Universe of Two

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  Charlie laughed. “Somehow it slipped my mind.” He began to read. “Wait,” he said, and started over. The front sheet was mostly text, with a few signatures at the bottom. The other pages were all signatures. “Holy cow, Giles. Where’d you get this?”

  “From the place where we don’t say how we obtained something. But it’s real. Leo Szilard delivered it to James Byrnes, our soon-to-be secretary of state, personally.”

  “It’s dated the day after the Trinity test.”

  “Yes.” Giles sat beside Charlie. “Szilard found seventy compatriots, from Oak Ridge, Berkeley, and Chicago.”

  Charlie scanned the list. “I know one of these guys. We called him Steel Wool.”

  “It’s measured, and wise, and addressed to the president.”

  “Listen to this,” Charlie said, reading from the first page. “‘The development of atomic power will provide nations with new means of destruction. The atomic bombs at our disposal represent only the first step in this direction, and there is almost no limit to the destructive power which will become available in the course of their future development. Thus a nation which sets the precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale.’”

  “Rather articulate, don’t you think?” Giles said, deftly collecting the papers. “Like Oppie, they say the president should conduct a demonstration—”

  “This dissent is important. It shows we’re not the only ones with doubts.”

  “Yes, but I’m afraid the outcome is not entirely unexpected. All seventy signatories have been removed from weapons development.”

  “What?” Charlie shook his head, as if to clear it. “Szilard is an American citizen.”

  “What can I tell you? The man who discovered atomic chain reactions is no longer permitted to work on atomic research.”

  Charlie began to pace behind his large assembly table—which had been bare for nine days. “What do you predict Truman will do about this?”

  “I predict that Truman will never know,” Mather announced from the doorway.

  “Hello, Mather,” Giles said, not turning much in his seat.

  “Hello, gents.” He sidled into the room. “Fish, I wanted to know if you know what your uncle John’s plans are. I’m weighing what I might do next, since this war is about to wrap up. If he had the clout to land you here, imagine what he might do for me.”

  Giles rolled his eyes. “You are as sour as the milk here, you know that?”

  “And yet in days to come, my conscience will be clear. Can either of you make that claim?”

  “What do you mean?” Charlie asked.

  “Silly Fish.” Mather shook his head in mock disappointment. “Let me ask you first. Has anyone briefed you on the success of our test last week?”

  “I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “Yes.” Mather idled down one side of the assembly table. “But the details?”

  “What details?”

  “Oh, for example, who won the pool on how big the explosion would be. Anderson drove one of the lead-shielded tanks out to ground zero, and his samples confirmed a yield of eighteen point six kilotons of TNT. So Rabi took the pot.”

  “Who cares?” Giles said, conspicuously studying his fingernails.

  “Such as the tower was vaporized at detonation,” Mather persisted. “The winch, the platform. Nothing left but a crater. Solid steel turned into air.”

  Charlie turned to Giles. “Is that true?”

  Mather smiled like a poker player proud of his hand. “Did anyone tell you about the glass?”

  “What glass?”

  “The detonation heat was so intense, it melted the surface for hundreds of yards in every direction. It turned the sand into green glass. They’re calling it Trinitite, after the Trinity test. Isn’t that deliciously banal?”

  “You are poison,” Giles said. “You know that?”

  “That’s not nearly the best part,” Mather continued. “You’ll recall that the test took place at five thirty a.m.—”

  “Five twenty-nine and twenty-one seconds,” Giles snapped.

  Mather frowned. “By eight thirty, the other detonators you built, for four more Gadgets, were loaded aboard the USS Indianapolis in San Francisco.” He reached a corner of the assembly table and continued idling along. “With four sets of Horn’s doublers, all destined for Tinian.”

  “For where?” Charlie asked.

