The Atomic Weight of Love (19 page)

“How does it look over my ratty old bathrobe?”

“Perfect.”

I let the fingertips of one hand hover just above the silver. “When I wear this, I will think of new beginnings,” I said, reaching to cup one of his cheeks in my hand.

After he left for work, I lifted the heavy necklace from my chest and carefully laid it on top of the dresser. The necklace was too expensive. On the other side of the equation of that necklace, that promise of fresh starts, was Belle. The costly deaths of Belle and her baby.

Still, I could hear her voice telling me: “Sweetheart, give it a shot.
Try
, Meri.”

WITHIN THE HOUR, I
dressed in warm wool slacks and a heavy sweater. I pulled a knitted cap over my hair, being careful to keep it from snagging on Belle’s earrings. I laced my boots, packed my rucksack with a Thermos of hot chocolate and graham crackers, a few cubes of cheddar cheese. I put my crow journal in the front pocket and checked to be sure I still had sharpened pencils from the last time I’d gone out, who knows how many months before.

My feet broke through a crust of snow, and the woods were a mixture of shadow and sunlight sparkling on ice crystals. I could hear chunks of snow release and drop as though relieved from the limbs of ponderosa pines. Piñon jays berated me, their dusky blue plumage contrasting beautifully with the green of the pines, the white snow. A male Steller’s jay, his black head peaked with that bit of stegosaurus spike, joined the other jays in chastising me. I smiled at them, trudged onward.

I was soon out of breath. It took a great deal of energy to lift my legs out of the heavy snow, and I’d been almost completely inactive for so long. My muscles tired quickly, but in a good way, a way that let me know that tomorrow and the next day I’d feel this hike, know it had been real. I felt snow crystals sift into the back of my collar and then melt instantaneously, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath of the cold, clean winter air.

They were still there, my crows. Once they spotted me, they doubled their caws in quick succession, alerting each other to my presence. I watched their bodies: they announced ownership of the territory by flicking their tails, spreading and then retracting their tail feathers, pumping their upper bodies up and down rhythmically. I heard mates calling and responding to each other across the treetops, keeping track of each other, reassuring each other. And then I swear they recognized me and began instead scolding.

I laughed out loud, found a boulder and used my forearm to clear the snow from it. I sat, not caring that the seat of my pants would be wet for the hike home. I remembered an expression I’d heard once at the university:
colder than a well-digger’s ass
. It was something Belle would have said, and it made me smile.

Over the next ten to fifteen minutes, the crows’ vocalizations evolved into a mixture of soft chortling, rattles, and low growls. One sounded eerily like a gurgling baby or bleating lamb. I poured myself a cup of hot chocolate and pulled my knees to my chest.

It felt good. It felt clean. It felt clear.

I didn’t want to think about Belle being dead. I wanted to think about the future, about possibilities, about potential.

I heard a steady dripping as the snow lacing the pine needles melted in the sun. I’d ask Alden to help me. I’d ask him to be my partner once more, my teacher, my helpmate.

Happy birthday to me
, I thought.
Happy birthday to me
.

A Kettle of Hawks

1. Some hawks are built for soaring, others for agility within the forest, and others, such as the falcon, for speed.

2. In Greek mythology, Circe, a goddess of magic known for her knowledge of potions and herbs, is associated with the hawk.

I decided that what I needed was structure—more than the predictable bread truck on Thursdays, milkman every other day, and Saturday evenings setting my hair with torturous brush curlers held in place with pink pins. I’d make my crow observations on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; the rest of the week, I’d keep up with the housework and find more hobbies I enjoyed—maybe meet a new friend. I could teach the Girl Scouts birding, swimming, and water safety, and I considered other possibilities such as the hospital auxiliary, the library, and substitute teaching.

My next step was to involve Alden. I broached the subject one morning when he came in from shoveling the driveway. He was breathing hard, and his face and neck were an alarmingly dusky red. He sat down on the kitchen stool to pull off his galoshes, and I resisted the urge to point out how much snow and ice he was leaving to melt on the linoleum. I pulled one of his old T-shirts from the rag bag and picked up his boots, set them on a towel, wiped up the melting snow.

