by Weike Wang
The best friend wants her baby to be a model, if she has the legs for it, or an actress, someone beautiful and famous but not necessarily very smart.
I see where she is coming from.
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When a woman gives birth, her body releases large amounts of oxytocin, a hormone that helps with maternal bonding.
This hormone has many other names.
The moral molecule.
The trust hormone.
The source of love and prosperity.
Not all mothers show the same peaks in oxytocin. Some show very, very high levels. These are the ones who refuse to let go of the child. Others show no peaks.
When I first learned that, I thought, Very possible. No peaks.
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In parenting magazines, I look up what it means to be a good aunt and find nothing. I find instead an interview of a famous model who is now a mother. She says that she was first drawn to fashion after watching her own mother dress up in front of the mirror.
I read interviews of other models. A common sentiment, it seems, is this mother in front of the mirror, dazzling them.
The best friend must know. I call her but she is at work. So I page her and she calls me right back.
I tell her to go out this minute and purchase one full-length mirror, one long string of pearls, and one beautiful dress. When the baby comes out, she must dress in those every day in front of the baby and then change into scrubs at work. Your baby can never see you in scrubs, I say. Or the illusion will be lost and she will think you ordinary and herself ordinary and not want to go into modeling or fashion.
What are you talking about? she says. In the background I hear a siren.
I know association is not causation. I know causation is harder to prove, unless you have at your disposal a crystal ball or time machine that can go back in time and remove the mother from the mirror and see if the girl still becomes a model.
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Or remove both parents from the mirror and see if the girl still pursues a PhD.
If I could go back in time, I would first win the lottery and second win the lottery.
If I won a million dollars, I would invest it.
You are missing the point of the question, Eric says. A minute ago, we were discussing my lottery winning scheme. But what would you do if you had that much money? he finally asks. I tell him. He replies, money is not the point here, it is what you choose to do with your time thereafter.
If he had a million dollars, he would play drums all day long.
If he had a million dollars, he would read.
See what I mean, he adds, and now I am annoyed.
Fine, I reply, if I had a million dollars I would go on a brief vacation and then invest it.
The Chinese so often seen as utilitarian. But truthfully isn’t this what most people would do? Who would win a million dollars and just read? Also Eric has no time for drums. He stops playing them when he stops reading books. Where is the time? But more important, where is the space? The soundproofed walls? Where is the band? He tries to join a band at the beginning of grad school but then has to leave, because where is the time?
When I remind him of all this, he is annoyed. You take everything so literally.
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On weekends, he is gone. He must fly out to each college for an interview and impress them with PowerPoint slides. When he practices the presentation in front of me, I am impressed. What if you add lasers? is my one real suggestion.
The dog and I stay home. Hold down the fort, he tells us before leaving.
Aye, aye, Captain.
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Jot this down as well:
To understand light is to understand its spectrum. It is a long spectrum but there is reason to it. Ultraviolet comes after violet and infrared comes before red. If you take everything back to first principles, you will never have to memorize anything again.
I then point out the window. See how the light outside is bluish, the shadows longer. That is because we are still in the dead of winter and the sun is in a lower position in the sky.
The dead of winter goes until March. I bundle up heavily and then go outside, but the stupid wind cuts right through the down feathers and layers of cotton shirts. I can’t even frown. My face is frostbitten.
When it gets too cold to bike or walk to the library, Eric drives me. Then picks me up. Thank you, thank you, I say when I get into the moving heated box. Thank you, oil and pistons. Thank you, Henry Ford.
There is a period of time when my students wonder if I am angry at them.
What? No. Why would you think that? Because it’s cold? Everyone is angry about the cold. Who doesn’t want to punch a cloud these days.
Then I realize.
It’s not that, it’s because I lie on eye exams. I prefer less than sharp vision and therefore must squint all the time. This has made others think that I am giving them a look of disdain when I am only trying to make out their features.
So I try to remedy this by looking at each student with eyes wide open and eyebrows raised.
Now they ask if something they said surprised me. I decide that it is better to look surprised all the time than to look angry.
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The eye is a converging lens so named because it converges light, much like a magnifying glass.
Don’t stare, my mother tells me when I am a child and looking around. I see a couple kissing on the bus. I see old people holding hands. I am fascinated by these public displays of affection because it feels like watching a crime. Don’t stare? But why not? The eye is a magnifying glass. Growing up, I have perfect vision until high school. Then things start to get blurry. I like this blurriness. There are some things I would rather not see. Everyone has acne, but why does my acne seem to be the worst? Everyone has parents, but why do mine seem to be the worst? Also the looks from other people when we walk out in public, not because we are Chinese, but because sometime during the trip, we will start to argue.
