Ben said nothing.
George was outraged. “Of all the nasty things to accuse me of. Making you steal! That was downright nasty of her. Nasty. Rotten. The most irresponsible thing I ever did was to let you sleep in two days last year. That was the worst damn thing. And you had that cold, anyway. And also anyway, it wouldn’t hurt her to be the first one up for a change.”
Ben did not answer his mother or George. He was too disappointed in the one to even mention her name to the other. Besides, George wouldn’t shut up long enough to hear what Ben might have to say. Mr. Berkowitz and his mother both thought he would steal from his beloved chemistry lab. William probably thought so, too. And Karen.
The thieving stopped.
Nothing at all was missed on Thursday, the day after Mr. Berkowitz spoke to Ben’s mother. That day Mr. Berkowitz announced to the class that he would place a carton in the corner of the stockroom. The person or persons who had taken the equipment could return the pieces to that box and no questions would be asked. If enough equipment was returned to show good faith, nothing would get reported to the school principal, and the seniors would be allowed to continue their research over vacation. Everyone but Ben acted delighted. William did and Cheryl did and Ron and Lacey and Adam and Violet. Even Karen.
Karen said to Ben, “Did Mr. Berkowitz talk to you personally about the missing equipment a couple of days ago?”
“No,” Ben answered. “He went to my mother.”
“He called me out of English class the day that William passed that list around. It seems that we were the two who looked most suspicious.”
“You could have saved him a trip to my house.” Ben looked hard at Karen. “Why didn’t you, Karen? Why didn’t you tell him that I didn’t take anything that wasn’t given to me? Leftovers and chipped test tubes are all I took.”
“I told Mr. Berkowitz what I saw. That I never saw you take anything, just as you never saw me take anything, but how should I know what I can’t see?”
“The same way that I know things that I don’t see, Karen. The same way.”
George said, “Hold it, Ben. Hold it! She may not have a George to help her out.”
Karen said, “You gave the benzene to William when you shouldn’t have. You can’t always be sure about people, Ben.”
“I thought that you would understand. It’s too bad you feel that way, Karen.”
“I guess it is. But it’s something that I’ll always have with me, I think. I don’t expect anyone to ever stick up for me.”
George said to Ben, “You see, Ben, what happens when you trust only what you see!”
Ben said nothing.
Karen began walking away, but she turned around and added, “I’m sorry. Sorry that I didn’t reassure Mr. Berkowitz harder.” She paused and smiled, more to herself than at Ben, and added, “You know, Ben, even as I said that I was sorry that I didn’t reassure Mr. Berkowitz harder, I was saying it because I felt that I owed it to you to say it. I wasn’t saying it because I really am sorry for not believing in your innocence.” She turned again to go, but hesitated and without looking around said, “And for that I am sorry, Ben.”
The only time that Ben’s feelings sank lower that week was the next day when he passed the stockroom on his way to the cafeteria. He glanced into the box and noticed that a dozen test tubes and some Erlenmeyer flasks and the set of beakers, sizes 400 ml to 25 ml and about three yards of rubber tubing had been returned. Everyone in the world had had a chance to return them there. Including Benjamin Dickinson Carr.
On that last day of school Ben carried his lunch tray over to where William was eating with Cheryl. Adam and Lacey, and Ron and Violet were still waiting in line to be served. Ben would never have had the courage to sit down in the midst of six seniors.
Cheryl and William smiled at him. “I saw Berky for only a minute after class; he said that the research will continue,” William volunteered. “Thanks for helping out, Ben.”
“That’s all right,” Ben said, not for any reason except that whenever people thanked him, he automatically said that. Ben started to explain that he really shouldn’t be thanked when William changed the subject. “Going to Virginia to see the old man over Christmas, Ben?” Then William turned to Cheryl and explained, “Ben’s daddy lives in Norfolk, and Ben and his brother visit him every Christmas. What’s your father’s new wife’s name?”
“Her name is Marilyn,” Ben said. Ben noticed that Ron, Vi, Adam, and Lacey sat down three tables away, and Ben felt that he was the reason. Why else didn’t they come sit with William as they usually did? “I hope I didn’t take anyone’s seat,” he said.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Cheryl answered.
Ben thought that since he was taking up their time, he ought to be entertaining or helpful or something.
“I think that your research is the most difficult one of all. Making amides can be tricky.”
William and Cheryl smiled at each other.
“I’m sure glad that all those thefts stopped so that you can go on.”
“We’re glad, too,” Cheryl said. She and William smiled at each other again but said nothing.
Ben said, “Now you won’t have to take that job in the drugstore, Will.”
“Oh, I think I’ll do that anyway. I applied and was accepted already. I guess I want to.”
Ben said, “I’m relieved that you’re doing it because you want to. It would make me sad to think that you were doing it just to get someone out of trouble.”
William smiled at Cheryl. “We know how you feel, don’t we?” Then he looked at Ben and said, “We understand all about it, Ben.”
“I really want you guys to do research. Really I do.”
