The Atomic Weight of Love (11 page)

I was the awestruck, besotted student again. I studied him through a swirl of cigarette smoke, tried to fathom what he’d done, what he and the others had conceived and made reality atop that distant mesa. The pull of his breathtaking intellect again had a hold of me; the force of the attraction I felt for what he could do with that head of his made my heart quicken to the point of dizziness.

The vinyl seat of the taxicab crackled with the cold when we left the supper club, and my legs in their much-mended stockings began to tremble. I curled myself into Alden’s side, wondering if I’d ever be warm again.
I’d move to New Mexico in an instant
, I thought, just to escape the sharp, penetrating Chicago wind. My jaw hurt from clamping my teeth, and although I knew that relaxing my muscles would help, I only grew tenser, more knotted, as the cold permeated my coat and gloves. Alden had the cabbie take us to a hotel.

I took a hot bath and crawled beneath the covers, lit a cigarette, and watched Alden as he sat reading, pipe smoke wreathing about his head. He closed the book, and I read the spine:
The Physics of Flight
, by Alfred Landé.
Well, well
, I thought, pleased.

“At least you’ve stopped trembling,” he said, climbing into bed.

“But isn’t that exactly what you want from me in bed? Trembling?”

He laughed and then reached toward the night table for the oversized nail he used to tamp down his pipe tobacco. He relit his pipe, and I inhaled a vicarious sampling of the mixture he always bought—Scottish Mist.

“You said you wanted to talk with me.”

He puffed several more times to ensure the pipe remained lit. I watched his cheeks cave in, release, cave in, release. I knew that he sometimes used this ritual to buy time.

“I’ve put this off, this conversation,” he said.

“Obviously.”

“Well, it’s difficult.”

“Just tell me. We can talk to each other, can’t we?”

“Sometimes,” he said, and I was struck by the honesty of that statement. He laid his pipe across the ashtray and turned to face me, plumping a pillow to hold his head at the right angle. “Here’s the thing.” He brushed some hair from my forehead. “The plan is to keep Los Alamos functioning, make it into a real research facility. There was a bill introduced in Congress—just last week. The McMahon Bill.” He rubbed his eyes. “Oppenheimer, et al., have been on Capitol Hill, discussing what the country’s atomic energy policy should be, how the bulk of scientific knowledge should be handled. We need to keep our science out of the hands of the military and the politicians.”

“All right.”

“We’re hopeful the bill will pass, and we really think it will.”

“What does it
mean
, Alden?”

“Los Alamos could be a top-notch research facility—like Berkeley or other spots. But it wouldn’t be academia—and not privatized, either. It would be run by a new government agency, the Atomic Energy Commission.”

“You’re telling me you want to stay there.”

“I am.” Now his eyes lit up, the hesitation in them subsided, replaced by excitement, animation. “I could work there, without the inevitable restrictions and distractions. No teaching duties—just pure research. Meri,” he cupped my cheek in the palm of his hand, “I can have a freedom there that I can have nowhere else, and, frankly, the pay is better—much better than what I can make if I stay in academia.”

“But what would I do? What about my studies?”

Now he reached to hold my head in both of his hands, to keep my gaze focused on his. I felt an Alden promise coming.

“Maybe you could work there, too, with your laboratory skills. Part of the mission would be to find peacetime uses for atomic energy.”

I sat up, moving his hands away from my head. “But that’s not what I want. It’s not ever been what I wanted, you know that.”

“I’m saying it could turn out to be what you want. I’m telling you about the enormous potential of the place, of all of this. Of what we can build there, with the ongoing interaction of so many intriguing, challenging minds.”

“Crows, Alden. Crows are what I find intriguing and challenging.”

He closed his eyes briefly, reopened them. “You could move as soon as next month, start the new year living with me. After so long, we could be together—really together. Why don’t you think about it, sleep on it. We can talk more tomorrow.” He turned from me to flick off the bedside light, as if darkness would alter my vision of my future, make me more compliant.

