Oh Pure and Radiant Heart

by Lydia Millet

  Near Ben, a tray of appetizers passed and was grabbed at by a tall, clean-cut Gomer with a braying laugh who looked to be straight out of college.

  This is Ted, said Szilard. —He’s going to be suing the Department of Defense for me. Suit gets filed tomorrow.

  Pleased to meetcha! said Ted, and grabbed eagerly for Ben’s hand.

  I’m Larry, said Larry, skirting the table and clapping Ted on the shoulder. The guy who pays the bills around here. Sometimes anyway!

  They brayed together, ha ha ha. Ben thought families that bray together and sipped his wine to hide his face. He was humiliated by the pun.

  —So what’s the outlook, hombre? Are we gonna beat the pants off the Feds?

  —Ha-ha-ha.

  —Larry! called the Belgian food activist from across the table in what sounded to Ben like a caricature of a French accent. That was typical of French accents: they always sounded like caricatures of French accents. —How we know where the vegetables here on the menu is come from? Maybe they modified! Everything in this country GM or GE!

  —Get the chef for us, would you please? said Larry to a flustered passing waitress.

  —I think we have a decent chance! said Ted, trying to get Larry’s attention. —The problem is this whole War on Terrorism thing.

  —But the records he wants are from World War Two! What, that’s going to be classified still? interjected Ben.

  —Just in general, they don’t have to get to things like this right now, it’s low priority, said Ted. —They got paperwork backlogs with FOIA requests already. And now the terrorist wars and all that.

  —The wars are why we’re doing this, Ted, said Szilard.

  —Course Leo. I get it. Other thing is, they may not actually have the records anymore. Can’t produce what they don’t have. Even if they do, it’s been twenty-one working days since he put in the request, they don’t return his phone calls, but that doesn’t mean they can’t give him a No Records response or claim national security.

  —They can claim national security even if all they’re doing is looking in some naked chick’s window, said Larry.

  —Ha-ha-ha, brayed Ted.

  —They have the records, said Szilard firmly, paying no attention. —Are you kidding? The Manhattan Project’s historic.

  —Do you have to take this antagonistic approach? asked Ben. —They have nothing to gain by guarding your precious fingerprints, do they?

  —What a stupid question, said Szilard. —It’s the Army.

  —Leo? Don’t be an asshole.

  —Larry! Larry! yelled the Belgian food activist past the back of a sous-chef, who stood at the table talking to him. —It is terrible! I can’t eat here! There is nothing for me! This so-called food is agribusiness byproduct!

  —He ran out of the whole grains he brought with him, said Szilard.

  Ann came out of the bathroom finally. She had washed her face and looked fresh, but her eyes were still tired. She stood next to Ben, leaned against his shoulder and fluttered a hand over to take a sip from his glass.

  —Everybody! said Szilard, clapping his hands. —I’ve got press releases that have to go out in the morning about the lawsuit! Who’s going to get on the phone and do media with me?

  Hands raised around the table. Even over the babble of conversation Szilard was being heard. It struck Ben as surprising: they were listening to him. Szilard was actually being taken seriously.

  —What’s the count? One, two, three—eight of you. Great. OK, phone banking starting at nine a.m., said Szilard. Copies of the press release will be in Larry’s room along with a list of newspapers to call. There’s a package of information for each of you, with a script for you to read from. I’ll divide up the call list between the eight of you plus me. We’re going national with this one so everyone’s going to be making about forty, fifty calls.

  —You’ve got to be kidding, said Ben under his breath. —You think newspapers are going to cover some wacko suit against the Army?

  —We’ll see, won’t we, said Szilard smugly.

  Ben noticed one of Szilard’s shirt buttons was undone, just over the belt. It gave a view of poking flab.

  He kept it to himself, gratified.

  —Ann, said Oppenheimer, taking her arm gently as he came in from the front, the smell of nicotine wafting from his mouth as he spoke, —Can I talk to you briefly?

