Charmed Particles (6 page)

But what Sarala noticed was the herd of buffalo in the distance. “That, I'm afraid, I cannot explain,” Abhijat said. “A quirk of the Lab's first director,” he offered, and Sarala laughed at the idea of these enormous animals living among the scientists and their tiny, hypothetical fragments of the universe. Abhijat, smiling, began to laugh with her.

Like much of Nicolet, Abhijat explained, the Lab had been built on land that had once been farmland. In recent years, though, the Lab director had begun a project to return the land under which the tunnels ran from its geometrically arranged agricultural fields to the wild chaos of native prairie grasses. The addition of the herd of buffalo had been part of the prairie restoration project. There was speculation, though, among some local residents, that the buffalo were there less for aesthetic reasons and more as canaries in a coal mine—that their demise would be the first warning sign of something amiss at the Lab, of some nefarious plot afoot in the tunnels of the accelerator. Abhijat had only recently begun to apprehend the uncertainties many of his new neighbors harbored about what went on at the Lab.

As Abhijat and Sarala drove, he pointed out the places where the land's original farmhouses and barns had been left standing. When the Lab had acquired the land, the houses had been repurposed as offices, the barns for storage. A gambrel roof peeked out over the berm of the old fixed-target beam path. A silo stood at attention beside a red barn, silver tanks labeled
liquid nitrogen
and
argon
lined up against its outer walls.

Across the road from the detector, Abhijat showed Sarala the untouched pioneer cemetery where local settlers had been buried, including a general from the War of 1812 who had come west with his family to explore America's frontier. Sarala thought of how even the Lab—red barns against green fields against blue sky—was America as she had always pictured it.

As the sun began to set, they made their way to the Research Tower. A flock of geese waddled slowly across the road in front of the car, trumpeting their indignation.

Inside, Sarala and Abhijat rode the elevator up to the theory group's offices on the nineteenth floor. A hand-lettered sign outside the conference room read T
HE
C
ONJECTORIUM
. In the hallway outside Abhijat's office, Sarala admired a framed image of a collision event in which the subatomic particles created by the collision were shown spiraling off in all directions, each path delineated in a different color so that the image looked, to her, like a strange blooming flower.

Abhijat's office was a small room with floor-to-ceiling chalkboard walls covered in equations. Sarala didn't know what the constellations of numbers and symbols meant, but they filled her with a sense of awe. She thought of the advice her mother-in-law had given her about helping Abhijat find happiness in the world. How, she wondered, could she compete with the importance of this work? Perhaps his mother was mistaken, and it would be his work that would bring him happiness and contentment.

Across the hall, Abhijat pointed out the office of Dr. Gerald Cardiff, his closest friend at the Lab (by which he meant not that they shared personal troubles or the details of their lives outside of the Lab, but that they regularly shared a table in the cafeteria at lunch, and that it was understood that Abhijat, when stranded by a difficult idea, was welcome to wander into Gerald's office where, together, they might hash the issue out).

When she first arrived in Nicolet, Sarala had imagined that she and Abhijat would, together, join one of the Lab's many clubs, a good way to get to know one another and meet others, but she had soon found that Abhijat, as well as his other colleagues, made little time for such diversions. The clubs were well advertised but sparsely attended. A good idea, if only in theory.

As Sarala came to more thoroughly know and understand Abhijat, she saw how he had created for himself a disciplined life. For Abhijat, it was a discipline born of constant reaching, whereby each time he achieved one of the many goals he set for himself, he responded not with celebration and satisfaction at his own accomplishment, but by thinking,
Yes, but there is more to be done
. A place in the top graduate program in his field—
yes, but still the matter of prestigious fellowships
. A teaching position at a well-regarded university—
yes, but even better would be a place at the National Accelerator Research Lab
. And having accomplished that?
Yes, but there were always papers to be written, prizes to be won, a career to attend to, a legacy to build
. Deep within him was the fear that if he allowed himself a moment to enjoy the successes he'd worked for, it would mean the end of them. That he might find the resting on his laurels so comfortable, so seductive, that he would never again accomplish anything of note. And then where would that leave him? No, he had decided—that was the sure road to an unremarkable career. Not what he imagined and planned for himself.

Knowing so little about what it took to make a career as a successful theoretical particle physicist, Sarala was unsure whether she should regard Abhijat's constant striving as something to be concerned about, as his mother had suggested, or as something to be proud of, as was Sarala's inclination. Though she didn't apply the same set of standards to herself, she resolved to do her best to help Abhijat accomplish his ever-shifting goals.

Abhijat had been surprised and impressed by the easy way with which Sarala embraced the challenges and differences of their new home, but he wondered if underneath her enthusiasm there might lie some of the homesickness he had himself experienced.

