THE HABENULA: DISAPPOINTMENT
HEREāS MY FAVORITE piece of trivia in the whole world: Dr. Marie SkÅodowska-Curie showed up to her wedding ceremony wearing her lab gown.
Itās actually a pretty cool story: a scientist friend hooked her up with Pierre Curie. They awkwardly admitted to having read each otherās papers and flirted over beakers full of liquid uranium, and he proposed within the year. But Marie was only meant to be in France to get her degree, and reluctantly rejected him to return to Poland.
Womp womp.
Enter the University of Krakow, villain and unintentional cupid of this story, which denied Marie a faculty position because she was a woman (very classy, U of K). Dick move, I know, but it had the fortunate side effect of pushing Marie right back into Pierreās loving, not-yet-radioactive arms.
Those two beautiful nerds married in 1895, and Marie, who wasnāt exactly making bank at the time, bought herself a wedding dress that was comfortable enough to use in the lab every day. My girl was nothing if not pragmatic.
Of course, this story becomes significantly less cool if you fast forward ten years or so, to when Pierre got himself run over by a carriage and left Marie and their two daughters alone in the world. Zoom into 1906, and thatās where youāll find the real moral of this tale: trusting people to stick around is a bad idea. One way or another theyāll end up gone. Maybe theyāll slip on the Rue Dauphine on a rainy morning and get their skull crushed by a horse-drawn cart. Maybe theyāll be kidnapped by aliens and vanish into the vastness of space. Or maybe theyāll have sex with your best friend six
months before youāre due to get married, forcing you to call off the wedding and lose tons of cash in security deposits.
The skyās the limit, really.
One might say, then, that U of K is only a minor villain. Donāt get me wrong: I love picturing Dr. Curie waltzing back to Krakow Pretty Womanā
style, wearing her weddingslash-lab gown, brandishing her two Nobel Prize medals, and yelling, āBig Mistake. Big. Huge.ā But the real villain, the one that had Marie crying and staring at the ceiling in the late hours of the night, is loss. Grief. The intrinsic transience of human relationships. The real villain is love: an unstable isotope, constantly undergoing spontaneous nuclear decay.
And it will forever go unpunished.
Do you know whatās reliable instead? What never, ever abandoned Dr.
Curie in all her years? Her curiosity. Her discoveries. Her accomplishments.
Science. Science is where itās at.
Which is why when NASA notifies meāMe! Bee
Kƶnigswasser!āthat Iāve been chosen as lead investigator of BLINK, one of their most prestigious neuroengineering research projects, I screech. I screech loudly and joyously in my minuscule, windowless office on the Bethesda campus of the National Institutes of Health. I screech about the amazing performance-enhancing technology Iām going to get to build for none other than NASA astronauts, and then I remember that the walls are toilet-paper thin and that my left neighbor once filed a formal complaint against me for listening to nineties female alt-rock without headphones. So I press the back of my hand to my mouth, bite into it, and jump up and down as silently as possible while elation explodes inside me.
I feel just like I imagine Dr. Curie must have felt when she was finally allowed to enroll at the University of Paris in late 1891: as though a world of (preferably nonradioactive) scientific discoveries is finally within grasping distance. It is, by far, the most momentous day of my life, and kicks off a phenomenal weekend of celebrations. Highlights are:
I tell the news to my three favorite colleagues, and we go out to our usual bar, guzzle several rounds of lemon drops, and take turns doing hilarious impressions of that time Trevor, our ugly middleaged boss, asked us not to fall in love with him. (Academic men tend to harbor many delusionsā except for Pierre Curie, of course. Pierre would never.)
I change my hair from pink to purple. (I have to do it at home, because junior academics canāt afford salons; my shower ends up looking like a mix between a cotton candy machine and a unicorn slaughterhouse, but after the raccoon incidentā which, believe me, you donāt want to know aboutāI wasnāt going to get my security deposit back anyway.)
I take myself to Victoriaās Secret and buy a set of pretty green lingerie, not allowing myself to feel guilty at the expense (even though itās been many years since someone has seen me without clothes, and if I have my way no one will for many, many more).
