Matt put his head in his hands.
My head was splitting, my vision clouding from anxiety, tears at the brink of erupting.
In a couple of days, Matt would get measured for a Styrofoam cradle, as if he were a piece of delicate equipment ready for shipping. I wanted desperately for him to have no further stress over my relationship with his sister.
I stood up, brushed my skirt into place. “Why don’t I let you two talk,” I said. “I just remembered I promised Rose I’d drop over this evening to help her with …” I stumbled. “A project.”
Matt walked me to the door, kissed me good-bye. “Trust me, it will be different when you get home.”
I could hardly wait.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Frank’s mother didn’t like you at first? How come I never knew that?” I asked Rose.
As I’d expected, Rose had welcomed my surprise visit, pulling out our favorite espresso cups and three kinds of biscotti. We sat in Frank’s den, the coziest room in the house, with dark paneling and brown leather furniture, while he was fast asleep upstairs. Frank had had to make an early pickup that morning, Rose told me, since Robert was at a casket show out of state. Horse shows, casket shows—no end to the uses of large convention halls I’d assumed were only for the different branches of the American Institute of Physics.
“You knew how my mother-in-law slighted me at every turn. I complained constantly at the time; you just forgot.” Rose shook her head slightly, probably thinking, correctly, how hopeless I was at history. “Don’t you remember when I’d whine about how the family would stop playing cards as soon as I showed up? That’s just one example. All the Galiganis—Frank’s parents, Rico, Muffy, all the brothers—they’d be playing poker in the back room of the old house on Oxford Park. I’d come in and old lady Galigani, God rest her, would say, ‘Hokay, boys, there’s a-no-mo tonight.’ And then she’d say to Frank, ‘How longa she be he’?’ Meaning me.”
Rose’s parody of our old relatives’ dialects brought back memories of our immigrant parents and grandparents, all deceased, and I finally did remember the tension with her in-laws in the early days.
“The issue of the flowers,” I said, smiling.
Rose nodded and laughed. “Frank would bring me these lovely bouquets he’d put together from the sprays around the caskets.” She moved her hands gracefully, forming a bouquet in the air. “And Ma Galigani thought it was a sin. It was stealing from the dead, she’d say, and she thought I put him up to it. I was a near occasion of sin, as we said in those days. Me, a temptress!”
“But eventually Mrs. Galigani loved you, Rose, like the daughter she’d always wanted. How did you finally win her over?”
I was ready to take notes. If Rose could bring around a stubborn old Italian mother-in-law, surely I could do the same with an educated, professional woman who was my peer.
I’d always thought Realtors had to have excellent people skills, and that they’d be logical in their communications. Certainly they had to know a combination of mathematics and finance that eluded me. The one time I bought a house, my condo in Berkeley, I felt completely at the mercy of my real estate agent, who talked glibly about fixed rates, points, balloon payments, equity. And I gave up on trying to understand the distribution of mortgage payments toward principal and interest. A payment should be a payment, I thought, the way subtraction usually worked. Real estate arithmetic was more economics than pure mathematics, I decided, and left it to my broker.
Rose reached over and picked a lemon biscotti crumb from my knit skirt. “I think when his mother saw how happy Frank and I were, it helped, but really she didn’t come around until I got pregnant with Robert.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, mentally closing my imaginary notebook. “That’s not going to work.”
We had a good laugh over that, making up stories for me to tell Jean.
“Tell her that her only brother is going to give her a new niece or nephew,” Rose said.
“I could say I’ve been irritable lately because I’m in the first semester.”
“Trimester.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“Say her brother wants to make an honest woman out of you, and would she be the godmother.”
“I could say it was fertility drugs, and we’re having quints.”
We let the single-concept joke run its course, nearly doubled over much of the time.
How to turn a bad evening into a great one—leave the trouble spot and run to your best friend.
Matt joined me for an early breakfast of coffee and toast and told me he’d had a talk with his sister while I was at Rose’s. We kept our voices low, with occasional glances toward the stairs to the bedrooms.
I was glad I had errands and a hair appointment, and would be leaving the house before Jean was awake. Or maybe she’ll hide in her room till she hears my car pull away, I thought.
“Jean promised to be more open to this change. You know, she had a hard time adjusting to her husband’s death. She has Chet’s photos all over the house, and still doesn’t even date after ten years.”
I was glad Matt hadn’t kept such a strict mourning regime. “Having two small children would make a difference,” I said, by way of excusing her.
He shook his head. “It’s not the kids at this point. They’d love it if she had a social life of her own. I told her she had made her choice, and it was fine, but I’d made a different one. It wasn’t going to do anyone any good, us mourning together for the rest of our lives.” He put his hand on mine. “I know you’re doing your best. It will all work out.”
“I thought she liked me the first time I met her,” I told him. “But then she got colder and colder. Am I doing something in particular that offends her?”
“No, I’m sure it’s because you kept showing up, and now that you’ve moved in, it looks like you’re here to stay.” He smiled at me. “You are, aren’t you?”
I nodded, touched at his care of me.
I considered telling Matt the round of pregnant jokes Rose and I had engaged in, but thought it might fall flat. Or sound disrespectful to the mothers of the world. Sometimes with these funny stories you had to be there.
