Atomic Love

by Jennie Fields

  * * *

  —

  It’s raining when the train stops. Ice-cold rain spatters from matte skies the color of nickels, stinging their skin, running into their eyes. Herded with bamboo sticks, they’re force-marched down a mile-long slope so muddy, it sucks the canvas shoes from their feet. Charlie loses the burlap that covered his toes, turns around, and grabs it before it’s trampled. It’s nearly dusk by the time they arrive at the river where the camp is located. The buildings are so new, they ooze pine tar. There’s bark on the wood and spaces between the slats. Forced to stand in the yard, Charlie tries to keep his body from shaking by conjuring images of hot showers, hot cocoa, Linda’s arms. His toes throb in the biting air. Even the oppressive heat of the Philippines would be preferable to this bitter cold. The commander steps up to a jerry-built podium looking cozy in his heavy wool coat, a fur-adorned hat. He barks, “Japan win. We eternal sun. You, American light bulb. You die. We laugh. You die. We laugh!” One of the guards is moving down the row of men, randomly striking out with a bamboo stick. Charlie’s height and his exposed legs must call to him. The bamboo lashes into one unprotected calf, then sears the other.

  “You die!” the guard yells up at Charlie’s face. “You die! We laugh!” Charlie feels a rivulet of blood coursing down his right ankle. More blood down his left. I’m okay, he thinks. Just cuts. And then as the long bamboo bludgeon cracks down on his neck beneath his left ear, a sensation flares: a shot of flame, a jolt of electricity. Crumpling to his knees, he sees black, then red, then gold.

  “You die,” the guard says. “We laugh.” Can he have come all this way on a tin boat, vomiting and praying, only to die his first few hours in Japan? He covers his head, waiting for the next blow.

  * * *

  Charlie blinks and glances around the church, tries to settle his racing heart. Has he made a noise? Called attention to himself? Something, for Peg grabs his hand, looks at him with a worried expression. Jesus. But no one else is staring. Thank God. Only she heard. His lungs hurt. Sometimes when he detours down these dark corridors, he forgets to breathe. Now he sucks in air like a parched man guzzling water. Peggy squeezes his hand. I’m alive, he thinks. Father Janowski is beginning his homily. It won’t be long until they can go home. Thank God.

  The homily is about the third commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Janowski starts quietly, about how they are all here to celebrate the Sabbath, here in the benevolent arms of St. Mary’s. Charlie’s relaxing. He feels better. St. Mary’s, the church where he sat between his mother and father every single Sunday. Beautiful St. Mary’s. Where he felt safe and part of a community. “But what happens if you don’t come regularly?” Father Janowski squeaks. “What happens if you think there are better things to do on a Sunday? What happens when you turn your back on the Lord week after week after week?” As Janowski’s voice grows shrill, Charlie realizes Father is staring at him. When he looks around—is it madness?—the whole congregation has turned its gaze his way. Including Linda, whose bright red lips are smiling sympathetically, but Charlie looks away.

  “Sin is fed by laxity!” Father says. “We are meant to worship God with a special effort on Sunday. When we don’t, we lose our way. We die inside. Our hearts grow empty and we have little to give. Maybe nothing to give!” Charlie has nothing to give. All he wants to do is leave and never come back.

  When the service is at last over, longing for air, for escape, he hurriedly follows Peg and Mack down the aisle. But before he can reach the door, he’s accosted by Linda Dubicki. She’s once again holding her little boy. The kid’s nose is snotty; he’s drooling and rubbing it on the shoulder of her pink dress. Her face is swollen, probably from the heat and her pregnancy, her neck and chest flushed. Where is the girl he once loved under all that makeup?

  “I can’t believe you’re here, Charlie,” she says.

  He takes a breath. “Neither can I.” Each word costs him.

  “How’s saving the world going?” she asks.

  He shrugs.

  “How’s motherhood?” he asks. He wants to leave. He never wants to see her again.

  “Well, take a look,” she says. One child is pulling on her; the little one is playing with the mucus he’s smeared on her dress. “It’s no picnic.”

