by Lydia Millet
Making her way down the aisle of the airplane with her shoulder bag held in front of her, almost tripping over a scissor-legged Barbie doll on the floor, Ann thought she recognized a man from the birthday party as she passed him seated: the food activist from Belgium. He had helped burn down a McDonald’s in France, it was said. She wondered whether she should say hello, but did not remember his name.
—Ben! she hissed as they went past. —A guy from the party was sitting back there, did you see him? The one who threw the Molotov cocktail at the Ronald McDonald statue. What’s his name again?
—Adalbert, or something. He only eats what he grows.
And then she heard a familiar voice ring out from the middle row of seats in front of them, and her found her eyes drawn to a cascade of green dreadlocks over a seatback.
—Tamika?
—Surprise! said Tamika, turning.
Other heads turned to her right and left and she realized they were surrounded by guests from the party: Ashlee the jewelry maker, Boogie the surfer, Leslie the cancer survivor, and Clint the heckler who’d worn camouflage but now seemed to be garbed in a suede cowboy jacket with a long, swinging fringe. There were other faces she recognized without knowing names.
—She’s all surprises, that girl, said Ben under his breath.
—We’re coming with! called Larry, smiling broadly as ever from his seat beside Tamika.
Ann took a breath and smiled back at him shakily, and as she sat down she turned to Oppenheimer, who was assigned to the seat behind them.
—I didn’t know, he said, and lifted two fingers to his brow. —Scout’s honor.
Leslie had a seat directly in front. She turned to prop herself up on the headrest.
—Larry paid for our tickets, she confessed in a hushed voice. —Fourteen of us! Besides them.
—I don’t understand, said Ann. —Are you just coming for—?
—Larry offered, and some of us believe in him, you know?
—You believe in Larry?
—Oppie!
—Believe in him? asked Ben.
—Like Clint for example. He saw Oppie’s head in a vision and it was surrounded by this halo of pink sparks but on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s body.
—That would have been the LSD, I’m thinking, said Ben.
—Don’t be so negative. Some of us choose to believe, you know? No offense, but try not to poison us with your cynical attitude, OK Ben?
—Please take your seats, said a flight attendant, pushing past. —We have passengers behind you here who need to get through. OK?
—Sorry, said Ben, and closed the overhead compartment.
—I don’t follow, said Oppenheimer. —He saw me with pink sparks coming out of my head? And now he’s coming with us to New Mexico?
—He had a vision, said Leslie. —Clint! Oppie wants to talk to you!
—Quite all right, said Oppenheimer, sinking down into his seat and stretching a long leg out into the aisle. —Maybe later.
It was too late: Clint the camo man, stringy-haired and leathery-faced with his drooping mustache and fringed cowboy jacket, bore down on them from his seat a few rows behind. He blocked the aisle to talk to them as the last stragglers onto the plane stowed their gear.
—Yeah, man, he said, —it was yesterday, the day after the party, you know? I was sober by then. Or at least I was hung over. I wasn’t tripping.
—Sir, I’m going to need you to sit down, said the flight attendant, passing again. —You can feel free to continue this conversation once we take off, OK?
Clint moved into an empty seat.
—I left Larry’s place and I got on the subway, right? I was looking at this ad, it was for some movie I think, and then where the guy’s head was—
—Didn’t you say it was Arnold Schwarzenegger? broke in Leslie. —That’s what you said.
—But I’m not so sure it was him anymore, OK? I don’t go to movies that much. It could have been some other buff guy with a bodybuilder thing going on. Like Stallone.
—But you said—
—Just shut up, would you Leslie? Anyway he had a big gun and so the train’s going along, right? I was standing up and it was one of those ads that hangs down right onto people’s heads, right? So I’m tired, I’m kind of falling asleep as I’m standing there, holding on, you know? And I look up and here’s Oppie on this movie poster instead of the other guy. Now he’s holding the gun. But his head is surrounded in this sort of—
—Pink light! said Leslie eagerly.
