The Atomic Weight of Love (22 page)

“I never made it to graduate school.”

“Looks as if that didn’t stop you,” he gestured toward the journal.

“Well, it’s all rather informal. Less than immaculately scientific.”

“Immaculate science? Really?”

“Well, I don’t know.” I put my ball cap back on, thinking about sunburns, my forever peeling nose in the summer. “I don’t know why I used that word.”

“I like it.
Immaculate
,” he said, pensive. “Words are fun. I like a woman with a rich vocabulary.”

I could hear the murmuring of White Wing, and I tried to see if I could tell which female he might have chosen.

“You’re watching one crow in particular?”

“White Wing.” I pointed. “He’s in that tree. Fourth branch down.”

“Is that unusual? That feather coloration?”

“Yes. And mercifully so.” I felt more at ease, now that we were on a comfortable topic. “It lets me track him.”

He shaded his eyes with his hand. “So what’s White Wing up to?”

“Picking a mate. Well, more accurately, attracting a mate. He’s got two possibilities.” I pointed. “Check over there, and then go to your right two trees, and you can see the other female.”

Clay followed my directions. “So, what’s the determining factor? How will they choose, and what happens if both of them want him? Or if both of them reject him?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“Fun.”

“To me, it is.”

“That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

We were quiet again.

“You draw, too?” he asked, picking up my journal. “Do you mind? I don’t want to intrude.” It was the second time he’d used that word, and I liked that he seemed so sensitive.

“It’s all right,” I said, and, surprisingly, it was. Not since Belle had I let anyone look at my journal—not even Alden, although truth be told he’d never asked.

Clay turned the pages carefully. “You’re good,” he said. “Really, these drawings are beautiful.”

“What do you do, Clay?”

“Geology. Rocks. Layers of rocks. The formation of rocks. Upheavals. Events of seismic proportion. I’m working on the new geothermal project in the Jemez. For a few semesters, on an internship. The plan is to mine heat from the earth’s crust. The rock is still hot, still retains the volcanic heat from the formative days of the earth.” He fingered the loose threads that bordered the slash in his jeans, pulled one and broke it off. “Geologic time. Fascinating concept, fascinating perspective on the smallness of human history.” He paused when one of the crows let out a loud series of caws, four sharp beats.

“Darwin started out as a field geologist,” I said. “He used geology to get to his theory of evolution, working off of his observations and the theories of Charles Lyell—mostly about the true age of the earth.”

“I remember reading something about that. Wow,” he said. “I love that you know that, Meridian.” He squeezed my knee and I flinched, surprised by the intimacy. He withdrew his hand and placed it next to his hip on the boulder. “But you asked about the geothermal project. The plan is to pump water into the crystalline rock, inject it to a depth where it becomes superheated. Then we’ll pull it back out and extract the heat from it. It’s an ecological way to generate energy.”

“I didn’t know. About the project, I mean.”

“Well, it’s not as though we hit the front page of the
Los Alamos Monitor
.”

“What hits the front page of the
Monitor
, in case you haven’t noticed, is hardly newsworthy. The best part is the Police Blotter. My husband reads it just to find out how old everyone is.”

“Husband?”

“Husband.”

“Too bad.”

I was stunned. I was old enough to be his mother, surely.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Twenty-six in just a bit.”

“Oh my.”

“You can’t be that old.”

“Oh, but I am.”

“How old do you think ‘old’ is?”

“Forty-six.”

“Geologically speaking, it’s a heartbeat, Meridian.”

“Really, Meri is fine.”

“Meridian is too beautiful, too unusual, not to be used.” He stood and picked up his knapsack. “Will you be here tomorrow?”

“I don’t know.” I stood; I didn’t like looking up at him.

“I will be.” He touched my shoulder lightly and then turned, walked the zigzag path back up the side of the canyon.

I listened to the crows bidding him good-bye, until their voices turned to soft murmurings, until I could hear the susurrant breeze as it sifted through the tops of the pines.

His eyes were blue, a light blue captured in a ring of darker, almost navy blue. He smelled of Irish Spring soap, the hair on his forearms shone gold in the sun, and I knew that if I pressed my lips to his chest I would taste salt.

