His choice stayed the same.
Eventually, she accepted it.
“Okay, a break.”
She conceded.
“I love you,” she added. She must’ve had a second throat, because those words came from somewhere deeper than her lungs.
They stood up.
They hugged.
Sophie kissed his cheek.
She walked back to the subway.
A break?
Sophie cried over the sidewalk running under her in gray scale. She was surrounded by people in one of the biggest cities in the world, but no one else in the crowd was her people. She and Jake hadn’t just been dating. He was family. Were they on a break from being family? How could this be happening when she still felt their love? He hadn’t responded to her on the bench, but he hadn’t needed to. She knew how he felt.
Meanwhile, Jake stood in the lobby with his phone in hand, his last connection to her. Should he text something? Nothing felt big enough. Besides, he wasn’t going to change his mind. He pocketed the cold thing and stepped through a turnstile into an elevator. His stomach brewed something horrible. Sophie had taught him about that. In the gut, called the “second brain,” there were more nerve cells than in the head. “And you know, I can talk about this, the biology, everything,” she said one night in bed. “But that’s not what it’s all about it. We’re billions of cells, and millions of processes, but we’re not that hard to understand. I think at the end of the day, we all just want connection to know we’re not alone.” He saw their future home as if it were real, or possible, with her reading in the library. In reality, he stepped out of the elevator toward Olympus and decided the best thing to do was work.
CHAPTER 9
One year later to the day, Sophie walked to Madison Square Park at dawn. The streets were empty minus a runner, then a dog walker branching into three pugs. Parallel lines in the sidewalk converged ahead in an illusion of distance. Traffic lights flashed for no one.
She still couldn’t sleep well. After a whole year. In the park, she sat alone on the bench where it had happened. She sensed him with her, a stronger version of what she felt every day. Did people leave pieces of themselves everywhere they went? Morning lightened the air to blue. Eventually, she pulled her phone out of her parka pocket, went to “The Classics,” and played Ray Charles’s “Georgia on My Mind” at the bottom of the queue. Its time stamp showed he’d added this song just days ago.
Sophie played it again. Was it a happy song or a sad one? Was it the most wistful melody ever composed or was that her projecting? Maybe Jake had added it for her, thinking of her. Maybe she was his Georgia, the home that stayed on his mind. The possibility felt like medicine as she held the soft part of her belly below her ribs. She missed her Georgia, too.
* * *
“How are you, Sophie?” Dr. Alice White asked the next day, a long month into their sessions. Sophie had barely spoken since they met, but she appeared to want to. Every week, she arrived on time and sat by the sofa arm closest to Dr. White’s chair. She’d bring her eyebrows together sadly, abruptly. She’d rest two fingers on her lips, then drop her hand to her throat, clearly focused on her own voice and yet not using it. Dr. White kept trying, in front of her Harvard psychiatry degree on the wall, to tease out the knot inside her.
Silence.
“What’s on your mind?” Dr. White asked.
Sophie tugged a drawstring on her black Nike hoodie. She wasn’t trying to be difficult. She wanted to figure herself out, too. The flashbacks she kept having of Jake were interrupting her daily life. These didn’t feel like normal memories. They hijacked all five of her senses. One second, she’d be on the subway to work, dense air plugging her nose, and the next, she was sitting next to Jake in the dining hall, breathing him in again. It was like a lucid dream, but with body, substance, and spectacular detail. She could count the Cheerios in his bowl. She could feel the sun through Berkeley’s windows. She was there—but so briefly, and without ever losing track of the present—it was as if she were in both moments at once.
Her parents had already sent her to a general physician to see if anything was physically wrong. They wanted to understand not only the “hallucinations”—their word—but her weight loss, pallor, and why her hand kept drifting to her stomach. Sophie kept cradling her belly as if she were alerting the world to a tapeworm. All tests came back healthy.
“Last time, you mentioned ‘soul mates’—”
“I said I was reading about them,” Sophie corrected.
She’d been reading poems during the day at Free People, looking for other accounts of what she was going through. Rumi had written, “Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.” That passage had felt like a clue. What did psychiatry have to add? Why was she being catapulted into the past, somehow straddling then and now?
“Right,” Dr. White said. “Then you asked me if I believe in soul mates.”
“Yes.”
“I said there was no evidence of them, and I wanted to say more about that. ‘The One,’ ‘true love’—I went through the literature again.” Dr. White leaned forward but spoke gently, afraid to scare Sophie’s voice away. “Studies show that people who believe in soul mates are actually more likely to break up and have difficult relationships. Because they believe there’s only one person for them, they keep asking themselves: Is this him? Is this ‘the One’? A better strategy is to ask, How can I make my relationship better? People are happier when they feel empowered to improve their relationship. When they have a growth mindset, not a destiny mindset.”
“I don’t think the idea of soul mates hurts people.”
“Hm.”
She tried to lure more out of Sophie.
The pause snowballed.
