by Weike Wang
Packing takes days.
We clean up the spot where he pees. He pees over Eric’s ties. We take these ties to the dry cleaners and wait for them to call us. We clean up the spot where he poos. He poos all over Eric’s best suit. We take this suit to the dry cleaner and wait for them to call us.
What’s wrong with your dog? they ask.
Willful incontinence.
We finish packing when the dog has run out of ideas.
But not quite.
At the gate, he goes through his repertoire of tricks—sit, lie down, crawl, play dead, roll over, high-five, sit, lie down, crawl, play dead, roll over, high-five. I ask him to please be dignified about this, but I have not yet taught him that command.
Dog, Eric says, and bends down to scratch his ears. Man, dog says, and lets out a long howl. Furried brows, both of them.
···
A frustrated dog will shed and now I must follow him around with a lint roller.
It’s doable, I say to the shrink, to drive to Oberlin in one furious night.
But that is not love, she says, that is fear of facing your own demons.
I don’t have demons, I say. I have students and a dog, but at night I do close all my closets out of fear of what might be inside. Dark matter, I believe.
I tell the best friend, He left and I let him. He said he would try not to call.
What are you going to do? she asks.
Not dwell. Move forward.
What are you really going to do?
Stare at spoons.
I tell the math student, Me and the dog make two, and two points define a line.
Remember what Doctor Who said about lines. Not at all interesting.
You need three or more points to define a shape. The triangle is the strongest of all the shapes. When you think geometry, think triangles. The theorem that everyone knows by name, Pythagoras, is a theorem about a triangle.
If I could go back in time, I would design apartments that could not echo. I would revoke sound’s ability to echo in the first place.
It is the echo and the dark matter that keep me up at night.
If I could go back in time, I would sleep and sleep.
But Hawking makes a very simple case for why time travel is not possible: no one in the past has come forward and no one in the future has come back.
···
There was a mnemonic I used to use in chemistry to remember the order of the four fundamental alkanes.
It was Me Eat Peanut Butter, which stood for methane, ethane, propane, butane.
I feel like I should not just be eating this stuff out of the jar.
···
The first time he asks, we are at the esplanade in the morning for a fireworks show that will start at night. It is the Fourth of July. We have brought a blanket, a basket, a dog. He has brought a ring, but I don’t know that yet.
We wait for the sun to go down and the sky to light up. My head is on his lap the whole time.
And then the sky lights up.
I should have noticed the change in his demeanor. He is not cheering like I am but studying the sky. He is searching for the largest firework under which he will present me with the ring, not in the palm of his hand but, as he tells me later, like a telescope in front of my eye.
Not this one.
Or this one.
Or this one.
The largest one is coming at the end.
And then the barge from which the fireworks launched catches on fire and the show abruptly stops.
This cannot be happening, he says.
So we stay another minute while everyone around us scatters. When the barge is fully consumed by flames and other boats are speeding to its rescue, we have to be evacuated in case the barge explodes.
I say we’ll come back next year, and he says he can’t wait until then. I say we’ll watch another show on TV, and he says he can’t do that either.
I don’t understand until on the train back, in a tunnel, he puts the ring on my knee.
A Chinese proverb says that the mastery of three things will make you fearless anywhere in the world. They are math, physics, and chemistry.
I have a few smart but lazy summer school students who want to learn all three as quickly as possible. They want what’s in my head in theirs and wish that I could deliver knowledge more efficiently, through a tube, ideally, uploaded online.
Quality over quantity, they say, when they refuse to do the work that I have assigned.
So for these students, I have come up with a new assignment. Please sleep with your head on your textbook, and if you can recite the whole textbook by tomorrow, then I will concede to your genius.
Of course they try.
To be fearless means what? I ask the shrink. Does it mean to be without fear or to have courage that is equal to or greater than fear?
The courage one, she says.
And where do I find courage?
·
At the library, when girls walk past me tutoring the math student, they slow down. They drop things like books and pencils and it gets too distracting, so we move to the café, where the same type of girl appears, dropping cups of coffee, and then stands in line again while glancing at him.
Had I noticed this before? His eye color is ivy. His hair color is sand. He is tall but not that willowy. I guess I can see the appeal. He often comes in wearing cool sunglasses and funky nautical-themed shorts.
But he pays no heed to these girls.
Why not? I ask. They seem so accommodating.
I then learn about the girl he feels strongly about, who feels the same way about him, but has said that it would never work out.
She can’t possibly know that, I say.
But she’s right, he says.
I then learn that the girl who feels the same way about him also studies extreme climate geology and spends most of the year in Antarctica.
I ask him to repeat that.
I had not heard that one before.
···
Many scientists believe that science cannot advance without sacrifices along the way.
Eric believes this. My father believes this.
Both have said something along this line of reasoning: the first man could not have known what was poison until he ate it and a second man was there to watch.