In the gloom I heard his breath deepen, watched his shoulders release their tension. He’d said his piece at long last, and now he could relax. For me, any chance of sleep had vanished, and so I took my book, a blanket, and a pillow into the bathroom and climbed into the empty tub, just as I had when I was a girl. The hard sides of the bathtub seemed an appropriate place for me to lay my body that night—unforgiving and nonmalleable. I couldn’t concentrate, though. Finally, I pulled a hand towel from the rack, bit down on it, and used it to muffle my sobs. I let my shoulders spasm, felt the muscles of my lower back tighten into fists of pain.

I could understand why he wanted Los Alamos, what it represented to him, what it could do for his future, his career. Were my needs less important than his? More trivial? Or were my needs great enough to overshadow what Alden might accomplish if he could continue to pursue research that literally changed the course of man, of history? I couldn’t be that selfish, could I?

By morning, I’d found a place of compromise. I agreed to a one-year trial period. I’d still do what I could in terms of crow observation, and then I’d use that research as a foundation for my master’s degree.

A Descent of Woodpeckers

1. Woodpeckers do not sing to attract a mate, they drum.

2. Sacred to Mars, the Roman god of war, woodpeckers guarded a woodland herb used for treatment of the female reproductive system.

It was February of 1946, fortunately a snow-free day. The Studebaker was packed with my two suitcases and box upon box of books—that’s all I brought to New Mexico—clothing and books. Really, that’s all I owned. Headed north out of Santa Fe on a wet, hissing highway, we descended into a valley and encountered Tesuque Pueblo. I tried my hand at pronunciation: “Tea-soo-key.”

“Teh-
sue
-kay.”

“Tesuque.”

“Right.”

The wind cut across the highway, and condensation on the windows distorted my view. I wiped the passenger window with my woolen coat sleeve and looked out at undulating, pale pink-brown hills studded with daubs of dark green piñon. Remnants of snow from a storm earlier in the week iced the dips of the hills like skillfully applied makeup.

The horizon was vast, open, and I had a sense of how that openness could help to create a sense of freedom, of possibility. I reached my hand toward Alden’s, and knitted glove to knitted glove, we held hands as he drove toward several more amazing words: Cuyamungue, Pojoaque, Otowi, Totavi, Tsankawi.

The climb toward Los Alamos began just after Tsankawi. The narrow road wound through outstretched fingers of mesa with surprisingly flesh-colored ascents pockmarked with hollowed-out openings that Alden told me had been Anasazi cave dwellings. Many of the caves had soot-blackened ceilings, and he called the rock
tuff
or
tufa
, saying it was pyroclastic, the result of a giant volcanic eruption in the Jemez Mountains just northwest of Los Alamos. I thought about how the firelit caves would have looked at night, blinking constellations embedded in walls of rock. The clouds dissipated, and I was struck by the sensual beauty of that flesh-colored landscape against a pure blue sky. I imagined people scaling the edifices, reaching for foot- and handholds, trying not to fall into the brush below. I closed my eyes, felt a thrilling sensation of vertigo.

The dropoff grew enormous as our Studebaker chugged up a rutted, muddy road that lacked the comfort of guardrails. I looked out my window over the edge of a perilous cliff to the floor of the valley below, looked back over my shoulder to see the Sangre de Cristo Mountains above Santa Fe. This part of New Mexico was so much greener than Albuquerque, and I could see clear changes in vegetation as we gained altitude, approaching Los Alamos at over 7,300 feet. Alden said Wheeler Peak, farther north, was over 13,000 feet—effortlessly dwarfing my father’s proud bens of Scotland. I thought of all my father had missed, his short years on the earth, and how much he would have loved trying to put his arms about this vast landscape.

Armed MPs stopped us at the East Gate, which looked like a typical highway toll station with several lanes. A nine-foot security fence surmounted with triple strands of barbed wire encapsulated the site. Above it all stood a formidable guard tower. We parked and went in to fill out paperwork that would gain me entry on a temporary basis; later, I’d have to apply for a permanent identification card that I’d be required to carry with me at all times. If I wanted to leave, I’d have to surrender my pass, which had to have Alden’s signature on it as my host. Two tanks flanked the entrance. In Los Alamos, it seemed, the war had not ended.

As we drove into the town, I saw parked cars with tires sunk in mud, dirty mounds of snow, a few wooden sidewalks built beneath clotheslines strung across puddle-pocked mud, and ramshackle, temporary wooden buildings of army green. Alden pointed out landmarks that, at least for now, were meaningless to me.

