An Atomic Romance

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  “I’m studying for exams and I work at the lab all week,” Julia said.

  “Julia studies salamanders,” Reed said to his mother.

  “Is that on the menu?”

  When Reed and Julia burst out laughing, Reed’s mother laughed too, insisting that she was just joking. “I’m not that addled,” she said.

  For several minutes, Julia trotted through an enthusiastic description of the genome project, which didn’t register with Reed’s mother. Reed had to admit that genetics didn’t inspire him—it was too much like genealogy—but he loved to watch Julia bubbling her information. The food arrived then.

  During the meal, Reed’s mom said to Julia, “You eat like a wood-pecker.”

  Julia choked on her food. A dot of flounder flew from her lips.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Julia said. “I wasn’t laughing at you.”

  “You’ve been listening to your bird clock, Mom,” Reed said. “But you may be right about Julia. You should see the holes in my siding.”

  Now his mother laughed. She tried to do the Woody Wood-pecker call, and her face turned red. Julia cracked up.

  “Bring us all some pie,” Reed said to the waiter.

  22

  All over the city plutonium continued to be the topic of rumor and gossip, like a celebrity awash in the aftermath of a fresh transgression. The official word was minimal. “We’re looking into it.” “It’s not part of any present function of the plant.” “It’s of no danger to employees or the community.” The Department of Energy was sending a representative. According to a press release, the plutonium that had entered the plant was “an insignificant amount.”

  Reed swam through the theories and the official statements, the terse assurances of the well-oiled managers.

  “They’re saying it came in the fucking feed stock—back in the fifties,” Teddy said. “It’s been here all along, I heard.”

  “They brought in reactor tails,” Jeremy J. offered. He was leaving the day shift, and he ambled out the door indifferently.

  Reed pieced together a version of the story from the guys coming and going. It was part rumor, part speculation, part memories of men who remembered the tales from older, now retired workers. They claimed the plutonium had arrived over a period of twenty years in secret shipments of reactor tails—spent uranium fuel rods that had been used in nuclear reactors to make plutonium for atomic bombs. The plant recycled the fuel by retrieving the last remaining traces of valuable uranium. But plutonium—and other bomb-making by-products—had contaminated the material. When the stuff sped through gaseous diffusion, the contaminants lingered behind, clinging to the lining of the pipes in the Cascade.

  “The plutonium got into the nickel lining,” a chemical engineer with an office job explained to a group of process workers from Reed’s division. “You can’t get nickel really clean and purified. So my guess is there’s a residue of plutonium in the system—but that would be totally insignificant.”

  “So that accounts for the technetium too,” Reed said. And neptunium, he thought.

  “What about the warheads? Didn’t some of it come in on the warheads?” an older man in the gathering asked. His name was Bert, and he was an old-timer Cascade operator.

  “What were warheads doing here?” Reed demanded. “Warheads? What the fuck?”

  “Not my bailiwick,” the chemical engineer said.

  As the engineer bustled away with his clipboard and his advanced degree, Bert turned to Reed. He was gray haired, probably in his early sixties.

  “I know who knows all of that, Reed,” he said. “Wes Thornhill. You know him. He used to work with your daddy.”

  Reed nodded. He hadn’t seen Thornhill in years.

  “He probably knows all about it,” Bert said. “They were both here when those reactor tails came in. And the warheads. I heard a lot about the warheads.”

  “Thanks, Bert. I’ll look him up.” Reed disappeared into the break-room kitchen and found a bag of pretzels and a ginger ale.

  In full C-zone dress, he squeezed through narrow niches inside a dusty cell on the cell floor, where the UF6 gas rushed through the pipes in dizzying monotony, washing through the barrier sieves again and again until the uranium-235 isotopes were isolated. Tonight, the process seemed different. If transuranics had somehow gotten into the Cascade, the atoms would have become embedded in the walls of the pipes, jostling loose here and there and sloshing finally into the wastewater that poured through drainage ditches through the wildlife refuge and out to the river. Some of the atoms might be in the aqua cylinders near the parking lot. Plutonium, slower than a tortoise wearing lead boots, was so very heavy that it probably had not traveled very far. When Reed wriggled inchmeal from the cramped space, he imagined he could feel hot wind blowing through fissures in his moon suit.

