“It seems like you’ve been saying this a lot lately,” Carol said.
Yes, Sarala thought—it was probably true. Ever since the matter of the collider had descended upon the town, upon their home, it felt less and less like Abhijat was there and present in their daily lives. It wasn’t, in fact, all that different from Randolph’s absence from Rose and Lily, she’d realized. She’d so often wondered about its effect on Lily and Rose, but was their own life so very different? She thought of how often she had to dispatch Meena to pull Abhijat out of his thoughts, out from behind his closed study door, to join them for meals.
Sarala found herself thinking, then, of her mother-in-law’s warning about Abhijat’s constant striving, about her hope that Sarala would help him find a greater degree of balance in his life. Perhaps, Sarala thought, she had been naïve. Perhaps, by making their home life so unobtrusive, she had, in fact, made it possible for Abhijat to withdraw. Perhaps, she had, without realizing it, made it even more difficult, even less likely for him to find this balance his mother had believed in so firmly.
A sense of her own failure settled over her. His mother had hoped that Sarala would help to bring balance to Abhijat’s world, but instead, Sarala had only allowed him to withdraw from it more. She wondered if she’d made a terrible and irreparable error in judgment.
Carol refilled Sarala’s coffee mug. “Sweetheart,” she said, putting her hand on Sarala’s arm. “As your friend, I have to tell you that you seem unhappy and you seem lonesome. Now, I’m not one to advocate breaking up a family, but I do think it’s important that you understand your options here.”
She handed Sarala a pamphlet neatly folded in thirds. SO YOU’RE CONSIDERING SEPARATION read the title across the top.
The guidance counselor, Mr. Delacroix, called Lily and Meena, finally, into his office. He was a short man, bald, with a wiry black moustache, and Meena thought for a moment that he looked exactly how she had always imagined Hercule Poirot might look. The girls took the empty seats opposite his desk and waited for him to speak. Mr. Delacroix regarded them across the wide expanse of his desk. “Well, I suppose you’re both wondering why I’ve called you in today.”
The girls nodded.
“I’m pleased to tell you that you’ve been identified as two of our most academically talented students. As such, you’ve been encouraged to consider applying for a new program called the Academy of Science and Math. It’s a residential high school for gifted math and science students from all over the state. Students are accepted in their sophomore years.”
He slid brochures across the desk to each of the girls, who opened them as he spoke.
“We’ve prepared a letter for your parents,” Mr. Delacroix continued, sliding identical envelopes across the desk, one to each of them, “explaining the opportunity and laying out the application process. I hope you’ll both consider this very seriously. Take a few days to look over the materials and to talk with your families. In the meantime, if you have any questions, I’ll be happy to talk with you further.”
The girls nodded again. Thus dismissed, Lily and Meena made their way back through the strangely silent halls. Lily reached out and clutched at Meena’s hand as they walked. “This is the best thing that has ever happened to us,” Lily said, breathless with excitement.
Meena nodded, but privately she was not sure she agreed.
The letters Lily and Meena carried home each met a different fate. Lily’s was delivered proudly into her mother’s hands, then photocopied and included in her next letter to her father.
Meena’s was slipped, surreptitiously, into the garbage can beside the desk in her bedroom.
That afternoon, after returning from Carol’s house, Sarala began a letter of her own, addressed to Abhijat’s mother.
You always told me that you hoped I would help Abhijat find happiness in the world. I worry now, though, that I’ve made a terrible mistake.
Sarala was afraid that she had been seduced by his work, by his ambition, much as Abhijat had been. That she had been wrong to believe it might make him happy.
I wanted so much to make a place for it, for him, she wrote. But now, he seems frustrated. Unhappy, and lost to us.
She described the quiet that had come over him, the worried brow that was now a nearly permanent fixture. He’s not happy, she confessed, and she felt her failure again drape itself heavily over her shoulders.
She tucked the letter into the thin airmail envelope with its red, white, and blue borders and tucked it into her purse. She didn’t want to mail it from home on the off chance that Abhijat might see it.
At the grocery store, she stood in front of the squat blue post office box, uncertain. For a moment, she considered not sending it.
Perhaps his mother would only see it as a confirmation that Sarala had not heeded her good advice, as proof that this wife she’d selected for her son had been a poor choice after all.
Then, before she could change her mind, Sarala dropped the letter into the slim mouth of the blue box and went inside to do the week’s shopping.
In the halls of Nicolet Public High School, word about the Academy soon made its way through the AP students, who had begun to describe it as a boarding school for baby geniuses.
Lily assumed that she and Meena would both apply. She did not know that Meena’s letter and application materials had never even been opened, nor did she know that, lately, Meena had begun wondering whether it was a good idea for her and the other advanced students to be so separated from the rest of the student population.
Over the last few weeks, Meena had been thinking about this and about how clear it seemed, in each of the articles and editorials on the collider she read, that the people on either side of the issue simply didn’t know how to talk to one another.
