“I didn’t tell you any of this because I didn’t want you to see me fail.”
He blinks at her. “You’re allowed to fail in front of me,” he says.
“Not today.” She holds the letter out to him.
He unfolds it, smooths it. I’m happy to inform you . . .
“They offered me a job. A good job.”
“This is wonderful! It never made sense for you to be stuck at Field’s.”
“I’d convinced myself any atomic lab would reject me after Weaver’s report. But I found the nerve to write to Fermi. I owed it to him to tell him what happened with Weaver—to counteract any gossip he may have heard. And since I was writing, I explained what happened to me before I was fired. He’d only heard Weaver’s side of the story and said it always troubled him. Anyway, he’s still on the board at Argonne.”
“And?”
“And I called him long-distance after I got the offer tonight. Apparently, he told them if they didn’t hire me, he would. I’ve wasted so much time thinking I didn’t have a chance. This is everything I want. Argonne is dedicated to utilizing atomic energy in peacetime—for power.”
Charlie picks up the bottle to pour her more wine. “We should make a toast!”
“The thing is . . .”
He notes that she isn’t looking at him and it gives him an uneasy feeling.
“Argonne is building a gigantic nuclear reactor out in the high desert of Idaho. The letter says that’s where they want to train me. The job they offered is extraordinary. The salary is so much more than I made at U of C. And the job title . . . well. Then maybe I can come back and work in Lemont.”
“Maybe?” Charlie runs his hand over his face.
“I . . .”
“You plan to leave Chicago?” he asks. “You plan to leave me?”
“I’ve just found out. I didn’t say yes yet.”
“You want to leave me.” It’s not a question but a statement. His voice is flat. And that’s precisely how his heart feels, run over like that coyote in the Road Runner cartoon.
“It’s the last thing I want . . .” She moves closer, smooths her hand over his back. But he stands and walks to the other side of the room.
“I can hear in your voice you’ve decided.”
“I wanted to talk to you first. The training is only for a few months. Unless . . . I mean, any chance the FBI would reassign you out there?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” he says. “They tell us what to do, not the other way around. In the FBI’s point of view, men don’t follow their wives.”
“No, I guess not.”
“Besides, how much crime do you suppose takes place in the high desert of Idaho?”
“Fence smearing? Cow tipping?”
He doesn’t smile. How can she leave him? She’s cured him of so much bitterness. And it seems she’s healing from the scars Weaver left behind. He vowed that she was safe with him. But is he safe with her?
“You’re upset,” she says.
“You said maybe.”
“I wouldn’t be entirely in charge of what happens, just as you aren’t, but if things go right . . .”
He stands. “I think I should go home,” he says.
“What?”
“I can’t take this . . .” He stands, heads for the closet, for his coat, his hat.
“Wait. Don’t walk away.”
* * *
Rosalind sees the heartbreak in Charlie’s expression. Even as she coaxes him to sit down again, she has the sense that he’s not fully in the room anymore. His eyes have gone dull. His face is closed off to her. Both of them have struggled to believe happiness is possible since the war, and yet in these last months, they’ve mended each other. She knows to lose this man now would be a travesty.
Women are expected to give up their dreams for men. But the thought weighs on her like an anchor. She was raised to say, I’ll turn down the job. Marrying you is enough for me. These words, however, go silent before they reach her lips.
“It’s not about you, Charlie. I need to do this for myself.”
He’s quiet for a long time. She listens to herself breathe, terrified.
“But does it mean you need to leave me?”
“I want to make a difference in the world . . . I know it sounds foolish. I need to believe in myself not just as a woman but as a scientist.”
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t sound foolish.”
“So do you see? It’s my one chance . . . a chance I wasn’t sure would ever come again.”
“It’s not because of me?”
“Not at all. We’re happy together, but it’s hard to feel fulfilled when I’m not proud of who I am. And since Weaver, since the war, I’ve walked away from my own aspirations. This is my chance to reclaim them.”
“I understand,” he says, his voice tight. “But you said you wanted to marry me. When you go off to Idaho, what happens to us? What if they don’t send you back?”
“Of course I want to marry you. But I don’t want to become just another housewife who adores her husband but lost her dreams.” A siren runs by on Lake Shore Drive, then trails off into the night. “Is there any way you can understand this? You mean everything to me . . .”
