Tizita Page 12

  Which was why I felt guilty packing up my things for home at the crack of dawn the next morning. (How ironic that Stanley Fiske, the world’s premier genius of the quantum world, could barely wait to open his presents from Gwen and me in one wild tornado of torn wrapping paper. Talk about the inner child peeking through. In his case, the bug-eyed boy—crazy for presents and magic tricks—and the prizewinning physicist were one.)

  I’d been going through guilty mornings like this one ever since Mother had moved out to SoCal to be near me after my Nobel debacle. I was like the child of divorce twice over, divvying up Christmastime between Mother—who got me on Christmas Eve—and the Fiskes, who on the actual day hosted Sammie and Aadita and the physics gang in all its geeky glory.

  Mother stood in the doorway, watching me pack. Spotting the telltale moisture well up in her eyes, I approached her. She was wearing the cozy, recycled poly robe I’d given her last night. I put a hand on her cheek, marveling at how her skin had softened even more with age. “Are you sure you’re okay with me going?”

  She nuzzled my tangly head. “Don’t be a goose.” Her nose still buried in my hair, she gave a dramatic sniff. “Mmm. You smell good. Jo Malone Orange Blossom?”

  I grinned. It was a little joke between us. She bought me a bottle of it, with a matching-scented candle, every birthday. “You know it is. But really ....”

  Mother stepped back and regarded me appraisingly. Never comfortable with being stared at, I focused on tugging my nightie out of my butt crack.

  “Sweetheart, I’m grateful for what I get. You’re a complicated young woman with a complicated life, and, actually, I’m quite happy for you about that. At your age, I was still pickled in wine and going nowhere.” She looked off into the distance, and I wondered if she was seeing what I saw: a house divided both literally and figuratively between a wing devoted to lively little fruits of Father’s anti-abortion crusade—with Nana, Sister Flatulencia, and Fayga working themselves to the bone for that revolving door of foster children—and a wing containing the pesky lone fruit of his most public dalliance, flapping and whirling so frequently she drove her mother straight to the bottle. I was well aware that I wasn’t supposed to think such thoughts anymore. Adam and a host of angels since then had worked very hard to persuade me that it hadn’t been my odd-duckishness that had created my mother’s misery, that, if anything, her youthful inability to be a proper mother may have contributed to my own troubles with the void. But as much as I understood all that on a rational level, I couldn’t rid myself of the suspicion that she might have been just a tad less tempted by demon alcohol if she’d given birth to a more normal, albeit less scientifically gifted, child.

  Of course, I was also aware that if that had been the case, I would never have met the Fiskes. Which I simply could not imagine. For if Mother were Mother, then Stanley and Gwennie were the godparents to the person I was fated to become. Sammie liked to talk about what her analyst told her was “the challenge of holding the tension of the opposites.” By which I understood her to mean honoring life’s predilection for paradox. The awareness of which Niels Bohr had purportedly contended was a precondition for progress. I suppose both Jung and Bohr would have judged it a good thing that I simultaneously hated leaving Mother and couldn’t wait to get home to the Fiskes.

  But one thing was certain when I arrived back at Rose Villa: holding the tension of the opposites might be fine for humans, but cats have no patience for it. As soon as I tiptoed into Stanley and Gwennie’s living room, Jillily took a flying leap toward my gift-laden arms, only to fall when her nails found no purchase. As always, she’d been waiting at the front door, seemingly intent on confirming biochemist Rupert Sheldrake’s ideas about animals knowing when their owners were about to come home.

  Stanley wasn’t much better. As soon as I set down the packages and concentrated on scratching Jillily’s thrumming throat, I spied my mentor excitedly shuffling up the hallway in his Nick and Nora skiing dog pajamas. Sixty-four going on six. Or four.

  “Merry Christmas,” he croaked froggishly, bending over to extract a quarter from Jillily’s ear. My cat favored him with a long-suffering stare.

