The Atomic Weight of Love (33 page)

“It would have been nice if you’d asked, but if it was a last minute thing . . .” Jasper put a paw on Alden’s shoulder, instant comrades in arms.

“He really likes you,” I said. Jasper had never responded this enthusiastically to me.

“Dogs tend to like me.”

“I never knew that.”

Alden put his briefcase on the side table and headed toward the kitchen. “C’mon, boy, let’s see what we have to feed you.”

They left me standing in the middle of the living room, my hands clasped tightly at my waist, entirely befuddled.

WHILE HE WAS ALONE
with me, Jasper was purely my dog, and we hiked the trails in and around the Los Alamos canyons and Jemez Mountains. He looked handsome riding on the Morris Minor’s red leather seats, and he gave me someone to talk to as we clambered up and down hillsides or crossed streams. I sewed a little backpack and made him carry his own kibble and water, and he shared the crusts of my cheese sandwiches without complaint about their relative lack of nutritional value.

At home, however, Jasper was Alden’s faithful sidekick. He began sitting in the front window waiting for Alden about fifteen minutes before Alden’s punctual arrival, and it was Alden who fed him his evening meals. While Alden read
Khrushchev Remembers
, he kept a palm on Jasper’s head, and Jasper curled for warmth against Alden’s leg. He slept on the floor beside Alden’s side of the bed.

Jasper forged a link between Alden and me, a demilitarized zone. He gave us a safe topic of discussion. I wondered what Clay would think of this unintended result of his gift, and I hoped he would be glad that Jasper lent some peace to our home, that he eased tensions somewhat. I think Clay loved me enough to be that generous.

“IT’S BEEN A WHILE,
so refresh my memory.”

Just after Thanksgiving, Emma and I were seated at a booth in the soda-shop portion of Anderson’s Pharmacy. There were few places in Los Alamos to go for coffee and conversation—unless one wanted to frequent the American Legion or the B.P.O.E.—and we didn’t.

I set
The Second Sex
on the tabletop. “What she says is that with D. H. Lawrence, a wife derives her justification for existence from her husband—Lawrence’s women have to adopt their mates’ values, his universe.”

Emma took a sip of her coffee and watched my face.

“It’s precisely what I’ve done,” I said. “I’ve submitted to Alden, with some small flurries of rebellion that quickly melted. Coming here, staying here—he required that of me.”

“Without discussion?”

“With minimal discussion. I glanced at the countertop where three big, yeasty doughnuts rested beneath a glass dome.

“Just because I won’t doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.” Emma smiled.

I nodded at the girl behind the counter, who took a pair of tongs and selected one of the doughnuts, brought it to our table, and refilled our mugs. “Thanks,” I said.

“I know about the minimal discussion,” Emma said. “But let’s talk about why it was minimal.”

“Because my compliance was pretty much assumed.”

“Sure. Mine too. But you’re not blaming Alden for the whole thing, are you?” She took a breath. “What I mean is that the entire culture assumed, right along with our husbands. It was
understood
. And while they might well respect us, love us, sometimes even be a tad less intelligent than us, by marrying them we tacitly agreed to a contract in which we would sublimate. They did not have to subjugate—we did that for them.”

“So I’m just as guilty as Alden?”

“Maybe even more guilty. You put the bridle in your mouth, your neck in the noose, your head on the chopping block—whatever metaphor you’d like to use.”

“And you?”

“
Mea culpa
.”

“So why are we still here?”

“I love Vince.”

“It can’t be that simple.”

“For me, it is.” She stirred her coffee for no reason other than to give herself time to think. “I think I’ve given up fretting about it. Vince loves me in the best way he can. We’ve made a life here, and there is no longer any other life I want more than this one.”

“You’ve settled.”

“Yes.”

“But should we settle?”

“The real question is should
you
settle, because I’m not the one who is tortured by all of this.”

I began shredding my napkin into strips. “Maybe that’s one difference between us. You finished your Ph.D. Maybe that permits you a level of contentment that I can’t find.”

