Fire and Ice

Night falls quickly. It is the winter solstice, which means that this is, in theory, the day that we have the least number of daylight hours. That this is the shortest day of the year. I find this exceedingly funny for two reasons. Firstly, my daylight hours have been so minimized anyway that a few more hours of darkness really isn’t going to make any difference. Second,I find mirth in reflecting upon the fact that people think they can measure darkness. I’m working on a starlit dome, an observatory which operates solely on the luminosity of stars. Mark is leaving just as I set up work for the night. It is the end of his day, but it is just the start of mine. “Hey, Kate, should I leave the lights on in the foyer?” he asks, leaning in the doorway. I shake my head. “No,” I say, “turn them off.” I wonder if I have an aversion to light. Or maybe, I have just grown used to darkness. --------------------------------------- He was thin and tall and brown. He had green eyes. I first saw James when I was doing an internship in Alaska, in 1980. My first thought was that he was strange. For one, he didn’t wear jackets like the rest of us. He’d walk around in a pair of old sweats and a chunky t-shirt. And second, he didn’t look like all the other men there; as if molecular biology was his life and passion. On the contrary, he looked as if he had turned up there quite by accident. Over the next few weeks, I itched to speak to him. And then, ready-made in a box and tied with a bow, came my unadulterated excuse. Some idiot in management thought we should work together; he wrote a whole load of stuff in the formal recommendation, and much of it was either nonsense, or else undecipherable. I do remember one phrase in particular, though. He said that I was fire and James was ice. --------------------------------------------- After Mark leaves, I set up my apparatus on the trolley and pull it outside. It may have been some intrinsic genetic flaw, or a habitual need for air, but I have always preferred the outdoors. Somehow, darkness is exemplified behind the window. I am currently working on a mini model of what I hope to achieve. Generally speaking, my hypothesis should work in practice, since logic and reasoning support it. However, biology doesn’t. The laws of biology state that light energy cannot be directly captured from celestial bodies so physically small. Logic, however, says otherwise. If stars are visible in the darkness, then they must have some degree of energy. We should be able to conduct a direct molecular transfer of this energy… as it always does when it hits this bump in the road, my mind begins to wander… wait, I think, not yet. I touch the tiny model of the observatory dome on the trolley, and then smile. It has James in every fibre of it. I can almost see his deft fingers working away again…it hurts. I abruptly draw my hand away from the model, but it is too late. Against my will, tears pool in my eyes and splash onto the cardboard below. I let the memories wash over me, and suddenly I realize: to get the light, you have to let the darkness in also. I lean over the mess of objects on my cluttered desk. I suppose I haven’t changed much since I was a child. I still leave things where I want and there is no element of organization to any part of my life. There is a difference now, though. I know what I am looking for. ------------------------------------------------ Our first “date” was in Lab B. Just him, and me, and, of course, the dead frog lying between us like some perverted meal. What a night. Despite the poignant night of excitement I had spent pining to speak to him and¸ I had hoped, to discover the possibly clandestine secret behind his arrival to the States, I was past speaking when he came. He had arrived thirty seconds late, smiled at me, bade me to sit, and then had brought the unfortunate frog that we were supposed to be dissecting out onto the operating table. It may seem like it, but this was no elementary exercise. And believe me, I had neither inclination nor desire to view the creature’s innards. The frogs’ former residence had been inside a pool in Atlanta, where it had, by some horrible work of fate against both it and us, perished. DOC had apparently observed the rapid decline of several other species of fauna in this area also, and therefore some fool up in Genesis had said had offered up me and James to do the dirty work. I use the title “fool” not out of contempt for its bearer, nor a personal detest of thawing out the frog, though I do not deny that the idea was certainly detestable to me. I use it because I can’t for the life of me understand why dichotomizing the frog would help with anything at all. It is common knowledge to biologists that you don’t find anything of consequence by looking into something which probably became deceased through natural causes. True, there is some remote chance that Osama has decided to move from people to animals, or some masochist in Australia decided that actually, he’d rather like to kill of every living creature in that lake. But, really, the odds aren’t that high when you compare it to the reasonable explanation- that it’s just a routine manifestation of natural selection. Even in the unlikely scenario that there is human involvement this, how the hell is cutting open the bloody frog going to help with anything? It is these thoughts that zoom around my head as I look at the dead creature in front of me. While I arrive at the laboratory after thoroughly thinking about everything that could go wrong, James arrives