Charmed Particles (9 page)

Each time he returned from an expedition, Rose labeled his travel journal with the dates and destinations of his trip, adding it to the long row of journals that lined the mahogany bookshelves in his study. There, among his record of daily activities could be found sketches of native art, notes on travel routes and supplies, lists of objects acquired and of animals observed, handwritten receipts, well-worn maps gone soft at the folds and threatening to tear, official-looking permits bearing indecipherable stamps, foreign banknotes, customs forms issued by stern and harried clerks, now folded into small squares—all of these tucked, like bookmarks, into his journals. The mementos she catalogued and arranged in the display cases in his study, tucking a tribal mask in next to a clay sculpture or a tiny hand-woven basket, closing the case carefully and stepping back to admire each new addition.

In a small tin box on the bookshelf, Rose saved all of their letters. Sorting through his trunk after Lily had unearthed all of the treasures with which he'd returned, what delighted Rose most was to come upon the letters she had sent him, bound and bundled together, and which he had carried with him throughout his travels. These she added to the collection each time he returned, so that the tin box contained within it both the original correspondence and the response, a record of their extraordinary marriage, of what Rose thought of, always, as their great love story.

When it was again time for Randolph to pack, it was Randolph and Lily's ritual to do that together also, Lily sometimes slipping in a drawing, a note, or some small treasure. These, Randolph discovered well into his trip, smiling to think of Lily doing this on the sly as he tucked his belongings into the trunk.

Lily prided herself on maintaining a stiff upper lip when it was time for her father to depart. She had never cried, not once. She felt it would have been disloyal. Her mother had taught her to be proud of their unconventional life—that there were many different ways to be a family, and that though it was different from what most people chose, this was the way of being a family that worked best for them. This was what she reminded herself firmly, emphatically, on the days when her father left.

In kindergarten, Lily came home from school one day distressed to have learned from a classmate that parents who didn't live together no longer loved each other. Rose had gently corrected her. Certainly sometimes parents stopped loving one another, she explained, but that would never be the case with Lily's mother and father, who loved each other so strongly that even Lily had to admit to never having seen her parents argue.

“Our family is different, yes,” Rose said, taking her daughter's small hands in hers, “but that is something we should be proud of. It makes us unique.”

Rose had read all of the great political biographies—Churchill, Kennedy, Truman, Roosevelt. As a girl growing up in a small farm town in the shadow of the great city of the Midwest, she had cried with her classmates over Kennedy's death, but unlike her girlfriends, she was crying not because their handsome young president was dead, leaving behind a widow and small children who, even in mourning, looked like they had just stepped out of a catalog, but because she had had such great hopes for his political career.

As a teenager, she had not imagined herself in any role other than that of a diligent helpmate to a spouse with his own promising political future. “Politics is men's work, like plowing, or fixing a tractor,” her father, a stout farmer, said when Rose revealed her interest in the subject. Her mother, more sympathetic, pointed out the many ways in which Rose might fulfill her interests from behind the scenes, cutting out for her daughter photos from magazines and newspapers of a perfectly groomed Jackie Kennedy meeting Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru or being presented to the president and first lady of Mexico.

But when Rose surprised everyone, including herself, by eloping with Randolph at eighteen, she had come to realize that he would be an unlikely political candidate for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the infrequency with which he stayed put in a given location. And so, after Lily's birth, Rose signed up for a correspondence course in political science at the state university, and, excelling in that class, had continued on until she had graduated with honors, with a deep sense of personal pride and accomplishment, and with a new plan for her life.

When Lily began school, Rose began her political career in earnest, first campaigning for and winning a seat on the local school board. At her first election, Randolph had been full of pride. Rose, uncertain about her chances, had worried that she might not win. But who better to represent the citizenry, Randolph encouraged her, than a daughter of Nicolet, now returned?

It was, perhaps, the frequency and unapologetic nosiness of the questions Rose received about the whereabouts of her husband (or, more often, of “Lily's father,” as they tended to refer to him, unable to imagine that a man so infrequently present might still be a spouse, a partner, a helpmate) that had steeled Rose for a career in local politics. She'd been elected Alderman of Nicolet's twelfth ward and had thrown herself into the work with zeal and dedication. Already she had overseen the installation of speed bumps in the Lost Colony neighborhood, spearheaded an ordinance fining citizens who failed to clear snow from their sidewalks, and initiated the implementation of a hotline for residents to report suspected rabid wildlife (mainly squirrels).

