by Kari Luna
“Finny,” I said over a Wall Street Journal. “If you see a seat, take it. Just get off at Canal Street and wait under the sign. I’ll find you.”
“Okay,” his muffled voice said. “Canal Street. Got it.”
I read headlines ranging from “Big Polluters Told to Report Emissions” to “White House Considers Economic Strategy Shift.” But the best one was on the paper right in front of me: “Study Assesses Women and Responses to Love.” According to the article, a recent study showed that 84 percent of women weren’t emotionally satisfied with their romantic lives. I wasn’t even sure what that meant, but it didn’t sound good. It also mentioned that we didn’t trust men, even though we wanted to. I wondered what the numbers said about pandas.
I took my Walkman out of my bag and felt around in my pocket for the Love mixtape, but it wasn’t there. My logical mind knew that Peyton had washed my skirt and that she probably put the tape somewhere else, but my emotional brain panicked. What if it got washed? Or fell out and someone stepped on it? What if Love was gone like it had never existed? I felt in my other pockets and dug through my bag, but it wasn’t there, either. No Love anywhere. Nada.
“No,” I said. I had come too far for this. “No, no, no, no.”
Gray Suit stared straight ahead, but Puffy Shoulders turned.
“Can I help you with something, honey?”
“I lost something important,” I said, looking through my bag again.
“Maybe it can be replaced,” she said, closing the book she was reading—Women Who Love Too Much. “Unless it’s a photo. Once I lost the only photo I had of Mr. Murphy, and that was sad.”
She had curly hair, and bright orange balls hung from her ears, the same color as her lipstick. “I’m from Montana,” she said, as if that explained why she was talking to me, since no one talked to anyone on the subway. “Mr. Murphy was from Oklahoma, but he was a great tabby.”
A cat. She’d lost a photo of her cat. And I’d lost the closest thing I’d had to a conversation with my dad in four years.
“It was a love letter,” I said, thinking that was the best way to explain it.
“Oh, that’s awful,” she said. “According to this book I’m reading, though, we shouldn’t depend on others. We can get all the love we need by loving ourselves.”
I think Puffy Shoulders forgot that I was a kid, and kids weren’t supposed to have to do all the loving themselves, but whatever. The train slowed as we approached Canal Street, and I squeezed through the door as it was closing, hoping Finny had made it.
“Ta-da!” he said when I found him standing under the sign. “What’s wrong?”
“I lost the Love tape,” I said.
Finny grabbed my hand and pulled me up the stairs, for a change. “Not lost, just misplaced,” he said. “Like your dad.”
I punched his arm, and we walked through neon signs and chickens hanging from the ceilings, colored lanterns and tables of herbs and teapots. I’d have to compartmentalize again, or at least try. I had to put lost Love away for a minute and focus on what I could find instead.
“This is where you used to hang out after school?” Finny said.
“Only sometimes,” I said. Dad and I went there on the way home a few times, trying on slippers and doing origami. That’s what happened when your dad was a professor. Afternoons weren’t spent at home, they were spent on campus at another school or in the neighborhoods around it.
I grabbed a wok and tried it on as a hat. “Who could resist this?”
“Not me,” Finny said, hanging two bundles of herbs from his ears like earrings.
For a minute we forgot about the book and just had fun, like we did in school. We faked fights with chopsticks, tried on masks like that scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and put slippers on our hands and made them talk like puppets. I picked up a red dragon mask, which reminded me of the time Dad took me to a Chinese New Year parade. Huge dragons lined the streets, and even though I knew that the floats and masks were fake, I was terrified they were going to eat me. Dad picked me up and put me on his shoulders, but instead of walking away, he walked right out into the middle of the parade, putting me at eye level with the dragons. Their eyes bulged and their teeth flashed, but when I saw the seams—and the people inside them—I knew I was safe. As the music played and the lights glowed, as I sat on Dad’s shoulders eating cookies, I thought I’d always be safe.
“How about this one?”
Finny spun around in a kimono, which he dubbed the Chinese Smoking Jacket.
“Debonair, right? Or whatever the Chinese word for debonair is?”
“You look fabulous,” I said. “Buy it, and let’s get out of here.”
“What’s the rush?” he said, taking it off.
“There’s more to see where this came from,” I said. I could only hope Dad would be one of them. “Plus I’m hungry again. Let’s hit the hum bao stand.”
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By the time we arrived at Washington Square Park, it was almost noon. And since the rain had stopped, the park was full of jugglers and chess players, acrobats and a guy playing a baby grand piano. Parts of a shiny orange and purple dress flew by me as cards appeared in my face.
“Future?” the purple-dress lady asked. “Want to know your future?”
I did, but I didn’t want to know it from her.
“No thanks,” I said, pushing Finny along. “We’re good.”
We walked past a group of guys playing jazz, and I had the urge to ask the flute player or cardboard box drummer if they remembered Angelino Sophia. He ate lunch there every day and was the kind of guy who’d borrow an upright bass and try to fit in, even though the only stringed instrument he knew how to play was a banjo he’d made out of rubber bands. But things like that never stopped him.