having done the exact opposite. “It’s quite simple…Kate?” he looks at me, and I nod mutely in confirmation. “All we have to do is cut open this thing, analyse a couple of the chemicals in its blood, and make sure that it didn’t cop it cause of anything a human might have contributed to, right?” He is waiting for a response, but I don’t give it. Instead, I do the one thing I have wanted to from the moment he said the words “cop it” -I laugh. He stares at me for a moment, then joins in, as if he intended to all along, and that was his sole purpose in saying the words. It is as simple as that: getting to know him. And learning how to laugh. ------------------------------------------------- I know I’m onto something here. this time, I attach the thread to the sphere I have fashioned with tissue paper and shine the light bulb on it. But this time, I carefully remove the cardboard walls which I have been using to keep the darkness out. The results are immediate. At first, the sphere is plunged into darkness. I can’t see a thing, save my own fingers; nail moons in the moonless night. Then I see it- the refraction of the rays- weak but somehow strengthened by the pitch black that surrounds it. It flickers, but’s it’s there. ------------------------------------------------- After we cut open the frog and tested each and every one of the frigging proteins and minerals in it, (surprisingly, on James’ insistence; he proves to be a very conscientious worker), he asked me out for lunch. I thought there was a very serious possibility that I would hurl if I ate anything after that, but I agreed anyway. I wanted to unfurl more of this man’s mysteries. We went out to eat at some fancy place in Queens; he ordered roast steak and I, pumpkin bread. “So, Kate…you from around here?” “No,” I say. “Made in New Zealand! How about you?” He whistled. “Australia. We were born enemies.” He had this way of making everything funny. It wasn’t that he turned everything into a joke, exactly, just that he found the humour in every situation in his own simplistic way. In that one hour, we talked about everything from Genesis to Dolly Parton. “So, how was lunch?” he asked finally, nodding at my plate. “I don’t know,” I said, and that was the first time I felt the rush that preceded a touché comment. “I think I would’ve preferred deep fried frog.” ---------------------------------------------- On my clock, the numbers blink at me out of the darkness. Memories and work combined, I’ve made it through the hardest part of the night, but I'm not done yet. The refraction model may have worked, but if I want to even be considered for funding, I need to present a written explanation of my findings. I know the scientific concepts involved, but words have never been my forte. That was James’ department. He could make each word right. He could make anything right. ------------------------------------------------- We married In Vegas. Typically, it was a drive thru wedding. I wore work pants and my best cleats, since I had to catch a flight to Bali to attend a CMB conference straight after the wedding. But still, some inkling of sentimentality lingered in my veins, and so I’d insisted that we invite out families to the “ceremony.” So we drove through to find our parents and my sister waiting for us. Angela, ever the dutiful sister, said she’d prepared a speech, but ended up losing the cue cards. Both mothers were crying and our fathers were both men of few words. So that left James. “Katherine Amelia,” he said, “I love you.” “I love how you like dachshunds and white muslin and when rain clouds appear on a sunny day. I love how I am with you, and I love who you are to me, and I to you. I love how, when I look into your eyes, I can see the world in them. I love how you can make anything better with your lousy jokes about deep-fried frog, and the way you look when you wear your glasses and dance all the way to the chemistry department. I love how you’re you.” That was the first time I remember crying, but it definitely wasn’t the last. ------------------------------------------------ I’ve written up the method and sample report. All I need now is to explain why I chose to do it. -------------------------------------------- In 1993, James is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. In the first month, I watch as he loses so much weight that he becomes akin to a bag of bones. In the second month, his nerves are so dysfunctional that he cannot walk. In the third month, , I watch as he battles optic neuritis, and loses. Loses the light. The call wives without their husbands widows. But what is the word for a wife who has to watch darkness claim her husband, unchallenged? ------------------------------------------------ Why did I choose to do it? God, why would anyone even care what I think? There is actually no viable reason for wanted to channel the light of stars. Isn’t that what solar power does, anyway? Isn’t the sun just a giant star? I chew my pen in thought, and then stop when I remember it was what James used to do. James, James, James. When did he go from being my light to my darknesss? And suddenly, I realize that this is the answer. I admire the stars because they can shine in the darkness. No, inspite of the darkness. Because it’s what I can’t do. I let the memories flow, and I can’t measure the tears; where they start or where they end, because they never do. I simply pick up my pen and, for once in my life, truly write. I did it because, for once, I wanted to challenge darkness. I wanted to win. By Natalia June 2013