Then, finally, on the third day, a scratchy phone call, and, like a miracle, his voice on the other end. He would be home within a few days, courtesy of an empty seat on an NGO’s return aid flight.
At the airport, Lily rushed for Randolph the moment she caught sight of him.
Rose stood where she was and watched him approach, afraid, almost to believe it, to believe in their good fortune. It was a trick of the world, she thought, to visit upon you such bad fortune that you were reminded every now and then of how lucky you were—a builtin guarantee that no one should ever become complacent or begin to feel entitled to one’s happiness.
Back at home, Rose put a plate of food in front of him, but Randolph showed little interest in it. Lily sat with her chair pulled close to his, every now and then her hand snatching at him as though to reassure herself that he was there in the flesh. They looked exhausted, Rose thought. She bundled them both off to bed, to little protest from either, and then the house was quiet and dark.
Rose made her way downstairs to Randolph’s study. Filling the bookshelves were his travel journals in which he’d recorded the details of so many places, so many ways of understanding the world, so many other ways of living. She thought of the rituals of these cultures. What was the ritual, she wondered, for overwhelming relief, for giving thanks, for burying fear? For being reminded, by almost losing something, of how important it was to you?
The moonlight shone on the framed maps that hung along the walls. She put her fingertips against the cool, smooth glass of one and a wave of grief rolled over her. There had been no preamble—just a sudden sob, as though it had broken free and escaped. She sank down onto the floor in front of the bookcases, pulled her knees to her chest as tears came. Why now? It made no sense. He was home and safe. She held her hand over her mouth to keep from waking them.
This time he returned with nothing. Randolph imagined his trunk, his travel journals, swallowed by the ocean and sinking, finally, to its bottom. He’d been so tired of the clothes he’d arrived in—having lived in them for nearly a week—that instead of handing them over to Rose to be laundered, he had thrown them into the garbage, happy to be rid of them and their smell of mud and sweat and dark, stagnant water.
He had survived, he explained, by climbing into a tree from which he watched possessions, entire cars, splintered pieces of wood, hunks of metal, and people being carried away by the torrent below him.
And in telling it, he is again rolling with the water, rushing toward a tree he counts himself fortunate to have caught hold of. Catching his breath, he begins to climb, pulling himself through the fragile branches he wouldn’t have gambled would hold him. But it is his only hope, the water below him rising, black as charcoal and filled with the detritus of what it has already encountered, splintered boards, concrete blocks, a bicycle, a woman.
“What happened to those people?” Lily asks.
“I don’t know,” Randolph says—though he can still hear them calling out for help, some rushing past atop an island of debris. He’d had nothing—not even a rope to throw down to them.
Cars against cars, an ocean of steel and tin and wood filling what had once been the streets. And what to do? He had found himself praying.
“Then what?”
After a long while, the waters shifted, began to recede, returning to the sea. All around were still, shallow pools of dark water containing who knew what. He had climbed down then, out of the safety of the tree’s embrace.
At the first muddy spot, he had fallen forward, palms against the wet, soft soil, touching his forehead to this solid earth, inhaling its smell.
He’d headed inland on the back of a motorcycle, hitching a ride with the local postman. Together they rode north to the airport along empty stretches of road. At one spot, the hulls of two enormous freighter ships lay across the road, the traffic—all motorbikes—passing carefully between the two beached craft.
On his second night home, Randolph had come to sit beside Lily in the living room, where she sat surrounded by her schoolbooks. “Your mother told me about your speech during the hearing,” he said.
For Lily, the hearing had receded from her mind, which had, instead, for so long it seemed, been full of images of rushing water.
“I’m very proud of you,” Randolph continued. “It’s not always easy to stand up for what you believe in, especially in the face of friends, neighbors, and family who disagree, and on matters about which passions run high. I understand from your mother that you did so articulately and with grace.”
It seemed now like such a silly, inconsequential thing, Lily thought.
Randolph had been absent for so long that the daily rhythms of the Winchester home were entirely foreign to him, and he observed them as curiously as though watching a native people in their habitat. He learned the small, simple routines of the household—on what day the trash was collected, when he might expect the arrival of the newspaper.
Randolph and Rose’s was a marriage that had, for years, been conducted in absence, via letter, scratchy phone connections that ran under the sea, long cables stretching from continent to continent. Now, as they each adjusted to the other’s daily presence, Lily noticed the way her parents moved around each other in the kitchen in the mornings, bumping into one another as they both reached for the milk. It was as though they had to learn all over again how to live with one another.
Rose took pleasure in the routines that had sprung up among all three of them. The waking, each morning, to a warm presence in the bed beside her. The rising to prepare breakfast. The bustle of the morning routine as they all—three of them now—busied themselves preparing for the day ahead. She and Randolph, once Lily was off to school, retiring to their corners of the house to work—he to his study, she to her small desk in the kitchen, and how, now and then, they might meet in the hallway or over the teakettle. The house quiet, then coming back to life with Lily’s return from school. Gathering in the kitchen to prepare their evening meal, now Lily’s and Randolph’s heads bent together over the last difficult bits of the crossword, here and there calling out clues for Rose. Dinners over which Lily regaled them with stories from school—then the quiet evenings in which they each withdrew to their work, Lily to her room, Rose to her small desk in the kitchen, and Randolph to his study. And then, at night, again, Randolph there beside her, and the whole lovely routine ready to spin out ahead of them once more each day.
