Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [12]
“This pizza’s cold,” says Judy. She won’t touch the green beans.
Mack says, “I don’t see why she won’t stay and finish her tests at least. Now she’ll have to pay for a whole extra semester.”
“Well, I hope she don’t go off the deep end like her mama,” says Mary Lou. Judy once told them that Stephanie’s mother had had several nervous breakdowns.
“Her daddy don’t eat meat a-tall?” asks Mack.
“No. He’s a vegetarian.”
“And he don’t get sick?”
Judy shakes her head again.
After supper, Judy dumps out the contents of her tote bag on the love seat. She has a math book, a science book, something called A Rhetoric for the Eighties, and a heavy psychology book. She sits cross-legged on the love seat, explaining quantum mechanics to Mary Lou and Mack. She calls her teacher Bob.
Judy says, “It’s not that weird. It’s just the study of elementary particles—the littlest things in the world, smaller than atoms. There’s some things called photons that disappear if you look for them. Nobody can find them.”
“How do they know they’re there, then?” asks Mack skeptically.
“Where do they go?” Mary Lou asks.
The seashell bounces between Judy’s breasts as she talks excitedly, moving her arms like a cheerleader. She is wearing a plaid flannel shirt with the cuffs rolled back. She says, “If you try to separate them, they disappear. They don’t even exist except in a group. Bob says this is one of the most important discoveries in the history of the world. He says it just explodes all the old ideas about physics.”
Bob is not the same teacher Stephanie had the crush on. That teacher’s name is Tom. Mary Lou has this much straight. Mack is pacing the floor, the way he does sometimes when Judy doesn’t come home on the weekend.
“I thought it was philosophy you were taking,” he says.
“No, physics.”
“Mack’s been reading up on philosophy,” says Mary Lou. “He thought you were taking philosophy.”
“It’s similar,” Judy says. “In quantum mechanics, there’s no final answer. Anything you look at might have a dozen different meanings. Bob says the new physics is discovering what the Eastern mystics have known all along.”
Mary Lou is confused. “If these things don’t exist, then how do they know about them?”
“They know about them when they’re in bunches.” Judy begins writing in her notebook. She looks up and says, “Quantum mechanics is like a statistical study of group behavior.”
Abruptly, Mack goes to the basement. Mary Lou picks up her sewing and begins watching Real People on TV. She can hear the signs of her husband’s existence: the sound of the drill from the shop, then his saw. A spurt of swearing.
—
The next evening, Judy talks Mary Lou into going to a movie, but Mack says he has work to do. He is busy with the home entertainment center he is building for Judy. Mary Lou is embarrassed to be going to an R-rated movie, but Judy laughs at her. Judy drives her Chevette, and they stop to pick up Clausie, whom Mary Lou has invited.
“Clausie changes with the times,” Mary Lou tells her daughter apologetically. “You ought to see the way she gets out and goes. She even square-dances.”
Clausie insists on climbing in the back seat because she is small. “I wore pants ’cause I knew y’all would,” she says. “I don’t wear them when I come to your house, Mary Lou, because I just don’t feel right wearing pants around a man.”
“I haven’t worn a dress since 1980,” says Judy.
“This show is going to curl our ears,” Mary Lou tells Clausie.
“Oh, Mom,” Judy says.
“Is it a dirty movie?” Clausie asks eagerly.
“It’s R-rated,” says Mary Lou.
“Well, I say live and learn,” says Clausie, laughing. “Thelma and Edda would have a fit if they knew what we was up to.”
“Mack wouldn’t go,” says Mary Lou. “He doesn’t like to be in the middle of a bunch of women—especially if they’re going to say dirty-birds.”
“Everybody says those words,” says Judy. “They don’t mean anything.”
The movie is Stir Crazy. Mary Lou has to hold her side,