The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black

by Eden Unger Bowditch

  Noah had given one of her broken dolls new life. Opening it up, he’d inserted a simple mechanism that allowed its head to turn and its legs to move. Using the battery he built, even the tiny spring-loaded eyelids opened and closed, and the left eye winked independently.

  Noah and the little girl had exchanged letters for about a year, but when Marie moved to Belgium and Noah moved about twenty times, they lost touch.

  Noah’s second friend was Zeke, the man who sold newspapers outside their flat in New York City. Whenever they went back to New York, Noah would visit the newspaper vendor. Zeke was about ninety years old, and almost blind. He told Noah funny stories about New York in the old days. He would always let Noah have free chocolate when Noah was sad about his mother being away. Noah would sometimes sit with Zeke on warm afternoons and hand out magazines and newspapers to the people who came to buy them.

  Noah’s third friend was Ralph. Ralph was really his best friend. They were inseparable.

  “People are going to get us mixed up for one another,” he once told Ralph. “That’s what happens when guys spend a lot of time together.”

  But, in truth, Noah and Ralph didn’t look much alike at all. Ralph had rather wiry mottled hair instead of fair hair like Noah’s. And one of his ears was longer than the other. He also had a funny little beard that made him look a bit like one of the three musketeers. And Ralph had wide-set ears, a very long tail, and four very stubby legs.

  Ralph was a dog. And, to be polite, he was a dog of mixed heritage.

  Ralph was quite a small dog, like Fifi, the poodle who belonged to Noah’s mother. Unlike Fifi, Ralph never snapped at ankles, growled at people, or urinated on the upholstery. Fifi had always been very unfriendly to Ralph. When Noah’s mother was in town, Noah had to keep Ralph in the kitchen.

  At twelve years old, Noah Canto-Sagas had probably lived in more places than everyone else he knew put together. He once counted. He had lived in fourteen different places before he was seven years old, and probably at least that many since. In cities where his mother often performed, like London, Paris, and New York City, they kept small houses or flats. With his father, a prominent scientist, often on the lecture circuit, Noah was also familiar with hotels throughout Europe and North America. And in some cities, they had still other accommodations. Before his father had given up full-time research and taken a permanent position at the University of Toronto, and while his mother was on a regular touring circuit, Noah was dragged all around the world, living here and there, but always returning to Toronto in the fall to their beautiful bay-and-gable home in Hoggs Hollow.

  Like Jasper and Lucy, and unlike Faye, Noah had gone to school. In fact, he had gone to lots of schools. He had been to schools in every city where they had moved, with two exceptions. One was when they lived in Vienna the winter he was five. It was there that he learned how to play the violin. The other time was a year later when they lived in Tokyo for seven months. In both places, he was tutored at home.

  Noah’s mother was Ariana Canto-Sagas. The famous, glamorous, glorious Ariana Canto-Sagas. The incomparable, regal, Italian-Scottish-French-Albanian diva Ariana Canto-Sagas, whose great-grandmother had been an Egyptian queen. Everyone in the world of opera knew her name. She was strikingly beautiful—tall and shapely, with cascades of thick, deep red hair falling over her shoulders and down her back. Her voice was compared to “the heavenly sound that could only come from the throats of celestial angels” by a reviewer from The London Times. She was the world’s greatest living soprano, he wrote. Rodin had sculpted her. Tchaikovsky had been inspired by her. Even Gustav Klimt, it was rumored, had designed and created the simple but utterly elegant platinum necklace she wore day and night. When she toured, the newspapers almost always mentioned her “platinum throat.” The necklace that adorned it was never removed.

  Because she was so famous, she was constantly in demand. This meant that she was almost never at home. She traveled the world with an entourage of assistants, coaches, and Fifi. When at home, she was there sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, but rarely longer. Noah was not sure he had ever seen his mother for more than seven days in a row.

  “Nonsense,” she once insisted. “Why, not long ago, I was home with you for almost a month.”

  “Are you sure I was there? When was it? I don’t remember,” said Noah.