—Would you shut your piehole? It wasn’t a pink light, it was more of a—what do they call them, a scarf? No wait. Like the old Spanish ladies wear, you know, wrapped around their heads.
—A shawl? said Ann.
—A shawl? asked Oppenheimer. —I was wearing a shawl?
—I don’t think you were seeing Oppenheimer in the subway there, Clint, said Ben. —I think what you saw was a transvestite.
—Ha ha, man. It was Oppie. I’m telling you. This shawl, it wasn’t a normal shawl, OK? It was like a shawl of awareness.
—What? said Ben.
—Don’t knock it, OK? said Clint. —I’m just telling you what I saw. And his face—your face, sir—it like had this saintly look. Like it does. I mean look at him! This guy looks like a stained glass window!
Ann almost remembered something, but failed. She studied Oppenheimer: he was pale and his eyes stood out. It was true that he looked, as he had always looked, paper-thin and absorbed, hunger shining.
—But the deal is, like, the shawl made me understand, it was this like feeling coming off the shawl. The shawl was like, I don’t know. Holy.
—Congratulations, said Ben to Oppenheimer. —You can let the whole Robert Oppenheimer identity go, finally. Now you’re the Virgin Mary.
—I don’t want you to be disappointed, said Oppenheimer earnestly to Clint. —I mean this isn’t a circus. We’re not going to perform. What exactly do you plan to do in Santa Fe?
—Just go with the flow, said Clint. —Keep the eyes open, you know? Eyes of the world, man. Don’t sweat it.
—Santa Fe is a powerful healing place, said Leslie. —I’ve always wanted to go there. I’ve never been to New Mexico.
—If you’re thinking of finding a vortex, said Ben, —I should warn you that’s Sedona.
—Sir, the seatbelt, please, said the flight attendant to Clint, making a sweep past Leslie before she turned. —Ma’am? Can you sit down for me please? You need to have your seatbelt on for us to pull away from the gate.
—We’ll need your help, said Szilard to Clint, leaning around from the row behind Clint as the plane began to pull back from the gate. —We need manpower. We’re launching a major PR and legal campaign as soon as we get back. You’ll be a highly valuable member of the team, Clint. Believe me.
Ben considered how quickly Szilard had picked up the business language to add to his canon of slang. Whatever you can say about Szilard, he thought, he’s sharp as a tack. He assimilates information at a rapid rate. He never stops learning.
—Where are they going to stay? whispered Ann to Oppenheimer, turning in her seat once Clint had been distracted.
Ben shot him a look of warning, or tried to. Don’t impose.
—Don’t worry, said Oppenheimer.
He had understood.
—They’re not staying with us, Ann, said Ben. —Robert wouldn’t ask that of you.
—Of course not, said Oppenheimer smoothly. —I’m sure Larry will take care of it. From what I understand his father is one of the richest men in the world. Larry is his only son so his funds are virtually unlimited. The trust fund alone is worth hundreds of millions. And he told me he’s never known what to do with all that money, other than buy marijuana and go surfing. Now he feels as though he has a mission, for the first time in his life. How did he put it? He wants to be a warrior for peace.
—That’s nice, said Ben. —Catchy, yet stupid.
—So when it comes to money, don�
�t worry, Annie.
—Larry can help them much more than we ever could, said Ben to Ann, trying to be comforting.
Ann smiled at Ben as the plane began to taxi, thinking it was the first time Oppenheimer had called her Annie. It was the first time anyone had called her that since she was very young.
As they leveled after the steady climb she watched Oppenheimer undo his seatbelt, struggle to cross his long legs in his seat and then give up and reach for his packaged headphones. He tore them out of their plastic, put them on his head and adjusted them to sit right. He played with the channel buttons on the arm of his seat and listened intently to each channel before he changed to the next. It was astounding how quickly he had adjusted, she thought, to modern commercial flight, to technology, to all the routines that were new to him. It was the same with Szilard. Only Fermi was slow, and the slowness was due to disinterest, she thought.
