The Atomic City Girls: A Novel

by Janet Beard

  “I think because the mountains are beautiful, you’re supposed to see God in them.”

  “I get it. But I don’t see God.”

  “Don’t you have the same god?” she asked, hoping he didn’t find the question stupid.

  He took a big gulp of the splo. “Do you mean do Jews have the same god as you Christians do?”

  “Yes, I guess.”

  “I guess as a Christian you’d see it that way.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean any offense.”

  “None taken. But if you want to discuss theology, you’ve got the wrong man.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t believe any of it. I’m only a Jew because my parents were Jews. I don’t have a god.”

  “You mean you don’t believe?”

  “Believe in what?”

  “God.”

  He took another drink and looked away. “What God? What God do you think there is in this world? My whole family in Europe is dead!”

  He turned to her, his voice rising, and she took a step back. “Dead! Aunts, uncles, cousins, dozens of human beings. All over Europe, a generation disappeared. Do you know how many dead? How many in Russia? Or China?”

  She was shaking her head, but he paid no attention. “Not just dead,” he ranted, “tortured and raped as well. Do you know how many we’ve killed with our bombs in Dresden and Tokyo? And how many thousands more will die when this bomb that we, you and I, work on every day is finished? It will kill indiscriminately—babies, mothers, the elderly, whatever is in its path. What God is there in this world? Where do you see God?”

  Sam had never spoken to her like this. He seemed off-kilter, capable of anything—cruelty, violence even. “Why are you shouting at me? I didn’t mean to make you angry.”

  “Just shut up then! Stop rambling on about God like a country hick!”

  “Why would you call me that?”

  “I don’t know, June! Because I’m not nice! I told you the first time we met, but you didn’t listen.”

  “Why are you acting this way?”

  “Christ, I just told you! I am a bad man. I’m not nice!”

  Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  “I’m going out,” he said, grabbing his hat and taking the bottle with him out the door. She stumbled back into the room, to the bed, and lay there in her dress, crying until she fell asleep.

  Sam didn’t come in until around four o’clock, and he passed out in the bed almost immediately, snoring drunkenly. He was still deeply asleep when June awoke the next morning. She went out to the balcony and closed the door behind her.

  She watched the clear water form white lines as it passed over rocks. If she stared at it long enough, it looked still, even though it was rushing past. I should leave him, she thought. This wasn’t right. She shouldn’t be in a hotel with a man she wasn’t married to. Especially a man who drank like that. He shouldn’t drink like that. He shouldn’t speak to her that way. But she couldn’t imagine her life without him. If only she could help him. Not that long ago, she thought she had. He’d stopped drinking during their first months together. During the winter and spring, they had done everything together, in sync, happy together. He’d often told her that she made his life better, but he never said that anymore. She didn’t know what had changed or what she could do to get back to those times.

  She’d been sitting like that for a long time when Sam opened the door and walked out beside her.

  “June . . .” His voice was soft and faltering, so different from last night. “Don’t be sad, June.”

  She didn’t know what to say, so she just kept looking down at the water.

  “I’m sorry about last night. I’ve just been so frustrated lately. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

  She turned. He looked awful, still in his clothes from yesterday, his hair sticking out in all directions and dark shadows under his eyes. “You shouldn’t drink like that,” she said.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  His eyes pleaded with her. She knew he was sorry. She had thought his behavior was unforgivable, but after one minute of his apology, she relented. He looked so lost and sad, and she wanted more than anything to be in his arms, to be comforted and to comfort him in turn.

  “Why don’t you take a bath?” she asked. “We can get some breakfast and go for a walk in the mountains.”

  “Okay.”

  She smiled faintly, a gesture to reassure him.

  “I love you, June.”

  “I love you, too.” Her voice was hushed, almost a whisper. He turned to go back inside to the bathroom. It was the first time she’d said it aloud.

  As the day progressed, they began to relax around each other. Soon they were laughing again like normal, holding hands as they walked. The despair from the night before was melting away. They walked to a waterfall and stood, still and silenced by the roar of tumbling water. Everything around them was green and damp, the air so thick with moisture that June felt as though she couldn’t quite catch her breath.

  “Should we go in?” Sam shouted over the blare.

  She looked quizzical, but he had already bent down to take off his shoes and roll up his pant legs. She followed his lead, kicking off her sandals and slipping her feet into the icy river. The intensity of the cold made her squeal out loud. Sam gently kicked water onto her shins, and she laughed, all the tension of the past twenty-four hours evaporating as she playfully splashed him back. He grabbed ahold of her tightly around the waist, and they kissed. She gave herself over to the moment fully, the feel of his lips, the sound of the falls, the cold of the water, the heat of the air.

  But on the bus ride back to Oak Ridge, Sam dozing beside her, June couldn’t shake the feeling that something had been broken in Gatlinburg and would never be the same. All couples fight, she knew, but they hadn’t really fought. It was more like Sam had exploded, and this unpredictable side of him frightened her. Even if it didn’t reappear, she knew now that it was there inside him, waiting.

