The Love Proof

by Madeleine Henry

  During a storm, cloud particles break into positive and negative charges. The negatives shoot down to earth in “streamers,” channels that conduct electricity through the air. When streamers connect with positive charges on the ground, the circuit is complete, and lightning strikes. Even though our eye is drawn to the fantastic bolt, streamers are everywhere in a storm. This piece is about the powerful connections we cannot see and the invisibilities that shape our world.

  Sophie stood up slowly. She noticed that the comets springing up from the ground had lightsaber blue clockfaces—an unmistakable nod to Roxster. This was Liam’s ode to Jake: the connection he felt to a father who wasn’t around.

  “Wow,” Sophie said. “It’s—”

  “Liam!” Lily called.

  She sauntered in wearing stonewashed overalls the same color as Liam’s pants, as if they’d been cut from the same enormous denim square. She shone a smile on Daya before she hugged Liam with all of her strength. She kissed his forehead and then up one side of his face. Liam laughed. Then, at last, Lily and Sophie stood face-to-face, close enough that they could brush each other with the tip of an index finger.

  “I’m Lily,” she began.

  She held out her hand.

  “Liam’s mom.”

  Sophie felt Lily’s warmth. It was in this woman’s kind smile, the number of times she’d kissed Liam in a row, and how she kept a hand on his shoulder now.

  “Sophie Jones,” Sophie said.

  They shook hands.

  Sophie cleared her throat.

  “I taught Liam physics,” she explained.

  “She did more than that,” Liam said.

  He gestured at the painting.

  “Oh, Liam,” Lily gushed. “It’s a masterpiece.” The four of them stood as points in a jagged hemisphere around it. “I love how weightless it is.” Lily swirled her fingers inches above a gray whirl in the sky. “Who else could make a storm so light? You amaze me.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” Liam said. “Sophie actually helped with the idea.”

  * * *

  Outside the Yale School of Art at that moment, heat wrinkled the air above the black hood of Jake’s car. He wore a crewneck over gray jeans, one suit jacket away from his usual outfit. He’d considered wearing something different—special—but, then again, this was who he was. It was appropriate. He wasn’t trying to hide.

  He didn’t pray or worship any oracle in particular, but that morning, he’d read his horoscope. He’d felt so wide open inside and unsteady on his feet that he had the unusual desire to ask for help from beyond the human world. Janice was Catholic, but the church had never stuck with him. He didn’t know where else to turn. There was wisdom in the stars, wasn’t there? So, he read the advice meant for every Sagittarius: “Beware of strong emotions on this day. Your best tools will be clear thinking, patience, and staying calm.” It was vague, but the words soothed him. Jake felt a flickering connection to something eternal and unbreakable.

  He looked out his window at the city where he’d spent the most formative years of his life. So far, New Haven was just like he remembered. A teen walked by carrying volumes of Thoreau, Emerson, and Whitman. From here, Jake saw the building where he’d had a history class on the Cold War. He imagined its syllabus unchanged. Nearby, Jake had taken Psych 101, where he’d learned about immersion therapy for phobias. That treatment required people to confront what they feared, in virtual reality or in the real world. Someone who was afraid of crowds might face a mob in a simulation—or someone afraid of rejection might face the woman he loved. Jake opened the door. He put sunglasses on, took them off, and then left them on the seat folded into the glasses equivalent of the fetal position.

  He stepped onto the sidewalk.

  The art building glimmered.

  As Jake walked toward it, step by step, he’d never felt more vulnerable. His physical awareness was at an all-time high. When he swallowed, he felt his entire existence in his throat. A loop of breaths linked him tenuously to life. He was acutely aware that he had no special powers, only soft tissue and breakable bones. He was imperfect. He’d hurt other people with his selfishness and neglect. Like many others, he’d fallen in love and never forgotten it. He was just a man.

  He stepped inside.

  The gallery bustled.

  A teen handed him a catalog. Jake rolled it into a tube and squeezed it at his side. He was head and shoulders above almost everyone else. Liam stood twenty feet away talking to Lily, Daya, and… Sophie. Finally. They were in the same room. His veins flooded with euphoria and terror. He needed to be closer to her, feared she didn’t feel the same way. After all, his flaws had had fifty-five years to emerge. He’d abandoned her and built a separate, broken family—but he did love her. Deeply, singularly. His life wasn’t perfect, but his love for her was. She stood sideways to him. He walked toward her. Her profile was small. He could’ve covered it with his thumb. Back when they were in college, he used to watch her listen to their professor, her expression kindly curious. Now, an arm’s length in front of him, she wore an expression just as kind, just as curious. She was still Sophie. His feelings for her had never changed.

  “Jake,” Liam said.

  Lily and Daya turned.

  Sophie swiveled tick by tick, slow as a clock’s second hand. A row of ceiling lights shone on them now face-to-face. His dark eyes tagged her blue.

  “Hi, Sophie.”

  His heart throbbed. Ecstasy, fear. He was thrilled to be reunited, horrified she might not be. The moment was delicate, precarious. She could end it all with a slight shake of her head, or with a goodbye and a sudden rush to be somewhere else. He waited and—her gaze didn’t leave him. Her expression was warm, hopeful. Optimistic, even.

