Rose reached over and picked a lemon biscotti crumb from my knit skirt. “I think when his mother saw how happy Frank and I were, it helped, but really she didn’t come around until I got pregnant with Robert.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, mentally closing my imaginary notebook. “That’s not going to work.”
We had a good laugh over that, making up stories for me to tell Jean.
“Tell her that her only brother is going to give her a new niece or nephew,” Rose said.
“I could say I’ve been irritable lately because I’m in the first semester.”
“Trimester.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“Say her brother wants to make an honest woman out of you, and would she be the godmother.”
“I could say it was fertility drugs, and we’re having quints.”
We let the single-concept joke run its course, nearly doubled over much of the time.
How to turn a bad evening into a great one—leave the trouble spot and run to your best friend.
Matt joined me for an early breakfast of coffee and toast and told me he’d had a talk with his sister while I was at Rose’s. We kept our voices low, with occasional glances toward the stairs to the bedrooms.
I was glad I had errands and a hair appointment, and would be leaving the house before Jean was awake. Or maybe she’ll hide in her room till she hears my car pull away, I thought.
“Jean promised to be more open to this change. You know, she had a hard time adjusting to her husband’s death. She has Chet’s photos all over the house, and still doesn’t even date after ten years.”
I was glad Matt hadn’t kept such a strict mourning regime. “Having two small children would make a difference,” I said, by way of excusing her.
He shook his head. “It’s not the kids at this point. They’d love it if she had a social life of her own. I told her she had made her choice, and it was fine, but I’d made a different one. It wasn’t going to do anyone any good, us mourning together for the rest of our lives.” He put his hand on mine. “I know you’re doing your best. It will all work out.”
“I thought she liked me the first time I met her,” I told him. “But then she got colder and colder. Am I doing something in particular that offends her?”
“No, I’m sure it’s because you kept showing up, and now that you’ve moved in, it looks like you’re here to stay.” He smiled at me. “You are, aren’t you?”
I nodded, touched at his care of me.
I considered telling Matt the round of pregnant jokes Rose and I had engaged in, but thought it might fall flat. Or sound disrespectful to the mothers of the world. Sometimes with these funny stories you had to be there.
I parked around the corner from the high school for my late-afternoon, after-classes appearance at the Science Club meeting.
I’d prepared an outline of my talk, taking the students from the basic facts on carbon to the latest in carbon research—carbon nanotubes. Buckytubes, I said to myself, rehearsing my opening, one of the versatile new materials of nanotechnology. I’d talked MC into joining the Science Club program, thinking it would be a nice introduction to what a career in high school teaching might be like. For this topic, I’d give the first lecture, laying the groundwork and providing some physical applications; MC would do a follow-up talk emphasizing the chemical and biological applications she was more familiar with.
I’d laid out a timeline with the highlights that preceded the nanotech revolution: the development of the electron microscope and new coating techniques; the discovery of buckyballs by two experimental chemists; and the discovery of the carbon nanotube, which opened the door to advances in all fields from medicine to computing to building materials.
Daniel Endicott, young, tall, and fit, met me at the front door of the school and relieved me of some of my props. His haircut would have been an embarrassment for any boy in my high school class, looking as though his mother had put a soup bowl on his head and shaved around it, leaving the effect of a blond weeping willow at the top.
I’d met Daniel only once before, at the orientation session at the beginning of the school year. He impressed me as one of those dedicated teachers we hope are the norm, not the exception. He’d set up partnerships with Boston colleges, which allowed his students to get involved in real-life science activities. I was thrilled that Revere High students were being exposed to equipment and techniques used by professional scientists such as the field biologists working on the Rumney Marsh project.
“I like to give my students opportunities to be scientists, as opposed to being told what scientists do,” Daniel told me at our first meeting. I wanted to adopt him.