Atomic Love

by Jennie Fields

She glances at him and then quickly looks away. “Okay.”

  “Listen, when I came by Field’s today, you seemed upset. Did Weaver hurt you last night?”

  “It depends what you mean by hurt . . .”

  “You tell me. I’m not savvy about these things.”

  “What things?”

  “Men and women . . .” She notes the concern in his eyes. “Did he hurt you?” he asks again.

  “Not the way you mean.”

  Hearing their feet marking out a rhythm on the pavement together, she can tell he’s taking shorter steps to match hers. “Then, in what way?”

  She shakes her head, can’t think how to explain it. “It was hard to be with him.”

  “Because you hate him so much?”

  She hears her own voice come out small and bewildered. “Because I love him too much.”

  “Oh.” Does Charlie sound disappointed? Or is she disappointed in herself? Despite how much she hates what Weaver’s done to her, how much she should loathe him, after she pushed him out the door last night, she felt gut punched, left with an ineffable longing. She loathes that he still has power over her.

  “How did he seem to you?” he asks.

  “Like himself. Only older. Thinner. Maybe more nervous.”

  “Nervous about what?”

  She shrugs.

  “He said he had something to tell you . . . something he couldn’t say on the phone.”

  “We had a drink. He didn’t tell me anything. He was just trying to . . . soften me up, you know?”

  Szydlo says in a pointed voice, “And did he succeed?”

  She expels a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a huff.

  “What?” he asks.

  “In the movies, a girl would slap a fellow for the way you asked that question.”

  “Sorry. It did seem like he wanted to tell you something.”

  “Well, he didn’t.” She hears how terse and angry she sounds. But his questions aren’t wrong. Why didn’t she find out what Weaver wanted to tell her? Why did she lose her bearings the moment Weaver stepped into her apartment?

  “Look, Rosalind.” Szydlo’s voice is kind. “I’m sure it will take time for the man to open up. He’ll tell you more when he thinks you’re close again, back together.”

  “Back together? I haven’t told you I’ll do this. I haven’t agreed to anything.”

  “No.” His voice is even, patient. “You’re right. You haven’t agreed. I still hope you will, though, as hard as it might be—”

  “You have no idea how hard that would be.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.”

  They don’t speak for a while, but he lingers beside her. She can almost hear him thinking about what she’s said. She wonders if he’s planning to walk her all the way up to Lincoln Park.

  “Did you tell him you don’t want to see him anymore?” he asks after a while.

  “Yes.”

  “Did he take you at your word?”

  She pauses, then shakes her head.

  “Good,” he says.

  “It’s not good.”

  “Look. I know you still care for the guy despite yourself. And you’re not a disloyal person, are you?”

  “No.”

  “So I propose you take a little time to see what happens. And don’t think about me. Or the FBI. Or what we want to know. Okay? You’ll decide if you want to see him again. You’ll decide if you want to learn more from him.”

  They walk for a while, Rosalind pondering what he said. Though she never asked for this assignment—spying on Weaver—the man still intrigues her as much as he repels her. Is it possible he’s done awful things, is capable of future choices that could affect all the people passing them on the street? Everyone on this planet? She shivers.

  “I don’t want intimate details, you know,” Charlie says. “What goes on between you and Weaver isn’t my business. But you’re the only one who can get answers. The only one he’ll talk to. If you could just play it out, get him to open up . . . and see if he tells you anything important. Won’t you try?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “Think about it. See how you feel when he calls again, because my bet is that he will.”

  He pulls a cream-colored card out of his breast pocket. “Call me day or night,” he says. “On the front’s my office number. If you hold the card, sorry, I’ll write down my night number on the back.” She takes the card and holds it in her palm so he can write on it with his one good hand. “When he says something meaningful—and I think he will—you’ll want to reach me. Keep it with you, okay?”

  “But even if I agree to see him again, if he really is involved in . . .” She stops at the word. “Treason, as you said, wouldn’t my reporting to you be like sending him to the electric chair?” Even as she says it, she thinks if he’s done what the FBI is suggesting, he deserves nothing less.

