Charmed Particles (37 page)

“If then,” Dr. Cohen added. “I think this may be the death knell for our field.”

“Entire fields of academic inquiry don't just die out, Adam,” another colleague said.

“Of course they do.”

Alone now in his office, Abhijat looked again, as he had so many times before, out the window and over the great prairie.

He felt tired, he realized. Tired of the constant striving that had been the focus of his attentions for as long as he could remember, the most important part of his world. Tired of attending to a professional legacy, of contributing, critiquing, keeping up, being first. But he was afraid, too, of living without those things. Who would he be without them? Was there, as his mother had always insisted, happiness in contentment with what one had?

Instead of driving home, he decided, that evening, to walk, following the paths laid out through the Lab's prairie grasses, toward town, toward his home.

He felt angry with ambition, he realized as he made his way home. It had, after all, come to nothing. Had seduced him with promises undelivered, and perhaps, he thought, undeliverable.

He had been an unwise man, he realized—no, worse, a stupid man, he decided, angry with himself.

For a week after the announcement, Abhijat stayed in bed, venturing out only to graze, listlessly, in the kitchen when his body reminded him to feed it. Each night when Sarala joined him, she felt his head for fever, but she knew what this was. She brought him cups of tea that grew cold on the nightstand, chicken soup at Carol's suggestion, but this, too, grew cold and gelatinous in the bowl beside his bed.

“What will this mean for his work?” Carol had asked, and Sarala realized that she didn't know.

When he emerged, finally, a week later, dressed again in a suit and tie, appearing at the breakfast table as though nothing had changed, Sarala and Meena exchanged looks. Once again he loaded his briefcase and made his way, for the first time in days, back to the Lab.

What to do now, he had asked himself. There was only going forward, letting go, embracing.

By the time of Randolph's return, Lily had only a few days until her application to the Academy was due. She'd turned it in just under the wire, which was unlike her, but understandable given the circumstances. Meena had ignored the deadline entirely, something she had not yet had the heart to tell Lily.

CHAPTER 23

Field Guide to the North American Household

D
UANE
B
ANTAM
,
A
MAN
WHO
,
THOUGH
COMFORTABLE
AND
successful in his role as the high school's wrestling coach, did not harbor finer academic ambitions, had, that spring, inexplicably been assigned to teach the Nicolet Public High School's Advanced Placement U.S. History class. As they neared the end of the school year, Mr. Bantam, in what was either an act of desperation or of genius—his students and colleagues had not yet decided—announced that the class would participate as reenactors during Heritage Village's annual Revolutionary War Days, a hands-on learning activity, he explained. Mrs. Schuster, the director of Heritage Village, was thrilled by the idea. She assigned each of the AP U.S. History students a character, and they had thrown themselves into their preparations, studying and designing period-appropriate costumes with the attention to detail she usually saw only in the “career” living-history buffs.

The students, the majority of whom had been Lily and Meena's classmates in the Free Learning Zone, now spent class periods poring over information on colonial-era field gear and weaponry, cookware, soap making, blacksmithing, indentured servitude, medicine, spinning, needlework, and woodworking, leaving Mr. Bantam to peruse his coaching manuals in peace.

Along with their newfound enthusiasm for reenacting, the AP students, with the zealotry of the recently converted, had also acquired a passion for the careful monitoring of accuracy above all else, and this had manifested in an awkward conversation (one Mrs. Schuster would have preferred to avoid) over Meena's participation in the reenactment.

“It's inauthentic,” Tom Hebert argued. “There wouldn't be a housemaid in the period who looked like Meena.”

Lily glared at him. Meena rolled her eyes, tired of her classmates' seemingly never-ending arguments over historically accurate footwear and undergarments.

Mrs. Schuster, who had not before been confronted with this issue, having dealt almost universally with the white, towheaded, and corn-fed volunteers who presented themselves to her, began to fumble. “We will do our best, Tom. You are right to note that it isn't…” Here Mrs. Schuster paused, searching for the word she wanted. “… ideal. But we will make the best of it.”

“What a cretin,” Lily muttered. Together, the girls sat down under a tree a little away from the rest of the class to look through one of the books Mrs. Schuster had lent them.

“Well,” Meena allowed, “he does have a point.” She expected that she might encounter similar sentiments, similar questions from the Revolutionary War Days audience.
Also, I drove here in a car and had Cocoa Puffs for breakfast
, she imagined replying.

Sarala had offered to help the girls with their costumes. “I used to be quite skilled with a sewing machine when I was your age,” she told them as she laid out snacks and Lily regaled Sarala with details about their characters, both housemaids in Heritage Village's mansion.

“For six weeks, we'll be in training, learning about the time period and creating costumes. The mansion is the most difficult assignment,” Lily explained, “because there are so many rooms to interpret. You have to learn millions of details about each of them.”

Meena had been relieved by Lily's interest in the project, for it meant a reduction in the steady stream of chatter regarding when they might finally receive news about whether they had been accepted at the Academy.

At some point, Meena knew, she was going to have to break the news to Lily that she hadn't applied. Until then, though, Meena negotiated these conversations with noncommittal, single-syllable responses, which Lily happily did not seem to notice amid her own growing anxiety and impatience.

Randolph had begun his book project with dedication and enthusiasm, but had found himself unable to make any meaningful headway. Each time he sat down at the large desk in his study, prepared to regale his imagined readers with tales of his wildest exploits, he was seized, instead, with a sense of the danger and the futility of it all. Reading through his drafts at the end of the day, he began to notice that he'd focused almost entirely on warnings: how to avoid cultural misunderstandings, the importance of preparation, the necessity of keeping one's eye on surrounding crowds.

He had asked Lily to read and comment on his work, and each night before bed, he presented her with his day's efforts. As she read, she noted helpful suggestions and asked questions, but she could see that he was struggling. What was missing from the pages was the sense of her father's enthusiasm, his curiosity, traits she had never known him to be without—indeed, traits which he had always seemed to have in abundance compared to the other adults she knew.

She had asked him one night what it was about exploration that had so appealed to him at her age, what had drawn him to his adventures. Randolph didn't know if she was asking because she was wise and hoped to remind him of what he had first fallen in love with, or because she was simply curious. In the end, though, it didn't matter. As he answered, Lily in the great chair in his office, Randolph behind his desk, he found himself thinking back to his childhood, to the books that had seemed to promise that there was still adventure to be had in the world, still unknown parts of the world left to be explored. And he began to see the way forward.

As he sat behind the polished mahogany desk from which he could survey the collection of curiosities he had acquired on his travels, he began to imagine who his audience might be, and found himself surprised that instead of writing to the intrepid adult travelers he had imagined addressing, he found himself instead remembering the nights he hid under a blanket with a flashlight, transfixed by wild tales of adventure. Perhaps a book for children might stoke that same curiosity in others, might help him remember his own curiosity rather than his fear.