Cindy’s head hangs to her chest. The shine of curiosity once inherent in her eyes has been replaced by loss, boredom, and hurt. She smacks her doll on the floor of the Cube again and again and it echoes through the hollow lab.
In a far corner of her cage, a pile of feces is visible. Humiliated, she refuses to look in that direction.
Cindy turns to face herself in the long mirror. With one angry scream, she pounds her fist against her own reflection until spiderwebs of fracture distort her beautiful image.
Can’t you at least hear Cindy? Can’t you see the images I cannot ignore? Try, David. Now that you know my truth and my shame, don’t let this innocent being perish because of apathy. At least try to listen to her.
But David, trained for years to listen for the slightest inflection in a witness’s answer, hears nothing in the barn he deems meaningful. He scoops Skippy up in his arms and, after one last look into the four corners of the still barn, turns off the lights and heads toward the house with the other two dogs following sleepily behind.
C
hristmas Day.
The dining room table at our house is covered with the remains of a surprisingly festive holiday dinner for Sally, David, and Clifford. Although Joshua had been expected, he called to say he had an emergency at the hospital and would be late.
The candles on the table have already burned low. Gone from the room is almost all evidence of David’s nocturnal activities; only one vestige remains—a vague purposefulness in his movements—but I acknowledge that even this may be only a projection of my imagination.
While David and Sally survey the damage David has created in the kitchen, Clifford sketches on a brand-new pad in the living room. Since David’s gift to him, Clifford has taken to drawing detailed images of himself engaged in equestrian activities—riding, jumping, and even dressage. Sally is pleased at this development because Clifford had never before included himself in his own sketches. She believes that anything that makes Clifford more real to himself is a good thing. Makes sense.
The doorbell rings. “I’ll get it,” Sally announces and races to the door just ahead of Chip and Bernie.
In a few seconds she returns with a smile and Joshua.
“Hey Doc,” David says, taking Joshua’s outstretched hand. “About time you got here.”
“Sorry. Two emergencies.”
“I’m just glad you came,” David says.
“We haven’t had dessert yet, so let me fix you a plate of food,” Sally offers. “David cooked, and I’m still standing—so far.”
Clifford walks into the dining room and announces, “Merry Christmas, Dr. Joshua,” and then in the same breath asks, “Can we go outside?”
Joshua looks at Sally for approval and she shrugs, another request from her son that she doesn’t quite understand. “Fine by me then,” Joshua says.
“Tell you what,” David says to Clifford. “Why don’t you take your mother, too, so I can clean up without her telling me what to do?”
Sally takes Clifford by the hand. “C’mon, let’s put on something warm.”
When Sally and Clifford are out of earshot, David turns to Joshua. “Something you want to tell me?” he asks, a hint of teasing in his tone.
“Something you want to ask?”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s up with you two?”
“I like her. Always have. I’m trying not to think too hard about it so I don’t screw it up.”
“You’re entitled to some happiness, you know?” David says as he begins clearing the dishes from the table, stacking them into one pile.
“I could say ‘Physician heal thyself,’ you know?”
“But you won’t.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Just don’t take her away from me. Not yet.”
“Not possible,” Joshua answers. “I think she really likes it here.”
“And Clifford, too?”
“Hard to know with Cliff, but it sure seems that way to me.”
“I like that kid. I don’t understand him half the time, but”—David clears his throat—“somehow when I’m around him I feel more connected to Helena.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Lies and all?”
David nods. “Sorry, you know, about being so short with you last time. You may be right; maybe I’m just looking for a reason to be angry.”
The Joshua I knew would have been embarrassed by this conversation, but the Joshua before me now reaches out and squeezes David’s shoulder. It’s what a father would do.
David struggles for his next words. “Tell me something. Do you think Helena ever found those answers she’d been searching for?”
Joshua shrugs. “If you don’t know how to answer that question, I’m afraid that no one does.”
Sally and Clifford return, bundled in heavy sweaters and boots. Sally looks from David to Joshua. “So, what’ve you two been talking about?”
“You know, the usual. Peace on earth,” David says.
“Goodwill toward men,” Joshua adds. “And all that other seasonal stuff.”
