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The Women of Harvard Square
A Novel in Short Stories
By Michael Lieberman Texas Review Press
Copyright © 2014 Michael Lieberman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-937875-86-2
CHAPTER 1
Our Lady of the Bogs and Pitcher Plants
Diana was the talk of Adams House. And Agnes, like everyone else, was swept up by her mystery and beauty. Diana hung out with writers and literary types and was rumored to be working on a play. The title, House scuttle had it, was Disraeli's Apricot Tree—which led to endless speculation. People googled "Disraeli." The curious, meaning a large swath of the undergraduates in Adams including Agnes, had to know every last detail. The more enterprising got hold of an old British TV miniseries and watched it avidly for clues about the statesman. And everyone kept an eye out for Diana in the common rooms and the courtyard and walking along the Charles or on Plympton Street or Mass Ave. The dining hall was prime viewing. What would she be wearing? Who would be her dinner companions? Was she dating someone?
Diana had instant glamour. She was fine-boned and delicate without seeming frail. She could make the simplest top and pants look as if they had come from the most expensive boutique in Boston, and when she did walk in for dinner, she seemed to have stepped simultaneously out of the pages of Vogue and The New York Review of Books.
One night Agnes watched Diana cross the dining hall to a table where three attractive, young women sat. She carried bound copies of something—her play, Agnes surmised. A jolt of excitement surged through the voyeur—a play devoted to young women, perhaps exclusively devoted to their sensibilities, and certainly written by one with undeniable charisma. And Benjamin Disraeli? What was he doing in their company?
This was in the early spring of their junior year—Agnes remembered because the crocuses were just in bloom. Later, when the tulips were at their height, she saw a performance of Disraeli's Apricot Tree, and her fascination turned to longing.
With Maynard it was different. Agnes was taken with him before she met him.
Her mother Adriana Lubeck first put her on to him—as it happened, after the crocuses and before the tulips, that is, when the forsythia were at their height. Agnes was quite certain of the timing because one day she came to her mother's office and found a generous clutch of the brightly flowered branches in a vase. She also found her mother grousing about Maynard.
Not many people had the courage to stand up to the formidable Professor Lubeck. Maynard was one of these. Adriana was famous for her brilliant, if sometimes idiosyncratic scientific investigations. Maynard had come from Princeton expressly to work with her and brought with him the highest recommendations and very clear ideas of his own about his dissertation research.
"He was exceptional, and so I gave him what I think will be a showcase project. The rub is that he wants to work on cancer and the human genome. He dismissed my project, calling it 'trivial and derivative.' He pronounced it, 'not fit for high school students.'"
His chutzpa, his strength of character, his conviction, his self-confidence—Agnes didn't know what to call it—interested her.
"I was furious," Adriana continued.
"So what did you suggest that he balked at?"
"Well, I told him I wanted him to develop a rapid, generally applicable method to use DNA sequencing to survey the insects and spiders that the carnivorous pitcher plant traps in the fluid of its pitcher-shaped leaves."
"Honestly, Adriana"—Agnes always called her "Adriana," never "Mother" or "Mom"—"if I didn't know you so well, it would sound like a yawn to me too. If that's all the information you gave him, what did you expect? My generation was raised on the hype around the human genome. Let me guess. He stood his ground."
"He did, damn it. I don't understand why he didn't get it. He is so very able."
"So what now?" Agnes asked.
"I have to say this for him, he marshals his arguments better than any student I remember."
"Come back to my question. What's he going to do?"
"Finally I had to say, 'Maynard, trust me. You can make rapid progress in an area that is almost unexplored, and with climate change and global warming this approach might become a major tool to study changes in the earth's ecosystems. It's a lot of fieldwork, a lot of time collecting specimens in hot, humid bogs, but in the end you will have something.' Eventually, he agreed but only provisionally."
Agnes was sucked in before she laid eyes on him. Her resolve was only strengthened by another vignette Adriana recounted. Early on she had told Maynard to think about how useful recent DNA sequencing data had been in sorting out the species and subspecies of finches that Darwin had found in the Galapagos. Maynard responded that doing the project she proposed would be like being sent to Darwin, Australia—to a nineteenth-century Australian penal colony never to be heard from again. That bit of moxie clinched it for Agnes.
Disraeli's Apricot Tree was performed as part of an undergraduate drama festival, and Agnes and many other undergraduates made the pilgrimage to see it. She came away enthralled and titillated by Diana's beauty and talent. In appraising her, Agnes drew in her breath with decisive force, and as she let it out, a compelling but loopy plan seized her. She would stalk the playwright—learn the most minute details of her life, her interests, her romantic involvements. Agnes could not get the idea out of her brain. Most of her understood that such behavior was twisted, but a small part of her pushed back. Was not information gathering an essential part of science—and maybe life too? Was she not a scientist? Then good sense prevailed, and Agnes swallowed hard and let go of the misadventure.
