The Other Traitor

by Sharon Potts

He unlocked the door, worried at this point. A ninety-five-year-old woman shouldn’t be living alone. He should have insisted she hire an aide to stay with her. He could have helped pay for it. It would have been a better use of his money than his expensive loft apartment. He stepped into the foyer, dropping Saul’s folder on the table. “Nana, are you okay?”

  She wasn’t in the living room. He checked the kitchen. Empty. He hurried toward the bedroom. “Nana?”

  The door was ajar. The room was dim, curtains partially drawn. A slight figure lying on top of the faded quilt. She didn’t seem to be moving.

  “Nana?” He stepped closer. Her head turned toward him and she opened her eyes.

  Thank god.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and examined her. She was breathing okay, but her skin looked grayish. He took her hand. Cold. He squeezed it. She squeezed back weakly. “Are you feeling okay?” he asked.

  “Perfect.”

  Her pulse was forty-eight beats a minute. A little low, but not terrible. He reached into the drawer in the nightstand where he’d stashed a blood pressure cuff and stethoscope in case of an emergency. Her blood pressure was in an acceptable range. He checked her lungs. Clear. He listened to her heart.

  “Nana, can you raise your right arm for me?”

  “Still a physician at heart,” she said, raising her arm.

  “Now the left.”

  She did, then moved her legs and arms up and down as though she was swimming. “See? I’m perfectly fine. What are you doing here?”

  “Why are you in bed?”

  She pushed herself up against the mahogany headboard. He adjusted her pillows. She was wearing the same old blue shirt she’d had on the day before.

  “Memories,” she said. “I needed to lie down for a few minutes.”

  A black-and-white framed photo of Nana and his grandfather that she usually kept on the nightstand lay on the bed beside her. It hadn’t occurred to Julian that thirty years after his death, Nana still missed her husband.

  “This was taken on our honeymoon,” she said, picking up the photo. “He was a wonderful man.”

  “I’m sorry I never got to meet him.”

  “Me too. He would have been very proud of you.”

  Julian’s throat tightened.

  Her eyes wandered over the faded patches on the quilt. “He was a smart man, too, and very level-headed. Not a starry-eyed fanatic like some.”

  Did she mean Saul? He would have to move carefully into the conversation he planned to have with her.

  Nana kissed the photo. Her hand trembled as she set it down in its usual place on the nightstand.

  “Let me make you something to eat, Nana.”

  She looked startled. “Did I miss our lunch? Is your friend here?”

  “No,” he said. He wasn’t going to get into how Annette had lied to him. “She’s not coming.”

  He persuaded her to get up and wash her face while he went into the kitchen and heated up a bowl of tomato soup for her. She joined him a few minutes later. She had combed her hair, put on a pair of earrings with a cluster of sparkly stones and changed into a pink sweater with a red apple applique. He remembered the sweater from when he was in high school, but back then it had fit her. Now it hung on her frail frame, making the apple look like it was wilting.

  “Soup’s ready,” he said, adjusting a pillow behind her back as she sat down.

  He brought the bowl to the table and took a seat across from her.

  She took a small taste of soup. “This is wonderful, Julian. Thank you.”

  They sat in silence surrounded by the low-tech past—the Philco refrigerator with its rounded edges and giant handle, a green and white O’Keefe and Merritt gas stove, even the original double-basin cast-iron sink with a checkered green skirt to hide its legs. Julian remembered sneaking off behind the curtain, under the sink, trying to block out the arguments between his mother and grandmother. His mother crying. You never even hugged me. Not once.

  Hadn’t he said something just like that to Essie the other day?

  There’d been a palpable distance between Nana and his mother, and that same lack of affection had been passed down to ruin the relationship between Essie and him. But why hadn’t Nana hugged her daughter?

  He eased into the subject. “I went to see Rhonda this morning.”

  She sipped the soup from her spoon. “You and your sister should spend more time together.”

  “She gave me something. I’ll be right back.” He got the thick folder from the foyer and set it down on the kitchen table.