  “Tinian. It’s one of the Mariana Islands, the size of five Manhattans, ten days’ sail from San Francisco. Bristling with bombers. Also, a special hangar that holds a special bomber for a special crew. People on Tinian know all about the Gadget. For instance, a bomber can’t load it in the hold like any ordinary bomb. It’s taller than the clearance under the aircraft. The clever people of Tinian dug a trench with a ramp. They’ll roll the Gadget to below ground level, drive the bomber over, then hoist it in. The aircraft will groan, I’ve been told. Five tons in one pull will strain any bomber’s frame—”

  “What is your point?” Giles interrupted.

  “My point?” Mather came to a stop. “There will be no more tests. No flowers in the desert sky. From here on, it is all real. All war. And the destructor? All yours.”

  Charlie fell back against the table, a hand over his mouth.

  “I do wonder, though. Do you think the Japanese people will like green glass?”

  “Get out of here.” Giles jumped from his chair. “You disgust me.”

  Mather was already at the door. “Over in Theoretical, I’ve had nothing to do with any of this. My hands are clean. Yours might have been, too, if you were smarter.”

  Giles threw a wastebasket, but Mather was gone before it struck the wall.

  In the quiet afterward, Charlie went over and picked up the trash can, one by one putting the spilled papers back into it. After a moment he stopped, and sat on the floor.

  “What is it?” Giles asked.

  Charlie rested a forearm on the trash can’s rim. “What have I done?”

  “Your job,” Giles said. “Like any other soldier.”

  Charlie stared down into the wastebasket. “So we pulled the trigger. Now we wait for the bullet to hit.”

  43.

  I could not predict what condition he might arrive in, in those first weeks, but I knew what my mood would be: always ready.

  Charlie’s workload had fallen so sharply, he could jump last minute on the bus, sometimes three times a week. He might arrive tired, or hungry, or more often distracted by worries about his work. It was a weight on him, never completely absent.

  But my point of view? The last thing I’d expected: a dormant part of myself that Charlie had awakened, a secret he had called forth.

  I was wanton. The great discovery of that time was how ferociously I desired. Charlie’s quiet gave me confidence. I could trust him, and entrust myself to him. He fed my imagination, he enabled my abandon. I became reckless and obsessed. I would picture being with him in all sorts of forbidden ways. The best ones I would keep in mind for the next visit. No matter what I asked, he said yes.

  “I had no idea about you,” he murmured in my ear one afternoon.

  “I didn’t know either,” I answered, and it was true.

  Oh we were babies, and virgins, and I’d had no idea of my body’s capacity for joy.

  On Monday my mother would send some money. “Buy yourself a dress.” On Tuesday I would shop instead for underthings—the more scandalous, the better. On Wednesday I would display them on the bed for Lizzie, who clapped her hands and laughed, or called me naughty, or grumbled that she could not wait for her husband to come home. My excitement was so great, I had no sense that I might be torturing her.

  On Saturday morning I would dawdle as I dressed, assessing myself in the mirror, my breasts lifted by a new brassiere, my backside complimented by stockings that stopped at the top of my thighs, secure
d by garters of lurid red, and then one thin layer of respectability draped over the whole outfit, some demure sky-blue dress, innocent as a robin’s egg, while I sashayed to East Palace Avenue to wait for him, my heart full of filthy secrets, an animal in heat.

  Of course I was not entirely an innocent. I’d danced with quarterbacks and necked with captains, and there was the whole misguided dalliance with Chris. But Charlie was the first man I genuinely desired. And with incredible specificity. I thought about his strong hands, his hips surprisingly powerful and steady as an oil derrick, the high arches of his feet and what I might do to curl his toes. I lingered on memories of his kisses, and how they made me bold. I imagined pulling him to me as my lover, his face in my breasts, both of us thrilled by lust.

  Sometimes I’d say no to myself, and push those thoughts away, they were occupying too much room in my mind. I’d jump out of bed to start the day, or go dust the organ keys in the church, or switch the shower to cold and then towel myself roughly to smooth the goose bumps away. Yet bit by bit the love notions would return, like a spell, a reverie all my own. Damn that wonderful Charlie Fish.

