific projects you dislike?” he asked Redfield. “Or am I the only one who looks at the Red List and sees the specter of those creative men and women who were blacklisted? Is it any accident—”
But Redfield did not let Sandy finish. Leaving aside his own closing statement, he answered Sandy's fire with his own. “We have a fine tradition in America of taking the part of the victim when we are called to account,” he said, “and I see you play the victim well. But let's remember who the victims truly are when it comes to scientific fraud: not you, Dr. Glass, not I, not any of my colleagues here. The victims are the taxpayers. The victims are the hopeful and deluded public. I see that you're offended. It offends you as a physician and a scientist that a governmental committee might call you to account. It offends you deeply that we might question your work, your methods, and your results, or probe into information that you insist is of a private nature. Let me ask you this: if your research process is private, then why do you accept public funding for it?
“You have professed surprise and shock at the questioning here. Do you know what shocks me? I am shocked by the aura of entitlement among American scientists. I am shocked by the expectation of public trust. Well, where I come from trust is earned. What have you done here to earn my trust?
“There is another victim in this matter,” said Redfield. “And her name is Robin Decker. You knew her well, but you chose not to listen to her. She came to you and Marion Mendelssohn to speak up about the irregularities she'd seen and the fraudulent claims she'd witnessed. She went to other scientists and pleaded for a full hearing. However, her findings received only a cursory review. Since that time, in pursuit of the truth, she has given up years of research to start over in a menial technical position. She has given up her postdoctoral salary and her benefits. When she arrived in Washington to testify this week, she stayed in the home of a friend's parents, because she could not afford the cost of a hotel. Let's remember who the real victims are.”
Downcast, almost sorrowful, Marion listened to this description of Robin's struggle. But Sandy shook his head defiantly.
“Robin had a full hearing,” Sandy declared. “Don't try to pretend otherwise. We have statements from every scientist there.”
“Yes, let's talk about
your
show trial, your so-called seminar,” Redfield snapped. “Your laboratory is the oppressive regime. You are the dictator there in a totalitarian system. Yours is a culture of accepted truths corrupted by your desire for more and still more funding, and a lust for quick results. Your lab is but one example in a long line ORIS is just now bringing to light. Exaggeration is rewarded. Lies are justified.”
Redfield was living up to his name, for his face was reddening. “I fault the senior scientists in each case. I fault the principal investigators who nurture quick fixes and engineer the fast track from a whiff of success to pharmaceutical riches or academic glory. I fault the principals who should know better,” he said, nearly spitting out the words. “You are collaborators in the true sense of the word. You reward intellectual dishonesty. In the face of good publicity you sacrifice good practices. In the face of possible results you stifle all dissent. Your rationalizations are no better than those of the Germans who collaborated with the Nazis.”
Redfield's staffers cringed. Reflexively, Ian Morgenstern ducked his head as if to avoid a blow. In the passion of the moment, Redfield didn't notice. He spoke only to Glass. At Sandy's side, Houghton-Smith stared in amazement. Sandy had spoken recklessly; he'd forgotten everything, and yet he'd provoked the congressman to even more treacherous rhetorical heights. Redfield had invoked the Nazis. As in tennis, Sandy had drawn the error, and scored a victory.
But Sandy was no tennis player. The day was won, but he did not retire from the court. Even as Houghton-Smith gestured for his client to desist, Sandy leaned into his microphone and said, “I insist on responding to Mr. Redfield's last statement.”
The clerk announced that time was up. The representative from Tennessee suggested that they all adjourn.
“I'm sorry,” Sandy said. “I cannot let this pass.”
The floor was his again; every man and woman remaining shocked awake.
“Sir,” Sandy said, “I take exception to your remarks as a scientist, as an American, but above all, as a Jew. Six million of my people perished in the Holocaust, among them members of my own extended family. To compare my conduct to that of Nazi collaborators is an insult to me and to the entire Jewish community. Such a statement is beyond tasteless; it is deeply anti-Semitic, and I demand an apology.”
For a moment the room was silent. Well played, Jacob thought. And in the back row, Jeff Yudelstein watched in wonder. Even he, the newest of reporters, saw what Sandy Glass had achieved. Redfield was on the defensive. Still testy, Redfield was now the one explaining himself. His analogy was not meant as an insult to American Jews, but as an indictment of corruption in the scientific community, a culture of falsehood in which compliance was rewarded and truth tellers shot down. His analogy, perhaps unfortunate, perhaps misleading, was not at all meant as a slight to the sacred memory of those who perished. He was clarifying mightily, but he was too late. The words had sprung from his mouth and flown into every notebook and tape recorder, to multiply in print and on the radio, and on every public access cable station.