  It was late afternoon when June returned to the dorm. She carried her suitcase up the stairs to her room, the effort dampening her with perspiration. The room was stifling, oppressive. Cici sat on her bed, painting her fingernails, and the sharp smell of nail polish hung in the still air. She looked up at June, waving her hand in the air to dry. “Where’ve you been?”

  The fact that June hadn’t even told Cici she was going away just went to show how far their relationship had deteriorated. They hardly ever went out together anymore, each spending most of her time with her respective boyfriend.

  “Sam took me away for the weekend to Gatlinburg.”

  “Oh, I suppose you can take time off whenever you want now that he got you that fancy job.”

  June couldn’t stand the whininess of her tone. She felt altogether too hot and irritated for Cici this afternoon. “It was just one day off. You can get that, too.”

  Cici blew on her fingers now, making far more elaborate gestures than seemed necessary. “Tom isn’t so desperate to get me into a hotel room as all that.”

  “Cici!” June felt something snap. “You have no right to talk to me that way!”

  Cici walked over to her vanity and dropped the nail polish into her toiletry bag. She turned to face June. “I’m just being honest. I thought we were friends and could be honest with each other.”

  “If you were really my friend, then you’d treat me with some respect.”

  Cici’s mouth tightened. “I’ll give you the respect you deserve.”

  June was yelling now. “You just can’t stand that there’s a man in the world who prefers me to you!”

  Cici let out a short, loud breath. “I’d rather die than be touched by that dirty Jew!”

  June was driven by pure emotion, her mind floating somewhere above her rage-filled body. She’d never slapped anyone, hardly knew how to slap someone, but found her hand hitting Cici hard across the face.

  They were both
stunned. Cici’s mouth opened, and she stared at June, motionless. She picked up her pocketbook and turned to the door. She opened it wide and slammed it hard behind her. June slumped over to her bed and lay back, staring up at the ceiling. Her eyes welled with tears. She wished Cici would never come back. She had no idea at all how they had ever been friends.

  (Courtesy of the Department of Energy)

  Chapter 18

  THE HOUSE WAS EMPTY WHEN SAM GOT IN THAT AFTERNOON, AND he was relieved, eager for some time to himself. He was sweating through his shirt and tossed his hat and jacket on the back of the sofa, then collapsed onto it himself, lying stretched out across its length. He watched the ceiling fan spinning above him and willed it to send down cool breezes. The weekend had left him exhausted. He’d behaved horribly. He’d been in a foul mood for weeks now and had hoped the trip would help shake it, but it had seemed only to make it worse. God, it had been awful. He’d gotten truly drunk but still remembered the fear in June’s face as he had yelled, and the sadness the next morning, the terrible way she’d looked at him, like a small, hurt child. No matter what happened between them now, he would not be able to forget making her look at him that way. He wished he could take it all back, start back at the beginning on that bus headed to the mountains. Be a gentleman. Show June a good time. She deserved it. She tried so hard all the time—to do a good job at work, to make him happy. She deserved better. He’d tried to make it up to her. After the awful night, her sadness, the look, all he’d felt like doing was getting drunk and staying drunk, but he’d followed her through the forest and the ridiculous backwoods town and hadn’t had a sip of liquor for the rest of the weekend.

  Which made him think, now was the perfect time for a drink. He found a bottle hidden under his bed, happily still half full. He stumbled back to the sofa with it and searched his pockets for cigarettes. Once the smoke was lit and his mouth gently tingled with the sour alcohol, he felt a sense of calm wash over him. It was almost happiness.

  But he couldn’t forget that look. And the thought nagged at him: She deserves better.

  The door opened. He tossed the bottle into his suitcase and sat up. With relief, he saw that it was only Charlie, alone.

  “Hello there. You just get back?”

  “Yeah. Sorry for the mess.” Sam motioned with the cigarette at his suitcase and jacket.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it.”

  “It’s too damn hot to move.”

  “Tell me about it.” Charlie slumped in the chair across from him, looking uncharacteristically dispirited. “If you just got back, then you probably haven’t heard.”

  “Heard what?”

  Charlie was lighting his own cigarette and inhaled deeply before answering. “It’s done.” Charlie spoke softly, almost in a whisper, though they were all alone in the house. “They tested it this morning in New Mexico.”

  Sam felt his stomach contract. “What happened?”

  “It worked. Beautifully.”

  Sam nodded slowly. It had been only a matter of time until the wretched thing was ready. Still, after all this time, working and waiting for this moment, he found it hard to believe it had really happened. “What have we done, Charlie?”

  Charlie shook his head. “Created a monster, I suppose. You don’t happen to have any of that bootleg whiskey on you, do you?”

  Sam pulled the bottle out of the bag and passed it to Charlie. He drank from it directly, wincing as the fiery liquid hit his mouth. Sam took a gulp after him. Charlie motioned for more. Before he drank, he held the bottle up, as though to make a toast. “To the Age of Fission. The Atomic Era.”

  Sam had never heard his upbeat friend speak with such irony. It was almost more frightening than the news. He went to Max to commiserate, but depended on Charlie to put a positive spin on things.