There were moments when a map beckoned to him—this or that spot as yet unexplored. But for the first time in his life, Randolph did not feel excitement at the possibility of the unknown. At first he had not known what to call it—caution, a wariness, trepidation? But, he realized, with a sudden and shameful understanding, this was nothing more than fear. When he recalled his travels now, instead of thinking of them fondly as he once had, he found himself cataloguing the risks he had taken, all the tiny ways in which he’d been so lucky that he felt sure he must have used it all up. In such a new place, he thought, he wouldn’t know how to save himself should the situation arise. He would not again be so fortunate. And so, each day, it felt reassuring to travel no farther than his study where, surrounded by his own memorabilia, he could recall his more adventurous days.
The editors of the Nicolet Herald-Gleaner, more than a little surprised to learn that there had been a Nicolet connection to one of the most significant natural disasters in recent decades, printed a long piece about Randolph’s narrow escape. Randolph had not wanted to be interviewed, and so had asked Rose to speak to them instead.
Rose, for her part, found herself dominating the news cycle as coverage of the mayoral race began to increase. It was looking good for Rose, her campaign team assured her, though in the world of local politics, they reminded her, things could change dramatically in the months leading up to an election. And still there was the matter of the electorate’s discomfort with her strange marital arrangement, her campaign advisors reminded her. Still, there was the matter of that for her to contend with.
But now, even more so than before, it was a conversation she could not imagine having with Randolph.
Rose had begun to prepare, to steel herself against the announcement she knew would come soon enough: that he was again leaving. She knew that for the first time in their long marriage, it would be difficult for her not to ask him to stay.
She wanted him to stay. To unpack, to put away his boots and his travel guides and his journals for good. Not because of her political ambitions, not this time, but rather because she wanted the luxury of taking him for granted. The banal daily interactions over schedules and groceries had begun, to Rose, to feel almost sacred, full of meaning and intention and reverence.
She thought of the farm families she had grown up with and of her own parents, her farmer’s upbringing—the notion that the harder a thing was to do, the more worth doing, the more valuable. And what, she had begun to think, could be more challenging than to go on loving someone through so many grim daily routines? To love one another not through absence and letters and joyful returns, but through snow shoveling, and meals together one after another, and bills pored over at the kitchen table. Through no longer the electric thrill of brushing against one another in the hallway or the kitchen, but instead through the possibility of growing so familiar that it sometimes felt impossible to still see one another. What love, to still love one another through that.
As Rose prepared dinner, Lily sat at the kitchen table, poring over her schoolwork, and Rose thought of how, at Lily’s age, she had been just a few years from running off with Randolph, from taking flight from this farm town where she’d been raised. Now, here she was, perhaps about to become mayor of this town, though it had grown so different as to be hardly recognizable were it not for a few familiar landmarks—the granary along the railroad tracks just off Main Street, where bistros and coffee houses had begun to take up residence; here and there a silo in one of the fields that frayed off at the edges of town, not yet developed, not yet transformed into still more and more houses.
And here she was, also, quiet evenings at home with her husband, beginning to fall in love with the idea of a marriage that looked less like the grand love story she had always envisioned and more like the quiet, committed, humble marriages of the farm couples she’d grown up surrounded by and had vowed to be nothing like. Now, though, she could see the dignity in those relationships—the simple bravery of staying together through routine and hardship, through overwork and fatigue. She felt ashamed that she had ever been so dismissive. How little she’d known of life then. How little Lily knew, she thought, as she watched her daughter, bent over her schoolwork at the kitchen table.
And so Rose was surprised, one evening, when Randolph, home then for just over a month, made his way into the dining room where she was working on her campaign literature. “Rose,” he began. “I’ve been thinking.”
She looked up, recognizing his tone as the sort that indicates a conversation deserving of one’s full attention. Here was the moment she had steeled herself for.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said again, “that it may be time for me to take a break.” Lately, he explained, he had found himself thinking about a book project—photos and text, maps of his journeys, suggested routes, helpful tips for other intrepid explorers. “I’d like to be home,” he said. “For a good long while this time.”
At first, Rose said nothing. She watched him for signs that he might have known what she had considered asking, that he might have known about the many unsent letters she had drafted before—
She stopped herself from thinking of it, as she always did.
“Is this because of my political aspirations?” she asked, finally.
Randolph took a seat in one of the chairs beside her at the glossy dining room table. “Not at all,” he said, confused by the question. For his part, he was wondering if Rose could sense the fear that had grown in him. He hoped not. He was ashamed of it. He held his hand out to her. “Just a good time to begin a book, I think.”
