Atomic Love

by Jennie Fields

  She sighs. “Reliability.”

  The first time she said that, he told her she should write it on a blackboard for students to memorize.

  “Yes, reliability. Exactly so. Surely your feelings haven’t changed.”

  “I loved that everything seemed solvable and measurable with time. But the destruction we created, Weaver . . . how do we measure that?”

  He looks up at her, frowning. “We had a war to win.”

  “Can you defend it so easily?”

  “I have to.”

  “Well, I can’t. Who was it that said the world breaks everyone? Well, we broke the world. You and me and Anderson and Zinn and Fermi. Every single day, the earth teeters on the edge because of us.”

  “Darling.” He lays his hand on hers.

  “Don’t touch me.” She hisses the words and notes how his mouth quivers.

  “Rosalind . . . I have to touch you. All I think about is touching you.”

  “I hate you, Weaver.” She was so intent on staying calm, neutral, cold, but her voice is full of venom.

  “You have every reason to hate me,” he says. “Don’t think I don’t know it.” He shakes his head. He looks distressed. “But I will do whatever it takes to make it up to you. We’re here. We’re together. We’re going to talk this out.” His lips are pale. Time seems to have eroded the certainty he once exuded. Perhaps certainty is something only young people possess. “As for the bomb, it’s not that I don’t recognize the power of what we wrought. But it’s done. Behind us.”

  “It’s in front of us all. And now that the Russians have the bomb”—does she see him wince?—“the end can’t be far away.”

  “No, you’re overstating it. And you know it.” He slugs down more Scotch. “They’re working on using nuclear power in positive ways now. That was your passion. You need to be part of that.”

  “Even if I were able to forgive science for what we created—after that report you wrote, who’d hire me?”

  Weaver rubs his forehead, doesn’t look at her. “You have no idea how sorry I am,” he says.

  “It was you.” No one in the lab would admit it, but she’d been sure Weaver had instigated her firing. Fermi was out of town, but after a damning report was written about her instability, even Fermi couldn’t have saved her. Weaver reaches out and touches her hair tenderly, fondly. He tucks a strand behind her ear.

  “I told you not to touch me.”

  “You have no idea what I feel for you . . .”

  His words are washed away by her ire. “You wrote that report. Who else knew what I was going through?” She remembers it far too well, the tumbling blocks of her life: First she lost her father; then she lost Weaver; for a while she lost her mind; and then her job. It all crashed down. And her love for science, already battered by the bomb, collapsed in on itself.

  “You’re a born physicist, Roz. You can start again . . .” She expects she’s going to laugh sarcastically, but instead, she hears herself make an ugly sobbing sound. A wet intake of breath and a hiccup. It rises uncontrollably, like a wave of nausea. Damn. Why did she agree to see him? Why did she listen to Szydlo?

  “I’d do anything to make it right,” he says, his usually round voice a rough whisper. “I can make it up to you if you’ll let me.”

  She stares at him. Could this man really be sharing secrets with the Soviets? The Soviets who seem to have little respect for liberty or even life itself. The Soviets who have tucked their people behind an Iron Curtain of lies.

  “Why have you come back now?”

  He blinks. “There are reasons I can’t explain quite yet. But if you can’t forgive me, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” He laces his fingers into hers, and for a moment she lets him. His touch sings on her skin. She’s had just enough Scotch by now to welcome the gorgeous familiarity of it. He leans forward and kisses her, gently at first. His lips are hot. Not warm, but flaming, as though he has a fever. My God, the taste of his kisses, the feel of him as he pulls her toward him. Desire engulfs her and she lets out a stricken moan as he kisses her deeply. Weaver! Then, setting both hands on his shoulders, she shoves him away with more force than she knew she possessed.

  “Roz . . .”

  “Go!”

  “I know you love me as much as I love you,” he says. With his left hand, he gently, purposely caresses her neck before hooking her necklace around his finger. When he lifts it, the little platinum-and-gold box swings free. “You still wear it.”

  But even with the Scotch in her, even though his touch still thrills her, she tugs the pendant from his hand and stands.

  “Please. Please go.”

  “Roz . . . I love you. We’re meant to be together.” How easy would it be to let the overwhelming swirl of desire suck her down past reluctance. But she’s aware he’s both the siren and the unforgiving undertow. And she’s no longer a girl willing to drown.

  She moves to the shelf in the entrance and picks up his fedora. “Go,” she says again. “And don’t expect me to ever see you again.” With a wounded look in his eyes, he takes the hat. At the door he turns. “I’ll keep coming back,” he says. “I won’t let this go.”

  “And I’ll keep saying no.”

  “Then I’ll die trying.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  In school, Rosalind learned the word “atom” comes from the Greek, meaning “indivisible.” Once, the atom was the smallest particle known to man, and therefore it was thought impossible to divide. Her adult life has been defined by splitting an atom. But if she ever falls in love again, she wants her love to be like the ancient Greeks believed an atom to be: unbreakable. It would take a special sort of man, perhaps one that doesn’t exist. The alternative is to be alone the rest of her life.