“Well,” Dr. White conceded, “the idea of soul mates can make it harder for people to move on if they think they found the One.” Dr. White’s eyes widened as she understood. “What can complicate a breakup further is introversion,” Dr. White went on cautiously. “Introverts take more time than others to let their guards down. Then, in an intimate relationship, the introvert is no longer alone. She finds companionship, passion, depth, and trust. When that relationship ends, she—or he, excuse me—may not have close friends to rely on in the transition. She may lack the emotional support she needs, because she had fewer relationships to begin with.”
Sophie pinched a tent on the knee of her baggy jeans.
“Why are we talking about this, Sophie?” Dr. White asked.
“He…” Sophie’s voice cracked. “We were together for four years.” Dr. White did not take notes or disturb the momentum in any way. “He asked for a break. I haven’t heard from him since then. I don’t know, a year ago.” Plus one day. “We’re not together, but… I know that we are. There’s no evidence of it. I know that. If we went through all the facts together, I’d agree with you on every one. I don’t know how to measure what I’m talking about. I just know we’re together. Not in a parallel reality, but in this one. Not in a visible way, but in a real way. I don’t know how to prove it yet, but he’s with me. I just know.”
“You feel like he’s with you,” Dr. White repeated.
“Yes. Why is that?”
She waited for her answer.
Dr. White held her pen.
“He’s in everything I like: places, songs. Why I’m in New York City. I can’t see myself without him and—I have these flashbacks of being with him in college. But they’re so real.” Sophie rubbed her fingers together at eye level, emphasizing how tactile the visions were. “I get transported into these moments with him as if they’re happening again, or as if they never stopped happening. I’m in both places at once. I don’t understand.”
“Breakups can be traumatic.”
Sophie flinched.
“I mean breaks can be,” Dr. White corrected.
“What’s happening to me?
”
“Studies show the shock can be physical…”
Breaths pumped Sophie’s chest irregularly.
Dr. White listed the symptoms of a depressive episode.
“In order to live a healthy life again, the first step is to want to. Moving on really is a choice. Studies show it’s not only possible to find love again, but common…”
Sophie swallowed her disagreement. She wasn’t trying to feel okay. She was trying to understand. She needed to talk about this with someone who was looking for answers, not someone who thought she had them. What Sophie was sensing had never been explained.
“What is it?” Dr. White asked.
“Nothing,” Sophie lied.
Dr. White tapped her pen on her legal pad.
“Sophie,” she tried again. “What is it?”
Sophie wiped her eyes.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be here.”
“Do you want help?”
Sophie shielded her brow, revealing short nails bitten to stubs. Her pinky nail had split in half, divided by a thread-thin line of blood.
“Sophie, are you hurting yourself?”
Sophie hid her hand. She knew Dr. White would have to report any serious self-harm, making the question feel like a checklist item. For the first time since freshman fall, Sophie wished she were talking to Professor Malchik. He didn’t tick items off by rote. He was the only person she’d ever met who seemed to crave new paradigms and unlearning, as if those discoveries fed his soul. The stranger her theories were, the better.
“Sophie?” Dr. White said.
Sophie covered her eyes.
“Sophie, will you let me help you move on?”
No. Sophie touched her belly. Her pain was information. She just needed to understand, but maybe that wasn’t going to happen here. She looked around the room. The thin floor lamp by her end of the sofa supported a bowl of measly light. It barely lit the box of tissues on the coffee table next to two hardcovers in a row: Parenting a Prodigy by Dr. Alice White, MD, and Inside the Mind of a Gifted Child by Dr. Alice White, MD. Answers, answers, answers.
Sophie stood.
“Sophie—”
“I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
* * *
As Sophie rode the subway home, she thought about how she might reach out to Professor Malchik. They were four silent years apart. Their only real time together was marked by her withdrawal: she disappeared pigment by pigment until her lack of interest in his lessons was clear. She needed to do more of her own work before calling on him again. She needed to prove that she was committed to solving this problem, that this wasn’t an impulse but was instead connected to something reliable and enduring.
Meanwhile, sitting in front of her, a toddler played with a toy shaped like a segmented green worm. He bent and twisted it into different curves, riveted by the stop motion. The scene lingered with her as she got off at her stop.
Maybe that was the start of an idea.
CHAPTER 10
Peter gripped the podium facing an empty lecture hall. He’d covered a half mile inching side to side. This was the moment he’d been waiting for, ever since he got Sophie’s email—Subj: Physics PhD—which had revealed she’d matriculate today.
Apparently, she had a new idea to discuss and would join his Time Theory lecture this fall. She “looked forward to” seeing him in class. He’d googled her right away. In the four years since she’d graduated, she’d only managed inventory at Free People. But what had she been thinking? Einstein had worked a job far below his abilities, too, as a patent clerk while developing his theory of relativity. Had monotony freed her mind? To what end? Peter had spent the past week alert to people around him, looking for her in every face. The new school year was just days old and, for once, he felt the budding energy of it.
His head jerked up when the first student drifted in—not her.
Would he recognize her?
And then—
Sophie?
Her bony cheeks tapered into a sharp chin. Her hair was thinner, limper. She was always pale, but now, she verged on translucent under her hoodie.
