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Jack takes a step forward. “Laurendeau has isolated you and made it impossible for you to realize it. Just like he did with my mother.” He rubs his forehead, and I wonder when he last talked about all of this. “It’s all in her diaries.”
“Oh my God.” I cannot believe it. “Is that why you wrote the article? Because of those diaries?”
He exhales a humorless laugh. “No. I wrote it because I went to Northeastern and tried to report Laurendeau. I was told that I couldn’t file a complaint, because I wasn’t the victim. It fizzled into nothing. And Elsie, I was...” His eyes hold mine for a second, and I see everything. He was young and he was tired. He was sad. He was angry. He was lonely; he was alone; he was the odd Smith out. He was helpless. He wanted revenge. “ThenI wrote the article.” His big shoulders rise and fall. “I used what I knew of physics to make it believable, and I still didn’t think it’d get accepted. But somehow it did, and when I read that Laurendeau was removed as editor...” He shakes his head. “It didn’t make me feel any better about the fact that I couldn’t remember shit of my mother, or about the things Caroline did to me.” His eyes are full of sorrow. “So I stopped thinking aboutit. And whenever someone reminded me, I ignored them. Until I met you.”
My expression hardens. “Because I kept bringing it up.”
“No, Elsie.” His voice is calm, firm. “Because the idea of Laurendeau doing to you what he did to my mother terrified me.”
I scoff. “Why didn’t you warn me, then? We talked about him. About your mother. You hadcountlessopportunities.” There’s a piece of me, somewhere in the back of my head, that knows how much Jack’s admission of vulnerability must have cost. But the larger piece thought this was the first relationship in my life based on honesty, and now... I feel incredibly stupid. “Youliedto me. Over and over.”
“Would you have believed me if I’d told you?” he asks, taking a single step closer. “In fact, do you believe menow?”
“I...” I glance away, suddenly flustered. “I believe thatyoubelieve it. But... maybe you misinterpreted the diaries. It must have been a misunderstanding, because he would never... I owe him so much, and...”
Jack pinches the bridge of his nose. “This ispreciselywhy I didn’t tell you. You idolize him and weren’t ready to hearanyof this. If I’d brought it up, I would have hurt you, and you would have pulled back.”
“That’s not for you to decide! And anyway, why do you thinkIspent my life lying to people, Jack?” I explode. “Why do you think I never told Laurendeau that I hate teaching, or Cece that her movies are worse than a Windows screen saver, or Mom that I’m a real fucking human being? Because I’m afraid that if Ihurtthem with the truth, then they’llleaveme. Why is it only a good excuse when it comes toyou?”
I walk away from the table, away from Jack. Take a deep breath,willing myself to calm down, staring at the streetlights shining over the rooftop snow.
Jack lied to me. After everything,hewas the one to lie tome. Not about a movie or wanting to get sushi—he lied to me about something huge.
“Here’s what I think, Jack,” I say into the Boston skyline, angry, dejected. “You enjoy calling people out on their bullshit, but no one ever calls you out on yours.”
“Mybullshit?”
I turn around, not sure what to say. And yet when I look at him, it’s right there on my tongue.
“When you were a teenager, you did something impulsive out of anger, and that...that, I can understand. But after, you went on to have a brilliant career that gave legitimacy to your actions—and you stillneverbothered addressing them. Even after you grew up and should have known better.” I wipe my cheek with the palm of my hand, because I’m crying. Of course I am. “Your actions...youractions hurt lots more people than Laurendeau. And while you didn’t think much about the article, I thought about it every day for over a decade. It had terrible consequences for something that I really,reallylove, and you know what? I’ve done my best to avoid thinking about it, but I don’t know if I can keep on doing that. I don’t know if I can stop being angry at you. I don’t know if I...” My voice breaks and my eyes flood, and I cannot bear to be here, with Jack, a second longer.
“Is that what you are? Angry?” His hand cups my cheek, forcing my eyes to his blurry face. “Or are you just scared? Because you’ve been more honest with me than ever before?”
“Maybe.” I pull away and see it in the twitch of his fingers that he wants to chase me, but no. No. “Maybe I’m scared. And maybe you’re a liar. Where does that leave us?”
He gives me a long, undecipherable look. “I don’t know. Where?”
You know where we’re going, here, he said, over and over. And I said no, and then I said yes, and itiswhere I want to be. But he asked me for honesty and lied in return, and he did beat everything I stand for to a pulp, and I just—
I need space. I need to think.
“You should leave, Jack.”
He lets out a breath and moves closer. Like he wants to wrap himself around me. It’s in the way his muscles coil, that impulse to take care of me. “Elsie, come on. You’re not—”
“I am.” I’m starting to sob. I want him to touch me, but I cannot stand for him to be here. “You always talk about what I want, Jack. You helped me learn how to ask for it. Well.” I force myself to look him squarely in the eye and show him that I mean what I say, even though I’m not sure I do. There’s a burning heat in my chest, scalding, painful. “Right now, I don’t want to be with you. I need you to give me some space.”
I see it in his eyes, the moment he realizes that I’m telling the truth. And the second he’s gone, I feel it in my bones like nothing before.
24
ELECTROMAGNETISM
Jack calls me two days later during my office hours, but I’m busy explaining to a UMass senior that if she truly must paste an entire paragraph from Wikipedia into her essay, she should at least take out the embedded hyperlinks. He tries again on Friday night, when I’m grading the thermo papers that came in late, and one last time on Saturday morning, while I’m in bed staring at the popcorn ceiling, thinking about him anyway.
I never consider picking up. Not once. Not even when I cannot sleep. Not even after being sullen tempered, distracted, inefficient for the entire week because I cannot stop replaying my fight with him, slicing it into pieces, retracing what I said, whathesaid, what our positions are, what algorithms could be used to solve the mess we’re in and the things I feel. Not even when Cece comments on the newly whole credenza, making me miss him in an angry, visceral way.
I need answers. On Monday morning my alarm goes off at fivethirty, but I’m already awake, just as I’ve been for the rest of the night. I dress quickly, without looking at myself in the mirror, and leave as quietly as I can, stopping only to give a suspicious Hedgie a handful of food pellets. It’s early enough that the bus to Northeastern is semi-deserted—the driver, me, and a girl in scrubs. Her foot taps to music I cannot hear, and focusing on it makes the thought of what I’m about to do almost bearable.