“Not everything, it seems.”
She can hear the clock on the table by the sofa, the heat rising through the pipes. She can’t think of another word to say. She is astonished by how heavy she feels, how exhausted.
Then Charlie gets up and walks to the window. He crosses his arms, stares out at the night for a long while. She’s afraid she’s lost him. She wonders if any man could ever understand. Even a man as decent and kind as Charlie. What she’s asking breaks all the norms. And yet she had no choice but to ask it.
“Talk to me, please,” she whispers when the silence has gone on too long.
He turns. The look on his face is so complex, she can’t begin to read it. “I wouldn’t make much of a husband if I didn’t want you to be proud of yourself,” he says finally. “I do understand that. And I don’t expect to be the only thing in your life. You wouldn’t ask that of me . . .”
“No.” She waits for him to go on.
“Chicago’s your home. And wherever I am—I want to be that too—your home.”
“Charlie . . . you are.”
“So go to Idaho.” He takes a deep breath. “We’ll marry when you’re ready.”
“I will come back,” she says. “I’ll find a way.” She goes to him and slips her arms around him. He smells of mint and herbs. Of comfort. Of home. “Did you know the word ‘atom’ comes from ancient Greek?” she asks.
He looks up, surprised, shakes his head.
“In Greek, the word ‘atomos’ means indivisible. They thought an atom was the smallest particle on earth and could never be divided. I’ve spent my life’s work proving that untrue. But it’s what I want our love to be. No matter how far apart we are. No matter what happens in our lives.”
“Indivisible,” he says. He draws her to him with the sort of desperation that comes from impending loss. Holds her close. Love is so unfair. Two people rarely need the same thing, seek the same answers. And yet, what becomes possible when two discrete dreams spin into one?
With his arms still around her, they stare out at the city together. Below, the cars on Lake Shore Drive paint the highway red and white. The Drake’s pink neon clicks on as they watch. The Palmolive Building’s spinning beacon illuminates the room for a blink on its way around its cycle. And a crescent moon rises over the lake, spilling phosphorescence in a single, widening band, a clear pathway through dark water.
COMBUSTION
Sara Eliza Johnson
If a human body has two-hundred-and-six bones
and thirty trillion cells, and each cell
has one hundred tri
llion atoms, if the spine
has thirty-three vertebrae—
if each atom
has a shadow—then the lilacs across the yard
are nebulae beginning to star.
If the fruit flies that settle on the orange
on the table rise
like the photons
from a bomb fire miles away,
my thoughts at the moment of explosion
are nails suspended
in a jar of honey.
I peel the orange
for you, spread the honey on your toast.
When our skin touches
our atoms touch, their shadows
merging into a shadow galaxy.
And if echoes are shadows
of sounds, if each hexagonal cell in the body
is a dark pool of jelly,
if within each cell
drones another cell—
The moment the bomb explodes
the man’s spine bends like its shadow
across the road.
The moment he loses his hearing
I think you are calling me
from across the house
because my ears start to ring.
From the kitchen window
I see the lilacs crackling like static
as if erasing, teleporting,
thousands of bees rising from the blossoms:
tiny flames in the sun.
I lick the knife
and the honey pierces my tongue:
a nail made of light.
My body is wrapped in honey. When I step outside
I become fire.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I’ve always longed to write about a female scientist. My mother was one of them. Trained as a biochemist at the University of Chicago during World War II, she remained at the University working on important cancer research. But as was typical in that era, when she married, she was told that no decent man “forced” his wife to work, especially in a field as male-centric as science. So she gave up her career to be “a wife.” She desperately missed science. As a result, science flowed into her cooking, cleaning, our health care. She measured, she weighed, she considered, she hypothesized. And, eventually, she volunteered at our local hospital doing cancer testing for free.
My mother’s best friend was her cousin Jean. They walked to campus together each day, discussing everything: the family, romance, their hopes. But no matter how many times my mother asked, Jean refused to tell her a single detail about what was going on at the Metallurgical Laboratory where she worked. As it turns out, Jean was a clerical worker for the Manhattan Project, and she stayed true to her oath of secrecy until long after the atom bomb was dropped.
