“You hurt her, and you’ll never get that key!” Rosalind shouts.
“Or maybe I’ll torture her the way we tortured Thomas. He wept and wet his pants when they snipped off his finger.” As Clemence says it, Roz sees her visibly shiver. They snipped off Weaver’s finger and Clemence watched? Roz’s stomach clenches. An icy sensation runs up the sides of her neck, over her ears. Lou looks so scared. She loves her sister, has never loved her more than in this moment. If she faints, the knife will surely cut her on the way down.
“You want the key,” she tells Clemence. “If you let her go, I’ll lead you there. You need me with you. Not her. Let her go!”
When will Lawrence realize that things are taking too long? When will he come to the door with his gun drawn? And even if he does, can he stop Clemence from hurting Louisa? Rosalind needs to be what her ring says: the bravest girl in the world. But how? She can see the rise and fall of Louisa’s chest with each panicked breath. She doesn’t have much time, but what can she do with the knife pressed to Louisa’s throat?
Suddenly, the bathroom door is thrown open and one of the bobby-soxers walks in, arms in front of her, head down, paying no attention. Clemence swings the knife away from her sister and holds it toward the girl.
“Get the hell out of here,” she hisses. The girl’s eyes snap open in terror. “Don’t even think of screaming or telling anyone or I promise I’ll slit your little face in two.” All the color drains from the girl’s face. As she backs away and the door begins to close, Roz knows this is her only chance. Rushing Clemence and cutting rightward with as much velocity as she can muster, she spikes the hand holding the knife as she once did a volleyball. Clemence lets out a quack of surprise and the knife clatters under a stall. Roz shoves with all her weight so Clemence’s head and shoulders slam into the wall-mounted towel holder. Then she grabs Louisa’s arm. Running past the teenage girl, dragging her sister behind her, she bounds down the hall toward Lawrence, screaming the entire way.
* * *
It’s past eight P.M. when Rosalind, Louisa, and now Agent Gray head toward the Allerton in Gray’s car. After Lawrence managed to handcuff Clemence, statements had to be taken, the knife had to be recovered. The place was soon swarming with agents—though not Charlie—and the owner of the Wagon Wheel was practically crying, insisting that Saturday night was his big family night and the FBI was going to bankrupt him.
Eventually, Agent Lawrence insisted that Louisa needed to be taken to the emergency room to be checked. The thin, oozing cut on her throat was minimal, but Lawrence thought she might be in shock. She kept gulping air.
Somewhere in the middle of the hospital wait, Rosalind managed to find a pay phone and called Henry. He kept saying, “Is she okay? Are you okay? How could something like this possibly happen?”
Now in Gray’s car, Louisa touches her bandaged throat.
“Does it hurt?” Roz asks.
“It stings.”
“You can use it as an excuse. To be coddled by everyone. I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” Roz says.
“Weaver haunts us even though he’s gone. Do you think that was true—what that woman said about torturing him?”
Rosalind whispers, “Yes.”
“So he didn’t die of cancer. He was murdered. Did you know?”
Rosalind nods, reeling with the awfulness of how Clemence described Weaver’s demise. “Sorry. I didn’t want to lie . . . I just wasn’t ready to tell you.”
“At least now I know why you were drinking Scotch before lunch.”
Louisa squeezes Roz’s arm. Roz is pretty sure she never wants to drink Scotch again.
* * *
Later, at home, Roz feels an overwhelming lassitude—the letdown that floods the body after adrenaline. It was good leaving Lou at the Allerton with Henry and Ava. They kissed and hugged her sister.
“We’re going to baby you,” Henry promised Lou.
“And I’m going to do all the housework for a week. You’ll be amazed!” Ava said.
“If that’s true, I will be amazed,” Louisa agreed.
Now Rosalind is relieved to be alone in her apartment, looking out over the lake. She imagines Weaver somewhere out there, deep beneath the water, his body caressed by the soft underside of waves. How odd that one minute a man can be alive, prickly, confounding, loving, and the next, an element of a lakebed, a copse of trees, or the soil beneath an engraved stone.
When Weaver came to Chicago, she’s sure he had no idea he’d die here. We walk through life with no script or certainty, she thinks. Even if someone else murders us or holds our hands at the last moment, even if we have dozens adoring us or an entire world hating us, we end utterly, pristinely alone.
* * *
Just after ten P.M., as Rosalind is about to step into her bath, the buzzer sounds. She reties her robe, asks Frank who it is.
“It’s your friend the agent,” Frank says. Rosalind is flooded with relief. She expected Charlie to come to the Wagon Wheel, to worry over her and Lou. Other agents did. When he didn’t arrive, she believed he must still be angry at her for wanting to go home.
Now when she opens the door, he shakes his head softly and draws her into his arms. For the first time in hours, she feels her jaw unclench.
“I’m so sorry about what happened.” She can hear his heartbeat, smell the fresh scent of his laundry soap. “Lawrence should have watched out for Victoire Spenard. We weren’t sure she was dead. So I should have briefed him, shared her picture . . .” Charlie’s talking too fast. She gets the sense that he’s gone over these words again and again on the way over. He looks miserable, guilty even, as he takes her chin, scans her face. “Are you okay?”