  There were two problems. First, we still had not declared our love. I discounted that, though, because our bodies were saying it so zealously. But it nagged at me.

  The second one was harder: We had nowhere to go. He’d applied for family housing on The Hill, but the waiting list was six months long. We could not live at the boardinghouse. Mrs. Morris reminded me with a wagging finger that men were still not allowed inside. I might be wed, but the virtue of the other girls must be protected.

  The result was a perverse kind of sightseeing. Charlie and I would stroll the streets of Santa Fe, respectable as old folks on a constitutional, while both of our heads periscoped right and left in the hunt for a place to mate.

  An empty house. The deep doorway of an out-of-business restaurant. On the seat of an abandoned truck. Once, against the retaining wall of a religious high school, after class hours but with me biting my lip to keep quiet just in case. The search made our hunger keen, hours spent seeking a safe spot made things urgent, and the chance of being caught made us aggressive. We had to move quickly, we had to finish fast.

  That meant no time for coyness, no luxury of negotiation. It was right here, right now. We caressed each other’s every inch with our fingers. We lavished the sensitive places with our tongues. We tried positions, ideas, attitudes. He stood before me proud, in broad daylight. I presented myself to him naked, inviting complete examination. I held his manhood and studied it like a marvel. He weighed my breasts in his palms.

  “All I have been doing,” I confessed one day, “is remembering when I pulled you into me harder, and how perfectly your cheek fit my hand.”

  Charlie nodded. “I can still feel it.”

  “And what have you been doing?” I asked him, a creature at play.

  “Giving thanks for how you distract me from dread.”

  “Dread?” I said, grabbing him roughly to me. “None of that now.”

  And on we went. We were kneeling, straddling a chair, gripping a tree. We were lavish and base. For all my bossy ways, Charlie dominated me, and I was pleased to be his mistress, his release. Where did this surrender come from? How could I make it never go away? And then the next time again there was no place, every time we had to find a place. What a way to intensify desire. What a way to become expert in each other.

  On those rare times when the hideaway we’d found allowed it, we would stay, holding each other in sweet silence.

  I knew what pleasure I gave Charlie, and how already I was developing a mastery of certain deeds that he craved. He learned my wants as well, generously. He clung to me, he kissed my throat, and I thought: yes, I will give you anything.

  Now, with the perspective of time, I know that this happy interval marked the end of a phase of young Brenda’s life. In my secret heart, I continued to believe in my sophistication, my intelligence, my allure. Even as I indulged Charlie’s least whim, I continued to hold myself in lofty regard. I had not yet told my mother that we were married, which I believe was a last vestige of that girl who considered herself superior. Some part of me—despite all the intimate connection with Charlie, despite the wild ecstasy he provoked in me—still believed that I was rescuing him. In a very few weeks, I would learn that it was entirely the other way around.

  If I could reach back through time, from now to then, old woman to new wife, I would admire that girl, the sheen on her skin from the love she has just finished making in some basement or grove or parking lot. As she collects her garments one by one, I would tell her, enjoy it, savor it, because your days of self-lauding are almost at an end.

  I’ve gone back and checked the records, and I remember correctly: the summer of 1945 was extremely hot in the Southwest. I disliked it for walking, for making the organ go out of tune, but especially for lovemaking. We dripped on each other. We grew sticky and fragrant. Sometimes I delivered Charlie to the bus, confident that our afternoon athletics would help him sleep for most of the ride, and in the heat I ambled back to the boardinghouse, also knowing that my clothes were disarrayed and I smelled of dried sweat and sour skin. But I was married, so no apologies were necessary. For all I cared, the world could take two steps backward off a cliff.

  Besides, as I navigated a town stunned by summer, I was already on patrol, searching for the next place we could tryst, hoping it was in the shade. After one of those walks, as I lazily reached my room, Lizzie was about to leave for work.

