An Atomic Romance

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  “At first I was going to write you off, but then I decided I’d give you another chance. Our zip codes are touching and nuzzling. We’ve probably passed on the road a hundred times. We may as well meet and say hello sometime. It was ‘Kubla Khan’ that did it for me. A man who would like a poem is unique in my world. I like Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’ as well as pie. I Sing the Body Electric. Do you think men and women stand a chance together? Have you met others in this manner? Actually, I think we should get to know one another a bit on the Net before we go through with it.”

  Hot Mama went on for two or three screens. Reed skimmed. Apparently Leaves of Grass expressed her soul. But she offered few specifics. Reed clicked another reply to his ad. And he laid eyes on Jennifer—melon curves, apricot hair, apple cheeks, grapefruit boobs, cherry lips. She had sent her photograph, with a teaser, “Hey, Atomic Man. What do you think?” Reed fired back a reply and by the next afternoon he had met Jennifer at a coffee place downtown near the hospital. Atomic Man to the rescue, he thought.

  She was young, with a short butter-blond bob and brownish lipstick. She said she was just out of college and had a job at an investment company downtown. She had on dark office-wear, with a plunging neckline that revealed her soft breasts. Sipping her iced mocha, she told him about her trip to Cancún her senior year.

  “It was the coolest time of my life,” she said, playing with her straw. “You know, the kind of thing you know you’ll never have again unless you like work at it and really try? I can’t tell you how cool it was.”

  “Try,” Reed said.

  She prattled about some of the memorable things she and her roommate did in Cancún, as if nothing they had done was either stupid or trite, or there had never been a spring-break movie.

  “My roommate got TMJ—that pain you get in your jaw?—from sucking cock.” She didn’t avert her eyes from his. “There’s this bar, the Happy Top. And after everybody’s been through a couple of pitchers, a row of guys like holds on to a sort of bar overhead, and the girls line up and do blow jobs on them. The last guy to keep holding on to the bar wins.”

  “Wins what?”

  She slapped his arm playfully.

  “Did the guys have their pants on?”

  “Bathing suits.”

  “Damn, I missed a lot in college,” he said.

  “You could probably get a cheap ticket to Cancún,” she said.

  “Yeah, they’d see an old guy like me coming and call the police.”

  Reed’s erection could have levitated the table. But it wilted. He realized suddenly that he knew who she was. The lift of her eyebrows, the lilt of her voice—he remembered a sulky teenager sprawled in front of the TV. Reed used to fuck her mother on winter afternoons, and on one occasion the children came home from school early. In a moment he would remember the mother’s name. He remembered a velvet parting beneath loud-colored underwear—lime, orange, bright pink. Sue?

  Reed bowed out of the coffee shop—gracefully, he thought, and unrecognized, he thought—paying for their coffee and buying Jennifer a poppy-seed muffin with caramel icing to take home with her. Nice to meet you.

  Julia. Julia. It had surprised him that someone so brainy could enjoy sex so much. He was used to women whose minds dwelt on clothes and schedules and recipes. Their heads were all wound up with intricate little rules, and sex was somehow an elaborate concoction, a romantic idea that was supposed to take shape the way an extravagant gourmet creation did on a TV cooking show. But not Julia. No matter how involved she was in some theoretical problem in her books, or a messy case of administrative incompetence at work, she seemed able to be right there in the moment. She would gaze straight at him and smile. They would be looking at each other as they jockeyed into position. Some women just wanted to close their eyes. But Julia had treated him like a rare individual, and she made him feel that she was thrilled in every way to be with him—their bodies, their minds, their hearts, their histories, their memories, their dreams. Maybe he had never been truly in love before. Entirely immersed in her, he had spun through shifts at work like a weaver at a loom, unaware of repetition, feeling outside of time.

  9

  Reed tiptoed past the sleeping redhead in the bed near the door. A basket of lilies with a tag sat on her tray table. A curtain separated the two women in the room.

  When Reed gave his mother a peck on the cheek, she whispered, “She’s not getting any better. The doctor said she had the dwindles.”

