The Prodigal Son

FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 1969

“Think of this as good practice,” Millie soothed. “By the time the banquet rolls around tomorrow night, you’ll be a true veteran.” She made an adjustment to Jim’s tie and stepped back. “Perfect! So handsome! There won’t be anyone in your league.”

Sentiments that were, he knew after listening to them for eighteen years, utterly mistaken. His looks had improved out of sight, but he’d never be Harry Belafonte. The only reason he turned heads was the ravishing white woman on his arm.

Old enough now to be settling into his ultimate physique, Jim Hunter was several inches over six feet in height, had a neck so thick and strong that it tended to dwarf his head, massive shoulders and upper arms, and a barrel of a chest. When he walked he waddled thanks to bulging thighs, but the right knee injury that had put paid to any hopes of a football scholarship made him favor the right leg in a noticeable limp.

The face, to those seeking it atop so much raw power, used to be no disappointment, for it had been brutish. Jim Hunter’s skin was nigh impossibly black, as black as the blackest native African’s; when he was photographed, even in color, his face was so dark it lost whole layers of definition. To see what he really looked like necessitated seeing the living man. His bones were unobtrusive, the cheekbones flat, and his nose in the old days had splayed outward with hugely gaping nostrils. At St. Bernard’s he had instantly been nicknamed Gorilla, a huge insult compounded by his uprooted bewilderment, this all-white environment so far from home: the days of black immigration from the South were still to come, so he was a true novelty in Italian-American East Holloman. Adolescents are cruel; to find the Gorilla could ace them all in a classroom without even extending himself didn’t go down well. Nor, when almost immediately he took up with the St. Mary’s belle Millie O’Donnell, did that go down well. Add Jim Hunter’s temper plus his tendency to harbor grudges, and the pattern was set. He fought. Dozens of fights against ever-increasing numbers of opponents had eventually destroyed his superficial, even some of his deepest, sinuses as well as afflicted him with agonizing pain in his facial nerves. While the gorilla look grew worse.

Only John Hall’s loan of ten thousand dollars for surgical repair had saved Jim’s life, and in more ways than one. After the surgery the gorilla look had vanished; his nose was straight and quite narrow, its nostrils small and unobtrusive, he had bones in his cheeks and a good jawline. Finally his one great natural endowment, a pair of large, astonishingly green eyes, could come into their own and dominate his face beneath a high, broad brow.

But the psychic scars persisted down to this moment when his beautiful white wife tied his black tie and told him he looked so handsome. These were the great years of the Black Revolution, of last-ditch stands by fanatical whites against the inevitable opening up of all horizons to the black man, and Jim Hunter knew it, acknowledged it, even understood it. What he couldn’t shake off was his deep conviction that much of his own ordeal was due to his marrying a white prom queen. She had been with him since his fifteenth birthday, so much a part of him that she was a cause. A cause? No! The cause.

A sensible streak had whispered to Jim that, appearing so very African, he must not go the Afro route; his hair was close-cropped and he wore the apparel of a post-doctoral fellow—chinos, white cotton shirt, loafers, a beat-up tweed jacket.

Except when, as now, he was being squeezed into the biggest tuxedo the formal-wear shop hired out.

“Don’t flex your muscles,” Millie was warning.

He hardly heard her, thinking how he’d gotten there. The years at Chubb had been a landslide of discoveries and seminal papers, or maybe a roller-coaster was a better analogy. Most of those who talked excitedly about Professor Jim Hunter had no idea he was a black ex-gorilla married to a dishy white chick. His reputation was made; now all he had to do was hang in there over this coming twelve months, during which he would enjoy fame of a different kind: a celebrity author. Though when Don Carter had started to describe some of the things he would be called upon to do, he shrank away in horror. Most of all, he was not ready to face the whole of a vast nation as the blackest of black men with a beauty queen white wife.

Millie was standing there, gazing at him with the eyes of love. Her sister Kate, a clothes horse, had lent her a dress, kind of wispy over a plain lining of lavender blue, the wisps the same shade, but varied in intensity. She looked out of this world. Her legs were on display because miniskirts were in for evening parties, Kate said. And Kate had good taste, down to the loose cord of sparkling rhinestones around Millie’s hips.