“Sorry,” he said, still breathing hard. Alden was only forty-nine, but he lived such a sedentary life. I planned to stop buying ice cream, and no matter how much he loved it, German chocolate cake was going to have to become a near-extinct species.

“Could we try to do some new things together?” I looked for more meltwater to capture with the rag.

“Like what?”

“Things that require activity. I don’t know—how about dancing lessons?”

“Uh . . .” He looked at me and stopped himself, switched gears. “Sure, sure. Be happy to. See what the Rec Center’s offering, and let me know.”

“If you really don’t want to . . .”

“No, no. I made you a promise.”

And so began what I came to think of as The Activity Years, from the 1950s through the 1960s. I lined up distractions like suitors at a fancy dress ball, picked them off one by one, tried to find at least one that would spirit me away, consume me with a full-throated passion.

Alden bought his version of a dream car, a two-door saloon version of the Morris Minor. It was exotic—black, with red leather upholstery. A tiny, ugly duckling of a car, it made Alden smile when he got behind the wheel and honked the horn playfully. I think it was the first time I’d seen him spend money in a way that approached frivolity.

Without Belle, I had no pressure to drink, no one with whom to drink, and so I gave up alcohol completely. Besides, I had to admit that it had been an incompetent solution to my problem, to wrestling with my resentful self. Los Alamos finally built a community swimming pool, and I began to swim regularly. Swimming, combined with hiking to see the crows, put me in the best physical condition of my life. I felt better—the release following exercise was a tonic.

THE UNIVERSITY WOMEN’S GROUP
met in Diane Chamberlain’s living room, two streets up from our house. I heard the announcement on KRSN and decided to give it a try, hoping I’d meet someone not like Belle, certainly, but a new friend, someone who could be more to me than the superficial acquaintances I’d accumulated like charms on a bracelet. I set my hair, wore a nice pair of plaid wool slacks, a cream-colored blouse, and a teal-colored wool cardigan that matched the blues in my trousers. I took a plate of chocolate chip cookies, thinking I should contribute something.

I stood on the bricks of the Chamberlains’ front porch, waiting for someone to answer the doorbell and looking at the remnants of dry leaves hanging from rosebushes and children’s snowflakes stenciled onto the dining room windows. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was hurry back home, skip the entire thing.
What was I thinking?
I’d never fit in here.

“Meridian Wallace?” Diane took the plate of cookies from me. “Now this is a surprise!”

I stuffed my gloves in the side pocket of my purse. “Hi, Diane.”

“You’re the first to arrive. Let me take your things,” she said, setting the cookies on the built-in buffet beside the door. I could smell coffee and cinnamon, warm winter spices. Handel’s
Messiah
played at a low volume on the turntable, the chorus voices triumphant.

“I’m early?”

“No, you’re on time. You know how it is. Let me get you some coffee. Oops—there’s the bell again.”

Diane disappeared, and I eased my awkwardness by studying her artwork. I stood before a couple of fine watercolors, women weaving at a traditional Navajo loom, a spotted deer caught mid-leap.

“They’re sweetly done, aren’t they? Fairly accomplished pieces.” The woman beside me had the elongated poise of a great blue heron standing in slim reeds, patiently watching for dinner to swim into view. She was all angles and spiky, sharp edges. “Emma McAllister, newcomer,” she said, extending her hand.

Her eyes were hugely magnified with the kind of eyeglass lenses prescribed for post-cataract surgery patients, although she didn’t look much older than my nearly thirty years. Her lips were a pencil lead’s width of obligatory Revlon Red. “Newcomer to the club or Los Alamos?” I asked.

“Los Alamos. Two years. But that still qualifies me.”

“I’ve been here since ’46, just after the war.”

“You’re one of the originals, then.”

“Not quite. Since I arrived postwar, I mean. And believe me, it’s been made clear to me that I am not an original.” I could almost hear a pinging, my nerves were that taut.

Her bright smile erased the austere aspects of her physicality. “Then we should stick together,” she said.