  “I believe it.”

  “Find my tweezers,” his mother said. “I want you to pluck out this hair on my chin.”

  He found the tweezers among her personal things in a drawer, along with a plastic tray of toiletries provided by the hospital. The toothpaste tube appeared to be unused. He didn’t have his reading glasses—despised and clumsy and slightly effeminate—with him, but after redirecting the light, he located the stiff white hair on her chin. When he gave the hair its liberating tug, she winced. He pulled out a few more, aware that he was jerking them too roughly.

  “I need to get you a razor, Ma.”

  “I don’t want to shave every day.”

  A young aide flitted in with a small white paper cup. “Time for your medication, sweetheart.”

  “When did that start?” Reed said to the aide. Her collar hid her badge and he couldn’t see her name.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Sweetheart. Everybody is sweetheart. Or sugar, or sweetie. Or darling. Where did that come from?”

  “We like a little personal touch.” She flipped a quick smile at him and turned to his mother. “This here’s a horse pill, ain’t it, hon? Do you want me to cut it in two?”

  “No, that’s O.K.”

  Reed’s mother swallowed the pill and lay back on the pillow, closing her eyes. As she shifted her legs, her gown fell open, and he glimpsed between her legs. “Oops! I took your picture,” she said, with a little titter.

  “Bye, sweetheart,” Reed said to the aide as she danced away.

  He stared through the doorway a while, holding the image of her blue-clad butt twisting out of sight. Then he turned to his mother.

  “Did anybody comb your hair today, Mom?”

  “No. Nobody was here.”

  “Did they give you a bath?”

  “No. Maybe they did.”

  He wet a washcloth and rubbed her face. It felt odd to touch his mother’s face—her skin so soft, her cheeks curved like breasts, her mouth hanging open. He got a whiff of her breath, like onions and fish souring together. The dead woman in the dream still invaded his thoughts from time to time. He found himself measuring his life—and his mother’s life, and everything he held dear—in terms of the imagined woman who chose to die. But he always believed his mother had the strength of a steel cable hauling a train up a mountainside. She was the fun in funicular, he thought.

  “You’re good to me,” she said, touching his arm.

  “Hang in there, Ma,” he said. “I’ve got you covered.”

  That was what the TV evangelists said: the Lord has got you covered. If you lose your credit card, he’s got you covered. If you get cancer, he’s got you covered. The cover-your-ass school of theology, Reed thought.

  Later, in the lounge, a wide-bodied family gorging on three gigantic pizzas offered him a wedge of pizza.

  “Go ahead and eat some,” they urged him. “There’s plenty.”

  He shook his head, thinking he would go home later and have some leftover carry-out spaghetti carbonara with a glass of burgundy, if his mother didn’t need him again tonight. His shift wasn’t until seven the next evening, but he couldn’t think that far ahead—how would he cover his ass if he took off from work another night? Maybe God could cover for him, if he wasn’t too busy.

  When he returned to his mother’s room, he met a male nurse and a lab tech wheeling an ultrasound contraption out the door. Reed was always surprised to see a male nurse.

  “Radiology just scanned her bladder,” the nur
se explained after Reed identified himself. “She doesn’t need the catheter anymore.”

  Reed saw that the scanner was equipped with an enormous black plastic ultrasound probe. Reed thought of aliens kidnapping people and scanning them on their intergalactic operating tables.

  He said, “Could you please see that her teeth are brushed? She has a bridge, and I don’t think it’s been out once since she’s been here. She’ll be growing a garden in there before long.”

  “One of the aides will be around later.”

  Reed hammered down a sudden surge of anger. He had no confidence that his mother’s teeth would ever get brushed. The nurses and aides changed like runners in a relay race. He did not recognize this nurse. There was no one watching out for his mother except himself. Grimly, he set about the task of brushing her teeth.

  “I’ll do it later,” she said. “I’m sleepy. Go away and let me snooze.”