I TOLD MYSELF
I
would not go back the next day. I felt too eager, too giddy, and it wasn’t right. But more than that, I was afraid Clay would sense those things in me, perceive me as ridiculous.

I stood behind Alden as he shaved. “Do you want me to trim your eyebrows?” With age, Alden’s hair follicles seemed to have gone into overdrive—his eyebrows grew wild and curly, hair sprouted from his nose and ears. Several years before, he’d given up on his mustache—he could not keep it clean, and it made it nearly impossible for him to eat ice cream cones with any semblance of grace.

“Maybe later,” he said, preoccupied.

At the door, he looped the lanyard for his security pass over his neck, and I handed him his briefcase. He gave me a perfunctory peck on the cheek and climbed into the mint-green Corvair he’d bought in 1969. The Morris Minor was now my car—the first car I’d had to myself so that I could go where I wanted, when I wanted. When Alden had turned over the keys to me, he showed me that he’d put together a safety kit, including flares, a tire pressure gauge, and jumper cables. I had felt like a child going off to camp, fully loaded with both her father’s fears and his blessing.

I used all of my willpower to keep myself out of the canyon. I distracted myself by standing at the M&S Market meat counter waiting for the butcher to wrap my ground chuck in nice, white waxed paper. I performed mundane household tasks, and then I drew in my crow journal. In the early afternoon, I pulled out the volume from the previous year and flipped through it until I found a drawing I’d particularly liked of Withered Foot. I used
Webster’s
to prop the book open, and then I got out my watercolor paper and paints.

KRSN played “Bridge over Troubled Water” and “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” while I copied the drawing as a watercolor. I decided to paint Withered Foot in the topmost branches of a pine, his beak open, his neck outstretched as if calling to his mate. When I finished, I set the watercolor to dry on the windowsill in the dining room.

I pretended that the painting was intended as something other than a gift to Clay. I lied to myself for the rest of the day and throughout the evening, as Alden read
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
and I watched
The Carol Burnett Show
. Occasionally, Alden would look up and shake his head.

“What?” I asked, taking the bait despite my better judgment.

“I don’t know why you watch that crap.”

“Because it’s funny.”

“Really, Meri? Really?”

“Yes, Alden.
Really
.”

CLAY WAS SITTING ON
my boulder.

“I thought you worked,” I said, setting down my pack.

“A student intern has flexible hours. I missed you yesterday,” he said, scooting over to make room for me.

“Well . . .”

“Are you scared of me, Meridian?”

“Yes.” I could smell his soap again, and I sneaked a look at the tear in his jeans. I felt a burning in the center of me—pure, unadulterated lust. I was afraid my skin would betray me, and I made myself look away.

A boisterous jay emerged from beneath a scrub oak with an acorn in his beak and then flew deep into the woods.

“I have something for you,” I said at last and pulled my journal from my pack. I opened it to where I’d inserted the painting. “This was Withered Foot, White Wing’s father.”

He followed the curve of Withered Foot’s back with his fingertips. “What happened to his foot?”

“As far as I know, he was born with it, always had it.”

“Hmm. Do you think,” Clay paused. “Do you think it could have been a birth defect caused by radiation or chemicals?”

“I honestly don’t know. I doubt radiation. But chemicals—during the war they weren’t at all careful with those, didn’t think anyone would ever live here, and so they just dumped a lot of it in the canyons.”

“I could just be paranoid,” he said. “But, I guess to take it a little further, I’d wonder about White Wing, about the aberration of white feathers. A genetic mutation?”

“It’s been so long since I took genetics. Since I took anything. There must be all kinds of advances I’ve not kept up with.”

“You seem to think you’re ancient or something.”

“I feel it some days,” I said, laughing.

“Well, Meridian, let’s do something about that.” He took off my ball cap and then stroked my hair lightly. “Do you mind?” he asked, keeping his hand in my hair, resting it at the nape of my neck.

“I wish I did, but I don’t.” I thought I heard a high-pitched humming in my ears.

Clay threaded my hair behind my misshapen ear. I put my hand up to cover it, self-conscious.

