by Lydia Millet
—Leadership van?
—The Christians. You know, Bradley and some of the others. I don’t know who exactly. Plus some of their soldiers I guess. The soldiers have their own jeeps.
He sat down in front of the window as the mother ushered her children into the back seat, leaned in to fasten her daughter’s seat belt and then set the beach ball on the girl’s legs. As the mother slid the door closed she looked up and saw him watching them, but looked away again, barely noticing.
—So where should I meet you then?
—I can’t hear you!
—Where should I meet you then?
—You can stay put. We’re still heading for the Jersey Shore sometime after breakfast. We’ll be there tonight.
As the van backed out Ben saw a colorful plastic cup wobbling on the hood and falling off. It spilled a purple liquid on the gray metal and then fell and rolled on the ground, but no one in the family seemed to notice, their faces behind the windshield already preoccupied, already turned to the prospect of a next event that would never be known to him.
The crowd would be managed by Bradley’s army and would maintain a safe distance behind them. As Bradley assured Oppenheimer over breakfast at the picnic table, his army was full of actual retired Army guys and National Guardsmen. —There’s guys with us that actually got drafted, way back when, he told them as he spooned up stewed prunes. —There’s guys that came to Jesus in Saigon.
—Tell me why any of us need guards, said Oppenheimer, —if we’re traveling alone. Because I’d like us to get rid of our weapons. I’d like us to divest ourselves of the trappings of violence. Since after all we’re a peace movement.
—There is purity in your heart, said Bradley, —but sadly, we live in a world governed by the whore of Babylon.
—Good gracious, said Oppenheimer testily, and got up from the table to light a cigarette. —Dory, is there any more coffee in the thermos?
—We still want privacy, said Szilard, —in case you were wondering. Just because we’re traveling with you and your thugs doesn’t mean we don’t need our space.
—Believe me, said Bradley, as Oppenheimer and Dory and Ann walked away from them with coffee and cigarettes, —we need time alone too. Time to pray and worship.
—Dr. Oppenheimer! called out a woman behind them.
When they turned it was Bradley’s mousy wife, carrying a small white umbrella.
—Can I walk with you?
Huts tagged along behind them as they went through the gate, keeping their distance from Bradley’s men who stayed vigilant alongside the bus. Outside the perimeter fence Bradley’s sentries stood guard, each with a rifle held vertical against his shoulder, each, Larry had told Ann, wearing a silver cross on a chain around his neck.
Some of the soldiers, Larry had said, had their old dog tags around their necks too, and these nestled against the crosses over their hearts.
—I wanted to ask a special favor, said Mrs. Bradley, trotting along beside them as they walked down a pebbly path toward a small public park tucked into a cul-de-sac. Ahead there was a swing set, empty of children. —I have a women’s prayer group, and we meet for special worship twice a week. There’s a meeting tonight. And it would mean so much to them if you could speak. You don’t even know how much it would mean. They worship you! They do!
—These women are under the impression that I am the Second Coming of Christ?
—They believe in you.
—I don’t know what I would say to them, Mrs. Bradley, said Oppenheimer, patience strained. —That’s the problem.
—But all you have to do is be yourself!
—Myself is a Jewish physicist from New York, said Oppenheimer drily. —I enjoy a nice bourbon and reading the classics of Eastern philosophy.
—We know all about you, said Mrs. Bradley warmly. —We are bathed in the light.
And she opened her umbrella suddenly and raised it over his head, though she could barely reach.
—It’s not raining!
—It will be, she said.
—Can I film you? asked Dory. —For our records? I record oral histories.
—Oral? asked Mrs. Bradley uncertainly, and Dory raised the camcorder.
—I can give them half an hour this evening, Mrs. Bradley, said Oppenheimer finally, —but this will be a one-time event, do you understand me? And for future reference, I don’t do children’s birthdays.
