Uncertainty

A short story

Powerful, searching fiction from Maya Sinha is on the menu for today.

I won’t say too much because I think good fiction speaks for itself and should be left to do just that. Too many experiences are mediated and have middle men explainers that get between the intended audience and the thing itself.

But that being said, one small thing that I would like to quickly highlight before leaving you to read todays work is how Maya has the confidence with her writing to be simple and direct rather than mess around with the kind of over cleverness and writerly affectation that are the ruin of so many good stories.

I always admire when a writer just gets down to it and tells a good story. And I suspect you will feel the same way.

Enjoy.

TJB.

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They say my husband, a capable hiker but no longer young, probably lost his footing as he negotiated the narrow path overlooking the ---- Gorge and fell to his death, a few miles from where his car was found. Two witnesses thought they saw him on the trail that morning, and a trekking pole, believed to be his, was found at the lip of the Gorge. Due to treacherous winter conditions in the mountains, they called off the search after seventy-two hours. They’ll return to look for a body in the spring.

I’m not so sure. You’d think I’d know it if my own husband were dead. We were married twenty-six years, and I’d expect to feel something at his passing: a chill, a sense of foreboding, a disturbance in the force. But I felt nothing. The day he vanished passed like any other. I woke at seven, made coffee, and watered my kitchen plants. I let the dog out for a pee, then took a hot shower and put on an old, soft pair of sweats. For a few hours after breakfast, I read a novel in an armchair with my feet up. I ran errands, bought groceries, and made a creamy chicken soup with fresh thyme. As evening fell, I took the dog on our usual loop around the park. I popped popcorn and watched a movie on TV, then went to bed.

My husband Gregory had left early that morning, though I was asleep and didn’t hear him go. We had been living largely separate lives. Gregory chaired the physics department at ------ University and was busy with meetings, classes, and of course, his own work. He also supervised a group of graduate students, acolytes I called them. These groups of earnest youths came and went, a new batch every few years, and I no longer bothered to learn their names. Some went on to prestigious jobs based on the papers they co-authored with Gregory, who was considered a star in his field. A few dropped out or left on bad terms with my husband and the other acolytes, a risky move in the small professional world of theoretical physics.

No one asked my opinion, but I felt sympathy for the absconders. My husband could be a difficult man, to put it mildly. When I married him, all those years ago, I didn’t know him well.

Anyway, two peaceful days passed, and then he didn’t return home on Sunday night. On Monday morning, I called the department secretary and asked if anyone had seen him. She said no. An hour later, he failed to show for class.

At that point, the police were notified. The following day, a Tuesday, his car was found parked at a trailhead a few hours out of town.

After he was pronounced presumed dead, the physics faculty and acolytes led a candlelight vigil on campus. A chaplain, a rabbi, and an indigenous spiritualist offered condolences and prayers. There was a write-up in the local paper. It was apparently well-attended.

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After the search was called off, as he would have died of exposure by the third day in any case, I called an Arizona number and was put through to a convent, a whitewashed outpost in the desert. A woman answered, and I asked to speak to Sister Mary Gertrude. The woman replied that Sister Mary Gertrude was occupied but could return my call on the weekend during certain hours. I said it was an urgent family matter. The woman asked what that might be. I said that her father was missing in the mountains, presumed dead. There was a pause, and then the woman asked me to please wait one moment.

A few minutes later, my daughter (whom I knew as Kathryn) came on the line. She sounded tense and out of breath, perhaps pulled from manual labor. I told her what had happened.

Oh no, she said. There was a pause, and I knew she was making the sign of the cross.

I told her I was sorry, sorry to have to break the news. Sorry to interrupt her work, the peaceful life she had created.

She brushed this off and asked how I was doing.

Oh, I’m all right, I said. It’s horrible, of course.

Poor Daddy, she said in a low voice. I can’t believe it.

I said he loved her very much.

She said she knew. She loved him, too.

There was a silence, and it seemed perhaps we had covered the topic. Certain unsayable things lurked under the surface.

I’ll let you know if I hear anything else, I said.

I’ll come home in the spring, she said. Was she crying? I couldn’t tell.

Kathy, I blurted, as it seemed the call was drawing to a close. Please pray for me, okay?

I always do, Mama, she said. I always have. But I have to go now. Goodbye.

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The next few weeks, I occupied myself with cooking. There were many recipes I’d flagged in my cookbooks over the years, but had never gotten around to making. Gregory liked certain dishes, and I guess you could say I got in a rut.

