The Atomic Weight of Love (38 page)

“That’s a good, concrete example. You should also consider any changes in flight patterns, what relationship they might have to changes in atmospheric pressure.” She was nodding, wide-eyed and attentive. “Think about this, too,” I said. “Do you want to observe variations in bird behavior in an artificial or natural setting? Or maybe you’d like to compare behaviors in two settings.”

“I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Feeders create an unnatural environment. If you choose to observe them in that setting, it would be easier, but you would need to make that distinction in your paper.”

“What do you think?”

“It’s not my project, not my idea,” I smiled at her.

“I don’t know . . .”

“What would stop you from watching them in the woods?”

“I don’t know,” she said, but it was clear she did know and was choosing not to say, that she was holding something back.

“Let’s have tea,” I stood to go into the kitchen. “Do you drink tea, Marvella?”

“Herbal?”

“Sure. Peppermint?”

“My favorite.”

I put the kettle on the stove and leaned in the kitchen doorway, looking into the living room. Marvella had walked over to the set of bookshelves beneath the front window, and she picked up a miniature I’d done of a crow’s nest filled with eggs.

“This is cool,” she said. “Really cool.”

“Thank you.”

“You did this?”

“I did.”

“Wow. And you’re a scientist, too?”

For a moment, I couldn’t decide what would be an honest answer. Finally, I said: “I was. Am. I am a lot of things, just as are most of us.”

She put the piece back in its spot and turned to me. “Most of us?”

“Women. Men, too, but I was thinking of women.”

“Not my mother.”

“Your mother is a bright woman, Marvella.”

“Oh, no doubt about that. But she’s a housewife.” She spat out the final word as if it were poisoned.

“Didn’t she study astronomy? That’s hardly something to dismiss so readily.”

“But she quit! She doesn’t even mention it, and you wouldn’t even know she ever did anything that great.”

The kettle began whistling, but I didn’t want to turn away from this girl. “Your mother is like a lot of us, honey,” I said. “That part of her isn’t dead, it’s just in shadow. She’s still a smart woman deserving of your respect.” I filled two mugs and set them on the coffee table, along with a bowl for the spent teabags. “Things are not as simple as they may seem.” I watched her pinch the teabag and dunk it up and down. I inhaled the peppermint. “Some of us had to make some very difficult choices.”

She set her mug down and looked at me. “Like what?”

“Like loving someone, wanting for him to have a good life, and giving up some of our plans.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.” I could tell she was waiting for me to go on. “I gave up my plan for a Ph.D. so that I could stay here with my husband, so that he could continue his research at the Lab.”

“But didn’t that piss you off?” She put a hand to her mouth. “Sorry.” She blushed.

“It’s OK. I’m not afraid of a little profanity. If we work together, you’ll hear plenty of it from my lips.”

“Would you? Would you consider working with me?”

“I’d be delighted, Marvella,” I said, sipping my tea. “On many levels.”

“Oh,” she said, beaming. “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Whetstone!”

“You’re welcome. Now, let’s get out a pad of paper and start an outline.”

I HAD THE CLERK
in the photo shop show me all of the portable cassette tape recorders (there were two). I picked the one with the best microphone, and once home I wrapped it carefully in glossy white paper. I used plain old brown twine as ribbon, and I drew silhouettes of birds in flight. Marvella’s research project was complete, her paper turned in—and this was my graduation gift to her. Although I knew she’d also use it to play music—I’d been hearing a lot from her about Cat Stevens and Gordon Lightfoot—I wanted for her to be able to record birdsong.

She showed up half an hour early, in tears. I sat her on the couch and tried to find out what had happened.

“Didn’t Mr. Drummond like your paper?”

“No. No, I got an A+.”

“All right then.” I grabbed the Kleenex box from the kitchen counter and set it beside her. She blew her nose, flipped her hair behind her shoulders.

“My parents,” she said.

“What about them? Weren’t they proud?”

“Yes, they said it was great,” she sniffed. “And I know they meant it.”

“So, what?”

“My dad says they’re putting their feet down.”

“Meaning?”

“No Santa Cruz.”

Marvella had been thrilled when she received her acceptance letter from the university. “They won’t let you go?”

