Sam. I’m sorry. I need to talk to you. There is something we need to discuss in person. Just one meeting.
Sam feels her heart constrict in grief again. She can still hear the familiar authority in the words, but the words themselves are a little different this time. Meeker. Pleading. Like she is unsure whether her daughter will obey her.
Sam thinks of Will’s stories about his own mother. How strange and difficult the path is between parent and child, how the tether pulls taut in spite of everything.
She misses her mother. She wants to talk to her, work it out. She looks away from the message and glances over her shoulder to Will’s figure. When she’s sure that his chest is still rising and falling gently in deep sleep, she sits up.
Quietly, she slides out of bed, pulls on her shirt and shorts, and moves to the balcony, where she steps sideways so as not to be in the center of Will’s view when he opens his eyes. There, she leans against the railing, deletes her mother’s message, and calls her.
Her mother picks up before the first ring can even finish.
“Sam.”
Her voice sounds different tonight—high-pitched and soft, hesitant in a way that makes Sam uncomfortable.
She’s silent for another beat before she whispers, “It’s too early.”
“I know. But I need to see you.”
“Why?” she whispers, and her voice is hoarse with sorrow.
Her mother’s voice lowers now too. “We can discuss everything. It won’t take long.”
Sam closes her eyes. She pictures them sitting together, this broken couple, how awkward it will be for them to find the right words around each other. A lifetime of missed opportunities. Sam tries to make up her mind.
“Please, Sam.” Her mother’s voice is so quiet now that she can barely hear her. “It will be different.” Underneath the words, she hears an urgency that frightens her.
Sam stares out into the night and says, “When?”
There is silence on the other end, and Sam thinks she hears a small intake of breath. Then her mother says, “Tomorrow night.”
Then there is nothing more to say. Sam lets her mother hang up first, then stays against the balcony railing a moment longer. At last, she returns to bed, her back turned to Will, and closes her eyes.
Beside her, Will’s breathing stays rhythmic and even.
The paradox of quantum superposition, famously illustrated by a thought experiment where a hypothetical cat can be both dead and alive at the same time due to its fate being tied to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur, applies also to alchemy at the quantum level. There is a moment when both sides of the transmutation equation can be true. […]
The Quantum Mechanics of Alchemyby Hypatia, 2003