  I managed to talk Stanley out of waking Gwennie by offering to scramble him some eggs with chervil and mushroom. I knew he would have loved to have a slice or two of Parma ham thrown in there, or even some cheap bacon bits, but there was no way Gwen would have tolerated meat in her kitchen.

  Only after Stanley had contentedly smeared his lips with his napkin and put his feet up onto the only other chair onto which the New York Times wasn’t piled did the topic arise that I’d been trying to duck for the past twenty-four hours.

  “So how’s that man of yours?”

  “Huh?” I extemporized, admittedly poorly.

  “What’s wrong, Fleur?”

  Damn. I tried to keep my voice level, but instead it came out like Alvin the Chipmunk. “Who says anything’s wrong? Actually, we talked last night.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. He hasn’t found his father yet, if that’s what you want to know.” I couldn’t help but add dryly, “Which is why he went there.”

  “Yeeess. Of course, that’s why he went there.” He squinted his bulgy eyes and licked his lips, which made him look like he was about to leap after a fly. Except the leap was mental. “What’s the man gone and done? It’s not another woman, is it? Oh, don’t give me that surprised look. You’re about as transparent as glass.”

  “Why do you think that’s what’s going on?”

  “Because in my own limited experience—and don’t start on me, please, with that feminist crap of my sister’s—women are particularly susceptible to jealousy. I lost a perfectly good marriage because Doris got it into her head that I was in love with one of my students. Never mind that the girl had a very bright young man waiting for her back in Massachusetts and that she had absolutely no sense of humor.”

  That would have been a decided black mark in Stanley’s book. Jillily jumped onto my lap just then, circling awkwardly a few times before settling her bony body down in a way that jutted satisfyingly against my femur. I stroked her absentmindedly while I considered Stanley’s words. I tended to forget that Stanley had once been married. It was hard to imagine, since I’d always known him as a part of a duo with his sister Gwen. It wasn’t that there was anything incestuous about it, but the two were like a comfortable pair of shoes. Gwennie complained incessantly about his sunflower seeds and the stain he made on the back of the couch with his oily hair. On his side, Stanley could be counted on to grumble rather incessantly about Gwennie’s cooking—not that it was bad; it wasn’t, but it didn’t include sugar or meat. How many times had our physics team gorged on donuts in Stanley’s Caltech lab because our mentor was being subjected to corn syrup deprivation at home?

  I thought I was saved from having to answer Stanley’s question by Gwennie popping her gray head into the kitchen, faux-complaining, “Why’d you let me sleep so late?” But then she frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  Stanley grunted. “Fleur thinks Assefa’s cheating on her.”

  “No, I don’t! Stop. Please. It’s Christmas morning.” Hoping to head them off at the pass, I got up and pulled out the tea drawer. “Morning Thunder?” Gwennie nodded. “You want some, too, Stanley? We really should get to those gifts, don’t you think?”

  Stanley clapped his hands gleefully and bounded off toward the living room. Gwennie shot me a considering look before she hurried after him, shouting, “Don’t you dare start before Fleur can join us.”

  It wasn’t the first time I fantasized doing a chemistry experiment, comparing the caffeine content of Morning Thunder and Starbuck’s House Blend. We went through our gift opening like a house afire, tossing our torn wrapping paper to Jillily, who quickly turned it into red and green and gold confetti. Gwen had purchased Stanley a super-soft, frog-green cashmere sweater, which I didn’t have the heart to point out he might never have occasion to wear
if this winter’s testimony to global warming had anything to say about it. For me, she’d artfully concealed in a handmade gift bag a generous gift certificate to our local Aveda hair salon. Downing the last of my Morning Thunder, I fetched my own present to her from under the tree and was delighted to hear her little squeal of pleasure at the Vitamix juicer I’d bought her, which still couldn’t compete with Stanley’s roar of appreciative laughter at my double gift of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog and Taschen’s Magic: 1400s to 1950s. I was just absorbing Stanley’s present to me—a plane ticket accompanying a breathtaking written request from Guy Wilkinson to visit and consult for his team at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva next fall—when my cell vibrated.

