Love, Theoretically

From: [email protected]

Subject: WHY DON’T YOU PICK UP YOUR PHONE? IT’S BEEN THREE DAYS.

[this message has no body]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Death in the family can’t come to class

hey mrs. hannaway what do you mean, who died? pretty sure you can’t ask me that, it’s a HIPAA violation

From: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Not who you think I am

Dr. Hannaway,

I apologize! I mixed you up with Dr. Hannaday, who teaches my Shakespeare After Dark: Intercoursing the Bard class. He’s actually a man in his seventies with bushy sideburns and chronic nostril boogers, so . . . Oops & lol. Thank you very much for answering my questions anyway! I ran with your idea of looking at how Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer is loosely based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream and actually got an A+! I attached the paper in case you’re interested (It’s titled: Twilight vs. Shakespeare: May the horniest triumph). Also I looked you up on the BU database, and you teach Intro to Thermodynamics? I’m thinking of signing up for your class next year! I have a STEM requirement, and you’ve been so nice. If anyone can help me understand stuff like gravity or long division, that’s you.

Cam

From: [email protected]

Subject: Formal complaint

Dear Elsie,

I wanted to thank you again for our conversation re: your former advisor. The pattern of behavior you have highlighted is highly concerning, and an investigation on the matter has started. For now, I want to reassure you that part of my commitment as the new Chair of the Physics Department here at Northeastern is to counteract the secretive, toxic, unregulated academic environment that made it possible for Dr. Laurendeau to isolate you through the years.

I will keep you updated,

Best,

Bernard Greenberg, Ph.D.

My decision is already made by Tuesday night, but it’s not until Friday morning that I get on the subway and head toward Cambridge. I walk through Harvard Square, coat open in the middle of a delightfully sunny sixty-degree February day that’s probably paid for by several yards of coral bleaching somewhere in the Red Sea. I feel much like I have for the rest of the week: raw, delicate, a little bumbling. As though I’m gingerly trying on someone else’s life.

It’s my first time in the building, but I find the office easily. When I knock, a voice yells from inside, “I’m not here! Don’t come in! Go away!”

I laugh and open the door anyway.

“Oh my God, Elsie! Come in—I thought you were one of my colleagues. Or students. Or family members. Basically, anyone else.” George seems overjoyed to see me. Her office resembles her: a little messy, but cozy and comfortable. She begins to move a stack of printouts from the chair, but I shake my head.

“No need. I don’t really have time to stay. I wanted to talk to you in person. About the job.”

“Oh.” Her expression briefly shifts into a wince. Then reverts back to a small, reassuring smile. “You didn’t have to come all the way over here for that. I totally understand that working for an experimentalist might not be your ideal career. And I have no doubt that you’ll find a tenure-track position soon. And like I said, I think you and I should still—”

“Actually.” I clear my throat. “I came here to accept.”

She blinks. Many times. “To . . . accept?”

I take a deep breath, smile, and nod. “Yes.”

“To accept . . . the job?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“To be clear: you’re taking the job.”

“Yes.”

She screams. And hugs me tight. And after a startled moment, I hug her back. And about ten seconds into that, something breaks through the foggy haze of the past few days: I feel selfishly, beautifully happy. I just chose something on my own, for my own, without first building a sophisticated theoretical model of other people’s advice, preferences, needs. Without the nagging feeling that the only path I could take was the one pre-trodden for me.

This decision is all mine.

“I wanted to tell you in person,” I say when we let go. “And I wanted to thank you for the opportunity.” My smile wobbles a little. I could get emotional, but not yet. First, I have things to say. “And I’d love to set up a meeting, maybe for the next week. I don’t know if I mentioned it to you, but I’ve been working on several algorithms regarding the behaviors of bidimensional liquid crystals for . . . well, years now. Lots of incomplete projects I want to finish up. I’d love to tell you more about it. Get your input.” I bite my lower lip. “Maybe it could be part of our collaborative research, too?”

“Yes. Absolutely, I’d love to hear all about it.” She grins. And then, almost abruptly, doesn’t. “I really didn’t think you were going to accept.”

I nod. “I know.” My heart beats a little harder. “But in the end, it was an easy choice. Because I wanted to.”

I leave with a promise to meet her for drinks next week when her friend Bee’s in town. The ride back home is still delicate, but a little less raw. When I tap through my phone in search of a good song, the old notifications of Jack’s unanswered calls stare back at me, unflinching.

