RUTH WAS FEELING OUT OF sorts at the start of the new decade. Richard remained in the nation's capital living in a hotel room when he wasn't flying to secret destinations. Her neighbor and confidante Val was preoccupied with Ruth Benedict, her new love. While Ruth was pleased to see Val happy again—after the last two miserable years, which had included the death of her brother—she would have missed the closeness with her friend of twenty years.
Though Ruth and Richard were open-minded and accepted Val's and Nat's various relationships with women, they frowned on Robert and Kitty's coup de foudre. They liked Stewart Harrison and were dismayed to see hurt and humiliation inflicted on a friend. The Proust quote Robert liked to recite was about an indifference to suffering as the "most terrible and lasting form of cruelty." Robert's friends did not want to believe he was capable of cruelty. Robert Serber said, "He was . . . so sensitive to other people and their feelings; there was just an aura around him." But not all the time.
JULY BECAME A MONTH FOR decisions: Benedict's sabbatical ended and it was time to return to her life in New York City and she wanted Val to go with her. Val had not been sure—leaving her house, her friends. But she screwed up her courage and decided to join her new love in the East. As for her friend Ruth Tolman, she knew that with England and France now at war and America on the fence, Richard could be in Washington for a long time. Going East herself would mean giving up her work and her home and probably even her dog. Ultimately, though, she wanted to be with Richard and to be part of what was happening in the country. In mid-July 1940, she and Val closed their homes, piled their things into Val's car, and drove across the country in the heat of summer. They paused in Detroit long enough for Ruth to buy a new car for Richard; she drove it into Washington on a sweltering August day.
In a letter to Benedict, Nat wrote that Ruth "sounds doleful; and why not? I think she's been virtue personified to come at all, and I don't begrudge her a load of neuroses, indecisions and complaints. . . . I do hope she finds something to do that will take time and energy. I can't quite picture her in a hotel, caring for Richard who just isn't around most of the time, and without her house to play with, her job to run, and the innumerable chores that result from having lived in one community for some 15 years."246
BEFORE HEADING TO PERRO CALIENTE in the summer of 1940, Robert returned to Berkeley. Frank was now at Stanford. The other regular summer visitors to the cabin, Bob and Charlotte Serber, had arrived from Illinois, ready to move on to New Mexico. Robert had a plan and turned to the ever-accommodating Serber, explaining that he had invited Stewart and Kitty Harrison to Perro Caliente in the spring, but that Harrison had told him he was caught up in research and could not make it. (To justify herself, Kitty would say that Stewart had other reasons for wanting her to go without him.) Kitty might come alone—if she could find a way to get there. Robert then suggested: "You could bring her with you. I'll leave it up to you. But if you do, it might have serious consequences."247 Serber was adept at translating Robert. As a good friend, of course he and Charlotte would detour to Pasadena. Robert, Frank and Jackie were waiting at the cabin in New Mexico when the Serbers drove up the rough road with Kitty in the backseat.
The Oppenheimers had become excellent horsemen. Jackie learned to ride as she did most things, by grit and hard work. Charlotte had a few lessons, but Serber had never been on a horse in his life. The diminutive Serbers seemed unlikely candidates for the rugged life in a high mountain wilderness. Their first summer at Perro Caliente, Robert had chosen a horse named Blue for Charlotte, and one called Cumbres for her tremulous husband, then promptly sent them out by themselves on an overnight trail ride. Six years later, by the summer of 1940, the Serbers were veterans. Horseback riding and camping out were what Serber would come to call "the business" of a summer at Perro Caliente. He explained, "We rode in the wilderness area, in the pine and birch forest, the high grassy and flowered meadows, and along the ridges of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains."248 The quest was to camp out with a minimum of food or equipment, to live a lean and active life far from academia. Riding was required, so a visitor's first confrontation with a horse became a defining moment.