“You think you still have something to prove.”

“Maybe.” I paused in my dismemberment of the innocent napkin.

“You’re telling me that you don’t already know how bright you are? You don’t know that you could have finished if you’d chosen to do so?”

I blew out my breath. “At the start, Alden was . . .” I spread my arms wide. “He was so big in my life, such a massive intellect, such a compelling mind.”

“And now?”

“He hasn’t lost his intellect, but he doesn’t share it with me anymore. Does Vince still talk to you?”

“About?”

“Work. The one thing they love, what consumes them.”

“But they can’t—not for the most part. They can’t discuss classified work with us.” Emma waited while the waitress refilled our coffee mugs and took away my empty doughnut plate. “Vince and I talk about books. We talk about the news, politics, about the people at his work. But never his work, Meri. It’s verboten—you know that.”

“But even the
ideas
of work—quantum physics,
something
that interests him. He used to be so animated, talking about wave propagation, particles. He was glorious, Emma.
Lit
. But not anymore. The other day, he was reading Khrushchev’s memoirs. So I asked him about them, what he thinks.”

“And?”

“First, he said,
Read it yourself, Meri
.”

“Oh.”

“Then he said he had no intention of joining my ladies’ coffee klatch.”

She reached across the booth for my hand, halting my paper shredding.

Her kindness deflated the balloon of my anger. “I had you all wrong,” I said, squeezing her hand.

“Meaning?”

“Your reserve.”

She laughed. “Don’t you know? Still waters run deep. Cold hands, warm heart. Truthfully, I’ve grown careful over time. It’s living in this small town,” she said, looking out the plate glass window onto Diamond Drive. “It’s one way of maintaining some modicum of privacy in a city where people will talk if you make an excessive number of lane changes in less than three minutes.” She let her voice fade and again stared out the window, thoughtful, before turning back to me. “Do something for me?” she asked, and I nodded. “Take another look at your husband, try to see him with fresh eyes. See if he’s really an unfeeling ogre.” She folded her napkin precisely, used her thumbnail to sharpen the fold. “If he is, then that’s one thing. If he’s not, then talk to him. I’d do that before I walked away from all those years.”

AT FIRST, I FAILED
to notice the difference, but within minutes I realized that the crows had not alerted to my presence. The woods were silent, but for my footsteps and Jasper’s panting.

As we descended to the boulder, I saw them—at least a hundred crows, lining the pine branches or clustered in groups on the ground, their focus a single crow lying inert in the center of the gathering. They stood together, not quite a huddle but with their backs to the world, for once oblivious to intruders. I heard murmurings, understated crow voices, and I felt intensely their black coloration, their seeming mourning dress. There were a few punctuations of squawks when one crow jostled another, but for the most part they remained eerily quiet.

I whispered to Jasper to sit and stay, and then I focused my binoculars on the inert crow.

I drew a quick, audible breath, startling some of the birds.

It was White Wing, and he was dead.

I lowered the binoculars, but not before I glimpsed Beacon just to White Wing’s left. Her head was bowed.

One by one, they approached White Wing and either stopped short of him by a few inches or touched him with their beaks, as if placing a hand on a closed casket, bidding farewell.

I was seeing a crow funeral, as impossible as that seemed. They’d gathered for White Wing. To say good-bye? To honor him? I couldn’t make sense of it.

I squatted on the ground beside Jasper, leaned my head against him as we watched the crows bid adieu and then take off. When the departing crows had flown some prescribed distance from the setting, each one called, two to three brisk caws.

Eventually, the only birds remaining were Beacon and her dead mate. I left my pack with Jasper and made my way slowly, respectfully, to where White Wing lay.

His eyes were gone, shot out with BBs. I knelt beside him, touched him for the first time in my life, in my head saying
holy, holy, holy
. Then I picked up a fist-sized stone that lay near his body. I screamed and threw the rock as hard as I could. I heard it ricochet off of another stone and then roll.

