Free Charmed Particles by Chrissy Kolaya

Room 125. The halls were filled with harried parents. “You meet with Jenny’s teacher. I’ll meet with Randy’s,” one woman, a baby on her hip, shouted down the hall to her husband, and Sarala thought of how here, again, was evidence that Abhijat had been right: that with one child, they need not spread their attentions, their resources, so thin.
    Inside, Sarala took in the bright primary colors of the posters decorating nearly every inch of wall space. She thought of the schoolhouse at Heritage Village, with its spare walls and stern signs. She took her seat at the small desk labeled with Meena’s name on a piece of construction paper in careful cursive. A teacher’s handwriting, Sarala thought, smiling at the other parents sitting uncomfortably in the too-small chairs.
    Mrs. Hamilton began by asking each of the parents to introduce themselves, and Sarala listened intently as they did so, trying to imagine something about their children, in whose company Meena spent her days.
    Once the introductions were finished, the woman next to her leaned toward Sarala, extending her hand. “We should have met long ago. I’m Rose Winchester, Lily’s mother.”
    â€œOh, yes,” Sarala said, taking her hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you. Meena talks about Lily, well, nearly all the time.”
    â€œIt’s the same at our house,” Rose said, smiling.
    There was something so perfect about Rose, in her twinset and pumps, glasses on a chain around her neck, Sarala thought, looking at her, though she wasn’t so much attractive as orderly looking, Sarala decided.
    At the front of the classroom, Mrs. Hamilton began her part of the evening’s presentation—a description of the students’ daily schedules, an introduction to the textbooks for the year—and as she began, both Sarala and Rose pulled notebooks and pens from their purses. They were the only two parents taking notes, Sarala observed.
    â€œFor my husband,” Rose explained, gesturing at the notepad spread open on her daughter’s desk.
    At conferences, Rose always took notes to share with Randolph in her next letter, and, in the weeks following the conference, she hand-delivered a letter from Randolph to Lily’s teacher, by way of illustrating that while theirs was an unconventional family arrangement, Randolph was by no means an absentee parent.
    â€œFor my husband, too,” Sarala said, holding up her pen. The women exchanged warm smiles, sharing this small thing between them. Sarala wondered if perhaps Lily’s father had a job as demanding as Abhijat’s.

    Despite their many differences, both the Mital and the Winchester homes shared one thing in common—a long bookshelf filled with a maroon set of World Book Encyclopedias. It had been Lily’s idea that the girls should, together, embark upon a scheme of self-improvement whereby they would both read, each night before bed, a pre-selected entry in the World Book.
    They moved through the set alphabetically, taking turns selecting the day’s reading, and at 7:30 each night, the phone in one house or the other could be heard ringing as the girls telephoned each other to announce the evening’s selection, at lunch the next day, their common reading providing them with a subject for conversation: E NLIGHTENMENT P HILOSOPHERS over peanut butter and jelly, M ASTERS OF G ERMAN L ITERATURE over Fruit Roll-Ups, T HE H ALLMARKS OF F EUDAL S OCIETY over string cheese.
    K INDS OF B RIDGES
    At night, by light of campfire or oil lamp, Randolph wrote letters to Rose and Lily, which they took turns reading aloud at dinner on the happy days when the letters arrived bearing strange foreign stamps, his thick cream-colored writing paper marked with the signs of his travel—dirt, sweat, rainwater-smudged ink, exotic smells rising up from the paper as they unfolded it. In his letters, Randolph took them through the day’s