“Seriously?” This guy’s being interviewed? Whatever strings Jack had to pull, I’m going to cut them one by one with my poultry shears. His mediocre love child doesn’t stand a chance—
My phone rings. I jolt and immediately pick up—Greg. Finally.
“Hey! I—”
“I need your help.”
I swallow a groan. “Hi, Mom.” I’ve made a lethal mistake.
“The situation is dire. You need to rein in your brothers.”
After two and a half decades of APE, I can safely state that the Elsie my mom wants is a droid. She’s powerful, mobile, financially soluble. She successfully quenched her earthly needs and lives in a state of perennial prosperity. Her main purpose is to score prestige points when Aunt Minnie brags about her son who almost finished law school. Her secondary purpose? To intervene when two idiots decide to embark on months-long feuds over stuff that, historically, has included:
who gets the front seat in the car
who deserves the piece of cake with the frosting bootie at Cousin Jenna’s baby shower
who’s taller (they are identical twins)
who’s more handsome (see above)
whose birth year, according to the Guinness World Records book, has more recorded python attacks (see above!)
who gets to pick the dog’s name (we never had pets)
This is a noncomprehensive list. Over the years, the feuds have become more rabid, Dad more absent, Mom more reliant on me for cleanups. “You can’t be your family’s janitorial staff,” Cece tells me once a week, but I do my best to make Mom happy, even though of all the Elsies people want, hers is the fakest—and the one with deepest roots. I have, after all, cursed my way into it, tirelessly and painstakingly.
“How are you, Mom—”
“Overwhelmed. Lucas and Lance are at it again. Almost came to fists after their soccer game.”
“Over the result?”
“Over Dana.”
I rub my temple. “They both agreed to stop dating her.”
“They did. But Dana needed a ride somewhere.”
“Who did she call?”
“Lucas. Lance slashed his tire. The neighbors are starting to talk. You need to stop them.”
“I did, Mom. Two weeks ago. A month ago. Three months ago.” I’ve been holding a series of conflict mediation seminars in my parents’ basement. They mostly consist of me reminding my brothers that murder is illegal.
“Well, do it again. Come over tomorrow.”
I physically cringe. “I’m sorry. It’s not possible.”
“Why?”
“I—” No. No I statements. Too personal. “This is a stressful, busy time. The semester just started and . . .” Do I tell her? I shouldn’t. But maybe she’ll want to know? “I’m interviewing for a job.”
“You have a job.”
“This is a better job.”
“Your job is already a better job.”
I consider bringing up concepts like relativity, gig economy, and insulin resistance. “This is even better.”
“Let’s hear it—what is it?”
“Professor.”
“So you’d go from being a professor to being a professor.”
Needless to say, I don’t bother telling my parents about the pendulous nature of my job situation. Or . . . anything else. “I’ll call them tomorrow morning, okay?”
She grumbles for five more minutes and guilts me into calling tonight, then switches to complaining about something related to toxic deodorants that she saw on Facebook. I hang up to a notification—not Greg, but some guy looking for a fake girlfriend for a Valentine’s Day group date. I decide on the spot to personally blame Faux for tonight’s shit show and chuck the iTwat into the laundry hamper.
What’s the plan here? Cece asked.
I have a grand total of zero ideas, which means that I’m going to have to annihilate Jack Shitwipe Smith-Turner the old way: by excelling at my job.
I sigh deeply. Then I pull my ancient Mac onto my lap, click on my teaching demonstration, and rehearse the crap out of it.
5
GRAVITATIONAL CONSTANT
In the major motion picture of my life—a low-budget slapstick tragicomedy—Dr. Christophe Laurendeau’s role would be played by one of those old-school French actors who often star in Cece’s movies. He shouldn’t be hard to cast: a long-faced man who looks at once stern and wise, wears only turtlenecks, and never stops being handsome, not even in the tail end of his sixties, when his hair goes ash gray and his skin wrinkles into sandpaper. His office smells like chamomile tea and old books, and whenever I’m here (daily for the five years of my Ph.D., weekly since I graduated), he does the same thing: unfolds his tall, razor-thin frame from behind his desk and instructs, like it’s my first time on the Northeastern campus, “Sit down, please. In that green chair.” His English is never anything but perfect, even if his accent is still Disney strong. “How are you, Elise?”
It’s something I learned not to wince at, the way he always uses the wrong name. In Dr. L.’s defense, he called me Elise on our first meeting, and I never bothered to correct him. I did consider asking him to switch to Elsie when he took me out for dinner after I defended my dissertation, but I chickened out.
Aside from Cece, Dr. L. was the only human being who acknowledged me getting my Ph.D.—a matter of circumstances, I tell myself. After the Smith-Turner hoax almost killed his career, I was his first mentee in many years, which meant no close labmates. The theoretical physics research group at Northeastern was not quite fond enough of women in STEM to celebrate one. And my family . . . They couldn’t make the two-hour drive because of Lance’s adult league game—and, likely, because I never fully managed to convey to them what grad school is, though Mom once asked if I was done with that paper I had to turn in (i.e., my dissertation), which I took as a win.
So Dr. L. took me out to a fancy restaurant, just the two of us, where the hostess gave me an inquisitive Daughter, granddaughter, or sugar baby? look. And when he looked at me over a dinner that cost half my rent and said, “You carried yourself well, Elise. I am proud of you,” the rare spark of initiative died out. If I had Dr. L.’s approval, he could call me whatever he liked.
And that’s the story of my doctoral work: bookended by someone else’s name.
Elise, I’ve come to believe, is the Elsie that Dr. L. wants—a brilliant theoretical physicist with an illustrious job that will garner her the admiration of the scientific community—and while she might not be who I am, she’s who I want to be.
Too bad that her existence is antithetical to this other guy’s.
“Jonathan Smith-Turner.” Dr. L.’s mouth is a thin line. His eyes, hurt. “A disgrace.”
I nod.
“The likes of him taint physics and academia.”
I nod again.
“It is apparent what needs to be done.”
More nodding, in full agreement.
“Clearly, you must withdraw your application.”
Hang on. Maybe not full agreement. “Withdraw . . . my application?”
“I cannot allow you to work in the same department as that animal.”
“But I . . .” I squirm and lean forward in the chair. So much for elegance and poise. “I need the job.”
“You have a job.”
“I cannot adjunct for one more year.”
“But you are an adjunct professor. You should be proud of your current employment.”
Throughout my Ph.D., I expected to graduate and then move on to a research-only position. Those tend to come with better pay than adjuncts, health insurance, and a blessedly low number of student emails claiming the sixth grandparent’s death of the semester. As someone with . . . whatever the opposite of a calling for teaching is, it seemed like a no-brainer. My passion, my joy, my talent—they all fit into three simple words: two-dimensional liquid crystals.
Laurendeau was against it, saying that research-only positions are not prestigious enough. I initially disagreed (who cares about prestige if I can do what I love and purchase pancreatic hormones?) and for a while worried that he wouldn’t help me find the kind of job I wanted. Professorships aside, most academic postings are not advertised online, but obtained through professional networks of peers and advisors. In the end, it didn’t turn out to be an issue: Dr. L. said that he respected my wishes and reached out widely to all his colleagues to let it be known that I was looking for a research position.
Not one person was interested in hiring me. And when no tenure-track professorship was available, either . . .
“I used my connections to find you your current jobs, Elise,” he tells me, eyes full of concern. “Are you having issues with them?”