She didn’t look happy, despite the love. Poor little girl! The guy who pinched her tetrodotoxin ought to be shot for the major crime of worrying her. And then there was John Hall …

He took her face between his huge hands, holding it like a single rose. “You are so beautiful,” he said in the back of his throat. “How did I ever get this lucky?”

“No, how did I?” she whispered back, stroking his hands. “One look, and I was done for. I will love you until I die, James Keith Hunter.”

His laugh was almost too quiet to hear. “Oh, c’mon, honey! Death is just a transition. D’you think that our molecules won’t shift heaven and earth to be together as long as time endures? We may die, but our molecules won’t.”

Her laugh was silent. “Just taking the mickey, my love, my joy—my dear, dear love.”

“This time next year we’ll be comfortable, I promise.”

“A promise I’ll hold you to.” She twisted a scarf around her neck and shrugged into a sweater before he helped her into her down coat, old and weeping, but Chicago-warm. “Oh, winter! I can’t wait for spring this year—1969 is going to be ours, Jim.”

His own Chicago down coat was a better fit than the tux, creaking at its seams. “At least it’s not snowing.”

“I dislike these people,” she said as she watched him lock the front door. “Fancy John turning up their relative.”

“You know what they say—you can choose your friends, but not your relatives. Though the Tunbulls aren’t too bad once you get to know them.”

“Poor John! I wonder how he’ll feel when he meets his stepmother. From what he said last night, most of his contact with his father concerned proving that he was the long lost son,” said Millie.

“That’s logical,” Jim answered. “Don’t worry, Millie, it will all come out in the wash sooner or later.” He looked suddenly hopeful. “Just think! I’ll soon be able to pay John back for that sinus operation if my book does what they say it will. Ten thousand dollars! Yet one more debt. A hundred big ones in student loans …”

“Stop it, Jim!” she snapped, looking fierce. “We’re Chubb faculty now, you’re about to be famous, and our income will pay back every last debt.”

“If Tinkerman doesn’t suppress A Helical God. Oh, Millie, it’s been such a long, hard road! I don’t think I could bear another disappointment.” Jim removed the stick from the old Chevy’s gas pedal. “The car’s good and warm. Get in.”

Davina and Max Tunbull lived in a big white clapboard house on Hampton Street, just off Route 133 in the Valley, and not more than half a mile from the invisible boundary beyond which the Valley became a less salubrious neighborhood. There were actually three Tunbull houses on this longish, rambling street of mostly vacant lots, but Max and Davina lived in the dominant one on the knoll, by far the most imposing. A house on the far side of the street had some pretensions to affluence, but there could be no doubt whose residence kinged it over all others.

When Millie and Jim arrived they found themselves the last, dismaying—had it really taken so long to squeeze Jim into his hired tux? What an idiocy! Black tie!

It wasn’t the first time she had met Davina, but the woman still jarred and disturbed her. Millie’s life to date had been spent in traditionally unfeminine pursuits and with mostly male peers, a pattern set very early on thanks to her liaison with Jim. So the Davinas of this world were more foreign even than this Davina really was; they chattered of things Millie knew nothing about, nor hungered to know about.

John Hall was almost pathetically glad to see them, which made it all worthwhile; despite Jim’s importance to Max, they probably would have declined this invitation had John not visited last night and implored them. The poor guy was terrified, but that was typical John, a loner, shy, unsure of himself until he settled into the kind of friendship he had enjoyed with the Hunters back in California.

But of course Davina wouldn’t leave them alone. Not surprising to Millie, who knew of Davina’s reputation: see an attractive man and go for him, then, when he became too ardent or amorous, run screeching to husband Max for protection. John, with genuine good looks skating on the verge of female, was a logical Davina target. The weird servant, Uda, had obviously assessed John to the same conclusion, and plied the poor man with martinis he had the sense not to drink. What was Uda’s stake in it? wondered Millie, eyes busy.

