Love Is Both Wave and Particle

by Paul Cody

  In the last week of March, those of us who were finishing up, who had found positions, were in an unusually gay mood. Chicago’s winters are long and cold, but that week was unseasonably warm. There were a few flowers and buds on the trees, and the sun shined and felt so welcome when you closed your eyes and put your face to it.

  Light. Warmth.

  I had been several times to dinner with Susan, Daniel, and Enid Dowd, a chemist who had also just finished and was going to work at Bell Laboratories. We ate our dinners, and it seemed Daniel and Enid were some sort of couple.

  On a weekday night, after dinner, we went to a barroom for drinks, something I very rarely did. The bar was just off campus, a quarter mile perhaps from the science quads. I drank two or three beers and I was quite happy, and a little off my guard, if you will.

  When we got outside, the night was beautiful and fragrant with flowers and exhaust, garbage, and the very smell of the earth itself. Enid and Daniel took their leave of us, and then Susan did something strange, something I’ve thought often of over the ensuing years.

  She took my arm, when she had not so much as touched me in all the time I’d known her. As we walked toward the quad, she held my arm, and not only was it not unpleasant, I enjoyed the warmth, the gentle pressure, the presence of this tall and rather glamorous woman.

  She said she wanted to show me something in her office. She said she’d found some amazing things in PET scans that showed patterns in the brain of violent criminals who were shown very scary photographs.

  We walked across the empty quad, and I recall the echo of our footsteps, and thinking how they would echo, those sound waves, for a very long time.

  She had the keys to the locked building, and we went to her third-floor office. Inside it was dark, but she only turned the computer on. She touched my back and neck, and I felt nothing but pleasure. No anxiety, no sense of panic, nothing the least bit awkward. I was outside myself. I was not who I was.

  She sat on the edge of her desk, and she said, Trevor.

  She took my hands, and drew me to her. She put one hand on the side of my face, and stroked the hair off my cheek.

  I’ve wanted you for a while, she whispered.

  She put my hands on her breasts, and I was shocked by how soft they were, and then she leaned forward and kissed me lightly. On the forehead, the neck, then on my lips. Then she kissed me more urgently. I found myself kissing her just as urgently.

  She lifted her skirt, and pushed her underwear down. She unbuckled my belt, unbuttoned and unzipped my trousers, and when she spread her legs—I was not myself. It was utter heaven itself. Like nothing I had dreamed could be in this world.

  Then it was over.

  Susan kissed me. She said, Lovely man.

  That is how Levon Grady was conceived.

  I was twenty-six years old, we were both twenty-six that spring, and I was not only not a virgin anymore, I was, at least in the biological sense, a father. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time.

  I never saw Susan Grady again. But I received a card in my mailbox in the physics department some time later. It was a photo of the stars, and inside, Susan wrote, Dearest Trevor—Good luck and congratulations and thank you and goodbye, all at once. I leave for Ithaca tomorrow. I wish all good things for you, and treasure our talks, and finally and at long last, our coming together.

  Love, Susan.

  I puzzled over the word love for a long time. Was that merely a convention, a way of saying, I’m fond of you, a form for sincerely, or best wishes? Because I was not conversant in the ways, the intricate byways, of love, or of any emotions, for that matter.

  As I thought about it, it seemed to me that light was something like human love. How could it be so smooth, so lovely and flowing and warm, the apex of human existence at times, and at other times so gritty, the cause of heartbreak and misery and misunderstanding and even murder?

  Did Susan Grady love me? In some way? Some particular convection of pity and affection and attraction and like-mindedness?

  Had she planned this final-semester tryst, this conjoining of parts?

  What was in her mind?

  At any rate, I moved to Cleveland and took up my work, and I received an email from Susan Grady. She wrote that she had thought long and diligently over this, but in the end, after much rumination, she wanted to tell me: that she was pregnant, and that there was no doubt but that I was the father. She expected nothing from me. She had initiated this whole incident. I was in no way responsible.

