The Flame Alphabet - Ben Marcus [51]
But the cake had been disturbed. Not eaten, but violated, the ball of wax collapsed, smokeless. Something had been dropped on the cake, then removed. I made a fist, held it above the ruined cake. This was too large.
The size of the crater was just right for Esther’s hand, I reasoned. Balled up, punching down.
I couldn’t believe she would destroy her own cake. Certainly the cake had collapsed because I had baked it poorly, failed to follow a recipe. It was stupid to think I could go in the kitchen and improvise like that.
Perhaps Esther was not hungry. Perhaps she came in and saw the cake and decided she might have a slice later on. Only not now. After dinner, maybe.
I’d put it in the refrigerator, is what I would do. The cake would be there for her when she was hungry. Perhaps when I was feeling better I would have a piece, too. Maybe Esther and I could sit quietly together over a piece of cake. I’d skin back my frosting for her, because she liked extra. There’d be no reason to speak. We could enjoy each other’s company in silence, in the kitchen, on her birthday. If I could find a candle, an old-fashioned one, we’d light it up. It’d be nice to sit together, listening to our forks click on the plates. We’d be sure to save a piece for her mother.
17
LeBov died that week. A feature ran on the news, a final piece of television. He was sixty-two. Or he was sixty-eight. An assistant found him at home, where he lived alone. Two of his many children apparently lived nearby. I missed the picture they flashed of him, but then a photo of one of LeBov’s sons, cast up on the screen, showed a suntanned, elderly fellow with a white ponytail. LeBov’s son. There was no mention of a wife. LeBov had been taken to a private facility in Denver where he later expired. This was the language used by the newscaster. Expired.
There would be no funeral.
According to the news, LeBov was perhaps the first researcher, certainly the most outspoken, to identify the threat of language.
All the good it’s done, I sat there thinking.
The editorial assessment of the news program was that LeBov’s death was particularly distressing at this time, given our current situation.
A toxicologist by training, they called LeBov. He had lived mostly in Canada, spent the early years of his career developing his theory of a primary allergen, allergy zero.
Later in his career LeBov focused on the toxic properties of language. Most recently, until his passing, he had been the director of a private research lab in Rochester called Forsythe. He was working closely with health officials on the problem of the viral child.
“Claire!” I called out into the cold house.
LeBov was known for disseminating his views in underground publications. Designed, some said, deliberately to mislead. Filled with false information and historical inaccuracies invented to bolster his theories.
A montage spun together clips of other scientists appraising LeBov’s contributions. He merited scorn, derision, from a pedigreed cohort, doctors, scientists, linguists. But these were old clips, exhumed from an archive somewhere, stitched together to form a portrait. All the footage was from well before his death, before his recent lunge into credibility. These men and women, pronouncing on the now dead LeBov, projected a vital cheer quite terrible in hindsight—sitting in offices or newsrooms while off-loading their expensive opinions about someone they could safely dislike in public.
These scientists had yet to live in these times. Today, yesterday, the past few months. Their short-term futures were going to hurt, and they had no idea. Where were these fine people now? I wondered. Were they hiding yet?
Have you found shelter? Is it finally quiet and safe where you are? I wanted to ask them.
Not a person alive could be made to talk like