The Heart of Henry Quantum (17 page)

“Banana is, like, the best for hypoglycemia,” he crowed. “Plus very, very delicious with chocolate.”

“Stop being so nice to me,” she said, sensing that something had already moved within her, a tectonic shift deep within the substratum of her soul. It was all those families. All those children and husbands and wives. Her family. His family. Her heart went out to Margaret, who was the innocent one here, in the dark completely. What on earth had Henry and she been thinking?

This was the moment in which she'd at last made up her mind. It had to stop. Love had nothing to do with it, she told herself. Love was just a feeling. Not important. Not like family. It's just she couldn't find the words to tell him. Not when he was offering her a chocolate croissant and a banana.

She took a deep breath, searched her mind for an answer and then told him that, as Edward would be away that evening, would he like to come by after the kids were asleep?

“Really?” he said.

“Yes. Please.”

“Then you're not mad at me?”

“No, I'm not mad.”

“We can watch
Glee.
”

“After
Glee,
Henry. After the kids are asleep.”

Exactly an hour after
Glee,
there was his knock on the door. She suspected he'd been waiting in the car, checking his watch, not wanting to intrude on her kid time, but impatient and excited to see her nonetheless. He was sweet that way. Considerate. Always putting her first. Hanging on her words as if they were droplets of gold. Actually listening. But she had already decided she would not ask him in. Because if she did . . . He knocked again. She grasped the knob but found she could not turn it. He knocked again. That knock reverberated all the way down to her toes. What choice did she have? She opened the door. He smiled—even in the dark of night there was sunshine all over his face—and took a step forward. Instantly she placed her hand on his chest to stop him.

“Let's go outside,” she said. “The kids.”

“I thought they were asleep.”

“What if they wake up?”

She led him onto the front deck and down the stairs to the lawn. The air was thick with redwood and jasmine, still warm from the day's heat, the sky a clear lens through which the star-filled heavens shimmered.

“It's nice out here, too,” he said.

She tried like hell to remember what she'd rehearsed—nothing came into her head.

“I can't see you anymore, Henry!” she finally blurted. “I apologize, I do.”

“Really? I can still see you. The moon's out. But I can get a flashlight if you want.”

“No, Henry. No. You're not hearing me. I can't do
this
anymore.”

“This?”

“
Us
.”

His throat caught, but he managed to squeak, “Are you serious?”

“It's not right, Bones. It's just not right. And you of all people should know that. You're a good person, Henry. I believe that. But this—no. Please just go home!” she said, or something to that effect because by now she couldn't remember the exact words, but she clearly did see herself turning tail and running into the house, that gigantic house, before he had a chance to respond. Whatever he was going to say, she didn't want to hear it, couldn't hear it, wouldn't hear it. She slammed the door behind her. Perhaps not really
slammed.
She wouldn't do that. Especially with the kids asleep. But it might as well have been a slam. She pressed her back upon it, though, to make sure it was shut—and waited for him to run up and knock, pound, cry. But he didn't. This surprised her. And when she heard the car starting and the spinning of tires on the gravel drive and the crunching of gears furiously thrown into forward, and finally the fading, fading, fading of the engine as he drove off into oblivion, that thing inside her that had sent him away now became rather frightened, and maybe a little angry. Everything was so quiet. The house. The yard. The dog. The children. She felt incredibly alone.

But then something occurred to her. She was . . . free. Free from all the lies and deceit. Free to feel at home again. The noise of all that love was behind her now, far, far down that road. Everything would be as it was. The air would be clear again. The sky would go back to being just sky. The mirror could once again reflect the woman her husband married.

She wandered a few minutes through the house, running her fingers over the edge of the couch, the porcelain statuettes, the lid of the Steinway; she looked with fresh eyes at the paintings on the walls and the photographs on the mantel; she passed through the living room, the library, the gallery, and ended up where she and Edward and the kids had spent so many hours together—Edward's home theater. It might as well have been an IMAX with its acoustically tuned walls specially made to look like zebrawood, three rows of deluxe stadium seating with their rosewood armrests, the massive 3-D screen with speakers practically everywhere, including under your feet and in the headrests of your seat. In one corner there was even a popcorn machine. Edward's world.