  “You recognize me?” she asked.

  “Everything’s the same.”

  Her, his heart.

  He cleared his throat.

  He had to change the subject before he lost composure.

  “Well,” he said. “How about a tour?”

  * * *

  Liam guided them through the gallery. All three portraits of Daya blended her limbs into flowers, ferns, and other greenery. Daya blushed when Liam said he wanted the plant theme to evoke fertility. As Liam explained each piece, he glanced more often at Jake than at anyone else. Jake didn’t interject. He had no thoughts to share or questions to ask. His mind felt scrambled and useless. All he could do was feel: hopeful, vulnerable, and observant. Throughout the tour, he and Sophie stayed side by side, only an inch of space between them. Never touching, never far. He beheld every one of her details. Eventually, he caught her eye for an electric millisecond as Lily gushed over My Mom the Miracle Tree. They ended at Streamers. Liam stood in front of the painting, obscuring it, with his arms across his chest.

  “Thank you for—” Liam started.

  “What about this one?” Jake interrupted. “This is the cover, right?”

  Liam nodded, stepped aside.

  “Well,” he started warily. “It captures ‘streamers,’ which are an invisible, powerful presence during a storm. This piece takes that idea and finds an analogy in relationships. Sometimes, you have a powerful bond with someone who isn’t around. Just like streamers, two people can have something charged, out of sight, connected.”

  Sophie, Lily, and Daya were quiet. Everywhere else, chatty visitors milled about the space. The crowd cinched in groups of three or four. A few leaned toward particular works, backs hunched, noses dangerously close to the paint.

  “That’s wise,” Jake said.

  “Thank you.”

  Lily smiled proudly.

  “And thank you all for coming,” Liam said.

  “Can I take you two to lunch later, sweetheart?” Lily asked.

  “Yes!” Daya interjected.

  “Perfect,” Liam agreed.

  Lily looked at Jake.

  “Are you free to join?” she asked him.

  Jake hadn’t spent a weekday out of the office in years
. His dark desk at Olympus, longer than his wingspan and finished in midnight java, was his home. His original team of four plus Tawny all still worked for him. Lionel hadn’t retired, either. He came to One Madison in a suit and tie every day with the appetite of his teenage self, still eager for that next best idea. Today, Jake didn’t have a call he needed to take or a meeting he needed to attend. His schedule was in his own hands. Yes, he’d be “free to join,” but the idea of a lunch break was so strange to him—in such unfamiliar territory—that he couldn’t answer.

  “Anyway.” Liam put everyone out of their discomfort. “It really was great to see you.”

  Jake squeezed the catalog.

  “I’ll be here tomorrow,” he said.

  Liam smiled, thanked him.

  Jake and Sophie left at the same time. They walked as close as if they were in the middle of a conversation. Gallery chatter faded step by step. Jake summoned the elevator.

  “Your son,” Sophie said, “is a really good man.”

  Inside the elevator, the only sound was their breathing. Sophie remained acutely aware of Jake’s body just an inch away. In a flashback, she unzipped her backpack next to him in Bass. She imagined how their elbows might graze if she got lost in her own mind, her body forgotten. The vision faded. Her love for him remained. Seconds later, they came to a stop. Stepped outside. Faced each other in the bright morning. The small veins under Jake’s eyes were bigger now. They protruded like wrinkles turned inside out. His jawline was softer without being any less lean. She would know his face anywhere. Her love for him was timeless.

  “Do you want to take a walk?” Jake asked.

  His tone was not presumptive.

  She nodded.

  They strolled up Hillhouse past the firs.

  “This is the most I’ve been outdoors in a while,” Jake said.

  They walked.

  Rays of sunlight cast spiderweb patterns on the sidewalk.

  “What’d you think of the show?” Sophie asked.

  He smirked and laughed quietly.

  Sophie looked around for what had happened.

  “You won’t believe me,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I had a hard time focusing.”

  They passed the psychology building where they’d met. There, they’d learned the concept of social judgment. When you met someone, you instantly sized up two qualities: competence and warmth. On those two axes, you plotted every first encounter. But Jake believed he could judge a third dimension: what people wanted from him. His teachers had wanted him to make them feel important. His mom had wanted him to succeed. Most people wanted his money. With Sophie, though, he never knew. She didn’t seem to want anything from him. He couldn’t sense any agenda. She was the first person he’d ever met whose affection was truly free.

  They reached the top of Science Hill by the brick-and-metal Kline Biology Tower. It stood sixteen floors high, prominent as an obelisk. They sat next to each other at a picnic table half a football field away from the Sloane Physics Lab. They could see into Kline’s ground-floor café and over the rest of campus below.

  “Is it what you remembered?” she asked.

  “You are.”

  “Jake.”

  Their battered table was riddled with carved initials, scratches of every width, tree rings, and a crack down the middle that appeared to split the table in slow motion. Jake scratched the surface and flicked a microscopic wood chip into the quad.

  “Most people, when they get older, they get harder,” he said. “You didn’t.”

