2. April
APRIL
I’m not going to say that twinkle lights and wine can fix all the world’s problems, but the combination can certainly help a little.
Four days after my career imploded, I’m indulging in a beloved ritual: Friday wine-and-cheese night with my best friend and my elderly aunt. It’s not an every -week thing, but the three of us try to get together at least once a month. I always look forward to the gatherings, but tonight I’m feeling extra grateful to be in one of my favorite spots in the world: curled up in one of my aunt’s patio chairs, surrounded by the white twinkle lights that she keeps up year-round to add what she calls dazzle to the ivy climbing up her latticework.
Throw in the fact that my aunt lives in part of an actual castle, and it’s hard not to feel like I’ve just been transported to someplace downright magical.
If I believed in magic, of course.
Which, as a physicist, I cannot.
Paterno Castle is nestled in Hudson Heights, right along the Hudson River on the Jersey side. Lillian’s townhouse, charmingly called Cottage One (there are four in total on the southern part of the estate), is a relatively quick cab ride from my own apartment on the Nova campus.
“Okay, here we go,” Daphne says as she finds whatever app she’s been looking for on her phone. She places it screen-up in front of me. “When you’re ready, just hit this record button and repeat word for word what exactly these morons said to you.”
“Oh, sure, I’ll get right on that,” I mutter into my wine. “Can’t wait to relive the worst moment of my life in excruciating detail.”
“Well, see, I need specific details on what happened for when I cast my revenge spell,” Daphne explains with a completely straight face.
I lift an eyebrow. “You still in your witchy phase?”
“Being a witch is not a phase,” she explains patiently. “It’s a calling.”
Lillian nods solemnly in agreement, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. Last October, we’d gone out to dinner and the hostess had complimented my aunt on her witch costume, to which Lillian had replied that a black cape was only a costume when worn by a child. On a grown woman it was a statement .
“Hold on, back up a second,” Daphne says with a frown, walking her fingers backward as though reversing the conversation. “This was the worst moment of your life?”
“Um. Yeah ,” I say with feeling.
“More than the Dan breakup?”
“Absolutely.” I’m not sure what it says about my romantic history that I don’t even have to pause to think about it. Probably nothing good.
Daniel Dixon was my longest—and most serious—boyfriend to date. Dan is a kind and brilliant computer engineer I’d met while getting my second doctorate, and we fell into an easy, satisfying, stable relationship. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t mind when you have to work late, or that you make the same slightly dry roast chicken every single Sunday. The kind who always says thank you when you hand him a Tupperware on Monday with leftovers, just like you did last Monday, and the Monday before that.
In other words, Daniel and I had an understanding that fiery passion was overrated compared to quiet compatibility. In fact, we were so compatible that our last Christmas together, we’d gone ring shopping. We hadn’t found the one. Which was good.
Because it turns out Daniel hadn’t been the one.
Just before New Year’s that same year, he’d been offered a job at Google’s corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California.
A job offer he’d accepted without so much as a word to me.
That part had hurt. Daniel may not have set my insides aflutter, but I’d thought we were partners. And partners do not make decisions that take them across the country without telling the other person.
By February, Daniel had moved out of our place with, get this: a handshake.
And you know what? It had been fine. I’d been fine. I’d spent Valentine’s Day with Daphne the way I always did, not missing Daniel in the least. We’d had fudge sundaes with good ice cream, the kind that costs like ten bucks for a tiny carton, and we’d gotten two cartons. We’d followed up the ice cream with lobster rolls, because you know what? A single grown-ass woman can eat in whatever order she wants to while watching Thor .
(Generally speaking, I’m not much of a movie buff. And definitely not a superhero person. But even I had a hard time resisting a film in which Natalie Portman plays an astrophysicist.)
The point is, Daniel’s cool dismissal of our relationship dented my heart a little, but compared to this?
My entire career being upended?
That was nothing, and I tell my aunt and best friend as much after my aunt goes to retrieve the cheese plate from inside.
“Well, that’s because that Daniel wasn’t right for you,” Aunt Lillian says, rejoining us on the patio and setting a more-lavish-than-usual charcuterie board in the center of the table.
“What time does the entire neighborhood arrive?” I say, gesturing at the overflowing platter.
She pats my knee as she sits beside me and lights her cigarillo. “Still just us girls. I call this comfort cheese. Making your way through a variety of cheese types can help speed up the stages of grief. At least it did for me when I lost Harold.
“For example,” she continues, gesturing at a soft cheese in the corner. “Still in denial? Try this nice triple crème.”
“Nope, I’m solidly in the anger phase,” I say, though I scoop some of the triple crème onto a cracker anyway.