I parked around the corner from the high school for my late-afternoon, after-classes appearance at the Science Club meeting.
I’d prepared an outline of my talk, taking the students from the basic facts on carbon to the latest in carbon research—carbon nanotubes. Buckytubes, I said to myself, rehearsing my opening, one of the versatile new materials of nanotechnology. I’d talked MC into joining the Science Club program, thinking it would be a nice introduction to what a career in high school teaching might be like. For this topic, I’d give the first lecture, laying the groundwork and providing some physical applications; MC would do a follow-up talk emphasizing the chemical and biological applications she was more familiar with.
I’d laid out a timeline with the highlights that preceded the nanotech revolution: the development of the electron microscope and new coating techniques; the discovery of buckyballs by two experimental chemists; and the discovery of the carbon nanotube, which opened the door to advances in all fields from medicine to computing to building materials.
Daniel Endicott, young, tall, and fit, met me at the front door of the school and relieved me of some of my props. His haircut would have been an embarrassment for any boy in my high school class, looking as though his mother had put a soup bowl on his head and shaved around it, leaving the effect of a blond weeping willow at the top.
I’d met Daniel only once before, at the orientation session at the beginning of the school year. He impressed me as one of those dedicated teachers we hope are the norm, not the exception. He’d set up partnerships with Boston colleges, which allowed his students to get involved in real-life science activities. I was thrilled that Revere High students were being exposed to equipment and techniques used by professional scientists such as the field biologists working on the Rumney Marsh project.
Besides a binder filled with transparencies, I’d brought materials to build models of a soccer-ball-shaped buckyball molecule and a long, slim “nanotube.” I carried tote bags of Styrofoam balls, drinking straws, wire mesh, a sturdy metal T-square, scissors. Arts and crafts gear.
“I hope this won’t be too juvenile for them,” I said to Daniel.
He shook his head. “Nah, all students love crafts. Hands-on, visuals, field trips, demos, anything but listening to a lecture.” A blush started at his neck and spread to his face. Poor guy, I thought, a blusher, like most fair-skinned people. “I didn’t mean—”
I laughed. “Don’t worry, Daniel, I know what you meant. I thought I’d start the session with an overview of Buckminster Fuller’s life. How’s this? An amazing journey from a desperately poor man with a young family, on the brink of suicide, to a life of invention in service to humanity. And now a whole series of molecules named after him. What do you think?”
“Wow, I think it’s great. I told you, I’m a huge fan of Bucky’s. Are you going to talk about how his ideas were so efficient, no one wanted them because it would upset the economy? I mean, if you can build homes that are cheap, strong, and safe, for everybody in society, who would want to spend a third of their income on some square box with endless decorations, right? And renewable energy sources.” He shook his blond locks. “Let’s not even go there.”
I cleared my throat. “Hmm, is this a political science class?” I smiled to show I wasn’t some good old boy who was afraid to second-guess the American capitalistic system. Even if I was. “And how about that Dymaxion map of his—the first to show the continents on a flat surface, appearing as a one-world island in a one-world ocean.”
“Right,” Daniel said, shaking his head. “One world. As if.”
I knew I’d lose any debate on the basis of language alone, and knew also that Daniel’s dream, like Fuller’s, of “more with less” technology was basically a good one. Back to hard science, I decided.
“You know, carbon itself has an exciting story. We thought we knew everything about it, until 1985, when this new, third pure form, after graphite and diamond, was discovered.”
Daniel laughed, and stroked his hairless chin. “Just remember, to these kids 1985 was a long time ago. You might as well be talking about Abraham Lincoln.”
“Good point.”
I showed him a transparency for buckyballs, a graphic with a caption that explained its shape:
C-60, NAMED BUCKMINSTERFULLERENE, BECAUSE THE SIXTY CARBON ATOMS FORM THE SHAPE OF AN ICOSAHEDRON, OR GEODESIC DOME, LIKE THE KIND INVENTED BY BUCKMINSTER FULLER. LARGER FULLERENES CONTAIN AS MANY AS FIVE HUNDRED CARBON ATOMS.
Buzzzzzzzz!
The buzzer for the start of class startled me, a loud Klaxon sound as if to call inmates in from the yard.
Daniel laughed. “I think there was a sale on those bells last year.”
In came about fifteen students. And one very tall, bald gentleman with thick glasses. Dr. Timothy Schofield, I presumed. In expensive-looking navy slacks and a beige cardigan, he was by far the best-dressed person in the room. Maybe even the oldest, I thought. He wore a pleasant expression as he extended his hand.
“I’ve heard so much about you, Dr. Lamerino,” he said. I doubted it, since I barely knew Daniel, but it was a nice way to start off. “I hope you don’t mind my dropping in on your talk. I thought this might be a good way to get to know the students and hear what kinds of questions they ask.”
“I’m glad you could join us. Daniel’s told me about your coyote project,” I said. I’d never met a veterinarian and wondered what kinds of questions he might ask.
Once the class was settled, I launched into a tribute to carbon, the sixth element of the periodic table, and its all-pervasiveness, in our food, clothing, cosmetics, and gasoline.
