So this was the going-away party!—Marya saw almost with satisfaction that it was a mistake; a blunder; beyond even disappointment. These people—what did she care for them, what did they care for her? did they even know her? The gathering was only another end-of-summer picnic, another drunken beer-bash as Wilma would say, loud music blaring from a plastic radio, loud oafish voices, laughter. . . . Marya recalled a biology class of two or three years before when she’d been moved almost to tears as their teacher explained the principle of human reproduction: the miracle (for it was a miracle, an authentic miracle) by which a single egg and a single sperm fused; and formed a single cell; and the cell divided itself in two . . . and then in four . . . and then in eight . . . and so on to infinity. At a certain stage cells emerged for certain parts of the human body so that the living protoplasm became human: now it would have a human brain, for instance. Where does that come from, Marya asked their teacher. I mean that, that cell, how does it know to be a brain? how does it know ahead of time to be a brain? Her classmates were yawning, or doodling, or pretending to listen; or, like Kyle Roemischer at the rear of the room, whispering smutty jokes. (You want to know where it comes from, Marya, they laughed afterward in the hall, y’want to see?) Their teacher acknowledged the fact that no one knew; no one had the faintest idea. Marya was struck dumb by the idea that out of nowhere, suddenly, the human essence appeared . . . the brain, the soul . . . the personality. Why does that cell form when it does, Marya wanted to know, but knew that she wouldn’t ever know: it was one of those things.

And at the rear of the room the boys telling their dirty stories, scarcely listening. “It’s just one of those things, Marya,” their teacher told her after class. He seemed halfway embarrassed at her sudden intense interest—as if he’d started something, provoked a response, he hadn’t at all intended. “All we know is what it does, we don’t know exactly how . . . and we certainly don’t know why,” he said.

“Yes,” said Marya, frowning, her nose twitching, “but why?”