“What?”

“My ear. It’s disfigured.”

He removed my hand, looked carefully, and pinched the odd bump of cartilage.

“No, it isn’t.”

“It is.”

“Who on earth told you that?” He paused. “Maybe more importantly, why did you believe them? You think you’re old, you think you’re disfigured. Good grief, Meridian. I have to say that’s just plain stupid.”

He pronounced “stupid” as “
steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew
-ped.” I laughed again and then closed my eyes, listened to a breeze moving high in the pines. Then I felt him kiss the tip of my nose like the single raindrop that comes sometimes minutes before the rest of the raindrops in a thunderstorm—that first raindrop that is an explorer.

I STAYED AWAY FOR
a week. I knew I must be his perfect prey—a lonely, middle-aged woman, somehow signaling her availability, a perceived waft of pheromones. How presumptuous he was; how presumptuous I’d let him be. He was too young to be so self-assured.

I slammed about the house, broke three glasses while washing the dishes, knocked over a lamp and tore the lampshade, and bruised my arms and legs by turning too sharply and hitting walls, thudding my shins into furniture. I even managed to burn my arm while ironing Alden’s shirt, so lost was I in thought.

I climbed into bed, crossed the middle line, and ran my fingers down Alden’s back, kissed him between the shoulder blades.

“What?”

“I just wanted . . .” I fumbled for words. I rarely came out and asked Alden for sex, but I was filled with longing. “I want to be close to you.”

“Not now, Meri.” He kept his back to me and sighed. “Look. I’m exhausted.” Finally, he rolled toward me, took my hand from his body and patted it twice, the Alden dismissal signal.

“I really hate it when you do that,” I said.

“What?”

“The tap-tap that says ‘go away, Meri.’ ”

“Please let’s just get some sleep tonight,” he said and turned his back to me once more.

I’d been rebuffed—completely. I was glad of the dark. It hid my shame.

Alden had told me before that he no longer needed sex the way I did, that he’d “gone past that,” as if he’d evolved beyond me, ascended to some Dantean stratosphere of perfection. But it was more than sex that was missing, that left me aching, lonely. We’d lost the core of our relationship. Alden and I no longer reached deeply into each other, no longer strived to know and understand each other. Genuine intimacy had been supplanted by boredom, lassitude.

I got out of bed and went to sit out back in one of the metal lawn chairs. Wrapped in a blanket, I listened to the pulse of crickets, interrupted by the strident yowl of a tomcat. “You and me both, buddy,” I said. “You and me both.” I sat there, inert, until the sun came up.

AFTER BREAKFAST, I HEADED
for the canyon. There was no sign of Clay, but I found a dark, imposing stone about the size of my fist purposefully placed on my boulder. Beneath it, wrapped in several layers of plastic wrap, was a note.

May 23, 1970

Dear Meridian,

If you think I want something from you, you’re right. I want to get to know you.

I know you don’t trust me, but I’d like to convince you that I would not ever purposefully injure you.

I also know this: life is short. LIFE IS SHORT. I have seen my friends die. I have killed people, too many people. I know the smell of flesh burning, and sometimes at night I hear screams, cries. LIFE IS SHORT.

Flight is possible, but we have to
take
flight—it has to be a decisive action, a purposeful, brave act.

Clay

P.S. I picked up the rock at Glencoe, in the Scottish Highlands and have carried it with me ever since—apparently so that I could give it to you. Look closely—do you see the red specks in it? The blood of your ancestors, encased in stone?

He’d killed people
. I shivered despite the warm morning. I’d never known anyone who’d killed, had I? By the time Jerry had been through the war, he and I no longer spoke. Well, there was Red, Kitty’s beau—but somehow for Red Guadalcanal had been another lifetime, cut off, dissected from the man he was when he returned. Then I felt my gut clench: Alden had killed—not face to face, not in person, but as much or more than any bomber pilot. Alden had killed on a massive, impersonal scale. Death achieved by theory, invention, and the calculations of esoteric formulae.

Clay wrote of screams in the night and the smell of burning flesh. He was on intimate terms with death. For reasons I couldn’t articulate, that drew me to him.