“As you should be. Icing you out because you shined more brightly than them.” My aunt sniffs in disdain.
“Well, they didn’t phrase it quite like that,” I say, smiling in thanks at Daphne as she tops off my sauvignon blanc.
“How did they phrase it?” Daphne asks, trying to subtly hit the record button on her phone again. Apparently she’s very committed to her revenge spell.
“Well.” I swallow my cheese and crackers. “I was mostly in shock, so I only caught the highlights, but the general gist is that my ‘fixation on science pop culture’—their words—isn’t in alignment with the university’s or department’s goals.”
“I didn’t realize science pop culture was a thing,” Lillian muses.
“It’s not !” I say with feeling. “And they seem to have forgotten that it was the university that urged me to accept all those TV spots on Good Morning America , and it was the head of the tenure board himself who opted to put that picture of me hosting Jeopardy! on the Physics Department website. Only to decide now that all of that ‘distracts from the sanctity of science.’?”
I add air quotes to signal my disgust.
Daphne makes an angry hissing sound. “So, to translate it to nonbullshit terms: you’re a hot wunderkind, and they can’t handle being in your shadow.”
Lillian nods and points her cigarillo at Daphne. “ Exactly .” Then she frowns at her empty glass. “Would one of you be a doll and get me a fresh bottle of sherry? This one seems to have evaporated.”
“I’m on it,” Daphne says, standing. “Miranda, you need anything while I’m inside?”
“Tenure?” I ask hopefully.
“More wine, coming up,” she says with a cheeky grin before heading across the small patio toward Lillian’s home.
It’s cool for April, but the three of us prefer our Friday hangouts alfresco as often as we possibly can. But since the sun is setting, I pull my aunt’s blanket from the back of her chair and tuck it around her legs.
As I’m leaning over her, my aunt cups my cheeks, her chunky, assorted rings pressing pleasantly against my face. “I’m sorry, dear,” she says, a wistful expression on her face. “Knowing their reasons are bullshit doesn’t make it any easier.”
“It’s fine,” I say, even though it’s far from fine. “Being here helps. I always feel… peaceful in this place.”
She gestures toward her small garden area. “It’s the little fairies. They keep the aphids off my rosebushes and they sprinkle good vibes.”
“Do the fairies wear red?” I ask, taking a sip of my wine.
“Some of them,” Lillian says in all seriousness.
“Those aren’t fairies. They’re Coccinellidae.”
“Sweetie, just say ladybugs,” Daphne chimes in, coming back with a bottle of sherry in one hand and a bottle of white wine in the other.
She’s reapplied her trademark orange-red lipstick, though as always, it looks just imperfectly perfectly mussed. That’s Daphne’s whole thing; her dark blond hair is always just a little tousled, her bangs just a tad too long. Her style is a compelling assemblance. She’s cool French-girl chic, beachy surfer girl, and mischievous witch rolled into one tall, skinny package. She looks like she could steal your man, become your best friend, and cast a spell all in the same day.
Of course, Daphne would never steal anyone’s man.
But the best friend part? Absolutely.
And maybe the witchy part, too.
Lillian calls Daphne and me the odd couple, and it’s an apt title. By comparison, I’m shorter, quieter, almost always dress in slim-fitted black turtlenecks, and have exactly one persona, one facet to my personality:
Brainy.
One does not look at Dr. Miranda Reed and think, “Gosh, now there’s a multifaceted woman with an air of mystery!”
They think, “Now there’s someone who could help my daughter with her calculus homework.”
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love being a scientist. I love science . But I’ll confess there are times when I envy how well rounded Daphne seems to be. And there are days when I stand in front of a classroom explaining the indisputable fact that one day, billions of years from now, our sun will die, our solar system will cease to exist, and I wonder if I’m missing something.
Or worse, I’ll wonder if I’m doing my students a disfavor by distilling our incredible universe into a pile of facts.
Maybe that’s why I’m “fixated on science pop culture,” as the tenure board believes. Perhaps it’s my attempt to infuse some meaning into it all, even if I’m still struggling to figure out that meaning myself.
“Lady birds ,” Lillian says, apparently still thinking about her red garden fairies as she snaps her gnarled fingers in recollection. “ That’s what he called them.”
“That’s what who called what?” Daphne asks, because my aunt’s conversational trails can be difficult to follow even before she starts in on her sherry.
“My darling Harold. He was from England originally, and he always called ladybugs lady birds. ”
“ See? ” I gesture to my aunt as I turn to Daphne in triumph. “This is one of the reasons I use the scientific name.”
Daf props her chin on her hand and gazes at me. “Possibly also one of the reasons you’re still single, babe.”