  —Of course, said Ann, and as they moved away Ben saw their heads go together in confidence, and wondered what it was Oppenheimer had to say to his wife that he could not say in front of him.

  —What can I eat? asked the Belgian food activist angrily, in Larry’s general direction. —What do they have for those people who do not wish to eat a grotesque mutation?

  —I wish he would shut up, said Frank the rugby player.

  —I will tell you! One single chili!

  On the back patio there was an artificial waterfall on a rock wall and house-shaped birdfeeders hanging from aspens and mesquites. Candles in paper bags glowed on the ledges of low adobe walls.

  —I just want you to know, said Oppenheimer to Ann as they walked out onto the stones, —that much as I appreciate everything Larry has done for us, I—

  He hesitated, and she looked up at him.

  —I consider you my dear friend.

  She stood without moving. Her eyes were filling. She was embarrassed.

  —Thank you, she said finally, and kept staring down at the ground at their two pairs of feet on the flagstones, his in leather shoes, hers in sandals. She thought how exposed her toes were, yielding and tender. Toes were naked things.

  —I mean it, he said quietly. —I’m grateful to Larry. He’s been exceptionally generous.

  —I know, she said, shaking her head.

  —But from you I had something more important. I still do.

  —Thanks, she said again, trying to hold the shake in her voice.

  —You were kind to me when I had nothing. I won’t forget it.

  —I’m just—, she said, and stopped. —I’m afraid of being left out.

  —You can go with us wherever we go, said Oppenheimer. —I promise. As long as you want to.

  Stiffly, almost formally, he leaned toward her and put his long, thin arms around her, formal but protective. It was an awkward embrace, and she thought a firm hold would alarm him so she let her arms rest lightly.

  Even when he tried to be close Oppenheimer stayed distant. He was always himself bracketed, at least one step away. But still he had consoled her.

  Ben was sitting at the breakfast table before work, his plate dirty and coffee mug emptied, about to fold the newspaper closed when he saw it, buried at the bottom of the sixth page. He jerked back in his chair, startled.

  Ann was sitting across from him and a few feet away stood Fermi at the counter, pouring tea.

  —I can’t believe this! he said. —Scientists Sue Defense Department! They ran Szilard’s story.

  —Read it to me, said Ann.

  —Yes please, read it, said Fermi anxiously, walking over in his sock feet with teacup raised.

  —A consortium of nuclear physicists has filed suit against the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, read Ben.

  —Does it say our names? asked Fermi nervously. —Oppenheimer’s, Szilard’s and mine?

  —I don’t think so, said Ben, scanning. —Along with the Coalition for Global Disarmament, a student organization at the University of New Mexico, the scientists, including John Ramager and Rajiv Sarathy—who the hell are they?

  —Szilard convinced them to be on the suit, said Ann.

  —… have alleged that the Department of Defense is withholding both personal and medical records they requested under the Freedom of Information Act. The scientists say they’re entitled to the documents, which they claim contain information they need for medical care. Says Sarathy, a research fellow at UNM, “This is also information that may prove the eligibility of some of the
people we represent for federal funds under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. It’s an underused law that lets victims of nuclear research and testing programs conducted between the 1940s and 1960s—”

  —Let me read it, OK? asked Ann, and he held out the paper to her. —“This is a classic case of the Department of Defense violating the law to avoid transparency,” said Ramager, an associate professor of physics. “There’s nothing in these papers that poses a risk to national security. These are personal medical records we’re talking about. This is a perfect example of the Army showing it doesn’t have to abide by the law, that it’s not responsible to the average American citizen.”

  —Yeah. Szilard’s John Q. Public.

  —His name isn’t here anywhere.

  —Good, he’s invisible, said Ben. —Just the way I like him.

  —They’re leaving on a trip, said Fermi. —I talked to them this morning. They called when you were in the shower. Did you know?

  —Another trip? Already?

  —Where to? asked Ann.