This would be huge for Feng. Byron Zouzoua realized it instantly. The Holocaust trumped everything. The accusation of anti-Semitism lifted the discourse to an entirely new level. Media attention on Feng, the brilliant, inscrutable Chinese, could hardly compete with this, the representative's anti-Semitic faux pas.
Thayer Houghton-Smith felt his stomach lurch again from despair to hope. He had nearly given up on his bull-in-the-china-shop client, and then Glass invoked the Holocaust. He had dropped the H-bomb. What more could anybody say? Was Sandy actually a genius?
Was he insane? Marion wondered, half in awe at this oratorical excess.
Ann bent her head to hide her astonished face. She was sure Sandy had never uttered words like these in his life. Her husband had never used the term
my people,
except perhaps in the punch line of some Jewish joke. Instinctively she understood he spoke metonymically: by
people
he meant Marion. When he demanded an apology, what he wanted was an apology to Marion, whose rough handling enraged him. Even now, after all these years, Sandy's deep attachment, his love for Marion, still took Ann by surprise. To see him defend Marion so recklessly, to watch him throw himself in front of her, hurt, even though Ann felt, high-mindedly and politically, that his behavior should make her proud.
9
A
S
R
EDFIELD
swept out of the hearing room with his staff surrounding him, rebuffing journalists in a rear-guard maneuver, Charlotte and Louisa Glass were riding a tall bus an hour north of Boston to visit Kate at Hill. Parents' Weekend at the Hill Academy was scheduled to begin that evening, and Ann, with her usual care, had asked that one of them go up for the first night to keep Kate company until her parents arrived the next morning. Both sisters had volunteered. It wasn't just a matter of taking care of Kate; it seemed a point of family pride as well, to go out to Hill, hold up the flag, and guard the home front.
The sisters were the only two passengers on the bus, and the driver seemed to have forgotten them as he picked up speed through the dun-colored farms. The John Parrish Hill Academy had not a single hill to its name, and Charlotte could see the church steeple from far off. “Excuse me? Excuse me!” she called to the bus driver. Swaying, she and Louisa made their way to the front.
“Oh, there you are,” the driver said.
“This is our stop,” Charlotte snapped.
“Relax,” Louisa murmured, and Charlotte shot her a look, because her sister sounded so much like Ann.
They tumbled out the doors, narrowly avoiding a slush puddle, and carried their bags across the two-lane highway that cut through the campus. They had both attended Hill themselves, and they felt almost old and wise as they trudged across the vast and muddy fields toward the main quad. Parrish Hill had an ethereal, storybook quality, as if it had been fixed in time one hundred years before. To the south, the ground sloped quietly down to the great pond. In the west, a bunch of students trundled off, like farm girls in a John Everett Millais painting, cheeks glowing in the rosy afternoon light, lacrosse sticks pitched over their shoulders.
Louisa took a deep breath. How sweet the air was after the stale city. She had forgotten.
A small figure was running toward them. They could see her from far off. Eventually Kate dashed up, breathing hard.
“Have you heard anything?” she asked.
Charlotte shook her head. “We were probably on the bus already if Mom tried to call.”
“Oh.” Kate took one of Louisa's bags.
“It's light,” Louisa said. “I can carry it myself.”
“No, I will. You're the guest,” said Kate.
Louisa looked at Charlotte, amused and touched by how happy Kate was to see them. Hill was such a beautiful, desolate place.
“Are you hungry?” Kate asked. “There's an opening reception in the old gym, but it's not till eight. We can have an early dinner.” She was wearing a brown corduroy skirt and there was a run in her tights. Her parka was ancient, faded, and green.
“You should really hit up Mom for some new clothes,” said Charlotte.
“Well, it's not like she has time to go shopping this week,” Kate replied in the reproachful tones that had earned her the family nickname Kate the Saint.
The three of them walked directly into the Commons, picked up cafeteria trays, and stood in line. Out of habit, Charlotte reached for her Harvard ID card, and then remembered that no cards were required. Guests came and went freely for dinner. There were no security guards or keys. The school was simply too remote to make such precautions necessary.
Dinner in hand, the three cast about for a few moments. “Where do you want to sit?” Louisa asked.
“I don't know,” said Kate.
“Well, where are your friends?” asked Charlotte.
Stricken, Kate scanned the dining hall. She wasn't sure she could scare up enough people at any given table to qualify.
“Your pseudofriends? Your imaginary friends?” Charlotte pressed.
