Kalila by Rosemary Nixon Read Free Book Online Page B

same time the properties of a particle and a wave. Sometimes it showed one set of properties; sometimes the other.
    Yet this was not the most astounding feature of Einstein’s discovery. The most astonishing was his rejection of absolute space and absolute time. All we need to do, Einstein said, is pick a frame of reference against which to set the happenings of the universe. Einstein believed time meanders like a river around the stars and galaxies, slowing and speeding.
    Now move forward a decade. Trenton, are you with me? Well, try to look it. Remember mid-term’s in five days. Do I review for the hell of it? Niels Bohr, a Dane, carried forward the idea of quantum physics. In 1913, he was first to suggest that the energy of atoms are quantized as well. It was Bohrs who discovered that electrons simply shift from one orbit to another, without being seen to travel, existing simultaneously in two different orbits. It’s called quantum theory because they make a quantum leap. Quantum Leap ? You guys watch old TV reruns?
    You perch on your desk. The superposition of states of quantum mechanics is truly mysterious, grade elevens. Remember the experiment of two holes in the screen? The light can zip through both holes at the same time, instead of having to choose one over the other. Yes, the impossible can occur: a photon, a quantum of light in other words, can be in two or more states, here and there, at the same time.
    That doesn’t make sense, a voice pipes from the back.
    Sure it does. Anita leans forward. It’s like my boyfriend — nice guy, son of a bitch —
    Anita, you get my gist. Reflect, grade elevens, on how far quantum mechanics has brought us. Humankind has moved from gazing in awe at the unattainable and distant sky, to a particular and detailed study of what light might be, melding the poetry and mystery of the heavens, to the rational logic of scientific inquiry.

Mid afternoon light washes the window. Everything ghosts white. I expect the scent of calla lily, trillium, jasmine, snow, picture my mother, standing motionless in a gauze curtain of thought, then turning to finish the dishes at her small sink, feeling their way through grey light into the cupboard. Last night she phoned to say she dreamed she was tattooed in large words and people read her. The dream awash in colour. My dad gone ten years and still Mom’s house in town feels strange and new though she’s been in it six. Each day her world fades deeper into grey-white twilight. Frost stars the ground. She spends less time with her large-print books, more afternoons listening to old tapes. This morning, she said over the crackling telephone wire, she came across one of us girls singing. She pressed Play, leaned into the window, and my dad appeared. I saw Wilf, bent forward on the chesterfield across from the piano, grinning at you girls. His voice lurks in the shadows by the coat hooks, his step on the cellar stairs, she smells his Sen-Sen though she keeps none in the house. Remember, Maggie? She hummed, then sang across the wire:
    When the sun in the morning peeps over the hill ,
    And kisses the roses round my windowsill
    Then my heart fills with gladness …
    My mother, imagining colour. The brown of a lonesome cowboy song, the soft mauve of a hymn, the wagon-red of “Way Up High in the Cherry Tree.” She used to sing that song to us when we couldn’t sleep.
    Way up high in the cherry tree
    If you look, you will see
    Mama Robin and babies three …
    Song calmed me, after shouting out my childhood nightmares.
    Mom had an eye specialist appointment in the city yesterday, she said. The Sawatskys drove her up. The doctor said, Congratulations, Mrs. Watson. You have excellent sight. You’re registering 20-25 in both eyes. Quite a feat for someone your age.
    Och, why can’t I see then? my mother said.
    You have macular degeneration, Mom, I reminded her gently. Your retina is full of tiny holes.
    Do