Ridiculous and pretentious! But now she wondered if she had judged him too harshly. There was some sweetness here, too, wasn't there? She sunk into one of Edward's seats. The lush vicuna inlay on the armrests comforted her and the closeness of the room calmed her. Daisy pondered the screen upon which, just an hour ago, she and her children had watched the latest episode of
Glee
, laughing and singing along with the cast. It was fun. It was healthy and honest and clean and normal. Now, of course, the screen was dark, a just-washed blackboard on a schoolroom wall. Or a black hole, like outer space. A wonderful emptiness, quietude, serenity. She let forth a long, languorous exhalation—all the tension, all the secrets, all the convolutions, all the excuses and deceptions, the wishing she was elsewhere, the wishing she were someone else—all of it went out of her.

She closed her eyes. She heard the silence all about. She hugged herself tightly. She felt herself go slightly faint. She already knew that everything she had been telling herself was a lie.

3:01–3:25 p.m.

So, yeah, Daisy now told herself as she drove back to Marin, she'd thrown Henry out, and so what? In his absence he became more powerful than ever, and he stood within her as a guide and confidante, explaining her own life to her, counseling her in her moments of doubt and assuring her that her future was her own to grasp; that she could leave her husband, go back to school and still raise her kids; that somehow they wouldn't starve and the world wouldn't fall apart; and when she went looking for boyfriends he showed her they weren't enough, didn't know a thing about her, hadn't a clue what a real relationship should be. In short, no one else knew how to love her.

Because it wasn't really his lack of remorse that had upset her so much that day. It was her own.

And so when she saw him standing in front of SlinkyBlink after all those years apart, and he was exactly the same as she remembered him, still lost in some crazy Henry stream of thought, staring into the window of a store in which he would never set foot, allowing his mind to wander wherever it might, and when she also realized that he had gained only a few pounds and that the khakis he wore were the very ones they had purchased together that day at Banana Republic, she was suddenly incapable of anything but striding up to him and saying hello. She had organized her best smile and most practiced air of insouciance, and even though she profoundly desired to come up behind him and wrap her arms around him the way she used to do, she merely tapped him on the shoulder and gently called out his name, saying it aloud for the first time in four years.

What had she thought would happen? That he would gather her in his arms and carry her off to the South of France? Maybe she had. Yes, she had. But then he said he loved Margaret.

He meant it, too.

And yet didn't he seem to look for her in the garage as he passed by?

She was now already approaching the span of the Golden Gate Bridge. She was a little concerned because she had to pick up Tasha at school and she'd heard there had been some snafu at the bridge, but she could now see the traffic was flowing smoothly. Apparently someone had decided to jump. Of course. It's Christmas. Later they said it might have been a motorcycle accident or a pedestrian who fell into the traffic lane or maybe there
was
a jumper but they talked the guy down. She hadn't really been listening. She had decided to concentrate on work instead of Henry, and the radio just became noise, like a foreign language. She'd been trying to create a kinetic model of photo transduction that included a detailed stochastic simulation of the activation and inactivation of rhodopsin, G-protein, and phosphodiesterase. Well, it wasn't her project exactly: it was her lab's, her teacher and adviser Dr. Russell's; she was merely a helper bee. But it was clear he was steering her dissertation in this direction and it was disheartening because so far they had gotten pretty much nowhere. It so happened it was quite challenging to create a mathematical equation that accurately described the molecular path of a single receptor cell as it responded to a particular wavelength of light. And now she tried to figure out why it wasn't working. That would be a good thing to concentrate on, she thought. She knew that the rhodopsin molecule underwent a series of phosphorylation steps and that each sequential step led to a progressive decrease in affinity between rhodopsin and the G-protein, and concomitantly to a progressive increase in affinity between R and Arr, and that the affinity between R and RK also ratchets down and—here her mental acuity failed her. Not because she couldn't handle the R's and RK's and whatnot, but because she couldn't get out of her mind the fact that he was still so cute, the jerk. He hadn't changed, not an iota. Not a tittle, not a tot! How could someone still be so attractive after all that time? So adorable. So, so . . . she found herself at a total loss for words.