  “Gotta go catch up with Peg,” he says, walking away.

  “Please, Charlie, wait,” she calls after him. He has no choice but to answer her.

  “Yeah?”

  She runs up to him. “I can’t stop thinking of when we were together,” she whispers. He keeps moving, but she follows urgently, child in her arms, toddler attached to her skirt. She leans uncomfortably close. He can smell her talcum powder, or is it the baby’s? “The way you touched me, Charlie. I think of that . . . all the time.”

  “Yeah. Those days when I had both hands, Linda. Those were great days.” The bitterness in his voice embarrasses him. She blinks uncomfortably, shifts the baby to her other shoulder. He would never have said it if he hadn’t been overtired.

  “I wish things were different,” she says. “If only I hadn’t . . . I should never have said what I did.”

  “Yeah? You got that right.”

  He can’t believe she’s telling him this in church, people all around. He heads for the door.

  “Charlie!” she calls.

  What the hell does she want? This time, he ignores her. His mother would have boxed his ears for being rude, even to Linda, whom she abhorred. Still, it’s a relief to put space between them. Why on earth did he come?

  Later, Mack asks as they walk home, “What did Dubicki want? The way she was eyeing you all through the service, it looked like she wanted to screw you on the floor of the church.”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “Imagine how excited Father Janowski would have been,” Mack says. He imitates Janowski’s shrill voice perfectly. “Lord on high, come down and smite these two sinners!”

  * * *

  Charlie knows Peg’s going to start making lunch. She’s tying on her apron. He should help. Set the table or something. But he’s too tired. Feels almost sick. He goes down to his apartment. His head hurts and he can’t get Linda Dubicki’s face out of his mind. Or the thoughts of Mitsushima that came to him in church. He touches his neck, tracing the scar with his finger, and sits for a moment, reminding himself he’s okay. He’s alive.

  He gets out of his church clothes—what a fool he was to go—and finds chinos and a T-shirt. Picking up the new Charlie Parker with Strings album, he sets it on the record player. Lying on the bed, he feels as empty as a beggar’s purse, letting the sweet buzz of Parker’s sax wash over him. Images of Rosalind Porter come to his tired brain. Sure, since Friday, he’s worried about what he’s gotten her into. But a man shouldn’t lie to himself. Something about Rosalind Porter gets to him. Her rare brew of brilliance and veiled vulnerability and, yes, even the anger.

  She’s the first woman he’s been drawn to since Linda. Of all people, the one person he shouldn’t be interested in. He lets out a puff of air, closes his eyes. He whispers her name to the strains of Charlie Parker’s sax. “Rosalind.”

  Peg calls down the basement stairs.

  “We have company for lunch, Charlie. Come see who it is!”

  Oh man. He’ll be forced to talk, put on a smile. He sighs and gets up with a curse, shoves his feet into his shoes, turns off the jazz. He dutifully climbs the steps because Peg doesn’t ask much of him. In the kitchen stands Peg’s high school friend Sondra Becker. She waved at him in church, twittering her gloved hand in a childlike way. A widow since the war, she’s a secretary for a lawyer. Peg’s always trying to set Sondra up with some fellow or another. The woman’s not unattractive. But Peg has been puzzled why no one seems to ask her out a second time.

  “Charlie.” Sondra holds out her hand in a formal way. She’s neatly dressed, her pale
hair curled, a barrette with a bow holding it behind one ear. “I was delighted to see you in church today.”

  Sheesh. He nods. Peg glances at him with exasperation.

  “I asked Sondra to join us. She and I never get a chance to chat.”

  He’s not astonished that Peg’s trying to shove them together but that she’s never tried before. Or maybe she’s been protecting Sondra from what Peg calls his “sullenness.”

  “Glad you could join us, Sondra,” he says. There. His mother would be pleased.

  The lunch goes fine until Peggy says, “That was my favorite homily of the year. An excellent idea for Father to remind us why we need to go to church every Sunday. The perfect homily for a certain person in this room,” she says, eyeing Charlie.