“Sure you do, Ben. Sure you do,” William said.
“I have a theory about those thefts.”
“So do we, Ben. So do we. Everyone is entitled to a theory. After all, if Einstein and Newton were entitled, why shouldn’t you be?” William laughed.
“Don’t you want to hear my theory?” Ben asked. George was getting ill; he said, “They’re going to say no, Ben, and then what are you going to do?”
Cheryl smiled at Ben and said, “Some other time, huh?”
George asked, “What are you going to do now?”
Ben didn’t answer George. Since being helpful didn’t work, maybe being entertaining would; he tried a joke. “Did you hear about the sick molecule?”
William said, “No, tell us about it.”
“It had a tomic ache.” Ben laughed.
Cheryl and William moaned together. George did, too. George moaned automatically upon hearing a pun.
William said, “Hey, Cheryl, I have to stop at my locker before the next class.” Then he turned to Ben and said, “I hope that you’ll excuse us, Ben.” He and Cheryl left.
George told Ben, “That was the most disgusting performance I have ever seen. I would say that it was vulgar.”
“I don’t think it’s vulgar to be friendly,” Ben replied.
“Buttering up William as if he were an English muffin.”
“What is wrong with a guy wanting a friend?”
“There’s nothing wrong with a guy wanting a friend. Heaven knows, I wanted Howard for a friend, but there is something wrong with grovelling for one.”
“What’s grovelling?”
“What you just did.” And George had it in for William more and yet more because he had humbled Ben.
five
Astra’s Christmas recess began. There was a gap of only one day, a Saturday, between the end of school and the time Ben and Howard boarded the plane to go to their father’s house in Norfolk. Ben was full of George’s complaining and swearing. Howard was full of Dramamine. Dramamine had two advantages; it kept Howard from throwing up, and it kept him sleepy. Ben felt that he could not handle a restless Howard as well as a restless George.
Ben and Howard visited their father and his new family during Christmas, during Easter, and for one month durin
g the summer, but they didn’t much care for it. It was in the contract under visiting privileges. They called their father’s new wife Marilyn even though she would have preferred that they attach something like Aunt or Cousin to the front of it. She had once suggested Auntie. Howard had refused; he had to call people ma’am and sir often enough when he didn’t mean it. People in the South do. So he decided right from the beginning, right from the first time they met, that he would call his father’s wife just what she was and what she was to him. Marilyn. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Mr. Carr’s new marriage had resulted in one daughter instead of two sons. Their half sister was named Frederica, which is the only polite thing that Howard ever called her. When his mother had told him that on his next visit to his father’s he would see Frederica, he had thought he was going to see a town. He still thought that his half-sister sounded like a town.
He didn’t appreciate all the fuss that was made over her either. “Boy,” he had complained to Ben, “they make more fuss over my half-sister spitting up clotted milk than they do over the fact that I’ve learned to read. Half-sister. They sure don’t treat her like half of anything. She gets all of everything.”
George said, “She’s half size, half bald, and half wet, top or bottom, all the time. That makes her half.” And Howard remembering that allowed himself to endure the fuss that everyone made over Frederica Carr.
Ben looked forward to his visits to his father’s house with a mixture of longing and loathing. He kept meeting the pits inside his happiness watermelon. He always had the feeling of wanting to be at his tiptoe best when he saw his dad. He wanted to show his father how much he had grown, how much he had improved, for Ben was nagged by the suspicion that if he had been a truly terrific fellow, his father would never have left. Ben was anxious to show his father just what he was missing by choosing to live with another wife in Norfolk, Virginia. The days before a visit to his father were filled with fantasies about how he would look to his dad, and the days following were filled with wondering if he had been a success.
Ben did enjoy the comfort and order of Marilyn’s. George called Marilyn, Mrs. Nasty Neat. He knew that the chemist in Ben admired straightened drawers and closets. Ben never directly told his mother how Marilyn was; he hinted a lot, and she knew that he wouldn’t mind if she improved in a direction toward Marilyn.
Mrs. Carr had packed the Christmas present that she had bought for Frederica. Freddie was surrounded by toy lessons. Putting round pegs in round holes or stacking plastic doughnuts on a peg with the smallest one on top. Frederica neither stacked nor put; she sucked. On everything. And then scattered it over the floor. Marilyn was teaching her pick-up. Howard complained because Marilyn had everything turned around. All of Freddie’s toys were for education instead of for fun, and all of her education was for fun. Like learning pick-up was supposed to be fun.
So Howard had suggested that Mrs. Carr buy Frederica a gun, and Mrs. Carr had said that girls don’t play with guns, and Howard had said, “Who said play?” Mrs. Carr smiled to herself; she would have been less than human if she had not been secretly pleased that her boys preferred her to Marilyn and almost always preferred their own tossed salad home to Marilyn’s tomato aspic one. She bought Frederica blue jeans with ruffles.
