Atomic Love

by Jennie Fields

  Christ. He needs a drink. At North and Bell, the bar that his brother-in-law likes so much is still open, its neon sign flashing SZCZĘŚCIE into the night. Though it means “happiness,” inside, Charlie can see men hunched drearily over the bar. No women. No one looking happy. Mack calls it “the Polish Boys’ Club” and goes there when he needs company or someone to complain to. One of the bartenders, Jurek, is an old friend of Charlie’s. Whenever Charlie comes, he makes him sit at the bar and insists on listing their high school pals from the most successful to the least successful. To Jurek, the most successful is Joey Gwozdek. His flat feet or asthma—Charlie can’t recall which—kept him out of the war. After changing his name to Joey Gordon, he started a plumbing company that employs eight men and works in Rosalind’s ritzy neighborhood.

  The least successful, Cal Piatek, was an A student, always on the student council, played the clarinet. He was a friend to everyone, a most-likely-to-succeed type. After a war injury, he’s now addicted to morphine. Charlie’s spotted him a few times downtown, his eyes like windows covered in rime. Charlie can’t help thinking, That could be me. He always feeds Cal’s tin can with too many coins, though Cal never recognizes him.

  Charlie’s relieved that Jurek isn’t at the bar tonight. He’s in no mood to judge or rate. Still, as soon as he’s smacked by the bitter stench of beer, he hears his name. At a table, with a pitcher all to himself and an ashtray overflowing with butts, is Stash Majewski, Linda Dubicki’s husband.

  “Hey, Charlie,” Stash says, motioning him over.

  “Stash.”

  “Join me. I’m three sheets to the wind and ready to entertain any guy who sits in that seat.” He points to “that seat” with the burning end of his cigarette, and Charlie sits down dutifully. “George,” he calls to the bartender. “Bring my pal Charlie a glass. You like beer, right?” he asks.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “I’m on a marathon drinking spree and it’s better not to do it alone. You hear what they say, right? Don’t drink alone!”

  “Linda will have your hide,” Charlie tells him.

  “She’s already got it. And my balls too. I’m counting how many beers I’ve had with peanuts. I finish a glass, I put one here. But I’m too drunk to count ’em now. You count ’em for me?” Charlie looks over at the rows of peanuts.

  “You drank that many?”

  Stash nods. “So how many? Give me a hint.” Charlie feels for him. A house full of babies and bossy Linda to contend with.

  “It’s a number between fourteen and sixteen,” Charlie says.

  Stash’s eyes cloud for a moment as he figures furiously in his addled brain.

  “Fifteen! Jesus.”

  “How you feeling, Stash?”

  “How does it look like I’m feeling? I’m fucked.”

  “I meant, how’s life?”

  He expects him to complain about the babies, his job, his income, Linda. Instead, he says, “My wife—’n’ I love her, fat backside and all—is in love with you, you fuckin’ asshole.”

  “C’mon, Stash. That’s not true.”

  “No? Go ask her. She tells me every time I screw her these days, she squeezes her eyes shut and pretends it’s you.” Stash’s face is growing red. These are not the sorts of things a guy tells another guy unless he’s so drunk he won’t remember in the morning. The bartender brings Charlie a glass, and Stash, drunk as he is, expertly pours from the pitcher, leaving room for the foam.

  Pushing the glass toward Charlie, he says, “I should kill you. I’ve thought of it.”

  “That will not win Linda’s love,” Charlie warns him. “And I’m not interested in your wife, in case you wondered.”

  “How could you not be? She’s beautiful. So damn beautiful. And she gives head like a goddamn whore. You teach her that?”

  “Man, you need to go home, now. How ’bout I walk you there?”

  “She hates me. Says I’m an ugly slob. I’m not ‘refined’ like Charlie Szydlo.” He spits the name with such hatred, it sends a splash of cold water down Charlie’s spine.

  “C’mon. It’s late. Don’t you have to work tomorrow? Let me walk you home.”

  “You wanna walk me home like a date? So romantic.”

