graphs.
I tried to explain quantum mechanics to her: probability, indeterminacy, chaos theory, photon as either wave or particle, right spin, left. Her eyes glazed and her expression became soft and blank. If one electron has a right spin, its matching electron has a left spin; change one, the other changes . . .
Destroy one; does the other languish and die? I didn’t know the answer, especially when applied to the macrocosm.
She lives in the sun, I in her shadow, yearning for sunlight.
She could not write a short story for our class. I told her if a, then certain things must follow, until you end with x,y,z . Cause and effect. She looked at me in wonder, then wrote something, and I wrote a story. Hers was considered brilliant, an incomprehensible prose poem, mine a story with a beginning, middle, end. Competent.
My dissertation will be competent. An old joke on campus: What do you call a medical student who finishes at the bottom of his class? Answer: Doctor. What do you call a physics major who finishes in the bottom of the class? Assistant.
Grandfather left the farm jointly to our father, my sister, and me. “We’ll sell it, of course,” Father said, and my sister shook her head. She wants to live here. “Talk to her,” he said to Mother, then included me in his indignant glare. “Talk sense into her.” The will of any two of us will prevail.
Mother never talked to us or with us. She sometimes talked at us. Father went back to his middle-management job in a high-tech firm in Seattle. He will return tomorrow for the weekend, and on Sunday he and Mother will both go back to Seattle. Now we are here, Mother, my sister, and I, and no one has mentioned selling the farm again. Mother is relying on me to talk sense into my sister. An impossible task.
It has taken me twenty years to learn what my sister grasped intuitively when we were children; we are both incomplete. When the ovum divided to form two fetuses, the brain cells were unfairly distributed. Matched particles, one spinning left, the other right. One brain housed in two separate skulls.
Across the lake I can see Bobby walking through meticulous rows of grapes. He is wearing shorts and a tank top. I wish he would look this way, but he is concentrating on the vines. Mr. Holt did not replant corn in his field after it burned. He tilled the ashes into the ground and the next time we came to the farm, there was a vineyard. Now Bobby owns the vineyard. It is very productive, pinot noir, much in demand.
We buried Grandfather on Monday, and as the casket was lowered into the ground next to Grandmother’s plot, Mother said in a tremulous voice, “Now they are together again at rest.”
That night I dreamed of him. He was a giant, walking away in his deliberate pace, hand in hand with a little girl. They were both nearly transparent. Not at rest, not yet.
I can’t bear to watch Bobby, and close my eyes, wishing I could block my swirl of thoughts. The mockingbird is back.
“What did you see in her sketch book?”
--Nothing.--
“Liar!”
She left it on the sofa last night. I looked. There was Grandfather, a giant, hand in hand with a little girl, walking away. The oak tree was visible through them. Has she gone from a to x,y,z , the way I did? I doubt it. She arrives without making the journey.
We will stay here together, I understand and accept finally. I’ll find the answer: if one particle is destroyed will the other wither and die? Who is transparent, who opaque?
The Late Night Train
I AM SITTING AT THE KITCHEN TABLE in my parents’ house with an open book, but I am not even trying to read the words. It is too cold in my upstairs room to take refuge there. I never gave a thought to how small the house is when I was growing up in it. Four downstairs rooms, kitchen, dining room, living room, a short hall with the bath and staircase on one side and my Dad’s room on the other. And two unheated bedrooms upstairs. My sister and I shared one of
I tried to explain quantum mechanics to her: probability, indeterminacy, chaos theory, photon as either wave or particle, right spin, left. Her eyes glazed and her expression became soft and blank. If one electron has a right spin, its matching electron has a left spin; change one, the other changes . . .
Destroy one; does the other languish and die? I didn’t know the answer, especially when applied to the macrocosm.
She lives in the sun, I in her shadow, yearning for sunlight.
She could not write a short story for our class. I told her if a, then certain things must follow, until you end with x,y,z . Cause and effect. She looked at me in wonder, then wrote something, and I wrote a story. Hers was considered brilliant, an incomprehensible prose poem, mine a story with a beginning, middle, end. Competent.
My dissertation will be competent. An old joke on campus: What do you call a medical student who finishes at the bottom of his class? Answer: Doctor. What do you call a physics major who finishes in the bottom of the class? Assistant.
Grandfather left the farm jointly to our father, my sister, and me. “We’ll sell it, of course,” Father said, and my sister shook her head. She wants to live here. “Talk to her,” he said to Mother, then included me in his indignant glare. “Talk sense into her.” The will of any two of us will prevail.
Mother never talked to us or with us. She sometimes talked at us. Father went back to his middle-management job in a high-tech firm in Seattle. He will return tomorrow for the weekend, and on Sunday he and Mother will both go back to Seattle. Now we are here, Mother, my sister, and I, and no one has mentioned selling the farm again. Mother is relying on me to talk sense into my sister. An impossible task.
It has taken me twenty years to learn what my sister grasped intuitively when we were children; we are both incomplete. When the ovum divided to form two fetuses, the brain cells were unfairly distributed. Matched particles, one spinning left, the other right. One brain housed in two separate skulls.
Across the lake I can see Bobby walking through meticulous rows of grapes. He is wearing shorts and a tank top. I wish he would look this way, but he is concentrating on the vines. Mr. Holt did not replant corn in his field after it burned. He tilled the ashes into the ground and the next time we came to the farm, there was a vineyard. Now Bobby owns the vineyard. It is very productive, pinot noir, much in demand.
We buried Grandfather on Monday, and as the casket was lowered into the ground next to Grandmother’s plot, Mother said in a tremulous voice, “Now they are together again at rest.”
That night I dreamed of him. He was a giant, walking away in his deliberate pace, hand in hand with a little girl. They were both nearly transparent. Not at rest, not yet.
I can’t bear to watch Bobby, and close my eyes, wishing I could block my swirl of thoughts. The mockingbird is back.
“What did you see in her sketch book?”
--Nothing.--
“Liar!”
She left it on the sofa last night. I looked. There was Grandfather, a giant, hand in hand with a little girl, walking away. The oak tree was visible through them. Has she gone from a to x,y,z , the way I did? I doubt it. She arrives without making the journey.
We will stay here together, I understand and accept finally. I’ll find the answer: if one particle is destroyed will the other wither and die? Who is transparent, who opaque?
The Late Night Train
I AM SITTING AT THE KITCHEN TABLE in my parents’ house with an open book, but I am not even trying to read the words. It is too cold in my upstairs room to take refuge there. I never gave a thought to how small the house is when I was growing up in it. Four downstairs rooms, kitchen, dining room, living room, a short hall with the bath and staircase on one side and my Dad’s room on the other. And two unheated bedrooms upstairs. My sister and I shared one of
Similar Books