  She had decided to go ahead with the pregnancy, with having the child, and she had plenty of means to raise it on her own. She thought, she said, that I should know. If the positions were reversed, she said that she would want to know.

  I thought for several days, and then I wrote back that I didn’t know if congratulations were in order, but that I should like to contribute to the child’s upbringing, monetarily.

  She said that was more than kind, but that it was not necessary. She did not regret the night in question, but she did feel a twinge of guilt about how she had breached my castle, and taken me, as it were, by storm.

  We exchanged emails, and after several weeks, we came to an agreement. I would set up a fund, a college fund called a 529, in the child’s name and under Susan’s control, that sheltered the money from taxes, and to which I would contribute several thousand dollars each year in well-managed growth funds.

  I would increase the contributions as my salary grew, and there is now $146,382.17 for Levon Grady to go to college, should he wish to do so.

  As a strange footnote, I myself, Trevor Towns, met and married a not-so-young woman, very unlike Susan Grady, who worked in the physics library, more than five years ago. Marie and I are the proud parents of a four-year-old girl named Susan.

  Marie knows about Susan and Levon, and she was curiously unconcerned about my tryst, my assignation, years earlier, and she chose the name Susan, which suggests that Marie believed Susan had done something important for me.

  We lead a quiet life. Marie cooks, I clean up, and after Susan has been put to bed for the night, I listen to music, using headphones, in the dark living room. I favor the baroque: Scarlatti, Telemann, Handel, but it is Bach who takes me to heaven. The simple sounds of a cello, a piano, a single note, a run of notes, then the repetitions, the intricacies and variations, always so carefully controlled. The way he weaves and reweaves, in unexpected ways, and the patterns occurring, recurring. Hiding, surprising, finding full flower, and it is a night in spring, and the flowers and trees are in bloom, and there is the smell of the earth.

  She took my arm, and I seemed to have stepped out of myself. Perhaps, that night, the rest of my life was born. It was like whole other rooms of life existed, of which I had been unaware. It was like for the first time in my life I actually stopped, looked at, and truly smelled a flower.

  Twenty-two

  Sam

  Like blinking eyes and beating hearts, the hours and days and weeks went steadily by. We were in November, and I was feeling pretty darn good, and for me, that was way above average.

  Levon was not so hot, at least I didn’t think so. He seemed more withdrawn, more inward, and things were roiling inside, and it was hard to tell how or why or exactly what was going on.

  Though that wasn’t exactly true.

  One thing he starting writing about, and it was pouring out, was his father. He started writing how he didn’t know his father, had never known his father. Had never seen him, never even seen a picture of him. He didn’t know his name, didn’t know if he was a serial rapist or killer in prison somewhere in the Midwest, for all he knew. Or was dead. Or sold insurance in California, or surfed in Australia.

  From as early as he could remember, his mother had told him that he had no need to know about his father, that it would be bad for him, for Levon, and that his father would never be part of his life. She said to just block that thought, that concept—of a father—out completely, and he’d be ha
ppier and healthier.

  Occasionally, over the years, he’d ask about or mention his father, and his mother would repeat her mantra. Don’t ask. Don’t go there. Once, when he was ten or eleven, he pressed her, and he said her eyes got cold, that they had a look almost of meanness behind them. As though she could get very ugly about this, and he was not going to learn anything.

  And for the most part, he did block it out, didn’t think about it—at least in any conscious, deliberate way. But he’d find himself having dreams about a person he thought was his father. Sometimes he was scary and scarred and had long greasy hair and was about to do something terrible to Levon, and sometimes he was large and kindly, and they were in sunlit fields, or camping in pine woods, and cooking around a small campfire, or watching a baseball game, which was strange because he had never watched a baseball game for more than five minutes in his life.

  The thing with Susan was that she was a scientist down to her toes, to the bones in her toes. She believed in facts. She hated ambiguities, and she was certain Levon needed to erase his father from his life, from their life. Case closed.

