Frameshift

His eyes lit on his desk, a white particleboard thing from Consumers Distributing. On it was his copy of Les Miserables, which he’d just finished reading for his French-literature course. Jean Valjean had stolen a loaf of bread, and no matter what he did, he could not undo that fact; until his dying day, his record was marked. Pierre’s record was marked, too, one way or the other, but there was no way to read it. If he were like Valjean — if he were a convict — then he had a Javert, too, endlessly pursuing him, eventually fated to catch up.

In the book, the tables had turned, with Inspector Javert ending up being the one incapable of escaping his birthright. Unable to alter what he was, he took the only way out, plunging from a parapet into the icy waters of the Seine below.

The only way out…

Pierre got up, shuffled over to the desk, turned on a hooded lamp on an articulated bone-white arm, and found Laviolette’s card with the doctor’s home number written on it. He stared at the card, reading it over and over again.

The only way out…

He walked back to his bed, sat on the edge of it, and listened to the wind some more. Without ever looking down to see what he was doing, he began drawing the edge of the card back and forth across the inside of his left wrist, again and again, as though it were a blade.

Chapter 4

When she was eighteen, Molly Bond had been an undergraduate psychology student at the University of Minnesota. She lived in residence even though her family was right here in Minneapolis. Even back then, she couldn’t take staying in the same house with them — not with her disapproving mother, not with her vacuous sister Jessica, and not with her mother’s new husband, Paul, whose thoughts about her were often anything but paternal.

Still, there were certain family events that forced her to return home.

Today was one of those. “Happy birthday, Paul,” she said, leaning in to give her stepfather a kiss on the cheek. “I love you.”

Should say the same thing back. “Love you, too, hon.”

Molly stepped away, trying to keep her sigh from escaping audibly. It wasn’t much of a party, but maybe they’d do better next year. This was Paul’s forty-ninth birthday; they’d try to commemorate the big five-oh in a more stylish fashion.

If Paul was still around at that point, that is. What Molly had wanted to detect when she leaned in to kiss Paul was I love you, too, spontaneous, unplanned, unrehearsed. But no. She’d heard Should say the same thing back, and then, a moment later, the spoken words, false, manufactured, flat.

Molly’s mother came out of the kitchen carrying a cake — a carrot cake, Paul’s favorite, crowned with the requisite number of candles, including one for good luck, arranged just like the stars on an American flag. Jessica helped Paul get his presents out of the way.

Molly couldn’t resist. While her mother fumbled to get her camera set up, she moved in to stand right beside her stepfather, bringing him into her zone again. Molly’s mother said, “Now make a wish and blow out the candles.”

Paul closed his eyes. I wish, he thought, that I hadn’t gotten married.

He exhaled on the tiny flames, and smoke rose toward the ceiling.

Molly wasn’t really surprised. At first she’d thought Paul was having an affair: he often worked late on weeknights, or disappeared all day on Saturdays, saying he was going to the office. But the truth, in some ways, was just as bad. He wasn’t going off to be with someone else; rather, he just didn’t want to be with them.

They sang “Happy Birthday,” and then Paul cut the cake.

The thoughts of Molly’s mother were no better. She suspected Molly might be a lesbian, so rarely was she seen with men. She hated her job, but pretended to enjoy it, and although she smiled when she handed over money to help Molly with university expenses, she resented every dollar of it. It reminded her of how hard she’d worked to put her first husband, Molly’s dad, through business school.

Molly looked again at Paul and found she couldn’t really blame him. She wanted to get away from this family, too — far, far away, so that even birthdays and Christmases could be skipped. Paul handed her a piece of cake. Molly took it and moved down to the far end of the table, sitting alone.

Wrapped up in his personal problems, Pierre failed all of his first-year courses. He went to see the dean of undergraduate studies and explained his situation. The dean gave him a second chance: McGill offered a reduced curriculum over the summer session. Pierre would only manage a couple of credits, but it would get him back on the right track for next September.

And so Pierre found himself back in an introductory genetics course. By coincidence, the same pencil-necked Anglais teaching assistant who had originally pointed out the heritability of eye color was teaching this one.