“Daya and I went to a Dada exhibit last week. It wasn’t my taste. The collages were abrasive, violent. They mashed up industrial elements, body parts, and magazine cutouts like ransom letters. But that’s a reflection of the era. That’s why it was great art. I think artists as a category are people drawn to express the world around them. Within that, different artists choose different tools. For some, it’s painting, or sculpture, collages, or—”
“Physics?”
She smiled.
“For you, maybe. Not me.”
“Are you on track for your show?”
“Yes. Barring one last painting, but I’ll finish that eventually.”
She waited.
And waited.
He smiled.
“All right,” she said at last. “Shall we?”
* * *
Liam sat dumbfounded on a sunny bench, having just left Sophie’s office.
Who was she?
She’d been too generous for him still to know so little about her. After taking a tender, unhurried interest in his art, she’d guided him through simple math for an hour. She never lost her patience. She dignified every one of his dense questions with her full attention. She didn’t even answer her phone when it rang. She acted as if there was nowhere else she’d rather be than reviewing basic physics. After they solved the final problem, she offered to help him again next week. Of course, he’d agreed. But weren’t teaching assistants and tutors invented to protect faculty time? He felt bad imposing on this middle-aged woman.
He raised his Roxster wrist and searched “Sophie, Yale physics” using the images filter. One million results? Were there really a million photos of her? Or related to her? He scrolled down. President Cohan? A much younger Sophie shook his hand by the unmistakable columns of the White House. In the next thumbnail, Sophie stood next to the Obamas in black tie at a Nobel Prize award ceremony. She’d won in physics. Then, Sophie was pictured walking by the Brazilian embassy in Buenos Aires. The embassy was a domed building like the US Congress. The caption mentioned a global scientific conference where Sophie was the keynote speaker. Liam enlarged the next image: Sophie Jones, the Halloween costume.
Wow.
Sophie Jones.
Of course.
From block theory.
He’d learned about that in high school. Sophie had proved it with the Malchik theorem. Everyone who’d lived through that moment said its memory endured in tragedy-level detail. The event had touched people around the world. Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking, scientific names engraved on everyone’s consciousness—even painters’—Sophie Jones was among them. The woman he’d just taken for granted wasn’t a Sophie, but the Sophie. She stood behind the insight of the century.
So why did she care about him? On his way out the door, she’d asked how he was finding the dining halls. Did he like the food Yale served? Was he staying hydrated? It was like a conversation with his mother—if she were gifted with concentration.
Lily was a free spirit: loving and nonjudgmental, but not the most attentive parent. She’d never been able to pin down a specific time to meet. Instead, she suggested a half-hour range, and she was rarely on time for that. She served dinner at a different time every night. Sometimes, while he was at Trinity, they would eat at 6 p.m. in their apartment on Ninetieth and Lexington. Sometimes they ate at 9 p.m. There was never any way of telling in advance which end of the spectrum they’d be on that evening. Of course she asked Liam questions about himself, but never such specific ones and never so many in a row. Her approach to life was visceral—which was perfectly all right. At the end of the day, he was happy. Healthy. At Yale.
But Sophie had really listened.
Sophie Jones.
He covered his eyes, embarrassed. His physics class was a survey designed for non-science majors. He knew his homework was cringingly simple even as he struggled to grasp it. Wasn’t she supposed to be preoccupied with grander thoughts about space and time? Much more than his student art show? People in her stratum were supposed to be busy. His dad was. Liam barely knew him. Besides, weren’t geniuses smug? Didn’t they take advantage of being idolized? Picasso had been famously nightmarish in person. Of the seven major women in his life, two had gone insane and two had committed suicide. Sophie had been kind. Why didn’t the world’s most brilliant woman have any idea of her own importance?
* * *
Liam showed up next week in a pristine white oxford and belted khakis. He stepped into Sophie’s office looking like a senatorial version of himself.
“Good afternoon,” he greeted.
They shook hands.
“How are you?” she asked kindly.
“I’m doing well.”
“How’s your art show coming?”
They filled their old seats.
“Coming along.” Sophie sensed something left unsaid. “Did some sketching today. And more work on these problems than I’m used to. I really tried my best.”
This time, when Liam opened his homework on the tablet, the space under each problem showed tattered equations instead of the typical, unattempted white. He seemed more anxious than usual. Had he googled her? Told his parents about her? Afternoon sun warmed the room. As Liam pushed his sleeves up to his elbows, Sophie’s eyes were drawn uncontrollably to the familiar dark hair on his forearms. His seashell bracelet cozied up to his Roxster. It was like seeing a picture of somewhere she used to live, now different, but still home.
Liam pulled a palm-size sketchbook out of his back pocket. He rested it off to the side on the table, drawing Sophie’s eyes.
“What were you sketching?” she asked.
“My last piece for the show.”
She waited.
“I start everything in pencil.” He peeled the cover back to the first page. Daya’s face was drawn in moonlight gray. The likeness was startling, except he’d replaced her hair with flower stems that blossomed below her collarbone. “This is a portrait that’ll be on display.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“Is there a theme to your show?”