He hasn’t tried to contact me since the weekend, and I wonder if he’s angry at me. I wonder if he’s sad. I wonder if he’s disappointed.

Then I remember: I’m angry. And sad. And disappointed. Yes, Jack was right about Laurendeau, but I’m still furious—at both of them. They lied, withheld information, presumed to know what was best for me, and a new, vengeful version of me revels in the way these two men who hate each other are now tangled up together in the expanse of my rage. Anger is not a new emotion per se, not for me, but for the first time in my life, I’m letting myself experience it.

Desirable Elsies were never allowed to acknowledge negative feelings. But the Elsie I’m discovering I am is in the eye of several, and instead of trying to channel, disassemble, toss, forget, bury, transform, choke, erase, disappear those feelings—instead of doing any of that, she just lets them be.

Breathes them in. Then out. Then in again.

The therapist I once talked with but never went back to, because the copay was too steep even with Dad’s health insurance, would probably call this wallowing. Unhealthy. Destructive. But I’m not so sure.

I treasure my newfound feelings. Hoard them. Every once in a while I study them, turn them around, squint at them like they’re a ripe piece of fruit, plucked from a mysterious tree that shouldn’t even be growing in my yard. When I pop them in my mouth to swallow them whole, they taste at once bitter and delicious.

For reasons that probably have to do with dopamine and oxytocin and other stupid chemicals in my head, Jack is ubiquitous. A shadow in the Walgreens line while I buy my insulin, the tall man waiting at the bus stop, the deep chuckle on my way to the UMass faculty meeting. Solidly nowhere, vanishingly everywhere. But it’s okay.

For the first time, when faced with a conflict situation with someone I care about, I don’t feel the urge to smooth things over. And it’s ironic, in an Alanis sort of way, that the main reason is Jack’s very voice in my head, asking, What do you want, Elsie?

I want to claw at your face, Jack. And then I want to bite into your shoulder while you hold me tight. But I will settle for just being sustainedly, explosively angry.

So I let myself do just that, and it bleeds over to other things, too. I ignore Mom’s panic about my brothers going into debt to out-truck each other. I say no to manning the table for the Physics Society at the Boston Extracurricular Fair. When Cece asks if there’s something wrong (I’ve been distracted, too lost in thoughts of Jack acting like an entitled, irresponsible little shit for fifteen years and then having the gall to see through me and make me laugh like no one before) and offers to watch Delicatessen with me—“To relax a bit!”—I say, “No, thank you,” then slip into my room with a block of cheese to comfort-read Bellice fan fiction.

It’s a balmy Wednesday afternoon, I just spotted Jack in the crowd (it was a postmodern clothespin sculpture), my heart hurts with fury and something I won’t allow myself to name, and I realize something: the last time I felt this low was after J.J. kicked me out and my entire life crumbled down like a shit cookie. Except that at the time, I walked away convinced that I needed to try harder to be the Elsie others wanted. This time . . .

What do you want, Elsie?

Maybe I’m not stumbling through someone else’s life. Maybe I’m just living mine for the first time.

•   •   •

When I get home, Cece is wearing:

• a teddy

• an apron

• a single knee sock

• nothing else

She’s cooking and swaying to the sound of something I cannot hear, occasionally breaking into off-key singing in the direction of Hedgie, who keeps on frolicking in a bowl of dry kitten food.

It’s a lot of chaotic energy. Even for her.

When I step closer, she takes out one AirPod and grins. “Found ten bucks on the bathroom floor of Boylston Hall and went to the supermarket, baby! We’re having tartiflette, but with no bacon and extra cheese—”

“I need to tell you something.”

Her smile stays in place. “Shoot!”

“It’ll take a few minutes.”

“Okay.” She takes out the other pod. “Shoot!”

I open my mouth and . . .

Nothing happens. Air comes in, doesn’t go back out. I squeeze my eyes shut.

“No need to shoot if you don’t want to.” There’s a tinge of worry in her voice. A line between her eyes. “You could fire or discharge or—”

“I want to. It’s just . . .” I’m not motorically able to.

Which Cece might know, because she crosses her arms, tilts her head in that compassionate way of hers, and tells me, “Maybe if you say it in a funny accent, it’ll be easier? May I suggest Australian? Not to be culturally insensitive, but those closed e’s are just—”

“I hated In the Mood for Love,” I blurt out. “And I find very little enjoyment in Wong Kar-wai’s filmography.”

