“Oh please, it’s easy enough to deduce that I’d be staying here?—”
“Is it?Isit? Just because you’reworkinghere? A lot of people worked here when I was a kid, Casey, and nobody ever lived in this house but us!”
“Well, it’s not likeyouwere living here, or doing anythingabout any of the problems, and anyway, Noeltoldme you were sniffing around, so?—”
This draws Will up short; he gasps. “After Ibribedthem? That little rat! What kind of respect for your queer elders is that, I ask you—what?”
A small smile is playing at the corners of Casey’s mouth, though it’s comically clear that he’s attempting to suppress it. “Nothing, nothing. Just. Uh. You bribed Noel?”
“Itriedto,” Will mutters darkly. “Apparently, I didn’t have enough cash on me, but the polite thing to do in that circumstance issay, really?—”
“Oh, don’t waste your money; you can’t trust Noel,” Casey says, with a little laugh. “Their grandfather died four times last year, and when I said, ‘That seems like a lot of grandfathers, Noel, you maybe want to think of a different excuse this time?’ they said, ‘I don’t see the point, Mr. Reeves; you know I’m lying, I know I’m lying, let’s all get on with our lives, right?’ And then they didn’t come back to work for three days.”
Will laughs in spite of himself. “God,teenagers. We get these interns at the lab, and you know, you’d think they’d care about this, be passionate? Every one of them has written some devastating essay about how better nutrition in early childhood would have improved their lives, and how deeply invested they are in the concept, and then they show up and all they want to do is find ways to get out of it.”
Abruptly, Will realizes that he is justtalkingto this man, who hates him, and who, of course, he hates as well, because that’s the only sane and natural reaction for a human being to have here. Obviously. So there’s no reason for him to beyammering pleasantly onas though this is an old friend, instead of someone he nearly attacked with a broom a few minutes ago.
But before he can make his escape, Casey, brow furrowed, says, “Early childhood nutrition? I thought you said you were an apple scientist.”
“Nobody is an apple scientist!” Will says this with a level of self-directed hysteria that he’s sure comes across as slightly unhinged. Forging ruthlessly on, he continues, “It was a stupid thing to say, I just said it because…being here makes me… Oh, look, it doesn’t matter. I’m a botanist, okay? And for the last ten years, I’ve been working on a project to grow apples infused with vitamin D.”
Sounding cautious about it, like he’s almost afraid of the answer, Casey says, “Why…?”
Will crosses his arms over his chest. He loves talking about his work, provided the other conversational party is, say, a fellow scientist, ideally also a botanist, and in the best possible scenario, also a botanist either focusing on work within his specific sector of bioengineering, or sharing his particular interest in the genusMalus. But talking about it with essentially anyone else is, more often than not, an agonizing, hair-raising nightmare. At best, Will comes across as boring; at worst, he has to endure a round of insipid-to-insulting questions, fired off at him by someone who mostly just wants to feel smart. And talking to this man, at this moment, in this house, he can’t help but feel defensive, as though he’s arguing for his funding all over again.
So he knows it comes out prickly, daring a challenge, when he says, “Because vitamin D is one of the most common deficits shown in children,actually, and it’s worse for children from low-income families, or with inadequate nutritional access, or in places likethisone, where the sun barely comes out from November to March! And, if you didn’t know, deficiency in vitamin D can cause all kinds of problems for kids—bone- and muscle-growth issues, developmental challenges, they get sick more often, I could go on and on. Vitamin D doesn’t occur naturally in apples, but they’re a good source of other things kids need: iron, vitamin C, it’s a long list. And they store well, too. So if we could create a cultivar that provides a daily dose ofvitamin D, we could distribute them through school lunches, and share cuttings from the mother plant so it would be sort of—open access.” Casey’s staring at him, so Will adds, sharply, “We’ve almost cracked it, you know; you don’t have to look at me like I’m crazy. The theory’s solid, it’s just about isolating the right?—”
“I don’t think it’s crazy,” Casey says, cutting him off. His eyes are wide. “I think it’samazing—can you reallydothat?”
“Oh,” Will says, blinking. “I—I mean, yes. I think so, anyway. It’s looking increasingly likely.”
They stare at each other for a second; Casey’s hair, Will notices, has a single twig caught in it, thin and easily missed. Briefly, he finds himself wanting to reach over and pluck it out, which is so wildly inappropriate that it throws him back, again, to thereality of this situation, which is that he is standing here with a man who he doesn’t like, and who doesn’t like him.