Lillian lets out a small snort, and I give them each a mock glare.
“Okay, sorry,” Daphne says. “Let’s get back down to business.”
“What business?” I ask. “The cheese?”
“That,” Lillian says. “And figuring out our next steps.”
I smile at her choice of “we” and “our.” Rationally, I know there’s not much my very non-science-minded aunt can do to help me navigate a perilous career crossroads, but it’s because she’s so far out of the world of academia that her support means so much.
To say that Lillian is the black sheep of the Reed family would be like saying the sun is hot. She’s my father’s older sister, and a self-proclaimed black sheep. I’m still not quite sure I have the full story of her life, but the version she likes to tell is that she escaped her family’s stifling “Bostonian clutches” to visit Manhattan when she was in her twenties. She met a wealthy New Yorker—the aforementioned darling Harold —and married him within a week.
He’d passed away suddenly just before I was born, but the free-spirited Lillian opted to stay here in the Cottage rather than return to the uptight Reeds in New England.
“Yeah, what happens next?” Daphne asks. “Or is it too soon to tackle that?”
“Honestly, I don’t have a ton of choices,” I say, lifting my shoulder.
“You can’t fight it? There’s no appeals process?” Daphne asks.
“Technically, there is. But it’s notorious for being a bit of a joke. They never change their minds. And if I were rejected a second time?”—I gesture with a cracker at the board—“I’d need a lot more cheese.”
“So are you… were you, like…” Lillian and Daphne exchange a concerned look, neither wanting to say it.
“Fired?” I say. “No. It’s more like… getting denied for a promotion. You simply go back to the job you had. Only, the difference in my world is that the decision is final. Once you’re off tenure track, you’re off for good. I can still be a lecturer at Nova University. They still want me to be a lecturer at Nova. Just without the job security or prestige.”
“Well, that’s a hot pile of bullshit,” Lillian declares.
“Agreed. Can’t you get tenure at a different school?”
“Technically, yes,” I say hesitantly. “But in reality? No school I’d want to work at will consider me for tenure once word of my rejection gets out.”
“Maybe your parents could—”
“No, no,” Lillian says, holding up a hand when she sees me suck in a breath. “No calling in favors with the stuffy, erudite side of the family.”
I can’t bear to tell my aunt that even if I wanted to ask a favor, I haven’t had the opportunity. My parents and brothers have been painfully silent since I texted them the news four days ago. I wasn’t expecting them to rush to the city to make me cookies or anything; we’re not that kind of family. We don’t do warm and fuzzy; we do facts and move on.
Case in point: for my birthday last year, they got me a collective gift of a Waterpik because I made the mistake of confessing I’d gotten my first cavity.
We’re that kind of family.
Still, I’d have thought I’d have gotten a little something. A token “that sucks” would have sufficed.
But in their defense, this is totally uncharted water for us Reeds, especially for me. Since third grade, when my teacher suggested skipping me forward a year, I haven’t been just a part of the high-achieving Reed family: I’ve been the star of it. The only girl, the youngest, the smartest…
Daphne reaches over and takes my hand. “You okay?”
No . I force a smile. “Yeah. And there’s a little good news to come out of all this. My mentor managed to get me approved for a sabbatical for a year, if I want it.”
“Do you want it?” Daphne asks. “A year off would be pretty great, right?”
A nod is all I can manage, because I’m pretty sure the sabbatical had been less for my own good, and more because the department wants to get me out of the limelight for a while.
“I say you do it. Take the year,” Lillian says, tapping her cigarillo. “And do it big, honey. Travel. Take dancing lessons. Get highlights. You need money? I have lots.”
“No, I’m good financially,” I reassure her.
Not wealthy. But good. Comfortable. I’ve had very affordable on-campus housing for the past several years, which keeps costs down, plus the extra money I’ve made here and there from TV and lecture appearances.
“So what’s the hesitation?”
“I don’t…” I pause. “Honestly, I don’t know what’d I’d do with a year off, even if it’s just a nine-month academic year. I’d have no one to teach. Nothing to study. No access to labs.”
“ Eat, Pray, Love ,” Daphne says, tapping the table excitedly. “ That’s what you’d do.”
“Well. Yeah. I could do those things…”
“No, no. I’m not talking about the verbs, I’m talking about the vibe . You know. Eat, Pray, Love .”
I tilt my head in confusion at the reference. “The book about the woman who goes to Italy and wherever else to find herself?”
“Oh, yes ,” Aunt Lillian says enthusiastically around a bite of Gouda, holding up her glass for more sherry, which Daphne refills. “I loved the movie.”
“I’m sure it’s great,” I say, “but the idea of traveling for a year doesn’t really call to me.”
