The Atomic Weight of Love (5 page)

I took another pull of my cigarette and felt my right leg instinctually keeping time with the music. Even at age nineteen I knew it was a moment I should take in with all of my senses.

“That’s what I’m saying. Yes.” For emphasis, I crushed the last of my cigarette until it lay like an accordion in the ashtray.

His lips were on my neck, a quick brush designed to preserve my Revlon Red lipstick. I touched his shoulder briefly, lightly.

He was leaving his university position, his office and desk, his lab and me, to participate in some unspecified way in the war effort. Almost reflexively, I had said “yes” to his marriage proposal, thinking of it primarily as a way to keep him close.

The band broke, and I watched Dinah Washington put her hand on the pianist’s shoulder while she reached for her glass with her other hand. He looked up at her, wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief, and I swear I could see the black beads on her dress shiver beneath his gaze.

I wanted to feel that with Alden. I was waiting for it. I took a sip of my champagne cocktail and curled my hands, one within the other, on my lap. Alden cupped the bowl of his pipe in his hand, and the match flared. He had beautiful hands, the hands of an artist, and I liked to see how carefully, with what natural grace, he held even the most mundane object.

The lights came up, and several of the patrons formed a conga line. Drunks too inebriated to stand used their silverware to beat out the necessary rhythm—
boom boom boom boom boom, BOOM!
Boom boom boom boom boom, BOOM!
We were all suddenly united in our need to forget the war, instead insisting on life and possibility.

One woman stood out, leading the conga line like some kind of deranged toucan, her nose just a bit too big and her black evening dress slashed with caustic stripes of green, yellow, and red.
Boom boom boom boom boom, BOOM!
She thrust out a hip, her mouth stretched into a giant O. I could see crescent sweat stains ruining her dress as she waved her arms with the drumbeats, and when the line snaked past our table, I smelled Evening in Paris cologne.

The toucan woman caught my eye, waved for me to join her. I envied the fun she was having, but something about this evening, about Alden’s impending departure and the way he frowned at the conga line, stopped me. Wanting to avoid displeasing Alden, I mouthed “No, thanks,” and smiled as the woman moved on.

When he kissed me good night, called me his beautiful fiancée, I cried into the buttons of his overcoat, already missing him.

The next morning, shafts of sunlight beat into Union Station, and I watched golden dust motes dance in response to my breath.

We stood in the train station, Alden and I. My cheap cloth coat, the lining of the right pocket torn, his minimalist bag at his feet. He looped a locket about my neck, promised me an engagement ring “down the line.” The book-shaped locket was empty—meant to be filled with our future.

Alden’s hand on the small of my back was warm through the material of my insubstantial coat. He couldn’t tell me where he was going or what he was going to do—just that it would be in an isolated location in the Southwest, that he would contact me as soon as he was permitted to do so. We parted with me feeling tearful and angry, already regretful that I could not force myself to be more mature. I was sad at his leaving, at my being left out, at the delay this secret war assignment meant to our life together. Angry that he could find it in himself to leave me with such barely disguised excitement. Whatever he was going to do, it flipped all of his mental switches; he glowed secretly like the vacuum tubes settled in the dark interior of the radio beside my bed.

When the whistle blew, Alden eagerly hopped up the stairs of the coach car, removed his hat, and then disappeared into the dimly lit interior.

Before heading back to Mrs. Hudson’s, I bought myself a medicinal chocolate malt at Fred Harvey’s, watched the Harvey Girls comport themselves with perfection, and wondered if there were Harvey Girls where Alden was going. I purchased a picture postcard of the train station and addressed it to Jerry. I told him I was engaged to Alden, wished him a happy new year.

I dropped it in a trash can on my way home.

THE LONG-AWAITED WESTERN
UNION
telegram from Alden was brief: “PO Box 1663, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Alden.” I found the place on a map and wondered what on earth such a place with so few cities or centers of commerce and industry could possibly have to do with the war effort. And I was disappointed—Alden sent not a word of his love, despite the fact that we’d been engaged to be married for less than two weeks.

PROFESSOR MATTHEWS WAYLAID ME
in the hallway outside of his third-floor office in the zoology building. He’d taken me under his wing and was helping me map out the remainder of my undergraduate studies.

“Come sit for a bit.” He fished in his pants pocket for his keys and unlocked his door, motioning for me to precede him. Overflowing ashtrays ruled every flat surface. He tossed a pile of library books onto a chair, and a cloud of dust rose from the cushions. The single overhead light fixture sputtered and then the light bulb popped, leaving us in a gray twilight.

“Ridiculous,” he said, crossing to the windows. He struggled with the cords of the venetian blinds, raised them several inches, and emptied the nearest ashtray into his trash can, finally pushing it toward me. We lit up while he leaned against the edge of his desk.

Professor Matthews was soft all over and gave every sign of being headed for unbridled corpulence one day—perhaps sooner rather than later. The heels of his shoes were worn at odd angles because of his heavy, awkward gait. I guessed he was in his early sixties, and that he’d likely been in the same office for a good thirty-five years or so—enough time to accumulate layer upon layer of solidified geologic time.

“I want for you to find your focus.” He exhaled smoke. “You can graduate in under four years—maybe as little as three, by my calculations. But I’d like to see you use your time and abilities to begin an area of specialization. It will help when it comes time to apply to graduate school.”

I looked at the glass display case that ran the length of one wall and included at least fifty specimens of stuffed birds, from cardinals to nuthatches. Over time, dust had made its way into the case, and now the poor creatures bore a patina of gray that dulled their feathers and filmed their glass eyes. It reminded me of what I’d read about the Victorians’ proclivity for killing and collecting every plant or animal species they encountered—Darwin included. I imagined pinprick openings appearing in the bellies of those preserved birds and then envisioned how the sawdust stuffing would sift downward like the sands of an hourglass until each of the dead bodies was nothing but a depleted small sack of tanned skin, a sad coat of former glory. It made me want to weep.