“Seasonal stuff,” Sally echoes, nodding in a way that makes clear she doesn’t believe them. “Right.” She takes Joshua by the arm and pulls him away. “Boys.” She sighs.
Once outside, Clifford leads Joshua and Sally to the woods in the back of the house. The three pass through a thin line of trees and approach a snow-covered field just turning dark under a deep purple sky. There, only twenty yards ahead of them, a huge stag with a full rack of antlers paws the snow for some hard-to-find greenery. The deer does not yet notice them.
Clifford motions for Sally and Joshua to remain where they are, hidden by the trees, while he approaches the stag. When Clifford is within ten yards, the animal sees him and stamps his foreleg, but doesn’t run off. Clifford finally stops five feet in front of the deer.
“Just look at them,” Sally whispers from her hiding spot, leaning against Joshua. She takes his hand and kisses the palm.
“What was that for?”
“Nothing. I just never thought I’d feel blessed again,” she says.
Joshua doesn’t answer. He can’t. He’s working too hard to stop his tears.
Our house—David’s house, I must force myself to acknowledge—is quiet now. The dishes have all been washed and put away. The dogs and cats have all found their favorite spots to sleep off the bones and chewies, catnip and fake furry mice the holiday brought. Sally and Joshua left together in very good cheer, no longer needing to pretend to David that they did not want or need each other and not caring for the moment which it was. If their displays of affection mattered to Clifford, he didn’t show it.
David, however, seems agitated. He turns on the television and, only minutes later, turns it off. He pours himself a glass of wine
but doesn’t drink it. He picks up the phone and briefly exchanges Christmas greetings with Liza and then Chris, but he’s done with the conversations several minutes before they actually end.
Eventually, David ends up in the living room in front of the rows of shelves of my books. Although David had probably looked at these bookshelves every day, he has never opened a single volume—until tonight. He first pulls down a book by Schwartz,
Higher Primates
. He opens to the first page of a chapter, which is heavily highlighted and annotated in my longhand. He takes down another book,
Chimpanzee Society
by Costa, quickly fans through the pages, and sees more of my notes. Next, he grabs Howard’s
Toward a Unified Theory of Communication,
and again finds my leavings.
Finally, David reaches for Ross’s
Ethical and Religious Implications of Primate Vivisection
. I’m certain he cannot help but see that it is the one I’ve annotated the most heavily. David stops at one passage that I’d circled in red and then further set off with three large exclamation marks.
The passage ends with the following: “You will not find a respected developmental psychologist who believes that the state of consciousness is entirely unique to humans. There are degrees of consciousness of course, but the fundamental process is there in chimpanzees as well. You just may need to get down on your hands and knees and get dirty to see it in action.”
David retrieves from his workbag my notebook. He must’ve been carrying it back and forth to work every day since that first meeting with Jaycee when she gave it to him, but he’d never opened it. Now he begins to read my careful, dense print. When he gets to my description of my first interactions with Cindy, he slowly moves his fingers over my writing so that he can feel the texture of the words written by my own hand.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he says. Then, notebook in hand, David slides down the wall to the floor. “Did you even try?”
No, David, not in life. But I’m trying now. I think I’m really trying now.
David reads page after page of my notebook right there on the floor until he cannot keep his eyes open any longer and he drops off into sleep.
David awakens a few hours later surrounded by my books. He still holds my notebook in his hands. He rises stiffly, stumbles over a few volumes, and heads for the window. It’s snowing again, but not hard. These are the large snowflakes that seem to float down from the sky in gently swaying waves.
David quietly makes his way out of the house, careful not to wake any of the dogs. He even leaves his coat behind.
There is only one noise out there now—the sound of soft snowflakes giving in to the unbending will of tree limbs that will let them fall no farther.
David listens to that sound for a moment and then does something I’ve never seen him do—not ever.
He prays.
I don’t know if he asks for hope, connection, compassion, guidance, peace of mind, or simply a human ear. I don’t know if he receives an answer.
What I do know is that as soon as it begins to turn light, David phones Jaycee and tells her—to her great relief and surprise and mine as well—that he will try to help her.