  I sneaked a quick glance at my watch and tried to instantly compute what time it was in Ethiopia. Finding my phone, I hurried up the hall to my room and pushed the door closed with my butt.

  “Hello, handsome. Merry Christmas! I love you so much,” I gushed, losing any cool I might have pretended to have.

  The voice on the other end gave a confused little laugh. “Am I missing something? I mean, you know I love you, too, Fleur, but I feel a little like that character in The Truth About Cats and Dogs.”

  Now I was the one who was confused. Confused and, despite how much I adored Adam, disappointed. “Huh?

  “You know—‘you can love your pet, but you can’t love your pet.’”

  “Oh, right.”

  We were both a little dense. It took a moment for Adam to get it. “Ah,” he said, in what I could have sworn was a rather pained voice. “You thought I was Assefa.”

  Jillily wound around my ankle, still licking her lips from her Christmas Greenies. “Mmm hmm.”

  “Okay, what’s wrong?”

  Oh for heaven’s sake. I burst into tears.

  “Christ, Fleur, what’s happened?”

  “No, no,” I managed to muster. “He’s okay. It’s just ... he didn’t remember to wish me Merry Christmas, and I think ... well, I’m almost certain he’s located a girl he knew when he lived in Ethiopia. Her name’s Makeda. After the Queen of Sheba. I looked it up. It means ‘beautiful.’” I heard a light knock. The door opened a crack. Gwennie peeked in and raised an eyebrow. I shook my head. She put a hand on her heart, blew me a kiss, and then withdrew.

  Adam’s voice was subdued. “My poor Fleur. It’s really gotten to you, hasn’t it? The Green-Eyed Monster.”

  “Don’t,” I pleaded. “Anyone would feel the way I do. He flies all the way to Ethiopia. Supposedly to look for his father. His missing father. And what does he do? Looks up his old childhood friend in the town where he was born. His female friend. And he hasn’t called since last night.”

  “Fleur, you don’t even know whether he has regular access to phone service. He could’ve been trying to call you ever since.”

  I paused and reached across my bed for a Kleenex. “Well, his phone did cut out when we were talking ....”

  “See? Anyway, how do you know about this Makeda? Did he tell you?”

  “Not exactly. But that makes it worse.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Not exactly’?”

  “I asked him about her when he was falling asleep. Actually, he may have actually been asleep.”

  “Fleur.”

  “What?”

  “You’re bad.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are. You’re cooking up something in that imaginative head of yours that may bear no relation to reality.”

  “You sound like my father.”

  “And now you’re being silly. You know what I mean.”

  And I did. If I were one of my physics students, I’d tell myself to stop letting my imagination run ahead of the evidence and put it, instead, to a test.

  “What do you think I should do? His phone cut out before I could ... oh, Adam, do you think he’s okay?” Why hadn’t it occurred to me that something might have happened to Assefa? His father and Zalelew had disappeared, hadn’t they? What did I know about Ethiopian crime? About natural hazards? The countryside was rugged and mountainous. His car could have run off a cliff. I found myself wishing the reason he hadn’t called was Makeda. I said a silent prayer. Please God, let him be okay.

  “Fleur. Sweet Fleur. I know this is scary. He’s far away, this is your first separation, and he’s your first love.” At least in this, Adam was dead wrong. I blushed to think how many times I’d given myself mini-explosions while imagining Adam’s thoughtful green eyes, his tender smile, his tight hugs and slight limp, his armpits smelling perfectly of Campbell’s Chicken Soup and B.O. “What about a little Kundalini?” Adam suggested. “You’re always telling me how much meditation relaxes you.” I felt a stab of guilt. Here was Adam, taking time from his own Christmas celebration with his new fiancée, and I’d made our conversation all about me.

  I took a couple of deep breaths, rolled my eyes up to my brow center, and, releasing the effects of caffeine and anxiety, felt my heartbeat slow down. “I love you, Adam,” I said.

  He sighed audibly. “This is how we started. I’m going to assume you mean that you just love me and not ‘love’ me.”