  “Yeah. Just like a date, Stash. Let’s go. You owe them money?”

  “Nah. I got a tab.”

  Charlie’s surprised how easily Stash agrees to leave his half-drunk pitcher, his abacus of peanuts, on the table. He stands, wobbles, sits, then stands again.

  “Nice o’ you to walk me home. You’re a nice guy. You have Linda’s cherry in your pocket? Like a good-luck charm?”

  “The air will do you good,” Charlie tells him. He directs Stash out the door, wondering if he’ll be picking him up off the street any minute. God knows the guy’s too big to hoist. Fortunately, he and Linda live not so far, on North Leavitt, in a little brick house whose windows and door need painting. It was Linda’s aunt’s until the old lady died. Charlie and Linda used to visit Aunt Lily there. She made them pierogies and kolaczkis. When he’s walked by it, Charlie’s noticed the Majewskis haven’t done anything to modernize the house. But how could they afford to, with two children and another on the way?

  Stash weaves, belches.

  “See, I’m good,” he says. “I don’t show I’m drunk.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Charlie tells him.

  “Why’s Linda so crazy about you? You’re too tall. Like a giraffe.”

  “I can see why you think so,” Charlie tells him.

  “I might kill you. You ever kill anyone?” he asks. “Shoot anyone?”

  “In the war.”

  “But not in the FBI?”

  “No.”

  “I never killed anyone in the war even,” Stash says regretfully.

  “Where were you?”

  “England. I was gonna be sent to France or Germany any day. Wanted to be. Never happened.”

  “You were lucky.”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Trust me, you were.” Charlie holds up his hand.

  “Yeah. You and your fucking magic injured hand . . .”

  “You should be glad about my hand. It’s why Linda threw me over.”

  “What?”

  “She couldn’t bear to look at it.”

  “No. You dumped her.”

  “That wasn’t the way it was.”

  “Yes. You broke her heart!”

  “C’mon. Look. We’re here.” Charlie helps him climb the steep front steps. Stash stumbles and Charlie has to catch him, wrenching his shoulder. Damn. “You got your key?” he asks. Stash rifles around in his pants pocket and pulls out an oversize ring of them, chooses one.

  Linda hasn’t left the porch light on. A message for Stash, perhaps? Stash can’t get the key into the lock. Charlie takes it and quickly sees the key Stash chose is an old-fashioned room key, too large for the lock. One by one, he tries the rest of the keys. Then the porch light comes roaring on, the door swings open, and Linda Dubicki is standing there in a pink nightgown.

  “Special delivery,” Charlie says, helping Stash over the threshold into the house. Lurching, he stumbles past Linda.

  “Hello, honeybun,” Stash says, then darts into the dark of the hall in a way that tells Charlie he’s running to puke in the bathroom.

  “How did you end up with him?” she asks, unruffled. She smooths her hair from her face. She’s so much prettier without makeup, softer, kinder-looking. Her breasts are swollen with pregnancy, her perfectly round belly beautiful and evident under her nightgown.

  “I found him at Szczęście.”

  “Of course you did,” she says. “It was nice of you to bring him home. I hope he wasn’t too much trouble.”

  “I’m glad he made it all the way home. I was worried. Well, good night.” He turns to he
ad down the steps.

  “Charlie, don’t go. I need to tell you something.”

  “It’s two thirty in the morning, Linda. Go look after Stash.”

  “He can look after himself. You think he doesn’t come home like this every night?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Please come in.”

  “I’ve got to be somewhere in the morning. We woke you up—”

  “It will take two minutes. That’s all.”

  He steps into her hall. She leads him to the living room. The furniture is modest. A gray sofa with pink pillows. A striped armchair. But other than the fact that there’s a large toy fire truck just inside the door to the hall, it’s neat and tidy. The colors are pleasing. Peggy, he’s sure, would call them pretty. She directs him to sit on the sofa.

  He looks at her, her face gentle and girlish. For the first time in years, he can see why he was drawn to her. Under all her ferocious flirting and too much makeup, here’s the girl he recognizes, the one he once loved.