  She’s mired in this dark thought when Charles Szydlo steps up to her counter the next morning. Removing his hat, he holds it to his chest as though saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

  “Can I help you?” she asks without looking up.

  “How did it go with Weaver?”

  “Not here,” she says. She hardly slept all night. Her sheets might as well have been studded with broken glass. Too large a part of her mourns the loss of who she once was. Weaver’s visit brought it all back: her love of science, her lapsed membership in a rarified boys’ club. It wasn’t until Weaver left that she recalled she’d invited him over in the first place because he said he had something he had to tell her. Something that couldn’t be spoken on a telephone. Something she imagined Szydlo would want to know. She, with the perfect memory, had forgotten. She, who was going to expose all his secrets and then put him out with the garbage, didn’t ask a single question of him.

  Instead, he’d evoked an almost uncontrollable wave of desire in her, which now leaves her shamed. It’s the agent’s damn fault. She would never have been curious enough to see Weaver if not for Szydlo’s urging.

  Pulling out a tray of rings, she turns them one at a time until they sit just right.

  “You saw him last night,” he says.

  “I said not here.”

  “No one can hear us.”

  “Not here.” She glances up just long enough to see Szydlo’s insistent blue eyes. Pulling out another tray—this one of necklaces—she straightens the chains on the black velvet, recalling how Weaver caressed her neck as he lifted the chain to prove she still loved him. Szydlo sets his hat on the counter and reaches out with his good hand to still her wrist.

  “I think you’d better tell me what’s going on. Look at me, Miss Porter.”

  His touch seems presumptuous. What makes him think he has the right to lay his hand on her?

  “I don’t want to do this,” she says.

  “Do what? Talk to me?”

  “I don’t want to see Weaver again. I don’t want to spy on him. I don’t want to report in to you. And I never agr
eed I would . . .” She feels an angry pressure behind her eyes. “I’m not going to see him again.”

  “Did Weaver hurt you? Please tell me what’s going on.” He’s still confining her wrist. At the same time, he looks worried.

  Her supervisor, Adele, walks by and says, “Can I help you, sir?”

  He yanks his hand away. Adele must think he’s some beau and they’re having a lovers’ spat.

  “She’s helping me find a gift for my sister,” he says.

  Adele stands there, unconvinced, guarding her employee. Agent Szydlo stares silently at the tray of necklaces and Rosalind squirms. How will she end this discussion?

  “I think she’d like that one,” Charlie says, pointing to a golden locket etched with a swallow, studded with seed pearls. Rosalind lifts the locket and drops it into his large hand.

  She takes a deep breath. “It’s beautiful,” she says, trying to steady her voice. “I’ve always loved this one.”

  “It is beautiful.” He deftly turns the piece over with his fingers and actually seems interested in it. “It’s the bird that caught my eye . . . My mother used to embroider bluebirds on everything,” he says. “It reminded her of the old country.” His mouth softens with the memory.

  Rosalind feels Adele’s eyes watching.

  “What country was she from?”

  “Poland.”

  Trying to keep her voice true, she says, “In Victorian jewelry, a swallow represents the hope that someone will return, as swallows do.”

  “That would have been so appropriate,” he says. “Although, my mother didn’t live to see me return from the war.” His voice is soft and sad.

  “I’m sorry . . .”

  “Is it expensive?”

  She turns the tag over. “It’s thirty-five dollars. A lovely gift for your sister.”

  He looks up at her, smiles nervously. If Adele weren’t nearby, she’d give him an out and say, I know it’s a lot. Don’t worry about it.

  “I’ll take it.”

  She raises her eyebrows as if to say, You sure?

  He nods. Adele turns and looks suspiciously at the two of them, then turns away again.

  “If you can wait, I’ll gift box it for you,” Rosalind says.

  “That would be helpful. I’m not much at wrapping . . .” No, of course, with one useful hand, he wouldn’t be. Turning her back, Rosalind finds the appropriate-size green velvet box fitted with a card. She slides the chain into two cuts at the top of the card, presses it into the jewel box, then slips the velvet box into a Field’s cardboard box and finishes with the signature gold ribbon.

  He takes out that badly worn wallet of his, the corners squashed and polished and round. She spots the gleaming slice of badge in the middle. He sets the wallet on the counter so he can thumb out the bills with his good hand, spreading them like a hand of cards.

  “Please take what you need,” he says.

  “I know your sister will love it,” Rosalind says. She counts out the money, softened somehow by the fact that he needs help to pay.

  “There you go.” She drops three coins into his hand. He pockets them, puts away the wallet, lifts the box, and tries once again to catch her eye.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  Adele, who’s been behind the counter pretending to straighten the display on the wall, turns to watch him go.

  “Tell your boyfriend we don’t allow any fraternizing during business hours. And certainly no quarreling. And just because he bought something—”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she says. “I have no idea who he is.”