“I’m suggesting that you think about disciplines such as acoustic networks, songbird communities, counter-singing. Mating systems, social and reproductive behaviors. Or, there’s navigation, migration patterns.” He tapped the ash from his cigarette. “You could also take another approach, focus on a specific species.”

“I think that’s where I’m headed,” I said, sending a stream of smoke ceilingward.

“What direction?”

“Species. Focus on a species.
Corvus
.”

“Excellent choice. But tell me why.”

“Their intelligence. We’ve just begun to scratch the surface when it comes to understanding crow and raven behavior.”

“Agreed. Is there a particular aspect of their behavior that interests you more than another?”

“Their seeming use of tools, since that runs counter to all current assumptions about what separates humans from other animals.”

“Perfect. Just the sort of analysis I’d expect from my best student.”

“And, I like them because so many people dislike them. All of the myths, the negative associations—carrion birds, birds of war. I was reading recently about a Tibetan funeral ritual involving crows and ravens. The deceased’s body is cut into small pieces and laid on an altar, and then the birds carry the departed, albeit in pieces, to the next life.”

He stubbed out his cigarette and stood, dismissing me. “Be a scientist, Miss Wallace, not an English major.”

“But I beg to differ, respectfully. Rachel Carson talks about this. I don’t want to write solely for the scientific community.” Aged cigarette smoke filmed his windows, turning the late afternoon light a sickly chartreuse.

“Listen to me: your thesis committee, the academics who hold your professional future in their hands, are not the Rachel Carsons of this world. They are old school, and you have to be ready to jump through all of the hoops they require of you.”

I thanked him, gathered my coat, and shifted my books to one hip. When I entered the staircase, I thought about crows. Why they compelled me. The affinity I had for them and their mythology. I wanted to know everything about them—these dark birds that seemed to me to be so misunderstood, so underestimated.

To:

Meridian Wallace

1225 Wayland Ave.

Chicago, Ill.

From:

Alden Whetstone

PO Box 1663 Dear Meri,

Santa Fe, N. Mex.

January 25, 1943

Dear Meri,

I’m sorry for the long silence, but it couldn’t be helped. Someday we’ll be able to sit and have one of our luxurious conversations, and I’ll be able to tell you about all of the myriad personalities, the turf wars, the GIANT egos at work here. And maybe I’ll be able to tell you how much I am learning from these men, how exciting the ideas, the potentialities.

I am proud to be engaged to you. I never thought I’d meet someone like you, have a chance to share your sweetness, your youth.

Do you remember my mentioning
Bob Jenkins
? I think I told you he and I worked on
a couple of papers summarizing some recent advances in blah-blah theory
. Do you remember? He’s a
research chemist
. Anyway, he and I are
partnering
again, and that alone is worth the trip to this place.

Tell me of your studies. Tell me you are not dancing with boys. Tell me, tell me, tell me, Meri. Tell me everything. I want the freshness of your voice, your enthusiasm.

And I want for you to think about my coming to see you just as soon as I can get a break. I need to
get some textbooks out of my office
and to smell your hair.

I love you.

Alden

It was difficult to respond to his letter, as I really had no idea what he’d tried to tell me. Still, I had the words that mattered most to me — evidence that he missed and loved me, that he was alive somewhere.

To:

Alden Whetstone

PO Box 1663

Santa Fe, N. Mex.

From:

Meridian Wallace

1225 Wayland Ave.

Chicago, Ill.

February 6, 1943

Dear Alden,

First things first: I miss you.

Secondly—you should know that a good deal of your letter consisted of elongated black rectangles. What are the censorship rules?

I haven’t been dancing with anyone except Newton. We’re on his Second Law of Motion, and so I’m trying to understand gravitational fields—something you can do in your sleep, I know, but for a lowly biology major, it’s a challenge.

What I’m finding fascinating is the complex relationship between the gravitational fields of two masses. One force pulling at the other, each separate gravitational force or power pulling at the other. Grace à Newton, I know that because your mass is greater, you must exert a stronger pull on me than I can on you. Or do you just shake your head at me for trying to make human relationships follow the rules of physics? Surely by now you recognize that as part of my allure, right?

Yes, I’m eating.

Yours—Meridian

MOTHER HAD ALREADY BEGUN
sewing linens for my trousseau, and Kitty offered to come with me to look for a cedar hope chest. For some reason, the war had made cedar chests scarce, so we couldn’t find any amongst the stores we searched. Finally, we stopped for ham salad sandwiches and pickles at Alderman’s Soda Shop.

“Did you hear?” Kitty asked. “Red’s coming back.” Red had lived in the boarding house with us, before he joined up. Kitty’s sapphire and diamond ring caught the light, reminding me of her story about how during the Depression her grandmother had hidden it, kept it secret so that it would not be sold.

“When?” I asked, trying to talk around a bite of sandwich.

“Mrs. Hudson said next week some time.”

“Is he OK?”

“Something happened to his leg. With the Marines, at Guadalcanal.”

“God.”

“Amy and Gretchen have agreed to share a room so he can have his old room back.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yeah, they’re swell gals.” She fiddled with her straw. “Do you ever hear from Jerry?”

“A short letter last week,” I finished my pickle and smiled at a boy in uniform who did a double take when he passed our table. “Jerry doesn’t say what’s going on, just superficial things, like jokes the soldiers play on each other.”