The Atomic Weight of Love (12 page)

What to say? Where to start?
“It’s such a pleasure to be here at last,” I said. “I’ve waited so long.”

“For
this
place?” Marge said, laughing. “Oh, girl.”

“I mean, to be with Alden. Not to be separated.”

“He bragged about you—all the time,” Marge said, softening.

“He told us you study birds,” Marcy said. “Ornithology, right?”

“Crows in particular.”

“Well, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to watch them here. They’re all over town, all through the canyons. They’re so bold. They even challenge Bitsy, our cocker spaniel, in his own backyard!” Jillian said.

“They’re not afraid of much—if anything,” I said.

“Darn it.” Madeline was searching the pockets of her trousers. “I forgot it. Our little handout.”

“You can bring it by later,” Marcy said, standing. “I have the feeling we caught you off guard when we just showed up, didn’t we, Meridian? But we were just so excited to have another gal join us, that we forgot our Ps and Qs.”

Marge stood, too. “Girls, we need to let Meri be for a bit, now that we’ve said our hellos.”

“Oh, but it’s all right,” I said. I’d actually begun warming to the company.

“It’s a little handout we made, with tips and pointers,” Madeline said as she struggled to buckle her boots.

“You’ll need it for baking,” Jillian said. “We did all the calculations for high-altitude, what changes you’ll have to make to your recipes. We made a chart.”

“Remember your basic science,” Marge said. “Higher altitude, less air pressure—so you have to add more flour, alter the liquids, change the oven temperature. Up here, gases expand more, liquids evaporate more quickly.”

“Not bad for an architect.” Marcy winked at Marge.

“This architect designed one heck of a fort for her boys!”

“When is spring?” I said by way of commiseration and farewell. “Soon?”

They laughed. “Comes and goes. Pretty uncertain,” Marge said. “But maybe May.”

“You’ll get a scattering of nice, warm days before then,” Madeline said reassuringly. “Don’t despair. But don’t hang any laundry on the clothesline, either.”

I waved as they headed down the muddy road toward their houses, and then I went to look in the bathroom mirror, wanting to see what they’d seen: a few curls escaping from the kerchief I wore over my hair when I cleaned, a smudge of dirt across my left cheek, but soft, moist skin and an earnest smile.
Pleasant enough
, I thought.

In their wake, the house was still. I thought about how good it would be to find friends here. Someone other than just Alden. Women to share things with—even something as prosaic as high-altitude baking tips.

THAT FIRST YEAR, 1946,
was an active one—establishing a home, exploring. Alden and I went on adventures to Indian ruins and natural attractions. We’d roll up our pant legs and wade into the bone-chillingly cold, dark-green water beneath the falls at the soda dam, a Yellowstone-type rock formation on the back side of the Jemez Mountains. We drove to the valley below Los Alamos, climbed to the top of Black Mesa, a thick, stubby black column of rock that rises dramatically alongside the Rio Grande on the San Ildefonso Pueblo lands. We knelt at the praying stone on top of the mesa, placed our weight upon our forearms along the top of the rock, and wished, prayed, hoped. We hunted for potshards, and once Alden found a small turquoise carving of a frog.

I skated in the bottom of Los Alamos Canyon on a rudimentary frozen pond of ice fashioned by the private boys’ school that preceded Oppenheimer’s city. I loved the bubbles trapped in the thick, uneven ice, the shadows of pine and fir trees, the tautness of my cheeks reddened by wind and cold. Some nights the men lit bonfires so that we could skate with piñon smoke scenting the air. From time to time, Alden would come and watch me try to teach myself to twirl. He didn’t like to skate but would sit on a rock and plant the tread of his galoshes on packed snow. More often than not, though, he stayed home to smoke and read, and I’d head out by myself. I didn’t mind going alone—it meant I wouldn’t have to worry that he was bored or getting too cold. I’d throw my head back, look up at Orion’s Belt, and think of things I wanted to discuss with Alden when I got home. I thought about the distance of the stars, the tilt of the earth’s axis, and Galileo’s trial for heresy.