“I want to go with you,” Finny said. “On your interviews.”
I’d stopped to look at the Matchstick Man’s boxes. You’d never see something like that in Havencrest.
“Would you be offended if we divided and conquered?” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we only have a day,” I said. “What if I took the interviews and you researched? Since I know some of the professors, it kind of makes sense. Plus you’ve read all of Dad’s book, so you know what to look for.”
“Like more copies?”
“That, and other books or articles that support his ideas,” I said. “Maybe other grad students wrote papers on his work, and this would be the best place to find that stuff.”
“True,” Finny said. “You know I’d do anything to help, but I was really looking forward to meeting a few professors.”
“And you will,” I said. “But can you spend a few hours at the greatest library on Earth? For me?”
Finny’s eyes followed my hand as it pointed to a tall, red building that resembled a Lego from the outside but looked like the future on the inside. Twelve stories of glass and miles of words. I always thought if brains were square and could be categorized like the Dewey decimal system, they would look like the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library.
“Wow,” he said. Then he shook his head and faced me. “If you need me to make the ultimate sacrifice and go in there, I will. For you.”
“You really are the world’s best friend, did you know that?”
“I did,” he said, spinning around. “Which means you owe me.”
“I always owe you,” I said, thinking about all the times he’d helped me in the short time I’d known him. “Let’s hope I can deliver in the form of a famous physicist.”
“Maybe the librarians knew him,” Finny said.
“Now your Sherlock Holmes is showing,” I said. “Anything you can find will help.”
“Even stuff on the whole parallel-universe-and-panda thing?”
I laughed. “If you can find a book on
that, we’ll have a slumber party at the New York Hall of Science.”
“That’s what I call motivation,” he said grinning. And then he took Dad’s book out of his bag and handed it to me.
“You’ll need this more where you’re going,” he said.
I held it in my hands like a promise. And then I put it in my bag so I wouldn’t lose it.
“Thanks,” I said. Then I pointed to a bench up ahead, right outside of Bobst. “Let’s meet here at three. And good luck.”
Finny laughed. “Who needs luck when you have over three million volumes?”
He walked away, waving, and I reviewed my plan: if Dad wouldn’t come to me, I’d go to him, retracing his last-known steps and making them mine, like when we used to play Copy Me. It was a game that involved me doing whatever Dad did. And even though that sometimes meant wearing suits to sell tubes of toothpaste to our neighbors, it was fun. Most of them thought he was an actor. None of them knew he was a scientist trying to change the world.
Dad modeled dimensions using whipped cream and balloons. He made punching robots named Energy and Matter. On good days, he shared his loftiest thoughts with me, and on bad ones, he acted like I didn’t exist. I wondered if he was always like that or if I made him that way. When I left, did he get worse? Because I know I did. It was why I had to find him. It was also why I was there, dealing with energy and matter. The matter being my father, the energy being myself, propelled toward him. Step by New York City step.
TWENTY-ONE
I found Dad’s old office without even thinking, my legs walking through the Meyer Hall of Physics, my brain forgetting that he didn’t work there anymore. Someone was in the office, though, so I kept walking, three doors down, to Dr. Perratto.
“Office hours are on Thursday,” Dr. Perratto said when I knocked on his door.
He looked like I remembered—gold wire-framed glasses, bushy gray hair and a light blue shirt with a brown tweed vest. His desk was covered with coffee cups and papers, and behind him, bookshelves were overflowing, crammed with everything I’d ever wanted to know about theoretical particle physics.
“I read the sign,” I said, “but I’m not a student here. Not yet.”
Dr. Perratto looked up from his papers and pushed his glasses up on his nose.
“Sophie Sophia?” He hopped up and shook my hand. “Sit down, sit down!”
He pushed a pile of papers off a chair.
“It’s been a long time, dear,” he said. “You look wonderful. What brings you to New York?”
“I came to see Dad,” I said, taking a picture frame off his desk. He and Dad were standing in front of a lake with fishing poles, but no fish.
“That was taken at a retreat,” he said. “Your father was even more inspiring away from the office. He liked to prove his theories out in the world, not just on paper.”
“Do you think that’s what he’s doing now?” I said, handing him the photo.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I’m sure he’ll come around. He always comes back.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said. If I was tired of people telling me that, I could only imagine how Peyton felt.
Dr. Perratto cleared his throat. “Yes, well, I’m sorry to repeat it. Would you like some coffee?” he said, pointing to his mug. It said Physicists take matter(s) into their own hands. “I call it nature’s sweet elixir.”
“I’m good,” I said. And even though Peyton mentioned it last night, I wanted to hear it from the source. “Can you tell me why Dad doesn’t work here anymore?”