  “Charlie,” she says, looking up at him with her still-water-gray eyes, “I’ve been wanting to tell you . . .” She stops and looks at her hands. “During the war, while you were gone . . .” She pauses again, doesn’t look up. He thinks she might be close to tears. He can’t imagine what she’ll say. What could possibly be so vital that she needs to tell him at this hour of the morning?

  “During the war, I prayed every day, never gave up believing that God would save you and bring you home safe. Father Janowski and I prayed together—mornings, evenings. I lit a forest of candles. You’re all I thought about.”

  His throat grows tight. “Well, thanks for that,” he says, wondering what she’s getting at.

  “But when God brought you back, it wasn’t you anymore. You barely spoke and you jumped at any noise and your eyes looked haunted. And what did you weigh, eighty pounds?”

  “More by then, I’m sure.” How vulnerable he was, like a skinned rabbit, certain at any moment he’d be beaten or shot dead. So weak from the aftermath of beriberi that he still had trouble walking. He’s tried to erase those awful months of doubt and misery that she added to so cruelly.

  “And your hand . . . I knew it would prevent us from doing the things we wanted. Together. It made me angry, Charlie. Angry at God. Angry at the church. Angry at everything I once believed in. I felt betrayed by my faith.” She takes a deep breath, as though she’s finally spilled what she’s been holding inside too long. “I wasn’t angry at you. I never meant to break up. I regret it every single day.”

  Charlie shakes his head. He remembers that after all those months at the VA hospital in California, he took the train to Chicago, dreaming of her, longing for her, then took a cab directly from Union Station to her house, not even caring what it cost. He thought she’d hold him and weep with joy. They’d kiss. They’d make plans again. It would be fine at last. Against all odds, he’d survived!

  Instead when she opened the door and saw him for the first time, she gasped. “Charlie?” He reached out for her and she stepped back. The look on her face was shock, horror, incomprehension. “Can I get something for you?” she asked. “I have cookies.”

  “Just seeing you is all I need,” he said. It seemed she couldn’t look at his face, or wouldn’t. And then her eyes fixed on his hand. And when he asked her questions, she had so little to say. Her answers to his questions about her job and friends were monosyllabic.

  She didn’t ask him anything. She just stared. They’d always felt so at home with each other. Not anymore. Had she found someone else? The tension was painful. He rose.

  “I should go home and see my dad,” he said. “I should have gone there first.”

  “Yes. Since your mother . . . The whole neighborhood prayed for you to come home before she died. But you didn’t.” Did she blame him for that too? For allowing his mother to die without him? He couldn’t wait to leave her. How conscious he was that he had to heft his oversize duffel with just one hand. He didn’t try to kiss her at the door.

  After that, for two weeks, she avoided him. All those loving, longing letters before his capture, more while he was in California at the VA hospital, and with him finally home, she made excuses not to see him. He slept a lot. He drank beer. He talked to his father. He was a man holding his breath. When she called and asked him to come over, he walked to her house, his throat aching with dread. She offered him coconut cake. She still wouldn’t look at him as she fussed with the cake and the fork, poured him a glass of Coke. He couldn’t imagine how he’d swallow any of it. She sat down across from him. He left the cake on the table between them.

  “See, the thing is,” she said. “The thing is . . . I wonder.” He could see she’d practiced the words before his arrival. A speech. A question.

  “What do you wonder?”

  He watched as her cheeks started to redden.

  “I look at you and I know you couldn’t even hold a baby in your arms or drive a car anymore. Not now. Everything’s ruined for us. I think it’s important we’re honest about it.”

  It was as though she’d socked him in the stomach. He had no breath in his lungs. It took him a while to answer.

  “They have knobs you can put on a steering wheel,” he said in a weak, reedy voice. “I’m sure I could hold a baby in either arm . . . I . . . I could. It’s not my arm that’s the problem. It’s my hand.”