But I did not want to make those meals again. Instead, I splurged on high-end ingredients, turned on a jazz station I liked, and experimented in the kitchen for hours a day. If I didn’t feel like cleaning up, I left the dishes in the sink.

I was a good cook, a quality of mine Gregory liked. He had a comfortable domestic life. He enjoyed having his mind freed for other things.

My other qualities, not so useful, were matters of indifference. My mind, for instance, did not interest him. Nor my physical features, anymore. At some point, I stopped trying to be thin and just enjoyed my food. There was no point trying to compete with childless women in their twenties.

Two weeks after the candlelight vigil, a Friday, a Ph.D. student in theoretical physics abruptly left the program. She withdrew from her classes, packed her apartment, and disappeared. She was one of my husband’s acolytes, and I happened to know her name: Elena. She was Romanian, I think. Pretty in an unkempt, distracted way, like some of these brainy girls were.

A rumor started that she had left to join my husband, who only appeared to have tumbled off a cliff. There was speculation that he’d set up a new life—a secret bank account, two plane tickets—having opted to quit academia in dramatic fashion. He was still a good-looking man, and his wife—well. Anyone could see that she’d let herself go.

I didn’t hear this rumor through the grapevine. I had few friends among the faculty wives, and it was an awkward topic. It took a police officer coming by, one morning, for me to learn what the campus had been buzzing about for days.

He was a slight young man, a junior officer of some sort, dispatched for the unenviable task of asking me what I knew about my husband’s relationship with his 24-year-old student.

Would you like a cup of tea? I said.

Oh, no. I’m good, thank you.

Are you sure? Because I feel like I could use a cup of tea. It’s loose-leaf assam, very good.

I’m okay. But please, go ahead.

I busied myself putting the kettle on. As I tapped fragrant leaves into a silver ball, I said that I made it a practice not to meddle in my husband’s personal life. I knew nothing about this student, nor had I asked. All marriages were different, right?

Yes, ma’am. For sure.

But the idea that Dr. ----- would abandon his post as a tenured professor was ridiculous, I said. He was dedicated to his research. It was his life, and he had no plans to retire.

Was he under stress? Money problems, maybe?

Our accountant handles the finances, I said. As far as I know, it’s all in good shape. We don’t have expensive tastes, we own this house outright. And our only child is a nun.

A short time later, the officer left. He said he was very sorry for my loss, and I said thank you.

I sipped my tea, sweetened with honey, and watched out the picture window as the squad car drove away.

---

After that, unusual things started occurring.

The suggestion that my husband might still be alive—again, I didn’t know what happened to him, no one did—planted itself in my mind, like a pebble in a shoe.

Whenever I was out in public, among strangers, I found myself scanning the faces of random men on the street. Many of them looked like him, a little. Their height and build were similar to Gregory’s. They had the same longish silver-gray hair, or were dressed in clothes he might have worn. As they walked by, I had to scrutinize their features to rule out the possibility that they were my husband, who for some reason had decided to pretend he didn’t know me.

One evening, out walking the dog, I saw a wiry gray-haired man in the distance. As I got closer, he seemed to hurry away and out of sight. For days, I mentally went over the details of this encounter, if you could even call it that. I told myself it wasn’t Gregory, secretly back in town again, taking a clandestine stroll through a local park.

But then again, it might have been.

Even at home, some silent shadow of his presence seemed to hover. Whenever my phone pinged with an incoming text, for a split second I wondered if it was him, getting in touch. And when the ringtone trilled one day, I nearly jumped. Maybe some hospital or rescue party had tracked down my number and was calling to inform me of his whereabouts?

Or maybe he was hurt and bleeding at the bottom of the canyon, calling for help. That was impossible, surely. No one could survive those freezing nights.

During all this, I had the uneasy impression that my husband was trying to make contact, to pierce whatever veil separated us in time and space. Was he trying to tell me something?

Was he angry?

For years, I’d hardly dreamed at all. But now I had vivid nightly dreams about Gregory and me. I dreamed of our first meeting at a college party, long ago. I was talking to someone over my shoulder when I bumped into a thin, dark-haired boy carrying two drinks, which sloshed onto my clothes. In the dream, I was once again a petite blonde in a pink dress. After we both apologized, he was in no hurry to leave. He handed me one of the drinks and asked my name.

Oona, I said. It’s Irish. It means lamb.

And are you? Gregory said. A gentle little lamb?

I try to be, I said. He struck me as good-looking and a bit intense.

He grinned and said we’ll cure you of that soon enough.

Fog filled the room, which it had not in real life. And through the mist, I saw that the boy had turned into an old man, more bent and frail than I’d ever seen him.