“It’s not about the travel, it’s about the emotional journey,” Daphne declares. “It’s about fighting back when your life goes to shit and inventing a new life, with new rules.”
“My life hasn’t gone to shit.” I frown, scooping up a very serious chunk of the triple crème.
Lillian points at my hand. “Note that you picked up the denial cheese when you said that.”
“Well, which one is acceptance cheese?” I ask patiently. “Let’s move on to that one.”
“You can’t force acceptance, you have to sort of… float into it,” Daphne says.
I snort. “I’ve never floated in my life.”
“Maybe that’s the problem, dear,” Aunt Lillian says, swiping at some fig jam on her chin. “You’ve only ever done things a certain way, thought about things a certain way, experienced things a certain way.”
“Okay, you’re not wrong,” I admit slowly, since it mirrors my own thoughts lately of feeling like I’m missing a vital piece of myself, a crucial part of the human experience. “But I don’t think chowing down on spaghetti is going to fix that.”
“Never underestimate the power of carbs,” Daphne says. “But that’s not actually what I had in mind. Can I show you something?”
To my surprise, it’s not a rhetorical question. She sits and waits patiently for my answer, which is a bit un-Daphne-like.
It tells me that whatever idea she has, she’s very serious about it. And it has me reluctantly intrigued, so I nod.
“Okay,” Daphne says, picking up her phone. “Remember how the only thing I wanted for my birthday a couple years ago was your birth date and time so I could read your natal chart? I wanted the practice?”
I manage to refrain from rolling my eyes. “I remember.” That was when Daphne had been at the height of her astrology phase, before she moved into her crystals phase (the witchy phase is relatively new).
“Okay, so you still remember your sun sign, your moon sign, and your ascendant sign?”
“Am I supposed to know what that means?” I ask warily.
“We’ll get to the Big Three later,” Daphne says excitedly. “For now, just read this. Just the first sentence.”
She hands me her phone, and I pick it up, reading aloud for Aunt Lillian’s benefit. “?‘A dramatic curveball is headed your way today, the kind that will destroy something you thought you wanted and send you careening, perhaps wildly, in a new direction.’?”
I look up. “What is this?”
“Zodiac Zone.”
I shake my head, not following.
“It’s a horoscope app. You just read yours.” Daphne pauses dramatically. “From Monday .”
I look back at her phone. “The day…”
“The day that a dramatic curveball took away something you thought you wanted?” Lillian says gently.
I narrow my eyes. “Not thought I wanted. I did want tenure. I still do.”
My aunt and best friend exchange a glance that I don’t like one bit, mostly because I have no idea what it means, and I loathe things I can’t understand.
“Hold on, one more,” Daphne says, taking her phone back, flicking her finger on the screen before handing it back. “Now read this sentence.”
I sigh but once again, I read aloud. “?‘Today’s celestial alignment suggests a dramatic and surprise shift in your romantic sphere. Embrace the change with grace and confidence, and trust this person was meant to be released from your life.’?”
“ That is from the day Daniel told you he accepted that Google job,” Daphne says.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “I get it. A fun coincidence. But you can’t tell me that every Virgo was fired and dumped on those precise days. Whoever writes those things is bound to get lucky once in a while. It’s called statistics, not fate.”
My aunt squints at the cheese board and then cuts off a generous chunk of something blue and funky-looking.
“What’s this?” I ask, giving it a sniff.
“Stilton. The bargaining cheese.”
I narrow my eyes. “What is it that you think I’m bargaining?”
My aunt only smiles and takes a good, long pull on her cigarillo.
Daphne gives me a reassuring smile. “All I’m suggesting is that maybe you take this sabbatical to explore a brand-new field of study.”
“Astrology,” I say, unable to keep the thick layer of derisive skepticism out of my voice. “You want me to take a year, of reading my horoscope and… what exactly?”
“Not just reading your horoscope,” Daphne says, practically bouncing with excitement. “Living by its prescriptions. It tells you to go dancing, you go dancing. It tells you to flirt with a handsome stranger, you buy the hot guy at Starbucks his latte. Stuff like that.”
I hand back Daphne’s phone, not wanting to admit that I feel the tiniest bit unnerved at the horoscopes’ accuracy.
“But what would be my hypothesis?” I say, looking between her and Lillian. “Even if I went with a null hypothesis, there’s no empirical data to work with. The very nature of astrology is that it’s completely subjective. So what would be the point?”
“I think the point, my dear girl”—Aunt Lillian pats my hand fondly—“is that life isn’t meant to be hypothesized.”
I frown, not liking that one bit. “What’s life meant for, then?”
Aunt Lillian smiles. “To be lived .”