At that point, Nicole burst into tears, and jumped to her feet crying, “You always criticize me! I hate you!” She ran into the bathroom and slammed the door. That woke the baby, who started to cry.
Julia turned to me and said, “If you would please just let me handle this myself, Jack.”
And I said, “You’re right. I’m sorry. You’re right.”
In truth, that wasn’t what I thought at all. More and more, I regarded this as my house, and my kids. She was barging into my house, late at night, when I’d gotten everything quiet, the way I liked it, the way it should be. And she was raising a fuss.
I didn’t think she was right at all. I thought she was wrong. And in the last few weeks I’d noticed that incidents like this had become more frequent. At first, I thought Julia felt guilty about being away so much. Then I thought she was reasserting her authority, trying to regain control of a household that had fallen into my hands. Then I thought it was because she was tired, or under so much pressure at work. But lately I felt I was making excuses for her behavior. I started to have the feeling Julia had changed. She was different, somehow, tenser, tougher.
The baby was howling. I picked her up from the crib, hugged her, cooed at her, and simultaneously stuck a finger down the back of the diaper to see if it was wet. It was. I put her down on her back on top of the dresser, and she howled again until I shook her favorite rattle, and put it in her hand. She was silent then, allowing me to change her without much kicking. “I’ll do that,” Julia said, coming in.
“It’s okay.”
“I woke her up, it’s only right I do it.”
“Really honey, it’s fine.”
Julia put her hand on my shoulder, kissed the back of my neck. “I’m sorry I’m such a jerk. I’m really tired. I don’t know what came over me. Let me change the baby, I never get to see her.”
“Okay,” I said. I stepped aside, and she moved in.
“Hi, Poopsie-doopsie,” she said, chucking the baby under the chin. “How’s my little Winkie-dinkie?” All this attention made the baby drop the rattle, and then she started to cry, and to twist away on the table. Julia didn’t notice the missing rattle caused the crying; instead she made soothing sounds and struggled to put on the new diaper, but the baby’s twisting and kicking made it hard. “Amanda, stop it!”
I said, “She does that now.” And it was true, Amanda was in the stage where she actively resisted a diaper change. And she could kick pretty hard.
“Well, she should stop. Stop!”
The baby cried louder, tried to turn away. One of the adhesive tabs pulled off. The diaper slid down. Amanda was now rolling toward the edge of the dresser. Julia pulled her back roughly. Amanda never stopped kicking.
“God damn it, I said stop!” Julia said, and smacked the baby on the leg. The baby just cried harder, kicked harder. “Amanda! Stop it! Stop it!” She slapped her again. “Stop it! Stop it!” For a moment I didn’t react. I was stunned. I didn’t know what to do. The baby’s legs were bright red. Julia was still hitting her. “Honey…” I said, leaning in, “let’s not-” Julia exploded. “Why do you always fucking interfere?” she yelled, slamming her hand down on the dresser. “What is your fucking problem?”
And she stomped off, leaving the room.
I let out a long breath, and picked the baby up. Amanda howled inconsolably, as much in confusion as in pain. I figured I would need to give her a bottle to get her to sleep again. I stroked her back until she settled down a little. Then I got her diaper on, and brought her into the kitchen while I heated a bottle. The lights were low, just the fluorescents over the counter. Julia was sitting at the table, drinking beer out of a bottle, staring into space. “When are you going to get a job?” she said.
“I’m trying.”
“Really? I don’t think you’re trying at all. When was your last interview?”
“Last week,” I said.
She grunted. “I wish you’d hurry up and get one,” she said, “because this is driving me crazy.” I swallowed anger. “I know. It’s hard for everybody,” I said. It was late at night, and I didn’t want to argue anymore. But I was watching her out of the corner of my eye. At thirty-six, Julia was a strikingly pretty woman, petite, with dark hair and dark eyes, upturned nose, and the kind of personality that people called bubbly or sparkling. Unlike many tech executives, she was attractive and approachable. She made friends easily, and had a good sense of humor. Years back, when we first had Nicole, Julia would come home with hilarious accounts of the foibles of her VC partners. We used to sit at this same kitchen table and laugh until I felt physically sick, while little Nicole would tug at her arm and say, “What’s the funny, Mom? What’s the funny?” because she wanted to be in on the joke. Of course we could never explain it to her, but Julia always seemed to have a new “Knock knock” joke for Nicole, so she could join in the laughter, too. Julia had a real gift for seeing the humorous side of life. She was famous for her equanimity; she almost never lost her temper. Right now, of course, she was furious. Not even willing to look at me. Sitting in the dark at the round kitchen table, one leg crossed over the other, kicking impatiently while she stared into space. As I looked at her, I had the feeling that her appearance had changed, somehow. Of course she had lost weight recently, part of the strain of the job. A certain softness in her face was gone; her cheekbones protruded more; her chin seemed sharper. It made her look harder, but in a way more glamorous.