  They drank for a while, and when Ann got home, Sam went out to the canteen. Max wasn’t there, so he drank by himself. If he’d been in a bad mood before, the news had sunk him into something deeper than words. It was always going to come to this, of course. He must have known. Some possible scenarios would have absolved him of guilt—they couldn’t get the bomb to work, the war ended before it was used (which was of course still possible, though hardly likely)—but he had never really believed they would come to pass. Still, his pessimism hadn’t prepared him for this feeling. It was just a matter of time until they could get another bomb together, decide on a target, and so forth. Nothing to do but wait for it. Wait and wonder how this had ever seemed a sensible thing to do—to any of them. Not to the Army, of course—building weapons was their bread and butter—but to the scientists, him and his colleagues. They had known exactly what they were doing and had all gone ahead together, telling themselves they had to beat the Germans to it, had to end the war.

  He forgot to eat supper. By the time he stumbled home, he was completely drunk and had almost reached the state of oblivion he desired. Not quite, though—as his head hit his pillow, so came the evil, drunken dreams of fire, smoke, and blinding light.

  The next day was worse, of course, because he had a hangover to deal with on top of his black mood. He kept the door to his office closed, telling June he had a lot to catch up on, unable to face her and sure if they spent too much time together, she would notice the telltale signs of his condition. He sent her off to the movies by herself after work, complaining he had a headache, which was true enough. On the hot, dusty bus, his head began to pound. He must get to his bed as soon as possible. Maybe a nap would set him right or at least prevent him from being sick.

  He was opening the door to his bedroom when Charlie called out to him. His friend appeared completely recovered from the previous day’s depression. He was talking in his usual fast, smooth way. It took Sam a moment to focus enough to understand his words. He was saying something about a petition.

  “Szilard started it in Los Alamos, and now we’ve started one here as well. There’s a meeting tonight at Kellerman’s house, eight o’clock. You’ll come, won’t you?”

  Sam rubbed his forehead with his thumb and index finger. “Yeah, I’ll come. But do you really think this is going to do any good?”

  “It’s worded carefully and doesn’t demand too much. We just ask that we give the Japanese a warning—explode one of the things at sea or on some unpopulated island to show them its power and give them a chance to surrender before we use it on a city.”

  “And who will the petition go to?”

  “All the way to the top. President Truman. You know, Szilard started this all. He was the first one to try to get the government involved in fission. Maybe he can finish it, too.” Leo Szilard was the eccentric Hungarian physicist who had championed the cause of the bomb program back in 1940, even enlisting Einstein to write a letter to President Roosevelt explaining the implications if Germany was developing a bomb. Now he was crusading against the bomb, but Sam couldn’t quite blame him for his change of heart, when he was guilty of the same.

  “Would have saved a lot of time and money if he and Einstein had never gotten the government involved in the first place.”

  “We have a chance to end the war without costing any more lives.”

  Sam didn’t really believe it could work. The Army and the president would have to go for the plan, and the Japanese would have to actually surrender for it to work. But of course he would go to the meeting. It was the best they could do to make themselves feel better.

  “Can you get hold of Max?” asked Charlie. “He’ll sign, won’t he?”

  “Yeah. I should be able to find him. He’ll be sympathetic.” Max had expressed his doubts about using the bomb the first time Sam had ever met him.

  “Good. Then I’ll see you at eight. I’m going out to make a few house calls, make sure everyone’s got word.”

  It was no cooler outside when Sam left the house an hour and a half later, the humidity capturing the sun’s heat and holding it in the air, even as it began its descent toward the horizon. Sam felt a bi
t better. His headache was gone, and he felt flickers of hunger. If Max wasn’t at the canteen, he’d head over to the cafeteria for some supper before the meeting at Kellerman’s.

  But Max was in their usual spot, nursing a beer. Sam waved, and Max raised his glass in salutation. “Hello, old friend. Haven’t seen you around in ages.”

  “I was here last night.”

  Max lowered his voice, though they were in the corner, far away from other patrons. “So you must have heard the news?”

  Sam nodded.

  “Let me get you a beer,” Max said, and before Sam could refuse his offer, he was at the bar, ordering. Might be just the thing, anyway, hair of the dog.

  “So we’ve accomplished what we set out to do.” Sam couldn’t classify Max’s tone, if he was meaning to be sarcastic or sad. His inflection was even, matter-of-fact.

  “Max, there’s a petition going around. Have you heard about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll come with me to this meeting at Dr. Kellerman’s house tonight.”

  “Afraid not. I have a date.”

  “Have you signed it already?”

  “No.”

  “Then you must come. We don’t have much time.”

  Max took a gulp of beer and looked Sam in the eye. “I’m not going to sign it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “If I were the president, I’d use the bloody thing.”

  Sam felt bewildered and betrayed. “You must be joking. I thought we were of the same mind. You always talked about what a nasty business this is.”

  “War is a nasty business. Personally I don’t enjoy it and worry about men who do. But surely you agree that in this case it has been unavoidable.”

  “The war was unavoidable. Using this weapon is not.”

  It was madness to be speaking so openly in public, but Sam was hardly thinking straight. Max was calmer. “Why don’t we step outside?”

  Sam followed him, still reeling from his friend’s position. “Now, Max, I know there’s not much chance of this thing doing any good, but we have to give it a shot.”