Page 46 of The Botanist's Assistant
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t stand up for you when I should have,” he says. “I learned my lesson.”
“Thank you,” Margaret says as he scoots out the door, although the harm has already been done. She shuts down the computer.
Thenwe’ll see what to do next?
It’s what she told Calvin but, really, she has no clue about next steps. Her world is burning around her, a fire so hot and dangerous, there is a very good chance she will be destroyed, like a Tecate cypress in a cataclysmic blaze.
Perhaps a walk will help. It’s close enough to her break time that she can take the short trail through the oak woodland to a small pond that is so filled with invasiveTypha latifolia(broadleaf cattail) that it is barely a pond anymore, which is why hardly anyone goes there. Solitude is what she needs right now, although by solitude, she doesn’t mean an absence of life.
The cattail-choked pond is home to song sparrows, Canada geese, salamanders, frogs and fish. A whole city of life. It’s only humans that are absent.
Margaret seats herself on a wooden bench that was erected at some point when the pond was still a pond.
Shredded clouds lace the sky, the remnants of yesterday’s storm.
What should she do?
A red-winged blackbird trills,conk-la-ree. Wind hushes through the cattails. A bullfrog croaks a baritone note. Margaret lets her thoughts run: through actions and reactions, through the way plants defend themselves against attacks.
She thinks of California laurel (Umbellularia californica), whose leaves contain a pungent oil that acts on the same cellular receptors that cause ice-cream headaches. A strong whiff of the scent can spark migraines and even cause some people to fall unconscious. Several California Native American tribes, however, would tuck laurel leaves into headbands and hats to relieve headaches. So the laurel was a contradiction, both a catalyst and a healer. Science says that the way you look at a problem affects how you solve it and that changing your point of view may bring you to an answer more quickly. A scientist must embrace the unexpected, the contradictions. She has been too focused on one view for too long.
There’s a soft plop as a frog leaps into the metropolis of cattails.
What if she changed her perspective to one in which Dr. Deaver was a possible womanizer and Blackstone was a loving father? How did those unexpected facts change her hypothesis? They changed it a lot, she realizes as a song sparrow lets loose with a buzzing trill. They lead to a whole side of the mystery that she hasn’t explored.
“Well, don’t just sit there,” she says and pushes herself from the bench. Then: “You need to stop talking to yourself,Margaret,” which is another contradiction since she’s issued this command out loud to no one but herself.
She glances at her watch. Time to get busy. She will not go down without a fight.
It’s as she’s returning through the building’s front doors that Beth Purdy beckons Margaret to her desk.
“Yes, Beth?”
Today, the woman is wearing a blouse in a shade of pink that, if it were any brighter, might actually cast a shadow. Beth leans forward. “You can’t say who told you, but you need to be careful,” she whispers. “The dean just asked me to type up a termination form.” Purdy waits a beat. “It’s for you.”
The announcement is no surprise. What is a surprise is that Purdy would warn her. Margaret is sure the woman thinks her both odd and annoying.
“Thank you, Beth,” Margaret says. “I’ll try to be careful.” She doesn’t want to give away that she knew this was coming.
Purdy, however, goes on. “They gave me a list of things you supposedly did but I think it’s also about Dr. Deaver and the poison thing.”
Margaret feels a brushstroke of panic. How much does Purdy know? Does Margaret dare?
Embrace the unexpected, she thinks.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because I heard the dean say that, besides you refusing to do what he asked, he’d gotten a complaint from the campus police that you kept insisting that they do some kind of drug test on Dr. Deaver’s body.”
“A toxicology screen.”
“Right. To test for poison.”
“To test for many things. And I only phoned twice.”
The message Officer Bianchi had left after her second call was the same as his first one: We’re following procedure, and this isn’t a TV show. Did he really think any scientist worth her salt would believe an hour-long TV show was real life?