  Nana started. “What are you doing with that?”

  “Rhonda told me you gave it to her years ago. She said you were afraid you’d burn it if you kept it. Why is that, Nana?”

  She pushed her soup bowl out of the way. “Please, let me see them.”

  He slid them toward her. She went through the sketches quickly, stopping to look at a Buck Rogers drawing, then continuing until she reached the one of her mother.

  “Mama,” she said softly, her eyes watering. She looked up at Julian. “This is the only picture of her, except for the one on her headstone.”

  “Why did you give these to Rhonda? What made you say you were going to burn them?”

  “I wasn’t thinking clearly. Rhonda had found the sketches when she and your mother were visiting. Your mother became very angry when she saw them.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged.

  “Did they remind her of the painting you’d hidden from her when she was a girl?”

  “Who knows,” she said. “We started arguing. I told Rhonda to take the folder away. I don’t know what I was thinking. I suppose I’d hoped if I didn’t have anything of Saul’s here, your mother wouldn’t find a reason to argue.”

  “Why were you so determined to keep Saul’s artwork from her?”

  She shook her head fiercely, like a child not willing to give up a favorite toy.

  “This all happened years ago, Nana. Why is my mother still angry with you?”

  “It’s nothing. It’s all in her head.”

  He was frustrated. “What’s in her head?”

  She ran a trembling finger over the image of her mother, not quite touching it. “I had forgotten this was in with the other drawings. I never would have given this to Rhonda if I had remembered.”

  His grandmother wasn’t going to tell him. At least, not yet. And he knew that trying to pressure her would only cause her to shut down.

  He took in a deep breath, and looked more closely at the picture of his great-grandmother. “There’s a lot of heart in this sketch.”

  “Saul loved our mother very much. We both did.” Her voice quivered. “She died when Saul was seventeen. He took it hard. Wouldn’t get out of bed for a month.”

  “That must have been difficult for you, too.”

  “Yes.” She reached across the table for her soup and moved the spoon back and forth without eating it. “Finally, Saul snapped out of it and threw himself back into his studies. He graduated from Brooklyn College when he was eighteen and went on to Princeton. He completed his PhD in physics when he was twenty-one.”

  Julian quickly did the math. “1943. The U.S. was involved in World War II then.” He knew enough history to see where this was heading. Many scientists, particularly those in physics, had been scooped up by the government to work on the Manhattan Project. “Jesus,” he said. “Was Saul sent to Los Alamos?”

  She put her hand over the red apple on her chest. “It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s gone. Why do you want to dig up the past?”

  “So he was at Los Alamos, wasn’t he?”

  “He was young and naïve, still a boy really,” she said. “The government promised him things they knew mattered to him. Working with the brightest minds in the world. Getting involved with science at a level that was beyond his dreams.”

  “My god, Nana. Did he work on the atomic bomb?”

  “They brainwashed him,” she said. �
�They told him he would be serving his country. Helping humanity by ending the war.”

  Goddamn. His great-uncle Saul had been involved with the development of the atomic bomb. Was that what the hostility between his mother and Nana had been about?

  The image of the painting in his mother’s living room came to him. A spreading stain of red. Not a geyser, as Julian always thought, but more like a giant mushroom. His uncle had painted a red mushroom cloud surrounded by radioactive objects. These weren’t reminders of Buck Rogers, but of Saul’s own horrible experiences.

  “It took him a while to understand what he was creating.” Nana put her spoon down, splattering red soup on the tabletop. “But what could he do? If he objected to his assignment, he would have been seen as a traitor to his country.”

  “So he helped develop the atomic bomb,” he said. “And died with a guilty conscience.”

  She stared at the red splatters of tomato soup.

  “But first he made a painting of his guilt and gave it to my mother.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Mariasha jerked her head up too quickly, causing a painful crick in her neck. “You know nothing of guilt.”

  “Then tell me what happened, Nana. Why did Saul make that painting?”