I realized this was a place that would help me grow healthier, that permitted me wholehearted access to nature away from the noise and fumes of a big city. I quit smoking, and my lungs thanked me by quickly adapting to the high altitude and greater physical demands I was placing on my body. I missed the university library but found I did not long for supper clubs or dinner shows. Many of the scientists played instruments, and they’d give small, informal performances of classical music that really were quite enjoyable. We had a movie theater with a green monster of a machine that for a nickel dropped a paper cup and filled it with cold, foamy Coca-Cola. On Friday nights, we joined other couples at the bowling alley next to the movie theater, afterwards crossing to Sparky’s soda fountain where I could order a vanilla egg cream and Alden could get a scoop of ice cream with chocolate sprinkles and a flourish of whipped cream.

While Alden worked long hours, I set off on adventures, much as I’d done during my solo summer in Albuquerque. Although Alden protested loudly, sometimes I’d drop him off for work and then take the Studebaker and head off the Hill. I’d drive in the dust to San Ildefonso and Santa Clara pueblos and buy round loaves of bread baked in humpbacked
hornos
. I bought black glazed pottery from Maria Martinez and Teresita Naranjo, my best-loved piece a wedding vase, shaped with two spouts so that bride and groom could each drink from a different side. There were times when rainwater came so quickly that the desert sands could not consume it all, creating flash floods that ran in sudden red rivers as deep as my knees. I had to be careful easing the car across those torrents, especially around the deep arroyos of Totavi. I learned how to remove a distributor cap and wipe it dry, to get the car to start again and take me away from the gushing waters.

For me, those times were divine adrenaline. I knew I was in New Mexico for a short time and so felt I should take advantage of all opportunities. Besides, I quickly grew bored sitting in our small house, sweeping floors that were instantly, redundantly covered in red clay dust or thumbing through magazines in search of the latest Jell-O recipe.

We got along, Alden and I. He had his work, which consumed him, and I found so much to learn from New Mexico’s nature, its history and cultures, that my mind was sated. In the evening, Alden and I would settle deeply into conversations, and I thought that domestication suited me just fine.

I BEGAN MY CROW
journals about two months after arriving in Los Alamos. At first, I explored all of the areas where crows tended to congregate. I wanted a spot where I could be certain I was looking at a stable population. Alden found an army surplus canvas backpack for me, and I loaded it with warm drinks in the winter, cool water in the summer. I carried a waterproof poncho, matches, toilet paper, a pocketknife, several sharp number 2 pencils, and a beautiful, blank book with rich, cream-colored paper—far too lovely for tromping about in the woods, but something I’d found in a stationery store in Santa Fe and knew I must have for my first crow journal.

Ultimately, I settled on a length of Los Alamos Canyon, alongside what became the Western Area housing development. I could hike there easily, perch on a rock high on the north side of the canyon, or climb down through pines and scrub oak to the stream that ran the length of the canyon. I did not have the equipment or assistance I’d need to band birds, so I wouldn’t be able to track individuals. Instead, I was forced to look at group behaviors, to see, for example, how the community of birds dealt with food in abundance or shortage. I listened to hours of their vocalizations, tried to ferret out meaning, to see and hear patterns, to look at body language and displays.

I believe they came to know me, that they learned to inform each other of my presence. They seemed able to rapidly assess my nonexistent threat level and to engage in mutual observation with me. Always, of course, I had to think about how my sitting, standing, or walking might alter their behaviors, whether I should be building blinds so as to escape their notice. But I knew that my constructing a blind wouldn’t fool them—these birds were too smart.

And so I decided my study would have to include me—that I would have to observe and carefully record my own behaviors, including the colors of my clothes, any perfumes or hats, what noise I made.

Those were quiet, respectful, contemplative times for me, the days I spent in the woods with the crows. The breezes that traveled the canyon raised the hairs on my forearms and held the crows aloft, hovering over prey, arcing coal-black through blue skies, toward burgeoning thunderheads.

THE LAB
BEGAN TO
take on a more permanent shape, eating its way across the mesa top, digging its way into the canyons. Temporary buildings were razed, and solid structures that signaled Los Alamos’ new-found permanence rose in their places. Still, there were frightening setbacks, like Louis Slotin’s accident in mid-May of 1946. Word of what had happened to the Canadian physicist/chemist spread through the research facility quickly, and Alden and his friends met at our home that evening. Slotin had been at the University of Chicago with Alden, and so the whole event hit Alden particularly hard. The men who sat in our living room were sober, shocked, reminded of the dangers of tickling the dragon’s tail, as they called it.