  “Why, of course you don’t, silly,” she had said. “It was when you were born.”

  Noah had seen his mother perform, on stage, bathed in light, in front of her audience, exactly once. Noah was seven. His father had to be in London and his mother had to perform at Toronto’s Grand Opera House. Glenda, the woman who cooked and took care of the house and garden when the family was abroad, was unavailable that one night until after eleven o’clock. Because there had been no other choice, Noah got to go to his mother’s performance.

  “It should be fine, Clarence,” Ariana told her husband. “It’s Verdi’s Aida, which can be a bit emotional, and it would be better if it was something silly like Falstaff, although there would certainly be no role for me, but never you mind, gentlemen, it will be fine.” She turned to Noah and brushed his forehead with her lips. “After all, Noah has already been to a performance of Roméo et Juliette.”

  “I don’t remember,” said Noah, who tried to recall the event but could not.

  “Well, you could not have been more than a couple months old,” said Ariana. “Perhaps you weren’t there and we left you home. Ah, but I was there and it was marvelous. And I was about your age when I first saw Célestine Galli-Marié play Carmen in Vienna. Utterly moving,” she said. “And it was fabulous. Simply fabulous.”

  Ariana was herself fabulous. The whole performance was fabulous. Noah’s mother was radiant, as much a princess in her own right as the princess she portrayed onstage. It was as if she was born to do this, as if her very essence consisted of the music she sang, and everyone in the audience, a full house of thirteen hundred, was mesmerized. Noah knew that, had the Grand Opera House been the size it was before the great fire in 1879, she would have filled that, too. She could have filled five houses and left standing room only.

  Opera-goers showered her with flowers and she blew kisses to the audience. Then, looking right up to Noah, she blew a kiss especially for him. He had wished that night would never end.

  But it did. A beautiful carriage took Noah home. It belonged to the visiting British minister of culture, who had planned to join the ambassador from France for a champagne-fest backstage in honor of Ariana. Noah had been hustled into the carriage. He thought his mother had waved to him from the middle of the crowd, but he could not be sure.

  Glenda had arrived at the house not long before Noah. She greeted Noah as he emerged from the beautiful gold carriage. Noah’s mother, meanwhile, had left the opera house with the governor general, the Earl of Minto, to attend a fabulous gala event hosted by Prime Minister Laurier. He had been desperate for Ariana to sing at the Olympics in Paris, because it would be the first year the Canadians would compete.

  After making Noah a cup of hot cocoa, Glenda went to bed herself. Noah said goodnight and went to his room to dress for bed, but instead of going to sleep, he took out his violin. He was much too excited for sleep. He tiptoed into the salon and searched among the pages inside the piano bench. He found the sheet music to Verdi’s Aida and began to teach himself one of the arias so he could play it for his mother as a surprise. He practiced until he fell asleep, only just before dawn. When he awoke, Noah ran into his mother’s room to play for her, but she wasn’t there. She had left straight from the show for an engagement in Milan.

  By the time Ariana returned from Italy, Noah had not only taught himself the entire opera, but perfected the arias. The morning she arrived at Hoggs Hollow, Noah met her at the door, violin in hand. Before she could unpack, he played her “Ritorna vincitor” from the first act, and she immediately fell into voice. The two of them played together for hours until the carriage came to take her
away again that afternoon. It had been bliss. Then, and for the rest of his life, Noah could hear no Verdi compositions without visions of Ariana bathed in light, applauded by her beloved fans.

  Playing together at home was magic in its own right, but it was different. Sometimes, Noah accompanied his mother on the violin, and they would perform for his father, Ralph, and Glenda, but it was not like seeing her in lights, larger than life. At home, his time with her was always colored by the knowledge that she belonged to the world and not to him. The world could snatch her away at any moment. He would always have to share her, and often get the smallest part. But when he was in the audience, when he was one of those for whom she glowed, she was his as much as she belonged to anyone else.