  She licked her satin lips and focused on the wall behind him. “I don’t think so. Look at you. You weigh nothing. You’re like those photographs of those people they liberated from the German camps. Only you being so tall . . . it seems worse.”

  “I’m trying to eat. They said not to overdo it. I’ll gain weight back. I’ll get strong again. I’m getting better.” Why did he have to defend himself to the woman he loved, the one who should have been his defender?

  “It’s more than that,” Linda said. “It’s that . . . well, forgive me, but I can’t look at it. I can’t bear to look at it. It’s the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen. How could they have done this to you?”

  She stood and turned her back and started to weep. And like a dentist’s drill hitting a nerve, her meaning became clear to him: His ruined hand repulsed her. Disgusted her. Offended her. Despite the pain, the years in captivity working on the dam with only one hand, the months of scar therapy in California, this was the first time Charlie felt utterly crippled. She said everything was ruined. What she meant was that he was ruined.

  He got up, walked out of Linda’s front door, and slammed it behind him. He felt drugged, dizzy, confused. The sides of his vision closed in. At the same time, the sun’s rays were needles. Why was this happening? Why had the woman he thought loved him kicked him? Halfway home, he vomited in the bushes. At his house, he ran past his father in the living room and up the stairs to his bedroom, where he flung himself on the bed. It took him two days before he could bear to let anything pass his lips but water. Her words had poisoned him. He contemplated killing himself again and again after that.

  And now she sits here and tells him it was all a mistake?

  “You made me feel like a monster,” he says.

  “It’s me that was a monster. I can’t blame you for never forgiving me.” Her cheeks are silvery with tears. Her lips tremble in silence. He’s shocked that his first instinct is, indeed, forgiveness. He’s overcome with the desire to slide his arms around her, comfort her. How soft and sweet she’d feel. He recalls the yielding swell of her breasts. How he loved to feel her pressed against his heart. But can he absolve her so easily? “God let me down,” she says. “And I let you down. I need you to know I’m sorry. More than you know. I’ve been sorry every single day since . . . the things I said. The things I did.”

  “You could have come to apologize, or written.”

  “I called almost every day for weeks after. I realized how cruel I’d been, how w
rong. Didn’t your father tell you? He said you didn’t want to see me ever again.”

  His father knew he was hurt and angry. He must have been protecting his only son. His father’s gone now. As for Peggy, she’s never said a nice word about Linda since.

  “Why do you still go to church, if you’re so angry your faith let you down?” Charlie asks.

  “My relationship with Him these days . . . it’s not great. I’m disappointed, but I haven’t given up.”

  “No matter what the sisters told us in grade school, I’ve never thought the Lord has time to fulfill individual requests like tickets at the bakery.”

  “I know. But He’s been screwing up all over. Look at all the Poles and Jews who died in the gas chambers . . . look at all the POWs that the Japanese beat to death or starved—like you. I keep asking myself, have Mary and all the saints and Jesus and God shrugged and said, ‘Man’s not worth saving. Let them go off and kill each other. Good riddance.’ And now this conflict in Korea. They say it’s not a war. But more fellows will die. And the Russians have the bomb. One day a city’s there. The next day, it’s not. People dying again and again for what?”

  Charlie has had these very thoughts. They’re what’s put him off religion. Yet Linda keeps hoping, when he’s simply stopped believing.

  “Still,” she says. “I look at you, and you overcame what happened. You’re like you used to be before the war now. Or better. You got your law degree so you could join the FBI. And it’s a great job. I know you must be good at it. I didn’t stick by you long enough to see you recover. I was young and stupid. Charlie,” she whispers. “I love you. You’re the only man I’ve ever loved.”

  He’s felt alone for so long. He feels unspeakably moved and doesn’t say anything for a while. The silence pulses. The room seems to breathe.

  “Well, don’t go telling Stash,” he says at last. “He loves you. You’ve got two kids together and this one.” He points to the baby swelling beneath her breasts and then is drawn to reach out and lay his palm flat against it. He’s never touched a pregnant belly before. It’s incredibly hard. He’s startled by the feeling of movement, a life inside.