The refreshment table was loaded with freshly baked rolls and chafing dishes filled with scrambled eggs, sausage, and home-fried potatoes. My mouth watered, and I piled the silver-rimmed china plate with servings of everything before I noticed that most women were eating almost nothing; their dainty plates carried only a parsimonious sampling of each item.

“You must not have to watch your waistline,” a red-headed woman with a thickened waist said to me. “I envy you.”

I smiled at her, found a seat next to Emma in the living room, and spread a bright blue napkin across my lap.

Callie Osbourn, president of the group, called the meeting to order and asked those of us who were first-timers to introduce ourselves. Emma said she’d attended Radcliffe; her husband Vince was the chemistry-metallurgy group leader. I saw several women nod approvingly when she indicated she’d received a Ph.D. in English literature, her focus Thomas Hardy. I gave my background at Chicago and purposefully left out my degree status—simply said I was an ornithologist, now studying crows in Los Alamos.

“Your Ph.D. is in ornithology? Is that correct?” Diane asked.

“That’s my field, yes,” I said.

“Your graduate degree?” Diane was taking notes. “I need it for the minutes, Meri.”

“Oh,” I blushed. Why had I thought this was a good idea? It only pressed harsh fingers into my bruise. “Marriage. The war,” I said by way of explanation. “I wasn’t able to finish my graduate studies.”

“Shall I put Ph.D., all but dissertation?” Diane pressed.

My face was hot, and I felt the plate wobble on my knees. “Just a bachelor’s,” I said. Diane nodded curtly, made her notation, and I saw a couple of the women exchange looks.

How dare they?
I thought. At least I was doing something with my degree, even if it was a watered-down version of ornithological study. What were they doing with their Ph.D.s, besides baking coffee cakes? I thought of the long-ago Welcome Wagon women with their high-altitude baking charts, the architect whose name I’d forgotten who was designing treehouses for her kids. Across the street from me, June Jacobsen with her soil studies and knitting classes—what was she doing? I felt a deep well of need for Belle, my savior and champion.

I sat and endured a report on their various charitable activities in the Valley, including clothing drives for Indian pueblos, a Valentine’s Day dance the group put on every year to raise funds for library books to donate to small communities in northern New Mexico. I put an occasional hand to my cheeks, hoping my cold hands would speed the blood away from my hot skin.

As soon as possible, I pulled my navy blue car coat from the pile in Diane’s guest bedroom, and I made my way to the front door, thinking only about how good a brisk walk home in melting snow would feel. I saw that my plate of cookies sat, untouched, on the buffet, and I felt like grabbing them to take back home.

At the curb, Emma caught up to me. “They’re a bunch of snotty, small-town prima donnas,” she said.

“The thing is, I knew better,” I said. “It was entirely predictable.”

“Well, I for one am not going back there. They can have their coconut cake.”

“And eat it too.”

“Give me a call sometime?” Emma asked.

I nodded, not sure that I would, but glad of the offer.

On the way home, I wondered how they would have treated me, had not I been married to Alden. But I knew—it would have even worse.
Maybe I should study them instead of crows
, I thought, finding my smile as I reached our street. My all-but-dissertation could be on the communal behavior of a brood of old hens.

FOR OUR FOURTEENTH WEDDING
anniversary in 1958, I told Alden his gift to me could be to learn to swim. I bought him a plaid pair of swimming trunks and then set about begging, cajoling, and wheedling until he agreed to a first lesson.

I fastened the chin strap on my swim cap with the pink and purple flowers and waited for him in the shallow end, bobbing up and down to keep myself warm. He made his way gingerly down the ladder. Alden was practically blind without his eyeglasses; I thought about how vulnerable he looked and wondered how long it had been since he had tried something new, that he might not be good at. For the first time in our marriage, I was the one with the expertise and confidence.

“Hold onto the gutter if that makes you feel better.” I took his hand and placed it on the slick pool tiles. Someone passed us, kicking up a spray of water. Alden winced as if acid had been thrown in his face, but he compressed his lips, stoic.

“OK,” he said. “What’s first?”

“Why don’t we practice the flutter kick?” I took my place beside him, demonstrating how he should stretch his feet behind him. “It should come more from your hips. Don’t bend your knees much at all. But don’t keep your legs stiff like boards.”