“All right, fine.” Kate led her sisters to the far edge of a rather literary-looking group, where she introduced them to a French girl named Sylvie, who wore a Hermès scarf; a spectacled young fogy named Stephen; a jolly, pudgy type named Monty; a sophisticate named Nick; and a small kid named Matthew, who was clearly the Jewish one. Each of them said hello graciously. Then they continued talking among themselves about the spring production of
Equus.
As usual, Kate was left to contemplate her dinner. She began to pick at her ravioli swimming in tomato sauce, her dish of chocolate pudding, her two slices of garlic bread. She was almost accepted by the others, certainly tolerated, but she was not one of them. She worked with them on the literary magazine, but her poetry was never picked. She was secretary of the drama club, but no one considered her an actor; she'd never had a part on stage. Sad to say, she was rather common at Hill. She was not African, or even African-American. She had no uncles in the Senate. Her father was not a Wall Street wizard. Her mother was not a famous activist, nor did her family attend the season in New York. Hill prided itself on its diversity. Students came from every sort of privileged background. They overcame stunning deprivations, as well. Here again, Kate fell short. She had not escaped the killing fields of Cambodia or been plucked like a rose from inner-city Baltimore by the scholarship committee. The Hill literati were fond of her, but she could not claim them as close friends.
Stephen was a little different. He was charming, even chummy when he chose to be. People said his grandfather was rich, but his parents had raised him on a commune in Oregon. He loved arcane bits of information, rare books, antiques. He'd bought a Victorian-era walking stick at a shop in Boston and been suspended for it, under the stricture that no weapons were permitted on school grounds. He claimed his middle name was Daedalus. This seemed fanciful and pretentious—but you never knew with him. It might have been true.
“Hey, Kate,” he called from across the table. Louisa stared at him; he looked so familiar. “Can I borrow your
Tristram Shandy
?”
“Where's yours?”
“Lost.”
“Well, where did you lose it?”
“My dear,” he said professorially, “if I knew where I'd lost it, obviously it wouldn't be lost.”
“Don't lend him anything,” said Monty.
“Yeah, I wouldn't,” Matthew told her.
“Please. I beg of you,” Stephen said, and came around and knelt before Kate on bended knee.
“I'm sure it's on reserve in the library,” she told him.
“Malignant thing,” he said.
Then Louisa remembered where she had seen Stephen.
“He was Prospero,” she whispered to Charlotte.
He'd played Prospero in the school's
Tempest
the year before. Louisa recognized the whimsical expression on his face, the round glasses, the way he spoke: formal, and at the same time flip. He had been such an odd image with those glasses and his wooden staff. Such a mix of innocence and sophistication, part Phileas Fogg at the Reform Club, part Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince. And now he must have been at least six inches taller, so lanky, and carelessly bemused. And trying to borrow books from Kate!
Charlotte viewed Stephen with a gimlet eye. After all, she knew something about callow youths.
That night Charlotte and Louisa curled up in sleeping bags in Kate's attic room. Years before, some girl had stuck glow-in-the-dark stickers on the overhanging eaves. Galaxies of tiny stars and planets filled the room as soon as Kate turned out the light.
“It's like a planetarium.” Louisa lay on her back, admiring the view.
But Charlotte got straight to the point. “You should watch out for Stephen,” she told Kate.
“Why?” asked Kate.
“Because he's trouble,” Charlotte said.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“She thinks he likes you,” Louisa said, amused.
Kate sat up in bed, genuinely surprised. “He does not.”
“Definitely stay away from him,” Charlotte warned.
“Really?” Kate was piqued by the suggestion. She'd always assumed Stephen liked boys better than girls, but then she wasn't sure. Maybe he wasn't sure either.
“He's bad news.”
“Why?”
“Don't listen to her,” Louisa counseled. “She's grumpy, and she's off men.”
“You are? Even Jeff?”
“Who?”
“You broke up with Jeff?”
“Dumped him,” said Charlotte.
“Dumped cranberry juice on top of him,” amended Louisa.
“Well, Dad will be—”
“I'm not discussing it with Dad,” snapped Charlotte.
“She's afraid of making him too happy,” Louisa told Kate.
“Very funny,” Charlotte said.
“He'll find out, anyway,” said Louisa, who hadn't been nearly so philosophical when she broke up with her own boyfriend the year before.
“I just wish—” Kate began.
Charlotte interrupted, “Oh, don't say you like Stephen.”
“No, I just wish Mom would call from DC. It isn't like her not to call.”
“They'll be here tomorrow,” said Louisa, “and then she'll give you the blow-by-blow.”