  —Somewhere out past Hawaii, said Fermi.

  Ben looked at Ann over the newspaper and saw her face fall, surprised by disappointment. He reached out to touch her wrist, against the edge of the table.

  —Damn it, he said. —He promised he would keep you in the loop, didn’t he?

  —You can go if you want, said Fermi to Ann. —Robert told me to tell you. They’re leaving tonight.

  —I see, said Ann slowly.

  The two-piece swimsuit known as the bikini is named after Bikini Atoll, destroyed by a bomb in a televised test. The garment was christened by a French designer, who put his product on the market soon after the first atomic tests in 1946.

  The Bikini natives, who were relocated from their coral reef home while the U.S. prepared to blow up the island with Shots Able and Baker, lived out their lives on a string of other nearby islands. They were shuttled between them over the decades that followed, from island to island, avoiding the bombs.

  After the first series of tests, the leader of the Islanders, known to Americans as King Juda, was told by U.S. representatives: “You have made a true contribution to the progress of mankind.”

  When she called Oppenheimer she got Szilard.

  —I wish you’d given us some warning, she told him.

  —We just decided yesterday. Larry and Tamika were already going there to see giant clams. Tridacna gigas. Four feet long. They’re an endangered species, ask Fermi.

  —You’re going to see clams?

  —Of course not. They are. I will be busy. I have no time for mollusks.

  —When are you coming back?

  —We’re not flying into Santa Fe. We have an appointment at the Nevada Test Site first. Oppie wants to see the craters. Wait, here he is.

  —Ann? said Oppenheimer, getting on the phone. —You’re not going to come with us?

  —To the Pacific Islands? I don’t think so, she said stiffly. —I’m tired of long flights. I wish you could have waited.

  —I apologize for the scheduling, said Oppenheimer after a pause.

  —Will you call me at least? Keep me up to date?

  —Of course I will, said Oppenheimer heartily.

  She nodded tightly to herself, saying nothing. He spoke into the silence.

  —Come to Nevada at least. Meet us there. Won’t you? You can drive. It won’t be expensive. And if you want to fly I’m sure Larry will foot the bill.

  With money everything was possible, she thought. There were no bounds to life except for the end of it.

  —I’ll think about it.

  The atolls of the Marshall Islands, which had once been a paradise for the small number of natives who lived on them, fishing and swimming in the turquoise shallows, diving among coral, eating breadfruit, coconut and crab, were thus re-christened by the American military. The new name was “Pacific Proving Grounds.”

  Here numerous test series were carried out. Shot Mike, with a yield equivalent to ten million tons of TNT, or ten megatons, was detonated two days before the presidential election, on Halloween day in 1952. The Mike device itself, and the housing that contained it, weighed sixty-five tons.

  It vaporized the island of Elugelab.

  In 1954 Shot Bravo, with a yield of fifteen megatons—about a thousand times the destructive force of Little Boy—spread lethal radiation over seven thousand square miles of the Pacific Ocean. Fully one-hundred and twenty miles away from Ground Zero, on an atoll called Rongelap, radiation was so intense that the people there doubled over to vomit.

  Later, when burns were rising on their skin, the Atomic Energy Commission announced breezily to the press that “All were reported well.”

  —I thought we were trying, said Ben a couple of nights later. —We are, said Ann.

  She was turned away from him on her side, reading an article about the Marshall Islands testing program. Several of the bomb tests had sunk old warships, incinerating pigs and rabbits that had been placed on the decks in cages.

  Reading was a distraction from worry. It had been nagging at her that she was missing what was essential, that her exhaustion was an excuse, a capitulation to life as usual, flat and dry with all the new suspense relinquished.

  She had to be there herself, she thought, she had to be among them, near what was happening. But it was too late now: she had missed it. She had actually said no. And there was no way of reaching them when they got there: they had not left an itinerary or the name of a hotel. Szilard’s new cell phone, bought for him by Larry, would not receive thousands of miles into the Pacific Ocean, would not ring in Micronesia, among the palm fronds and coral reefs in the middle of seemingly infinite water, when she dialed the number.