Beacon answered my call from her perch, and then we both sat, bereft and empty.

A Murder of Crows

1. Among the smartest animals on Earth, the American Crow is highly adaptable.

2. “Murder of crows” may have come from the belief that crows circle in large numbers above sites where people are expected to die.

December 15, 1970

Happy Christmas, Clay.

Do you recognize the feather that comes folded so quietly into this letter? Did you hear Beacon calling for her mate?

Someone shot White Wing with a BB gun. I watched the crows hold a funeral; it was extraordinary. Beacon looked awful, but I guess she should—she’s lost the mate she’d made for life. And then they left—all but Beacon. Here is my theory about the crows’ disappearance: They learned that the canyon is a dangerous place—they touched him and saw his wounds, and knew that they had to abandon their territory or risk extermination. I’m certain they are that smart, that evolved.
I know it.

I wanted for a part of White Wing to be with you. I want him to go beyond this place, to float on a new horizon, and he’ll have that, through you. I kept another feather—I put it in a cedar wood box that was given to me when my best friend Belle died. It’s where I keep precious things. I haven’t told you about Belle, but I want to, now. I will tell you when I can touch you and see your face. I want to show you the same level of trust you showed me when you told me of Roger.

One more death—then you can put this letter away or burn it and somehow get rid of its weighty sadness. Beacon is dead. You are the only person I can tell, who really,
really
knows how this feels. I went back to the canyon this morning, and she was lying on top of the snow. I unfolded her wings, stretched out her feet that had drawn up close to her belly in death. I couldn’t find a single wound on her, no reason for her to be dead.
I swear to you
—she died of grief. Her heart broke and could not mend itself.

When I got home I read from a book a professor gave me long ago—a book from 1923 by Townsend. He described how he’d seen a crow in a tree with one foot entangled in a piece of string—it could not escape. When Townsend returned to the site an hour later, the entangled crow was still entangled and alive, but a second crow lay dead on the ground beneath the tree. Townsend dissected the dead crow but could find nothing wrong—he said he was tempted to say the second crow had died of grief for the imprisoned crow.

I believe that our minds, our hearts, control our bodies—by chemicals or whatever, we can bring on our deaths when no other reason for death exists. Beacon did that. Beacon
decided
to do that.

I am sad. Just so sad. Hold me in your mind, your heart, as I do you.

Meridian

I WENT TO THE
canyon every day for over two weeks, but the crows were completely gone. All of the years I’d spent there—and now, nothing. I wrote up observations of the funeral, Beacon’s grief-stricken death, and of the crows’ abandonment of a long-term home ground and breeding site. I closed the journal and packed it away on top of the journals of previous years, in a box in the back of the hall closet, next to the sheets and blankets, the towers of embroidered and crocheted dresser scarves and doilies Mother sent me over the years.

The heart had gone out of me with the crow deaths, and although I told myself that in the spring I’d set up a new research site and continue my studies with another crow community, I wondered if I would. Or if I were finished.

I felt the passage of time, counted the years I’d been living in Los Alamos and was surprised when I realized I’d been living there for half my life. I noticed that the lines that ran in curves from Alden’s nose down past the outer edges of his lips had had deepened into ravines, that his eyelids sagged under the influence of inescapable gravity. I inspected my face carefully in the harsh light of the bathroom, saw the beginnings of tiny commas of wrinkles in my cheeks, generated by forty-seven years of smiling.

The holidays came—Christmas cards, decorations, holiday baking, shopping, and Alden’s numerous work-related parties. I bought white linen at Dendahl’s, just off the plaza in Santa Fe, and I sewed new drapes for the entire house. I had Alden’s reading chair reupholstered in a nice, bright fabric of gold, green, and oranges. I sent my usual annual card to Professor Matthews, told him about Beacon’s death, thanked him for his prescient gift of Townsend’s book. Two weeks later, the postman returned the card. Someone had drawn a single line through Professor Matthews’ name and written in blue ink: DECEASED. My crows receded further.