“I hope Dad didn't lose his temper,” Kate said in a small voice.
“Of course he didn't lose his temper,” Charlotte said. “That's what lawyers are for.”
“To stop you from losing it?”
“To lose your temper for you.”
“I'd kind of thought they'd make it up here after all and surprise me,” said Kate.
“Come on,” Louisa told her gently. “You knew it would be us.”
“In loco parentis,” Kate murmured.
“By the time they flew to Boston, and got the car, and drove out here . . .”
“I know, but I sort of thought your coming was just one of Mom's contingency plans,” Kate said. “Do you think if the hearings are running late, that's a bad sign?”
“No! Why are you always so alarmist?” Charlotte asked, although that was exactly what she'd been thinking.
The glowing stars faded, and the sisters lay in silence as they thought about their father. Unjustly accused, would he lose his position at the institute? Would he have to resign from Harvard Medical School? These questions did not spring from material concerns—losing their house, or dropping out of school, never occurred to them; they were too tough-minded, and at the same time, too sheltered for such ideas. Their worries were all for their father. Their identities were still tied to his, wrapped up in his cause and his career. His brilliance was the centerpiece of their family. His impossible hours, his weekends on call, his absences had structured their lives. His work as a healer, his research, his arrogant benevolence all comprised the central myth of their childhood, and they half dreaded the demolition of that myth, the smashing of their household god. What would become of the family then? What new religion would guide them?
What would become of him? Sandy Glass had never felt better in his life. He'd turned the tables on his accusers and he was jubilant. As Zouzoua had predicted, the media stampede had turned from Feng. Redfield, with his choice of words, by turns shocking, racist, and unfortunate, had raised the red flag and drawn public fury on himself.
The uproar over Redfield's comments swirled in all the newspapers, and privately, Sandy's own lawyer called him brilliant as the articles on Redfield's faux pas poured in: opinion pieces chastising the congressman, official statements from the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and the presidents of major Jewish organizations. There were requests for Sandy to speak to the medical chapter of Boston's Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and calls for Redfield to resign as chair of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. What a delightful pickle! What a savory stew!
Few enjoyed the brouhaha more than Sandy's own patients. They embraced him at office visits, and hailed him as a returning champion in their rooms.
“Redfield really put his foot in it,” said Mary Stoughton. She had a breathing tube in her nose for extra oxygen, and spoke in wheezy bursts, but she was planning to make it to her ninetieth birthday.
“He did, indeed,” said Sandy.
“It's the most absurd thing I've heard in my life,” Mary said to the elderly daughter keeping watch by her bed. “He called Dr. Glass a Nazi. I said to the nurse this morning—‘They've called Dr.
Glass
a Nazi!' Of course, Redfield must resign his post.”
“We'll see,” said Sandy, grinning.
“Mother is drafting a letter to Mr. Redfield,” said Helen Stoughton, who had been taking dictation on a yellow legal pad.
“That's what I like,” said Sandy, pressing Mary's hand in his. Her skin was white and papery, and the blue veins showed through. Old age had overtaken her, and cancer was wasting her, but she clung tenaciously to each day. She still knew the time, and followed the fortunes of her associates. She'd always enjoyed her lively Jewish doctor, but never more than when he was in the news. He was on her team. Indeed, he
was
her team, battling in the papers mightily, fighting Redfield and the whole House of Representatives. Mary never doubted that he did all this on her behalf.
“The next thing is, we ramp up our work here on the home front,” Sandy told Marion at lunch.
“I wish we could,” Marion said.
“And why can't we? What's the problem now?”
“Well,” said Marion, “we've got a lot to finish with Feng and Prithwish on the bone cancer paper.”
“That little thing?” Sandy scoffed. “I thought you'd knocked that one off weeks ago.”
He snatched up the draft from her desk. “You've still got Robin on there as a coauthor?”
“It was her project before she left,” Marion said simply.
He practically laughed with exasperation, she was so scrupulous.
“She made a contribution,” Marion said, “however small.”
“And this would be the same Robin who is attempting to destroy our careers?”
“We've already had this discussion.”
“It's like including Benedict Arnold on the list of Founding Fathers. You know—for his early contributions to the American Revolution.” He skimmed the first couple of pages, heavily annotated with Marion's red pen. “You are spending an inordinate amount of time on this. It's hardly worth your attention.”
She didn't answer. He was right; the results were modest, but she couldn't help herself. Relieved as she was to be done with subcommittee hearings, impressed as she had been with Sandy's performance, her anxiety was such that she could not let any ambiguity in Feng's paper pass.