They sat down at a table beside a seesaw. Ann wanted to sit on one end of it and go up and down but none of them would sit at the other end. She looked around at the still objects of the park, the red and blue slide, the yellow roundabout, a jungle gym in the shape of a rocket ship. Empty and motionless, they called up the same feeling.
Without play there was only getting old.
A few minutes later the rain was falling. While Oppenheimer smoked placidly beneath his dome of white, Ann and Dory stood under the tin overhang of the rest room roof sharing one of his cigarettes between them. At the table in the middle of the playground Mrs. Bradley sat beside him, holding the umbrella over his head and talking to him in a low constant patter whose words they could not distinguish. She was soaked.
Walking away from the continental breakfast with a heaping plate of bite-sized muffins, looking down at the blue and maroon carpet with its pattern of sturdy floral urns, Ben saw the receptionist smile broadly in his direction. He smiled back, wondering as the side door swung closed behind him if it was his gluttony or something else that made her look so fondly on him.
It was good to shed the crowds with their noise and litter. Their numbers had decided every pull to the side of the road, every stop at a gas station, and Ann had forgotten how it felt to be without them.
In the light rain, the wipers clocking back and forth in their reassuring motion, she sat beside Kurt the Hut and watched the road through the windshield. She let her eyes soften on the glistening wet asphalt and the other cars around them with their beaded shining hulks, the tall, boxlike passing buildings with their slick plastic corporate logos that referred to nothing unless you already knew the code. She remembered how she had felt on the train from Tokyo, passing the symbols on all sides of her. In a foreign country you believed it was foreignness that kept you out, but in fact your own country kept you out equally. It only took longer to notice.
She closed her eyes and still the plastic words loomed there, inscrutable. IMMUTEK, SOLIDYNE, MAGNUSON, VIVIDEX. Moving through time was a long string of comparisons, a longing for repetition or novelty, one or the other. It was all a reach, trying to touch the past to the present and the present to the future. Sad that way, how all of experience was a vector with a single ending, in which comparisons dissolved.
At a rest stop in Connecticut she came out of the bathroom and wandered toward the back of the lot, toward a straggly grove of trees and dried grass where she could stretch her legs. But before she reached the corner of the building she was hearing a private conversation between Dory and Oppenheimer, standing a few feet away behind a rhododendron. Dory was crying raggedly.
She jerked back from the corner but then she had to listen briefly. She looked behind her, furtive, to make sure no one else could see her lurking. She was shamed but compelled.
—It’s nothing about you, said Oppenheimer, —I’m very fond of you, as you know. And you have been a great comfort about losing Kitty.
—So you wouldn’t—with anyone?
—I don’t have it in me, said Oppenheimer. —There’s something missing. I don’t know how it happened, but it’s the way I’ve always been since I got here. I simply have no capacity. I’m sorry.
—Are you saying you don’t—what, you don’t even get erections?
Ann turned away cringing, her hands coming up involuntarily, fingers spread in horror, as though someone was speaking lewdly about her own father.
—I have turned from all that, she heard Oppenheimer say painfully as she walked toward the rest room doors again, anything to shut herself
in and be out of the way. —It was taken from me.
In the bathroom she stood over the bank of sinks without moving. The room was empty and she was glad. She looked in the smoky mirror, and could barely make out the features of her own face. It had been embarrassing: she had been embarrassed for Dory. But there was an element of relief.
Poor Oppenheimer had no secrets.
Ben was sitting on a white plastic chair beside the motel pool when the two buses pulled into the parking lot. Bradley’s army dismounted through the back doors of a van, hitting the ground hard in their black boots, armed to the teeth.
Szilard and Oppenheimer stepped down from the bus, followed by Ann and Larry, and Ben walked across the pool’s herbaceous border, bent down and kissed Ann over the top of the wire fence.
—How are you, he said, —are you OK? and she smiled up at him.
—I’m not bad, she said. —It’s good to leave the crowd behind. You’ll see.
—Where are they?