  23

  It was nearly two weeks before his schedule meshed with Julia’s again, but they had talked on the telephone twice late at night. He supposed it was a version of phone sex. She had described, her voice sensuous and breathy, the replication of some bacteriophages she was studying.

  He scoured the toilet and changed the sheets, even though they weren’t really dirty. When she arrived, he was waiting for her outside in the blazing late-afternoon sun. Her dusty chartreuse Beetle needed hosing down, he noticed. She had on a clashing color, a skinny red tank top, with faded jeans and her usual worn brown clogs with the loose straps.

  Reed pointed out Clarence’s dust bowl beneath the mimosa. “The heat wave’s getting to him, but he’s so macho he won’t admit he’s about to faint.”

  Reed curved his arm around Julia, feeling her warmth radiate through him, as though the freckles on her arms were sparks. He sang the syllables of her name.

  “I brought you some fennel toothpaste,” she said, taking the tube from her purse. “It’s natural stuff, with no carcinogens.”

  “Good. I’ll use it to clean the plutonium out of my tooth sockets.”

  In the kitchen she hooked her shoulder bag on a ladder-back chair and set her satchel of books and papers on the table. She frowned at a speck on her arm.

  “Find a microscopic toxic-waste dump there?” he asked, touching her arm. He was going to kiss it, but she pulled away.

  “Why did you say that about your tooth sockets?”

  “Just joking. Hey, why so uptight?”

  “Plutonium collects in the bones, doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe. I was just making a joke.”

  “Do you think there’s any plutonium out there at that place where you had me frolicking around so innocently?” she asked.

  “I told you there’s just old TNT chemicals out there.”

  While reminding her that those chemicals at the munitions works predated the atomic plant, he was aware of the flexing of her nostrils.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” he said. “It’s thinned out by now. And that stuff’s not radioactive anyway.”

  “But someone told me yesterday that the plant dumped tons of radioactive slag in those bunkers out there.”

  “Oh, slag is everywhere. I doubt if it would cause a Geiger counter to panic.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  Some of the administrative personnel had desk doodads fashioned from gray slag—helpless-looking elephants and dinosaurs. Slag was merely a by-product of conversion, turning used UF6 into D.U. metal and greensalt. Reed was used to seeing piles of it around.

  “So what are they saying at work about all this now?” she asked.

  “There’s a lot of buzz. Nobody really knows anything.”

  “Or wants to know?”

  “We’ve been over all of this before, Julia.”

  “I know. But I can’t get it out of my mind.”

  “This may be just a big scare that’s going to blow over, you know.” They were leaning against the kitchen counter. He touched her shoulder tentatively. “How do we know those guys with their Ge
iger counters were right about how many picocuries they found?”

  “Well, I myself wouldn’t want to work at a place that had any picocuries, whatever excuses anybody could think up.” She stiffened her spine, as if she had just remembered the rules of good posture.

  “It’s not much plutonium,” Reed said in a tone like hollow boasting. “Management said it couldn’t have been more than half a pound altogether.”

  He filled a measuring cup with water from the tap. “It couldn’t have been more than this,” he said. “Eight ounces.”

  “Fifteen ounces, I heard. This morning the TV said fifteen. If I remember my chem classes, that’s a lot of plutonium.”

  “Depends on how it’s distributed,” he said, pouring the water down the drain. He imagined the atoms of a pound of plutonium scattered through the spent fuel, like a pinch of salt mixed throughout the dark load of a coal barge.

  She said, “And the news guy on TV said nobody really knows how much got in. It could have been a lot more. A ton.”

  “A ton. You really believe that?”