It was a dreary setting, one that failed to inspire. But then the crows came: a benediction. First one or two, and then in increasing numbers, swooping to land on fenceposts or rooftops, setting up gruff choruses in the bare branches of trees. Clustering on the edges of trash barrels, their entire bodies bending and stretching with each vocalization. Stridently pacing across the frozen ground, tilting their heads to look up, then down, their eyes alive with curiosity. I rolled down my window and was greeted with their croaks in bursts of three to four serial caws
.

They told me I would be all right in Los Alamos. They told me they would protect me, keep me company, that they had not deserted me any more than I had deserted them.

OUR FIRST HOME
WAS
a Morgan Area house with a pitched roof, wooden siding, and a white picket fence—a decided contrast to the usual pueblo-style architecture of the region. We used Alden’s Brownie camera to take photos to send to Mother and other friends and colleagues so that they could see what our lives were like in this exotic, foreign land. In one photo, Alden stands in front of our Studebaker, parked in our dirt driveway. He has a cigarette in one hand, the other hand in his pocket, and on his chest is his omnipresent security badge. In another, Alden slouches on the couch, the light glinting off of his new wire-framed glasses and rendering the expression in his eyes one of blurry boredom. I’m close beside him, my thin legs in oversized trousers and saddle shoes, and behind us are the flower-printed paper curtains that covered all of our windows. A droop-leafed plant rests on an end table. One of our first purchases, a red, white and black Navajo rug, hangs on the wall behind us.

At twenty-two, I am small, inconsequential, girlish next to Alden’s forty-three years. My smile is nascent, still in its formative stages.

I’D MADE A RUDIMENTARY
shopping list and was sweeping the living room floor when the women knocked on the door and announced: “Welcome Wagon! Welcome Wagon for Mrs. Alden Whetstone!”

They wore bulky winter coats and stamped their feet as if that would remove the thick coating of mud and ice adhered to their boots. Each of the four women carried a tinfoil-covered plate, and they held them out to me so that they could free their hands to remove their galoshes. They stepped into our home in their stocking feet.

“Marge,” said an ample, big-breasted woman with bright red lips and a homemade knitted cap with ear flaps. “Banana bread.”

Madeline wore a man’s flannel shirt and dungarees, Jillian had a short dark blonde pixie haircut, and Marcy handed me a casserole of noodles with tinned beef in gravy. “Don’t knock it,” she said. “It’s the best I can do with the limited offerings of the commissary.” She exchanged a look with the others, who nodded. “The end of the war hasn’t yet meant much improvement in groceries.”

“Please call me Meridian,” I said, finding room for their plates on our small wooden dining table. “And thank you. Thank you for all of this.”

They occupied the couch and single reading chair, instantly making themselves at home. The women had a sense of oneness about them, of a unit with a common cause.

“Oh, honey, we didn’t leave you a spot!” Marge seemed to be the leader of the group. She tugged her red sweater over her round belly and scooted her wide hips closer to Madeline. Patting the Naugahyde cushion, she said: “Plop down here. Tell us about yourself.”

“I can stand, let you have the room.”

“Nonsense,” she said and pointed at the cushion until I obeyed. “Tell us what a sweet young thing like you is doing in all of this mud and squalor.” Marge laughed too loudly.

“My husband,” I began.

“Oh, we know. We all know,” Madeline said. “Alden’s been at our dinner tables. Poor man needed a decent meal or two.”

“You missed all of the fun,” Marge said. “You missed the impossible furnaces, the water shortages, the cracks in the walls. From now on, it’s a piece of cake.”

Was this some kind of competition? If so, I’d be happy to let them win.

Marge continued, “For those of us who were here from the start, during the war, things have been pretty tough. We’ve had to make do,” she said, slapping my leg so hard it stung. “One hell of a change from Princeton, I can tell you that.”

“Never thought I’d live in tenement conditions, that’s for sure,” Marcy said, picking lint from her navy blue wool skirt. “But, we were glad to be here to do our part, to take care of our men, right girls? The hours they put in!”

“But we’re doing all the talking,” Jillian said. “Let’s give Meridian a chance.”