  But Sondra surprises him. “C’mon, Pegs, leave your brother alone. After Ted died in the war, I couldn’t step into the church for over two years.”

  “I don’t recall. Is that true?”

  “I was sure that my prayers would keep him safe. Instead, he died alone, far from me, screaming in pain. I cursed God . . .” Her face clouds with the thought, and there’s a vacuum of silence at the table. The children sit wide-eyed, staring at each other. Charlie wonders who told her he died in pain. Most officers would tell widows their husbands died instantly.

  “That’s when you need church the most, though, isn’t it?” Peg asks.

  “You might think so. But you can’t know how hard it is to find faith again. You can’t know if you’ve never been tested. Mack came back safe and sound.”

  Charlie nods a sort of thank-you at Sondra. She smiles back shyly.

  “But you did come back to church, Sondra,” Peggy says.

  “I came back when I was ready,” she says. “I still find it hard to locate my faith some days.” Peggy winces. How is it that his sister has never discussed this with her friend? Would Peggy have spent so much time trying to find her a new man if she’d known?

  After lunch, when Sondra’s put on her hat and white gloves and said good-bye to everyone, even kissing Stevie, who wipes her kiss away as soon as she turns her back, Charlie surprises himself by following her out the door.

  “Sondra,” he says. “I just wondered if you’d . . . if you’d like to go out to dinner sometime.”

  She looks up at him sweetly. “Look. Don’t feel like you have to ask me just because Peg’s pushing me at you. I don’t know why she feels like she needs to play Cupid.”

  “I especially wouldn’t ask because Peg’s pushing you at me,” he says. “I’m asking because maybe . . . maybe we have something in common. I think we could be friends.”

  “Oh . . .” Her cheeks color. She smiles nervously. “Well then, I’d be honored to have dinner with you, Charlie.”

  “I’ll call,” he says.

  “Terrific.” She smiles warmly.

  It would get his sister off his back, he thinks. And she seems nice enough. She wouldn’t expect it to be a love match, just a friendship. He feels he made that clear. And maybe they do have something in common. Maybe he could learn something from her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sunday night, Zeke calls Rosalind.

  “Where have you been?” she asks. “You don’t know how many times I’ve called!”

  “I got home from New York late Wednesday. Then Thursday, Little Mommy fell and broke her hip. She says she tripped on her mules. But I’m sure she tripped on too much bourbon. She’s in Wesley Memorial.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Too exhausted by the time I came home every night, Bunny. Too mad at her to even discuss it.”

  “Aw, jeez. I know how she can be.”

  “You have no idea how good it is to talk to you.”

  There are few people in one’s life that fit like an adjacent puzzle piece. Zeke and Rosalind have been locked together since they were eleven. As smart as he was when they first met, he was a lousy student. He’d sit in science class drawing elegant ladies in intricate dresses, looking up only now and then as if from a dream. Skinny, small-boned, with light red hair, he’d already begun to dress eccentrically, wearing a tricorn hat every day for a while, then an entire cowboy outfit with a metal belt buckle so heavy it almost pulled his trousers down, then yellow dungarees the color of yield signs. The other boys wanted nothing to do with him. They called him a “fruit” and a “fairy.” Rosalind didn’t even understand those epithets.

  But it was clear that she and Zeke were both outcasts, both derided for what made them unique, and both unlikely to change. And they were happy to spend time together. At lunch hour, after they ate their sandwiches and emptied their tiny milk cartons, Zeke would draw dresses just for her. “This is what would look good on you, Bunny, a bow at the neckline to soften your long neck,” he’d tell her. She liked that he had a nickname for her. She liked that he drew her with womanish curves, though she barely had any yet.

  One afternoon in eighth grade, alone in the back of the library, Zeke whispered he had a terrible secret. And if he didn’t reveal it to someone, he’d get sick. His voice vibrated like a guitar string, “I’m . . . I’m drawn . . . to boys.”

  “Drawn to them?” she asked. “I don’t get it.” She imagined two magnets in science class, flying toward each other and meeting with a whomp!