  But the older he got, the more it bothered him. The not knowing. And writing this project made it even worse. Why was she so adamant? So sure? Was she ashamed of something? Afraid of something? Did she really think he would be hurt terribly by knowing who his father was, much less meeting him?

  Who knows, he might have the male equivalent of a Vera for a father.

  He’d turn eighteen on December 23. He’d legally be an adult. Could he file for a copy of his birth certificate? Was that part of the Freedom of Information Act?

  On the other hand, I was writing about having to take riding lessons as a kid, and how the horses terrified me, and how every summer, we rented a house on Martha’s Vineyard for a week, and how it was the best times we had as a family together. Dad spent a little time on his Blackberry in the mornings, but the rule was that was it. Only two hours in the mornings. We rode bikes, and Mom tried to teach us to sail, and she really knew what she was doing. She’d been sailing all her life, and it was great to see her in control, confident.

  She’d order us to pull on ropes, and duck as the boom swung over our heads, and it was really beautiful and peaceful out there. The sun, the water, the wind, the air, the salty smell, the land and houses growing smaller and smaller, and Dad said, Aren’t we getting a little far out here, and Mom smiled and said, Don’t worry, honey. I got you covered.

  I’d hardly ever seen them that close, and at night we ate lobster and scallops and clams. They even let me drink a little watered-down wine, and the sunsets were something to die for. The sun went down slowly, in these beautiful colors, from orange to purple and lavender and red, and there was like this path of colored light leading to the sinking sun. You felt almost as though you could walk on water all the way to the sun.

  At night, in my small bedroom, in the small house, I’d think, Why can’t we live here forever? Why can’t we stay and be like this? Ride bikes. Walk to places. No shopping, no house designed by the student of some famous architect. Just read books, and not rush around and have Dad work seventy-hour weeks.

  And always, on the ferry leaving the island, I felt I was returning to loneliness and sadness and this terrible smothering emptiness.

  At home in Ithaca, something really surprising happened at Thanksgiving. In the past we’d always gone out to really fancy restaurants or to my grandparents’, with the sherry and old silver. And the shop talk, as Grandpa called it.

  Mom and Dad invited a young faculty couple from the business school for Thanksgiving dinner at our house. This was their first year in Ithaca as well, and they had two daughters, who were three and five.

  At first I thought, Oh, shit.

  Then I thought, Well, this is different.

  Mom ordered the turkey cooked and stuffed from Wegmans, the greatest grocery store in the United States, and we made pumpkin pies, and had three vegetables and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes, and before they arrived, Mom found a box of my old toys in the basement—some dolls and stuffed animals and Legos—and brought them upstairs for the girls.

  Dad had a fire going in the fireplace, and then they arrived. Bob and Abby, who looked to be in their midthirties, wore glasses; his were wire-rimmed, hers were retro plastic. They were medium height, and he was a little chunky, had sharp features, and she was slight, blond, pretty, and alert, but looked tired. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. He had a slightly rumpled sweater on, and she had a blue cardigan over a green dress with a green cloth belt, and I liked them on sight.

  And the girls, Ella and Nina. They were gorgeous. Small, with simple dresses and cardigans like their mom, and tights, one red, one green, and Mary Janes. They kind of clung to the mom and dad at first, and my dad said, You like jazz singers, to Bob and Abby, and they laughed, and Abby said, Yeah, and short names that end with A.

  We don’t know why, but we do, Bob said.

  They had brought wine and warm baked bread, which Abby said was kneadless, meaning, you didn’t have to knead it.

  Then Mom squatted down and said, What pretty dresses, and such pretty names, and one of them said very quietly, You’re beautiful, and the other said, And she, pointing to me, looks like a princess.

  That’s very sweet of you, Mom said, but I don’t think we’re half as pretty as you two.

  I was a little shocked at how gracious and kind Mom could be.

  What a start, I thought. I don’t think my mom had been so relaxed or gracious in a long time.

  Bob went with my dad to open the wine, and Mom said, Would you girls like something to drink?

  Sure, they said, and they each took one of Mom’s hands and went to the kitchen.

