Charmed Particles (10 page)

For Meena, mornings were a parade of novelty breakfast foods that had caught Sarala's eye in the supermarket—Pop Tarts, frozen waffles, frozen pancakes, frozen pancakes wrapped around a frozen sausage, sausage biscuits, biscuits and gravy in a microwaveable bowl, packets of oatmeal with colorful bits of dehydrated fruit that came to life under a stream of hot water from the teakettle.

After dinner, their small family of three spent the evenings in the kitchen, Sarala cleaning up, Abhijat beside Meena at the table helping her as she worked through her homework.

Meena's schoolwork, Sarala had noticed, was one of the few things that could tear Abhijat away from his study in the evenings. As she loaded the dishwasher, she watched with pride the patient way he explained the things Meena struggled with, the way he listened carefully to each of her questions, even as, she knew, he was already beginning to craft his response. These were the moments in which Sarala loved Abhijat best, in which she best knew that he loved both her and Meena.

Rose encouraged Lily's intellect, enrolling her in summer enrichment courses in art, music, science, and math. By ten, Lily had a layperson's grasp of Heidegger, an unflagging interest in Freudian psychoanalysis, and had begun compiling a list of her own criticisms of Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis.

On weekends, Lily divided her time between the public library and the YMCA, where she could be found among the aging patrons, swishing along on the rowing machine.

On her bedroom mirror, Lily kept a photograph of her father, blue turban wound round his head, skin darkened and worn by the sun, beard closely cropped, indicating the beginning rather than the end of an expedition (which was itself distinguished by the presence of a long, tangled, and unkempt beard her mother insisted he trim immediately down to a refined Van Dyke). The photo had been taken in the Sahara, where he had joined a salt caravan and, in native dress, led his camel by a rope through the desert. Lily loved to hear again and again the story of the light-handed pickpocket Randolph had met there, who had offered to help Randolph negotiate a suitable bride price for the lady of his choice. “Oh, I've already got a lovely bride, thank you,” he had replied, pulling out the photo of Rose and Lily he kept on him always, brandishing it with pride.

Randolph came home during the holidays—Christmas, Lily's birthday, and Rose's—but these were short trips, temporary. The house was a house of women—Lily and her mother, their nights spent together, Rose reading to Lily from the letters Randolph sent from his expeditions—North Africa, the Greek Isles, New Guinea.

Rose kept one room on the first floor of the house, just off the foyer, as a study for Randolph, a dark-paneled room with a sidebar on which sat a bottle of whiskey and a polished silver seltzer dispenser. Here, she kept his leather-bound expedition journals arranged chronologically on the bookshelves along the wall. Above the bookshelves hung framed photographs of Randolph and Rose on safari, of their trusted porter on a trip to Nepal, and an impressive collection of rare maps. An imposing mahogany desk, which Rose kept polished to a high gloss, sat in the center of the room, and facing the desk, two leather wing chairs. The whole setup suggested an office that, in addition to being regularly occupied (which it was not), also hosted regular visitors (which it did not), who might occupy the wing chairs, admire the photos, and flip through the expedition journals. In fact, with the exception of Lily, who liked to curl up in one of the deep leather armchairs, a framed photo of a pygmy nuthatch hanging over her head as she applied herself conscientiously to her schoolwork, the room was almost always empty.

Sarala and Abhijat had always attended Meena's parent-teacher nights together, Abhijat asking most of the questions about Meena's performance and making notes on the small pad of paper he kept in the breast pocket of his jacket. This year, however, he'd been scheduled to present at a conference, so Sarala had promised to take detailed notes and report back on all pertinent information when Abhijat returned.

She dropped Meena off in the school's library, where Meena made a beeline for the low shelf of books near the librarian's desk, and Sarala made her way down the wide hall toward Meena's classroom: Mrs. Hamilton, Grade 3, Room 125. The halls were filled with harried parents. “You meet with Jenny's teacher. I'll meet with Randy's,” one woman, a baby on her hip, shouted down the hall to her husband, and Sarala thought of how here, again, was evidence that Abhijat had been right: that with one child, they need not spread their attentions, their resources, so thin.

Inside, Sarala took in the bright primary colors of the posters decorating nearly every inch of wall space. She thought of the schoolhouse at Heritage Village, with its spare walls and stern signs. She took her seat at the small desk labeled with Meena's name on a piece of construction paper in careful cursive. A teacher's handwriting, Sarala thought, smiling at the other parents sitting uncomfortably in the too-small chairs.

Mrs. Hamilton began by asking each of the parents to introduce themselves, and Sarala listened intently as they did so, trying to imagine something about their children, in whose company Meena spent her days.

Once the introductions were finished, the woman next to her leaned toward Sarala, extending her hand. “We should have met long ago. I'm Rose Winchester, Lily's mother.”

