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to help them understand the importance of such a position, but his academic colleagues understood immediately and responded just as Abhijat might have hoped: mouths agape, eyes wide, hearty handshakes and pats on his back. Among physicists, the Lab was a place they dreamed of visiting, perhaps conducting research there for a summer. They had understood what it meant to be offered such a position.
    In the lobby, over the bank of elevators, two clocks displayed the time at the Lab and the time at CERN, their greatest competitor. Among the Lab’s physicists, the consensus was that it was wise to begin the day imagining what those rascals in Geneva might be up to.
    The theory group’s offices were on the nineteenth floor, near the library, where many of the theorists spent the mornings poring over the latest journals. Abhijat had been given his choice of offices—one that looked out into the Research Tower’s atrium, or one that looked out across the eastern arc of the accelerator, over which the land had been returned to its original prairie grasses. Abhijat hadn’t liked the sense in those atrium offices of being on display, great floor-to-ceiling windows through which anyone in the lobby or cafeteria might watch you working, so he had selected an office looking out over the campus of the Lab toward Chicago. On clear days, as he puzzled over an equation or the proofs of his latest paper, he could make out the skyline of the city and watch planes rising and descending from the airports.

    Sarala spent her days carefully unpacking and arranging their new lives in the house on Patriot Place, room by room—first the kitchen, then the master bedroom, then the living room, family room, and a study for Abhijat just off the foyer.
    In the hallway, she hung the framed blessing her mother had sent as a housewarming gift:
    Here may delight be thine
through wealth and progeny .
Give this house thy watchful care .
May man and beast increase and prosper .
Free from the evil eye ,
not lacking wedded love ,
bring good luck even to the four-footed beasts .
Live with thy husband and in old age
mayest thou still rule thy household .
Be glad of heart within thy home .
Remain here, do not depart from it ,
but pass your lives together ,
happy in your home ,
playing with your children and grandchildren .
O generous Indra, make her fortunate!
May she have a beautiful family;
may she give her husband ten children!
May he himself be like the eleventh!
    Here in the States, people always and only wanted to know if she and Abhijat had an arranged marriage. But Sarala didn’t like to think of it like that. Rather, she thought of it as a thoughtful introduction made by their parents, and who better to know the best possible mate for their child? She kept a contented tally of the ways in which she and Abhijat had begun to love one another, Sarala marveling at Abhijat’s dedication to his work, Abhijat admiring Sarala’s social ease.
    â€œEveryone likes to talk to you,” he said to her one night, and Sarala furrowed her brow, bemused.
    â€œBut that is nothing difficult, nothing to be proud of,” she said.

    Sarala sat at the kitchen table to write a letter to her mother, the house silent as it always was in the afternoon, the clock over the sink ticking quietly. You asked how I find it here , she wrote. There are, of course, many things that I miss, many things that feel strange and unfamiliar, but this is my home now, and it is of no use to dwell on a thing that might make one unhappy. Rather, I have determined to do everything I can to help us both make the best of our new home . She’d sealed the letter and mailed it off the next morning.
    In response, a few weeks later, she’d received an envelope full of the same small blue pieces of paper as in the recipe box, her mother’s same feathery hand in delicate pencil strokes.
    For when you miss the warmth and joy of your home , and here a recipe