She nods. She doesn’t know how to explain that the experience has wrapped her in numbness. The world seems oddly remote, as though she’s peering at everything through the back end of a telescope.
“I wanted to come as soon as I heard, but . . .”
“You had to interview Clemence?”
He’s silent for a moment, then says, “I would have. I was supposed to . . .” Rosalind watches him, trying to discern why he’s broken off midsentence. Rubbing his forehead, he doesn’t meet her eyes. “She died . . . in the car on the way to headquarters.”
“She died?”
“Russian agents carry cyanide. She was searched. They didn’t find it.”
Rosalind’s throat aches. “My God.”
“The agents should have been so much more careful. Sometimes the capsules are sewn into hems, cuffs. There’s so much she could have told us.”
“She’s dead. Clemence is dead?” She suddenly feels incredibly unsteady, has to grab Charlie’s arm.
“Come on, sit down.” He guides her to the sofa. Weaver is gone. Clemence is gone. It’s as though the whole world has shifted. She feels him watching her carefully.
“Why didn’t you come to the Wagon Wheel?” she asks. “I hoped you might.”
“My boss insisted I go through what Weaver left in his box.”
“Was that really why?”
He straightens the journals on the coffee table. She sees his good hand tremble slightly.
“If I hurt you by asking to go home, I’m sorry,” she says.
He shrugs. “You loved Weaver.”
“You knew I did. He was my past,” she says. “You’re my future. I just needed time.”
He nods, then shakes his head, as though arguing with himself. “The thing is . . .” His voice is pinched. And then he’s silent. He’s a beautiful man. She’s astonished at how much she feels for him. A deep, binding connection right down to her atoms. “When you pushed me away, I had a realization.”
“Tell me.”
“I used up my lifetime quota of pain at Mitsushima. I don’t think I can take any more.”
His face is a mask she cannot read.
“Are you saying you want to walk away from this? From us?” She aches at the thought. “You can’t run from pain or jealousy. Or anger or loneliness. They come with life. They’ll find you.”
“But . . . you . . . you have the power to stir them up in me. The way Linda did. I hate you for that.”
She cringes. “You have that power over me too. That’s what love is, isn’t it? The power to both enchant and wound.”
He doesn’t look at her.
“Do you want to be alone all your life?” she asks.
“I’m used to it now.”
“But you don’t have to be,” she says. She takes his damaged hand and presses it to her face. “Not when someone loves you the way I already do. I love you, Charlie. I love you.”
Her words make his breath catch. And as if he can’t help himself, he reaches for her, nestles his face into her neck, says nothing for a long while.
“I’m scared,” he says at last. “And I hate that.”
“Who isn’t scared?” she whispers.
After a while, he straightens his arms, and she’s not sure at first if he’s trying to put distance between them or to truly see her. As he stares, she wonders what he’s searching for. Or whether she can supply it. All she knows is she wants to give him whatever he needs. And she expects nothing in return except his willingness to accept her as she is.
“We’re all scared,” she says. “And that will never change. Isn’t it better that we should be scared together?”
* * *
In the morning, she wakes to Charlie standing by the window, dressed in his white shirt and trousers, drinking a cup of tea. Again, their lovemaking was gorgeous. And all night he held her in his arms. She never felt so safe or beloved.
“I meant to give this to you last night,” he says, setting the teacup down. He reaches into his trouser pocket and pulls out a folded sheet of paper. “But I’m kind of glad I didn’t. It’s just a copy. They insisted on filing the original.” Like all mimeographs, the ink is purple and gives off its cucumber-soaked-in-gin scent. “He wrote it to you.”
She unfolds it and recognizes Weaver’s handwriting, which appears more careful and purposeful than usual.
Dearest Rosalind,
If you are reading this, I am gone. I hope you are not too pleased about this. I would not blame you if you were. I encourage you to throw a party if that suits your mood. You are the one thing I regret most in my life, and trust me, I regret a lot. Because of my “entanglements” (what other word can I use? Intrigues? Imbroglios?), I didn’t treat you as you deserve. I want you to know I love you. And I’m happy to die for all I did to hurt you. It pleases the physicist in me to create this symmetry at the end of my own counterproductive life.
In any case, I’m grateful that you’ve allowed me to give you access to this package. Within, you will find a group of papers marked “FBI.” Please find a way to give this to them immediately. It’s important and they will be glad to have it.
Once in a while, please try to remember days when we were happy. Enclosed is my lawyer’s phone number. Call him regarding my will. If you can ever forgive me for being the selfish, weak, and unworthy bastard that I am, I would be so grateful.
Yours,
Weaver
Rosalind looks up at Charlie, who is watching her read.
“The contents of the box were for the FBI?”
“Yes.”
“My God. What was inside?”
