Robert Lennon - Familiar

“Oh?”

“Did you think I was younger?”

“I admit I did.”

“My mother says I’ll look like I’m twenty until I’m forty, and then I’ll suddenly look sixty.”

Elisa says, “Thanks, Mom.”

Betsy settles in her chair until its back rests against the windowsill. The motion upsets a small cactus there, and its pot clanks faintly against another one sitting beside it. The younger woman doesn’t seem to notice. “I know, right?” she says, laughing. “But she thinks I’m a lesbian and that science is a phase I’m going through. So yeah but…” She leans forward. “Do you know you could make a universe? Like, in a lab?”

Elisa doesn’t say anything.

“Or your house even.”

“Really.”

“In theory! I mean, I can’t. You can’t. Well, maybe you can, what do I know.”

Betsy is excited. She seems to enjoy having Elisa here. Out the window behind her a corner of the building is visible, this very building, and beyond it the science quad. They are in some kind of wing or extension. Yet this seems miraculous somehow, an optical anomaly. A building that is visible from inside itself.

“How?” Elisa asks her.

“I was just reading about this. You’d need a seed. A little tiny thing. Ten pounds of matter, packed into a really tiny space. And if it’s all packed in there enough — so that it’s basically a black hole — then the repulsive component of gravity, which yes there is such a thing, should be enough, once you trigger it, to expand that matter into a whole other universe.”

Elisa says, “A little tiny one.”

But Betsy is shaking her head before Elisa has even finished speaking. “No, regular size. Like with stars and galaxies and everything. Like this one.”

At the words like this one, Elisa experiences a chill. For a moment, she can’t believe it — she is actually talking about this.

She says, “Wouldn’t it… blow everything up?”

“Nope. It would occupy its own space. Another space.”

“And you could make this. A person could make this.”

“Yeah. Well — in theory. You would need to smash the right particles together. To make the seed. And then, to trigger the expansion — it’s tricky. I mean, nobody has done it. As far as we know.”

Elisa leans forward. A cloud has covered the sun, the quad is in shadow, but light is still striking the corner of the building that is visible from the office window. “But maybe somebody has.”

“Maybe this is it! The universe somebody made.”

After a moment, Elisa says, quietly, “A person could go there?”

“In theory.”

“But in reality?” Elisa asks. “Is that possible? Can you go there? To the other universe?”

“Well…” Betsy says, and there must have been something in Elisa’s tone, some excess of hope, that is causing her to pull back from her initial enthusiasm. “You’d have to go through the black hole somehow. Which of course there’s all kinds of complications there. Like it would compress you into a stream of atoms, which is to say you’re dead. And then, you know, it’s a black hole. So.”

“So?”

She shrugs. “Even if by some miracle you survived the trip. You could never come back.”

“But listen to me,” Betsy is saying, “blathering like an idiot.”

Elisa shakes her head. “No, this is exactly what I wanted.”

“I am kind of giddy, having a nonstudent visit my office. So, wait, you’re… what’s your deal then? Do you work on campus?”

“I’m an administrator,” she says carefully, “in the biology department.” After a moment, she says, “I used to be a scientist, too.”

This seems to please Betsy. “So okay, wow. Physics? Not physics.”

“Plant biology. Genetics.”

“So how did you get interested in this? This stuff?”

Up until now, the meeting has seemed like a lovely bit of serendipity — the realization of a fantasy she didn’t realize she’d harbored. Betsy Orosco is perfect: a probing intelligence wrapped in a sheath of innocence, good humor, and charming clutter. Indeed, Elisa could not have invented a better person to explain these things to her. It’s almost as if she has created this strange little room, up in this obscure dusty corner of campus.

Elisa’s palms are sweating. She grips the greasy burlap armrests of the chair. If this universe, if any universe, could have been created by someone, then who? Could she have created it herself? By accident? Is there a universe where she stuck with science? Moved from biology to physics? Worked on a particle accelerator? Smashed the right things together? Created new iterations of herself, her husband, her sons? Could this be only one of many? Could this be only one of an infinity? Did she mean to do it, or was it a mistake? Does she even know she did it? Maybe she didn’t even notice that it happened. Maybe she thinks the experiment was a failure.

She is vaguely aware that an awkward silence has sprung into being. She looks up to find Betsy looking at her, biting her lip.

Elisa says, “I’m… trying to understand something. That happened to me. That is happening.”

Betsy’s response is quiet and tentative: “What happened to you?”

“I’m not sure I want to say.”

The two of them gaze frankly at one another for a moment, and then Betsy turns away, leans back in her chair. The cactus pots clank.

Here it is again, the moment to tell or not tell. She thinks of the billions of women throughout history who have silently endured this same moment of indecision, the little fermata before confession. A last breath before the uncomfortable intimacy is forced onto the friend, or the lover, or the mother, or the sister. I was raped. I’m married. I’m in love with you. I’m gay. She’s lying to Betsy: she is quite sure that she does want to say. What she isn’t sure about is whether she wants to be heard. Because there are only a few possible good outcomes, and an infinitude of bad ones. Sorry, I have to go. No, that’s crazy. Why are you telling me this? You need help. It’s narcissistic, isn’t it, this need to tell — to hear oneself give voice to one’s feelings, to watch them register on another person, to watch the person shoulder the burden. There’s no rational reason for it, just the relief from solitude. Betsy says, “Then maybe you shouldn’t.”

Her face is alert, the eyes wide, the lips pulled back revealing straight white clenched teeth. She appears alarmed — whether at the possibility of further, perhaps unwanted, intimacy, or at the sound of her own words, Elisa can’t tell. Both, probably. The words are not unfriendly; Elisa senses, strongly, that Betsy likes her, likes that they are both women, both scientists. There is a great deal, it seems, that they might understand in one another, that they wouldn’t have to explain, should they become closer. Elisa would like coming here, to the physics building, to meet her friend for coffee. She would like to hear more about Betsy’s work, about her strange ideas, her speculations.

Too close, too soon: that would ruin it. Elisa is disappointed and relieved. She nods, grips the armrests of the chair, readies herself to get up and leave.

“No, wait,” says Betsy, “I’m sorry.”

“I should be sorry,” Elisa says. “I’m taking up too much of your time.”

Betsy’s half out of her chair, her hand extended over the desk, the fingers splayed. “No, no, no. Please.”

They are frozen like that for a moment. Okay, then, Elisa thinks, we’re going for it. She relaxes back into her seat, and Betsy returns to her chair.

“You were going to say something that’s important to you. I shouldn’t have interrupted.”