Dr. Perratto squinted at me like he was looking at the same person he’d kicked out of his office for being volatile on more than one occasion. The colleague who’d been suspended but was kept on because of his innovative work. The friend whose scholarship surpassed his tendency to disappear without warning. I was me, but I was also part Angelino Sophia.
“Teaching assistants do a lot of the work, but at the end of the day, we needed a professor who could lecture on more than lollipops,” he said. He leaned back in his chair. “You look like him, you know.”
“It’s the nose,” I said. And my tendency to believe things no one else did.
“It’s also the eyes,” he said. “They’re intense, like your father’s eyes, like everything means something.”
His voice drifted off. Everything did mean something, especially when you were trying to find your dad. I reached in my bag, took out Dad’s book and set it on the desk.
“Since Dad isn’t here, what I’d really like to talk about is this.”
Dr. Perratto shook his head as if he were coming back to the present.
“The beginning of the end of his career,” he said. “Have you read it?”
“Only the first few chapters,” I said. “What do you think of it?”
“Your father is a brilliant physicist, but this book reads like a cross between poetry, philosophy and science fiction,” he said. “It’s not an academic work. When you read it all, you’ll understand.”
“What exactly am I going to understand?” I said.
“That you can’t bend string theory to make it fit some strange idea,” Dr. Perratto said. “Physics and emotion don’t mix.”
I hadn’t gotten to that part of the book yet, but I wasn’t surprised. Dad’s brain was like a blender. He thought everything belonged together.
“Just because you don’t believe in traveling doesn’t mean it’s not possible,” I said.
“We believe there are parallel universes,” he said, leaning forward. “But we don’t believe you can slip through the gaps from one universe to the next. Or that those universes contain giant pandas. No one believes that.”
A WORD ON PARALLEL UNIVERSES
Thanks to the multiverse theory—the concept that asserts that there are multiple universes within the greater cosmos—the potential for parallel universes has become more widely accepted. One idea that resonates more than the rest is that parallel universes are like our universe but with one noticeable difference.
For example, things could look exactly the same, except the people are half of their original size or the universe is run by large, intelligent pandas. Perhaps you could end up in a universe where unexpected objects animate or where everything’s a music video. Each one has its own rules, and since the number of universes is undetermined, so are the possibilities for what happens within them.
Dr. Perratto took off his glasses and polished them as I completely freaked out on the inside. Dad visited the same places I went, places where chairs flew around or great bands serenaded you or pandas walked around like people. Were there other universes, or were those the only ones? And was there a chance we could meet one day, maybe in the panda-verse?
“Are you all right, dear?” he said, blinking through his glasses.
“Yes,” I said, even though I wasn’t. Overwhelmed couldn’t even begin to describe it. This was why I should have brought Finny.
“It’s shocking, I know,” Dr. Perratto said. “A universe run by pandas? Please.” Dad’s book created more questions, and if I was going to find him—and save myself—I had to get answers. I had to keep going.
And then I remembered something Mr. Maxim had said.
“I thought physics was the one part of science that ran on possibility,” I said.
“Possibility within reason,” he said.
Was it reason that made them drop Dad as soon as they disagreed with him? Or was it reason that explained why everyone was sitting around instead of looking for him?
“But he proved his theory,” I said. And if panda, music video and animating universes were any indication, I was proving it, too. “Doesn’t proving something make it true?”
“Normally, yes,” he said. “But proving a theory usually involves a test group larger than one.”
Dr. Perratto came out from
behind his desk and sat in the chair beside me.
“Keep reading the book,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s any consolation, but your father believed the answer to everything—even complex scientific problems—was love. And you were the inspiration for that.”
Love in my pocket, which was now gone. Dad, who I’d found, but was missing.
“Someone had to believe him,” I said, wishing, hoping. “Is there anyone else I can talk to?”
Dr. Perratto wrote a name and an office number on a slip of paper and tucked it into my hand.
“Betty Russo,” he said. “She worked with your dad for years. She can talk to you about all of it, especially souvenirs.”
My breath got stuck in my chest.
“Sophie, are you okay?”
I coughed, trying to make it move, but it didn’t budge. I needed water. I needed air. I needed to get out of there.
“Sure,” I said. “I just need to take a break. Thanks for seeing me.”
“It was my pleasure,” he said. “I may not have believed in your father scientifically, but I did believe in him as a person. Make sure you finish his book. I think he was trying to tell you something.”
Someone was always trying to tell me something, and I wished they’d just come right out and say it. Enough with the blackbirds and the souvenirs, the Walt wisdom and Dad’s thesis. Would it kill a person to have a normal conversation with me for a change?
“Thanks,” I said, sticking the book in my bag. And instead of heading upstairs, I went for the door.
I needed blue skies—something bigger than that man’s office—if I was going to talk about souvenirs. Plus, my head was pounding. Nothing a few minutes in Washington Square Park wouldn’t fix. When I got there, it was sprinkling. Not enough for an umbrella, but plenty of people had them, like the little girl twirling a pink and green plaid one above her head and spinning, like she was performing for the clouds.