“A confession. Fourteen pages—every detail about the Russians that he could think to jot down. Descriptions, code names, methods. He said he wasn’t sure if what he left would be helpful. But when you add it to what we already know, it’s a gold mine. Hoover’s feeling pretty jolly. There’s one more thing I think you should know, though,” he says.
“Yes?”
“On the last page of the confession, he wrote about Clemence.”
“Oh.” Rosalind feels a catch in her throat, has to force her breath through her lips.
“He said that she was his handler, tried to control him, even made him write that letter that got you fired because she was jealous of you. In the end, she wouldn’t let him out of what she considered a contract. He lured her out to the forest preserve for a nice day together . . . and he shot her in cold blood. Those were the words he used: ‘in cold blood.’”
“But of course, she didn’t die.”
“No. But when he wrote this, he thought he’d taken her life. He also said he wasn’t a ‘jot’ sorry.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Autumn comes early and the little trees planted along Lake Shore Drive lose their leaves in a shower of color. Winter edges in. Without sailboats, the lake waits silent and icy. Then, spring balks. The evenings elongate but the temperatures still dip into the low forties. Rosalind is glad she wore her heavy coat to work this morning. She steps into her building’s lobby and unwinds her scarf. Chicago: too cold on the outside, too warm on the inside. After saying hello to Frank, she heads for the bank of mailboxes. Each day for weeks, she’s turned the key in the box with longing and trepidation. Today, at last, the letter she’s waited for has come. An elegant envelope with the words “Argonne National Laboratory” embossed on the corner. The thought that it might contain bad news makes her slip it into her handbag and head upstairs. She pours herself a glass of red wine before she opens it. Last night, Charlie asked her to marry him. In just a month, they will have known each other for a year. How surprisingly happy they are together. His sister has embraced her. Louisa and Henry and Ava already love him. (“Almost as much as I loved Weaver,” Ava confided.) When Charlie proposed, Rosalind said yes. She told him she had just one thing to figure out before they could set a date.
And now she holds the answer in her hand. She settles into the sofa with the wine and the envelope, taking a sip before she slips her finger under the flap. She tells herself that if the letter doesn’t contain good news, her life won’t alter. Yet, recently, the reminder that once she was someone special has been a stone in her shoe. It’s time, she thinks, to shake it out, to move forward.
* * *
Charlie arrives at six thirty, whistling. He’s been in such good spirits lately, he can’t contain it. He wakes happy. He sleeps well with fewer nightmares. And he has hopes for the first time in years. Even when evil memories overtake him, thoughts of Rosalind serve to steady him, the way a seasick man seeks the horizon to settle the misery of the waves. Even work feels renewed. Binder’s respect for Charlie has grown exponentially since Weaver’s pages yielded oceans of information. Binder even agreed (after some arguing) that since Rosalind was no longer an asset, Charlie could continue to see her.
The peace he finds in Rosalind’s arms, in her bed, in her mere presence, has healed him in ways he never imagined. When he asked her to marry him, she looked up into his eyes and caressed his face. She whispered, “Yes,” with a sense of wonder. How happy she seemed.
To add to his bliss, his team at headquarters experienced a breakthrough today. One of the most definitive leads emerging from Weaver’s papers was a flower shop on Damen Avenue—Weaver’s designated place to pick up and leave messages. The owner is a mother of four grown children—the most unlikely Communist operative. The FBI immediately set a tap on her phone, bugged her walls, and listened. But months have passed with nothing. Then, today, a man came into her store and they discussed in hushed voices another scientist they’ve persuaded to help them. The woman said they’re all hoping he’ll supply the information that “Weaver wouldn’t.” Gray is tailing the scientist. Another agent has been sent to watch the man who shared the information in the flower store.
“Did Weaver bring you flowers often?” Charlie asks now, hanging his coat in her hall closet. “He must have gone into this lady’s shop numerous times for instruction. I imagine he came out with flowers as a cover?”
“Weaver liked flowers,” she says. But he realizes her voice seems distracted, distant.
He turns to her. “What is it?” he asks. “Are you all right?”
“Do you want some wine?” she asks.
“You know me: beer. Any in the fridge?”
“I bought it just for you.”
He scans her face. “Looks like I might need some.” Grabbing a cold bottle, he sits down beside her on the sofa. “Did something happen?”
“I’ve gotten a letter,” she says.
“What sort of letter?”
She takes a gulp of air like a swimmer about to do a lap, then lets it out slowly before she says, “Do you know Argonne Labs in Lemont? I used to go out there near the end of the war, to work on Pile-3, our heavy-water reactor.”
“I don’t think I know it,” he says, hesitant because her face is so solemn.
“Two weeks ago, I took the train out there to interview. It was actually a second interview.”
He frowns. “You didn’t tell me you went . . . not the first time, not this time.”
“I know. Maybe I should have. But the process has drawn on with no answer and I’d pretty much figured I didn’t have a chance. Then last week, they asked me to come in again. I didn’t want to get my hopes up. The University of Illinois seemed ready to hire me for a while. And they eventually turned me down.”
“I didn’t know about that either.”
Atomic Love Page 31