We can adapt to anything, she thought looking out the window, homo sapiens.
At first the trait seemed praiseworthy, evidence of a lively and supple intelligence.
But then a long shadow was cast across the wing and she remembered the crowds in Tokyo, the infinite crowds spread across the concrete and the streets bare of trees.
One of the walls of the Peace Museum at Hiroshima is covered in letters, carefully typed on official stationery. The letters are arranged neatly in chronological sequence. Each letter was written by a mayor of Hiroshima, each successive mayor in his time, on a long series of dates after World War Two.
They are not form letters. Each is carefully written from scratch, in English. Some are addressed to a president, others to a prime minister or a premier, and all are written on the day of a nuclear test.
Each letter, one after another down through the years, makes its request politely. “Dear Sir: Please be kind enough to cease building nuclear weapons, for the good of all nations of peace.”
To feel sympathy for people outside ourselves we need to know each soul can be alone, thought Oppenheimer. We need to be sure that each body can feel the separation of itself from other bodies, to know desire lives there, in every one separately. We have to feel how longing surges from the hearts of others.
More than that, without longing the other is not a self, and beyond longing, even, it is the pain of others that is the source of our sympathy. A being that does not know pain cannot be the object of pity, and so a being that does not suffer also does not receive our love.
There is nothing to fasten to there, in who does not feel pain.
III
THE DEAD MAINTAIN THEIR GOOD LOOKS
1
We were not made to fly, thought Ann like many fearful passengers before and after her, but here we are aloft.
It was precarious. When she flew she was on the edge of air, between air and nothing.
They were moving steadily at thirty-seven thousand feet above a thin layer of cloud that gaped open over the Sierra Nevada and then dispersed into clarity. Colors showed beneath.
She stared down at the colors with her forehead against the cool windowpane, looking out over the clean white wing. She saw the Grand Canyon yawning purple and gray and brown and then the dust-red nation of the Navajo. The lines of its orange cliffs spread like floods of sand beneath them and towering stone monuments cast dark, blunt shadows. The government had given the Navajo a very large piece of barren land, thinking this a clever swindle; and the dry soil would never make them rich, that much was true. But the land was so beautiful the joke was on the government.
When the plane began its descent into her own high desert, gentle brown mountains in the distance with their dark green skirts of pine, Ann felt homesick. Only from here could she know her own country best, far above with no way to touch it.
Larry had booked the scientists a lavish suite at La Posada, the establishment Oppenheimer preferred.
—Let me take the burden off you, OK? Money is no object, like the man said. I couldn’t spend it all if I had six lifetimes. I’m serious. I mean you have already been so great to these guys.
They were in a flight lounge in Albuquerque, she and Ben walking fast with Larry beside them as the others trailed behind. She was moving out of relevance, she thought, away from the center. There was nothing to object to, because of course they would stay in a hotel. It was better for them. No one would turn down that offer.
—So you just feel free to take a break from playing hostess, OK?
She nodded and felt them slipping out of her hands, leaving in her a defeated, flat calm.
Larry leaned closer as they walked and whispered, in an understanding tone, —I know it’s been hard on you. Robert told me you guys have been a little strapped for cash recently. No worries, he told me in confidence.
Oppenheimer discussed her finances with Larry, Larry with his Tall Grays at Roswell, his autopsies and abductions and extraterrestrial squid swimming ceaselessly in the orbit of Jupiter.
—I mean I’d be happy to reimburse you for everything you’ve spent on them. I’m serious.
—Larry’s our sugar daddy, said Ben to Ann.
—Oh, no, said Ann. —Thank you, but—
—Are you kidding? It was our entire savings. We say yes, said Ben. —Reimburse us. Feel free! It’s been at least ten thousand.
—No problem, man, said Larry. —I’ll get the accountant to cut you a check. You need something, you just come to Larry.
—So you’re staying at the La Posada too? asked Ann quickly to cover her embarrassment.