Buy this, not that. Who pays for rent? Who pays for food? Just stop, the two of you. What did she just say? Did you hear her? Who does she think she is? Little princess. Little empress. Parents can’t even talk anymore without the child chiming in.
I am never grounded, never sent to my room without a meal. My parents find these punishments too easy. They believe a child should be made to feel bad for her actions, so their idea of a scolding is to talk about her as if she is not there. The third person is used. The looking right past her. Whatever she says is not acknowledged, but once she mutters something back in English—This is bullshit.
Is it the English or the impertinence that sends my father over the edge? Immediately, the slap across the face.
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During another weekend without Eric, I spend my spare time at a grocery store famously known for its free samples. The best friend finds this bizarre. Why are you always in a grocery store?
Because the aisles are neat and well stocked. Because everything, or almost everything, is edible. It is calming. You should try it. The best friend would rather not. She has weekly groceries delivered. Now, that, she says, is relaxing.
I am in line for a sample and then loop around to get another. I wear the same set of clothes for three days.
At the deli counter, a boy of ten is telling his mother, Satellites are constantly falling around the Earth. The mother thinks him absurd. Where did you get an idea like that?
I don’t want to interject, but while waiting for the sample of smoked ham, I do anyway.
Actually, he’s right, for the same reason baseballs fall after you throw them, satellites fall as well. But the curvature of the Earth prevents them from ever hitting the ground.
When I say, Think of how many home runs that would be if the baseball never touched the ground, the boy smiles but the mother, who has been eyeing me, pushes him along.
A meter is the distance between two marks on a platinum bar in Paris.
A meter is how much c
hocolate I have eaten since he has been gone.
One day, I end each tutoring lesson with this fallacy. A study has shown that European countries with higher chocolate consumption also produced more Nobel laureates. This would seem to suggest the path to a Nobel is paved with cacao beans. But how do you know that the people eating chocolate are the same ones winning the prizes?
You don’t, I say, while breaking off a piece of chocolate and giving it to the student.
Diet starts tomorrow.
A weird problem I have is that fat collects only on my abdomen and never on my arms or legs or below the chin.
Lucky you, the best friend says, who is growing all over. She says the glow they talk about is a lie. Glow is just another way to say fat, sweaty, and radiating hormonal rage. She feels like a crazed hippo most of the time.
I think the glow is probably still there, just hard to see, in the ultraviolet or higher.
When Eric comes home, I let the dog rush to him instead. I won’t tell him that I have eaten through two pounds of smoked ham.
Eric sees the number of wine bottles on the counter.
What’s this? he asks.
A sale. Buy two get one free.
But why are they all empty?
It just happened. But look, now we have three new vases.
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Before I can read names, I think every boy in America is named Ben and every girl is named Jen. My elementary school alone has seven and six of each. To reduce my confusion, I number them, Ben One, Ben Two, and Ben Three. Something I notice about this new culture: the common first names, yet the emphasis on being an individual.
My mother’s American name is Joy. She picks it out herself.
During a free minute between tutoring, I stare at my phone and imagine myself calling her. I could tell her about the letter. The school has sent me a letter. It says that I am no longer a student there. They call it a permanent separation and then they wish me the best.
The goal of a science PhD is to have an original idea. Those who cannot are often called technicians. A technician is able to follow a protocol but not able to think beyond it. The best PhD students make the jump from technician to scientist in less than a few years. The worst never make that jump. Some advisors realize this early on and advise these students to leave science soon. Other advisors allow them to reach that point themselves.
When we are both in the same lab, I ask Eric, How did you do it? The jump. And he explains to me the flowchart in his head, how after each experiment, his mind directs him to another box that builds off the results of the last one.
Afterward, I begin waking up each day, hopeful that my flowchart has appeared and then crushed when it has not.
Eric is the first to tell me.
Not to say that you’re not a good chemist, you are, but maybe this is just not your thing.
It is the first time I am this angry with him.
Not my thing? I shout. Who does chemistry think he is, God? If I want it to be my thing, it will be my thing. I will make it my thing.
Everyone is a genius, said Einstein. But he also said, A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of thirty will never do so.
Likewise, a mathematician peaks at the age of twenty-six. For whatever reason, after that young age, the creativity needed to do the work diminishes.
I show the school’s letter to the shrink. See here the stamped signature. See here the serious font.
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In addition to the Fortress of Solitude, there was another room for chemicals. It was a storage room but Eric thought up a different name, the Batcave.
This scene: It is after he has said he loves me and I don’t know what to say. I don’t say anything he wants to hear. We fight, cool off; we don’t want to talk to each other for a few days and don’t. In those few days, there is a lot of looking and looking away in lab. There is a lot of walking around each other as if the other person has the plague. There is also third-party involvement any time one person needs to say something imperative to the other, something like We are out of nitrogen, please put in an order of nitrogen. We are out of distilled dichloromethane, please distill more dichloromethane. Your reaction is about to spill over, it’s spilling over.