It was the only way to make the time go, especially in this almost all male assembly. Under ordinary circumstances Millie would simply have barged into the middle of the men and demanded to be included in conversation whereof she knew she could hold her end up. But with Davina present, no luck! Not to mention the pregnant Mrs. Markoff, the only other woman, and not, from the look on her face, a Davina admirer.

Mentally Millie ran through what she knew about Davina from Jim, the source of all her information on the big team who were responsible for putting his book into print, from the Head Scholar of the Chubb University Press to Tunbull Printing and Imaginexa Design. Oh, pray that A Helical God did what everyone said it was bound to!

A Yugoslavian refugee who had been in the country for ten years and was now twenty-six: that was the first item. She had been lucky enough to be “discovered” by a big agency and became a top model, especially famous for taking a bubble bath on TV—an ad, she was quick to point out, that still paid her good royalties. But her heart was in visual design, and she was, so the Chubb University Press people insisted, a superb exponent of the art of making a book irresistibly attractive to browsers. Her chief market lay with trade publishers, but because Max was sole printer to the Chubb University Press, she had deigned to take over their output as well.

Millie didn’t think, somehow, that dear old Don Carter, who had been Jim’s mentor through the writing and editing of the book, would have had the steel to deny Davina entry to a rather peculiar world, that of the minor academic publishing house. So whether C.U.P. wanted it or not, Davina took over their “book look” as she put it.

Could she honestly be just twenty-six years old? No, Millie decided, she’s thirty at least, has to be. Tall, stick-thin yet graceful, and lucky enough, thought Millie, eyeing her clinically, to have a narrow skeleton; a big, wide pelvis would have put a huge gap between those arm-sized thighs. Good, B-cup breasts, not much of a waist—that fit with the skeleton—and a long torso above shortish legs. She dressed extremely well, and her brown-black hair was thick enough to take the loose-down-the-back fashion, though it tended to clump in ropes. Beautiful clear white skin, carefully plucked and arched brows, long lashes, and startlingly vivid blue eyes. Yet, Millie’s thoughts rambled on, her lips were too large and her nose, though straight, was broad. Good cheekbones saved her face, together with those weird eyes. An enlightenment burst on Millie: Davina looked as Medusa the Gorgon must have looked before the gods stripped her of her beauty!

“I haven’t got my waistline back enough for miniskirts,” Davina was saying to Millie, the foreign accent lending her high, fluting voice some much needed character.

“I didn’t think dresses with miniskirts emphasized waists,” Millie said. “How old is Alexis?”

“Three months.” She gave an airy laugh. “I thought I was giving Max a much needed heir, and now—John turns up! So now I kill the fatted calf for the return of the prodigal son.”

“But John isn’t a prodigal son,” said Millie. “That son was banished for loose living or some such thing, I thought, whereas John is just a victim of circumstances beyond his control.”

The derisive eyes clouded, became uncertain; Davina gave a shrug and flounced off.

The room was very modern, but Millie quite liked it and found a comfortable chair to people-watch in peace while she could. Except that there were too few people. Her gaze rested upon Jim, talking to John, and her thoughts slipped backward in time; his advent out of the blue last night had shocked her, though Jim—no, not expected it, seemed to have sensed it was coming.

They had met in California when all three enrolled in the biochemistry Master’s program at Caltech; that they had clicked was probably due to John’s solitary habits, which fitted well into their own isolation. For reasons he never elaborated upon to them, John Hall too was armored against a cruel and inquisitive world. He wasn’t short of money, but learned not to intrude his wealth into their friendship. With John as third wheel, those two years in California had held many pleasant moments; they did a lot of sitting on public beaches, counting their nickels and dimes for a boardwalk lunch somewhere, listening to Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers and the Coasters, all very new and exciting at the time. Women found John immensely attractive and threw lures, but he ignored every overture. Whatever chewed at his core was shattering, subtle, sorrowful. That it had all to do with John’s dead mother they had gathered, but he never told them his whole story, and—at least while Millie was present—they never asked. Jim, she suspected, knew more.