Another night, I dreamed about a dinner party at our house. Gregory liked to host the acolytes at the end of each semester, and several were in attendance, including Elena, the girl whose name I knew. While the students chatted at the dining table, I stayed in the kitchen, cooking.

Gregory came in and asked what was taking so long.

I said just a few more minutes, relax.

Gregory said I had nothing to do all day except make dinner, and I was embarrassing him in front of his guests.

What is this, anyway? He lifted a lid and peered suspiciously into a pot on the stove.

Chinese food, I said. It was a joke I made sometimes.

Ha ha, he said.

That part really happened, a recent memory, but the dream gradually turned into a nightmare. It ended with me at the edge of an abyss, losing my footing and stumbling backwards. My stomach lurched, and I frantically tried to climb to solid ground, but realized it was too late. I was already in the air.

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One afternoon, as I was filing my nails, the phone rang. It showed the call was coming from a university in Zurich.

A sense of dread came over me, and I picked up.

The Swiss professor’s thin, accented voice was filled with emotion. He said he was grieved to learn of my husband’s disappearance.

I hope you’re happy, I snapped.

He said certainly not. The news gave him no pleasure whatsoever. In fact, he was deeply distressed. The global physics community had lost one of its brightest lights—

But you’re still planning to publish the paper, I said. Right?

After a pause, the Swiss professor said he was. But, given the tragic circumstances, the Zurich team had decided to delay publication for six months as a courtesy to Dr. ----‘s family, and in honor of his valuable contributions to the field.

Thank you, I said curtly.

Not at all, said the Swiss professor. He said he was very sorry for my loss, and I thanked him again and hung up.

Oh, Gregory, I thought, drumming my fingers on the table. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, wherever he was.

The day before he disappeared, my husband received devastating news. A Zurich-based research team believed they had disproved the main theory on which he’d made his name. Worse, they had combed back over his pioneering work and found a fundamental error, a wrong assumption on which all the rest was based. As a professional courtesy, the Swiss physicist called to inform him of their forthcoming paper in a major journal. He said he was sorry for any embarrassment it would cause, but of course it was not personal, and he continued to hold Gregory in high esteem.

Gregory said he understood and appreciated the call.

The minute he got off the phone, he was apoplectic. He said that the paper would be humiliating, career-ending. He couldn’t believe they were right. How could he have made such a serious error? And if he had, why had no one caught it before? It was impossible, unthinkable. He stormed through the house, cursing and raging, for hours.

I am in no way qualified to explain my husband’s research. It involves tiny bits of energy called quanta. It’s difficult to pin down much about them, because uncertainty is baked into the cake of their existence. From high school physics, you might recall an anecdote about a cat. Scientists put the cat into a thick lead box, which also contains a flask filled with cyanide. When they insert the cat, he’s fine. They seal up the box and wait. As time passes and they watch the motionless and soundproof box, they don’t know whether the flask has broken, or whether the cat is still alive.

Did they kill the cat? Or didn’t they?

A famous theory says it’s impossible to know, because until the box is opened, the cat is both alive and dead.

That’s what quanta are like, as I understand it. My husband’s research focused on quantum jumps, abrupt transitions between one state and another. He had a theory that the next move could be predicted after all—that if you observed a system long enough, you could guess its future state with a high degree of accuracy. He believed quantum uncertainty could be massaged, or tricked. And maybe so. He was a very clever man.

After the call from the Swiss professor, though, he acted like a child. While he ranted, I made sympathetic sounds and tried to stay out of the line of fire.

At some point, late that night, he said he was going hiking the next day. This surprised me: It was the middle of winter. But he was known to go off on long hikes alone to clear his head. Sometimes, when thinking through a problem, he left for the day to trek along the Gorge, a nearby trail rated very difficult. The path was narrow, steep, and simply too frightening for many. For Gregory, this was the draw. He said he liked to stand on the brink of nothingness and behold the void.

That night, he bitterly remarked that life as he knew it was over, and there was no point coming back. He’d be better off stepping off the edge.

You don’t mean that, I said mildly.

The hell I don’t, he barked.

He said a few more nasty things to me, which I will not repeat.

Then, as I watched in silence, he lugged his day pack and trekking poles out of the closet, threw them by the front door, and went to bed.

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I appreciate your taking the time to meet with me, Father. It’s a long story, as you can see. But now, I’ll try to get to the point.

When I married my husband, all those years ago, I didn’t know what marriage was. Like many young people, I’d fallen away from my faith, and my parents’ marriage was calm and stable. So I didn’t give it a lot of thought. I assumed everything would work out for me, too.

