Universe of Two

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  But I had done one thing right: I had married Charlie Fish. Lizzie, the Morrises, they stopped in each day. They chatted with my mother, which felt odd, two different parts of my life connecting, my elbow meeting my knee. She was there most of the time. But Charlie? Always. I measured my healing progress by the expression on his face. The less worry he showed, the less worry I felt.

  One morning they made me stand. The pain made me think of magicians, and their trick of sawing a woman in half. They made me prove I could get on and off the john. That afternoon, I walked all the way to the nurses’ station, gripping my mother’s arm for balance.

  “You’re doing great,” she encouraged me. “I know how you feel, too, because the incision is like a C-section. Which I had when I was delivering you.”

  I stopped in the hallway. “I never knew that.”

  She shrugged. “It never merited discussion before.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Every time I look down, in the shower or changing clothes or whatever, I see a reminder of the birth of my baby girl.”

  We started shuffling along again. “Mother, are you going sweet in your old age?”

  “You had me worried, kiddo. And with all of you gone, Chicago has been quiet.”

  “Are you all right?”

  She swatted at the air. “Let’s just say your mother appreciates her family.”

  “You are going sweet—”

  “For the love of Pete.” She stepped sideways. “Charlie, you guide her for a while.”

  He’d been right behind us all along.

  “I’m going to the waiting room for a smoke,” my mother said, leaving the two of us alone in the corridor.

  “Shall we turn back now?” Charlie asked.

  It was like someone uncorked a bathtub, my energy drained so fast. “Good idea. What have you told her, anyhow?”

  “She knows we’re married, if that’s what you mean. And since you got pregnant, I imagine she knows that we—”

  “Enough,” I said, but the exertion of saying it made me pause for breath. “How come you don’t have to get back to The Hill?”

  “I’ll need to, soon. Though I’d sure rather stay here.”

  We passed rooms with the doors half-closed. Inside one, someone was coughing hard. Then I shuffled on, with pathetic, tiny steps. “He said we might still have kids.”

  “I had no idea we were so close.”

  “Neither did I.”

  We smiled at each other in that hallway, a sad smile, but underneath it was something new between us. Like we were growing roots. I felt happy and sad and deepened all at the same time.

  We’d reached my room and Charlie helped me back into bed. I held on to him a second more, which made him lean down, so he bent all the way and kissed me.

  “Don’t,” I said. “I haven’t washed or brushed my teeth or anything.”

  “But you’re alive,” he said, and kissed me again. Like he meant it.

  Which of course was the moment my mother barged back into the room. Seeing her daughter on a bed, holding a man who is kissing her, I imagine required some mental adjustment. It did for me.

  “Excuse me,” she said, backpedaling. “I should have knocked.”

  “Not at all,” Charlie said, strangely at ease in that awkward moment. “I needed to check on the patient’s condition, that’s all.”

  She laughed. “What’s your diagnosis?”

  “As sassy as ever.”

  “Some conditions just can’t be cured, kiddo.”

  “You two,” I said. “Don’t you go ganging up on me.”

  Finally the nurses told me I’d be going home the next day. Well, back to the boardinghouse anyhow. My mother went to make sure my room was ready.

  “I need to go back tomorrow too,” Charlie said. “But your mom’s going to stay another few days, and I’ll be down on Saturday like usual.”

  I patted the bed, and he sat on the edge of the mattress. “You know what I want?”

  “To be fully recovered?”

  I rested the side of my fist on his thigh. “For this war to be over, so we can start our lives together right.”

  Charlie’s face went blank. He didn’t answer me.

  “Hello?” I said. “You don’t agree?”

  He sat there, staring off, and only gradually returned to me. “Sure. Of course, yes. But ending the war . . . that’s more complicated.”

  “The hell it is. We pound them until they surrender. Then everyone—Lizzie, my mother, my brother, my dad, you and me—we can bring things back to normal again.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Then let me say that ending it is more complicated for me.”