“No.”

“Why on earth not?” The Bennetts had the money, it couldn’t be that, and besides—employees of the Lab paid in-state tuition rates for California schools. “Marvella,” I said, holding her shoulders and forcing her to look at me. “Why not?”

“Too far. Too liberal. And,” now she scrunched her face, spoke mincingly: “If a New Mexico school was good enough for your brother Stirling, then it’s good enough for you.”

Stirling Bennett, the prodigy, had dealt his parents a near death blow when he turned down scholarship offers at the University of Chicago, Berkeley, and Yale and instead headed off to a New Mexico community college only one hundred miles down the road in Albuquerque. He’d not merely cut off his nose to spite his parents: He’d mutilated himself.

This was absurd. Just because Stirling had chosen to throw his life away didn’t mean the Bennetts should punish their daughter. After all her hard work—to crush her spirit, to so gratuitously dismiss her immense thirst for knowledge, her lively curiosity. I hugged Marvella to me. How did one name a child “marvel” and then so incongruously deprive her? I could not let this girl go to waste, not without a fight.

I ASKED THE BENNETTS
to meet me on neutral territory, in a place where they’d be reluctant to behave badly—so a restaurant. In Los Alamos, there were not many choices, and we ended up at Casa Luna, which made mediocre pizzas and enough other entrees so as to be good at none of them. I ordered fried chicken, which always took so long that Alden joked they first had to raise the chick from pullet to adult, then kill and dress it before making my meal. It bought me time.

“I’ve enjoyed working with Marvella,” I said, focusing on her mother. If either was going to understand, it was the woman who’d had her own trajectory irremediably altered.

“She’s been so happy, so enthusiastic,” Rebecca said. “It’s been a great experience for her.”

“For me, too,” I said, taking a sip of water.

Rebecca Bennett was an obese woman. The buttons on her blouse strained against untold tensile pressures, and her cheeks were heavy, soft, oversized peaches. Her skin was beautiful, and I could see how pretty she once must have been, before she’d decided to cloak her charms in an immense coat of fat. I imagined her struggling to climb the steps of the bleachers to watch her daughter run, fleet of foot. Her knuckles were indentations rather than mounds of bone, and her fingernails were immaculately manicured, a perfect bubblegum pink. It made me want to tuck my chipped fingernails beneath my thighs.

Mark Bennett sighed. “She’s going through an awful teenaged rebellion just now, though. Pretty impossible. Screaming and crying fits.” Rebecca looked to her husband.

“I think she’s in a lot of pain,” I said.

Now Rebecca scanned my face. “She’s talked to you about it?”

“About Santa Cruz,” I said.

“Non-negotiable,” Mark announced, and I watched him curl his wife’s fingers away from the fork handle she’d gripped tightly. He patted the back of her hand once he’d managed to get her to release the utensil.
Good dog
, I thought.

“May I tell you a story?” I asked.

“Feel free,” he said, out of politeness rather than any genuine desire. I watched Rebecca slip her hand from beneath his and fold her hands in her lap—undercover prayer.

“I once knew someone like Marvella. Bright. Industrious. On her way,” I said, holding my hands up before me. “The world in her hands.” Mark was eyeing me suspiciously. “Her mother had invested heavily in her—sacrificed for her to have an education that could take her beyond the provincial town in which she’d grown up. She wanted for her daughter’s life to be big—as big as she deserved.” I was leaning forward now, trying to mesmerize Rebecca. “She wanted her daughter to have all of the opportunities she never had: to use her mind, to find the challenges that would keep her alive, bring her fulfillment. She wanted her daughter to achieve her potential.”

“Marvella can achieve her potential at the community college,” Mark pronounced, intending to end the discussion.

“No,” I shook my head. “No, she cannot. And forgive me, but I have to say this: She will not have the peers she needs there. Marvella deserves to have to fight for A’s, not to be handed them because she has, half asleep, written the best paper in the class. She deserves to have top-notch professors push her, delight in her, grade her harshly, reward her appropriately. She deserves the connections those professors can give her, the doors they can open for her. I swear to you, if you send her to a mediocre school, if you take this dream from her, everything she’s capable of achieving will be lost. Your daughter will know how little you think of her.” I stopped myself, feeling I was getting a little overdramatic but nevertheless wanting so badly to get through to them. I looked at Rebecca, saw true pain in her eyes.