“Oh, yes,” Sarala said, taking her hand. “I'm very pleased to meet you. Meena talks about Lily, well, nearly all the time.”

“It's the same at our house,” Rose said, smiling.

There was something so perfect about Rose, in her twinset and pumps, glasses on a chain around her neck, Sarala thought, looking at her, though she wasn't so much attractive as orderly looking, Sarala decided.

At the front of the classroom, Mrs. Hamilton began her part of the evening's presentation—a description of the students' daily schedules, an introduction to the textbooks for the year—and as she began, both Sarala and Rose pulled notebooks and pens from their purses. They were the only two parents taking notes, Sarala observed.

“For my husband,” Rose explained, gesturing at the notepad spread open on her daughter's desk.

At conferences, Rose always took notes to share with Randolph in her next letter, and, in the weeks following the conference, she hand-delivered a letter from Randolph to Lily's teacher, by way of illustrating that while theirs was an unconventional family arrangement, Randolph was by no means an absentee parent.

“For my husband, too,” Sarala said, holding up her pen. The women exchanged warm smiles, sharing this small thing between them. Sarala wondered if perhaps Lily's father had a job as demanding as Abhijat's.

Despite their many differences, both the Mital and the Winchester homes shared one thing in common—a long bookshelf filled with a maroon set of World Book Encyclopedias. It had been Lily's idea that the girls should, together, embark upon a scheme of self-improvement whereby they would both read, each night before bed, a pre-selected entry in the World Book.

They moved through the set alphabetically, taking turns selecting the day's reading, and at 7:30 each night, the phone in one house or the other could be heard ringing as the girls telephoned each other to announce the evening's selection, at lunch the next day, their common reading providing them with a subject for conversation:
E
NLIGHTENMENT
P
HILOSOPHERS
over peanut butter and jelly,
M
ASTERS OF
G
ERMAN
L
ITERATURE
over Fruit Roll-Ups,
T
HE
H
ALLMARKS OF
F
EUDAL
S
OCIETY
over string cheese.

K
INDS OF
B
RIDGES

At night, by light of campfire or oil lamp, Randolph wrote letters to Rose and Lily, which they took turns reading aloud at dinner on the happy days when the letters arrived bearing strange foreign stamps, his thick cream-colored writing paper marked with the signs of his travel—dirt, sweat, rainwater-smudged ink, exotic smells rising up from the paper as they unfolded it. In his letters, Randolph took them through the day's adventures, and it was like being there with him. Almost.

When Lily missed her father, she retreated to his study, where his collection of
National Geographics
dating back to the 1930s weighed down a series of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, their bright yellow spines a kind of wallpaper. Here, Lily curled up in the leather armchair, flipping through back issues of
Popular Explorer
, imagining her father hiking, setting up camp for the night, or traveling among a passel of goat herders, conjuring him into the pictures in his articles.

In Portugal, Randolph had learned from the local women how to balance a basket the size of a small table, filled with chickens, on his head for carrying to market. Home for Christmas, he'd tried to teach Lily, and she'd practiced diligently, walking gingerly to the bus stop at the corner, her backpack balanced precariously on her head.

“What are you doing?” Meena asked as Lily made her way down the narrow aisle of the bus slowly, eyes looking up, willing the backpack to stay put.

“Get a move on!” the bus driver shouted at her.

A H
ISTORY OF
M
AGIC DURING THE
M
IDDLE
A
GES

The first time Lily was invited over to Meena's house, she'd been beside herself with excitement at the idea that she would be having dinner with an actual, real, flesh-and-blood physicist. She came home with Meena on the bus, Meena calling out, “Mom, we're home!” as they opened the door, dropping her coat and backpack in the foyer next to a pile of slippers.

Lily removed her shoes, lined them up along the wall next to the slippers, and folded her coat in half, placing it carefully on top of her shoes.

Sarala had made them an after-school snack of lime Jell-O with rainbow-colored marshmallows floating, suspended, in its strange not-quite-liquid, not-quite-solid state. This she served proudly, though the girls were less enthusiastic, poking at it disinterestedly with their spoons.

They worked together on their homework, sitting side by side at the desk in Meena's room until Sarala called them down to dinner. There, Abhijat stood at the head of the table and waited for the girls to take their seats before being seated himself.

“We are delighted to meet the celebrated Miss Winchester,” Abhijat said, holding his glass aloft in a toast. “Meena has told us a great deal about you.”

Lily blushed and felt as though she were dining with President Reagan himself.

Throughout the meal, she peppered Abhijat with questions about his work, his research, his daily routine at the Lab, and the difference between an experimental and a theoretical physicist. Abhijat was delighted by her animated curiosity. (This was one of the few traits she shared with her mother, favoring Randolph in appearance and temperament.) She was a perfect companion for Meena, Abhijat thought.