The glowingly bright corner John Hall occupied in Millie’s mind went back to his astonishing and totally unsought generosity. When Jim’s facial sinuses literally threatened his life, John Hall went out and commissioned the finest sinus surgeon in L.A., and, without telling them, threw in a plastic surgeon for good measure. Ten thousand dollars of surgery later, Jim Hunter emerged a changed man. Not only could he breathe easily, not only was all threat of brain infection removed, but he had also lost all resemblance to a gorilla. He was pleasantly negroid, no longer even remotely apelike. And Jim had actually stomached the gift! Jim, who would accept charity from no one! Millie knew exactly why: easy breathing and safety from cerebral abscess were wonderful, but not even in the same league as losing the gorilla look.

When they went to the University of Chicago, John returned to Oregon. But he kept in touch, and when Jim sent him the postcard saying they were now faculty in the Chubb Department of Biochemistry, he sent a huge card he’d made himself, delighted that good fortune had smiled on them at last.

Then, out of the blue, he’d called them from the airport to say he was on his way to Holloman, and would they be up for a cup of coffee if he came around? Only last night! With all this torment on his mind, he’d talked of the old times, nothing but the old times, and feeling his eyes rest on her, Millie had given a shudder of fear. Not that too!

Millie jumped, so deep in her reverie that Davina’s voice came as a shock.

“To the table, everyone!”

With so few women, no surprise to find she occupied the middle slot on one side of the table with the pregnant doctor’s wife opposite her. Ivan was on Max’s side of her, Dr. Al Markoff on Davina’s side; Jim sat opposite her down one next to Davina, and Val sat on Muse Markoff’s other side. Not a remote table of several conversations; everyone was within good hearing distance. Millie winked at Jim, whom Davina was already monopolizing.

They had to go through that awful speech about the fatted calf, the pointed references to the absentee Tunbull wives—she was a monster! Some of the tendrils of her hair, thought a fascinated Millie, were stirring to form snakes—wasn’t that a head and a forked tongue in there? This woman speaks with a forked tongue!

The first course was Iranian caviar.

“Of course Russian would have been better,” said Davina, demonstrating how to eat it, “but this is still Caspian sturgeon of malossol variety. What silly rules a cold war causes! No Russian caviar. No Cuban cigars. Silly!”

Iranian caviar is good enough for me, thought Millie as she piled a toast finger high and tamped everything down with sour cream; minced egg and minced onion had an annoying habit of tumbling off, and she wasn’t about to waste one of those tiny, heavenly black blobs.

“I’ve died of sheer bliss,” she said to Muse Markoff.

“Isn’t she amazing?” Muse asked as the plates were whisked away. “Even to having Uda, the perfect housekeeper. Things sure have changed in the Tunbull zoo since Max married Davina.”

“Muse! How did you get that name?” Millie asked.

“A father steeped in the Classics. He was an associate professor at Chubb, poor baby. Sideways promotion. Once an associate, never a full.”

“And how have things changed for the Tunbulls, Muse?”

“This passion for Max’s Russian roots. I always thought they were Polish roots, but Davina says they’re Russian.”

“Just as well the McCarthy era is over.”

Muse winced, patted her huge tummy. “That was rich for a first course. I hope I last—my liver doesn’t like rich food. D’you think the roast veal will be terribly fatty? The way Davina spoke, I see it kind of swimming in fat.”

“No, no fat,” said Millie, smiling. “‘Fatted calf’ is a stock phrase, like—um—‘lean pickings.’ Roast veal isn’t at all fatty, I promise.”

Nor was it. The veal was plain but perfectly cooked, very thin slices of pinkish meat with a gravy rather than a sauce, mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, thin and stringless green beans. Muse, Millie noted, ate with enjoyment, and made no complaints about her sensitive liver.

When Millie overheard Max and John talking about Martita, more of the puzzle fell into place. From her own little speech, Davina must have worked feverishly to disprove John’s story—what was the ring reference all about? So even through their phone conversations, Max must have kept to legal matters, Davina probably literally breathing down his neck. Those two poor men are not going to have an easy time of it …

A glance at Davina revealed a head of living snakes. If she caught their eyes, she’d turn them to stone.