  I’m Sam, I said. Formerly known as Samantha.

  Abby, formerly known as Abigail.

  Come in, I said, Unload, because she was carrying a tote bag.

  What a house, she said, and I said, Yeah. It’s pretty sweet. Used to be owned by a horticultural professor. The garden’s incredible. You gotta see it in the summer.

  So how’s Ithaca for you? she said.

  Curious, I said. We arrived at the same time.

  Right.

  I’ve gotta say, I think I like this place a lot. Maybe a real lot. How about you?

  The same? Great kid town, down-to-earth, funky, beautiful. But I keep hearing people say you’ve got to get through your first winter.

  They had both come from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and they liked it there a lot, except for the summers, which were brutally humid. They’d been there six years, after grad school at Cal Berkeley. Bob was at the Johnson School, the B-School, she was a historian, twentieth-century American labor movement, and was in ILR, the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. This was it, she thought. They were here for the duration.

  Everyone came back, with wine, and sippy cups for the girls, and Mom handed me a glass of wine that was not watered down. The grown-ups sat around the fire, and I asked the girls if they wanted to see what my mom had found in the basement from when I was their age.

  Yes, they said at the same time.

  We went over to the couch and chairs by the bay window, and there were the dolls and stuffed animals and Legos. We got down on the floor, and Nina said she liked the giraffe best, or maybe the rhino, and Ella said the Raggedy Ann doll was cute, and she picked it up, and started to make it talk to a Barbie doll.

  You may be pretty, but I’ve got more hair than you’ll ever have, Raggedy said to Barbie.

  Barbie said, But I’m skinny and perfect.

  You’re stiff and perfect, Raggedy said, and you can’t cuddle in bed at night.

  I laughed, and then we were all three into it. Building Lego footstools for a tiger, a Lego hat for the rhino. Then Ella made a kind of seat of Legos. She bent Barbie’s legs, sat her down and said, Look, Barbie has to pee.

  We were giggling, and I thought, All three of us hate Barbie. What about th
at? It was like this unspoken, instinctive bond between us.

  We ate dinner, and I felt warm—from wine, from the fire, from playing with little girls, from being with my family, from eating great food. Abby joked in this dark-humored way about how exhausting kids were. It’s all food and fluids and sleep deprivation the first two years, she said. It’s pure survival.

  Mom, Nina said. You love us.

  I know, sweetie. I’d give my life for you.

  You already have, Bob said, and we laughed.

  After dinner we sat on couches and big chairs in front of the fire and sipped wine. Ella wanted to sit in my lap, and I sipped wine very slowly, and soon she was asleep. She was heavy and warm, and I could feel her breath on my neck, and I thought, This whole night has been amazing.

  These normal people. These terrific kids. All of us just being people. Then I started thinking, Why can’t it be like this all the time? Why does there have to be such awful shit in the world? In my life? In so many lives?

  Then I thought, Stop. Stay here.

  This moment, the snap and warmth of the fire. The warmth and weight of this lovely kid. Like the ferry back from the Vineyard. A sad, sweet moment. But I wasn’t going there.

  Right here, I thought again.

  Then I wondered what Levon was doing at that moment. I hoped he was doing okay.

  Twenty-three

  Sierra

  Let’s face it: Being a teenager sucks. And being in high school, which is a prerequisite for being a teenager, sucks even more. Even if you go to a relatively decent place like the Clock School. Which at least tried to treat you as a more or less normal human being. Which was ironic, of course, because we were the most fucked-up teenagers among all the acne-plagued, angst-ridden, awkward, and goofy teenagers in Ithaca, and the entire United States for that matter.

  Okay. I exaggerate. But still.

  When you’re a teenager, you’re not a kid, you’re not a grown-up, your hormones are raging, you’re sure you’ll never fit in anywhere in the world, or you have delusions of happiness and grandeur, which is even more pitiful, because life is gonna fuck you in the ass over and over, and you kind of know it, but you don’t either. So no wonder. Who could blame us?