“Not intentionally,” he admitted. “But every piece does connect back to one of my relationships.” He flipped to a second sketch of Daya. This one replaced her body with a curving flower stem. Leaves sprouted up her arms. It reminded Sophie of a Salvador Dalí painting, The Burning Giraffe. In it, the central figure had cabinet drawers stacked up one of her legs. Another drawer replaced her bust. She stood in the desert while a distant giraffe burned red down its spine—in a shockingly imaginative way. Sophie loved Dalí. Liam had the same impulse to braid fantasy into reality, but in his hands, the braid came out beautiful.
He dragged his thumb down the rest of the booklet, playing a slideshow of sketches. His finger pinned the final one to cardboard. That narrow profile—but transformed. Jake’s mouth was a clockface. His suit jacket was covered in the word ROXSTER. Liam had apparently rejected the image by scratching zigzags on top. Black, destructive thunderbolts struck some of the details. Liam closed the book.
He forced a laugh.
“Still working on that one,” he said.
The portrait was so unflattering that Sophie felt compelled to stick up for Jake.
“He’s a complex man.”
Liam froze.
Of course Sophie knew Jake. She’d admitted that when they met. Her comment about their resemblance had led Liam to believe she’d known Jake in college. Another professor had introduced himself in a similar random encounter on Cross Campus. That man, Dr. Richards, had taken Cold War with Jake and now taught history here. Whatever connection Sophie’d had to Jake, Liam had assumed it was superficial, brief. Jake didn’t nurture relationships with anyone, not even with Lily and him, Jake’s own family. But Sophie’s comment—“He’s a complex man”—was too loving. It showed more familiarity than Liam had expected. Suddenly, he understood why she helping him: she’d actually been close to Jake.
/> “Hm. Well… you probably know him better than I do.” He shrugged, vulnerable. “My biological father and I don’t really talk.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. That’s life.”
His tone sagged. As he drew inward, Sophie’s pity came out. She’d struggled with the same fate: a permanent connection to Jake. She wanted to make sure Liam was okay.
She pointed at the sketchbook.
“What did you want that picture to say?” she asked.
Sophie looked so genuinely concerned that he wanted to tell her more. Besides, he’d always been an open person, and he liked talking to her. She was an exceptional listener, as if she had four ears and two hearts.
“You really want to know?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Well, like I said, great art shows what’s inside of you. So, the answer to your question is a little personal—if you’re okay with that.”
She nodded again.
He inhaled.
“I don’t know how much of this you know already. My mom and Jake weren’t together long before I showed up. A few months. I don’t think he wanted Mom to have me. To go through with it, I mean. She’s never said that, and I doubt he ever said that explicitly, but… He’s a good person. He’s always paid my tuition, but I never spent weekends with him. You see what I mean? He just wasn’t around. He was a provider, but I don’t think he ever wanted to be my dad.” Liam winced as if the word tasted bad. “Mom says he’s ‘cold,’ but…”
He shook his head.
“But…” Sophie prompted.
“It isn’t that he’s indifferent. He cares a lot—but about his work. He really does think he’s fulfilling his destiny by going to work every day. Most people think about what they do as just a job, but his job has to be, like, an expression of his soul.” Liam paused. “I get that a little bit, because I paint, but it’s not the same. He doesn’t seem to enjoy things. My theory is, I think he got hurt, and he went like a clam.” He shut his hands like shells hinged at the wrist. “He shut himself off from the world, maybe. I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
She lowered her head.
“Bringing him up,” she said.
“It’s okay.”
He smiled to reassure her.
“I email him every few months to tell him how I’m doing. Sometimes he responds.” He shrugged. “But my mom has always been there.”
His tablet went to screensaver.
“So you knew Jake in college?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What was he like?”
Sophie remembered lying next to Jake on Berkeley’s hammock their sophomore year. The setting sun lit a yellow edge over the college around them. A paperback of Star Dust: Poems lay tented on her chest, just like New Haven: Reshaping the City, 1900–1980 did on Jake’s. He was supposed to be reading chapter three for one of his classes. His green polo was tattered around the sleeves and collar. Sophie eyed his tan skin through the holes.
“Who would I eat with?” he asked.
“Yes,” Sophie confirmed her question. “If you could have dinner tonight with anyone, me excluded, who would it be?”
“Probably my dad.”
They rocked back and forth.
“Why?” she asked.
“Just to see how he’s doing. What he’s like.”
Liam’s question remained.
“What was he like?”
She united the two tips of her shirt collar.
“He was driven. A hard worker. Intense. I’m sure you know all of that.” She tried to say enough without giving away too much. She didn’t want to admit to her relationship with Jake, which might make Liam uneasy and drive him away. “But I never thought he was selfish. Some people want to achieve for their ego, but I always thought he was motivated by other people. He was in it for something bigger than himself.”
Liam nodded.
“A lot of people here are like that,” he said. “Driven, I mean. They hunker down and shut others out, but Jake takes it to an extreme. I care about my work, of course, but I care more about Daya. My mom. The ones around me.” He paused. “When you’re balanced, people look down on you. You get judged when you care about relationships as much as work. Nobody says that, but you can tell. It’s not something that people here really respect.”