What was with this Emily, the persecutor of John’s mother? Absent because she’d grown off in her own direction rather than because she had offended. Though so many years would soften anything, and she was Val’s wife, Ivan’s mother. Ivan … How did he feel, seeing his share of the family business steadily depleting? Though John had said last night that he had no wish or intention to be a part of the Tunbull business. Maybe the Tunbulls had no idea as yet how rich John was, how little he need depend on anyone after Wendover Hall dowered him. It seemed one of Davina’s ways of amusing herself was to snipe at Ivan—look at her crack about his wife.

Oh, John, John, I feel so sorry for you! Millie cried to herself as the cake came in.

“Uda made this with her own hands!” Davina fluted, the snakes writhing. “Each layer of cake is no more than five millimetres thick, and the butter cream is also five millimetres thick, flavored by Grand Marnier. The top is sugar-and-water boiled to crisp, transparent amber glass. And the entire cake is for the many years John has been away, while the glassy top, which must be broken before the past can be eaten, is tonight. Eat up, my friends, eat up!”

“A minute, Vina, give me a minute first!” Max shouted, surging to his feet. “First of all, I want you to lift your glasses to Dr. Jim Hunter, whose book on nucleic acids and their possible philosophical meaning is shortly to be published by the Chubb University Press, whose printers we have been for over twenty years. Head Scholar Carter assures me that it’s going to be a popular best seller. To Dr. Jim Hunter and his amazing, thought-provoking book, A Helical God!”

Good old Max, thought Millie, letting the most divine cake she had ever tasted dissolve gradually on her tongue. He could not resist showing Jim off for John’s benefit, always assuming that he had no idea we knew each other in the old days. And why would he know that? John’s advent is a shock.

Then the worst fate of all struck Millie; she was herded to the drawing room with Muse Markoff and expected to have coffee apart from the men, all gone to Max’s den. Not fair! What can I talk about, for God’s sake? They wouldn’t know a benzene ring from a curtain ring or an hydroxyl ion from a steam iron!

Luckily Davina and Muse, living across the street from each other, had plenty to talk about; Millie sat back and sipped much better coffee than she was used to, stomach pleasantly full and most of her spare blood supply more concerned with digestion than deep thoughts. Her eyelids drooped; no one noticed.

The door flew open upon a white-faced Max.

“Muse, Al needs his medical bag urgently,” he said.

Good wife, she was gone in under a second for the front door, the tiny maid Uda running at her elbow to steady her.

“What is it?” Davina faltered, all resemblance to Medusa vanished. “Let me see!”

“No!” he barked.

To Millie’s astonishment, Davina sank back into her chair at once. “What is it?” she repeated.

“John’s having some kind of attack. Ambulance!” And he rushed to the phone, gabbled into it that Dr. Al Markoff needed a resuscitation ambulance immediately—uh, yeah, address …

By this time Muse had returned, Uda carrying a seemingly heavy black leather doctor’s bag. Max snatched it.

“Stay here, all of you,” he said.

The minutes ticked by, marked out on a gigantic, fanciful clock sculpted into a wall; the women sat frozen, mute.

An ambulance came very quickly; the vigilant Uda let in two equipment encumbered physician’s assistants and ran them to the den, then returned to take up her station beside Davina, who looked wilted and terrified.

Jim appeared, went straight to Millie.

“John is dead,” he said abruptly, “and Dr. Markoff says it’s suspicious.” The green eyes were stern, level. “I thought of the missing tetrodotoxin.”

Her skin lost all its color. “Jesus, no! How could it have gotten here, for God’s sake?”

“I don’t know, but if you can help, Millie, then help. Call your father and tell him what’s happened. The symptoms sound as if it was injected. If the pathologist acts quickly enough, there may be a chance he can find tetrodotoxin in the form of its last metabolites. There’s blood drawn, so get a motorcycle cop here to siren it into town. Then your dad’s got a fighting chance. Call Patrick, please.”