CHAPTER 16
Charm Offensive
WHILE MOST OF THE TOWN’S READING MATERIAL INCLUDED THE Herald-Gleaner’s latest accounts of the battle over the collider and the voluminous final version of the Environmental Impact Statement that had been delivered to their doorsteps, Sarala continued her own informal education. After finishing the Mary Kay autobiography, she had become a regular borrower of the Nicolet Public Library’s significant collection of self-improvement and motivational literature. She was especially taken with Color Me Beautiful, breaking what she understood to be a cardinal rule about marking a library book by underlining (very lightly and in pencil) the following (feeling justified on the grounds that it was good advice, and, one might argue that she was doing future readers the service of directing their attention toward it):
Practice standing this way in front of a mirror, looking at yourself from the front and from the side. Practice walking while pulling up through your midriff, head carried high, shoulders down. When you walk, swing your leg from the joint at the hip rather than the knee. This stride is smooth and elegant.
Her attention was caught again, later, by the following:
Long hair is fine for young women, but after thirty-five it is aging. Then it is best to keep shoulder-length the limit.
She was not, however, eager that Abhijat should find and comment upon her choice of reading material, so she kept these books in a drawer in the china cabinet in the dining room, a part of the house into which Abhijat rarely ventured.
Meena and Lily had been the recipients of two socially uncoveted invitations to Erick Jarvis’s birthday party, and although Lily indicated that she had no intention of going, Meena urged her to reconsider. “It would be nice, Lily.”
“Oh, fine,” Lily acquiesced, and the two had been dropped off at the Jarvis house by Abhijat, as rare an excursion for him as for the
girls.
Erick’s mother had insisted that he invite not only his brother to the party, but also his cousins, with whom Erick had an uneasy relationship, themselves being dedicated students of the high school’s auto shop classes and finding nothing so damaging to their social reputations as having a cousin in the nerd classes
.
Lily had not strayed far from Meena’s side the whole evening.
“I hear you’re going to that school for geniuses,” Erick said, addressing Lily, who responded to this attention by turning slightly away.
“You mean the nerd academy,” Tom Hebert said loudly, hoping to attract the admiration of Erick’s brother and cousins with his quip.
“You don’t just decide you’re going to go,” Lily explained, her eyes half closed, arms crossed in front of her, a posture Meena noticed that Lily adopted when she was nervous. “It’s a competitive application process.”
“So do you think you’ll get in?” Erick asked, ignoring both Tom and his cousins, who were now shotgunning cans of Mountain Dew in the living room.
“I don’t know,” Lily responded, eyes still half closed, arms still crossed. “I hope so.”
“Will you guys be roommates?” he pressed on.
“Probably,” Lily answered. But at the same moment, Meena responded, “I don’t know if I’ll get in.”
Lily looked at her, perplexed. “Of course you’ll get in.”
Most of the town’s residents were now nervously anticipating the public hearing on the matter of the super collider, which had been scheduled for May and would be held in the auditorium of the Nicolet Public High School.
Lily’s mind, however, had turned entirely to the matter of the Academy. She worked diligently on her application each evening and could, it seemed to Meena, be counted on to talk about nothing else.
For Lily, the Academy represented the promise of a world of peers who would understand her eagerness in the classroom, to whom her quirks might seem normal. The idea that such a place existed, a ready home for her, seemed to Lily like a dream come true.
At school, she found herself poring over the Academy brochure, imagining the room she would share with Meena, how she would come to think of her single year of regular high school as a lost year—a horrible glimpse at the tiresome football games and ridiculous cafeteria dances she would soon shake off in favor of more worthy endeavors.
Meena had counted on her father’s preoccupation with the matter of the collider to allow the announcement of the opening of the Math and Science Academy to slip, unnoticed, past eyes that were otherwise ever vigilant for opportunities to enrich her academic environment.
The plan she had settled on was to say nothing, and with any luck, by the time the matter of the collider had been settled, should her father catch wind of the Academy opportunity, the deadline for application would have long since passed.
She had a sense, though they hadn’t discussed it, that her mother would have taken her side. Would have argued that the Nicolet school system was perfectly fine, better than fine. That it was, after all, why they had chosen to live there. That Meena would have time enough on her own in college and beyond without forcing her out into the world at this age. And she had a sense also that her mother (whom she sometimes noticed watching longingly as the other fathers on the block conversed easily with one another, leaning against their lawnmowers or snow blowers) would understand Meena’s wariness about moving so completely away from her classmates, her concern that she might become as unable as her father was to connect with them.
This was not, however, a decision Meena had shared with Lily, who, she imagined, would find it nearly impossible to comprehend.
Lately, Meena had begun to realize that the more time she spent with Lily, the more isolated she felt. There were an increasing number of moments in which she’d noticed, growing within her, a lurking and unpleasant suspicion: that it would be easier to do some things without Lily—social events she would have liked to enjoy without the specter of Lily at her side, needing to be attended to. This, though, had left Meena feeling both guilty and ashamed.