  “Jake.”

  “What?”

  “Go slow.”

  A young couple sat at another picnic table and shared two sandwiches out of plastic to-go boxes, one half for each person. Jake reached for her hand. She traced a figure eight around two of his knuckles with her thumb.

  “I can’t believe I let you go,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “You didn’t,” she said.

  He squinted.

  “That’s what I proved,” she said.

  “You proved block theory.”

  “Because I felt you with me when you were gone. I kept walking into visions of us in college as if those moments were happening now. Then, when I read about block theory… I just knew. That was it. That was true.” The idea had been there all along in the poetry she loved most. “Love rests on no foundation… with no beginning or end.” “Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” “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.” The spirit of block theory had been in all of Jake’s music celebrating timeless connections.

  “I had those visions too.”

  He looked at his watchband.

  “Did you ever… see the future?” he asked.

  “No, why? Did you?”

  He nodded.

  “What’d you see?” she asked.

  In his mind, the sun had set. Their house was like Sophie’s childhood home, surrounded by trees. Her silhouette shaded a yellow window in the library.

  Jake squeezed her hand.

  “Us.”

  He reflected.

  “And, now that I think about it, some of my ideas. Sometimes at work, I saw companies taking off before everyone else did. They were like visual gut feelings. I thought they might’ve been more than that, but… I don’t know, I thought that would’ve been impossible.”

  “Is that how you picked Roxster?”

  He shook his head.

  “No, I picked that for you. Roxster had always funded research on time. My biggest decisions were always for you, Sophie.” He didn’t want to waste more time. “How do you feel about New York?”

  “What?”

  “I can’t go back without you.”

  Sophie’s blue eyes grew.

  “It’s changed since we’ve been there,” he went on. “Not like this.” He pointed around Science Hill. As her head swiveled, he imagined them in a furnished version of his apartment. “I should’ve asked you sooner. I should’ve come back decades ago. But I heard this interview… I thought you had more to prove. I should’ve just come back.”

  Sophie squinted in confusion.

  “With the Yale Daily News? Your ‘other ideas’? I didn’t want to get in the way.”

  Sophie’s head slanted. She didn’t disagree.

  “You still do have other ideas,” he realized.

  He waited.

  “What are they?” he asked.

  She picked one.

  “When you fall in love, you see time the way it truly is. That’s the simple version of a bigger idea. The full truth is more complex than that. Have you ever heard of supersymmetry?” Jake shook his head. “It’s the idea that every particle has a partner, called its ‘superpartner.’ No one’s ever seen one. Or measured one. But they balance important equations that don’t make sense without them.” Jake nodded along. “Some say superpartners are components of dark matter, the parts of the universe we can’t see, and—”

  “And?”

  “I think these partners exist. More than that, I think they exist at every mass. I think everyone has a superpartner—a configuration of mass and energy—that connects them to the world beyond what we can see.” She squeezed Jake’s hand. “We form these intense connections with our superpartners, and they bring us closer to reality. It’s why we saw time as it actually is. I think this is the idea some people try to capture with the term soul mate, but it’s so much greater than that. It’s closer to a portal. A window. To everything we haven’t measured. We have real, physiological reactions to being around them. They balance us.”

  Jake wrapped his mind around the idea.

  “So why didn’t you explore that?”

  “I lost interest after block theory.”

  “Why?”

  “I trusted myself. I didn’t need to prove it to know it was true.”

&nbs
p; Science Hill was quiet.

  “You still have time to pursue it,” he said.

  He withdrew his hand.

  Sophie realized his intention: to leave in hopes she’d continue to work.

  “Jake,” she said, “that’s not how I want to spend my life. That’s not even the most important idea. Not even close.” Urgency warped her pace. She spoke faster. “It’s not about the mind. The most valuable insight of my life has been that the best use of time is to love. It’s not a sophisticated idea, and that’s exactly the point. People overvalue intellect. Life should be lived from the heart.” He appeared deeply thoughtful. “So, whenever I have the choice, I should spend my time with other people. Even if that means I leave less of a mark on the world at large.” It was why she still taught. She’d matured into the most social version of herself: teaching classes, holding office hours, seeing the Malchiks and their friends, and visiting her parents. She was unfailingly kind. She’d never stopped loving Jake.

  He exhaled a long breath.

  He looked prepared to deliver bad news.

  “Jake, please don’t make any rash decisions. We don’t need to solve everything today. We’ll see each other tomorrow. You’ll be clearheaded by then.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I know.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Sophie walked down Hillhouse in blazing sunlight, drifting in step with dozens of families. Their sound waves collided around her. Laughs, shrieks, and chatter competed for air as everyone headed to Cross Campus for the graduation ceremony.

  She hadn’t spoken to Jake yet, even though they’d exchanged phone numbers.

  He would be there, right? She stopped at the open gates. Thousands of folding chairs faced a stage in front of Sterling Library. The crowd stunned her into a standstill. Only fifteen minutes remained until the procession. The front section stayed empty awaiting the graduates. She spotted her parents, Jolene, and the Malchiks in the section closest to Hopper College.