“I told you,” Prakrti’s mother said. “The Kumars.”
“Are we related to them?”
Her mother laughed. “Maybe one day.” She looked out the window, her face lit with a violent satisfaction. “They are the parents of the boy who wants to marry your sister.”
*
Matthew talked for forty-five minutes, as requested. His topic, that day, was gravitational waves, in particular their recent detection by twin interferometers located at disparate locations in the continental United States. Wearing a lavalier, and pacing the stage in a navy jacket and jeans, Matthew explained that Einstein had theorized the existence of these waves almost a hundred years ago, but that proof had only been found this year. To aid his presentation, Matthew had come equipped with a digital simulation of the two black holes whose merging, in a galaxy 1.3 billion light-years away, had created the ripples that had passed invisibly and silently through the universe to register against the highly sensitive devices—in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington—that had been engineered for this purpose alone. “As acute as the ear of God,” Matthew described them. “In fact, a lot better than that.”
The auditorium was less than half full. Equally disheartening, most of the audience consisted of people in their seventies or eighties, retirees from the town who came to these lectures at the college because they were open to the public and given at a reasonable hour, and because they gave them something to talk about afterward at dinner.
At the book signing, those who remained bore avidly down on Matthew as he sat behind a table, armed with a Sharpie and a glass of wine. Many carried beige totes, the women wearing bright scarves and loose, forgiving sweaters, the men in shapeless chinos, all of them exuding anticipation and forbearance. It wasn’t clear from what people said if they had read Matthew’s book, or understood the science, but they definitely wanted their copies personalized. Most everyone was content to smile and say, “Thank you for coming to Dover!” as if he were doing it for free. Some men trotted out whatever they remembered from high school or college physics courses and tried to apply it to Matthew’s talk.
A woman with white bangs and red cheeks stopped in front of Matthew. She’d recently been to England to research her genealogy, she said, and she gave him an extended account of the pertinent gravestones she’d located in various Anglican churchyards in Kent. This woman had just moved on when the girl from the coffee shop appeared.
“I don’t have anything for you to sign,” she said guiltlessly.
“That’s all right. It’s not required.”
“I’m too poor to buy a book! College is so expensive!”
A little over an hour ago, the girl had struck Matthew as something of a bother. But now, drained by the procession of old, haggard faces, he gazed up at her with relief and gratitude. She’d taken off her baggy sweatshirt and now had on a little white top that left her shoulders bare.
“At least get yourself some wine,” Matthew told her. “That’s free.”
“I’m not twenty-one yet. I’m nineteen. I’ll be twenty in May.”
“I don’t think anyone will mind.”
“Are you trying to ply me with liquor, Professor?” the girl said.
Matthew felt himself blushing. He tried to think of something to counter this impression, but because what the girl had said wasn’t so far from the truth, nothing occurred to him.
Fortunately, the girl, in her hectic, excited way, had already moved on. “I know!” she said, her eyes growing wide. “Could you sign a piece of paper for me? That way, I can paste it into your book.”
“If you ever buy it.”
“Right. First I have to graduate and pay off my college loans.”
She had already swung her backpack onto the table. The motion released her smell, a light, clean scent, something like talcum.
Behind her, a dozen people were still in line. They didn’t seem impatient but a few were staring to see what was holding things up.
The girl produced a small ringed notebook. Opening it, she searched for a blank page. As she did this, her black hair fell forward, curtaining them off from the people in line. And then a strange thing happened. The girl seemed to shiver. Some delicate or tormenting sensation traveled the length of her body. She lifted her eyes toward Matthew’s, and as if giving in to an irresistible urge, she said in a strangled, elated voice, “Oh, God! Why don’t you just sign my body?”
The avowal was so sudden, so absurd, so welcome, that for a moment Matthew was struck dumb. He glanced at the nearest people in line to see if anyone had overheard.
“I think I’d better stick with the notebook,” he said.
She handed it over. Laying it flat on the table, Matthew asked, “How would you like this?”
“To Prakrti. Want me to spell it?”
But he was already writing: “To Prakrti. A Fresh Person.”
This made the girl laugh. Then, as if making the most innocent request in the world, she said, “Can you put down your cell?”
Matthew didn’t even dare to look up again. His face was burning. He was desperate for the moment to be over and thrilled by the encounter. He scrawled down his phone number. “Thank you for coming,” he said, pushing the notebook away, and then turned to the next person in line.
*
The boy’s name was Dev. Dev Kumar. He was twenty years old, worked in a store selling TVs and video equipment, and was taking night school classes toward a degree in computer science. All this Prakrti’s mother told her on the plane back to the U.S.
The idea that she would marry this unknown person—or anyone for that matter, for a long, long time—was too preposterous for Prakrti to take seriously.
“Mom, hello? I’m only sixteen.”
“I was seventeen when I got engaged to your father.”
Yeah, and look how that turned out, Prakrti thought. But she said nothing. Discussing the idea would only dignify it, when what she wanted was to make it go away. Her mother was prone to wild imaginings. She was always dreaming of moving back to India after Prakrti’s dad retired. She fantasized about Prakrti’s getting a job there someday, in Bangalore or Mumbai, of her marrying an Indian boy and buying a house big enough to accommodate her parents. Dev Kumar was just the latest form this fantasy had taken.
Prakrti put on her headphones to block her mother out. She spent the rest of the flight writing her essay on The Scarlet Letter.
After they got back home, just as she hoped, the nightmare scenario went away. Her mother brought up Dev a few times, in a scripted, promotional way, but then let the subject drop. Her father, back at work, seemed to have forgotten the Kumars entirely. As for Prakrti, she re-immersed herself in schoolwork. She studied late every night, traveled with the debate team, and, on Saturday mornings, attended SAT prep sessions at her school.