  “What in the world does that mean?”

  “I don’t even know.” He stood, backing away from the bed. “I’m going to get a little air, okay? Be right back.”

  He rushed out of the room, the first time he’d left my side in nine days. What had I said?

  That night the ward was strangely quiet. No nurses disturbed my sleep with a thermometer or stethoscope or blood pressure sleeve. Usually in the small hours I could hear the radio down at the nurses’ station, big band jazz turned down low, but not that night. I didn’t hear the ping of call buttons, either, which was unusual. Even in bed, I could tell something was going on, something was different.

  Then I slept, and by morning I’d forgotten about it, and was busy getting ready to go home. After breakfast they brought a wheelchair for me. Which Charlie pushed so slowly I wanted to smack him. Once again the Morrises lent us the old Hudson. I told everyone not to make a fuss, but to be honest it took some doing to land me in the big backseat. Charlie drove, slow as a snail while my mother had a cigarette, blowing her smoke out the open window.

  Lizzie was at work, but the Morrises were home—and behaved odd as a pair of harlequin ducks. They hovered and fluttered, and created a traffic jam at the door. I didn’t understand why till I reached the foot of the stairs and glanced to the left. Their living room was packed. Funeral, wedding, nothing had brought that big a crowd to the house before. My first thought was that I would have to play for a service of some kind.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Somebody die?”

  “Don’t you worry about any of that,” Mrs. Morris said. “Not your business.”

  “They’re all basses, wanting to audition for the choir,” Reverend Morris joked.

  “Yes, and today is Christmas Day,” I said. But then I was concentrating on climbing the stairs, and lifting a leg that high required more stomach muscles than I realized, which meant a serious flare of pain with each step, and the exertion of two flights required all of my attention.

  Soon they had me situated in bed, with extra pillows, a jug of water, and a little metal commode to spare me trips to the john. Charlie was going to be late for his bus. My mother tried to shoo him along, saying I’d be fine, but he stuck around till I was set and secure. I admit it, I was exhausted.

  “I hate to go,” he said. “But I think you’ll be okay.”

  “Course she will,” my mother said. “I’ll be here three more days, and then you’ll be back. Once this war is done, we’ll all be together in Chicago, happily arguing with one another.”

  Charlie winced at that. Why would he not want the war to be over?

  He gave my mother a long hug. “You’re family now, Charlie,” she said, patting him on the back.

  “I like it,” he answered, grinning. “I’m a Dubie and she’s a Fish.”

  She ducked back into the hallway while he came and leaned over me. “Your job is to get well, Brenda. We’ll both do our jobs, and everything will turn out all right.”

  I caressed the side of his face. “Come back soon.”

  He kissed me once more, and paused in the doorway, one hand holding the frame. “Now I know I am definitely a man in wartime.”

  “Why is that?” I called weakly from the bed.

  “Because I am leaving the woman I love.”

&
nbsp; It was the first time he’d said it. He’d done it perfectly too. I saw his words register on my mother’s face in the hall. Charlie hesitated for half a breath, poised there, waiting. Then he knocked twice on the door frame and I heard him running down the stairs. By the time the outer door slammed I knew what his hesitation had been—a moment for me to announce something similar, to express my thanks for all his tender care, to say, “Charlie, I love you too.”

  But my mother had been there, and I’d felt self-conscious. So even after all the devoted hours he’d spent by my side, long days and nights of steadfastness, Charlie went back to The Hill without a declaration of love from his wife. What kind of monster was I? What childish, selfish person?

  My mother came in, tucking sheets and fluffing pillows, matter-of-fact. Which told me that she had noticed my failure to respond too.

  “There,” she said when everything was snug. “I’m going downstairs for a smoke, then I’ll be back.”

  Oh, Charlie. That moment, when my heart hurt more than any other part of my body? That was the first time this girl knew what it is like to lie in a bed of remorse.

  46.