  She had already told her grandson too much, but a memory was pushing to get out and she couldn’t seem to hold it back.

  “Saul was a good man,” she said. “But being good can’t always protect you from evil.”

  December 1944

  Mari was surprised by the knock on the door. Had Aaron forgotten his key? She checked the time. Not quite five. Her husband had a late class tonight and wasn’t due home until after six.

  “Who is it?” she called through the door.

  “Your favorite trombenik,” the voice said.

  “My god. Saulie? What are you doing here?”

  “Would you mind letting me in?”

  She unlocked and opened the door, delighted to see her brother for the first time in months, since he’d left for some secret job in the middle of nowhere that he wasn’t allowed to talk about.

  “Look at you.” He gave her a hug. “A regular balabusta. But I was expecting to see you with a big belly.”

  Mari felt her face grow warm, but her brother meant well. He had no idea he’d hit a sensitive spot. She smiled brightly so he wouldn’t notice. “Well you finally look like a grown-up man.”

  “I think the moustache helps,” he said, smoothing out the thin line of golden red hair above his lip.

  She stood back and took him in. Still delicately built with his mop of curls, but there were a few lines on his forehead and by his eyes that hadn’t been there when she’d waited with him to catch the train for Albuquerque six months before.

  “So I’m starving to death and I smell something good,” he said.

  “I made brisket.”

  “You must have been expecting me.”

  “It’s Aaron’s favorite.”

  “And mine, too, at the moment.”

  She served him a platter of brisket with cooked carrots and potatoes and a healthy dollop of horseradish on the side. He ate as though he hadn’t eaten in months, although she’d been mailing him packages with salami and cheese each week. Finally, he pushed back the kitchen chair and patted his belly. “That was delicious, Mari. Just like Mama’s.”

  Mari felt a bittersweet tinge. She and Saul had come a long way from the ragamuffins who played on the tenement stoop. If only Mama were here to see them.

  She poured him a cup of hot tea with honey and set out a platter of mandel bread. “So what’s it like for you in the middle of nowhere?” she asked.

  “Not too bad.” He dipped a slice of the hard pastry into his tea just like he did when he was a child. “You know, it sure isn’t run much like a secret military installation. Sometimes I feel like I’m at a movie set for the Keystone Cops.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No one follows the rules. We sneak in and out of the facility without the guards noticing. Secret documents are lying all over the place for anyone to see. And you've got people wearing red badges wandering into areas that are supposedly for white badges only.”

  “Red badges? White badges?”

  “Red is for people with intermediate clearance. Blue is for the laborers who have lowest access. White is for the scientists like me.”

  Mari had concluded from not-very-subtle remarks in her brother’s letters that Los Alamos was engaged in building some incredibly powerful weapon that would end the war. Though occasionally, Saul would write jokingly that they were ‘developing windshield wipers for submarines.’

  “Aren’t they worried about someone leaking information?” she asked.

  Saul stuffed half the mandel bread into his mouth. “Everyone who works there had to get clearance,” he said as he chewed. “So I guess they figure the information is safe, at least amongst the guys who work there.” He reached for another cookie. “But I don’t exactly agree with all the secretiveness.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re doing important, ground-breaking research. Our findings should be made available to all our allies in the scientific community, not kept hidden away. It isn’t right.”

  “You mean the Soviets.”

  “Well, of course. The ally that everyone treats like an unwanted stepchild.”

  “The Soviets have been unpredictable,” Mari said. “They only begged to join the Allies when Germany turned on them.”

  “And can you blame them for being leery of us? The U.S. hasn’t exactly been a fan of the communists, even when Papa was alive. Our government has always been terrified that the Reds are going to upset our nice cushy capitalistic society.”

  “So your point isn’t about sharing scientific advances, but rather giving the communists a leg up.”

  “We’re all on the same side now, Mari. If we work together instead of mistrusting each other, we’re more likely to end the war sooner.”

  “Who have you been talking to?”