  For Noah, the week before the morning when his whole world changed had been one of the best of his life. Not only was it the longest he could remember ever having been with his mother in one solid block of time, but it was the only time he could remember, the only time in his life, perhaps, that his whole family—his mother, his father, Noah, and Ralph—were together in their own home for so many days in a row.

  Noah could not help himself—he was overcome with joy when he heard the news.

  “Your mother has a very sore throat. She is not able to sing,” his father explained. As it turned out, Ariana had to cancel all of her performances and stay in bed, drinking black cherry cider and puree of plum with brandy. She spent that whole week in her coziest nightdresses, with silk scarves wrapped around her neck to keep it warm. Not once in all those days did she put on normal day clothes. Instead, she surrounded herself with pillows and flowers and chocolate bonbons. Because it was Noah’s school holiday, he, too, spent the week in his nightclothes, surrounded by pillows and flowers, and munching on bonbons with his mother. Fifi, at the beauty salon for dogs, was nowhere to be seen. Ariana even let Ralph sleep on Fifi’s pillow at the bottom of the bed, but only after Noah and Glenda gave him a serious scrub. Ralph seemed quite pleased with himself. Smelling of rosewater and lavender, he was shockingly fluffy.

  Glenda baked all of their favorite treats and served the two bonbon-eaters as if they were royalty. They feasted on savory pies, roast sweet potatoes, and iced lemon cakes right there on Ariana’s bed. Noah’s father was not teaching that week, and though he was holed up in his laboratory most of the time, he would come up and join them for treats when he needed a break. They were all together, but most of all, Noah had his mother, and no one would take her away.

  Because Ariana’s throat hurt, and sealed lips were required for her recovery, Noah read to her from books he selected from his father’s library. The books Noah had chosen, however, were not at all to his mother’s liking.

  “The History of the Steam Engine? Discovering the Inner Ear? The Life of the Banana Slug? Ambrose Paré: The Father of French Surgery?” Ariana croaked. “Honestly, what kind of muck are you reading these days, Noah? You are a boy, not a laboratory rat. Here,” she said, pulling a quill from her drawer and writing out a list of books. “Give this list to Father. Tell him to have someone return these other books to their musty old shelves and fetch those on my list.” She handed Noah the stack of unacceptable books and the list of those she wanted.

  Before lunch, his father’s lab assistant returned from the library with a stack of new books and publications.

  “The Three Musketeers? Tom Jones? Dracula? Tristram Shandy?” Noah read down the list, incredulous.

  “These, my dear boy, are fun to read,” insisted his mother, whispering in a raspy voice. “Now, shut me up and start with this one.” She handed him a thin booklet, a story titled A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Noah began to read.

  The story was mysterious and exciting. Noah was thrilled as he read. He loved the fact that the detective, Sherlock Holmes, played the violin, and he loved being surprised at the end. He loved the bonbons and the nightclothes, and enjoyed cuddling with the suddenly sweet-smelling Ralph. What he loved most was having his mother’s attention focused on him, the only distractions coming from the delivery of delicious treats.

  They spent the next several days reading and laughing, eating chocolate and sipping sweet hot tea.

  “If the musketeers were dogs, you’d be d’Artagnan,” Noah told Ralph, who showed little interest in this pronouncement. Ralph did, however, seem to really listen when Noah read the story of The Three Musketeers, the dog curling up on Fifi’s pillow, his chin resting on Noah’s knee.

  Noah and his mother read all the books, some to themselves and some with Noah reading aloud. Noah played violin for his mother, and even sang “The Strange Round Bird” to a tune he had composed on the spot. When he was a toddler, Noah had always found the rhyme odd and a bit scary, but he’d been determined to learn it, memorizing the poem during playtime in the garden and singing it to himself every morning when he woke up so he wouldn’t forget.

  His father had always been impressed that Noah could recite it with such ease. “It took me ages to learn it when I was a boy,” he had said, beaming at his son.

  On the seventh day of the best week of his life, Noah woke to the sound of his mother gargling and singing her scales. His heart sank.