The group watched expectantly as Kitty Harrison approached the young mare that Robert had selected for her, "lifted easily into the saddle . . . touched her heels to its flanks and took the east fence at a leap." Robert looked on with "undisguised affection." They watched as she rode as fast and fearlessly as Robert did on his horse, Crisis. Like most girls of the middle and upper classes in America at the time, Kitty had learned to ride early. Aspinwall had its own riding trails and was close to the Mellon Hunt. Even Jackie, as proud of her working class credentials as she was repulsed by what she saw as aristocratic pretensions, had to admit that Kitty knew how to handle a horse.
By firelight that first night, the group played the ritual, complicated version of tiddlywinks that Robert had concocted, then bunked in as usual on cots on the porch. A day later, Robert announced he was riding to Los Pinos with Kitty to introduce her to Katy Page and would stay over. Robert and Kitty returned the next day. Soon after, Katy appeared on her big bay horse, looking as imperious as ever. The reason for her trip, she announced, was to return Kitty's nightgown, found under Robert's pillow, which she held out like a flag.249
Charlotte and Jackie quickly saddled their horses and took off, Jackie in the lead. When they came back, Jackie's neck ached from turning around to talk to Charlotte. Suspicions were confirmed. The "serious consequences" had begun.
"I FIND IT QUITE UNCOMFORTABLE being so out of touch with you," Jean wrote to Winifred Smith. "But this shall be remedied this summer when I come to New York to work in the psychiatric clinic of an institution called The Children's Village." Jean explained that it was for "what they call unadjusted or antisocial boys and girls." Founded in 1851 in New York City as an asylum for homeless immigrant children, the Children's Village moved in the 1920s to a farm in Dobbs Ferry, barely an hour and half from Vassar. It was the first residential treatment center in the country to establish a psychiatric clinic on the campus. Jean was expected to interview the children and study the behavior and progress of the boys. "As you know," she wrote, "I am interested in the psychology of it and also very much in the environmental—that is social—background of such conditions."250 Jean had one more year of medical school to complete before she moved into her specialty. This summer would give her an idea of the challenges, of how psychology as a science might address some of the problems these most vulnerable children faced.
Jean added, "I sometimes wonder if I have become a different person from Vassar days," then paused to add, "And then I fear—not enough. But I do know that whatever has happened to me has been in line with experiences of that adolescent period—the deepening though not the solution of the conflicts that came to light in that period. I can hardly tell you how horribly I miss some of you older enlightened ones—and my friends none of whom I ever see and who are irreplaceable."251 Jean continued to search for solutions to the conflicts that had bedeviled her adolescence and to which Winifred had been both witness and protector (as she had been in the two years since Marjorie's death). Jean may have been referring to a lingering confusion about her sexual orientation, but it is more likely she meant the debilitating depressions that continued to plague her. She was now twenty-five, and neither conflict was resolved.
From Dobbs Ferry, she took time to go north to Massachusetts to see Winifred, and to pay a visit to May Sarton and her parents. May reported that Jean brushed past her to embrace her parents, who opened their arms to the girl who had lived with them a decade earlier. (They found her "tall, slim and stunning . . . very left fringe.") May had admitted to herself, if not her parents, that she was a lesbian. Rumors had sifted back to the Sartons that Jean had a lover at Berkeley, a professor.252 Jean didn't mention Robert, or that the relationship had floundered.
In May 1940, the Nazi Wehrmacht had invaded Belgium, the Sartons' homeland. In the next month, Fr
ance surrendered and England stood alone, desperate for America to enter the war. The summer of 1930, after Letty's death—when May and Jean swam naked in the seas off the coast of France—seemed a lifetime away.
TWO RIDERS ON HORSEBACK COULD find whole forests full of secluded places in the high mountain wilderness, and Kitty and Robert discovered their own. Kitty had no reservations about how she felt for Robert. By the time they were ready to leave in August, when Robert had to be back in Berkeley for the fall semester, Kitty was pregnant but barely. She would not know for sure until late September. What Kitty did know for sure was that something had to be done about her current husband.
