| General Fiction posted November 29, 2024 | Chapters: |
...7 8 -9- 10... 
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Marie has some surprising revelations
A chapter in the book The Devil Fights Back
The Devil Fights Back - Ch. 9
by Jim Wile
| Background Three intrepid women team up to conquer medical challenges. |
Recap of Chapter 8: Marie decides to go to the christening of her grandson and experiences a variety of delays in flying from New York to Charlotte and getting to Julia’s house, where she plans to stay for three days. She is late for the christening, but Julia tells her to let herself into the house.
Marie begins snooping around the beautiful new house out in the country and discovers Brian’s basement lab. She thinks he is a drug-maker rather than a drug kingpin now.
The rest return to the house for a post-christening party, and Marie meets her grandson, Johnny, for the first time, who addresses her as “Ga-ga.”
Chapter 9
Marie
It’s hard to predict how you will feel when you see your grandchild for the first time, especially if you didn’t even know he existed until two weeks ago. I am not used to children; I don’t even like them as a rule. I had never wanted one of my own. Julia had been a mistake—a product of failed contraception—but once I had her, I had to grin and bear it as best I could.
I know I’m not a nurturing person by nature. My own mother had been a very cold woman. In retrospect, I think she was bipolar, although she was never officially diagnosed. I only know that she blew hot and cold, and there was no telling from day to day what the temperature would be.
She did instill in me a love of the violin, but she was a taskmaster who could be verbally abusive when I would make mistakes on her down days. I needed to escape her.
We lived in Waukegan, Illinois, north of Chicago. There was an excellent prep school called Wheaton Academy, which specializes in the arts, a little over an hour away in West Chicago, and I begged her to send me there. She was reluctant, so I begged my father, who was a pushover and always sided with me. Together, we eventually wore her down and convinced her to let me go. That got me out from under her tutelage, and I thrived after that.
Following prep school, I attended Northwestern University, where I excelled in my violin studies. That’s where I met Julia’s father, Robert Entwistle, who had been studying conducting there.
As a result of my unexpected pregnancy, Robert and I got married, and Julia was born when I was 22. The last month of my pregnancy and Julia’s birth couldn’t have come at a worse time. There was an opening for a first violin in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra just a couple of weeks after I gave birth. I auditioned for it, but with caring for a newborn, I had had no time to practice, and I didn’t get the job.
Subsequently, my career has been one major disappointment after another, in terms of winning auditions for a prestigious orchestra, until finally I made it into the New York Phil in 2011.
I know that life leading up to that, as well as the circumstances surrounding my beginning there, have left me a bitter woman. I never developed a close feeling for Julia. I guess I always resented the intrusion into my life of a child, and I blamed her for holding me back.
But seeing her again after all these years, especially with that baby—my grandson—in her arms, aroused an unaccustomed feeling in me. Where this will go, and how this will end up, I can’t predict now, but there was something awfully cute about that “Ga-ga?”
“Hello, Julia. I did my best to arrive on time, but everything seemed to conspire against me. I’m sorry I missed the christening.”
“That’s okay, Mother. We’re just happy you’ve come, aren’t we, Johnny? This is Grandma. Can you say Grandma again?”
“Ga-ga.”
I had to smile at that. “Are you sure he isn’t just making random sounds?”
“Well, I’ve gotten a ‘Ma-ma’ out of him, and he’s said ‘Ba-ba’ to his daddy. No ‘Da-da’ yet, but he has heard me call him Brian, so maybe that’s what he was saying.”
He started squirming then, so Julia put him down. He toddled over to an electronic keyboard nearby, began to pat it, and said, “Ga-ga?”
Julia and I laughed, and she said, “And then again maybe it’s just random sounds.”
Right then, Brian, the drug addict, entered the room and came over to greet me. “Hello, Marie.”
Just that. I looked him over. He’d turned into a handsome man. He is tall, much taller than Julia, who is petite like me. Clean-shaven with a full head of brown hair and well-dressed. No earrings or tattoos either. Not at all the picture I’d had in my mind of a drug kingpin or drug maker.
“We’re glad you could come,” he said. “We know how difficult air travel can be from all the trips Julia has made.”
Right then a rather large woman and man entered the room from the kitchen, drinks in hand. Brian said, “Marie, I’d like you to meet my sister, Fran, and her husband, Mike. Guys, this is Julia’s mother, Dr. Marie Schmidt.”
We all shook hands, and then a few others entered from the kitchen. I was likewise introduced to an older couple by the name of Rieke and a redneck-looking pair wearing overalls over plaid shirts, who went by the name of Stubblefield. What kind of hick name was that?
He was the huggy type and enclosed me in a big bear hug. “So nice to meet the mother of the star of our band, Marie. She came to us a year ago and turned us into a local attraction in this here corner of the state.”
“Do tell.” I looked at Julia quizzically. “I’ve got to hear this story.”
“Oh? I’m surprised she never told you about it,” said the paunchy old hugger whose name happened to be Willy.