  “Are you sure you’re well?” Noah said, hoping she still needed time to recover. “I mean, really, really well? You never can tell with these things. One minute you’re up and the next...” Noah performed a faux faint, crumpling to the floor.

  “You silly!” Ariana laughed. “Yes, dear, I’m fine,” she said. “Thank you for taking such wonderful care of me. I’m well because of you.”

  “Then I am to blame. Egads!” Noah jumped up from the floor.

  “Such nonsense,” said Ariana with a smile. Then she gargled again.

  “But maybe it’s too soon,” said Noah, more seriously. “Maybe you need more rest. Maybe three or four more weeks?”

  “Why don’t you help me pack?” his mother said.

  “Pack? When do you leave?” he asked.

  “Not until tomorrow morning. But your father and I will be going to the theater tonight. You’ll finally have a night off from your invalid mother.”

  Noah tried to smile, but it must have looked more like a grimace.

  “Don’t look so melancholy,” Ariana said. “Most likely, I’ll be gone just a few weeks or so, and before I head off to Rome, I’ll try to stay here with you for two whole days.”

  “Rome?” Noah asked. So very far so very soon, he thought with a shiver. She was going to be gone a long time again. He could feel it. “I suppose all roads lead to Rome, huh? How about a stowaway? I promise to be helpful and courteous,” he said. “You can just stuff me in an extra sack. How hard could that be?”

  Ariana Canto-Sagas smiled, kissed her son, and shook her head. “It’s not that it’s hard, darling,” she said in her softest, smoothest voice, the voice she always used to let him down easy. “It’s just the time. When will I have the time? I’ll be here and there and everywhere. It really is impossible, you see. Now, no sad faces on my funny man. There, there. You’ll understand, my sweet. I know you will.”

  Of course, Noah always understood. He understood he would not be going with her.

  “Don’t worry, my sweet. I will write.”

  Noah knew this was true. She always wrote. Noah had a collection of hundreds of postcards from all over the world. The postcards would say how she went fox-hunting with the Windsors or saw the bulls run in Spain, and Noah would treasure every word, imagining her voice telling him all about it. He could always pick out his mother’s postcards in a pile of letters on the front table. She would tell him about the mad adventures she was having or the magnificent performances she gave for whatever kings and queens were attending. It had never been more than a week before a card came for Noah.

  “Looks like you don’t have to take care of your mother anymore,” Noah’s father said with a smile as Noah helped his mother pack. When Noah couldn’t bring himself to smile back, his father said, “Hey, want to
help me rework that experiment? You’re my number one assistant.”

  Noah and his father often performed experiments together. Noah was dubbed his father’s “number one assistant” right after his third birthday. “Father tells me you are his number one assistant,” his mother had written. “Today I had tea with the prince of Denmark...”

  THE BIG BLACK BARRIER

  OR

  HOW THE CHILDREN FOUND THE FENCE

  In the morning of the second day at Sole Manner Farm, there was a bit of misty confusion when the children tried to remember why they found themselves in unfamiliar beds. The boys woke first, each coaxing the other out of sleep, and they were the first to remember where they were. It didn’t take long to fall back into snoozing, the comfort of the bed winning over enthusiasm for what was to come.

  The girls, however, entwined and in dreams, remained sound asleep nearly an hour longer. Lucy had dreamt she was held in the arms of a large creature that was half horse and half rabbit. It sang to her about pigs and the market and told her that her toes were nimble and soon she would need a candlestick. But she wasn’t afraid, she thought to herself. She was safe, here in his arms.

  Faye’s dreams were less vivid—more a feeling of warmth and safety. Until they woke, both girls clung to one another.

  “Get off me!” Faye cried as Lucy pulled herself closer.

  “I’m only cuddling,” said Lucy, trying to get warm again, moving back out of the cold part of the bed where Faye had sent her.

  “Well, it’s time to get up, anyway,” said Faye, climbing down from the bed. “And put your slippers on, or you’ll get splinters.”