When he returned to California, Robert called Harrison to say he wanted to marry Kitty, that she was going to have his child, and that he hoped Harrison would agree to a speedy divorce. Harrison would later claim that the three remained "on good terms" and that they "had modern views concerning sex."253
Kitty appeared in Berkeley a week or so later. She was with Robert when he was the featured speaker at yet another Berkeley fundraiser for Spanish Civil War refugees. Robert talked of the fascist victory in Spain as being the precursor to the war now raging in Europe; brave men had fought a delaying action, men like Steve Nelson, sitting with him on the platform that early autumn evening. Newly arrived to take over as organizer for the Alameda County branch of the Communist Party USA, Nelson had never heard of Robert Oppenheimer before that evening. After the speech, Robert approached Steve with a smile and said, "I'm going to marry a friend of yours . . . I'm going to marry Kitty."254 Nelson looked perplexed. Kitty Dallet? He had not heard from Kitty since she'd left his apartment in New York. Kitty was sitting in the back of the hall, and Robert waved her up. Steve opened his arms and hugged his comrade.
THAT SEPTEMBER OF 1940, KITTY was no longer interested in the Communist Party; she had other things to do. The first was to establish a six-week residency in dusty, sinful Reno—the Nevada gambling town at the foot of the Eastern Sierra, filled with shabby boardinghouses ready to welcome people who needed a quick divorce. In October, as Kitty sat waiting in Reno, her parents returned to the United States via Lisbon. Kitty had some news for them. Robert called the Serbers, to say he had some news for them. Except Serber wasn't sure if he heard "Kitty" or "Jean." Even those closest to Robert seemed surprised—either that he would choose to marry Kitty, or that he would give up Jean. What none of them knew was that Robert was wild about Kitty, and that there was a reason for rushing into marriage.
ON NOVEMBER 1, 1940, KITTY'S divorce was granted, and that same day she and Robert were married in the county courthouse in Virginia City, Nevada— once the richest boomtown in America. A court janitor and a local clerk served as witnesses, and signed their names to Kitty's most recent marriage license.
When the Oppenheimers returned to Berkeley, one of their first dinner invitations was from Molly and Ernest Lawrence. Molly was taken aback to notice the new bride obviously pregnant. Other department wives were furious with Kitty; they believed that she had somehow stolen Robert from his "sweetheart." It created quite a stir, Serber said: "Robert was the most eligible bachelor around in the academic world there, and the wives of all his friends were also his friends but they were very possessive about him." He added, "Kitty really was in a difficult position. She had to prove herself and defend herself at all times. It was pretty rough for her for a year or two."255
The leftist community—except for those who were close to Jean—was considerably warmer to Robert's new wife. Haakon Chevalier, a regular at Mary Ellen's soirees and someone who had known Jean and Robert as a couple, was among the first to welcome Kitty. The same Chevalier who would one day begin a book about Robert with the explanation: "Our friendship was to be, in a negative sense at least, epoch-making; and in a positive sense—for myself certainly and for Oppenheimer also, perhaps—one of those rare, selfless, profound attachments that leave an indelible mark upon a life."256
V
LOS ALAMOS AND WASHINGTON, D.C.
17
KITTY GETS A BABY BOY, A CADILLAC, AND A HOUSE ON A HILL WHILE JEAN EARNS HER M.D. AND MOVES AWAY
As 1940 closed, the familiar old routes were replaced with nothing in the least routine. Lawrence and Oppenheimer and a select group of physicists in universities around the nation began making quick, hushed trips to Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C. to talk about "the uranium problem." Others quietly appeared at MIT for a secret research project on a system of radio waves called radar. It was only a matter of time before the United States would enter the conflict. America stood by as London was bombed, and hesitated as Churchill begged the U.S. to come to the rescue. Behind the scenes in Washington, the government prepared for what they called the "Emergency."
