Like much of Nicolet, Abhijat explained, the Lab had been built on land that had once been farmland. In recent years, though, the Lab director had begun a project to return the land under which the tunnels ran from its geometrically arranged agricultural fields to the wild chaos of native prairie grasses. The addition of the herd of buffalo had been part of the prairie restoration project. There was speculation, though, among some local residents, that the buffalo were there less for aesthetic reasons and more as canaries in a coal mine — that their demise would be the first warning sign of something amiss at the Lab, of some nefarious plot afoot in the tunnels of the accelerator. Abhijat had only recently begun to apprehend the uncertainties many of his new neighbors harbored about what went on at the Lab.
As Abhijat and Sarala drove, he pointed out the places where the land’s original farmhouses and barns had been left standing. When the Lab had acquired the land, the houses had been repurposed as offices, the barns for storage. A gambrel roof peeked out over the berm of the old fixed-target beam path. A silo stood at attention beside a red barn, silver tanks labeled liquid nitrogen and argon lined up against its outer walls.
Across the road from the detector, Abhijat showed Sarala the untouched pioneer cemetery where local settlers had been buried, including a general from the War of 1812 who had come west with his family to explore America’s frontier. Sarala thought of how even the Lab — red barns against green fields against blue sky — was America as she had always pictured it.
As the sun began to set, they made their way to the Research Tower. A flock of geese waddled slowly across the road in front of the car, trumpeting their indignation.
Inside, Sarala and Abhijat rode the elevator up to the theory group’s offices on the nineteenth floor. A hand-lettered sign outside the conference room read THE CONJECTORIUM. In the hallway outside Abhijat’s office, Sarala admired a framed image of a collision event in which the subatomic particles created by the collision were shown spiraling off in all directions, each path delineated in a different color so that the image looked, to her, like a strange blooming flower.
Abhijat’s office was a small room with floor-to-ceiling chalkboard walls covered in equations. Sarala didn’t know what the constellations of numbers and symbols meant, but they filled her with a sense of awe. She thought of the advice her mother-in-law had given her about helping Abhijat find happiness in the world. How, she wondered, could she compete with the importance of this work? Perhaps his mother was mistaken, and it would be his work that would bring him happiness and contentment.
Across the hall, Abhijat pointed out the office of Dr. Gerald Cardiff, his closest friend at the Lab (by which he meant not that they shared personal troubles or the details of their lives outside of the Lab, but that they regularly shared a table in the cafeteria at lunch, and that it was understood that Abhijat, when stranded by a difficult idea, was welcome to wander into Gerald’s office where, together, they might hash the issue out).
When she first arrived in Nicolet, Sarala had imagined that she and Abhijat would, together, join one of the Lab’s many clubs, a good way to get to know one another and meet others, but she had soon found that Abhijat, as well as his other colleagues, made little time for such diversions. The clubs were well advertised but sparsely attended. A good idea, if only in theory.
As Sarala came to more thoroughly know and understand Abhijat, she saw how he had created for himself a disciplined life. For Abhijat, it was a discipline born of constant reaching, whereby each time he achieved one of the many goals he set for himself, he responded not with celebration and satisfaction at his own accomplishment, but by thinking, Yes, but there is more to be done. A place in the top graduate program in his field—yes, but still the matter of prestigious fellowships. A teaching position at a well-regarded university—yes, but even better would be a place at the National Accelerator Research Lab. And having accomplished that? Yes, but there were always papers to be written, prizes to be won, a career to attend to, a legacy to build. Deep within him was the fear that if he allowed himself a moment to enjoy the successes he’d worked for, it would mean the end of them. That he might find the resting on his laurels so comfortable, so seductive, that he would never again accomplish anything of note. And then where would that leave him? No, he had decided — that was the sure road to an unremarkable career. Not what he imagined and planned for himself.
Knowing so little about what it took to make a career as a successful theoretical particle physicist, Sarala was unsure whether she should regard Abhijat’s constant striving as something to be concerned about, as his mother had suggested, or as something to be proud of, as was Sarala’s inclination. Though she didn’t apply the same set of standards to herself, she resolved to do her best to help Abhijat accomplish his ever-shifting goals.
Abhijat had been surprised and impressed by the easy way with which Sarala embraced the challenges and differences of their new home, but he wondered if underneath her enthusiasm there might lie some of the homesickness he had himself experienced.
“It’s thoughtful of you to think of this,” Sarala said when he asked, “but I am adaptable. There is no reason you should worry about me. There is plenty for me to discover here. Plenty of ways to occupy my time. And you have enough with which to occupy your mind.”
“Yes,” he responded, taking her hand, “but I have chosen — and chosen well, I think — to occupy my mind with your happiness, too.”
Sarala looked down, embarrassed.
At the window of his office, Abhijat and Sarala stood looking out over the prairie, the skyline and lights of Chicago off in the distance. Together, framed by his office window, they watched the sun sinking into the prairie, the horizon gone gold and glowing for just a moment before twilight.
The next morning on the way to the Lab, recalling their conversation, Abhijat thought unexpectedly of the book he’d read in preparation for his own relocation to the United States. At Cambridge, he’d borrowed from the library a well-used copy of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and had pored over it, hopeful and expectant.
Remembering this, and feeling thoughtful and solicitous of his new beautiful wife (as well as having recently noted what was, in his opinion, the less-than-edifying reading material with which she had returned from her first trip to the Nicolet Public Library — a mix of paperback Westerns and romance novels), he planned to stop at a bookstore on his way home that evening.
He presented Sarala with his gift over dinner, explaining that he had found the book invaluable in helping him to understand his new country when he first arrived, and that he thought she would likely find volume two, in which de Tocqueville addressed such topics as “In What Spirit the Americans Cultivate the Arts,” “How Democracy Renders the Social Intercourse of Americans Free and Easy,” and “Some Reflections on American Manners,” most useful.
He had inscribed the dark indigo paper of the flyleaf—
FOR MY BEAUTIFUL AND BELOVED WIFE
AS SHE LEARNS HER WAY IN OUR NEW HOME.
Sarala had done her best to read enthusiastically, and, in fact, she did find the chapter titled “The Young Woman in the Character of the Wife” of interest; but, truth be told, she did not find the book terribly helpful in navigating contemporary suburban Chicago, and so she put de Tocqueville on the shelf in the living room and returned to her own selections, though she was careful now not to leave the books she had borrowed from the library where Abhijat might find them and note her choice of reading material.