“If you’re coming to my lecture,” Matthew managed to say while processing these impressions, “you must be a physics major.”
The girl shook her head. “I’m only a freshperson. We don’t have to declare until next year.” She slipped off her backpack and set it down, as if settling in. “My parents want me to do something in science. And I’m interested in physics. I took AP Physics in high school. But I’m also thinking about going to law school, which would be more like humanities. Do you have any advice for me?”
It felt awkward to be sitting while the girl was standing. But asking her to sit would invite a longer conversation than Matthew had time or desire for. “My advice is to study whatever interests you. You’ve got time to make up your mind.”
“That’s what you did, right? At Oxford? You started studying philosophy but then switched to physics.”
“That’s right.”
“I’d really like to hear how you combine all your interests,” the girl said. “Because that’s what I want to do. I mean, you’re such a beautiful writer! The way you explain the Big Bang, or spontaneous inflation, it’s almost like I can see it happening. Did you take a lot of literature courses in college?”
“I took some, yes.”
“I’m literally addicted to your blog. When I heard you were coming to campus, I couldn’t believe it!” The girl paused, staring and smiling. “Do you think we could get coffee or something while you’re here, Professor?”
Bold as it was, this request didn’t surprise Matthew all that much. Every class he taught had at least one pushy kid in it. Kids who’d been building their résumés since kindergarten. They wanted to meet for coffee or come to his office hours, they wanted to network, hoping to line up recommendations or internships down the line, or just to relieve for a few minutes the anxiety of being the stressed-out, hyper-competitive people the world had fashioned them to be. This girl’s intensity, her buzzing enthusiasm that came close to nervousness, was a thing he recognized.
Matthew was away from home on business, with free time on his hands. He didn’t want to spend it serving as an undergraduate advisor. “They’re keeping me pretty busy while I’m here,” he said. “Full schedule.”
“How long are you here for?”
“Just tonight.”
“OK. Well, at least I’m coming to your talk.”
“Right.”
“I was going to come to your Q and A tomorrow morning but I have class,” the girl said.
“You won’t miss anything. I usually just repeat myself.”
“I bet that is so not true,” said the girl. She picked up her backpack. She seemed on the point of leaving but then said, “Do you need anyone to show you where the auditorium is? I still get lost around here but I think I can find it. I’m going there, obviously.”
“They’re sending someone to fetch me.”
“OK. Now you think I am stalking you. It was nice meeting you, Professor.”
“Nice to meet you.”
But still the girl didn’t leave. She continued to look at Matthew with her weird intensity that was also a vacancy. From out of this vacancy, as if delivering a message from another realm, the girl suddenly said, “You’re better-looking in person than your photos.”
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”
“It’s a statement.”
“I’m not sure it’s good news, though. Given the Internet, more people probably see photographs of me than my actual living self.”
“I didn’t say you looked bad in your photos, Professor,” the girl said. And with a touch of hurt feelings, or an indication that their interchange had been, after all, a slight disappointment, the girl shouldered her backpack and walked away.
Matthew turned back to his laptop. Stared at the screen. Only when the girl had left the coffee shop and was passing by the front window did he glance up, conscientiously, to see what she looked like from behind.
*
It wasn’t fair.
Even though a third of the kids at her school were Indian, Diwali wasn’t an official holiday. They got off for Christmas and Easter, of course, and for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but when it came to the Hindu or Muslim holidays there were only “accommodations.” That meant teachers excused you from class but still assigned homework. And it meant that you were responsible for whatever material they went over that day.
Prakrti was going to miss four days. Almost a whole week and at the worst time possible: right before exams in math and history, and during her crucial junior year. The thought of it filled her with panic.
She’d pleaded with her parents to cancel the trip. She didn’t understand why they couldn’t celebrate the holiday at home like everyone else they knew. Prakrti’s mother explained that she missed her family, her sister, Deepa, and her brothers, Pratul and Amitava. Her parents—Prakrti and Durva’s grandparents—were getting older, too. Didn’t Prakrti want to see Dadi and Dadu before they vanished from the earth?
Prakrti made no reply to this. She didn’t know her grandparents well—saw them only on intermittent visits to what was, for her, a foreign country. It wasn’t Prakrti’s fault that her grandparents seemed strange and attenuated, and yet she knew that to publicize this fact would put her in a bad light.
“Just leave me here,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”
This didn’t work either.
They flew out from Philadelphia International on a Monday night in early November. Sitting in the rear of the plane next to her little sister, Prakrti switched on the overhead light. Her plan was to read The Scarlet Letter on the way over and write the related essay on the flight back. But she couldn’t concentrate. Hawthorne’s symbolism felt as stuffy as the cabin’s recirculated air; and though she sympathized with Hester Prynne, punished for doing what anyone would nowadays, as soon as the flight attendants served dinner Prakrti used the excuse to put down her tray table and watch a movie while she ate.