D
avid’s first act as Jaycee’s counsel was something she probably would have objected to had she known about it: David requested an off-the-record meeting with Jannick and his lawyer. Jannick, without a moment’s hesitation, agreed to meet.
Now Jannick is waiting for David and ushers him into a conference room on the third floor of the CAPS administration building.
“Should we wait for your attorney?” David asks.
“No need,” Jannick says. “The US Attorney’s Office has more important matters to deal with. I told them not to come.”
“I was hoping we might be able to discuss Jaycee’s case.”
“It’s ridiculous! Jaycee is not a criminal. Wrong, stubborn, and arrogant, yes, but not a criminal,” Jannick says.
David is obviously relieved by Jannick’s response. “If you feel that way, why is the case still being prosecuted?”
“You really think I want this? Even putting aside my own personal feelings for Jaycee, this whole matter is a distraction to our work.”
“Then why—”
“Because that stubborn idiot wouldn’t accept a plea deal and let it go. I got the US attorney to agree to a six-month suspended sentence. If Jaycee keeps her mouth shut and moves on, her record gets cleaned. But she wants this fight, she wants the grant continued, and she wants Cindy.”
“She has a very strong connection to the chimpanzee.”
“Too strong. It’s damaged her objectivity.”
“So you say, but Jaycee is absolutely certain that Cindy has acquired real human language ability,” David says.
“She’s wrong.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I know what the scientific protocol requires. The validity of Jaycee’s work cannot be established through communication that exists only between one person and one chimpanzee. Jaycee herself wrote that protocol over four years ago precisely to avoid the risk of anthropomorphic tester bias, and on this she was correct. There’s been no replication and—”
“Okay, then what if there was another person Cindy communicated with? Would that change your mind? Jaycee says—”
“She says a lot of things, but she hasn’t come up with one person in addition to herself who can communicate with Cindy. If she had, that certainly would be an important fact.”
“I believe there was another person.”
“Where is he then?”
“She’s dead. It was my wife, Dr. Helena Colden.”
I can see Jannick making the mental connections and finally he leans back in his chair. “The woman with the doll,” he says finally. “I saw her in the lab. Jaycee said she was an assistant. I’m very sorry for your loss. I didn’t know your involvement in this matter was so personal.”
“I guess I didn’t, either, until a little while ago.”
“Did you observe the interactions between your wife and the chimpanzee?”
“No.”
“Why wasn’t there film of it? Jaycee filmed everything. Why isn’t there some proof of Cindy communicating with someone else?”
“I can’t answer that. I asked Jaycee that same question. Either the interactions weren’t captured or, if they were, the film can’t be found. I don’t believe that means it didn’t happen. Jaycee wouldn’t lie about my wife’s involvement.”
“I no longer share your confidence in her integrity when it comes to her bond with Cindy. She’s stopped thinking like a scientist.”
“I guess Jaycee would say, ‘So what?’ ”
“Pardon?”
“Maybe the bond that you criticize is precisely why Jaycee was successful with Cindy. Perhaps Jaycee can communicate with Cindy only because she’s stopped thinking like a scientist and started thinking like a—”
“—a what? A mother?” Jannick scoffs.
“No. I was actually going to say like a person instead of a scientist. Just a compassionate, nurturing human who cares about what happens to Cindy. Why is it so surprising that Cindy feels and responds to that?”
“Your premise is wrong, Mr. Colden. Those feelings are not mutually exclusive. You’d be surprised to learn how many scientists actually do care. That’s precisely why the protocol was specific—to prevent the inference of meaning based on something other than objective, replicative action.”
Jannick takes a deep breath and rubs his eyes. When he speaks again, his voice is tinged with sadness. “Look, this isn’t just about me being cynical or jaded. There’s a long history of language work
with chimpanzees and bonobos. Jaycee wasn’t the first. The meaning of that work has always been debated because of the problem of interpretation bias. Personally, I believe that a number of those primates were taught to some degree to communicate with humans using our language or some proxy for it. That’s why I approved Jaycee’s grant. But that’s also why replication was a critical part of the protocol—to avoid the whole criticism of interpretive bias.”