  “If he cooperates, gives us other useful names, he could get off easy. Have you heard about Klaus Fuchs, the man they arrested for passing atomic secrets?”

  “Yes, of course.” She’s been reading all she can about the atom bomb and the Soviets, though every word hurts. The whole world is on edge because of something she helped create. It seems only right that she should monitor it.

  “You probably know: Fuchs admitted his guilt. Gave us names. He’s in jail. But because he’s cooperating, he’ll get off in a few years. Rosalind, you’re a person who sees the difference between right and wrong. I also sense you’re a woman who has the courage to stop a wrong. You know Weaver and his pals are working on a hydrogen bomb hundreds of times more powerful than the A-bomb.”

  “I don’t have clearance anymore,” she says.

  “C’mon. You know it. We all know. The Chicago Tribune knows it. Maybe you can’t stop the Russians from having the A-bomb. But what if you could stop Weaver from sharing H-bomb secrets?”

  “Didn’t Fuchs say someone’s already passed those secrets?”

  “No. He heard secondhand someone was in place to share those secrets. What if that person is Weaver? What if you could stop him?”

  Rosalind turns to look at Agent Szydlo. She finds her own breath shallow. Her heart jangling.

  “If the Russians succeed first, it could be the end of the line. Chicago . . . poof,” Charlie says. He makes a gesture with his hand clenched, then popped wide. “Weaver’s someone who knows things. Someone who could give the Soviets the final clues to their puzzle. Would you want to be the woman who could have stopped millions of deaths but didn’t for personal reasons?”

  His words make her scalp prickle.

  “Look,” he says. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to be part of this. I get that you’re afraid to get involved with Weaver again. It will take courage on your part. But let me put it this way: What you decide today could actually change the fate of the world. How many times is a person given that sort of choice?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Saturday, Weaver calls, asking if Rosalind would like to take the bus down to Grant Park.

  “I know you don’t want to see me. But there are things I need to tell you.”

  “Not today.”

  “See me one more time. After that, I’ve said my piece.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Rosalind, I’m not giving up.”

  “Sorry. I can’t today.” Her instincts are to tell Weaver to never come within ten feet of her again. If it were just about her own needs or safety, she would. Especially after what happened last night at the lecture. She had chosen a seat in the last row, praying she wouldn’t run into anyone from the project, and her heart sank when Sam Stone chose the same row two seats down. She tried to be invisible, to shrink back in her chair. She hadn’t seen him for three years, hoped he wouldn’t recognize her. But halfway through the lec
ture, she felt him glancing over. Afterward, he grabbed her arm. “Oh, my dear Rosalind, so incredibly good to see you,” he said with overly sympathetic eyes. “We still miss you. And talk about you. Worry about you, frankly—me and Hilberry and Agnew.” Three years have passed and they’re still worried. As though they expect to hear she’s just been released from a mental institution. How foolish would she be to let Weaver back into her life after what he’s done to her? Still, she was moved by what Agent Szydlo said, and concerned enough about what’s going on behind the Iron Curtain to never want them to have another shred of information. She helped to make this horrible bomb. Isn’t it her duty to stop the spread of something worse?

  But her niece, Ava, is coming to spend the weekend. And it allows her, if just for a moment, to put Weaver off. Ava’s visits are what Rosalind looks forward to most. Everyone sees Ava as the family miracle. After Louisa took Rosalind into their home, she expected to have a child or two of her own. She and Henry tried. But just like their mother, Louisa saw year after year pass with no pregnancy. She called her infertility the family curse. Her situation was even more unfair: At least their mother had had the pleasure of giving birth to Louisa before she faced a sea of barren years.

  When Rosalind moved to a dorm in her senior year of college (it was very much Roz’s choice to escape her sister), Louisa began to experience nausea, exhaustion. She was certain she had the same ovarian cancer that killed their mother. Even before she visited the doctor, she met with their lawyer and made up a will. Instead, the dyspepsia and fatigue turned out to be Ava making herself known. In six more months, an angel was born.

