by Kate Norris
“I have a lot of respect for him, is all!”
But Dora was right—“respect” wasn’t the only thing Winnie felt.
In fact, if Winnie were to make a list of what she wanted, Scott would be at the top. Above Barnard, above everything.
“Uh-huh.”
Winnie knew she must be blushing now. “I don’t have time for a movie, but we could go to the library,” she suggested, desperate to change the subject. “I need to get some books for our English project.”
“You know what you’re writing about already? Miss Hart just assigned that this week!”
Winnie nodded.
“All right, then,” Dora said, “if you agree to help me pick a topic.”
“Sure,” Winnie said with a shrug. Dora would probably be calling her up the day before it was due, begging for her help to get started. Better to have something interesting to write about.
“Then let’s go!” Dora said, tugging at Winnie’s arm.
Winnie returned her friend’s bright smile with her own faint one and allowed herself to be pulled along.
CHAPTER TWO
The trip downtown to the library ended up taking longer than Winnie expected. As soon as she entered the mudroom of their Sutton Place brownstone, their housekeeper, Brunhilde, was on her, unburdening Winnie of her schoolbooks and helping her out of her coat.
“So late! Vhere vere you?” Brunhilde exclaimed, in the same thick accent Father had been intent on banishing from his and Winnie’s speech. Though Winnie had worked hard to lose the language that would out her, even now, she couldn’t keep it out of her voice when she was nervous or annoyed. Although they had all been in America for nearly a decade, Brunhilde left the house only to buy groceries from Herr Wagner, the German greengrocer, or to take the train all the way to Queens to attend German mass at St. Matthias, so she had easily maintained her accent. “Your vater is already in the laboratory,” Brunhilde added in hushed tones.
Winnie felt her stomach drop. “This early?”
Brunhilde gave her a dark look.
“I’ll go straight down.”
“Yes,” Brunhilde said. “But stop in the kitchen and have a few cookies on your way,” she added, dropping her voice to an almost-whisper, as though Father might overhear.
Winnie headed down to the basement laboratory immediately. Her stomach grumbled a small protest, but the last thing she wanted to do was make Father wait any longer.
* * *
• • •
As soon as Winnie entered the lab, Father fixed her in his sharp gaze.
“Winifred, how kind of you to join us,” he said, voice slow and sarcastic.
Father always spoke carefully to conceal his accent, but it had the side effect of making him sound bored by everyone. If it weren’t for that voice, based on looks alone, a person might make the mistake of thinking him friendly. He had eager blue eyes, boyishly blond hair, and a lanky physique, and even though he was her father, Winnie could recognize he was handsome. She saw how this surprised people any time someone who’d first met her later met him. They probably assumed that her mother had been plain, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Winnie could only wish that when she looked in the mirror, she saw some bit of Mama looking back at her. But no. Through an unkind quirk of genetics, two attractive people had parented someone ordinary, and she saw Mama only in her memories.
Scott was in the corner, adjusting the knobs on a massive, boxy generator. He glanced over at Winnie and smiled warmly. Winnie smiled back, then quickly looked away. If her feelings about Scott were obvious to Dora, who had never even seen them together, were they obvious to him too?
Father had enlisted Scott as his assistant two years earlier, when Scott quickly distinguished himself as Father’s best student during his freshman year. Winnie didn’t know how Scott could stand to work such long hours—daytime at the university, and then evenings here—especially for a man as demanding as Father. But Scott’s company had become so precious that she prayed he never came to his senses.
Sometimes their eyes would meet across the lab with what Winnie could swear was complete understanding. He would look up from whatever work he was doing, fiddling with a mess of copper filaments or taking notes, and then—pow! Like the best sort of sucker punch. These moments filled her with hope—not just that there might be something more between them one day, but that there was more to life, and that one day she would experience it.
It was so strange. This subterranean laboratory was home to both her brightest moments and her darkest.
“What kept you so late, anyway?” Father asked sharply.
“I stopped by the library after school,” Winnie said, keeping her lowered eyes on the slightly scuffed leather of her Mary Janes. “I’m sorry.”
Father accepted her apology with a nod and went back to his calibrations, occasionally barking instructions at Scott, who always answered with an easygoing “Yes, Professor Schulde.” Winnie understood that she was supposed to stand there and wait patiently for her own orders, so she did.
The floor beneath her feet was packed earth. It gave the lab a primal feel, more like an alchemist’s lair than a state-of-the-art laboratory despite the array of shiny, meticulously maintained equipment. Here, anything felt possible. Her eyes drifted to the large Faraday cage in the corner, where Father locked her—for her own safety—during their other work. When she thought about their night experiments out in the waking world, they seemed mad. But down here? Down here, she was forced to consider that much of quantum mechanics seemed impossible, right up until it was proven true.
What would Scott think if he knew about the other work that went on in that lab?