  He gave her a bottle of beer and she rejected a glass. He opened a beer for himself. After they were settled down on the back porch, where there was a breeze, he said, “At Rocky Flats they had eighty-nine tons of it. They tried to mix it in big slabs of concrete and float them in water, to stabilize the stuff, but the concrete wouldn’t set up and it turned into jelly. They call it plutonium pudding.” He laughed.

  She said, “You told me once that working with uranium was hilarious, but I guess plutonium is just a real laugh riot. Those buggers could make a comedy duo. They could juggle isotopes.”

  “Buggers. Nobody around here says that. That must be a Chicago thing.”

  “You’re changing the subject. That means I’m too wound up.”

  She made the gesture of zipping her mouth shut. Learning made her excitable. He always loved the way she spewed out new information. But now he saw how distraught she was.

  “Let’s get this straight,” he said. “Don’t worry about one day out in the woods. There can’t be any plutonium out there at Fort Wolf; it’s so heavy it would take years to get out there. It’s all inside the fence, or close by.”

  “But it’s you I’m worried about. Working at that place.”

  “Well, thank you, but I think it’s been blown out of proportion.” He noticed his leg was jiggling, as though the vibrations in the Cascade had hijacked his nervous system.

  She was stroking the long neck of her beer bottle in an unconsciously suggestive way, Reed thought. It didn’t mean anything.

  She said, “I don’t understand your loyalty.”

  He rose from his deck chair to adjust the awning against the western sun, so that she wouldn’t be sitting with her face in the sun. He stared over the porch rail at the neighbor’s grass, which was being smothered by a growth of broadleaf weeds. He tried to think.

  Facing her, he said, “Working there is a sort of destiny.”

  “Destiny?” She laughed. “Go on. Tell me about karma. And predestination!”

  “I’ve told you—my uncle and my dad worked there. It’s what I was brought up to do.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  “What I’m saying is I have a responsibility. The safety of the plant depends on guys like me. We’re responsible for keeping the Cascade going, and that’s important. If you do a good job and keep the thing humming, then you do develop a little pride and loyalty. It’s just in the atmosphere of the place. I mean the Cold War and national defense—”

  “Better dead than Red—isn’t that a little outdated?”

  He ignored that. “Maybe I don’t mean destiny. It’s a legacy.”

  “That sounds like legacy waste.”

  “It boils down to this: the place is safe now. And if I picked up some bad stuff in the past, then I can’t undo that. It’s safe now, because of guys like me. Give me a little credit, Julia.”

  She didn’t reply. She was watching the sunset. He had bullied her again. He didn’t know why he was compelled to do that. He turned her toward him.

  Quietly, he said, “You know I’d do anything in the world to keep you safe. That’s my job. It’s the one thing I’m good at.”

  “That’s not all you’re good at,” she said, with a hint of a smile.

  “Let’s relax,” he said, touching her forehead lightly.

  “I’m sorry. I get wound up and I just go like a yo-yo.”

  “Come here. Let’s yo-yo together.” He nodded toward the bedroom.

  She squeezed his arm and nudged him with her shoulder like a cat rubbing on someone’s leg.

  A rampant red honeysuckle shaded the west side of his back porch, and later they sat there with a bottle of zinfandel. Julia approved of his choice. She admired his garden. Most of the tomato vines were drying up, but the beefsteak tomatoes were fat and heavy. He placed some marinated chicken breasts on the grill, although he had vowed to stop eating chicken because of all the poultry that fell off the trucks that carried them to be murdered. He washed a choice tomato for their meal and shucked the corn he had bought that afternoon. Earlier Julia had spent some time with her books, and now, while he manipulated the grill, she filed her nails and did some arm exercises, as if she couldn’t waste a minute. They had dropped the touchy subject of plutonium, but he was disturbed that he might have driven her into silence.

  The heat of the day made the sky shimmery and their skin glisten. As they ate, twilight disappeared into night. The fireflies were winking their frantic courtships. The stars were coming out, faintly, and Mars was setting.

  “What was the Greek name for Mars?” Reed asked. “Do you remember?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Just wondering about Greek gods.”

  She laughed. “Wondering if you’re one?”