“That sounds familiar.”
Liam waited.
“Something similar happened to me,” Sophie went on delicately. “In undergrad, I started to care more about my relationships—well, one in particular—and people thought I wasn’t reaching my potential. I never liked how that was framed, as if it’s a trade-off between love and work. Love enhances everything.” She breathed deeply. “That might sound strange, coming from me. I know how I’m seen. I’ll be remembered for my theorem, for my mind. People don’t see that my greatest gift was really…” My heart. “Anyway, I don’t have a stake in how I’m remembered, but it’s interesting to me that it’s so misleading.”
She lowered her gaze, saw the tablet.
“Well,” she went on. “We should probably do some physics.”
* * *
Liam returned to Sophie’s office again one week later.
And again.
And again.
Every Thursday at 4 p.m., they assumed the same seats at her round table. At least half of their conversations had nothing to do with physics. Sophie dug him up question by question. Where did he grow up? With his mom on the Upper East Side. Where did he consider home? Wherever Daya was. How long had they been together? They met during freshman assembly. She was wearing a bright orange dress and golden hoop earrings that, whenever she laughed, dazzled like glinting equators. Had he always wanted to paint? Yes. Growing up, he drew compulsively on the walls of his mom’s apartment: skinny crescent moons, stars in dense packs, and the sun in a perfect circle. Why did he focus on images of outer space? He only saw Jake a couple times a year, when Jake arrived carrying a magazine covered in stars.
“Thank you for your time,” Liam said.
They ended every Thursday that way.
Meanwhile, Liam bought a new sketchbook from the Yale Bookstore. He needed to finish his portrait of Jake. The rest of his show was complete: three canvases of Daya, two of Lily, and two of Berkeley, his dorm of four years, painted first as a freshman and then in diptych as a senior. Page after page, Liam sketched versions of Jake, but nothing felt honest enough. He crossed every image out with lightning slashes. Sophie had asked if he had a good relationship with Jake, and to be honest, Liam wasn’t sure. Maybe the other portraits had been easier to finish because he knew how the subjects made him feel.
* * *
“Is that it?” Liam asked.
He tapped the number he’d just written on his tablet and squinted his eyes into doubtful slits. Sophie read the math from top to bottom and then paused.
He’d been here an hour, and they’d only just started his problem set. Was he sleeping all right? How was Daya? The amount of time Sophie spent looking after him—on top of the enormous privilege of her private tutoring—was starting to feel wrong. He rubbed his eyes. She was too kind. He’d tried to balance the conversational scale between them, but her modesty made that almost impossible. Wikipedia had filled in some of the gaps, so he knew she’d never married or had any children. He knew she lived on Hillhouse and was famously introverted, but the rest of her personal life was a black box. How exactly had she known Jake in college? He never did ask. The question felt intrusive.
“Why’d you become a professor?” he asked.
“Hm?” Sophie asked.
He stopped rubbing his eyes.
“Is it out?” Jake asked in their double. His left eye welled with tears and surface tension. He blinked. A thin river ran down his face. Sophie studied him with her hands on his shoulders still drenched from his run outside.
“Yes,” she declared. “Bug no more.”
“Are my eyes okay?” he asked.
Her expression was stern.
“Soph, what color are my eyes?”
“They’re white. You’ve been cursed.”
“Soph! I’m serious.”
“I’m sorry. You’re fine, honest.”
“The thing flew right into my eye.”
Jake looked nervous.
“I promise,” she said. “I looked.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“It’s just a little bit of a curse.”
“Sophie!” He grinned.
“Really small.”
He laughed.
“All right, all right,” he said. “You know, you’re lucky I love you.”
She kissed his forehead.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
“I just feel like I’m wasting your time,” Liam admitted. “I really appreciate it. I feel very lucky, but… I don’t know. Did you want to teach?”
Liam’s pink eyelids stuck to his own teary dew. Sophie gazed at him with affection. He looked tortured by the prospect of imposing on her. She decided she couldn’t dodge all of his questions. She mirrored his lean against the back of her chair.
“Well, I didn’t really mean to end up here.”
“Huh,” Liam said. “You come across as a planner.”
She smiled.
“You really want to know?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Sophie tilted her head to the side.
“For me, it was about understanding things I couldn’t see,” she explained.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, it’s boring.”
She tucked hair behind her ear.
“It’s not boring at all,” he insisted.
“Okay,” she said tentatively. “Well, take air.” She gestured around them. “It’s here, and it’s invisible to us, but really, it’s nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and argon. It clings to our planet because of gravity; it moves around us in whirls we feel as wind and weather; and it carries sound waves.” Liam didn’t seem to follow. “Or take magnetic force. Earth has its own magnetic field, and it runs from deep underground into space. That field protects us from harmful particles shed by the sun.” Liam still looked stumped. “Or take streamers. The electricity in the air before lightning strikes? My point is that you can’t see any of these things, but you can feel them, and physics can prove them to you. You can’t see them, but physics shows you they’re there.”
The Love Proof Page 16