Casey must come to the same conclusion, because his face hardens again, and he snaps, “Well, that doesn’t change the fact that you shouldn’t be poking around in here when I’m not home. Bad enough that you’re trying to strip away my livelihood—now you’re after my house, too?”
“You—I—it’s my house!” Will throws his hands in the air. “I don’t—I just—I can’t do this with you. I can’t be here, it’s too—just—goodbye.” And he wheels around without further ceremony and stalks, in earnest, towards the door.
“Oh, okay,” Casey says, his voice thin, needle-sharp. “Leave, then. I guess Billdidsay that was your primary skillset.”
Will stops dead a foot from the door. He should leave, right now. He knows that. He shouldleave. Nothing he allows to come out of his mouth, in this place, when his skin feels hot and too tight like this, ever leads to anything good. How many times, over the course of his childhood and especially his adolescence, had he stood in front of this door vibrating with this much tension, telling himself to just go? Telling himself it wasn’tworth the trouble of letting out whatever he was working so hard to keep in? Hasn’t he learnedanythingin these past years? He should walk out, like he should have walked every time before, like he did, eventually, walk out.
Trembling, knowing even as he does it that it’s a mistake, Will turns around.
“Do you know what,” Will says. He means it to come out low, ferocious; instead it’s high and reedy, little fault-line cracks around his vowels where emotion is spilling out. “I’ve had just about enough of being told what the old man thought of me, you know that? That’senough. Maybe the two of you braided each other’s hair or exchanged friendship bracelets orwhatever, and, like,good for you, but he and I, as youclearlyknow, weren’t exactly the best of pals! And you can believe me or not, okay, but there was nothing I could havedoneabout that, because he wanted me to be someone I just—wasn’t! I wasn’t that person! And now he’s dead, so?—”
Will stops, drawn to an abrupt, hideous halt. Bill isdead. He’sdead. It’s not that Will didn’t know, objectively, that this was true; it’s not that the relationship hasn’t been dead for decades; it’s not that he’s under any illusions about the nature of death, or of the relationship. It was always going to end this way, with Will hearing about it after the fact, and having to pick up the pieces, fill in the blanks.
But—as Will had learned when his mother had died—grief has neither time for nor interest in logic. God, this had happenedlaterwith her, after the funeral, after Nancy; he’d been back in Chicago, a month and a half later, trying to order at a stupid bakery counter. She’d always loved a cherry Danish, which had annoyed Will’s father, because cherries were one of the few things they didn’t grow, and he’d seen a particularly nice one sitting there, and it had all hit him. That he’d never again see her eat another cherry Danish, or feel her tight grip close on his shoulder, or hear her mutter to herself as she struggledto solve a newspaper crossword. He had started crying, silently but unstoppably, right there in the middle of the bakery, and had to rush out past the other patrons, who had at least been very polite and Midwestern about it.
Will cannot—hecannot—burst into tears in front of Casey Reeves. It would be worse than bursting into tears in the middle of a Chicago bakery, which was at least relatively anonymous, and also over his mother; Will and June had, at least, kept vaguely in touch for a few years after Will left, until she decided it was too difficult keeping it from Will’s father. Still, it was better than nothing, and better to cry over her than Bill, and better to cry in front ofanyonethan the tall, blond slice ofaggressive unpleasantnesswho stands, ashen, before him.
“Will,” Casey says. It’s a very different voice, and, slowly, Will processes the expression on Casey’s blood-drained face, the harmonics of his tone. The bottom is dropping out of his stomach even as Casey, quietly, says, “I’m sorry, you’re right, he was your father and you’re obviously?—”
“Oh,don’t,” Will says, wrapping his arms around himself unconsciously, his voice clipped and wretched even to his own ears. “Don’t say whatever sympathetic thing you’re going to say, just—God, I can’t. Leave mealone, all right?”
A line of irritation appears in Casey’s forehead, but his tone is still struggling towards compassion as he says, “Man, listen, if you could chill for a second, you’d see that I’m trying to?—”
“I know what you’re trying to do!” Will’s voice is shrill, now, embarrassingly so, but he doesn’t care. “You’re trying to say that you’resorrymy stupid father is dead, because now it seems like Icaredabout him, but I didn’t! I don’t! So just—just—keep it to yourself!”