In this new role, Rose discovered her passion, and though she still thought fondly of her exploring days with Randolph, lately, her dreams were of an entirely different sort of adventure—climbing the political ladder, perhaps one day becoming mayor.

One of the things Rose liked best about this new Nicolet were the cultural activities at the Lab. She and Lily were frequent patrons, taking advantage of the opportunity to enjoy visiting musicians, theatre troupes, and lecturers. Lily had displayed an early and intense curiosity about all things scientific, and her favorite events at the Lab were the lectures by visiting scholars on popular issues of science.

On their first visit, Rose drove past the gate and along the winding drive toward the towering building that had sprung up during her time away. The Research Tower it was called, and she marveled at the way it loomed over this land she remembered as orderly rows of corn and soybeans. They parked in the Research Tower lot and made their way, Lily's hand in hers, toward the outdoor amphitheater that had been constructed where the Heggestadt farmhouse once stood.

As they took their seats, Lily diligently studying the program open on her lap, Rose counted more empty seats than full. A shame, she thought, not to take advantage of the chance to see a first-rate production right here in Nicolet. Still, she couldn't imagine the Heggestadts, or her own parents for that matter, in attendance. Most of the audience, she thought, looking around, were new citizens of Nicolet.

After the performance, Rose decided to take the opportunity to explore the vast grounds of the Lab campus. As they drove along the roads that cut through the prairie grasses, she pointed out to Lily the farmhouses now relocated, the barns, the new buildings that had been constructed around them. Rose had never been to one of the Lab's open houses for displaced families, but she had heard about them from those who had: how strange it was to find their former homes, farmhouses that had once stood so far from one another on such wide expanses of land, now arranged in a neat cul-de-sac, side by side like the houses in a subdivision. And how strange, too, to find their childhood bedrooms turned into offices or temporary housing for visiting scientists.

When she'd returned to Nicolet, it had, in many ways, felt to Rose like she'd moved to an entirely new town. Now, as she drove past the cemetery full of familiar last names, past landmarks she remembered, and through the Lab's expansive campus, she felt like she was showing Lily the ghost of a part of Nicolet that had once existed.

CHAPTER 6

Elementary Particles

The urge to travel and explore probably originated in my childhood. Certainly it was an unusual childhood
.

—W
ILFRED
T
HESIGER,
T
HE
L
AST
N
OMAD

M
EENA AND
L
ILY
MET IN
THE
THIRD
GRADE
. T
HEY
'
D
SPENT
THE
year racing to see who could finish their weekly math test first. Every Wednesday morning at 9:35 it was a draw as Lily arrived at the right side of the teacher's desk and Meena at the left. And every Wednesday at 9:36 they exchanged polite smiles and began the long, disappointing walks back to their own desks. But they'd bonded over the sly looks they exchanged as they waited for the rest of the class to shuffle forward at the bell with their half-completed tests.

Meena had noticed that Lily always brought the best things for show and tell—a shrunken head from Bali, a dried and stuffed piranha from the Amazon, which she passed around the classroom proudly, the fish's desiccated body mounted on a small wooden pedestal.

One day, finding no other available seats on the bus ride home, they'd been forced to sit together and had begrudgingly begun a conversation. Soon they were spending every Saturday afternoon together in the Nicolet Public Library, a large brick building that overlooked the town's scenic river walkway.

Lily preferred the quiet study room, spending her weekends working ahead in their textbook,
Steps toward Science
, shushing adults who whispered or folded their newspapers too loudly. Meena liked to browse the shelves, returning with armloads of obscure books from the reference section that caught her eye:
Noteworthy Weather Events: 1680-1981, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
, coffee table art books, mystery novels, and field guides, which she pored over beside Lily.

In the mornings, NPR on the radio on the kitchen counter, Lily and her mother ate breakfast in silence, ears alert for any mention of the countries where Randolph had set off on his latest expedition. Sitting across the table from each other, they passed the crossword back and forth as they ate. Rose had taught Lily tricks like filling in the
-S
s on plural clues, the
-ED
s on the past-tense clues, and how she might discover further clues within the clues themselves.