Wishful Thinking (23 page)

“That’s what I don’t understand,” Jennifer said, interjecting at last. “How could that be? How could you have been so close to pulling this off without her knowing? And why did you leave Columbia?”

“So many questions, my dear!” Dr. Sexton said, as Lucy got up, stretched, and ambled over to her water bowl. “There is one simple answer, at least with regard to the suddenness of the breakthrough. The last piece of the puzzle, the harvesting of quantum foam, was made possible by a very recently completed tool: the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, a twenty-seven-kilometer loop and the largest hadron particle collider ever built. Susan knew that the LHC would change everything for me, but … she had lost some of her interest, shall we say, and perhaps some of her respect, for my off-the-beaten-path pursuits. Particularly in the last decade, when, with the Nobel, her coronation as the world’s most brilliant female scientist was made official.” Jennifer detected a rare note of bitterness in Dr. Sexton’s voice. “It had been many years since we’d been truly intimate with each other. But we were still partners, and occasionally lovers too. There had been periods of estrangement before, of course. We’d always gotten through them. But in the last few years, things we’d ignored became impossible to ignore any longer, for me anyway. As her life became more public, her unwillingness to be public about our relationship was humiliating. And when everyone already knew! We fought about it constantly. And then there was … the incident.”

“The incident?” Jennifer asked, shifting her weight. She was getting sleepy.

“The incident is something you won’t find on the Internet,” Dr. Sexton continued, allowing herself a wry smile.
“The university made sure of that.” Dr. Sexton whistled softly to Lucy, who returned to her. “It has to do with this old girl, doesn’t it, Lucy dear?” Lucy looked up at Dr. Sexton, and Jennifer was sure she saw the great beast raise an assenting eyebrow. “But first, a bit of background. Do you recall, about a year ago, when one of the most well-known men in the physics department at Columbia said that women would never be equal to men in physics, because physicists ‘peak early,’ at a time when women are most interested in family and babies and thereby unable to fully concentrate?”

“Seriously?” Jennifer said. “What a dick.”

“What a
dick
,” Dr. Sexton repeated, with some relish. “That’s right! There was quite an uproar, as you might imagine, but not nearly enough uproar for me. I was getting close to completing the app, though I had not yet gained access to the LHC, as, with my lack of publications and slight reputation, I was a long way from being first in line. But laboring in obscurity, which had suited me so well for many years, suddenly chafed in a whole new way. I wanted to arm-wrestle this man, to show him what I was capable of. I wanted to see him fired and publicly flogged!” Dr. Sexton sighed. “However, as a lowly adjunct professor, without credibility or a platform, I could do little but rail privately to Susan. And do you know what Susan did? Susan, the most renowned woman physicist in the world, with a Nobel Prize in the cabinet and all the world waiting to see how she would respond?”

Jennifer shook her head. “Nothing,” Dr. Sexton said. “She did not say a word.” She was quiet for a moment. “I pressed her. I prodded her. I tried to shame her into it. And finally she came out and said it. ‘I am childless,’ she said. ‘What could I possibly have to say?’

“It broke my heart,” Dr. Sexton said. “To hear Susan, who had fought tooth and nail in some of the most sexist
environments imaginable, essentially say that because she had not had children she was in no position to speak out about this man’s attitudes toward women in science. She is a magnificent, brave, brilliant woman. And yet she denied who she was, and by doing so, I felt, issued a final, chilling denial of me. Of us. In that moment, in fact, I felt she denied our whole life together. And I was unbelievably angry at the man who, I felt, had had the power to make her feel she was not a ‘real’ woman but an aberrant exception to the rule.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jennifer said.