“It's thoughtful of you to think of this,” Sarala said when he asked, “but I am adaptable. There is no reason you should worry about me. There is plenty for me to discover here. Plenty of ways to occupy my time. And you have enough with which to occupy your mind.”

“Yes,” he responded, taking her hand, “but I have chosen—and chosen well, I think—to occupy my mind with your happiness, too.”

Sarala looked down, embarrassed.

At the window of his office, Abhijat and Sarala stood looking out over the prairie, the skyline and lights of Chicago off in the distance. Together, framed by his office window, they watched the sun sinking into the prairie, the horizon gone gold and glowing for just a moment before twilight.

The next morning on the way to the Lab, recalling their conversation, Abhijat thought unexpectedly of the book he'd read in preparation for his own relocation to the United States. At Cambridge, he'd borrowed from the library a well-used copy of Alexis de Tocqueville's
Democracy in America
and had pored over it, hopeful and expectant.

Remembering this, and feeling thoughtful and solicitous of his new beautiful wife (as well as having recently noted what was, in his opinion, the less-than-edifying reading material with which she had returned from her first trip to the Nicolet Public Library—a mix of paperback Westerns and romance novels), he planned to stop at a bookstore on his way home that evening.

He presented Sarala with his gift over dinner, explaining that he had found the book invaluable in helping him to understand his new country when he first arrived, and that he thought she would likely find volume two, in which de Tocqueville addressed such topics as “In What Spirit the Americans Cultivate the Arts,” “How Democracy Renders the Social Intercourse of Americans Free and Easy,” and “Some Reflections on American Manners,” most useful.

He had inscribed the dark indigo paper of the flyleaf—

F
OR
MY
BEAUTIFUL AND
BELOVED
WIFE
AS SHE
LEARNS
HER
WAY IN
OUR
NEW
HOME
.

Sarala had done her best to read enthusiastically, and, in fact, she did find the chapter titled “The Young Woman in the Character of the Wife” of interest; but, truth be told, she did not find the book terribly helpful in navigating contemporary suburban Chicago, and so she put de Tocqueville on the shelf in the living room and returned to her own selections, though she was careful now not to leave the books she had borrowed from the library where Abhijat might find them and note her choice of reading material.

CHAPTER 4

Notes on the Discovery of America

1974

M
EENA
ARRIVED
DURING
THEIR
SECOND
YEAR IN
N
ICOLET
. During the months when her stomach swelled with the growing baby, Sarala enjoyed the way, with this round, welcoming belly, anyone might stop to talk to her, asking, “When is your baby due?” and “Do you think it's a girl or boy?” and “What will you name her?” when she confided that she knew, most certainly, that it would be a girl.

Sarala's childhood home had been a rowdy, busy household in which she might toddle from aunt to grandmother to mother; in which uncles, her father, and grandfather were always coming and going; in which there were always cousins for playmates. She wondered what it would be like for her child to grow up in the quiet and solitude of their new home.

Abhijat and Sarala's mothers, who had liked each other from the start, congratulated themselves on a successful and fruitful match, and traveled together to be there for the birth and for several weeks afterward. When the mothers arrived, they were surprised not only by the quiet of the large empty house but by how far everything in Nicolet was from everything else. They found it amusing how one rode in a car nearly everywhere one went.

Sarala's mother began cooking almost as soon as she arrived, filling the house with smells that transported Sarala to her girlhood home. Abhijat's mother had set about the cleaning, both of them insisting that Sarala take to her bed and rest. Sarala obeyed, but from her bedroom she could hear the mothers talking happily to one another as they worked, and she longed to join them. At dinner, with the mothers chattering away, Sarala felt happier than she had in quite a long time.

The mothers, though, seemed concerned. Had they not met and befriended any other Indian families, Sarala's mother asked, loading plates into the dishwasher after Abhijat had retired to his study as he did nearly every night.

“It's complicated,” Sarala said. Most of the other Indians at the Lab were visiting scientists, she explained, there for only a few months at a time. And, given how little time Abhijat had for socializing, she'd found it difficult to connect with them. Sarala noticed a look of concern pass over the mothers' faces.

When Meena finally arrived, the house bustled in a way that felt familiar, one grandmother tending to the baby and one in the kitchen cooking what seemed to Sarala enough food to feed them until Meena was herself a grandmother.

The grandmothers stayed with them for several weeks, and when they left, Sarala was surprised by how quickly, even with the new baby, the house returned to its imposing silence. In the afternoons when Meena slept, and at night when Sarala woke to nurse her, the house stood large, still, and silent around them.