Cece startles. Physically. Spiritually. “But . . . but they are amazing.”

“I know. Well—I don’t know. They look like I should find them amazing, but to me they’re just sad and kinda slow. Still better than the Russian ones from the seventies, which feel like rubbing brambles against my eyeballs, and I really think producers should stop giving money to Lars von Trier and instead pick a good charity. Even just flush it down the garbage disposal, honestly. And don’t get me started about 2001: A Space Odyssey—”

She gasps like this is a theater play. “You said you loved it!”

“I . . . Maybe. I mostly repeated things I found online.”

She frowns at the backsplash tiles. “Your review did sound very similar to Roger Ebert’s,” she mumbles to herself.

“I hate all auteur-style movies.” My mouth feels like a desert.

Then it gets even drier when Cece asks me with a scowl, “What do you like, then?”

I try to swallow. Fail. “Twilight’s my favorite.”

Cece’s eyes bug out. She opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it. Closes it. Opens it one last time. “Which one?” she asks, sounding constipated.

“I don’t know.” I wince. “All of them. The fourth?”

Is that a whimper? Maybe. Yeah. And I don’t know what I expected her reaction would be, but it was not this one. Not her glaring at me and then something hitting me hard on the forehead. And then again. And then—

“Is this—” I lift my hands and take a protective step back. “Are you throwing cheddar cubes at—”

“Damn right I am!” She takes a two-second break to turn off the stove and starts again. With improved aim and vigor. I back down till the counter stops me. “I knew you weren’t watching hentai porn that time! I knew I saw that shovel-face guy on the screen, I knew it, I knew it, I—”

“Not the cheese, Cece!”

The stoning stops. And when I peek between my fingers, Cece is there, a bag of Great Value cubed cheddar clutched in her fist, staring at me.

Her eyes are brimming wet. “Why?” she asks, and my heart breaks, and I want to take it all back. It was a joke. I love Wong Kar-wai, and Kubrick is the best. I’m still the Elsie she wants, and tonight we can have a Jodorowsky marathon. It’s such a small lie, in the grand scheme of our friendship.

Except that I’ve built my entire life on small lies. And over time, they’ve all grown to be huge. And the Elsie that Cece wants is, first and foremost, not a liar.

“Because I . . .” I shake my head. I cannot even say it. Oh God.

Oh. God.

“Because,” I try in a poor man’s Australian accent, “I thought that if you knew we weren’t into the same movies, then you . . .” I can’t make myself finish.

A single tear slides down her cheek. “Please tell me you weren’t afraid I wouldn’t love you anymore.”

I can only look at her, apologetic.

“Oh, honey.”

My eyes are burning, too. “I’m so sorry.”

“Elsie. Elsie.” She takes one slow step toward me. Then another. Then two more and we’re clutching each other in a way we haven’t for a long time, ever maybe, and I’m thinking that she smells like cheese and flowers and something ineffably homey and comforting. “I will love you forever,” she says into my hair. “Even if you’re an animal with no taste.”

“I know. I’m just . . .”

She pulls back to look at me. “Incredibly messed up?”

“Yeah.” My laugh is wet. “That.”

“It’s okay. It’s not like I’m any better,” she says darkly. Her slight shoulders rise and fall. “Anything else you’ve been faking?”

“Not really.” I scratch my nose. “Flushable wipes are not really flushable.”

“Oh.” She cocks her head. “Is that . . . something you were faking?”

“Not really, but you should stop using them.”

“Okay.” She nods. “My poor butt.”

“Oh, and Hedgie and I hate each other.”

Her eyes narrow. “Now you’re making shit up.”

“I call her the p-word when you’re gone.”

“The p-word?”

“Pincushi—”

“Don’t you dare say it. We’re her moms!”

“I consider myself more of an evil stepmother.”

She slaps my arm. “Who even are you?”

I try to swallow, but my throat is stuffed full. So I settle for holding out my hand and meet Cece’s eyes squarely for what feels like the first time.

“I’m Elsie. And I really like cheese, particle physics, and movies with sparkly vampires.”

She takes it with a watery smile. “I’m Celeste.” Her fingers are sticky, a little gross. I love her so much. “I’m sure that we’ll be the best of friends.”