In the fall, psychologists and anthropologists at the National Research Council formed the Emergency Committee in Psychology to coordinate the personnel they anticipated would be needed. Fairly early in the effort, female psychologists protested that they were not being adequately included in the planning. A special "Subcommittee on the Services of Women Psychologists in the Emergency" was established with Ruth as the chair.257 She was also working as a Department of Agriculture "social science analyst," planning public opinion surveys. In FDR's Washington, an alphabet-soup of acronyms gave shorthand to agencies that were being set up. In her four years in Washington, Ruth would serve at four of them.
By 1941, a feeling of nervous excitement infused the nation's capital. The devastation in England and Europe and the rising threat of Japan triggered a new patriotism. People flocked to the capital; hotels and boardinghouses were packed; women clerical workers were living five to a room. Roosevelt's government and particularly the President's wife, Eleanor, recognized that the social sciences could analyze civilian and military morale. Margaret Mead declared that Hitler's manipulation of his people's minds called for all-out psychological warfare. Who better to wage that war than the people who study human behavior? Mead would spend weekdays in the capital, sharing a house with Ruth Benedict and Val. Even Nat turned up, eager to get in on the action.
Somehow, Ruth and Richard found a spacious colonial house in a leafy neighborhood on the northwest edge of the District. On the main floor were two formal parlors, a full dining room and a large kitchen. A back porch looked onto woods. The bedrooms were upstairs and on the ground level, a separate guest apartment that seemed always to be occupied by friends, relatives and occasionally a foreign scientist traveling incognito.
EARLY IN 1941, KITTY WAS rapturous. After six solitary weeks and one glorious day in Nevada, she had returned to her new home in Berkeley with the husband she "simply adored"—a phrase she would repeat in French and German. Robert was the center of her universe.
Kitty swept into this new life vivacious and captivating. Her slim figure bulged in what could have been an embarrassing admission, had she not acknowledged the pregnancy with one of her impish smiles and no trace of regret. She was Mrs. Robert Oppenheimer now. In the spacious home that Robert sublet, the new couple quickly put the kitchen to use. They began to cook together and entertain; Robert was a connoisseur of good food and wine; their dinner parties always started with one of his perfect and powerful martinis. One of Kitty's first invitations was to the Nelsons; they had been kind to her after Joe's death and were, really, the only people she knew in the area. The Nelsons were also committed Communists and the FBI—already watching the radicals in Berkeley—had taken note.
ALTHOUGH THE FERVOR OF KITTY'S early Communist Party days had died with Joe Dallet, she went with Robert to many left-wing fundraising events and meetings. Robert had not, he would insist, joined the Party,258 but he had given generously to any number of causes it championed, sometimes funneling the money through friends such as Thomas Addis. Robert also bought Kitty a new Cadillac convertible that they named, prophetically, "Bombsight." As winter moved into spring and they prepared to leave for Caltech, Kitty busied herself with family matters. And she began to explore the g
raduate program in mycology at Berkeley for the time when they would be settled long enough for her to resume her work on a Ph.D. But not everyone took Kitty's academic aspirations seriously. Jackie Oppenheimer, never one to mince words, called her a "schemer." "I remember one time when she got it into her head to do a Ph.D. And the way she cozied up to this poor little dean of the biological sciences was shameful. She never did the Ph.D. It was just another of her whims. She was a phony. All her political convictions were phony, all her ideas were borrowed."259
AT BERKELEY, ROBERT DROVE DAILY down tree-lined Arlington Avenue with its large homes, onto the campus and to Le Conte Hall. Inside those walls, he was quickly lost in the "sweetness" of physics, with its "rigor and austerity and depth" that he felt no other science could match. Physics, though, was in creative turmoil. When fission was discovered in 1938–1939, physicists knew a stupendous weapon was theoretically possible. The most respected leaders, including Einstein, were facing the daunting task of convincing the top echelon of the government that a bomb might well be developed. Those who knew Werner Heisenberg—one of the top theoretical physicists in the world—were sure he would lead a formidable German team. The British and Americans thought it possible that Heisenberg already had a secret laboratory up and running. The agonizing question then became: What if Hitler got the bomb first?
An Atomic Love Story Page 16