Rose took his hand, but rather than feeling pleased or relieved, she found herself feeling both guilty—that just like that, she’d been delivered from having to ask him something she had so thoroughly dreaded—and relieved—that he would be here with her, with Lily.
Lily, coming down the stairs in search of a snack for her study break, had found them, her mother, strangely, sitting on her father’s lap like a child, their foreheads resting together, eyes only for each other.
“I’ve decided to take a bit of a respite from my travels,” Randolph explained to Lily that night over dinner. Lily was slowly growing accustomed to her father’s presence each evening at the table, each morning at breakfast. Rose folded her napkin and set it beside her plate, feeling certain she knew what was coming.
Lily looked across the table at her mother, suspicious. “Why?” she asked.
What to say, Randolph wondered. Would he tell her all of the ways in which he’d felt himself growing fearful?
“I almost lost you both,” he said, finally, looking down at the table. “And I’ve been thinking about what’s most important to me.”
Lily looked down, too, a tear budding in the corner of her eye, which she brushed quickly away. Still, she stole another look at her mother, who, noting it, wondered whether Lily would raise the issue of the letters she’d discovered—the letters Rose had written but never sent.
She did not.
“I’m glad you’ll be here,” Lily said, taking her father’s hand and weaving her fingers between his.
CHAPTER 22
Awaiting Decision
IN THE WEEKS FOLLOWING THE HEARING, THE LAB SEEMED STRANGELY quiet, the scientists unable to concentrate. To Sarala it felt like the whole town had grown silent and closed in, as if bracing itself for a blow.
Abhijat found himself more often than not looking out his office window toward the city in the distance. How precarious it felt to have one’s professional fate in the hands of others.
At the grocery store, neighbors passed each other with curt greetings, having seen once and for all in the auditorium where everyone stood on the issue. They imagined the Department of Energy officials flying back to Washington, looking down over Nicolet from the windows of their airplane, its farmland and subdivisions growing smaller and smaller as they rose into the air and off to make their decision.
After the hearing, the letters began to arrive. In an office in Washington, a secretary who had been charged with collecting all correspondence on the matter of the super collider for the purposes of assembling a public record opened letter after letter from Nicolet. Some neatly typed on letterhead, others hand-lettered in nearly illegible scrawl—the shaky handwriting of elderly citizens, the large, looping handwriting of children.
Filed away with the others:
A letter from a woman who’d written I hate the SSC, across the bottom of the page near her signature.
Children’s drawings: SSC in all caps, a circle drawn round it, a line struck through in prohibition. And their letters, asking why the collider couldn’t be built on Mars instead of under people’s houses. There’s lots of space up there. Then no one in our town would be fighting.
In the rounded, decorative script of a teenage girl: I don’t really know much about this issue but our biology teacher asked us to write a letter in support of this. I hope this hasn’t wasted your time. I’m getting extra credit for writing this.
One in long, elegant cursive: It is my testimony at the hearing that has prompted my writing. I would like to apologize to the panel members for my attitude during the hearing. While this is an emotional issue for those of us facing relocation and the loss of our community as we know it, this does not excuse my anger toward the panel members. Shortly after the hearing, the Lord reminded me that as a Christian, I had failed to represent Him in a way worthy of His name. So I ask that you please extend this apology to the gentlemen taking testimony that day in the auditorium. Please also express to them that I continue to pr
ay for all of you for wisdom in this decision-making process.
Anderson Hall rumbled with the low murmur of nervous conversation. Dr. Palmer made his way to the podium set up in the center of the stage, the auditorium seats filled with anxious Lab employees. Dr. Palmer was not a man who hid his emotions well; written across his face were the signs of fatigue and disappointment.
“Colleagues,” he began. “This process has been a long and emotional journey for many of us, and I am afraid I call you together today to share with you disappointing news. After careful consideration, the Department of Energy has decided against construction of the Superconducting Super Collider here at the National Accelerator Research Lab.”
There was a heavy silence in the large room. Dr. Palmer continued speaking, but Abhijat could no longer hear him, his mind racing.
Would it be built somewhere else, he wondered? Perhaps. But where? And more importantly, when? For surely it would mean more waiting, further delay, starting from scratch with studies and outreach and attempts to explain the magnitude of their work. His breath caught in his throat as all of this made itself clear to him.
Dr. Cardiff, beside him, turned at the sound.
Abhijat met his eyes, wiped a palm over a forehead now beaded with sweat.
“I know that many of us are profoundly heartbroken over this decision,” Dr. Palmer finished. “I wish that I had some words of comfort to offer you all. Perhaps it is enough to remind us all that very big projects don’t always have happy histories.”
From his office window, Abhijat looked out over the charred prairie grasses.
For months now, he had been counting on the arrival of the super collider, had so freighted it with meaning, with the possibility of the great prizes, of his theories being recognized and his work remembered. He’d come to think of it as the most important thing to happen in his life, in his career. Now, though, without it? It felt as though a giant obstacle had been placed in his path. And for the first time in his life, he felt unequal to the task of determining how to circumvent it.
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