—Nah, Oppie wanted his space. We got rooms at La Fonda.
—Lar! called Tamika from behind them. —They’re boarding!
—I gotta go, said Larry. —You’re driving from here, right? We’re flying. Oppie and Szilard too.
—Oh, said Ann.
He patted her on the shoulder. —You can see them whenever you want, right? It’s all good.
Then he went to rejoin Tamika and the rest of his group, who were milling around a water fountain between the rest room doors. Szilard was holding forth to Leslie, who listened to him nodding slightly but constantly, as though her head was bouncing on a rubber stalk. Straightening up from the water fountain, wiping stray water off his chin, Oppenheimer waved at her jauntily and tipped his hat.
Fermi had declined Larry’s invitation to stay in the hotel room with the other scientists. He did not wish to be indebted to Larry and his friends, who he claimed reminded him of gypsies, as he insisted they had been called in his day. They were insufficiently washed, it was possible they would steal, and they had loose ways of living.
He would be just fine where he was, as stationary as possible. He was looking forward to working in the garden again.
—I hope it’s not an inconvenience? he said to Ben, leaning up from the backseat to put his head between them. —If it is, I can go with them of course. But I wish to stay with you for a little longer if it is not a problem. I will be happy to work in return for my room and board. I am not lazy.
—We know you’re not, Enrico.
—I just don’t want to be around all those people all the time. They make me nervous.
—Of course you can stay with us, said Ann. —It’s what we were planning. Right, honey?
—Right, said Ben.
There was no edge to it, and she realized he was fond of Fermi. When it came to Fermi he still did not believe, but he also did not suspect.
It was soon after the end of the Second World War that the American government began exploding atom bombs in the air. Now that the bomb existed it had to be improved and refined.
When the Soviet Union made its own bomb, a little later, it too would begin exploding the bombs in the air. Both countries would reach thermonuclear fingers into the most remote and unsullied parts of the globe. They would look for places where they could explode their gadgets without obvious and immediate fatalities and quietly measure the gadgets’ effectiveness. These tended to be places where only poor people lived, sparsely distribut
ed and ill educated, unable or disinclined to speak up in their own defense. Even if there was an outcry in such far-flung places, it would likely go unheard. And even if by some fluke it was heard, it would not be heeded.
Such places could be found both far away and close to home.
When they got back to the house Ann dropped her bags just inside the front door, ran upstairs and rolled into bed to take a nap. Ben washed his hands and face and then wandered through the rooms of the main floor, wiping dust off surfaces and ripping open the envelopes of bills and credit card offers.
Fermi spent the afternoon pottering around the rock gardens and flowerbeds, stooped over rosemary and lamb’s ear, rubbing the soft leaves between his fingers, raising the crushed leaves to his long nose and inhaling deeply. Ben watched him through the window as he pulled a white wooden stool from the garden shed and sat between the plants motionless. He looked like a man surrounded by family, face soft with relief.
With her cheek and eyelid against the cool pillowcase of her own bed she felt she could rest the true rest, which she could never find anywhere but at home.
Ben talked to no one and was glad. Behind him a fire burned in the fireplace despite the warmth of the evening and Larry’s friends lounged beside the hearth, some of them sitting around the large, deep wood table, others standing up with their drinks, clustered near Szilard. In the warm flickering light he was almost content. It was probably the wine.
He liked the curve of the goblet against his fingers. Since the arrival of the scientists he rarely felt the fullness of life, rarely ended the day as he used to in a globe of comfort. The closest he came anymore was alcohol and Larry’s pot.
He should probably be worried.
Beside him Fermi was trying hard to avoid conversation, affecting a shyness that bordered on the rude. He stood behind Ben’s right elbow, his head down, listening and saying nothing.
Outside Leslie and Clint stood on the sidewalk with Oppenheimer, talking to him eagerly as he smoked. Their conversation was inaudible but Ben suspected they were boring him. His expression was disinterested and his head moved in slight, bobbing nods, chickenlike, between cigarette puffs.