  They were the ones standing on piles of sand in the middle of the world’s vastest ocean but it was she who felt the panic of isolation.

  —I mean trying the usual way, said Ben, and rested his hand on her hip where it jutted up, covered in sheet. —Not by praying for an immaculate conception.

  —I’m not even close to ovulating, she said, and read perforating the reef with gigantic blast craters.

  Are you even there anymore? Ben was thinking, but refused to turn away from her and give up. This was the sole job of the male of many species, he told himself wryly: disseminate his semen often and broadly. The biological imperative broadly he had forsworn for the social imperative narrowly.

  But he knew he was cheating. Jocular humor would save the day but not the marriage.

  She resists, but single-mindedly I go forward. It is not that she has forgotten me.

  Of course, she thought in resignation, give in. It was kinder, it was easier and it would be fine by the end.

  She let the pages slide to the floor and turned. Strokes of the limbs, the usual bent head, the ministering, and she felt tended and passive as a plant, and then guilty for the passivity. Trying to infuse herself with momentum and will she moved, smiled, bent down herself in an awkward spiral of repositioning arms and legs. She would not neglect him, she would not be disappointing, since what if this was all there was, and after this there was no more of either of them?

  She knew it with her stomach suddenly, a weight of guilt and certainty caving her in. In the past months, with herself in other things, she had left him behind and forlorn in a corner. She had betrayed him gradually, not all at once like infidelity but here and then, more and more. Now, left out and discarded herself, she was getting a taste of her own medicine.

  She felt it with a twinge, how mean it was. Nothing was as lonely as abandoning.

  —I’m sorry, she whispered, and he looked down at her face and he knew what she meant, she could tell. But it was too sad to dwell on; it was not conducive. So she applied herself as though for a job. Usually it was not like this between them but now she felt it was necessary because she had too much to atone for to seem half-hearted. For once in recent memory she wanted to have given, furnished, even satisfied, as though she was being paid. Adequat
e was inadequate; she wanted him to go to sleep without doubt, if that was still possible. He should feel safe again.

  Even if, she realized as she set herself to the task, expression everywhere welling out of her, body stirring and full of gesture, he was not safe, even if he was not he should be unaware, for who was safe now, ever? Who was perfectly safe forever?

  Scientists at the Atomic Energy Commission took advantage of the testing in the Marshall Islands to study the effects of radiation on people.

  In 1956, at an AEC meeting, one official admitted that Rongelap was the most contaminated place on earth. He said of the Marshall Islanders, reportedly without irony, “While it is true that these people do not live, I would say, the way Westerners do—civilized people—it is nevertheless true that they are more like us than mice.”

  Sad, he thought, sad, collapsing himself into concave places and rounding himself over convex ones, fawning on the surfaces. Sad, without knowing why he was thinking it.

  It was her desperation to be in the fray that had led her to leave her husband behind, forgetting him while he was in plain sight. She was ashamed but could not help herself even now. She was pulled by a desire to be central to them, to Oppenheimer and Szilard and even Fermi, that solid, self-effacing Republican. The strength of her desire made her worry even when she was covered by her husband’s body. It made her strain toward the tropics far to the west, float dreamily in the white-and-blue elsewhere, the sand and the islands, because that was where they were, the others. And she was not. She only here, and it was not enough.

  What was crucial for her to see could be happening right now, all because she was here, lamely here.

  She was not proud of her desperation but that did not change it. It was the child in her, not the innocent child but the one that screamed for attention, face a fat red fury.

  She forced herself to let the anxieties subside, press them down. Just for a short time: the end was in sight. In the meantime he knew her well enough to feel her distraction if she felt it, he would know she was going through the motions. She had to absorb herself in the skin, the arms and the legs, push and pull, the movement, drive the rest all away.