  * * *

  Charlie frets. What on earth has set Rosalind Porter off? Is it because Weaver was injurious or because he was loving? He doesn’t consider himself very good at reading women. Once he actually believed he was one of the few men who understood the opposite sex. Back before the war, when he loved Linda Dubicki, everything he did got the reaction he longed for. How cocky he was then. Other girls were openly interested in him. But just being in the same room as Linda made him quiver. A round blond goddess whose throaty laugh was all the music he’d ever craved. She smelled of autumn leaves and limeade and flowers all at once. When he leaned her against the brick wall outside the gym for a kiss, her body yielded and her lips opened to the press of his mouth like a rose in the heat of June.

  He sighs now, recalling the thrill of it. Evenings in the Dubicki basement were a pass to wonderland. Nothing in his Catholic upbringing had intimated that life contained such pleasures. She got off work at Kaminski’s Bakery early on Friday afternoons and took the train down to Champaign nearly every weekend while he was in college. Because she stayed with her prim cousin, they made love in empty classrooms, in dark cornfields. He came home from their night of cornfield love with a cricket in his underwear and mosquito bites all over his backside.

  Birth control was frowned upon in their Catholic neighborhood, though condoms were quietly hidden behind counters for those who didn’t believe. Nevertheless, when he was home in the summers, Charlie went blocks beyond the neighborhood to buy the forbidden necessities because he knew if he’d picked them up at Lisowski’s or Jagoda’s, his mother would have heard all about it by the end of the day. She declared Linda flighty, silly, not good enough for her son. It was the one time he openly ignored her. He loved Linda and was certain that they would be devoted to each other forever. When he returned from the war, he discovered the truth. His years as a POW had constructed a house of scar tissue around his heart. And as soon as Linda took one look at his hand, she nailed shut its only door.

  * * *

  After closing hours, Rosalind spots Agent Szydlo waiting outside of Field’s like he was the first day she noticed him. He steps in beside her and she wonders how to shake him off.

  “You’re not expecting him, are you?” he asks softly.

  “No.”

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “I’m walking to Lincoln Park.”

  “All that way?”

  “The bus costs money.”

  “Not that much.”

  “More than I can toss away.”

  “What’s in Lincoln Park?”

  “A lecture.” This lecture series is one of the few frail threads connecting Rosalind to science. All week, she’s been looking forward to tonight’s talk. She wishes she wasn’t so tired.

  She feels him staring at her. “What’s the lecture?”

  “Gravitational Time Dilation.”

  He shakes his head. “You’re making that up, right?”

  “Einstein made it up. I didn’t have to.”

  “Time can dilate?”

  “It runs slower where gravity is the strongest.”

  “Gee, seriously?”

  “It’s not a joke. The lecture’s about how they’re structuring the latest experiment to prove it.”

  “So science does still matter to you?”

  She glances at his long, thoughtful face and frowns. “Why did you think it didn’t?”

  “Because you don’t seem to want to work as a physicist anymore.”

  “Oh.” The words sting.

  “Passion for something’s a gift,” Szydlo says. “A person shouldn’t throw it away.”

  She opens her mouth, falters. “I didn’t think I was going to get a lecture on the way to my lecture. Why do you even care what I do?”

  She watches as he draws his injured hand even closer to his ribs.

  “I read Fermi’s evaluations of you up until you lost your job. I can’t imagine a more positive acknowledgment of someone’s brilliance.”

  “Oh . . .” She’s sorry she spoke to him harshly.

  “Why is a girl like you selling jewelry?”

  “I have bills to pay.”

  “Couldn’t you get another job at a university or lab somew
here? With your background . . .”

  “After Weaver’s report?”

  “Have you tried?”

  It’s a question she asks herself nearly every night. Why doesn’t she at least try? What’s stopping her?

  She shrugs.

  “That was a dirty trick,” he says. “Weaver reporting you as mentally unstable, getting you fired.”

  Szydlo must be trying to stir her up—to make her say yes. It’s not hard. Her anger at Weaver is right on the surface.

  “He was a rat.”

  “But why let him win?”

  His question is so apt it knocks the air out of her. She’s pondered it so many times: What’s keeping her from science? Part of it is the horror of what all their elegant theories wrought, where it’s put the world. The rest is so much more complicated . . . so much more personal. She knows she needs to understand it, hack her way through what’s impeding her.

  “Tell me what you love about physics. I know nothing about it.” She turns to see his eyes are patient, curious.

  “Well, I love that it’s utterly reliable. That you can actually trust that the laws of the universe won’t fail you.”

  “Unlike people?”

  She looks over at him, surprised. “Exactly.”

  “I should have been a physicist,” he says. That makes her smile. “Go on. Tell me more,” he says.

  “With the laws of the universe, if something surprises you, it’s because there’s a hidden law at play, one that begs you to discover it,” she says. “My faith in physics is probably as close as I come to having a religion.”

  Has she ever said it out loud? Physics is the opposite of her father, the opposite of Weaver. People lie, turn their backs, break your heart. Even before Weaver hurt her, she knew she trusted physics more than she trusted him.

  “Listen, Rosalind,” he says. “May I call you Rosalind?”

  “I guess.”

  “You can call me Charlie. I’d like you to.”