The set was minimal—an artificial apricot tree and three high stools on a bare stage. The play was not. Diana anticipated the confusion the title would cause and provided program notes. Disraeli was much more than a famous nineteenth-century British politician. He was a novelist, a raconteur, and a confidant of the queen. Diana focused on his literary interests. The notes were silent on the apricot tree.
The curtain was raised on three young women in apricot colored bodysuits sitting on the stools under the apricot tree. They took turns speculating on what Benjamin Disraeli thought about Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. It began with the deplorable state of the serfs in Czarist Russian and morphed to the fanatic reverence in which they held the church.
Agnes could not see where the play was going. She kept shifting back and forth in her seat waiting for something to happen. It felt like a dry academic debate, not a play. "Stasis" was the word that came to the young biologist's mind. Surely this can't be the whole play. Someone as smart and beautiful as Diana must be up to something more.
Then the actors began to talk about the conflicts between Fyodor Karamazov and his son Dmitri. They turned angrily toward one another. Spittle-mouthed, they hissed and snarled. "Ivan is the family patriarch. Disraeli respected legitimate authority." "He's a controlling despot. That's why Disraeli secretly admired him." "The son's an ingrate, a degenerate." "He's only trying to escape the overweening control of his father." Off their stools, the actors stalked one another, crouching and shaking their fists. It looked as if they were about to savage each other. "You apologist for hate, get off the stage." For an instant it seemed that the biggest of the women would push one of the others into the audience. "You don't know what hate is. It's the way men love."
Diana introduced a certain Grushenka. "This beauty has no right to be here," one actor said. "She does. She is Dostoyevsky's desirable, elusive woman. We need to hear what Disraeli thought," was the counter. "Surely we can all love beauty." Slowly the roughness gave way to conciliation. The three women began touching one another—very discreetly at first—and kissing in a restrained, almost demure manner. As they portrayed Disraeli's imagined disapproval of the competing lust of father and son, they were seized with the need to fondle each other and to kiss passionately. Soon a ménage-à-trois theme took over the play. Disraeli's imagination was no match for three young women in apricot-colored bodysuits.
Agnes sat transfixed watching the erotic forays of three women whose dress simulated nakedness. Her thoughts turned to Diana. She couldn't help herself. She was attracted to the beautiful woman who could conceive such a bold idea and carry it off. Was this an unconscious invitation on Diana's part? Maybe, but not to her specifically. The two had only met in passing. Was it a more general call to which she might respond? Possibly. What would it be like to sleep with a woman? What would it be like to sleep with Diana? What would it be like to sleep with Diana and Maynard together? Forget about Grushenka and the rivalry between father and son for her favors. Forget about the three women in body suits. How about getting it on with Diana and Maynard?
Agnes was too shy to approach Diana, yet alone to act on her fantasy. But the spell Diana cast was so strong that Agnes did manage a conversation before the school year ended. Agnes ran into her one day as she exited the Adams House Library and blurted out a "thank you." Diana's imaginative vision had broadened her horizons, she said. By now Diana was used to such abrupt openings, and at this point in her life she was still in her warm, gracious phase. She thanked Agnes and said that she was glad the play had "touched someone who was in science and not just another literary type like me. If you're really interested, maybe sometime we can have lunch or something. Maybe in the fall."
"Hold on. How do you know I am in science?"
"I know these things. It is the business of playwrights to know about people."
"Where are you going to be this summer?" Agnes said.
"I'm moving in with my boyfriend Maynard. The rent is free, and he's good company. Besides, he'll be gone all day at the lab, and I'll be able to write."
The conversation stopped. "Which Maynard? ... Maynard Dresden?"
"Yes, why?"
"He is working in Adriana Lubeck's lab, my mother's lab."
"Oh, I see. I should have connected the dots. Well, we almost have something in common," she smiled.
They most certainly did. Agnes's heart raced.
"Agnes, you okay? You had this funny look for a second."
"Totally okay."
As she finished her junior year, Agnes was sick of undergraduate life. People like Diana and Maynard had broken out of academe's cloistered walls. Agnes dreaded another year of the Adams House dining hall and sitting around the common rooms with simpering pre-meds.
