Charmed Particles (25 page)

The following morning, Lily trekked grimly to the bus. Unlike every other day, she walked past the empty seat beside Meena and instead selected the empty seat beside Anderson Small, a junior band member (clarinet) who was very much perplexed (and, truth be told, a little alarmed at what this abrupt change in seatmates would mean for his admittedly already quite tenuous position in the social strata of Nicolet Public High School). Meena kept her eyes forward, studying the back of the bus driver's head as they made their way to school.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the school employed a program whereby the students progressed through the daily schedule in reverse, so as the day began the girls found themselves in pre-calc. Before the class began, though, Mr. Boden called Lily and Meena to his desk and informed them that they were both expected in the guidance counselor's office.

“Busted,” Tom Hebert whispered under his breath.

Lily glared at him, but she and Meena were both wondering what had prompted so unprecedented a summons. They made their way without speaking through the empty halls to the Guidance Office, where they were instructed to take a seat until called by the secretary. “What do you think this is about?” Lily asked Meena, whispering quietly, finally breaking the silence between them.

“No idea,” Meena answered, reluctant to slip so easily back to normal. She tucked her legs under the chair and watched the secretary, who peered at the girls from over the rim of a pair of reading glasses that had slid precariously close to the tip of her nose.

Sarala sat across from Carol at the kitchen table, her hands around the mug of coffee she'd learned to enjoy, though she preferred it with a small amount of milk and a large amount of sugar. She'd been telling Carol how absent Abhijat seemed lately, how entirely occupied he was by the matter of the collider and how it might impact his career.

“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. S
O
Y
OU
'
RE
C
ONSIDERING
S
EPARATION
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

W
HILE
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
.