He then proceeded to tell me how his bluegrass band had been performing at a coffee shop when their fiddle player became violently ill, and he had jokingly asked if there was a fiddler in the house to take his place when Julia stood up and volunteered to fill in. Apparently, he knows something about classical music because he recognized her as being the famous solo violinist that she is, but he didn’t let on about it right away and had her join right in. I guess she performed well—no surprise there—and he invited her to join the band, which, apparently, she did.
This is too bizarre, but it explains that picture I saw in their bedroom. I will find out more about this from her later. I was beginning to feel overwhelmed and in need of another drink, so I excused myself to go into the kitchen to make myself one. Brian followed me.
I was tired of drinking orange juice, so I just poured a couple ounces of straight vodka into a glass, while Brian retrieved a beer from the fridge.
I was dying to hear what he had to say about that lab downstairs. “Brian, I need to use the bathroom. Is this it over here?” I said, pointing to the door just outside the kitchen.
“No, that’s a door to my laboratory. Would you like to see it? There’s a bathroom you could use down there. It’s clean.”
“Lead the way.” As we descended, I asked, “What is it you make down here?”
“Well, I’m not Walter White, if that’s what you’re thinking, but I do make drugs. However, the drugs I create are pharmaceuticals. I fabricated one last year that is just about to begin phase-2 human trials once we’ve screened enough volunteers. It’s a non-addictive painkiller called Glyptophan that will replace opioids in the role they have played for far too long if we can get it to market. It has better analgesic properties than opioids and will not cause addiction—either physical or psychological—because there is no euphoria associated with it. It’s like taking Tylenol, but about 200 times stronger in the amount of pain relief you can expect.”
“And you know this how?”
“Well, at first, I tried it on myself. I’m sure Julia told you that I was in chronic, severe pain following the auto accident I had when I was 16 and became addicted to OxyContin that was prescribed to me. I subsequently needed rehab where, of course, I met Julia. Two years later, I suffered a relapse when I made a foolish mistake while weightlifting and reinjured my back and got addicted again.
“For 13 years following that, I did without drugs and managed my pain with several operations and an implanted spinal cord stimulator. But it became my goal to study neuroscience and invent a drug that could replace opioids, and last year, I finally succeeded. It was approved by the FDA to begin human testing, and we just finished up the phase-1 trials with smashing success.”
“Well, that’s very impressive, Brian, but how did you afford this lab down here? It must have cost a fortune with all this expensive-looking equipment.”
“Yes, it did, but we did it all by ourselves with our own money.”
“But you wouldn’t be earning anything at that point. Was Julia paying for it all? And is she still supporting you? What if this drug eventually fails?”
He had a wan smile on his face and took a few moments to formulate his answer. “This is why I followed you into the kitchen and wanted to talk to you, Marie. I wanted to set you straight on a few things before you and Julia begin to talk. I think it might be a lot more productive that way. I don’t normally like to talk about our personal finances, but since you brought it up…
“I think you’ve had the wrong idea about me for a long time now. I love Julia very much, and she loves me. We are good for each other; always have been. We are a team. Did I rely largely on her income to pay for all of this? Absolutely. She showed great faith in me by her willingness to let me pursue my dream, but you know what? Her faith in me has been rewarded—handsomely, I might add. I already have a licensing agreement with the pharmaceutical company I used to work for until I set out on my own. They paid me very well for the rights to manufacture this drug if it’s approved by the FDA. They already have paid me a large bonus following the successful phase-1 trial. We’re talking eight figures here.
“Julia will tell you that she has retired from touring, at least for now, and her only income is the little she makes from her bluegrass band and royalties from her albums. Now it’s my turn to support us. We just built this house and paid for it outright, so money is not a problem.
“Marie, we are happy and successful, and now we’ve begun a family. The only thing that could make us happier is if you and Julia can patch things up between you. It has eaten at her for years, the way we left things back then. I hope you will give it a chance.”
This was too much to take in all at once. I just looked at him and said, “I need another drink.”
 Recognized |
Fran Pekarsky: One of three narrators of the story. She is an FBI agent from the North Carolina field office in Charlotte.
Dana Padgett: One of three narrators of the story. She is the assistant marketing director for a Big Pharma company.
Brian Kendrick: Fran's younger brother. He is the inventor of Dipraxa and Glyptophan.
Julia Kendrick: Brian's wife.
Dr. Marie Schmidt: Julia's mother. She is the third narrator of the story.
Cedric (aka Cecil): The doorman at the apartment house where Marie lives.
Lou D'Onofrio: Fran's boss at the FBI.
Thing-1 and Thing-2: Two agents from the FBI's Inspection Division, the FBI equivalent of Internal Affairs.
Kevin Glazer: Fellow FBI agent whom Fran suspects is a mole who stole the formula for Dipraxa.
Patty Mattson: A hacker friend of Fran's.
Brittany Edwards: Kevin Glazer's contact at the patent office where she is stealing secrets for him.
Abby Payne (nee St. Claire): A girl from Dana's past, who she used to bully but has befriended during their adulthood.
Mike Pekarsky: Fran's husband. He is a homeland security agent.
Paul Rieke: Brian's former college professor and geneticist, who helped steer him into neuroscience. He has become a good friend.
Willy Stubblefield: The leader of Julia's bluegrass band.
Picture courtesy of Playground-v3.
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