Almost immediately, I suffered a great deal. I couldn’t understand what was happening. After our daughter was born, things only got worse.

Suffering has a way of making people stagger back to church. Though my husband wasn’t a believer, I started going to Mass. I had my infant daughter baptized and brought her with me every week. And through my reading, I thought I found a way of coping with my life.

As you know, Father, marriage isn’t about seeking your own happiness. A married person’s duty is to get their spouse’s soul to heaven. I took this as a sacred mission that gave meaning to my suffering. And so I stopped dwelling on my own disappointment. When he was cruel, I tried to turn the other cheek. When he stayed out with other women, I said nothing. I thought I could get him to heaven by example.

But my husband didn’t change, not really. He would act better for a few days, or a few weeks at most.

When Kathryn was eleven, she asked to be sent away to school. The atmosphere in our home was miserable, so hard on a child. I begged my husband to enroll her in an exclusive convent school, two states away. After she left, I missed her terribly. My church attendance tapered off. I struggled to believe my life still had some purpose.

Over the years, I got a dog, developed hobbies. Gregory and I moved on separate tracks. We became roommates who had dinner together a few nights a week. Sometimes he even brought his women to our house: Elena, others.

That brings us to the night he put his trekking poles by the front door.

After the bedroom door slammed shut, I remained on the couch, holding a cup of tea that had gone cold. I stayed there, motionless, for a long time. Wheels were turning in mind, creaky and dusty from disuse. For so long, I’d tried not to think about my marriage.

But maybe I still had a job to do.

In the back of a high kitchen cabinet was a glass jar with a faded label. I couldn’t tell you when I bought it. It may have been after the first time he made me serve his girlfriend dinner. It may have been after the thousandth time he called me a cruel name. I think I made myself forget. I only knew that it was there.

I’ve known Gregory a long time. We met in college, as I said, and by the time he was in grad school, we were married. One afternoon, when we were maybe twenty-five, we were having lunch with his professor and some other students at a Chinese restaurant. Back then, Gregory was the acolyte, and he was being easygoing and charming, trying to make a good impression.

As we stood up from the table, he seemed to stumble. His eyes widened, and he looked dizzy and confused. He grabbed the back of a chair and held himself upright for a few seconds before crumpling to the floor. Suddenly, his breathing was labored. Flat on his back, he put a hand to his throat. People were asking him what the matter was, but he couldn’t speak.

Someone called 911, and within minutes, an ambulance arrived and EMTs surrounded him. One of them asked if he had any allergies. Everyone looked at me. I said I didn’t know. The EMT crouched down and gave Gregory an injection. After a few seconds, he gasped for air, able to breathe again. Later, they figured out what the allergen was.

The sesame seeds in the jar were very small. Just to make sure, I pulverized them into powder. Weightless, almost insubstantial, the dust fell from my fingers into the bag of trail mix I had in stock, Gregory’s preferred brand. Then, like the good housewife I was, I tucked it into his day pack and zipped it up.

Are you shocked, Father? It’s all very confusing, because I believed—at least, some part of me believed—that I was saving him. You have to understand that my husband did whatever he wanted. He had no morality to speak of, answered to no authority outside himself. If the urge seized him to take his own life—going out in a blaze of glory that would be talked about for years—nothing would stop him. He would embrace the nothingness of the abyss.

But I could still save him, you see. If I couldn’t get his soul to heaven, I could rescue it from hell. He would get dizzy, stumble, fall—but none if it would be his fault. It would be mine, and I would live on to repent. My years of suffering would finally be redeemed: I’d save us both.

But now he’s gone, and no one knows what really happened. I didn’t foresee that the uncertainty would be so hard to bear. Maybe he never even took the trail mix out of his pack. Maybe he doggedly pressed on to the highest point, and jumped.

Or maybe he was just trying to clear his mind. At some point on the trail, he foraged in his backpack for supplies. Within two minutes, he felt dizzy, the Gorge swaying before him . . .

Maybe he wouldn’t have jumped. Maybe he would have, if I hadn’t killed him first. Maybe he did.

Either way, Father, I don’t think he’s coming back. And in the spring, they’ll find his broken, rotting body in the Gorge.

I’m sure you’ll agree that the important thing, now, is to repent. I have to save myself. Or else I’ve made a terrible mistake.

I know I should feel remorse. But, Father, I felt—I feel—nothing.

Am I a killer? Is my soul going to hell?

I’m sorry for the thing I might have done.

I am.

Truly, I am.

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