“Are you finished?” Mark asked.

“I only want to ask that you reconsider your position. Please—for Marvella’s sake. And for yours—it’s a decision I fear you will regret one day, and that’s a weight no one should carry.”

“We appreciate what you’ve done for our daughter,” he began. “I assure you that we love our daughter and only want the best for her.”

“I don’t doubt that,” I said.

“And you have some brass balls, lady.”

“That I do,” I smiled. I caught a fleeting smile on Rebecca’s face, too.

“I did not intend a compliment.”

“I know that.”

“I’m not sure I have any appetite remaining.” Mark stood and held his hand out to his wife, who looked over at me.

“I think I’ll stay,” she said in a near whisper, ignoring his hand.

“You’re not coming?”

“I think I want to have a meal with Meri,” she said, her voice still barely above a whisper. But she said it; she did it.

“Fine.” He took out his wallet and laid bills on the table.

I’d forgotten what it was like—the man paid; the woman likely didn’t even have any cash on her.

I MADE A NEW
friend that evening, a bonus I’d not anticipated. Rebecca Bennett took my hand and held onto it, tears running down her face. We sat together silently, and I actually began to wish the cook would hurry my chicken along.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Better than I’ve been in a long, long time.”

I smiled at her.

“I wanted for Marvella to be able to go. To Santa Cruz, I mean.” She took a deep breath. “I just couldn’t say the things you said to Mark. I wanted to, I really did. But his temper.” She looked into my face, searching. “Where did you get your courage?”

“First of all, he’s not my husband. That makes it easier.” I pressed my lips together. “Secondly, I really don’t care if Mark likes me. And I had some good teachers. Some people who loved me enough to encourage me. Finally, life, its events.”

“Alden’s death?”

“That. And some other things. People. One hugely precious person.”

“Well, I envy you.”

“Don’t,” I said. “Really and truly, don’t envy me. Don’t envy how I got here.”

“I love Mark.”

I waited. She didn’t need for me to comment on her marriage.

“It’s just that sometimes . . .”

The waitress came and lit the candle on our table. “Soon,” she assured us.

“He’s a little rigid.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, which made her smile broadly.

She fidgeted with her wedding ring, and I could see that it had been cut in the back to accommodate her larger finger.

“Mark thinks she’ll get hurt out there. You know,” she said, “it’s
California
.”

“It’s opportunity. And, if you’ve done your job well—and I think you have—then she will handle that opportunity, that freedom. She will make you proud. More importantly, she will make herself proud.”

“When I hear you say that, I believe you.”

“Believe your daughter. Remember who you were long enough to trust your daughter.”

It was enough to start her crying all over again.

“THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!!”
MARVELLA DANCED IN
my living room a week later.

“You’rewelcomeyou’rewelcomeyou’rewelcome!”

“I’ve never been so happy!”

Bravo, Rebecca, bravo!
I thought.

“I HAVE AN IDEA
I want to run by you,” I said, just as the heavy raindrops began. It was July, a few weeks after Marvella’s graduation, and Emma and I were hiking side by side on the nature path in Bandelier. Burgeoning towers of black clouds rumbled.

“Let’s head for the portico,” Emma shouted, and we ran. We found a spot for two on the wooden benches that lined the long, roofed porch of the Visitors Center. Twenty or more people packed the benches, all of us made instant friends by the drama of the storm. We looked toward the flesh-colored cliffs, and I closed my eyes and took in as much of the ozone-filled air as possible, listened to the booming thunder. Within minutes, the hail came. It pounded so hard on the tin roof that it was impossible to hear anything else, and so we sat, simply enjoying the concert.

A piece of hail bounced across the flagstones to my feet. I picked it up and slipped it down the front of my blouse. I looked up in time to catch the eye of an older man, likely in his seventies, who’d seen me. He was smiling at me, slightly dumbfounded, and so I smiled back. A rivulet of warmed water flowed between my breasts, down my belly and into the waistband of my jeans. It made me want more hail, more rivers, but the storm was over quickly.