This could go on forever, we think, because who could be better at being cold and facetious than two scientists, but what neither of us can stand is not knowing where the other person is, if not in the adjacent hood.
So when he is in the Batcave, I go in looking for him.
When I am in the Fortress of Solitude, he comes in looking for me.
What? we say to each other, annoyed but feigning annoyance.
Eventually, I hand him a spicy burrito. On the foil wrapper, I have written out what he wants me to say.
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A new student brings me a plate of cheese and crackers. It is our first day. He sneaks the plate into the library under his jacket. I am supposed to teach him something, but upon seeing the gift, I forget. What was it that I wanted to say?
I remember: Math is not something that you can learn in one hour. You have forgotten too much. I asked you what is the third root of sixty-four and you didn’t know. You will not be ready for this test in time. You will fail, most likely, or close to it.
But instead of replying he pushes the plate toward me and asks me to take a bite.
The last thing I ate was a candy bar, yesterday. I am opposed to bribery in principle, but when it happens, I can still eat the food. The cheese tastes expensive.
I once had a math teacher who made me play a game. The teacher is my father and the game involves a deck of cards. He puts four cards on the table, number cards only, and I am to use any order of operation to get to twenty-four. I am to say things like two times two is four minus one is three times eight is twenty-four or ten times ten is a hundred divided by five is twenty plus four is twenty-four. We play this game whenever I have someplace else to be—a school dance, a party. He likes to say, For every second that you are not learning, you are wasting. He sees no value in a school dance.
The rule is I cannot go anywhere until I have beaten him, and he knows I can’t beat him.
In general, a phrase I cannot say to him is it’s complicated, even though this is what middle school kids are saying at the time. What homework are you doing? he asks, and I accidentally say that phrase. Nothing is ever so complicated that I can’t explain it and he can’t understand it.
What’s so complicated about your life? he asks. You have no fiscal responsibilities, no taxes, no mortgage, no nine-to-five job, no job whatsoever except to learn and be a student.
Do not boast, he says, that your life is complicated.
Do not boast, period.
When I get into the best college in America, he is cutting radishes for dinner. I have just found out ten minutes ago. I am elated. He puts down the knife to shake my hand and then goes back to cutting radishes.
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Some students have said that I do not give enough positive encouragement. They wait until the end of the lesson to tell me, and then they say it timidly.
Do you think I am doing better? I don’t always know if you think I am doing better.
So I have practiced some phrases. Almost, but not quite. Nice try. Way to go. Don’t be so hard on yourself. These words sound foreign to me, but I am now a roulette wheel of positivity.
When he gets a problem wrong, I tell the math student, Almost, but not quite. I say, Nice try, because he does try but the answer is still very far from his reach.
What is a rate? he asks.
It is a number divided by time.
What is a ratio? he asks.
It is a number divided by another number.
What is the difference between a rate and a ratio?
One is a subset of the other, like a square is always a rectangle but a rectangle is not always a square.
What is a square? What is a rectangle?
Don’
t be so hard on yourself.
At the end of our sessions, he offers me the cheese and crackers. Then he offers to drive me home.
Outside the snow is melting in large waves. Soon the streets will flood. But the weather is just being a tease. Tomorrow it will get cold again and then on and off like that until summer.
He is older than most college students I have taught, having traveled the world after high school for many years. Places like Patagonia, Tibet, Morocco, Vietnam.
Why on earth would you want to go to Vietnam? And suddenly I sound a lot like my mother.
I let him drive me home. Look here, I point to the number on his speedometer. This is a rate.
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Lots of people stay together long-term and never marry, says the best friend. Finally, she has a weekend off work and spends it looking up famously unmarried couples for me. George Sand and Frédéric Chopin. Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Why don’t you two do that? she says. It doesn’t have to be so all or nothing.
I take this to Eric.
And, Eric, think of all those men who love their mistresses to pieces but never end up marrying them.
He looks at me dumbfounded.
There are other things that bother him now.
At Whole Foods, I come across a handheld scanner at an empty register. I pick it up and point it around, whispering, Pew, pew, pew, pew. Eric takes the scanner away.
That was uncalled for, I say. I wasn’t even pew-ing at you.
When we’re walking the dog, he says that it feels like he is walking me too. You walk too slow and must see everything.
Who is going to do this when I’m gone? he asks while closing a cabinet behind me.
It is not as kindhearted in tone as before. It is more abrupt. And vertigo inducing. He has started to say things that he knows and I know but we have never really said aloud.
Isn’t it obvious why you’re like this? You didn’t have a real childhood, so now you are lashing out.
But at night, there is still cuddling.
What do we think about that? I ask the best friend.