I try to picture this. How morbid. Did he really watch or did he run back to the village, arms flailing?
The math student meets the girl in college. They are on and off. He wants to travel the world first. But after he is finished, she wants to go to Antarctica. To get from here to that frozen place requires a mighty plane or boat. No car could get you there in one piece.
A southern continent was hypothesized to exist as early as the first century, but the South Pole was not reached until 1911. First by a team of Norwegians. A month later by a team of Brits. The Brits were disheartened to find that they were not the first to reach the pole. But even more disheartening was how, on the way back, the tin solders on their kerosene canisters broke and fuel leaked all over their food supply.
One member took ill and died.
Another went insane and wandered off.
The last three pushed on…
…then died, eleven miles outside of the British base.
I tell this story to the best friend.
What do you mean they all died? I thought you were trying to tell me a happy story.
No, I never said it was happy. Currently disaster stories are my jam.
Did you know that the same thing happened to Napoleon’s army? Their tin buttons couldn’t stand the Siberian cold and broke. All the men soon died from frostbite.
The best friend finds none of this interesting. Instead she tells me to leave the house at once.
If you don’t, I will come and drag you out myself.
You can’t. You’re big bellied.
I’ll send someone.
···
What is this feeling? The small pain
under my rib cage. A deep soreness, which is impossible, because the heart cannot feel sore, because cardiac tissue cannot feel tired. To feel these things requires nerves that conduct sensation and the heart does not have such nerves.
But paranoid, I consult an online medical reference.
What could make the heart feel sore?
Heart disease.
What else?
Cancer.
But what could explain this feeling, that wherever you go and see a guy with slouched shoulders and red hair, you want to walk close behind him and see where he goes, not to bother him or anything, but just out of curiosity? Like yesterday, at the grocery store, down food aisles and freezers we went, him filling his cart with salt and coffee and baby food, me filling my cart with salt and coffee and baby food. Then I followed him out of the store. I watched him load the groceries into his car. Can I help you? he asked, and I ran the other way.
Cancer, definitely cancer. Maybe brain cancer.
I come away from this exercise believing in the good of human doctors. At least they give you options.
···
Who folds the laundry now?
No one.
Who cooks dinner?
The microwave.
···
In the middle of summer, my father calls.
There is no Hello, how are you? There is How is the PhD? How close are you to being done? You have not talked about the PhD in a while. I just don’t understand why it’s taking you so long to finish, you work too slowly, this must also be what your advisor thinks.
I will try to work harder.
Don’t say try.
Sorry.
Don’t say sorry.
I will work harder.
And don’t say it for me. Say it for yourself. Have some self-discipline.
Okay.
After this talk, I go back to watching TV. I have started to watch competitive cooking shows. They are fun to watch because they are mindless. I notice that the Chinese American chef is always the one to say, I am here to make my parents proud. I want to prove to them that I can cook and that I am serious about it. More times than not the Chinese American chef will win.
When he loses he is the only one to say, Hopefully this does not make me a failure in life.
···
I ask the shrink, Why do they still encourage girls to go into science? I see flyers and commercials everywhere, and whenever I see them, I must divert my gaze.
Perhaps the fine print should read, If you are a girl with three balls, then please, please go into science, the field will definitely need you. Otherwise pick something else.
Chemistry has long been called an all-boys club, and yes, I agree this needs to change, but how to do it?
The great thing about science is that you are discovering truths about the world.
The bad thing about science is that you might not be the one to discover them.
Luck plays a huge role, but what Pasteur said about luck: Fortune favors the prepared mind.
·
Before I leave lab, there is another girl. She is very nice and high-spirited for the first year of her PhD. Then one day, I see her in front of the microwave, slamming the door and cursing it to hell. The advisor has given her an ultimatum: Either you give me results or I will fire you. To reach this deadline, she is soon found fabricating data.
She is suspended from lab indefinitely and every science PhD program in the country. A casualty of war, we call her. That of the mind against itself.
·
Sometimes it feels that I have failed many people. My father, for instance. The Chinese proverb about being fearless, he says it all the time. Could he ever see his daughter doing anything else besides math or chemistry or physics? If you ask him, he will certainly say no.
Engineers pride themselves on understanding how the world works. Imagine the core of the Earth as a heat engine, imagine the moon a perfect sphere. And I don’t disagree; I like knowing how the world works too.
So why did I leave science again? I ask the shrink. Was it because I didn’t like it or I wasn’t good enough to do it?
Does it matter? she says. It wasn’t your thing. Accept that and move on.
···
The dog and I are at a beach. I wake up this morning to clear skies, low humidity, and a sudden desire to see water. We then take the train to a place called Wonderland.