Meanwhile, Sophie felt unusually vulnerable in this life-size replica of her past. Yale hadn’t changed. Their old college—Berkeley—still took up half a city block. Sterling Library was ornamented like a cathedral, as always. Silliman’s dining hall featured the same long tables under high ceilings. And—she and Jake had taken a class in this room. Two dozen rows of seats still faced the stage. Retractable desks still separated chairs.
This had been her world at eighteen years old.
Professor Malchik looked just like she remembered: thin, antsy. She waved and sat next to the wall. As she opened her spiral-bound notebook, in a sweeping flashback, she turned an identical cover eight years ago in that room. Jake was with her, right next to her, typing notes on his MacBook. She turned to face him. His dark eyelashes were distinct, countable. He smelled aggressively clean, hard-scrubbed. She felt that moment happening now—and, for a heartbeat, she was euphoric—until it slipped away.
She breathed deeply.
She dated a page corner Sep. 1 in curly script.
“My name is Peter Malchik,” Professor Malchik addressed the class. He glanced at his notes on the podium, crestfallen. He’d crafted this introduction for her, excited by her reborn, phoenix-like energy. Seeing her in person was deflating—until she raised her gaze to meet his. Her blue eyes were sharp. In them, he saw a sense of purpose not apparent in her body.
“Before our first lecture,” he went on as planned, “I’d like to say why I study what I do when the world presents infinite options. The truth is, the world confuses me. Maybe if life were easier to understand, or if I were enamored with vacuous consumerism, I would’ve gone into another field. But I always felt that ‘the world is much richer than what we see.’ ” It was a quote from Sophie’s college essay. “We can’t sense everything ourselves, but physics can help us go beyond the reach of what we’re given. I encourage you to keep an open mind. What you think is true may be false. What you think is false may be true. My job is to show you what the field believes today. I dare you to improve upon it.”
* * *
After class, Peter gazed at the steel-wool-like rug, granting his students the comfort of anonymity as they left. He and Sophie had never chosen a time to meet. In their emails—her call, his response—they’d only gone so far as his I look forward to seeing you, too. He peeked to see her walking toward him. Only the two of them remained.
“Hi.” Her voice was soft.
“Sophie. Good to see you.”
“You too.”
His pockets kept him from fidgeting.
Where were the other words?
“I was happy to hear from you.” Peter tried to rescue momentum. “And to hear you’re back in the field.” He studied her from an arm’s length away. She had a deep sensitivity to her now—wounded, open—but balanced by new, palpable resolve. “Some PhDs take their time choosing a focus. I was glad to hear you had one.”
“Yes. Block theory?”
Oh—now it was clear why she wanted his help. Peter had published extensively on that topic. Block theory claimed that all events in the past, present, and future existed at once, frozen in a “block” of space-time. Everything that had happened or would happen was actually occurring now. The theory was perfectly captured in Einstein’s words, “For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” This block of space-time was depicted in scientific papers as a 3D rectangle, where the length represented increasing time: at one end lay the big bang, and at the other, the last moment of existence. The block contained, for example, Sophie’s birth, every second of her college years, and her death, all at once. Block theory implied that people existed at multiple times simultaneously, but it remained unproven.
“I thought we could talk about it?” Sophie asked.
“I’d love to.
And… to be clear, you don’t need to bring your ideas only to me.”
She pinched her eyebrows.
“Anyone would—will be happy to help you, whatever you need.” He averted his eyes. “You’re not obligated to come to me, just because we worked together in the tutorial.”
“But I want to talk to you.”
“Well, thank you.”
“Because you care.”
He rapped the side of the podium, energized.
“In that case, we could talk tomorrow?” he asked. The wall clock behind Sophie read 6:10 p.m. He imagined Maggie leaning over a boiling pot of chicken noodle soup in their kitchen. “My wife’s expecting me home for dinner soon.”
“I could walk you?”
* * *
“So, block theory?” Peter probed as they climbed Hillhouse. “How’d you get into that?”
“Intuition.”
She felt sheepish admitting that this wasn’t a logical quest. It relied on belief without reason and knowing without proof. She imagined these kinds of conversations were typically had with new age healers, pastors, or yoga teachers. How would he react?
“That’s okay,” he reassured her kindly.
“I became aware that the past isn’t gone. It’s happening right now.”
“You can… feel the past?”
“Yes.”
“How did this happen?”
“I fell in love.” Peter’s open mind encouraged her. She let the truth flow. “When you fall in love the way I did, I think your perspective shifts. You’re more in touch with the way the world really is. You can see and feel parts of reality you didn’t see before.”
“I’ve never heard that,” he admitted.
She shrugged.
“When you say ‘love,’ ” he went on, “what does that mean to you?”
“There’s an Anish Kapoor sculpture in Maine. It’s a metal plate about this big”—she spread her arms to the full length of her wingspan—“and made of mirrors. So, when you stand in front of it, your image is scrambled. You have this sense of being shattered into a million pieces.” She and Jake had visited the sculpture at the Colby College Museum of Art in August right before their sophomore year. “To me, love is when you can see someone that way and feel like nothing has changed. It’s hard to explain, but when you can scramble their appearance—their atoms, really—and what you feel for them is the same, that’s love.”
The Love Proof Page 11