Diana's news was riveting. Basically she was living with Maynard—sleeping with him. One didn't have to live confined to quarters. Like the three women in Diana's play, Agnes could explore. And living off campus her senior year was a ticket to, well, to anywhere she pleased, even if she wasn't sure at the moment where that was. When Agnes raised the idea with her mother, Adriana liked it. She wanted to foster what she termed her daughter's "fructifying eccentricity." She agreed to help with the extra cost—which explains why, instead of moving back home for the summer, Agnes found an apartment on a quiet street a few blocks off Harvard Square. It was in an old, almost charming, red brick building with cement lintels above the entries and windows.
A week later Adriana called her daughter who had just begun to work in Vladimir Rajewsky's neuroscience lab for the summer. "Come by for a chat this afternoon. I have a proposal you can't refuse."
She sat in front of her mother's desk. "So, what's up? I've got to get back soon. I'm doing some single neuron recording."
"Maynard came in again to see me. I think he is secure in doing the project, but he is a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the work. It's a huge job to collect so much material over such a wide area. I took a liberty of asking him if he needed a little help and if he would like me to speak to you."
"Really, since when did you start procuring for me?" Agnes sat poker-faced.
"Stop it, Agnes. I'm not procuring for you. I'm simply providing a possible opportunity."
"You know I'm interested in neuroscience. I've never even met this dilettante of the fens and bogs."
"Look, Agnes, do you want me to lay this out for you or not? Let me know. Because if you want to go back to being just one more undergraduate plugged into some massive research project, some data slave collecting bits and pieces of Rajewsky's megaproject, let me know. I'll back off."
"Okay, tell me."
"I have no intention of dissuading you from neuroscience. It's a wonderful choice for a young person, but I really believe this is a unique opportunity. Remember we are talking about the summer, not your life. We are at the beginning of a major rethinking of the way ecology should be done. And Maynard has the right mix of ability, fire, and perseverance. Don't be snide. He's not a dilettante. I think you would learn a lot, and I am sure that by late fall we will have enough data to write a very good paper. And I know there will be a piece of this you can carve out as your own for your honors thesis. I won't go through the ins and outs of the scientific details with you again."
"Adriana, you know perfectly well I can't do my honors thesis in your lab. You are my mother."
"Some days I need reminding," she smiled. "We'll figure a way around this. Maybe Gladys Shumsky will sponsor you."
Agnes could no more resist Adriana than Maynard could. Besides she didn't want to. She liked the idea of being the sidekick of a buckaroo like Maynard—a fantasy she burbled to herself after Adriana mentioned that late one afternoon after working in the field all day, he showed up with a red bandana around his forehead. "Deal me in," she said.
And that is how less than a week later and after confronting a very red-faced Vladimir Rajewsky—"You vill never virk in neuroscience in this unifersity. I am promising you"—Agnes found herself standing at the edge of Henley Bog. How this snippet of a girl-woman with a single thick, black braid separating her shoulder blades came to confound and captivate Maynard Dresden.
The two stood near a stand of tamarack that gave way to blueberries. It was a cloudy day, not too hot, a good day for collecting.
"Wow, this is way cool. Amazing in fact." What Agnes found amazing in fact was a broad slightly depressed marshy area covered with spongy sphagnum moss through which poked occasional lichen-covered rocks and pitcher plants. She noted a scattering of sundews as well and at the far end more conifers, which she could not identify at this distance—swamp spruce, perhaps.
She watched Maynard wade in and look back at her. "Come on."
"Just a second, I need to tie my shoe." Facing the marsh, she went down in a fluid, genuflecting motion to one knee, looked up briefly, and bowed her head over her right sneaker for an instant. "Okay, ready."
The collecting went well enough. Two meticulous young people culling the arthropods—insects and spiders—from pitcher plants in a bog in south central New England were bound to make good progress, so much progress that they quit early. They had run out of collecting vials.
Agnes pulled out a point and shoot. "I want to take some pictures while it's cloudy. They might be good for my honors thesis."
They rode back in silence listening to the local classical music station. "It's Mendelssohn," she said. "The Resurrection Symphony. He's quoting Bach, if it matters."
Maynard let out a noncommittal "I know it. It's nice."
"You religious?"
"Not really."
"That was my guess. Adriana raised me Lutheran. I didn't understand why since even then it was clear she was a non-believer. Later I realized she wanted to give me something to rebel against. So, Ein feste Burg, A Mighty Fortress is Our God and all of Bach's sacred music got drilled into me early. But I've moved away from that."
Her eyes were shining. She glanced over at Maynard, who was focused on the road, and swallowed. The steady forward motion of the car, the Bach, the presence of this man with his Red Sox cap and the shaving nick below his sideburn were soothing and lulled her into a feline contentment.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Women of Harvard Square by Michael Lieberman. Copyright © 2014 Michael Lieberman. Excerpted by permission of Texas Review Press.
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