State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [11]
“What questions?”
“Believe me,” he said, “there will be questions.”
She wondered then if he felt it too, that the blame would come to him eventually. “You’re not going to Brazil,” she said.
“No,” he said.
It was this terrible light that made him look old, the scotch and the heavy weight of the day. She wanted them to leave now, and when they got back to Eden Prairie she would take him home with her. She blamed him for nothing. She leaned across the table of this dark, back booth and took his hand. “The president of the company doesn’t go off to Brazil.”
“There is nothing inherently dangerous about the Amazon. It’s a matter of precautions and good sense.”
“I’m sure you’re right but that doesn’t mean that you should go.”
“I promise you, I’m not going. Annick Swenson wouldn’t listen to me. I realize now she’s never listened to me, not in the meetings, the agreement letters, the contracts. I’ve been writing to her ever since she left—no e-mail, no texting, she does none of that. I sit down and put it all on paper. I’ve been very clear about her obligations and our commitment to the project. There’s been no indication that she reads my letters.”
“So what you need to find is someone she’ll listen to.”
“Exactly. I didn’t think that through when I sent Anders. He was affable and bright, and he seemed to want to go, which counted for a lot. I only thought it needed to be someone from Vogel, someone who wasn’t me.”
Oh, Anders! To have been sent off on a mission you were never right for. To be regarded after your death as an error of judgment. “So now you’ll find the right person.”
“You,” he said.
Marina felt a small jolt in the hand he was holding, as if something sharp had briefly stabbed through him and into her. She took back her hand and rubbed it quickly.
“She knows you,” he said. “She’ll listen. I should have asked you in the first place. You were the board’s choice, and I made the case against you. I told them I had asked you and you had refused. It was selfishness on my part. This time we’ve spent together—” He looked up at her now but for both of them it felt almost unbearable and so he dropped his eyes. “It’s been important to me. I didn’t want you going off. That’s my guilt, Marina, sending Anders instead of you, because you would have gotten it done.”
“But he died,” she said. She didn’t want to turn back the clock and choose between Anders and herself, to think about which one of them was more expendable in life’s greater scheme. She was sure she knew the answer to that one. “You would have rather it had been me?”
“You wouldn’t have died.” He was utterly clear on this point. “Whatever Anders did, it was careless. He wasn’t eaten by a crocodile. He had a fever, he was sick. If you were sick you would have the sense to get on a plane and come home.”
Marina didn’t approve of the introduction of culpability on Anders’s part. It was bad enough that he was dead without it being his fault. “Let’s leave poor Anders out of this for a minute if we can.” She tried to grab hold of logic. “The flaw in your argument is that you think I know Dr. Swenson. I haven’t seen her in—” Marina stopped, had it been that long? “Thirteen years. I know her thoughts on reproductive endocrinology and to a lesser extent gynecological surgery, and not even her current thoughts on either of those things, her thirteen-year-old thoughts. I don’t know her. And as for her knowing me, she doesn’t. She didn’t know me then and there is no reason to think she would suddenly know me now. She wouldn’t remember my name, my face, my test scores.” Would Dr. Swenson know her? She saw Dr. Swenson raise her eyes to the lecture hall, sweep past the faces of all the students, all the residents, year after year after year. There could be hundreds of them in a single class and over the years that quickly added up to thousands, and yet for a brief time Dr. Swenson knew Marina Singh alone.
“You underestimate yourself.”
Marina shook her head. “You overestimate Dr. Swenson. And me. We would be strangers to one another.” This was halfway true. It was the truth