  A few months after the birth, and having had three glasses of wine one night, Louisa told Rosalind, “After you moved in, I couldn’t have a child of my own. Like a curse. Then you leave, and pop goes Ava. And the irony is she’s a carbon copy of you! The Grimm Brothers couldn’t have created a more twisted tale!”

  Later Louisa demurred. “You knew I was joking, right?” If it was a joke, it certainly wasn’t funny. But Rosalind couldn’t help herself: She fell in love with baby Ava the minute she saw her. In these last few years, Ava’s started staying with Roz often, mostly to give her mother a break. When they’re together, alone, Ava complains about Louisa. “Mama’s mad one minute. All lovey-dovey the next,” she’s reported. “What is wrong with her?” It’s something that Rosalind has long wondered.

  Happily, Rosalind and her niece are a love match. Ordinary things, done together, feel lyrical: fixing grilled cheese sandwiches. Spending hours on Oak Street Beach erecting sand palaces, strolling the lakefront at dusk, counting sailboats. They paint each other’s toenails birthday-cake pink. And do acrobatics. Roz lies on her back in the living room with her legs raised and bent, and Ava climbs up and flies like an airplane, so long-legged and free. So unmarked yet by wrong choices. Ava is the one thing in Roz’s life she never questions, never regrets.

  The buzzer sounds from the lobby and Roz’s heart lifts.

  “Send her up,” she tells Moses, the weekend doorman.

  “Your sister’s coming too,” Moses reports.

  When she opens the door, Ava marches right in with her round patent leather suitcase.

  “Hey, kiddo, drop it in the bedroom.”

  “I always do.”

  “Lou, this is a surprise!” Then Roz notes her sister’s face. “What’s the matter?”

  “Henry and I just had the fight of the century. Never had anything like it before . . .” Her voice is shaky and reduced.

  Henry can be grumpy, but he’s always given Louisa a pass on things no one else would stomach. She’s the wasp and he’s the sleeping bear. She stings him and he rolls over with a grunt and goes back to sleep without even swatting a paw. Rosalind can’t help wondering what’s pushed him too far.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “If we ever have some privacy.”

  “How ’bout you stay with us? Spend the day. We’ll go to the beach or walk down Michigan Avenue. It will get your mind off things.” All these years, she’s longed to break the barrier between her and her sister but has never had a clue how.

  Louisa shakes her head. “No. I just wanted to tell you.”

  Ava comes out of the bedroom wearing Roz’s newest sprigged straw cap. A small fault in the straw, and Laura in Hats had given it to her for a steal. “Aren’t I beautiful?” Ava asks.

  “Glamorous beyond words,” Rosalind says. Ava goes up to the hall mirror to view her new look, but Rosalind sees she’s glancing at her mother while tilting the little hat back and forth.

  “I’ve got to go,” Louisa says. “Thanks for taking her.”

  “Call or join us. Anytime all weekend, okay?”

  Louisa just shakes her head.

  “Have fun,” she tells Ava, her voice flat.

  Ava stares at the door after she’s gone.

  “They’re fighting.” She lets out a deep breath. “Good thing I can spend the weekend with you, huh? Want to play Monopoly?”

  “Go get the board.” Rosalind keeps three of Ava’s favorite board games under her bed. “And while you’re there, put my hat back where you found it.”

  “But I’m so glamorous in it!” Ava says, blowing a kiss.

  * * *

  Almost an hour into a scorching game, there’s a knock at the door. Only other residents from the building knock without being announced by the doorman. Rosalind gets up from the floor and peeks through the keyhole, astonished to find Weaver. Her first instinct is to pretend she isn’t there, press herself against the wall and wait until he’s left, but she knows she can’t do that in front of Ava.

  He smiles nervously when she opens the door. “You’ll have to forgive me,” he says. “I had to come.”