  He broke a fresh slice of mandel bread in two and picked out a nut. “I just hate this damn war and the number of people who are dying. Anything we can do to accelerate its end is a good thing.”

  “I suppose I can agree with that.”

  He rolled the nut between his thumb and forefinger. “I saw one of your old friends, by the way.”

  “One of my friends? Who?”

  “Flossie. She’s staying in Albuquerque to be near her boyfriend Joey. You remember Joey? He was at the first Popular Front meeting I ever went to.”

  She remembered. The good-looking fellow Flossie had attached herself to. So he and Flossie were still together, though never married. She felt sad that she and her friend had lost touch all these years.

  “Is Joey at Los Alamos with you?” she asked.

  “No. He’s taking the cure. TB.”

  Mari knew that people suffering from tuberculosis frequently went to sanitariums in New Mexico because the climate was supposedly good for them.

  How selfless of Flossie to devote herself to him.

  “Flossie had some people over for dinner a couple of weeks ago and invited her cousin Bertie. Bertie’s at the installation with me, but he’s only a machinist with intermediate clearance.”

  “I remember him, too,” she said. Bertie had been another of Yitzy’s friends, though she decided against bringing up Yitzy’s name. Saul had been very angry when Yitzy left for California after their mother died. Never forgave Yitzy for not saying goodbye to him. “Bertie also went to City College,” she said. “A heavyset fellow.”

  “You’re being polite,” Saul said. “More like a tub. Anyway, I had the weekend free so Bertie invited me to hitch a ride with him to see Flossie and Joey. We had a swell evening. It was like a home-coming. Even that fellow who was the speaker at the Popular Front meeting was there. Anton Dubrovski. Would you believe it, he remembered me.”

  Mari recalled the night at the meeting. H
ow interested Dubrovski had been in Saul’s accomplishments and background in physics and engineering. Had Dubrovski kept an eye on her brother all these years? Having a Party sympathizer of Saul’s caliber on the inside of Los Alamos would have been very useful to the communists. Maybe this was why Saul was showing so much enthusiasm for sharing scientific secrets with the Soviets.

  “I’m not surprised he remembered you,” she said.

  “I wasn’t either,” her brother said. “But I was surprised that he remembered you.”

  * * *

  “Dubrovski remembered you?” a voice asked.

  Not Saul’s voice. Saul was dead. It took Mariasha a moment to clear her head and return to the present.

  “You told me Dubrovski had been watching you at the Popular Front meeting years ago,” her grandson said.

  “That’s right.” There was a dull ache in her shoulder. She massaged it.

  “Why?” Julian asked.

  She considered how best to answer this. “I was very attractive as a young woman. I didn’t recognize it at the time. I always thought of myself as too skinny and plain, but when I look at photos or remember back, I can understand why men often stared at me.”

  “So what happened between Saul and Dubrovski?” Julian asked. “Saul was obviously sympathetic to the communist cause. Did Dubrovski recruit him to be a spy?”

  Julian was pressing her for the truth, but she could never reveal everything to him. “Dubrovski tried to recruit him,” she said finally.

  “And?”

  “Saul told me about Dubrovski’s proposition. Part of him wanted to do it, but Saul also understood the risk he’d be taking. I told him idealism was overrated. He needed to consider the evil forces he was up against. I didn’t trust the Soviets.”

  Her grandson had leaned forward waiting for an answer to his question. “So did he?” Julian asked again. “Did Saul spy for the communists?”

  Mariasha moistened her lips with her tongue and forced the words out. “No. He did not.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Arnie Weissman’s theories spun through Annette’s head as she stepped out of his apartment building into the frosty, late-afternoon air. A government conspiracy? Bill had also suggested as much, but that would be almost impossible for her to prove. The best way to publicly vindicate her grandfather was to identify the true spy. But how could she find the traitor who had evaded identification for over sixty years? Most everyone associated with the trial was dead. And Mariasha Lowe, who may or may not have been close enough to the family to know the truth, was no longer an option.