Weike Wang

Two marriages:

            Clara and Fritz Haber: Clara finishes a doctorate in chemistry. She is the only woman at her school. She is brilliant but reserved. The first time Fritz proposes, she declines. The second time, she agrees. After they marry, he demands that Clara be a housewife and a mother, while he travels for work. When war breaks out in 1918, he proves his patriotism through the development of a new weapon, something invisible to the human eye and absolutely silent. After finding out about the chlorine gas, Clara shoots herself in the family garden.

            Marie and Pierre Curie: Pierre makes several marriage proposals to Marie before she accepts. A commonality then between these women. On her wedding day, she wears a dark blue dress. More practical, she thinks, and afterward, in her dress, goes back to the laboratory with Pierre. The lab is the basement of their home. In three years, they discover polonium and radium. In eight, they are awarded a Nobel. At first the committee will not recognize her (no woman has won before) but Pierre demands it—she is the one who sifted through ten tons of mineral-rich ore to find that tenth of a gram.

In Chinese, there is another phrase about love. It is not used for passionate love but the love between family members. In translation, it means I hurt for you.

            My mother says this while standing in the doorway of my bedroom because I have just asked why she couldn’t be more like the mothers of my American friends, why she couldn’t be affectionate like them. She then holds a hand to her heart and says that the Chinese keep their feelings in here and not—she points to air—out in the open. Now, I think, if she knew the right idiom, she would have pointed to her sleeve.

            I remember how my father learns English. We have just left China. We are living in that studio. When he comes back from work, he sits down on the floor because there is no desk. He reads from the dictionary. He learns ten new words a day.

            In high school, I find his PhD thesis on the shelf. I don’t make it past the first page. The first page is a dedication. For my wife and daughter, it starts and then continues on in perfect English.

            I have probably read that page a thousand times. I have run my fingers across it.

The first time Eric says I love you, it is in lab, before a meeting. He thinks he will wait until after my meeting, but he has been anxious all day. He hasn’t slept. He catches me before I walk into the conference room and just says it. I freeze. I feel my skin burn to a crisp. Do I go to this meeting? I do but remember nothing.

            What the shrink says from day one: The chasm you need to cross is not a physical one.

            Then what is it? I ask.

            I much prefer the physical one. Tell me to walk across the Grand Canyon on a tightrope, balancing an apple on my head, and I’ll do it.