Her clothes were different, too. Julia was wearing a dark skirt and a white blouse, sort of standard business attire. But the skirt was tighter than usual. And her kicking foot made me notice she was wearing slingback high heels. What she used to call fuck-me shoes. The kind of shoes she would never wear to work.
And then I realized that everything about her was different-her manner, her appearance, her mood, everything-and in a flash of insight I knew why: my wife was having an affair. The water on the stove began to steam, and I pulled out the bottle, tested it on my forearm. It had gotten too hot, and I would have to wait a minute for it to cool. The baby started to cry, and I bounced her a little on my shoulder, while I walked her around the room. Julia never looked at me. She just kept swinging her foot, and staring into space. I had read somewhere that this was a syndrome. The husband’s out of work, his masculine appeal declines, his wife no longer respects him, and she wanders. I had read that in Glamour or Redbook or one of those magazines around the house that I glanced through while waiting for the washing machine to finish its cycle, or the microwave to thaw the hamburger. But now I was flooded with confused feelings. Was it really true? Was I just tired, making up bad stories in my mind? After all, what difference did it make if she was wearing tighter skirts and different shoes? Fashions changed. People felt different on different days. And just because she was sometimes angry, did that really mean she was having an affair? Of course it didn’t. I was probably just feeling inadequate, unattractive. These were probably my insecurities coming out. My thoughts went on in this vein for a while.
But for some reason, I couldn’t talk myself out of it. I was sure it was true. I had lived with this woman for more than twelve years. I knew she was different, and I knew why. I could sense the presence of someone else, an outside person, some intruder in our relationship. I felt it with a conviction that surprised me. I felt it in my bones, like an ache. I had to turn away.
…
The baby took the bottle, gurgling happily. In the darkened kitchen, she stared up at my face with that peculiar fixed stare that babies have. It was sort of soothing, watching her. After a while she closed her eyes, and then her mouth went slack. I put her on my shoulder and burped her as I carried her back into her bedroom. Most parents pat their babies too hard, trying to get a burp. It’s better to just rub the flat of your hand up their back, and sometimes just along the spine with two fingers. She gave a soft belch, and relaxed.
I set her down in the crib, and I turned out the night-light. Now the only light in the room came from the aquarium, bubbling green-blue in the corner. A plastic diver trudged along the bottom, trailing bubbles.
As I turned to go, I saw Julia silhouetted in the doorway, dark hair backlit. She had been watching me. I couldn’t read her expression. She stalked forward. I tensed. She put her arms around me and rested her head on my chest.
“Please forgive me,” she said. “I’m a real jerk. You’re doing a wonderful job. I’m just jealous, that’s all.” My shoulder was wet with her tears.
“I understand,” I said, holding her. “It’s okay.”
I waited to see if my body relaxed, but it didn’t. I was suspicious and alert. I had a bad feeling about her, and it wasn’t going away.
She came out of the shower into the bedroom, toweling her short hair dry. I was sitting on the bed, trying to watch the rest of the game. It occurred to me that she never used to take showers at night. Julia always took a shower in the morning before work. Now, I realized, she often came home and went straight to the shower before coming out to say hello to the kids. My body was still tense. I flicked the TV off. I said, “How was the demo?”
“The what?”
“The demo. Didn’t you have a demo today?”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, yes. We did. It went fine, when we finally got it going. The VCs in Germany couldn’t stay for all of it because of the time change, but-listen, do you want to see it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a dub of it. Want to see it?”
I was surprised. I shrugged. “Okay, sure.”
“I’d really like to know what you think, Jack.” I detected a patronizing tone. My wife was including me in her work. Making me feel a part of her life. I watched as she opened her briefcase and took out a DVD. She stuck it in the player, and came back to sit with me on the bed.
“What were you demoing?” I said.
“The new medical imaging technology,” she said. “It’s really slick, if I say so myself.” She snuggled up, tucking herself into my shoulder. All very cozy, just like old times. I still felt uneasy, but I put my arm around her.
“By the way,” I said, “how come you take showers at night now, instead of in the morning?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Do I? I guess I do. It just seems easier, honey. Mornings are so rushed, and I’ve been getting those conference calls from Europe, they take so much time-okay, here we go,” she said, pointing to the screen. I saw black-and-white scramble, and then the image resolved.