  He drove home, aware that he ought to investigate the nursing homes the next day. A few years before, he had gone with his mother to visit her aunt Willoughby at a small rest home. The smell of urine assaulted them at the door, and as they passed the kitchen, he saw the cooks frying bologna. He remembered a scrawny man wheeling up to him and pleading, “Find my glasses!” Maybe the other places weren’t that bad, he thought. He would not call his sister until after he had seen some of them. Shirley would be all for a nursing home, he felt sure. Or at least, she would be all for leaving the problem up to him.

  It was a bright, full-moon night. He remembered that the penumbral eclipse was coming soon—maybe minutes from now. He kept glancing at the moon during the drive, but it still shone brilliantly. The ancients believed the moon was the eye of God. Who would worship a god with only one eye? Cyclopsians? Cycloppers? He parked in his weed-thronged driveway. He had bought this weathered old place four years ago, after he relinquished the brick ranch house to Glenda, so that she could sell it and buy a farmette in her home state of Iowa. Now she was raising Nubian goats, of all things. As Reed jumped out of the truck, Clarence roared with joy. Reed opened the backyard gate and let the dog jump on him.

  “Come on, boy, let’s go see about this moon.”

  The eclipse should start any minute. The moon would turn blood red. He thought he saw a faint red rim around the moon, but he decided his eyes were playing tricks. He walked down the street, glancing upward every few steps. Clarence frisked along, pausing to nose aromatic spots along the edges of the lawns. Reed didn’t leash him unless people were around. At the end of the block, they reached a large vacant lot, an open field, with an unobstructed view of the sky. Clarence raced around in extravagant figure eights for a few minutes.

  “Hey, Clarence! Aren’t you supposed to bay at the moon? Bay before it’s too late, boy. Bay!”

  Clarence barked. “I didn’t say bark, Clarence. I said bay. Oooo—ooo.” Reed tried to howl at the moon.

  The rim of the earth’s shadow had reached the moon, clipping off a sliver of the round white disc. Engrossed, Reed forgot to watch his footing. He was vaguely aware that he had stepped in dog shit. But he stayed out in the field for a long while, while Clarence romped around him and the penumbra slid gradually across the moon, at last engulfing it. The moon was the color of terra-cotta. He could see through the shadow onto the patterned surface of the moon. The moon had a lace curtain drawn across its face.

  10

  The morning newspaper threw another front-page zinger. Technetium-99 that had been found in an underground plume of water was flowing toward the river at the rate of a foot a day.

  “Shit,” said Reed aloud.

  He read on. The radioactive metal had been found in a vegetable garden near the plant; rutabagas, tested a year ago, contained technetium. Reporters had teased out the data from piles of obscure technical reports. Technetium was also found in white icicle radishes. Reed remembered the volunteer tomatoes that used to grow near the sewage tank at the plant. And more volunteers sprang up in the compost behind the cafeteria. The cooks had used the fresh tomatoes from their cafeteria garden and had even planted cabbages and carrots, which grew to an enormous size. Everyone kidded the cooks about their radioactive vegetables.

  A box on the front page announced a public meeting that night at the school near the plant. A representative from the Department of Energy would answer questions about the toxic-waste cleanup, medical compensation, and current safety, but would not address the future of the centrifuge.

  The telephone rang. “Got your television on?” Darrell, a coworker, asked when Reed answered.

  “It’s busted.”

  “Oh, I forgot about you and your war on television. Well, you probably didn’t hear the latest.”

  “I take the paper and hear the radio. You mean technetium in the plume?”

  “Yeah. We need a bookmaker to bet on when it’ll get into the aquifer. Are you going to that meeting?”

  “No. I’m on shift tonight. You go and tell me about it.”

  “I don’t know if anybody from the plant ought to be going. We might get in trouble. I can’t afford to lose my job.”

  Darrell got on Reed’s nerves because he was always suspicious, filled with resentment about virtually everything. He complained all night at work—the long hours, the cost of roofing, his wife’s demand that he go with her to the mall on weekends (quality time together, she called it), the rotten weather. Something was always happening to Darrell: stolen wallet, kid who needed orthopedic surgery, mother-in-law with cancer, car with dead battery.