Alden had made it clear that some of their talk would involve classified information, so after I served coffee along with bakery pastries and cookies, I would have to step out. I acquiesced, but found myself hovering in the hallway, eavesdropping. One of the men said that Slotin had been engaged in a demonstration that included creation of some of the first steps in nuclear fission. The experiment involved bringing a hollow hemisphere of beryllium around a mass of fissionable material that was resting in a similar, lower, hollow hemisphere. Removing the spacers between the hemispheres that usually kept the experiment subcritical, Slotin then brought the shells together slowly, using only a screwdriver to keep the spheres apart. When the screwdriver slipped, the experiment went to a critical phase, with a resulting blue glow and heat wave. Slotin quickly used his hands to separate the spheres and halt the nuclear reaction, preventing expansion of the chain reaction and, ultimately, a much greater release of radioactivity.

When Alden climbed into bed, I reached to hold him.

“What did you hear?”

“Nothing,” I said, nuzzling my face into the side of his neck.

“Meri,” he took my chin in his hand. “What did you hear?”

I touched the tip of his nose, feigning playfulness. But I was a terrible actress. “Enough to scare me. Horribly,” I admitted.

“Your feet are ice.”

“I’m cold all over.”

He rubbed my hands. “You don’t have to be afraid for me.”

“But . . .”

“Things went wrong, Meri. Mistakes were made.”

“And we all make mistakes. Even you, Alden.”

“That’s why we met tonight. To talk about what happened and figure out how to do things better. It’s clear that criticality experiments can no longer be hands-on. We’ll come up with ways to perform them remotely. More safely than with screwdrivers and slippery hands.”

“What will happen to Louis?”

“He’s dying. It’s a matter of days.”

“Oh, God.”

“He was irradiated. He received a lethal dose and will die of radiation poisoning—there’s nothing that can save him.” Alden took a deep breath. “We don’t know exactly what the dosage was. Not a one of them was wearing a dosimeter.”

“You . . . ?”

“I wear mine. Always. And we all just got a goddamned good reminder not to get sloppy.”

I pressed my hands to his chest, and Alden kissed the top of my head.

“Meri,” he sighed, “I have you, and that’s plenty reason to be careful not to be bitten by any dragons I may wrestle.”

“Please,” I said. “Please.”

Louis Slotin died nine days later. He was thirty-five.

THE PAIN HAD BEEN
getting worse. I felt it in my lower back and most sharply in my pelvis. At times it took my breath away and caused me to double over. When the bleeding began, I told Alden.

“Are you sure it’s not something you ate? Gas from last night’s Brussels sprouts?”

“Gas doesn’t cause vaginal bleeding, Alden.”

“Well, no, of course not.”

It was the fall of 1946, and I was seated in our reading chair, bent at the waist, using my forearms to hold myself together.

“Are you sure you need a doctor?”

“I just know something’s wrong. That’s what I know.” I stood slowly and then fainted.

I regained consciousness on the brief drive to the hospital, which was a small, single-story wooden building staffed by former army doctors who continued to practice medicine as if they were working under battlefield triage conditions. When we arrived, two young Indian men who worked as orderlies helped me out of the car and through the hospital door. From the waiting room, I could see the single operating room. Framed certificates and diplomas thickly populated the walls, apparently as a means of proving to scientists that the physicians really were fully qualified to practice medicine.

Dr. Lowden was about forty-four, Alden’s age. He spoke to Alden.

“She looks pale. Has she been getting enough sleep?”

“I think so.”

“What else is going on?”

“She says her gut hurts, and she fainted. That’s why I went ahead and brought her in.”

Dr. Lowden unceremoniously pulled my blouse from the waistband of my trousers and began probing my abdomen. “Let me know when it hurts,” he said gruffly. He used both hands to press on the right side of my pelvis. I cried out, and then he released the pressure, which eased my pain. “Not appendicitis.” He raised his voice as if speaking to a child or deaf person. “You still have your appendix, right?”