The trick to getting a dog to swim is to throw something he loves far into the water and then watch the anxiety get to him. He likes getting wet but not going into open water. Fear of sharks, most likely. He paces the sandy shore. He whines. Eventually he leaps into the water and becomes buoyant. The chew toy is saved.
Then I throw it again.
The time Eric and I go to a beach, I cannot sit still. I cannot lie down. I have not yet broken those beakers but I am thinking about it. While thinking, I write in the sand a list of things I’m not doing in lab because I’m at the beach.
Recrystallize X
Purify Y
Retry recrystallization
Retry purification
Start over
The integrated circuit was invented by a man who was still in lab during the week he was supposed to be on vacation.
I say to Eric afterward, Beaches make me nervous. I don’t think I can go to one again.
Eric then throws a little sand in my face. Everything makes you nervous, he says.
But this time it is not so bad. The wet dog always comes back to me. It seems the chew toy is lost forever when he brings back a wad of seaweed.
···
Scientists like to say to other scientists, It depends on what question you are asking.
The question I am asking is: How to have fun without feeling like I am causing myself pain?
The best friend suggests weed. She’s read that some of the best artists and musicians attribute their first experiences of joy to being high. Though not always on weed. Most often on amphetamines, but in good conscience as a doctor, she cannot recommend that.
Where do you find the weed? I ask.
No, it’s just weed.
Weed. I say it over and over again. But it sounds so strange. I keep wanting to put in the article. Or if I say weed, I want to say weeds. Mister drug dealer, do you have any weeds for me today?
Never mind, she says. Just stick to alcohol.
···
There is another reason doing fun things causes me a tremendous amount of stress.
I am ten, eleven, twelve. I am trying to get through middle school but it is a rough time. I am made fun of relentlessly, the only Asian in school, minus another Asian kid but he is adopted and sticks to that line of reasoning—I am not like her, that freak. I am adopted and therefore terrible at math.
An aside that I am now coming to as an adult: When did being dumb become a virtue? He gets straight Ds to prove to his friends that he is definitely not anything like me, the girl who does the extra credit even when she has an A, the girl who likes to read textbooks and take notes.
On occasion, my mother picks me up early from this terrible school and I am profoundly grateful. She tells the teacher I have a doctor’s appointment. It is believable; I am small for my age, bony. In the car, she tells me that we are going someplace fun.
We drive to Deer Acres Fun Park in Pinconning with rides like antique bumper cars and a merry-go-round.
We drive to Crossroads Village in Flint with rides like a steam locomotive and paddle wheel boating.
My mother follows me from one fun thing to another. She watches me do the fun things but never joins. She buys me popcorn but never eats it. Sometimes a smile, but is that a smile I remember or her wincing from the sun?
Then she drives us home.
Deadpan, a word I learned later on in high school, a casual and monotone voice that expresses a calm demeanor, despite the ridiculousness of the situation. A voice that an unhappy mother and wife might use with a child.
She asks
if that was fun and I nod. She pulls into our driveway and tells me to get out.
What do you mean get out? the shrink asks.
I mean she would put the car in reverse afterward and leave.
What do you mean leave?
I mean go to a motel.
And then?
And then come back a week later.
···
The year I quit piano two things happen.
One: In the middle of a performance, my hands begin to sweat and I lose grip of the keys. I can’t do the crossover or the trill or the doublet of triplets or even turn the page. And then I am stuck on the same page, the third of Sonata no. 5 in G Major, repeating from the repeat bar until the performance is over.
Two: The B-flat key doesn’t play. I press it and press it and no sound comes out. The key is broken. Then I raise my hand in front of an audience of five hundred and say, May I stop now?
Some performers call stage fright going up, as in going up into a mental vacuum.
But it feels more like coming down and hitting pavement.
My parents do not come to my recitals.
Sure, my piano teacher says. You can stop now. And I never see her again.
It might be true that I was raising my hand at nine months. It has become so instinctual to always still be polite. Like now, at this bar, where I have raised my hand a dozen times to ask a question. Can I have another drink? Another drink? Another? When the drinks start to talk back (be careful with me, I am filled with hard liquor and dark thoughts), I tell the bartender and he tells me to leave.
The path of a drunk toward a lamppost is a classic model for probability. With equal probability, she will take a step left or right or forward or back. Such walk patterns have been used to model the length of a gambling game, the motion of a dust particle, the diffusion of neutrons in a reactor, and many other things.
I call Eric while en route to this lamppost. He answers. He answers so quickly. But when he realizes that I am not in grave danger, he says that he has to run.
Run where? You’re already in Ohio.
He replies, Let’s keep these calls sporadic but feel free to e-mail any time.
I try not to sound pitiful saying this: Can you stay on the line a little longer? I try but I fail. You don’t need to say anything. Actually, don’t say anything. Just listen to me walk home and I will listen to you walk home and once home we can both hang up.