Charmed Particles (28 page)

Upstairs in her room, Meena relished the quiet, working methodically, peacefully through her pre-calc homework, calmed and encouraged by the careful process through which, if she followed each step precisely, she would arrive at a reassuringly correct answer. Lately it seemed her ears were filled always with Lily's chatter about the Academy and her constant questions about Meena's own application, which were becoming tiresome and increasingly difficult to deflect.

“You should have your father help you with it,” Lily suggested.

But Meena said she didn't want to bother her father while he was so preoccupied with the super collider.

“I'm sure my mom would be happy to help look over your essays, like she did for me,” Lily offered.

“No, that's okay, I'll be fine on my own,” Meena assured her, but the truth was that Meena's letter about the Academy was by now buried deep in the Nicolet landfill.

Lily's other recent favorite topic of conversation was the issue of the super collider, and for Meena, their conversations on this matter were even less enjoyable.

Meena had privately begun to sympathize with the opponents. She didn't understand the science behind the collider any more than they did. But she had the luxury of a father to trust, to know that if it were a dangerous thing, he would not allow it to be built under his home, under her school. Many of the opponents, however, did not have the benefit of someone else's knowledge to lean on. Here, she echoed Dr. Cardiff's thoughts on the issue, for he seemed to Meena to be a reasonable and compassionate person.

“I think I can understand why they're so afraid,” Meena confessed finally.

Lily looked her as though she'd been struck. “Honestly, Meena, you sound like my mother.”

Abhijat had intended to spend the evening in his study, working, as was his habit, but he found himself unable to concentrate, a steady parade of intrusive thoughts interrupting each time he looked down at his notes. First, his thoughts were of the collider—the hearing, the letters to the editor, the growing number of signs in his neighbors' yards. Then he found himself thinking about what he'd said to Sarala at dinner, how he'd taken his frustration over the issue of the collider out on her, unfairly. Carol was not the problem, he chastised himself. She'd been a good friend to Sarala, for years now.

Unable to focus, he wandered into the family room and turned on the television, an indulgence he rarely allowed himself. A bad habit, a poor use of time, he'd always argued.

He ought, probably, to apologize, he thought.

“Well, all I know is that I don't want this thing running under my house,” Sarala heard one of the women at the far end of the table saying. “I don't care what it is.”

Carol caught Sarala's eye and gave her an encouraging smile.

“God only knows what they're really doing over there in that Lab,” Judy said as she lined the bottom lid of her eye, her mouth open a bit, tongue snaking around as she concentrated.

“You know, Judy,” Carol interrupted, handing her a new color. “You might try something in a smoky blue. To bring out your eyes.”

“I heard it's something to do with nuclear waste,” a woman across the table from Sarala said.

Carol pressed on. “Now take a look at this blush, ladies. Would you believe it actually works on every skin tone? Honestly. Give it a try. I'll pass it around.”

Sarala tried it. She looked around the table at the other women. It did, in fact, suit them, but on her own face, it looked pearly and strange. She wiped it off with a cotton ball.

“We'll be another Three Mile Island if we let them have their way,” Judy continued, undiverted.

“Well, according to that map in the paper, it's not supposed to run under our house,” Marjorie joined in, “but honestly, I've thought about selling either way. Before, I didn't take much notice of what they did there, but the more I learn, the less I like it.”

“Someone has got to put a stop to this,” said Lenore.

“You know, if you want to speak at that public hearing next week, you've got to sign up by Wednesday,” Judy noted. “Otherwise you can write a letter. But I think it'll be important to be there. For them to see us there in person.”

“Oh, come now, ladies,” Carol said smiling. “Don't let's spend the whole evening talking politics. It's not good for the complexion.”

Sarala was surprised to find that her lip was trembling, and she blinked back the tears that had leapt to her lashes more quickly than she would have expected, tears that hovered there as though held back only for the time being, certain to return the moment she let her guard down. She thought of how Abhijat and his job were at once the reason they were here in Nicolet, as well as the reason she might never feel entirely at home here.