  “When I dream of, you know, of what adults do, you know, sex”—she was shocked to hear the word; even Louisa called it “marital relations”—“it’s boys . . . it’s boys I imagine.”

  “You want to have . . . sex with boys?” Rosalind had just learned about sex and it was hard to believe. Her mother and father had done that? Henry and Louisa did that?

  “You hate me now. I knew you would. I knew it!” He’d never looked so vulnerable.

  “I could never hate you.” But she was curious: What could boys possibly do with each other? What little she knew about sex, she was fairly clear that two boys weren’t built for such things. Like two buttons and no buttonholes.

  “You won’t tell anyone, will you? You won’t say I’m a deviant?”

  “Your secret is my secret,” she said. “Forever.”

  She’d been reading about atoms, and it struck her that Zeke railing against his desires was like an electron in a decaying orbital. Struggling would only radiate away his energy. Weaken him. Until, like that electron, he’d be drawn inexorably nearer and nearer to the atom’s nucleus and be captured. She prayed that unlike that poor electron, his craving for boys wouldn’t obliterate him.

  Things have turned out far better than she feared. Today, Zeke is a photographer for the Tribune, covering street scenes and fashion shows. He’s good at it and appreciated by his peers. He’s managed to make a success of his uniqueness and she’s proud of him. There are men in his life, but it’s a secret world. He tells her but she never lets on to another soul.

  “Is your mother going to be all right?” she asks.

  “You know Little Mommy. The nurses will need a vacation by the time she leaves.” Little Mommy is Lona Adams. A concert pianist for about six months in her twenties. Now in her late sixties, a widow, she chain-smokes Marlboros while playing “Rhapsody in Blue” on her full-size Steinway grand. Thank heavens Zeke avoided the draft because of asthma. His mother would have packed herself along for basic training.

  Lona has more than once suggested that Zeke should marry Roz. “Why not, Ezekiel?” she’s asked, expelling a mushroom cloud of smoke. “You love each other more than any two people in the world. Who’s to know it’s not that kind of love. It means you wouldn’t each have to be”—she looks meaningfully into their eyes—“alone for the rest of your lives.” Every time she says it, Roz feels suicidal.

  “But here I am rattling on and on. What about you?” Zeke asks.

  “You’re not rattling on. You had important news.”

  “I’m sick of my news. Little M
ommy doesn’t deserve one more second of our time. What’s yours?”

  “Oh . . . well, there is some news for a change,” she says.

  “Spill.”

  “It might shake you up.”

  “Good. I’m starved for something juicy.”

  Rosalind’s been so eager to tell Zeke about meeting the real Shadowman, but Charlie warned her to only say she’s seeing Weaver again. “You never met me,” he warned in the doughnut shop that day. “You can’t tell him about the FBI.” Still, she’s thought about blue-eyed Charlie Szydlo a lot since the day he walked her up to Lincoln Park. She would love to discuss him with Zeke. About how she liked his questions about science and the way he matched his long stride to hers. A sad and complicated man who’s asking her to do something more dangerous than he could possibly understand.

  “Weaver’s come back,” she says. “I saw him once and told him I didn’t want to see him again. Then yesterday, he just showed up at the door.” She details Saturday’s jaunt to Grant Park, the Art Institute, Weaver giving the beggar five dollars, the Chinese restaurant, the steaming tea, the words of love.

  Zeke surprises her by saying, “Bunny, listen, this is the best thing that could possibly happen to you.”

  “What? You don’t really think that!” Doesn’t her best friend want to protect her from the man who smashed her life in two?

  “Anyone can see,” he says. His voice is patient and intimate. “You’ve been stalled for these last four years. Like an unhitched caboose left behind on the tracks.”

  “That’s charming.”

  “Accurate. From what you said, he wants to make amends. Let him grovel. It will be excellent for your soul. But, listen, whatever you do, don’t give yourself up to him entirely, okay? You have to be more self-protective. You’re lousy at that. You realize it, right? You always have been.”

  * * *