Chrissy Kolaya - Charmed Particles

“It is my most cherished hope,” Dr. Cardiff continued, “that we might work together as a community to ensure that this sort of revelation is available to the young people who join us here today, to their generation.” Here he looked at Lily and at Meena beside her. “They will, I believe, discover things that today we are unable to even conceive of, but we must provide them with the tools to do so, to participate in this remarkable unveiling of the world’s mysteries. The greatest gift we can bestow on future generations,” Dr. Cardiff said, turning to the audience, “is to encourage their curiosity. Thank you.”

The moderator leaned in to his microphone one last time.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Cardiff being our final speaker of the evening, this concludes our hearing. I, and the panelists who have joined me here today, wish to thank you for your thoughtful comments. With that, we are formally adjourned. Thank you and goodnight.”

Whereupon, at 7:30 p.m., the hearing was concluded.

Abhijat managed to wait until he, Sarala, and Meena had gotten into the car, the doors closing, one — two — three consecutive thumps, before raising the question.

“Meena, what is this opportunity, this academy Mrs. Winchester mentioned at lunch?” he asked, turning from his place behind the steering wheel to face Meena in the back seat.

All around them doors slammed, engines started up, the cars of the other hearing participants snaking up and down the parking lot aisles toward the exit, brake lights glowing out into the dark.

Meena had been expecting this, had buckled herself grimly into her seat waiting for one of them — of course it would be her father, she realized now — to ask the question. “I didn’t want to bother you,” she said.

“That you have mentioned,” he said. “But what is the opportunity?”

“It’s a special school,” Meena began haltingly, doling out as little as she could. “For science and math. You live there. Mr. Delacroix… the guidance counselor. He said Lily and I should apply.”

Abhijat was quiet for a moment, taking this in. “And do you want to apply?” he asked finally.

Sarala, listening from her seat beside Abhijat, was surprised by his choice of question. It was exactly the right one.

Meena scratched at a spot on her jeans. She spoke without looking up. “I didn’t want to bother you while all the stuff about the collider was going on.”

“Yes, but it is my responsibility as your father to help you pursue opportunities,” Abhijat answered. “It is not a matter of bothering me — this is my duty as your parent. And now, again the question — do you want to apply?”

Sarala turned in her seat to look at Meena, offering an encouraging smile.

“No,” Meena said, her voice small, apologetic.

“A useful piece of information,” Abhijat replied, nodding. “And, may I ask, why?”

“I don’t know,” Meena mumbled, hoping her vagueness, her lack of enthusiasm for the conversation might deter her father from pursuing it further.

But, like parents everywhere, Abhijat instead took this as encouragement to forge ahead, imagining that somewhere, underneath that “I don’t know” thrown aside so carelessly, she did in fact know, did in fact want to share this information. He pressed forward, and it felt to Meena a little like the evenings around the kitchen table, so long ago now, when he would gently nudge her on through the difficult terrain of a particularly tricky math problem, displaying a kind of certainty in her ability that even she did not feel.

“I just.” Meena started, then stopped again, assessing the hazards of the tangled path before her. “I like my school. And I don’t—” She took a deep breath, as though preparing to dive. “I’m sorry. I know this sounds mean, and I don’t mean it to, but I don’t want to have a life like you.”

For a moment this ricocheted around the quiet of the car. Abhijat felt himself absorbing the force of it in an almost physical way, as though being tackled. And then, like parents everywhere who have pushed forward and learned something they are no longer sure they wanted to know, he wondered if he should have, perhaps, not pressed her. Should have let her float in the cool uncertainty of her mumbled “I don’t know.” Should have let himself float there, safe from knowing this. Though of course he had known it already.

After a long moment, Sarala spoke. “Meena, we have never asked or expected that you choose a life like ours.”

For Abhijat, there was a moment of light in that pronoun — ours. He listened as Sarala continued. “But we do ask that you respect the choices we have made, the hard work and dedication your father has given to his work. Whether you apply to the Academy or not is of course your choice,” she said. “But it seems to me that Lily was quite confident that you had applied or were planning to.”

Meena looked down at her knees. She nodded.

Abhijat started the car, the noise of the engine filling the silence of the interior in a way that felt welcome to all three of the occupants. By now, the parking lot had cleared of all of the other hearing participants. Abhijat swung the car around in a graceful circle, down a row of empty parking spots to the stop sign at the exit, and headed for home.

Lily and Rose’s car ride home had been nearly silent, Rose in the driver’s seat negotiating the traffic, Lily staring determinedly out the window. Rose stopped at the mailbox to gather the day’s mail before piloting the car into the garage. In the laundry room, both shed their coats, hanging them on the hooks along the wall.

Sorting through the envelopes in her hand, Rose made her way into the kitchen and turned on the television on the kitchen counter, hoping to catch the evening news.

But the regular programming had been preempted, and nearly all news channels showed maps of the Indian Ocean.

Lily turned on the larger television in the family room and sat down before it. The voice of the reporter floated out into the room. “Reports today that the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a remote chain of islands in the Bay of Bengal, have been devastated by a tsunami that struck the island early this morning.”

Lily turned to look at Rose, who held in her hands a letter from Randolph bearing the return address: Andaman Islands.

For two days they had no word. Lily stayed home from school and rarely moved from the couch in the family room, where she monitored the news coverage, grainy videos taken by tourists in the more populated areas of the islands, aerial images showing sixty percent of the island chain’s landmass now under water.

The first night, Lily appeared in the doorway of Rose’s bedroom.

“I can’t sleep,” she said.

“Me, either,” Rose said.

“Could I stay here with you?” Lily asked.

“Of course,” Rose answered, holding up the comforter and making a place for Lily beside her.

Lily slid into the spot, what would be Randolph’s place were he there with them, and allowed her mother to wrap her arms around her. Rose buried her face in Lily’s hair, spread out over the pillow, and gathered her daughter to her.

“Do you think he’s alive?” Lily asked, her voice small and muffled by the pillow.

At the very thought of it, Rose could feel her heart beginning to race. What was best in this situation, she wondered. She could feel her careful veneer of parental authority and competence beginning to fracture, a slow spreading, like a cracked windshield.