That story of silence stuck with me. When I matched it with my desire to write about a female scientist, I was happy to find there was indeed just one female physicist involved in those early Chicago years of the Manhattan Project: Leona Woods. Under the guidance of her mentor, Enrico Fermi, Woods was the youngest member of the team, but also an important one. She’s credited with designing the boron trifluoride counter that gauged that first man-made nuclear reaction, and was the only woman present among forty-nine scientists that cold day when Chicago Pile-1 went critical. This book is in no way based on Woods’s life. Unlike Rosalind Porter, Woods always maintained that the atomic bomb was essential to ending the war. Still, her presence at that momentous time and place in history allowed me to create Rosalind.
And there was one physicist who obliquely inspired Thomas Weaver. Theodore Hall shared crucial atomic secrets with the Russians while at Los Alamos, and continued to do so postwar while doing research at the University of Chicago. But because the FBI obtained their knowledge about Hall by decrypting Russian messages, the information was thought to be inadmissible in court. Also, unless the case against Hall could be backed up through independent investigation, the FBI feared the Russians would realize their code had been compromised. Thus, despite their efforts, Hall was never convicted and lived out his life in England.
Another personal note is that my mother came by her love of science naturally. Her father, Dr. Joseph Springer, was Coroner Physician for Cook County right about the time gangsters took over Chicago. A curious and persistent seeker, my grandfather was key in developing the nascent science of forensics. Testifying as an expert witness in many sensational trials, he became a well-known figure in the Al Capone era. My mother told of being awakened in the middle of the night, bundled into the open “rumble seat” of the family car, and motored off to their house in Michigan when some bad actor warned my grandfather that if he testified in court the next day, the safety of his five daughters couldn’t be assured. My mother and her sisters stayed in Michigan for a while, my grandfather testified, and, happily, no one was harmed. When Dr. Joseph Springer died, more than fifteen hundred newspapers from coast to coast printed his obituary; he’d become that much of a national celebrity. He was the man on whom I based Rosalind Porter’s father, Dr. Joe.
One more note about Chicago: I grew up in a suburb north of the city and spent ten years of my adult life living Near North, walking distance from Michigan Avenue. My apartment—just like Rosalind’s—overlooked Lake Michigan. Though it’s been many years, my love for Chicago, it’s beauty, architecture, and people lives on. Chicago will always feel like home to me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For someone who rarely shares her work until it’s finished, I’m astonished by how many people helped me write this book in so many ways. I want to thank Annie Solomon for her helpful tips on writing suspense. Yona Zeldis McDonough, as always, gave me invaluable direction, as did Ann Patchett who accomplished the amazing feat of reading the manuscript in a single day from six A.M. to nightfall. Thanks to Kory Wells, James Hayman, Sally Schloss, Rachel Gladstone, and L. B. Gschwandtner who read and advised superbly. And to Xan Holt for helping me with the Polish translation. Thank you to the late William Bailey who worked as a special agent in the Chicago office of the FBI during the 1950s and so kindly described the office environment and answered my endless questions.
The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Rivendell Writers’ Colony, and Rockvale Writers’ Colony all provided me with lovely, uninterrupted writing time without which this book could not have been written.
My new agent, Susanna Einstein, gets a huge thanks. She’s done miracles representing me, and I feel so lucky to have her on my side.
One of the people who deserves the most credit is Tara Singh Carlson, my brilliant Putnam editor, whose ideas were so fabulous they made me smack my forehead and lament that I didn’t think of them first. And thanks to her entire team, especially Helen O’Hare. I am so grateful, too, to my UK editor, Jillian Taylor, for her many thoughtful comments. I can’t thank her enough for her incredibly generous encouragement.
Finally, a big hug goes to my best supporters: my husband, Russ, my dear friend Lindy DeKoven, and my ever-walking dog, Violet Jane, all of whom were always there to lift my spirits when I needed it most.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennie Fields received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is the author of the novels Lily Beach, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, The Middle Ages, and The Age of Desire. A Chicago native, Fields was inspired by her own mother's work as a University of Chicago–trained biochemist in the 1950s. Fields now lives with her husband in Nashville, Tennessee.
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Atomic Love Page 32