  “Some of us need to go just to provide a sense of humor,” Reed said. “You know, to show the funny side of nuclear catastrophe.”

  “We could forklift a rusty canister of worn-out UF6 over to their meeting,” Darrell said.

  “And lay it sweetly at their feet,” Reed said. “Now you’re talking.”

  He hung up, finished reading the newspaper, then called the hospital. He waited on hold for some time, listening to a rolling message about hospital services. Local news on the radio mentioned the public meeting but not the technetium. Finally a nurse reported that his mother had eaten a good breakfast. “She’s asleep now. There’s nothing new on her chart from the doctor.”

  “Did somebody brush her teeth?”

  “That wouldn’t be on her chart.”

  He had vowed to visit some nursing homes today. He had had plenty of sleep and felt he could last all day and through his night shift. But he wasn’t eager to begin the mission. Although his tank was still a quarter full, he drove out of his way to get gas at a mini-mart that was his favorite place for filling up. From time to time since his divorce he had gone out with an ex-stripper who worked there. Rosalyn still looked good, although her butt was flattening somewhat, Reed had noticed. She had had a few nips and tucks—and a Botox-frozen forehead—and appeared much younger than her age, which he thought was over fifty.

  When he went inside the mini-mart to pay for his gas, Rosalyn pointed to the lead story in the newspaper splayed on the counter. “Who around here grows rutabagas?” she asked him.

  “Isn’t that another name for hooters?”

  “No. Rutabaga sounds dirty—like hogs.” She laughed.

  Reed thought he should spend more time with Rosalyn. She was probably the nicest person he knew, always sweet-tempered, large in spirit. She had raised four children as a single parent.

  “How’s your mom doing, Reed?”

  “Better. But they’re wanting to put her in a nursing home, and I know she won’t go.” He explained about the rehab.

  “That’s a hard one. I’m really sorry about that. But they can probably help her.”

  “Yeah.”

  She folded the newspaper. “Reed, you watch out what they’re doing out at the plant,” she said, with concern. “There doesn’t seem to be any end to this.”

  “Oh, they take good care of me,” Reed said.

  “I see guys come in the store to cash their checks, and it’s pitiful what they make at som
e of these places around—like the sock factory and the plastics place? But at the atomic plant they always made really good.”

  “I can’t complain. I worked five twelves a week last month.” He grinned. “With time and a half, I’m rolling in it.”

  She was regarding him apprehensively.

  “Got to finish paying off my kids’ college,” he said.

  “Are you going to that meeting tonight?”

  “No, I’m on tonight. Anyway, I don’t think anybody can get a straight answer out of the government.”

  He gave Rosalyn a twenty and a five for his gas. She gave him a dollar and eighteen cents and dropped his receipt into the waste can. He pocketed his change, wadding the dollar down into his jeans.

  “I hope your mom is feeling better, Reed,” she said as he backed out the door with a wave. “Don’t eat any rutabagas!”

  Technetium could be used to keep iron from rusting, he thought as he turned the key in his car. He knew about the technetium. It had been there for years, and he didn’t want to think about it.

  At the light, an eighteen-wheeler was making a turn through the intersection, barely clearing Reed’s front end. Reed hit the horn a glancing blow, a slight warning bleep.

  He stopped at the Handy Gunner, a collectors’ gun shop, located in a basement below a dry cleaner’s. When Reed entered the shop carrying an army-issue pistol he wanted to sell, the owner, Andy, raised his hands in mock surrender.

  “I give up,” he said with a large grin.

  “I got you covered, Andy,” said Reed, laying the pistol on the counter. “How’s it going?”

  Andy’s girlfriend Brenda was in the shop. She was wearing a pink filmy top with clusters of tiny feathers knotted to the yoke. He knew she loved to shoot, and he had gone out with her and Andy once to the old munitions works to shoot targets. She never got angry with Andy about it the way Julia had with Reed. Now she was examining a small pistol, testing its weight and the texture of the shaft. She caressed the little barrel. Her long fingernails were polished pink.