The guy wore his heart so far out on his sleeve it was on the next block. It was nuts. He was nuts. She was nuts. After all, she had been with men, real men, and he was more like a little boy sometimes. But she knew that really wasn't so. There was no word for who he was! He was a good guy, a very good guy, a guy with soul, with tenderness. And that beautiful brain of his that never stopped!

How could he love Margaret?

Daisy truly didn't want to think negative thoughts about Margaret, but they came anyway because she was certain that Margaret was unfaithful and mean-spirited, at least when it came to Henry. Why wouldn't she have children? Because she was selfish, that's why. She was the opposite of Henry; she was his evil doppelgänger. No, doppelgänger is the same, a carbon copy. She was nothing like him. No one was.

I would have kids with him, she thought.

And why not? She was only thirty-eight. They could have two! And the children they'd make together would be amazing and beautiful, because these would be the children of love, the children of
true
love. And Tasha and Denny would love them, too. How could they not? Especially Denny, because he would be the big brother who would take care of them, and Tasha always said she wanted a sister anyway, and then Tasha and Denny would also have Bones to help them and love them and be a father to them. Tasha and Denny would totally love Bones back; they would adore him because he'd be more of a father than their own father, because Edward was more like an absentee landlord with them. And the new kids—Allison and Alex—they'd go to Marin Country Day, too, which was where she was headed at this very moment to pick up Tasha. She didn't have to worry about Denny today, he had basketball over at Marin Academy. They were already letting him practice with the freshman squad—that's how good he was—and he was also going to be on the ski team, he hoped. So she just had Tasha, and all she had to do was drop Tasha at Marin Ballet for her level-four class, which Tasha was beginning to lose interest in, which would be a shame.

So Daisy starting thinking how she could keep Tasha in dancing, and she decided maybe she could discuss it with the teacher, today if possible, because Tasha had been dancing five years already, no six, since pre-ballet in kindergarten. You had to give it to Edward, he never held the money over their heads, not once; he just paid, and paid happily, and you never even had to ask him. So in that way, yes, he was a good father, and a swath of warmth for Edward came over her as she exited 101 toward Paradise Drive, because people can only show their love in ways that are natural to them, and that was his way, and it wasn't the worst possible way, it simply wasn't a way that fed her soul. That was a different path, a path of love, the one Bones had shown her. If only she had had the eyes to see it.

No, that wasn't true.

She
had
seen it. And it had terrified her.

She should have just shut her eyes and followed him to the edge and jumped. Jump, jump, jump! What an idiot she was! she told herself.

But she'd let him go and that was the end of it. When you lose something you don't get it back. That's the law of karma he'd tried to show her.

It was like that problem she and Bones were always arguing about. If Daisy were standing on the front of a freight train, holding a flashlight, and Bones were standing on the front of another freight train facing her, also holding a flashlight, and both trains were heading toward each other at, say, five hundred miles per hour, then each of them should see light coming toward them at the speed of light plus one thousand miles per hour, which is his train speed plus her train speed plus the speed of light. But no. No matter how fast the trains are heading toward each other, the light takes exactly C, the speed of light—no matter how you measure it, either from a standing position or a moving position, from the front, from the side, from above or from below, from on the train or off the train, from near or from far. The speed of light is absolute, and there is nothing you can do about it. No alterations allowed. This was the conundrum—illogical, impossible, but unassailably true—in which she found her whole life mired. The speed of love was fixed. Her movement toward Henry Quantum was unchangeable, just as his movement away from her was. The immutable law of loss insisted they would never reach each other, no matter how hard she tried, no matter how fast she ran, no matter how much love she emitted. Their lights would never collide.