  “I like to imagine myself out there, in the heavens, tooling around with Mars and Orion and all those guys.”

  “Parading around like a Greek god, huh? Were you in a fraternity in school?”

  “No. They wouldn’t have me.”

  She said, “When I look at the stars I think about the world coming to an end. I feel there’s so little time. I feel like everything is urgent.” She stared at her lap.

  “Relax, honey.” He scooted his chair nearer to hers and reached for her hand.

  She tuned up an octave or so. “You know very well that the pit facility I keep hearing about is just nuke-speak for bomb factory. I wouldn’t be surprised—I have no doubt—this country is already building a whole new generation of bombs. Didn’t you say the D.O.E. never tells what it’s up to?”

  “That’s the nature of the beast,” he said.

  She crossed her legs and then uncrossed them. “I read up on this, on the Internet. They’re talking about a ‘plutonium pit facility’ as a way of ‘refurbishing the arsenal.’ Did you ever hear such language? Refurbish the arsenal! It sounds like redecorating. But what they mean is they can go ahead and make little bombs without violating the nuclear freeze. Or seeming to. The whole nuclear show will be on then, and sooner or later—”

  “Honey, the mind can’t hold a thought like that.” He tried to caress her face, but she jerked away from him. “O.K.,” he said. “Turnabout is fair play. What good would it do to find a cure for Puumala or Ebola if you think the world is going to end soon anyway?”

  “Am I that paranoid?”

  “Shhh.” He drew her close to him, and she softened. “Look. Right now I’ve got you, and the stars are out. What could be better? And nothing should stop us from just enjoying the hell out of a good bottle of wine on a fine Friday night. We have to go about our business, no matter what might happen.”

  “Well, then, I have a question,” she said, touching his cheek. “What time does the Jiffy Lube open in the morning?”

  She gathered their plates, deftly arranging their stripped corncobs on top, and headed for the kitchen. “Don’t move,” she said. “I’ll do this.” Through the windo
w he saw her set the dishes on the counter and disappear into the bathroom. Reed stood and leaned against the porch rail to get a better view of the sky. Only a few stars were visible. Although the city lights obscured it, the Milky Way was spread out somewhere overhead, a blanket of vapor as insubstantial as morning fog. Julia’s pessimism wasn’t really like her, he thought. He threw a scrap of chicken skin over the porch rail to Clarence.

  Julia returned, the kitchen light flashing through the porch door into the darkness. She stood with her back to the rail, blotting out a section of stars. The evening was still sweltering, and he suggested they go for a drive by the river. He let the car’s air-conditioning run for a few minutes before they got inside. The bank marquee said 86 degrees. At the downtown riverfront, bunches of people were strolling. A piebald dog dashed by. Reed parked, and they walked along the riverfront, in the shadow of the concrete-and-steel sports stadium.

  “Have you been to any of the games here this summer?” he asked her.

  “No, I don’t have time to go to games.”

  “Gotta hurry up and cure the plague, I know.”

  She didn’t reply. Reed kicked himself. Where did he get this put-down style of his—from his father? He had no idea if his father ever cracked a joke. Across the river the lights of the chemical plant burnished the sky. Flames shot from a tower. On the river, a barge was gliding past, and in the distance one of the foghorns blasted. Sheet lightning flashed on the horizon, as if responding to the sound.

  Reed stared into the dark, swift water. He said, “I say all the wrong things, and I don’t know why. I don’t mean to do that.” He laid his arm around her shoulders. “But I don’t know what’s going on with us.”

  She was thinking for a while before she answered. “I’m under a lot of pressure,” she said. “I have to finish this lab experiment tomorrow on T-4 bacteriophages and—”

  He groaned. “I should have known it would be bacteriophages.”

  “My exam is Tuesday night. And I’m thinking about going to Chicago in a couple of weeks. My sister’s got something going on—I don’t know what it is, but I’m worried. I don’t know if she’s sick or depressed or just doesn’t want to tell the family some embarrassing secret, or what. I haven’t heard from her in two months, and I’ve called several times.”