Winnie risked a quick glance at him, and noticed that his curly, butterscotch-colored hair was a little overgrown. She smiled. Of course Scott wouldn’t notice he was overdue for a trim. He was completely unlike the preening boys she saw when she and Dora went to the soda shop, boys who were always trying to catch a glimpse of themselves in the flat black of the dark windows, seeming more interested in their own images than in their dates.
Winnie never would have confessed this, not even to Dora, but Scott was always with her at the soda shop, or when they went to see a picture, or even just when she was putting her hair up to go to bed. He was a constant companion in her own imagination. When Winnie lay in bed at night, she would imagine telling him anything and everything. The taunts she endured at school when Dora wasn’t there to threaten to sock anyone who so much as looked at Winnie cross-eyed. The way that sometimes the strangest things, like the smell of Brunhilde baking pfeffernüsse at Christmastime, could make her miss her mother so badly it felt like her stomach had contracted to the size of a pea. That even though she feared she would never be anything but a disappointment to Father, she wanted to please him so badly that on nights when he dragged her down to the lab for those other, secret experiments, alcohol hot on his breath, what she prayed for wasn’t for him to stop, but for them to succeed.
“Winifred!” Father said, snapping his fingers and motioning to the cabinet a few feet to his right. “The cathode ray tube.”
You’re closer, she thought sulkily, but silently fetched it for him nonetheless. Was she a good daughter for obeying? Or a bad one for wishing she didn’t always have to?
“Tonight,” Father said, “I want to try something with photons—a bit of a twist on the double-slit experiment. I know Scott is familiar with it. You’ve heard of it too, I presume?”
Father saw her grades. Did he really think she might not be familiar with Young’s famous experiment? If only Father were as confident in her scientific aptitude as Mr. Claremont was, she thought with a pang.
“Of course I have,” Winnie said, a touch of sharpness creeping into her voice.
“Oh?” Father raised his eyebrows and paused just long enough fo
r Winnie to know she was in trouble. “Then tell me, where did he publish his first account of the experiment?”
Winnie had no idea. This was why it was better to just smile and nod and keep her mouth shut. Father was already irritated with her for being late. She knew he wouldn’t just let this go.
“Well, I know he first performed the experiment in the early nineteenth century. Very early. 1801, I believe—”
“Correct,” Father said coolly, “but not what I asked.”
“Sir, I believe it was—” Scott began, but Father silenced him with a look.
“I asked Winifred, not you.”
Winnie thought for a few more moments, then finally admitted that she did not know.
“Astonishing,” Father said. “And here I thought you were the expert. Go up to my study and find the journal where it was published. We’ll wait.”
If she’d learned meekness too well, Winnie thought bitterly, it was because she had an excellent teacher.
* * *
• • •
Upstairs, Winnie pushed open the door of the converted second-floor bedroom that served as Father’s library. She cringed out of habit at the loud creak of the door hinges, nervous to be entering Father’s personal sanctuary, even though he was the one who’d told her to.
Father kept his periodicals in a bookcase of their own, unfortunately but unsurprisingly organized by title rather than year. She stared at the shelves for a long moment, imagining having to page through hundreds of scientific journals, the task taking hours while Father grew angrier and angrier . . .
But it was only a moment before she came up with a simple solution. Young had performed his experiment more than a hundred and forty years ago; Father didn’t have many journals that were that old. All Winnie had to do was scan the spines to find the ones that looked shabbiest and check the indexes of those. After checking fewer than a dozen, she found Young’s “Experimental Demonstration of the General Law of the Interference of Light” in an 1804 volume of Philosophical Transactions.
“How fantastically edifying,” Winnie grumbled to herself.
She knew she should rush back downstairs, but she’d found the article so quickly. Why should she hurry back? She hated that Father had embarrassed her like that in front of Scott . . . and she hated even more that all she could do about it was spend a few extra minutes upstairs pouting.
Winnie began scanning Father’s bookshelves absentmindedly. She pulled an old issue of Annalen der Physik off the shelf, curious to see how her German was holding up. She took a seat in Father’s desk chair with a delicious feeling of rebellion, then flipped to an article that had been dog-eared.
Winnie was surprised to find that someone had filled the margins with notes. Not Father, certainly. He wasn’t the type to write in books, and it wasn’t his handwriting besides—although she could swear she recognized the slanted, elegant script. Winnie’s heart began to pound, but it took a few hurried beats for her conscious mind to catch up with her body.
This was her mother’s handwriting.
Winnie quickly flipped to the inside of the front cover to confirm it. There it was, in careful block print: her mother’s name, Astrid Keller, as well as a Swiss address that Winnie assumed was the boardinghouse where Mama had lived while attending the University of Zurich.
Mama must have studied this article there, when she barely older than Winnie was now, but with less than a decade to live.
Winnie brushed her fingers over the ink. She could just barely feel the divots her mother’s pen had scratched into the paper. Did Father realize this scientific journal had been his wife’s—that it was sitting on his bookshelf, full of her notes? Maybe he did. Maybe he had all sorts of mementos he kept from Winnie, while she didn’t have even a single photograph.