—They’re something like sixty miles behind us. Whenever Leo has an event staged we’ll allow them to catch up, but the rest of the time we have privacy.
—Except for Bradley and his boys.
—Except for them.
Later she and Ben made a cigarette run, Oppenheimer in the back seat. He waited in the back of the car while they walked across the street to the convenience store.
Outside its front doors a teenage girl smoked a long cigarette. Heavy blue eyeliner made her eyelids look droopy and knobby knees protruded beneath a suede miniskirt with a fringe. A few feet away a man in bad-smelling clothes foraged in a garbage can.
—I wouldn’t go in there if I was you, said the girl to Ann as she reached for the handle on the front door, and shook her bangs in her eyes. —They’re being robbed.
—Excuse me? said Ben, and craned his neck to see in past the glare on the doors.
—Yeah, this guy’s robbing them with a gun, said the girl, and inhaled.
—Did you already call the police?
She shrugged. —I don’t got a phone.
—I’ll get the cell, said Ben, and headed back to the car.
The man rummaging in the garbage can threw down a soda bottle, which broke on the concrete, and ran away on bow legs.
—You saw someone point a gun at the cashier in there? asked Ann, incredulous, and tried to peer in the window behind her, futile as Ben had been. There were too many signs, cheap phonecards, cheap malt liquor.
—Yeah, I was just going out the door, he didn’t hardly notice me. He’s probably on something.
Ben came jogging back talking on his phone as Oppenheimer followed him.
—Someone’s robbing the store, apparently, said Ann, and Oppenheimer raised an eyebrow.
—It’s disheartening. Would you care for a cigarette? I still have a few left.
—Yes I would.
—Could I bum one too? asked the teenage girl. —That was my last. I’m all out.
—Certainly, said Oppenheimer, flipping his case open. —May I ask how old you are?
—Fourteen, she said, and plucked two cigarettes out of the platinum.
In the distance Ann could hear a siren as Ben took her by the arm.
—Honey. Can we just move away from the doors here, please? Either the guy’s gonna come barging out or the cops will go barging in. You should move too, he told the teenager.
—He won’t hurt me. I know him from school.
—You know him?
—Yeah, he was always this big crackhead. He dropped out. But he asked me to do it with him one time. He was way old though and he had this real greasy long hair. But now he cut it.
Oppenheimer gazed at her, speechless, and then shook his head as he cupped his hand over his lighter to light her cigarette.
—And you’re fourteen, he repeated. —Should you even be smoking?
—So I got a deathwish. Shoot me.
They moved away from the doors, retreating toward their car. Ann was leaning against the side of it as the squad cars pulled up and four cops jumped out and went in with their guns up.
—They could get shot, said the teenager. —If cops get shot and don’t die? They have to go see a shrink or something. I saw it on Law & Order.
Bradley had ceded his hotel suite to his wife while he met with Szilard. It was already dark outside and the room was sepulchral and dim, lit by bedside lamps and candles and camp lanterns. The overhead was not on.
Ann and Dory sat in the corner quietly on folding chairs while the women filed in. They had promised they were there only as observers and would not interrupt the proceedings, and Dory had brought her camcorder. Ann thought she was paler than usual, flatter. But she lifted the camcorder dutifully and taped the women as they milled around eating shortbread cookies, drinking sugary lemonade from a plastic dispenser and waiting for the arrival of Oppenheimer.
Each woman had brought her own pillow to sit on, and Ann noticed that several were U-shaped.
—Hemorrhoid cushions? whispered Dory.
Oppenheimer was late.
—Would you like me to go check on him? Ann asked Mrs. Bradley finally.
—It doesn’t matter. I know he’s coming, said Mrs. Bradley, and held out the platter of cookies. —We can wait for as long as it takes.
It was almost nine when Oppenheimer stepped through the door, hat in his hand, trailing two Huts with their hands on their sidearms. One of the women crumpled onto the carpet as soon as she saw him, and Ann ran over to help her.