  On the eighth of August, the bus to Los Alamos was nearly empty. Two local men sat in the rearmost seats, a canvas duffel of plumbing tools on the floor between them. The driver ground through the gears, swearing mildly at a reluctant clutch. Otherwise Charlie was alone. The route out of Santa Fe narrowed, the roadside homes and shops dwindling, and then none. The bus turned west across the Rio Grande, laboring as it climbed the winding road to The Hill.

  Charlie showed his pass at the front gate, found himself waved summarily through, and thought the soldiers seemed less hostile. Maybe the Trinity test impressed them enough that they realized the scientists were not a complete waste of food.

  The bus stuttered to a stop outside the mess hall, and Charlie descended into a strange quiet. Normally in midafternoon on a Wednesday, the place would be bustling. He heard two cooks arguing, but none of the other normal hubbub. No one was walking around. He’d been away nine days, an eternity in the tight timetable of The Hill. Now it seemed the world had ended while he was gone.

  Hitching up his pants, he set out for the barracks. They were nearly empty, two men on cots at the far end, both snoring loudly enough that Charlie thought each should have wakened the other. On his tightly made bed, the blanket was unmarked by visits from Midnight. Changing his shirt, he headed for the lab. What assignment would Bronsky have for him, now that the detonators were finished?

  As he passed Ashley Pond, he noticed a gathering in Fuller Lodge. Chairs stood in rows, many of them filled, while someone’s lecture droned at the front of the room. On a Wednesday. Normally he would have swept by to eavesdrop. Instead he picked up his pace till he reached the tech area gate. The guard barely glanced at Charlie’s pass before waving him in. Something was definitely going on.

  When he reached his desk, the only orders on it were the usual weekly directions for dealing with documents—which to preserve, which to destroy. No checklist of tasks, no criticisms of recent work. Under that sheet, the mess of calculations and designs he’d left incomplete when he’d heard about Brenda. He fell into his chair, flummoxed.

  “Hard to get comfy now, isn’t it?”

  He turned and Mather sauntered in. The man was like a rash that would not quit. But Charlie knew he would explain things. “Where is everyone?”

  Mather shrugged. “On a hike? Taking a nap? Drinking themselves blind?”

  “On a Wednesday?”

  “You poor boy,” Mather said, his grin revealing an evil delight. “You don’t know.”

  “Know what? I’ve been at the hospital with Brenda.”

  “I heard. Everything peachy now?”

  “Not quite peachy,” Charlie said. “Please don’t be coy. What is going on?”

  Mather held up one finger. “Wait right here.” And he scuttled away down the hall.

  Had The Hill’s work been shut down? Had Truman done something? He went to fill his cup at the lab sink, but when he turned the knob nothing came out.

  “The water shortage is worse,” Mather said, returning with his arms full of newspapers. “Apparently a tanker truck is on its way. But no more showers this week.”

  He reached the assembly table, and dropped the papers so that they landed with a slap. “Feast your eyes, Fish. Come learn what Trigger has done.”

  His heart fluttering, Charlie saw himself as if from outside his body, crossing the room and bending over the newspapers. On top, the New York Times. Its headline was in capital letters, stacked in three lines across the top of the page:

  FIRST ATOMIC BOMB DROPPED ON JAPAN;

  MISSILE IS EQUAL TO 20,000 TONS OF TNT;

  TRUMAN WARNS FOE OF A “RAIN OF RUIN”

  “It happened,” Charlie said, rubbing his neck. “The blade came down.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mather asked.

  Charlie read on. On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., Japan time, the Enola Gay released an atomic bomb over Hiroshima. It detonated while six hundred yards in the air. The fireball reached three hundred thousand degrees, making a ground temperature of five thousand four hundred. It demolished every building for two miles.

  He opened to the inside pages. There were many stories, including one explicitly stating that the bomb had been developed in Los Alamos. “I need to warn Brenda.”

  Mather chuckled. “She knows, I’m sure. Unless she’s been under a rock.”