Some days, no matter how hard she tried, Winnie couldn’t picture Mama clearly. Other times, when she could picture her, it was only the awful image of Mama slumped over in the front seat of their car, dead. What the windshield had done to Mama’s forehead. The blood all over Mama’s pretty yellow dress.
Normally she pushed those awful images aside, but this time she couldn’t help but let the memory linger—there, in Father’s library, fingers tracing Mama’s words.
Winnie dreaded her father’s night experiments, but she felt their pull too. It was all tied together. Their experiments. Mama’s death. The experiments were Father’s twisted way of trying to make up for what had happened to her.
Because the accident that killed Mama was his fault.
Well . . . his—and Winnie’s.
It had all happened at once. They lost Mama. And they found out what Winnie could do.
CHAPTER THREE
Mama died in 1934, on one of the first days of the year that finally felt like spring. The frost had broken, the ground was clear of snow, and songbirds could be heard in the morning. They spent the day at Mama’s parents’ house in the city, but what should have been a lovely afternoon was tense from beginning to end. It didn’t help that Father started drinking before lunch.
Winnie’s parents started arguing the moment they got in the car to drive home.
“You know, when my father asks you how the job search is going, it’s just that—a question. He’s making conversation.”
“Making conversation? Did you see the look on his face when I told him I won’t apply for that Berlin posting?”
“Surely you can understand how it looks to him. It’s a good job, and you would apply, if not for . . .”
Here, Mama trailed off. Winnie wasn’t sure exactly what they were arguing about, but at seven, she was old enough to understand that their financial situation was precarious. She’d heard enough of these fights to know that Mama and Papa each thought that these problems were caused by something that the other one either had or hadn’t done.
“Exactly!” Papa said, then mimicked Mama in a high-pitched voice. “If not for . . . ! So, the least you could do is say something when he brings it up, not just sit there.”
Winnie bounced violently when the car hit a large bump in the road, which was still winter-rough.
“For goodness’ sake, Heinrich! Slow down.”
“And then he smiles and tells me, ‘You might want to take a job, even one you think is beneath you, before you let these girls of yours starve.’ Like I’m turning positions down, like I’m not trying . . .”
Her father’s voice began to fade in Winnie’s ears. She felt sick to her stomach, which was odd, because she didn’t normally get carsick, although Papa was driving a bit erratically.
Then it happened. Winnie saw her first splinter, although she had no idea what it was at the time.
First, she saw herself asleep in the back seat of the car. Stronger than a daydream—more like a dream dream. She was inside it, experiencing it. But at the same time, she knew she was awake. Was this really just her imagination? Why imagine herself asleep in the car? Sure, it would be nice to not hear Mama and Papa bickering, but—
In this vision, a deer leaped in front of the car.
The car swerved, spun, and that sleeping version of Winnie woke screaming as her father managed—barely—to right the car and keep it on the road.
Winnie screamed along with that other dreamlike version of herself. “Papa! Papa, watch out!” Yet when she looked around, the deer was gone. It seemed so real! But it wasn’t.
Was it?
Papa turned in his seat. “What? What’s going on back there?”
Just then a deer leaped in front of the car. Here. Now. In her waking world.
Papa was looking back at Winnie, and they hit the thing head on.
* * *
• • •
Winnie came to covered in blood. Father was wrapping his scarf tight around Winnie’s upper arm.
“Ow! Papa, stop!”
“Hush, and
stay still!”
Winnie saw the blood gushing from the gash in her arm, and everything went black.
* * *
• • •
When she woke again, only moments had passed. Winnie could tell because Father was still right there, pressing on her arm.
“Mama?” Winnie whispered. She could see the outline of her, folded over in the front seat. “Mama?”
Louder now, wailing.
She leaned forward to get close, to see, but Papa pulled her back. “No,” he said roughly, “don’t look.”
But it was too late. She saw. Mama’s gold hair black with blood. The slash on her forehead peeled back to the white skull. And her eyes, terribly open. She might have wondered if Mama was still alive, if only they’d been closed.
“Why did you shout like that?” Father asked, shaking her. She could smell the malt of beer on his breath. She knew he didn’t mean to shake her so hard. “If I’d been looking ahead and seen the deer, I could have stopped! Why did you yell? What did you see?”
What had she seen?
She’d seen—herself. She’d seen what would have happened . . .
If she fell asleep.
Then Father saw the deer.
Then he swerved the car.
Then Mama lived.
And Winnie knew—she knew—that it really had happened like that. Somewhere else. For some other her.
And somehow, she saw it.
* * *
• • •
Days passed. Weeks. The memory of the crash that hadn’t happened was eclipsed by the aftermath of the crash that had. Winnie’s odd vision became just another nightmare facet of that awful evening, and made just as much sense as any of it—which was to say, no sense at all. Grief blunted all meaning. Mama was gone. Shut up in a box and buried. That was the impossible thing, not whatever she had or hadn’t seen.