I download the Couch-to-Marathon plan Iāve been meaning to start and do my first run. (Then I limp back home cursing my overambition and promptly downgrade to a Couch-to-5K program.
I canāt believe that some people work out every day.) I bake treats for Finneas, my elderly neighborās equally elderly cat, who often visits my apartment for second dinner. (He shreds my favorite pair of Converse in gratitude. Dr. Curie, in her infinite wisdom, was probably a dog person.)
In short, I have an absolute blast. Iām not even sad when Monday comes.
Itās same old, same oldāexperiments, lab meetings, eating Lean Cuisine and
shotgunning store-brand LaCroix at my desk while crunching dataābut with the prospect of BLINK, even the old feels new and exciting.
Iāll be honest: Iāve been worried sick. After having four grant applications rejected in less than six months, I was sure that my career was stallingā
maybe even over. Whenever Trevor called me into his office, Iād get palpitations and sweaty palms, sure that heād tell me that my yearly contract wasnāt going to be renewed. The last couple of years since graduating with my Ph.D. havenāt been a whole lot of fun.
But thatās over with. Contracting for NASA is a careermaking opportunity. After all, Iāve been chosen after a ruthless selection process over golden boys like Josh Martin, Hank Malik, even Jan Vanderberg, that horrid guy who trash-talks my research like itās an Olympic sport. Iāve had my setbacks, plenty of them, but after nearly two decades of being obsessed with the brain, here I am: lead neuroscientist of BLINK. Iāll design gears for astronauts, gears theyāll use in space. This is how I get out of Trevorās clammy, sexist clutches. This is what buys me a long-term contract and my own lab with my own line of research. This is the turning point in my professional lifeāwhich, truthfully, is the only kind of life I care to have.
For several days Iām ecstatic. Iām exhilarated. Iām ecstatically exhilarated.
Then, on Monday at 4:33 p.m., my email pings with a message from NASA. I read the name of the person who will be co-leading BLINK with me, and all of a sudden Iām none of those things anymore.
ā¢ ā¢ ā¢
āDO YOU REMEMBER Levi Ward?ā
āBrennt da etwasāuh?ā Over the phone, Mareikeās voice is thick and sleep-laden, muffled by poor reception and long distance. āBee? Is that you?
What time is it?ā
āEight fifteen in Maryland and . . .ā I rapidly calculate the time difference.
A few weeks ago Reike was in
Tajikistan, but now sheās in . . . Portugal, maybe? āTwo a.m.
your time.ā
Reike grunts, groans, moans, and makes a whole host of other sounds Iām all too familiar with from sharing a room with her for the first two decades of our lives. I sit back on my couch and wait it out until she asks,
āWho died?ā
āNo one died. Well, Iām sure someone died, but no one we know. Were you really sleeping? Are you sick? Should I fly out?ā Iām genuinely concerned that my sister isnāt out clubbing, or skinny-dipping in the Mediterranean Sea, or frolicking with a coven of warlocks based in the forests of the Iberian Peninsula. Sleeping at night is very out of character.
āNah. I ran out of money again.ā She yawns. āBeen giving private lessons to rich, spoiled Portuguese boys during the day until I make enough to fly to Norway.ā
I know better than to ask āWhy Norway?ā since Reikeās answer would just be āWhy not?ā Instead I go with, āDo you need me to send you some money?ā Iām not exactly flush with cash, especially after my days of (premature, as it turns out) celebrations, but I could spare a few dollars if Iām careful. And donāt eat. For a couple of days.
āNah, the bratsā parents pay well. Ugh, Bee, a twelveyear-old tried to touch my boob yesterday.ā
āGross. What did you do?ā
āI told him Iād cut off his fingers, of course. Anywayāto what do I owe the pleasure of being brutally awakened?ā
āIām sorry.ā
āNah, youāre not.ā
I smile. āNah, Iām not.ā Whatās the point of sharing 100 percent of your DNA with a person if you canāt wake them up for an emergency chat?