Page 88 of Love in the Lab
We spend the rest of the weekend combining apartments as much as makes sense when we’ll be moving in a month. Even though Molly’s place is teeny tiny, we decide to stay there these last few weeks. It’s close to work, and her lease is up sooner than mine. We can sublet my apartment for the six months remaining.
I’m sorting my belongings into piles based on what I’ll need before the move to Charleston and what can get packed into moving boxes already when my phone rings.
I wipe my dusty hands on my jeans and pull the phone from my pocket. It’s my mom. I called her on Thanksgiving to let her know about my life updates, but I got her voicemail. Of course, they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in India. I left her a message to call me back.
Even though I didn’t hint in the message that what I had to say was life altering, I thought she would call me back sooner.
I swipe to accept the video call and move to the couch to sit down.
“Happy Thanksgiving, darling!” my mother greets me as her face appears on the screen.
“Happy Thanksgiving, Mom.” I pause awkwardly. “Listen, I have some really great, but surprising news.”
“Okay. What’s your news?”
“I got married last weekend. In Vegas.” I realize how that sounds and rush to add, “But it was on purpose, and no one was drunk!”
She’s quiet, an unreadable expression on her face. “That’s … reassuring, I guess?”
I chuckle. “What I meant to say is that we decided to get married while we happened to be in Vegas, so it was sudden but not hasty.”
“Okay. Just trying to wrap my head around this. I didn’t know you were dating anyone.” Her eyebrows pull together, emphasizing the deepening wrinkles on her forehead. How long has it been since I’ve seen my mother in person? Years, at least.
How long since I last talked to her, even? Not since the summer, so no, she wouldn’t know about Molly. “Yeah, for a few months now.”
More awkward silence. “Well, congratulations. I’m happy for you. Tell me about your wife.”
My wife.Still sounds so weird but amazing at the same time. Molly Delaney is my wife.
“Her name is Molly. We work together. We’ve known each other for a while—had classes together in graduate school. She’s amazing. The whole reason we were actually in Las Vegas was to present her research at the CERA conference. Research so impressive, one of the attendees offered her a job right after the presentation. That’s my other news. Molly and I are moving to Charleston in January.”
“A researcher, hmm? Sounds like she and I will get along. And Charleston is lovely. Maybe I can get away sometime next year to visit so I can meet her.”
“That would be great. And yeah, I think you’ll love her. Her research and career are really important to her, and they’re important tome, too, so we can avoid the kind of problems you and Dad had.”
More silence. I’ve never seen my mother so at a loss for words. “What do you mean? What kind of problems were there between your father and me?”
“You know,” I say. “He didn’t support your career. When you got the job opportunity at WHO, he didn’t think it was important enough to move for.”
“Is… is that what he told you?” She blinks several times in a row.
“No, he didn’t have to tell me. I saw what happened. You got the job, and we stayed in Ohio without you.” The familiar bitterness creeps into my voice.
She rubs a hand against her neck. “Darling, that’s not what happened.”
“Of course it is.” I was there. I know what happened.
She grimaces. “No. I … I asked your dad for a divorce at the same time I told him about the job. He was never … included … in my plans to move to Switzerland.”
Meaning Tamara and I were never included in those plans either? Meaningshelefthim, and not the other way around like I’ve believed for almost twenty years? “What? That can’t be true.”
“Your dad was happy with his life in Ohio. I didn’t want to disrupt that. Besides, our marriage hadn’t been what it should have for years at that point. I thought you knew.”
I shake my head slowly back and forth. “No.”
“Jonathan, I love you and your sister more than anyone. I loved your dad once, too. But, all the moving around I’ve done, from country to country, that would have been a hard life for youkids. You had stability with your dad in Ohio that I couldn’t give you.”
I’m drowning in cognitive dissonance. Wrapping my brain around this kind of paradigm shift, finding out that what Iknewto be true isn’t true at all, leaves me feeling lost. I’m a sixteenth-century astronomer listening to Copernicus suggesting the sun is the center of the solar system. I’m a geologist in the early twentieth century learning about Wegener’s theory of continental drift, introduced to the possibility that maybe the continents arenot, in fact, fixed in their positions.
