Charmed Particles (34 page)

For a moment this ricocheted around the quiet of the car. Abhijat felt himself absorbing the force of it in an almost physical way, as though being tackled. And then, like parents everywhere who have pushed forward and learned something they are no longer sure they wanted to know, he wondered if he should have, perhaps, not pressed her. Should have let her float in the cool uncertainty of her mumbled “I don't know.” Should have let himself float there, safe from knowing this. Though of course he had known it already.

After a long moment, Sarala spoke. “Meena, we have never asked or expected that you choose a life like ours.”

For Abhijat, there was a moment of light in that pronoun—ours. He listened as Sarala continued. “But we do ask that you respect the choices we have made, the hard work and dedication your father has given to his work. Whether you apply to the Academy or not is of course your choice,” she said. “But it seems to me that Lily was quite confident that you had applied or were planning to.”

Meena looked down at her knees. She nodded.

Abhijat started the car, the noise of the engine filling the silence of the interior in a way that felt welcome to all three of the occupants. By now, the parking lot had cleared of all of the other hearing participants. Abhijat swung the car around in a graceful circle, down a row of empty parking spots to the stop sign at the exit, and headed for home.

Lily and Rose's car ride home had been nearly silent, Rose in the driver's seat negotiating the traffic, Lily staring determinedly out the window. Rose stopped at the mailbox to gather the day's mail before piloting the car into the garage. In the laundry room, both shed their coats, hanging them on the hooks along the wall.

Sorting through the envelopes in her hand, Rose made her way into the kitchen and turned on the television on the kitchen counter, hoping to catch the evening news.

But the regular programming had been preempted, and nearly all news channels showed maps of the Indian Ocean.

Lily turned on the larger television in the family room and sat down before it. The voice of the reporter floated out into the room. “Reports today that the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a remote chain of islands in the Bay of Bengal, have been devastated by a tsunami that struck the island early this morning.”

Lily turned to look at Rose, who held in her hands a letter from Randolph bearing the return address: Andaman Islands.

For two days they had no word. Lily stayed home from school and rarely moved from the couch in the family room, where she monitored the news coverage, grainy videos taken by tourists in the more populated areas of the islands, aerial images showing sixty percent of the island chain's landmass now under water.

The first night, Lily appeared in the doorway of Rose's bedroom.

“I can't sleep,” she said.

“Me, either,” Rose said.

“Could I stay here with you?” Lily asked.

“Of course,” Rose answered, holding up the comforter and making a place for Lily beside her.

Lily slid into the spot, what would be Randolph's place were he there with them, and allowed her mother to wrap her arms around her. Rose buried her face in Lily's hair, spread out over the pillow, and gathered her daughter to her.

“Do you think he's alive?” Lily asked, her voice small and muffled by the pillow.

At the very thought of it, Rose could feel her heart beginning to race. What was best in this situation, she wondered. She could feel her careful veneer of parental authority and competence beginning to fracture, a slow spreading, like a cracked windshield.

She imagined herself saying, “I think he's probably dead.” But she did not say this, for by saying it aloud, wasn't she calling that very possibility into being? She felt like a traitor for even allowing herself to think it. She was meant to be a better wife than that, a better mother, the kind who kept faith, who believed in his survival.

She imagined herself saying, “I think he's alive.” But she did not say this either. It felt dangerous to admit, as though acknowledging any small chance of hope would only irritate fate into snatching him away.

Still her heart raced.
Lily would be damaged beyond repair
—the thought passed through her consciousness, and her heart beat faster.
This is your fault for allowing him to go, for permitting such a life
. Pressed against Lily's back, she wondered if her daughter could feel her heart thumping so furiously inside her. It felt as though it were trying to escape the confines of her body. Rose took a deep breath, hoping to calm her racing thoughts.

“I don't know, sweetheart,” she said finally. And although—or perhaps because—it was as unsatisfying an answer as she could have given, Lily did not ask again.

Rose counted slowly to ten. She listened to Lily's breathing and tried to breathe in tandem with her, slowly, deep, long breaths. She could tell the moment Lily slipped off into sleep, and Rose thought of all of the times when Lily was a baby that she'd watched for that moment, laying her down gently in her crib, tiptoeing quietly from the room, afraid of waking her.

When she was sure Lily had fallen into sleep, Rose slid from the bed and padded downstairs to Randolph's study. In his office, she sank into the large wing chair before the bookshelves and opened the tin box of his letters—line after line of his small, cramped handwriting (economical, he would argue, she thought with a smile), sketches, here and there a memento tucked between the pages.

She had always been keenly aware of how Randolph had chafed against his overprotective parents, and in their marriage, she had taken great pride in her willingness to tolerate, her enthusiasm, even, for his wanderings, for his work.

The moonlight shone in through the windows, reflected in the glass of the display case. She thought of how it had all once seemed so thrilling, but now—now it seemed so futile, such an unnecessary risk.

And what if he didn't return? She and Lily would continue on without him. What else could they do? Break down entirely? Let their lives come to a standstill? No—Lily would go to the Academy as planned. Rose would continue on with the election. Her day-to-day life would look much the same. But, she thought, holding the tin box in her hands, she would have no more letters to add to it. She ran her fingertips over his handwriting on the page. For so long, he'd been her dearest friend, her closest confidant, her greatest love next to Lily.

Meena brought Lily her books and assignments from school, and in the evenings sat with her in front of the television, though Lily hardly spoke, and her schoolwork remained untouched.

Sarala prepared a large stack of casseroles and filled the Winchesters' freezer. Before she left, she put one in the oven and reminded Rose to take it out in forty minutes, but neither Rose nor Lily remembered or even thought of it until they began to smell it burning.

In the kitchen, Rose kept the radio on and tried to work, listening for each time they cycled back to the story.

“Mrs. Winchester is so calm,” Meena had said to her mother. But Sarala suspected that, while on the surface the waters appeared still, below it was a rolling boil.

Lily tried to prepare herself for the worst. “He's dead,” she told herself over and over again, imagining that, somehow, anticipating this possibility, preparing herself for it in advance, might offer her some sort of protection once the news arrived, might somehow make it less painful.

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.