  I was considerably calmer by the time we got off the phone. He’d described the beauty of the snowscape outside his window, and I told myself with only the palest green tinge how great it was that he’d found a woman smart enough to appreciate his gentle strength and loyalty.

  Thankfully, helping Gwennie get the house cleaned up from its chaos of wrapping paper and sunflower seeds ended up being a welcome distraction from obsessing about Assefa. We worked side by side on a new recipe she’d discovered for a carrot and cashew fan with orange and cardamom sauce, served with lentil and dill salad. I found the slicing tedious, but singing along to this year’s version of Stanley’s eclectic Christmas music collection filled the void quite nicely. Who wouldn’t laugh to see stout Gwen’s mimed striptease to Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby,” climaxed by whipping off her Physicists are Spicier apron and flinging it on the floor? As for six-foot Stanley’s bizarre, stylized strut to Louis Armstrong’s “Zat You, Santa Claus,” popping cashews and orange segments into his mouth as he circled the kitchen—it was a miracle we didn’t pee ourselves.

  At five minutes to five, the three of us subjected our nervous systems to another jolt of caffeine, this time via some face-squinchingly bitter espresso one of Stanley’s students had brought back from Italy. We did a superficial tidy up and turned on the air conditioner just in time for the doorbell to ring, with the Caltech crew arriving en masse. They burst into the house so noisily that Jillily immediately retreated under my bed, where not even a catnip mouse from Amir could coax her out.

  When Sammie and Jacob arrived, I was relieved to see that she, at least, was in good spirits. She confided in me during a quick bathroom break that they’d had a truce in which he’d actually—miracle of miracles—apologized for his appalling behavior. She stood up from the toilet, pulled her skinny red skirt back down her hips, gave herself a quick glance in the mirror, and confided in a low tone, “He even hinted that he might be open to me working part time if my mum would be willing to shift to teaching three days instead of five so she could help us with a baby.” The lord giveth and the lord could just as easily taketh away, I thought cynically, doubting Jacob’s sudden conversion to sanity.

  And sure enough, I couldn’t help but notice that Sammie’s mood was markedly different from her lover’s. Jacob was sitting at the end of the table, next to Aadita’s boyfriend Arturo, whose valiant attempts at small talk were met with clipped responses and condescending stares. I began to suspect that Sammie’s mood had a hint of the manic when she summoned more than her usual forced politeness as the scientists amongst us (Stanley, Aadita, Amir, Katrina, Tom, Gunther, Bob Ballantine, me) did our damnedest to bore the rest of the table (Sammie, Jacob, Arturo, Gwennie) with talk of string theory, multiple worlds, the Large Hadron Collider, and Chile’s Very Big Telescope.

  Alas, Isaac Newton’s famous
“What goes up must come down” applied to more than just gravity. I shared with the group what Stanley had given me for Christmas, along with Wilkinson’s invitation, which was received with gratifying oohs and aahs until Sammie broke in. “You’re joking, right? Very Big Telescope? Large Collider? That’s what they’re actually called? I can’t fathom why you scientists can’t exercise a little more imagination in naming your machines. I mean, what’s the next one going to be, the Ridiculously Huge Thingamabob?”

  Her olive skin uncharacteristically flushed, undoubtedly in sudden recognition of how rude she’d sounded, Sammie pivoted to mentioning a couple of films about Facebook that had recently been released. “Jacob and I were both left less than impressed by that new documentary about Facebook, weren’t we, hon?” Jacob, seemingly staring at a Chagall print on the opposite wall, didn’t even bother to look at her.

  “Oh, Facebook,” Bob muttered, inadvertently spitting a cardamom seed across the table onto Aadita’s cheek. Aadita quickly brushed it away and kept her eyes on her plate as if to spare him discomfort.

  But Bob was oblivious. “I want to tell my students who yatter on and on about Facebook to get a life.” I stifled a snort by coughing into my napkin.

  “Wait, no,” Sammie insisted. “I wouldn’t have met Jacob if it weren’t for Facebook.”