Dr. Sexton shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now. It might have. But right after that conversation, I took Lucy for a walk. Didn’t I, Lucy?” Lucy pricked up her ears at the sound of her name. “And it was very unfortunate that, at that moment, the professor in question happened to be out for a walk too. I tried to ignore him, but he saw me and, as arrogant as you please, approached just as Lucy was beginning to do her business, something that, as you can imagine for a dog of this size, is quite a production. I was stuck. He asked after Susan, who, while refusing to speak publicly on the matter, had not returned his calls, either. And then, just as I was bending down to pick up Lucy’s steaming pile of stool, he said, ‘I hope she knows that I have the utmost respect for her. Please tell her. I’ve always thought of her as
one of us
.’ And then he had the audacity to stick out his hand to shake mine.” Jennifer, who could see what was coming, began to giggle. “And yes, my dear, I filled that outstretched hand with a fistful of Great Dane poop.” Jennifer burst out laughing. “It was glorious!” Dr. Sexton said, beginning to laugh herself. “The feeling of it, hot and squishy on the other side of the poop bag, which naturally I deployed to keep my own hand clean, oozing every which way as it enveloped his hand, the little hard bits of gravel and twigs poking into his palm through the muck, and the look on
his face as he withdrew that insulting handshake and began to frantically wipe his hand on a nearby tree, with very little success at cleaning it.”

“What did you do then?” Jennifer asked.

“I said, ‘I hope I have conveyed how much respect I have for you as well,’ gave him a little nod, and walked away.”

“He was speechless,” Jennifer said.

“Utterly,” Dr. Sexton replied. “Susan, however, when she heard what had happened, was quite the opposite. She was beyond angry with me, telling me I had behaved like a spoiled child, that I had jeopardized her career, after all she had done for me, and demanding I apologize. Naturally, I refused. As for her esteemed colleague, he recovered his powers of speech very quickly, particularly when I was not in a position to defend myself. He called a private meeting of the faculty council of the institute and had me, for lack of a better term, banished. And what did Susan do?” Dr. Sexton asked, her voice flat and hard.

“Nothing,” Jennifer guessed.

“The final blow,” Dr. Sexton said, nodding. “A complete repudiation. I lost my access to the lab, I lost my academic standing, and I lost her. That is the loss I still regret the most. But I couldn’t stay then. And she didn’t want me to. She’d had enough, she said. She wanted to be left alone.”

“And so you moved out and came here,” Jennifer said. She couldn’t suppress a yawn, though she was captivated. “And then you finally got into the LHC, and …”

“And my work was complete, but Susan never knew, and still doesn’t,” Dr. Sexton said, her voice growing quieter. There was a pause. “I think that’s quite enough of me for one night!” Dr. Sexton said suddenly. “Or morning.” Jennifer could see the gray hint of dawn illuminating a slit between the curtains. “My goodness,” Dr. Sexton said, taking out her phone, “look at the
time. I have to be ready to depart in less than an hour. It’s nearly dinnertime in Tokyo, you know!”

The two of them got up. The fire was out—there were only embers now.

“May I ask you a question?” Jennifer said. “About the app?”

“Of course,” Dr. Sexton answered, making the fireplace disappear with a wave of her hand.

“How often do you use it? Do
you
use it only twice a week?”

Dr. Sexton looked at Jennifer with curiosity, and then her eyes narrowed, as though she were trying to decide something. “I use it more frequently than that,” she said after a moment. “But I restrict my appointments to two hours, as a rule, sometimes extending them to three, which is generally enough time to enjoy a dinner, or an exhibition, or a man.” Now Jennifer was the one to raise her eyebrows.

“Yes,” Dr. Sexton said, slipping an arm into the crook of Jennifer’s elbow as she escorted her to the door, “a man! Men, after all these years, seem to be, for now, what I enjoy. Though perhaps it’s because, by not taking up with another woman, I feel as though I’m remaining faithful to Susan somehow.” Dr. Sexton paused, turning to face Jennifer. “I would advise you to listen to Norman, my dear, though I’ll be the one to say it, if it helps you to feel you are acting on my advice, not his. Love, or another lifelong partner, may not be what you need, or what you are ready for. But adult companionship, physical pleasure—those are things one should never live without! Don’t use the app to amplify your martyrdom, Jennifer. Use it to amplify your
life
.”

They were standing together by the door, and Jennifer spotted the white paper bag, just where she had left it on the foyer table. Dr. Sexton followed her eyes and looked at it. “What’s this?” she said. “For me?” She reached into the bag and
produced the Styrofoam cone, covered in red and white peppermints. Turning it this way and that, she smiled. “How charming!” she said.

“See?” Jennifer said. “I
am
amplifying my life. With crafts! The boys made it,” she added, feeling a little bit silly.

“Thank you,” Dr. Sexton said, placing it back on the table. “I will take it into evidence, in hopes that, by year’s end, you have considerably steamier, child-free adventures to regale me with.”