  Assessing me in her savvy way, taking it all in, she hesitated at the top of the stairs. “Tell me, kid. What are you doing to prevent a baby?”

  I shrugged. “Not a thing.”

  “Want some help with that? Anything you’d like me to pick up at the hospital?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, not entirely understanding. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Really?” Lizzie made a surprised face, tried to hide it by looking down the stairs, then spoke in that direction too. “Okay then. Off to the races with you.”

  She trotted down without another word. I turned and did a series of push-ups.

  The next day Charlie visited, the air was humid and still. I wore a white cotton top, a lace bra beneath to present me to best advantage. Our search for a secluded spot was unsuccessful. By coincidence, we were only blocks from the church—where I had already declared we would never go to make love—when the skies opened. By the time we ducked under the church’s stone archway, I was drenched.

  “Oh my,” Charlie said, a devilish grin on his face.

  “What is it?”

  “You.” He pointed at my chest.

  The wet shirt had become see-through. It clung to my body, left nothing to the imagination. Remembering my fantasy, I pulled his face between my breasts. My lover.

  Two seconds after I released him, the church door opened, and there was Mrs. Morris. She seemed every bit as surprised as we were. Before I could speak, Charlie whipped his wet jacket off to drape it over me.

  “Hello, Mrs. Morris,” he said. “Didn’t we get caught by the weather?”

  “Come in,” she said, shaking her head, not scolding but instead somewhat amused. “I’m sure we have some towels in here.”

  While we wiped ourselves off in the nave, she hurried up to the organ and switched it off. So she’d been playing again. Which maybe explained her good mood.

  By the time we dried out, Mrs. Morris had taken her umbrella, wished us a good evening, and set out for home. Charlie stood up from the pew we’d been sharing, and crossed to the organ. Turning it on, he also switched on the lamp over the music stand. When he saw what piece I’d played most recently, his face lit up too.

  “The toccata? I love it. Brenda, would you please?”

  I ambled over. “Only the opening, Charlie. I don’t have the fugue part in hand.”

  “Anything. Aside from hymns, I haven’t heard you play in centuries.”

  I sat on the bench,
my husband standing beside me, towels draped over our shoulders, and despite the limited stops and two broken manuals, I began.

  Yes, the opening was powerful. Yes, the world fell away. When it came time to turn the page, I did not have to do the usual hasty grab. Instead Charlie reached forward to do it, which meant that the former choir boy was reading the music along with me.

  As the fugue approached, I felt confidence from how well the first passage had gone. Which was dumb, because it made me barrel right over the waterfall. Only a few measures into the fugue and my right hand stumbled on the melody, my left entered late, and it all became a ball of knotted yarn.

  “Damn,” I said. “It was going so well.”

  “Brilliant,” Charlie said, touching the score. “This is the measure that stops you?”

  I nodded. “Just about every time.”

  “Here.” He pulled me around to face him. “Can you sing it to me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just sing the melody of that measure, and the part after, if you remember it.”

  “Well, I can’t. I don’t know it. That’s the whole problem.”

  Charlie leaned forward, reading the notes, then he squatted so his face was level with mine. And he sang. “Ba ba-bum ba-bum bum-ba.”

  “This is silly.”

  But he sang the measure again. “Ba ba-bum ba-bum bum-ba.” Perfectly on pitch. When he did it a third time, I sang along.

  “There, you see?” He smiled as if he’d been repairing organs all day. Scanning the page, he squatted again. “Now the next measure. Ba-bum-bum, ba-bum-bum, ba-ba.”

  And I sang with him. Two minutes later I could sing the whole right hand of that passage. We did it together.

  “Now comes the fun part,” Charlie said, touching the key to make sure we would still be on pitch. It reminded me of when he’d done that same thing, on the piano in our living room, before singing on Christmas Eve. So much had happened, so much changed, yet he was still Charlie, not wanting to be sharp or flat.