Carol caught Sarala's eye and gave her a small smile of encouragement. “Now then,” Carol continued, and Sarala was grateful for the way the women's heads swiveled back in her direction. “Really big for spring this year is the smoky eye.” Carol leaned into the light of the chandelier that hung over the dining room table so the women might admire her own eye makeup. “I didn't quite do a smoky eye tonight, but I did the dark blue, which is a nice kind of baby step toward the true smoky eye.

“Are there any questions?” Carol paused and looked around the table. “Now, as you finish up, I'm going to go around and write down everything that's on your face. Whatever you'd like to start with is fine with me.”

Sarala blinked at how seamlessly Carol had moved into the sales portion of the event. The other women began taking their headbands off, rearranging their hair in the mirror, admiring the lipstick or rouge they had tried, and fishing in the purses that hung on the backs of their chairs for their checkbooks.

The women began to gather their purses and pink plastic bags filled with their new purchases. Carol turned to Sarala as she repacked her tote bags. “Why don't you let me give you a ride home?”

“Thank you. I think I will prefer walking, though,” Sarala said. She thanked Judy and collected her purse as the rest of the women said their goodbyes.

Outside, the air was cool. Again she felt the cold creeping in around her newly bare neck. Sarala walked through the neighborhood, most of the houses lit from within by the dancing blue light of a television in the family room.

Until the discussion of the collider had intruded, it had been nice to be out of the house for the evening. Sarala imagined the quiet that would hover over her home when she returned—Abhijat closed up in his study until late into the night, Meena busy upstairs with her schoolwork, which she never seemed to need help with anymore. Sarala wondered sometimes how Meena felt about the collider, if she thought about it at all.

She was glad that Abhijat had never asked her thoughts on the collider. She wouldn't have liked to tell him.

Her own home stood on the corner, dark but for a light in Abhijat's study and one in Meena's room. Sarala looked up as she neared it. The feeling of belonging nowhere pressed down upon her. The sky was dark but for a bit of light pollution coming from the center of town. She belonged neither with those women, nor, lately, it seemed, with Abhijat, from whom she felt keenly aware that she was drifting further and further.

Instead of going inside, Sarala kept walking. She thought of Abhijat's mother, of her own mother, a continent away, past a deep blue sea. She wondered if they, too, had grown far from their husbands, even while wanting nothing more than to go on loving them.

She wanted to be a woman who counted her blessings. Who thought each day of how lucky she was to live in a beautiful home, in a pleasant town, with a child and a husband she loved. Here, the tears she had held back in Judy's dining room returned, and since she was now alone and in the dark, she let them run quietly down her face. She didn't cry, exactly. It felt, instead, like they just leaked out of her.

Maybe everyone was secretly unhappy, she thought.

When Sarala returned home, she was surprised to find Abhijat in the family room watching television. He had startled, hearing her come through the door, jumped up, and turned off the television, as though he'd been caught doing something unseemly.

Standing in front of the now-dark television, he composed himself. “How was your evening?” he asked.

“Just fine,” Sarala said, and he noticed, with a twinge of shame, the note of surprise in her voice as she answered. She was surprised by the question, he realized. Surprised to find him interested in her activities.

He should apologize, he thought again.

“And your evening?” she asked.

“Oh, fine,” Abhijat answered. There was a thick, strange silence between them. “Meena's upstairs,” he offered. “Schoolwork.”

“I'll just check on her, then,” Sarala said, and she turned and was gone, her footsteps on the stairs.

I should have apologized, Abhijat repeated to himself as he sat down again on the sofa. Distantly, he could hear Meena and Sarala talking.

He should go upstairs and apologize, he knew. But instead, he listened, discerning the sounds of Sarala changing out of her clothes, the scrape of a hanger against the rod in the closet, water running in the bathroom, then the sounds of her settling into bed, the television in their room tuned to one of the shows she followed—all of them, it seemed to him, about rich and impossibly good-looking American families.