  “How did you avoid the doorman?”

  “He was helping someone get a cab. I marched right in.” Of course. Feeling entitled gives a person power. He’s wearing a crisp seersucker jacket, khaki pants, tan bucks, juggling an armful of carnations and lilies. He squeezes her arm as he steps by her into the apartment, though it wasn’t her intention to let him in. How handsome he looks; how vulnerable she feels. Why does she still feel equal measures of furor and attraction for the man?

  “Well, it’s Ava, isn’t it?” he asks, spotting the game in progress on the living room floor.

  “Do I know you?” Ava asks.

  “I’m Tom Weaver. The last time I saw you, you were in diapers.”

  “No. The last time you saw her, she was already reading,” Roz says. “Do you remember Mr. Weaver?” she asks Ava. She is trying to keep her voice steady. She is trying not to show her upset to Ava.

  Weaver shifts the flowers into his other arm, crouches down, and holds out his hand to the girl who remains cross-legged by the game board.

  “Hello again, Miss Ava,” he says.

  She takes his hand and glances at her aunt with a confused frown.

  He straightens and heads for the kitchen as though it’s the most natural thing a visitor might do. “You still have that blue glass vase in the first cupboard?” It comes back to her how he pronounces “vase” to rhyme with “Roz.” And how he always takes over. She hears him puttering in the kitchen, cutting and snipping and adding water. Ava continues to shoot her questioning glances. Feeling her cheeks coloring, she wonders how she can explain to her niece why Weaver’s here when she isn’t even sure herself.

  Emerging with a charming arrangement, he looks pleased and sets it on the coffee table in the living room. In the old days, he often bought her flowers and arranged them. That was the thing about Weaver: He was highly capable in all sorts of unexpected ways.

  “How would you girls like to go down to Grant Park and maybe the Art Institute?” he asks. I propose you take a little time to see what happens, Charlie told her. And don’t think about me. Or the FBI. Or what we want to know. Is she
strong enough to let Weaver back into her life without allowing him to trample her?

  “I love the Art Institute,” Ava says. “And Grant Park.”

  “It’s warm,” Weaver says, “but there’s a great breeze.”

  “Can we go, Rozzie?”

  “What about Monopoly?”

  “We can get back to it later. Right?”

  Rosalind looks from one to the other. Both of them have their eyebrows raised. What will Lou say if Ava tells her the hated Weaver, of all people, took them on a pleasure trip down to Grant Park? On the other hand, she imagines Charlie Szydlo nodding with encouragement.

  “Please,” Weaver says, coming up to her. “It would mean more to me than you know. Just this once?”

  “Just this once,” she repeats. At least Ava will be there as a buffer. But why has Weaver ambushed her? This man who may or may not be selling secrets to the Russians. What’s so critical?

  As they head for the door, she notes him eyeing her. His handsome features are frayed; he looks diminished somehow. Yet, he’s smiling and still far too attractive.

  “Let’s go, ladies!” he says.

  * * *

  Grant Park is full of families enjoying the cooling trees and the breeze off the lake. At Buckingham Fountain, Ava asks for three pennies and makes three separate wishes, which she refuses to reveal. Then Weaver takes a half dollar out of his pocket.

  “A penny won’t do the trick for this wish,” he pointedly tells her. He turns his back to the fountain and, closing his eyes, tosses the coin over his shoulder. It lands with a loud splash. “Had to be the left shoulder or it wouldn’t come true,” he says.

  “What?” Ava gasps. “You didn’t tell me that!” Her pennies are gone.

  “I think that rule only applies to me. But just in case . . .” He fishes out three more pennies and drops them into her hand. She flings them over her left shoulder one at a time, each with a great sense of import.

  “C’mon, Rozzie, aren’t you going to make a wish?”

  Rosalind used to wish something bad would happen to Weaver. Now that she has the power to make it come true, she shakes her head, darkened by his closeness, his humanness.