The tape showed Julia in a large laboratory that was fitted out like an operating room. A man lay on his back on the gurney, an IV in his arm, an anesthesiologist standing by. Above the table was a round flat metal plate about six feet in diameter, which could be raised and lowered, but was now raised. There were video monitors all around. And in the foreground, peering at a monitor, was Julia. There was a video technician by her side. “This is terrible,” she was saying, pointing to the monitor. “What’s all the interference?”
“We think it’s the air purifiers. They’re causing it.”
“Well, this is unacceptable.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“I want you to fix it,” Julia said.
“Then we have to boost power, and you have-”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I can’t show the VCs an image of this quality. They’ve seen better pictures from Mars. Fix it.”
Beside me on the bed, Julia said, “I didn’t know they recorded all this. This is before the demo. You can fast forward.”
I pushed the remote. The picture scrambled. I waited a few seconds, and played it again.
Same scene. Julia still in the foreground. Carol, her assistant, whispering to her.
“Okay, but then what do I tell him?”
“Tell him no.”
“But he wants to get started.”
“I understand. But the transmission isn’t for an hour. Tell him no.”
On the bed, Julia said to me, “Mad Dog was our experimental subject. He was very restless. Impatient to get started.”
On the screen, the assistant lowered her voice. “I think he’s nervous, Julia. I would be, too, with a couple of million of those things crawling around inside my body-”
“It’s not a couple of million, and they’re not crawling,” Julia said. “Anyway, they’re his invention.”
“Even so.”
“Isn’t that an anesthesiologist over there?”
“No, just a cardiologist.”
“Well, maybe the cardiologist can give him something for his nervousness.”
“They already did. An injection.”
On the bed beside me, Julia said, “Fast forward, Jack.” I did. The picture jumped ahead.
“Okay, here.”
I saw Julia standing at the monitor again, with the technician beside her. “That’s acceptable,” onscreen Julia was saying, pointing to the image. “Not great, but acceptable. Now, show me the STM.”
“The what?”
“The STM. The electron microscope. Show me the image from that.”
The technician looked confused. “Uh… Nobody told us about any electron microscope.”
“For God’s sake, read the damn storyboards!”
The technician blinked. “It’s on the storyboards?”
“Did you look at the storyboards?”
“I’m sorry, I guess I must have missed it.”
“There’s no time now to be sorry. Fix it!”
“You don’t have to shout.”
“Yes I do! I have to shout, because I’m surrounded by idiots!” She waved her hands in the air. “I’m about to go online and talk to eleven billion dollars of venture capital in five countries and show them submicroscopic technology, except I don’t have a microscope feed, so they can’t see the technology!”
On the bed, Julia said, “I kind of lost it with this guy. It was so frustrating. We had a clock counting down to the satellite time, which was booked and locked. We couldn’t change it. We had to make the time, and this guy was a dimbus. But eventually we got it working. Fast forward.”
The screen showed a static card, which read:
A Private Demonstration of
Advanced Medical Imaging
by
Xymos Technology
Mountain View, CA
World Leader in Molecular Manufacturing
Then, on the screen, Julia appeared, standing in front of the gurney and the medical apparatus. She’d brushed her hair and tucked in her blouse.
“Hello to all of you,” she said, smiling at the camera. “I’m Julia Forman of Xymos Technology, and we’re about to demonstrate a revolutionary medical imaging procedure just developed here. Our subject, Peter Morris, is lying behind me on the table. In a few moments, we’re going to look inside his heart and blood vessels with an ease and accuracy never before possible.” She began walking around the table, talking as she went.
“Unlike cardiac catheterization, our procedure is one hundred percent safe. And unlike catheterization, we can look everywhere in the body, at every sort of vessel, no matter how large or small. We’ll see inside his aorta, the largest artery of the body. But we’ll also look inside the alveoli of his lungs, and the tiny capillaries of his fingertips. We can do all this because the camera we put inside his vessels is smaller than a red blood cell. Quite a bit smaller, actually. “Xymos microfabrication technology can now produce these miniaturized cameras, and produce them in quantity-cheaply, quickly. It would take a thousand of them just to make a dot the size of a pencil point. We can fabricate a kilogram of these cameras in an hour. “I’m sure you are all skeptical. We’re well aware that nanotechnology has made promises it couldn’t deliver. As you know, the problem has been that scientists could design molecular-scale devices, but they couldn’t manufacture them. But Xymos has solved that problem.”
It suddenly hit me, what she was saying. “What?” I said, sitting up in bed. “Are you kidding?” If it was true, it was an extraordinary development, a genuine technological breakthrough, and it meant-
“It’s true,” Julia said quietly. “We’re manufacturing in Nevada.” She smiled, enjoying my astonishment.
Onscreen, Julia was saying, “I have one of our Xymos cameras under the electron microscope, here”-she pointed to the screen-“so you can see it in comparison to the red blood cell alongside it.”