Special topics in calamity physics - By Marisha Pessl Page 0,26

had piano.)

But, quite unabashedly, Hannah Schneider did not stop talking, as if Dad and I were Confidential reporters who'd waited six months to interview her. Still, there was nothing outright haughty or overbearing in her manner; she simply assumed you were deeply interested in whatever she was saying. And you were. She asked where we were from ("Ohio," seethed Dad), what year I was ("Senior," fumed Dad), how we liked our new house ("It's fun," frothed Dad) and explained that she had moved here three years ago from San Francisco ("Astonishing," fizzed Dad). He really had no choice but to throw her a scrap.

"Perhaps we'll see you at a home football game," he said, waving goodbye (a one-hand-in-the-air "So long" that could also pass for "Not now") and steering me toward the exit at the front of the store. (Dad had never attended a home football game and had no intention of attending one. He considered most contact sports, as well as the hooting and woofing spectators, to be "embarrassing/' "very, very wrong," "pitiful exhibitions of the Australopithecus within." "I suppose we all have an inner Australopithecus, but I'd prefer mine to remain deep in his cave, whittling away at Mammoth carcasses with his simple stone tools.")

"Thank God we made it out alive," said Dad, starting the car.

"What was that?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. As I've told you, these aged American feminists who pride themselves on opening their own doors, paying for themselves, well, they're not the fascinating, modern women they imagine themselves to be. Oh no, they're Magellan space probes looking for a man they can orbit without end."

One of Dad's favorite personal comments regarding the sexes was his likening assertive women to Spacecraft (fly-by probes, orbiters, satellites, landers) and men to the unwitting subjects of these missions (planets, moons, comets, asteroids). Dad, of course, saw himself as a planet so remote it had suffered only a single visit—the successful but brief Natasha Mission.

"I'm talking about you," I said. "You were rude."

"Rude?"

"Yes. She was nice. I liked her."

"Someone is not 'nice' when they intrude upon your privacy, when they force a landing and take the liberty of discharging radar signals that bounce off your surface, formulating panoramic images of your landscape and transmitting them ceaselessly through space."

"What about Vera Strauss?"

"Who?"

"Vera P. Strauss."

"Oh. The veterinarian?"

"Check-out girl in the express lane at Hearty Health Foods."

"Of course. She wanted to be a veterinarian. I remember."

"She accosted us in the middle of your—"

"Birthday dinner. At Wilber Steak, yes, I know."

"Wilson Steakhouse in Meade."

"Well, I-"

"You invited her to sit down for dessert and for three hours we listened to those awful stories."

"About her poor brother getting all that psychosurgery, yes, I remember, and I told you I was sorry. How was I supposed to know she herself was a candidate for shock treatment, that we should've called those same people who arrive at the end of Streetcar to cart the woman off?"

"At the time I didn't hear you bemoaning her panoramic images."

"Point taken. But I remember with Vera, very distinctly, she had an unusual quality. The fact that this unusual quality turned out to be of the Sylvia Plath variety, well, it wasn't my fault. And at least she was extraordinary on some level. At least she provided us with a raw, uncensored view of complete lunacy. This last woman, this—I don't even remember her name."

"Hannah Schneider."

"Well, yes, she was. . ."

"What?"

"Commonplace."

"You're nuts."

"I didn't spend six hours quizzing you on those 'Far, Far Beyond the SAT' flashcards for you to use the word 'nuts' in everyday speech — "

"You're outré/' I said, crossing my arms, staring out the window at the afternoon traffic. "And Hannah Schneider was" —I wanted to think of a few decent words to blow Dad's hair back—"prepossessing. Yet abstruse."

"Hmm?"

"You know, she walked by us in the grocery store last night."

"Who?"

"Hannah."

He glanced over at me, surprised. "That woman was in Fat Kat Foods?"

I nodded. "Walked right by us."

He was silent for a moment, then sighed. "Well, I only hope she's not one of those defunct Galileo probes. I don't think I could withstand another crash landing. What was her name? The one from Cocorro —"

"Betina Mendejo."

"Yes, Betina, with the sweet little asthmatic four-year-old."

"She had a nineteen-year-old daughter studying to be a dietician."

"Of course," Dad said, nodding. "I remember now."

VI

Woman in White

Dad said he'd first heard about the St. Gallway School from a fellow professor at Hicksburg State College, and for at least a year or so, a copy of