  “In fact, she has.”

  There was no immediate estimate of the number of people killed, but the articles quoted President Truman at length. “We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have aboveground in any city. We shall destroy Japan’s power to make war.”

  Charlie sat back. “I can’t continue.”

  “But we’re only getting started.” Mather flipped the Times aside, and there lay the Albuquerque Journal: “U.S. Announces Atom Bomb; Hope for Earlier End to War.”

  Charlie pushed it away, only to see the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which also used capital letters. “deadly new atomic bombs begin devastation of japan.”

  Charlie straightened. “I don’t need a newspaper to tell me what the Gadget does.”

  “Then try these. A day later.”

  The first thing Charlie saw was a death toll estimate of one hundred thousand people. One hundred thousand. One blurry photo showed a city leveled, every structure gone but one or two chimneys standing bent and alone. Complete destruction.

  “Dear God,” he said. “Have the Japs surrendered?”

  Mather snorted. “Incredibly, no. Call it an indication of how persuasive a demonstration would have been.”

  Charlie scanned the various front pages, fanned on the table like a hand of playing cards. “We don’t know that.”

  “The emperor saw an entire city destroyed, and still did not quit. So actually, Fish, we do know.”

  “We will never know for certain.”

  Mather shook his head. “You sound like the editorials. All bleeding hearts.”

  Charlie shuffled through the pages. “Where are they?”

  “Move over.” Mather flipped to the bottom of the stack. “Here are a few. All half-informed, and too late to matter.”

  Charlie closed his eyes. If Giles had delivered this news, he might have cried. If it were Monroe, they would have wept together. Why did it have to be Mather?

  “Let me see.” Blinking, he leaned over the opinion page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. But he had begun to tear up, and could read only fragments. The editorial asked the reader to imagine Denver obliterated in an instant. Science had “signed the mammalian world’s death certificate, and deeded an earth in ruins to the ants.”

  He opened the Milwaukee Journal. There was a map of Milwaukee, with circles to show which parts of the city would be obliterated, which ones ruined, which ones burned. The editorial predicted “a self-p
erpetuating chain of atomic destruction” that could destroy the planet like “a forest fire sweeping before high winds.”

  Last came the United States News. “We cannot be proud of what we have done. If we state our inner thoughts honestly, we are ashamed of it. . . . Since we lately had been warning the people of Japan against air attacks on certain cities, we might have warned them against staying in the specific area where we first wished to demonstrate the destruction that could ensue from the continued use of the atomic bomb.”

  Charlie wiped his face on his sleeve. “Wow.”

  “Yes.” Mather nodded. “Apparently everyone has forgotten that our firebombing was every bit as catastrophic. Use a new tool, and your critics suddenly have amnesia.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant,” Charlie said.

  Mather sniffed. “One struggles to comprehend precisely what you do in fact mean by the great philosophical treatise known as ‘wow.’”

  “How did you manage to come by all of these papers?”

  “Bronsky trusts me.” He shrugged. “The army sent someone to Albuquerque to bring him the latest news.”

  Charlie found himself tidying the papers, folding them closed again.

  “It’s all right,” Mather said. “He was finished with them anyway.”

  Charlie kept folding. “I want to put it all away.”

  “There’s more, you know. Not news, but evidence of your role.”

  Don’t answer, Charlie said to himself. Don’t take the bait. He went to his desk and, as ordered, began sorting papers into two piles: keep, destroy, keep, destroy.

  “Your math, you see,” Mather continued. “It was instrumental.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “Of course you do,” Mather scoffed. “It’s history now anyway. Remember that day, long ago in Chicago, when you had to calculate the timing of an object falling from thirty-five thousand feet to other various heights?”

  “Of course,” Charlie said. “With no idea why. It was absurd.”

  “We weren’t permitted to tell you,” Mather replied. “That wasn’t absurdity. It was caution.”

  “Caution? With me? I’ve been loyal, and kept all my secrets.”