“And they’re a girl’s best friend,” said June-Anne, a tiny Asian student.
I was happy June-Anne could relate carbon to diamond, one of its three pure forms, but Lynda with a y, as she called herself, poked June-Anne. “Better not say that. Dr. Lamerino doesn’t like sexist remarks. I’ve been in her class before.”
“How is that sexist?” June-Anne wanted to know.
“Well, girls should be thinking of more than bracelets and rings, for one thing, like school and all, and then the whole, like, cliché involves a guy giving a girl expensive jewelry, when why doesn’t she just get, like, a great career and make a lot of money and buy her own diamonds? Right, Dr. Lamerino?”
I nodded. Lynda soared to the top of my Smartest Teen list; if I were giving grades, she’d have gone up a point at that moment, her quirky grammar and my lack of interest in diamond jewelry notwithstanding.
“I’m so not into all that,” June-Anne said.
One to one. I decided not to take a further vote, unwilling to risk another cause for depression. I stole a glance at Dr. Schofield. He seemed amused, but didn’t give away his philosophical position on girls and diamonds.
After we constructed our nanotube—a hexagonal network of carbon atoms rolled up to make a seamless cylinder, capped at each end with half of a fullerene molecule—I showed slides of realworld nanotubes being prepared in a furnace operating at more than one thousand degrees centigrade. I was happy with the respectable numbers of wows and cools.
Daniel remained quiet through my presentation, until near the end, when Nathan, a young man with several earrings in places other than his ears, made a comment.
“There’s one of those domes in Atlantic City. And there’s this totally cool video game called ‘Spaceship Earth,’” Nathan said. “Maybe that’s where this guy Fuller got the idea.”
Daniel jumped up. I thought he might attack Nathan, but he attacked the whiteboard instead.
RIP OFF, he wrote in red dry-erase letters.
“They have completely ripped off Fuller’s ideas and themes. And they give him no credit, not even a plaque.” Daniel wrote CREDIT on the board, then drew a circle around it, and a line through it. The international, intergenerational symbol for no. “The term ‘Spaceship Earth’ was coined by Fuller, not by some action hero.”
I’d stepped back when Daniel came to the front of the room, unsure whether to interrupt. It was his club, after all, and not having children, I’d never been to a theme park and was unaware of this controversy. Daniel went on for a few more minutes; then I raised my hand and asked permission to give an example of a physical application of nanotubes.
Daniel smiled. “Okay, the student with the great pin can have the floor,” he said. It was the first I knew that he’d noticed the replica of a carbon atom that I wore on my lapel.
“Thanks, Mr. Endicott, and I appreciate the way you give your students a well-rounded perspective. Science is part of society, and at the same time it impacts our culture as if it were an external force. Maybe sometime we can do a whole class on that subject.”
Daniel seemed pleased with the resolution. Dr. Schofield nodded agreement, but said nothing. In fact, he’d said nothing beyond his initial greeting, and I began to wonder if he’d been sent by the administration to evaluate me.
I described briefly the excitement for physicists, the remarkable electronic and mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes. I thought Daniel and the budding environmentalists in front of me would appreciate the application to new hydrogen storage methods that were important if we were ever to have an alternative to fossil fuels. I flipped to my transparency showing a sleek, environmentally friendly, fuel-efficient vehicle, and ended with a list of URLs for those interested in pursuing dome-related topics in more depth.
Once the students left, I started packing up my materials.
“Very nicely done,” Dr. Schofield said. “I’ve always admired people who understood physics.”
“And I can’t
imagine knowing the details required of a medical person.” I thought of asking him why he didn’t become a human doctor, the kind who could help Matt. But he might ask the same of me.
“I hope you’ll feel free to come to my talk next week,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, noncommittal. I didn’t think I had the time or the interest in learning how microchips were implanted in coyotes. Besides, what if he brought a real coyote to class? I didn’t trust anything faster than I was that couldn’t talk.
Daniel offered to help carry the tote bags to my car, but I declined, citing a need to use the rest room and make a couple of calls. The truth was that I’d had enough interaction for the day. I loved being in the classroom, but found it draining in a way that hours of research were not. I wasn’t used to being around so many high-energy people at once, from Daniel to the fifteen or so well-fed, lively teenagers.
I looked forward to the solo ride home and then to the espresso maker only a few feet from my couch.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It was nearly five and dark as I headed to my car. The street was full of vehicles, but empty of people. I had my remote ready and pressed it to open the door of my Caddie. The interior light did not come on, meaning the door locks hadn’t snapped up, either. I pressed a few more times, as if I didn’t know a thing about dead batteries and how they didn’t resuscitate spontaneously. Clearly I’d need my backup system. I dug out my keys, flipped around the ring until I fingered the long, thin key that opened the driver’s door the old-fashioned way.
Matt would have laughed, I thought. He never used the remote that came with his Camry. “There’s not enough return for the extra space the square thing takes up on my key ring,” he’d said.
There was no streetlight close to my car, and I knew I’d have a hard time seeing the lock. I put my bags down on the sidewalk, fumbling in my purse for the small flashlight I always carried.
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