The Big Bang Symphony: A Novel of Antarctica

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41 10 Alice thought that maybe she was, at this moment, the happiest she’d ever been in her life. It was ten o’clock at night and a hard New England rain pelted the roof and windows of the city bus. She should have been home hours ago. She should have spent her last evening with her mother instead of in the lab. She’d pretty much wrapped up everything at school, so it hadn’t really been necessary to stay this late. She didn’t know what was making her behave so irresponsibly, even unkindly. Yet she felt sure that this show of commitment to her work, in the face of her mother’s protest, was the cause of her euphoria. Euphoria? She’d never once used that word in association with herself. She’d never once used that word, period. Maybe this was what courage felt like. The levity was frightening, actually, the way her hands and feet were tingling, as if she might float off the bus seat. Even this weather couldn’t dampen her sense of . . . yes, liberation. She was leaving her mother. Finally. She was starting her career , the work she’d dreamed of for most of her life. At long last. She was doing it. Alice pressed her palms hard against the vinyl of the bus seat as the tingling traveled up her limbs, threatened to fill her head. What’s more, her professor had set everything up for her, made it easy, or as easy as was humanly possible given the situation . Thinking of her doctorate—and now postdoc—advisor, Dean Rasmussen, helped relieve the invasive euphoric fizzing. He was bedrock. At least compared to the sliding shale of life with her mother. For the past ten years, ever since she graduated as valedictorian from high school, Alice’s mother had thwarted all her attempts to move out. Even though she’d received a full scholarship to the university, her mother wouldn’t pay for her to live in the dorms. Alice had tried, during those first couple of years of college, to get a job to pay for the dorm room herself. But the restaurants and copy shops near campus wanted smiley, crowd-pleasing girls waiting on customers, not reticent, serious-minded ones like Alice. Anyway, she didn’t try that hard. She wanted every spare moment for study. Besides, she owed her mother so much. Living at home was the least she could do. Alice’s mother had been working on her degree in English literature when she got pregnant. She rarely had more to say about Alice’s father than that he was “another student, some goodlooking guy.” Once, in a fit of temper, her mother had answered the question, “Who is my father?” with, “Obviously, someone brainy and humorless like you.” After Alice was born, her mother took an administrative assistant job. In the evenings, she worked on the novel she had always planned on writing. She often complained about how the demands of being a mom kept her from finishing the novel, as well as from ever finding a stable relationship. When Alice began the doctorate program in geosciences, she announced to her mother that she was going to move into graduate student housing. That’s when her mother began having health issues. Alice stayed home. It took Alice another six years to realize that none of these health issues ever actually panned out. Her mother’s health threats were just that—threats. To Alice. Rasmussen was her ticket out and she was taking it. Still, it wasn’t easy. As the bus neared her stop, Alice’s elation began to seep away like steam from a fissure. She was twenty-eight years old. She was leaving home. At last. But she hated hurting her mother. Like tonight, all she’d been doing was corresponding 42 with Rasmussen. She could have done that from her laptop at home. She hadn’t needed to be in the lab. She could have kept her mother company in front of the television while she emailed him her questions and received her final instructions. What she didn’t want to admit was that maybe she was going to miss the lab more than she’d miss her mother. Alice loved the geology lab. The cold linoleum floors. The hum of computers. The mix of iron and earth smells emanating...