—Is she OK?
—She just fainted, said another woman quietly, staring past them at Oppenheimer, who was apologizing to Mrs. Bradley for the delay. —She is overcome.
The Huts stationed themselves in opposite corners, pulling chairs over to sit on and setting their rifles down across their laps. Standing under a camp lantern suspended from the ceiling Oppenheimer looked older than he had before. At the same time, as always, he looked like a child; his face was lined but his eyes were large. She thought of children with an aging disease. She had seen a documentary about these children, with deep wrinkled pouches under their large eyes.
Against the sliding door that led to the narrow balcony, two older women were holding hands and weeping as they gazed at him.
—I see it, I see it, said one of them, a black woman wearing a flowery dress. —Do you see it?
—I see it, said the other woman, and they both looked at him with tears streaking their cheeks, the white woman shaking her head.
—No involvement! said Dory to Ann. —You promised. Let them take care of her.
The woman who had fainted stirred and opened her eyes as Ann stood up.
—You’ll be OK, said Ann, trying to reassure, and moved back to her chair as the woman moved her head back and forth dizzily.
—I apologize for my lateness, he said to all of them, —I was held up. I plan to speak briefly on our proposal to slow the global proliferation of nuclear weapons and bring about their eventual elimination.
Ben left Larry and Tamika with a pizza box open on their bed and wandered out into the parking lot with his cell phone to call Fermi.
—Room 410, he said, and then waited for what seemed like a very long time.
—He’s not answering, sorry, said the switchboard operator when she came back on.
—Can you try the darkroom?
But Fermi was not in the darkroom either.
—This worries me, said Ben. —Is there someone I can talk to, a nurse or someone with oversight?
When the nurse came on she told him Fermi had the run of the grounds and had not been seen since three.
—You’re not worried? he asked.
—If he’s not in his room by curfew we will send staff to locate him. And if we do not, of course, we will notify you.
—When’s curfew?
—He has another two hours. As you know, we allow a lot of latitude here. The patients who choose to stay with us depend on that.
—Any id
ea where he could be?
—All these big white birds came down from the sky, she said. —I guess they’re flying south for the winter. He went out to see them.
—Big white birds? There?
—Beside the lake.
—What were they?
—I think he said cranes.
—There are no cranes in this part of the country.
—Oh.
—They could have been herons, maybe. If they had long thin legs?
—Oh, I didn’t actually see them myself.
—I thought you were saying—
—I just took his word for it. He described them to me.
—Yeah. It’s what he’s been saying since he got sick. All about these whooping cranes, these birds that are nearly extinct. He always thinks he sees them.
—I see.
The women started singing before Oppenheimer was even finished giving his speech. He paused to step out onto the balcony and smoke a cigarette and they joined hands and begun to sing a hymn.
Ann stood outside on the balcony with him and smoked and listened. When she glanced in at the women, standing in the cramped space between the sofa and the kitchenette, she thought they shone with contentment.
—Must Jesus bear the cross alone, and all the world go free? No, there’s a cross for everyone, and there’s a cross for me.
—Nothing I say can change their opinion, he said to Ann, shaking his head, voice pitched high in disbelief.
—It’s not an opinion, she said. —It’s faith.
When she first met Oppenheimer, she realized, she had been one of these women. In fact she was one of them still, except for the matter of doctrine. To her he was a dead scientist, to them he was a living messiah. The only difference between her position and theirs was that she and Oppenheimer happened to agree.
—The way you look at science, she said, drawing on her cigarette and then sipping from her cup of lemonade and taking note that she did not like it, —that’s the way they look at you.
He glanced at her quickly and then turned, nodding, and looked out over the parking lot, where Ben was pacing and talking on his cell phone under a street lamp. Near him a truck pulled into a space and parked, and men began to unload rifles. She wondered if they were reinforcements for Bradley’s army.
