Naomi has become not comfortable, exactly, but more routine in her relationship with a ghost.
She spends all of her free time chatting with Deb and mixing cookie dough. Naomi asks Deb about her work, her family, what the early- and mid-1900s were like. She tells Deb about BioGenesis, her coworkers, her research. Deb is particularly intrigued by the state-of-the-art laboratory. She has Naomi do a quick sketch of the lab’s setup and asks her to explain the 3D printing machines, the cordoned off areas for bio-contaminant work, the small chunk of space dedicated for Naomi’s own private thinking—her office. “And you’re in charge of all of this?” Deb asks, gesturing to the crumbled napkin with a blueprint of Naomi’s lab on it.
“Much to the dismay of my techs.”
“You’re a tough boss.” Deb says. It’s a statement, not a question. “I can feel it,” she says, thumping a hand over her chest.
“It’s important work. We have to get it right,” Naomi says defensively. Her lab techs gripe enough at work and avoid her most days. She doesn’t need the reminder at home.
“It’s not a bad thing,” Deb says softly. “You’re lucky, and so are they.”
Lucky isn’t a word that Naomi would use to describe her life in any capacity, but she doesn’t say this out loud.
One day, Naomi asks Deb about her own research. “Dreams, memory, consciousness,” Deb rattles off.
“Okay, but what does that mean?”
Deb squints, as if she is reaching far back into her memory and distilling it into something that would make sense to a “hard” scientist. “It was my belief that psychology should include the study of the self and how that self relates to its physical and social environments.”
Naomi fusses with a pan of cookies and says absently, “Sounds reasonable.”
Deb snorts. “I got a lot of shit for it.”
For once, Naomi’s surprise at Deb is curious and not terrified. “Why?”
“Ah,” Deb waves a hand dismissively. In a flash, her face vacillates from young girl to old, old woman. “My research didn’t align with the popular thinking of the time.”
“Because it was too advanced?”
“Because,” Deb says, her voice weary and self-protective, “I was a woman.”
In a moment of clarity, Naomi understands why Deb is so fascinated with the idea of Naomi’s lab, the hundreds of thousands of dollars that filter through it, the techs (men and women) who leap when Naomi says jump, the attention that is paid through published articles, summit speeches, and research awards to Naomi’s work.
“It must’ve been hard,” Naomi says quietly.
Deb shrugs. Her face is open and unwrinkled again. “It was. Especially when I got married.”
“Did your husband support your work? I looked it up—you all worked together in the same lab, didn’t you?”
Deb’s smile is anything but sweet. “Sure. I did the grunt work. Ran the experiments. Made the discoveries. And he put his name on it.”
Naomi should know better. She knows this. It’s not like it’s uncommon information, men stealing women’s work and calling it their own, especially a hundred years ago, especially in the sciences. But Naomi’s mouth falls open with shock anyways.
“He’s a celebrated psychologist,” Naomi says. “Practically a household name.” At least for the kind of person who listens to dry, research-laden, hours-long science podcasts.
Naomi had taken a keen interest in how the brain works when Maisie was in her pre-teen phase. There was no logical way Maisie’s brain was functioning optimally, not with her mulishness one minute (like when she tried to wear a tube top to school and threw a hissy fit when Naomi told her to march back to her bedroom and change) oscillating to tearful emotional fragility the next (“I’m too fat and ugly to wear anything else,” she’d cried surrounded by a pile of perfectly fine clothes and a baffled Naomi. Naomi’d had the forethought, at least, not to mention that a tube top is a figure-hugging, skin-showing article of clothing which is even less suitable if Maisie was feeling self-conscious about her body). The psychology podcasts—which occasionally featured the work of adolescent psychologist and pioneer in self-psychology, Dr. Peter Abrams, Deb’s husband, apparently—worked as a kind of salve even if nothing they said was directly applicable to Naomi’s life. There was a reason, at least, for her daughter’s behavior—her brain was underdeveloped. Simple as that.
“You don’t have to sound so keen,” Deb mutters.
“It was all your work?”
“Yes. It was.”
“What a thieving jackass.”
Deb’s head whips to Naomi. For a moment, she flashes opaquely, the way an energy surge seems to solidify light during a storm. She almost looks real, a tangible woman.
But just as quickly, she fades. “Until I started having kids. And you know how that goes.” Deb gives Naomi a knowing look.
In those first few postpartum weeks, when Naomi was passing uterine clots the size of her fist and sleeping only a few hours at a time, a group of the higher-ups had gathered at BioGenesis and tried to shove her out. They cited the timeliness of her work, the fact that the lab was inefficient, unfunctional in her absence, the demand for a different kind of 3D research than what Naomi was currently focused on. They’d sent her an email with a letter for a hefty severance package and the signature of the CEO attached. That same day, Naomi pulled a business suit over her wrecked body, added an extra pad to her underwear, and drove to BioGenesis. She’d thrown the words misogynistic, discrimination, and litigation at them like bombs and raised such hell that she not only kept her job but was offered an additional ten percent raise.
Still, she cut her sixteen-week parental leave down to four weeks.
When she’d dropped Maisie off at daycare, tiny, cotton-shrouded, and ignorant to a stranger’s touch, Naomi had cried for half an hour in her car before she wiped her nose, blotted her face with a tissue, dabbed on some extra mascara and strode into the lab with a chip the size of a newborn baby on her shoulder.
She knows exactly what Deb is talking about.
But she’s not ready to go there. Not with Deb or with herself.
Deb, sensing this, changes the subject. “What will you do with this batch?”
After Maisie died, Naomi had lost a lot of weight and had yet to put any of it back on. That is, until she started baking (and eating) cookies every day. She’d gained a few pounds in the last couple of weeks, and while she is proud of her body and the way it feels more solid, she still cannot keep up with the sheer number of cookies she’s baking and is not overly fond of so much food waste. So, she buys cheap plastic Tupperware off Amazon, packs up a dozen cookies at a time, and delivers them to her coworkers, to bank clerks, to the mailman. She even leaves a few as a small offering at the entrance of the Children’s Garden one weekend.
“Sal,” Naomi answers.
“It’s your best batch yet.” Deb winks conspiratorially. “Good luck.”
“It’s not like that,” Naomi says, rolling her eyes. “See you in a few hours.” She flips the newspaper page over for Deb before heading out the front door.
This is getting really interesting...