Ben and Howard had received their gifts from their mother on the Saturday before they left. Once during a conversation between them, in which they tried naming the advantages of having divorced parents, they had put celebrating two Christmases at the top of the list. It was also the only entry on the list. In all the years that they had been shipped to their father’s for this holiday, they never once thought about how it might be for their mother left at home alone. And Charlotte Carr never told them, but she hugged them special every year as she put them on the plane. Ben was always too full of airline schedules and Howard too full of Dramamine to notice. But George did.
This year Ben showed relief as he zipped the fuzzy lining into his raincoat and put it on. Insulation. Insulation not only from the cold they would find in Norfolk but also from the sun, steam, and laboratory routine of Lawton Beach. For once Ben wanted to forget chemistry. He would try to forget it at his father’s.
But George would not let him. George, who hated organic chemistry, would not let Ben turn it off. He nagged. He began immediately after they arrived, and he continued whenever they had a quiet moment. In the car as Marilyn drove them to the home of her mother and father. Sitting at the table waiting to be served Christmas dinner. Any little niche of time, George nagged about the lab. But he was his worst at night. Then he never let up. George was like a night fever. He was furious. He had been blamed by Mrs. Carr and Mr. Berkowitz, and he was suspected by Karen.
Two days after Christmas, George’s fury reached a climax. He was determined to get to the heart of the matter. Howard had long since fallen asleep, and Freddie had had her night-night kisses, which Howard claimed were bearable only if you kept Kleenex handy. George began grumbling.
Ben pleaded, “All year you have been telling me to relax about not-knowing, and now you are begging me to pick a certain situation apart and examine it for flaws. I don’t see what that has to do with me. The case has been closed, and I know that I’m not guilty.”
“Stupid. It’s me they’re blaming. You’ve got to clear these things up. Besides, I think that what happened in the lab is only a symptom, the way that pimples are a symptom of chicken pox, but a virus is the reason you get the pimples. There’s a virus named William behind all this.”
“You can be brutal, George. You are really very unkind.”
“I am kind to kindness and lovable to lovableness and …”
“And conceited.”
“And also absolutely uncanny about sensing when things don’t fit. To begin with, why didn’t the separating funnel or the condenser show up in that carton? They are being used for something. Why are they needed?”
“I don’t know, George. I’m sleepy.”
“And what about the electric heater? It should have been returned. It was more valuable than the set of beakers that was. And so was the condenser and so was the separating funnel. Who was missing that set of beakers?”
“I don’t remember, George.”
“I do. It was Cheryl. She probably had them hidden. Some of the stuff was taken just as a cover-up for the stuff that was needed.”
“Aren’t you being as unfair to Cheryl as Mother was to you?”
“Maybe. But I’m keeping it to myself. I’m not making an out-loud accusation.”
“That’s what you think. You’ve been talking out loud without realizing it.”
“Never mind. Howard is asleep anyway. What is William’s project?”
“I don’t remember. Goodnight, George.”
“Don’t lie to me, Ben. This is George you’re talking to.”
“So what if I do remember? I also remember that day at the beach when you told me that you didn’t give a darn about William’s project.”
“I did not say that I didn’t give a darn; I said that I didn’t give a damn. That was because you were interested only to impress Mr. Berkowitz and because you were annoyed that there was something in this organic chemistry world that someone knew and that you didn’t know. Now tell me.”
“They are supposed to make amides out of compounds that have an indole ring. Can I go to sleep now?”
“Amides? What are amides?”
“They are a certain kind of organic compound. If you hadn’t decided to cop out on organic chemistry, you would know that. According to Mr. Berkowitz, they are supposed to be making amides out of compounds that have an indole ring.”
“Don’t think that you are going to put me off by using those big names, Ben.”
“I have to think about them with the words that I have for them. How else can I think about them? What do you want me to do? Think of making amides with words like mashed potatoes and succotash? Do you like those words better? You really don’t have muc
h respect for chemistry, do you, George?”
“Let us say that I feel that I must save you from being just a chemist.”
“Save me from being a chemist? That’s what I want to be!”
“That’s the second time you’ve quoted me incorrectly. I am going to save you from being just a chemist. Which means being merely a chemist. Weren’t you listening before?”
“I’m sleepy, George.”
“Foggy brained is what you are. I intend to see that you are not just a neat, prepackaged chemist who fits things into neat, labeled jars. And everything that doesn’t fit into ready-labeled jars is placed into a jar anyway and put away until some label can be put on it. Chemistry is all formulas and boundaries, and I, I, me, nasty, vulgar George, intend to keep you slightly out of bounds so that you can move, swing. In short, Benjamin Body, I intend to make a man of you, a man that I’ll be proud to live in. And you can shut your mind to all the messiness in the lab, all the stealing and all the funny goings on because you are afraid of making waves, making someone not like you because of what you may stir up. You don’t want to care because—Ben. Ben. Ben, are you sleeping?”
“No, George, thinking.”
“Good! In the morning I want you to sit down with pencil and paper and think about William’s amides. I want you to think until you can make indole ones and findole ones and Dole pineapple ones …”