“I’ll try,” Jennifer said, yawning again, hugging herself as she felt the cold in the absence of the virtual fire.

“Don’t try,” Dr. Sexton said sternly.
“Do.”

T
WO WEEKS LATER
, when Jennifer found herself traversing cobblestone somewhere in deepest Brooklyn on the night of December 31, wearing nineties-era dark brown faux-leather pants that she’d had to wipe clean of dust, Jennifer blamed Dr. Sexton. If not for Dr. Sexton’s prodding about “adult kinds of fun,” she thought, she wouldn’t have asked Owen, just a little bit flirtatiously, if he had plans over the holidays, in response to which he had handed her a flyer inviting her to see his band play on New Year’s Eve. If not for Dr. Sexton, she thought, she probably would have tried a lot harder to ignore the tingling warmth she’d felt when, as he handed her the flyer, he’d leaned in to her ear and said, in a voice low enough that Julien couldn’t hear, “I’d love it if you came.” And if not for Dr. Sexton, she probably would have worked much harder to dismiss/repress the fact that she’d had three sex dreams about him in a row. (In the last one, they were trapped in the West End School broom closet and he was wearing nothing but a flannel shirt and black
ballet tights.) But Dr. Sexton’s advice had awoken something in her, or at least given her permission (or a mandate, more like), to act on it. So two days after he’d given her the flyer, she’d sent him a simple e-mail:
I’ll be there.

He’d sent an equally simple e-mail back:
You made my day.

She’d now read that e-mail about fifty times, and it still gave her a little spike of happiness. It had made granting Norman and Dina’s request to spend New Year’s Eve with the boys easy, though she hadn’t told them that.

Now, however, as she stood outside the Brooklyn music hall where Owen’s band, the Dimes, was playing that night, in a line that went all the way down Wythe Avenue, Jennifer felt incredibly out of place. Scantily clad twentysomethings, who, in the rearview mirror of Jennifer’s life, were beginning to appear even farther away than they were, were everywhere, like skinny little mice, smoking and squeaking in the cold. She knew that divorce made some people feel young again, as though they were rejoining a party they’d never really wanted to leave. But divorce made Jennifer feel old, or, worse, it made her feel nowhere: caught between the countries of young single life and middle-aged parenthood, without full residency in either. Sometimes, as she did taking her place in line outside the Brooklyn Bowl, she felt like an impostor, as awkward and obvious in her attempt to “pass” for young as the old man in
Death in Venice
, dyeing his hair and wearing rouge on the beach. Like an idiot she’d shown up at ten thirty, only a half hour before Owen’s set, too nervous to arrive earlier alone. But when she’d headed to the front of the line as though she were someone important and actually uttered the words “I’m with the band,” she’d found there was a list, and she wasn’t on it. So much for being with the band. She was pretty sure she heard someone snigger.

Afraid she would miss his set entirely, she texted Owen.
Hey, sorry, outside in long line, there’s a list? Sure you are v busy, np to wait!
Shivering, she shoved her phone back into her coat pocket. The faint smell of clove cigarettes and weed sweetened the dry, wintry air. Jennifer was just beginning to feel sorry for herself again, wishing she’d had a second glass of chardonnay while watching TV at home, when suddenly Owen materialized, almost out of thin air. Tall. So deliciously tall, with that little bit of light brown bang hanging over his eyes, his breath sending white puffs of steam into the black night air. In a heavy canvas jacket and work boots, he looked Brooklyn perfect (but not Brooklyn pretentious), and suddenly, despite the fact that a bulky black North Face coat completely covered her outfit, she felt foolishly glam in her makeup and strappy gold heels.

She looked up at him, and he smiled. She smiled back. It surprised her a little, just how happy she was to see him. It was the first time, she realized, she’d ever seen him outside the walls of the West End School. It was nice.

“Wow,” he said, grinning.

“What?” she asked, pleased, starting to glow.

“
You.
Wow.” Jennifer blushed. How good it felt to be looked at,
really
looked at, a good, long look that lingered, warming her to her nearly numb toes. Suddenly the leather against her thighs, faux or no, felt soft and sexy and exactly right, and, on an impulse, she opened her coat to reveal her outfit in full.