How different it was from when they were younger, Meena thought. She could still remember the first time she’d been invited to Lily’s house to play. She’d understood it to be a great honor and a sign of the depth of their friendship when, one Saturday afternoon, Lily invited her into Randolph’s study—a grand cabinet of curiosities filled with specimens in glass jars, the fossilized bones of strange creatures, sculptures, wood carvings, well-worn travel books (his favorites, Lily explained, and thus, well loved). It was as though Lily’s house contained within it a miniature museum.
Meena thought how unlike Randolph Lily had turned out to be, and how a bit more of his curiosity about the world might serve her friend well.
As for breaking the news about the Academy to Lily, Meena did not yet have a plan. Instead, she kept silent while Lily pored over her application, too engrossed in her own application materials to notice that, rather than commiserating, Meena barely responded each time Lily brought up the subject of her application essay, her quest for the strongest letters of recommendation.
Meena never told Lily that she had applied. But she never told her that she hadn’t, either. For Meena, this seemed an important distinction—a talisman against any future accusation that she had acted with dishonesty or deceit.
The week before the public hearing, the Lab had arranged a meeting to brief all employees on how they would be expected to conduct themselves should they choose to participate in the hearings. Dr. Palmer, the Lab director, stood once more at the podium in Anderson Hall, addressing the assembled employees. “I’m sure you all know by now,” he began, “that the public hearing on the projected super collider will be held on Wednesday at the Nicolet Public High School. For those of you who have preregistered to speak—and I understand there are a number of you who have—I’d like to make a few important things clear. If you choose to speak, and we encourage you to do so, you may identify yourselves as Lab employees, but you must also make it clear that you are speaking for yourselves as private citizens, that you are not speaking on behalf of the Lab. Please remember that your conduct at these hearings will reflect on the Lab and may well influence the Department of Energy’s decision regarding the collider. We would urge you to do your best to talk in terms that will be easily understood by laypersons.”
Here there were chuckles from the audience.
Dr. Palmer held up his hand, smiling. “Yes, I am aware that this is difficult for many of us. In light of that, Gerald here,” he gestured at Dr. Cardiff in the front row, “has been working over the past few weeks on something we’re calling the checkout-line project. Essentially, it’s a quick physicist-to-layperson translation of some of the central issues. What we’re thinking about is how you might quickly and clearly describe what we’re doing to one of your neighbors in the checkout line at the Jewel. Gerald will be handing out some of the talking points he’s put together, and I’d encourage you all to make use of them.
“Now,” he continued, resting his elbows on the podium, “I know there is a good deal of frustration in this room with the people who want to put a stop to this project, and I know there is also significant concern over what will happen to the Lab if this collider isn’t built. But the thing we’ve got to remember at this hearing is that these are our friends and neighbors.”
Here, Abhijat thought he detected the voice of Dr. Cardiff in Dr. Palmer’s remarks.
“And no matter how unfounded we think their concerns are, the most important thing to remember is that they believe them to be true. All we can do is to try our best to educate them and to allay those fears.”
In the atrium after the meeting, over coffee and Danish, Abhijat listened with concern to his colleagues, wondering how well those who had chosen to speak would be able to adhere to the director’s advice.
“I don’t know what we can say to these people,” one of Abhijat’s junior colleagues was saying to a circle of fellow physicists. “These are the same geniuses who think a mobile phone is going to give them cancer.”
“Or living near power lines,” added another.
“It’s not looking good for us, is it, mate?” one of his colleagues said, patting Abhijat on the back, and setting a few tiny muffins on
his plate.
“I have confidence,” Abhijat said, nodding as if to demonstrate this. “I have confidence in our fellow citizens.”
“I hope that’s not misplaced,” his colleague said, popping one of the muffins into his mouth and looking out over the prairie.
Though it had always been Abhijat’s habit to collect the mail at the end of the day when he returned from the Lab, Sarala had begun to do this, hoping to intercept any return correspondence from Abhijat’s mother before he might see it and wonder why his mother should be writing to Sarala alone as opposed to both of them, as she always had before.
When the letter arrived, Sarala snatched it out of the pile of mail she left for Abhijat on the kitchen counter and took it into the living room to read.
My dear Sarala,
I was both touched and saddened to receive your letter. Touched that you should think of me as a confidant, and sad to see how unhappy this has made you both. You are correct that I had hoped that you might help Abhijat to see beyond his often very limited horizons. I had hoped for this, and you have—you and Meena both.
You must always remember that you have allowed him to live a much fuller life than he would have otherwise. And though he may not yet see that, I believe he will someday come to recognize this, that he will someday come to understand how important it has been.
He is a difficult man to love, I imagine. Yet without those parts of him, he would not be the man we love, all three of us.
My great hope for my son is not that he becomes a renowned and famous physicist, but rather that he should look up from his work and come to see the beauty of the world he has—the world that is tangible and knowable and present.
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