November 1944
Alice
Alice nursed her martini covertly in the middle of Oppenheimer’s crowded kitchen. She refilled her glass with a cheap red wine, not bothering to rinse between pours. So what if the Syrah mixed with the vodka?
She was convinced that on some cosmic level, her infidelity had precipitated Warren’s death. As a scientist, she knew that was hogwash, but she couldn’t shake her guilt. She rubbed away the smudges from her lipstick along the rim of her glass and increased her dose by three fingers, a miracle elixir for tragedy. She receded into herself, trying to repress the image of Warren’s remains going blue in the snow. The Ardennes Forest haunted her every time she closed her eyes—men hanging from sagging branches, corpses staring up at the shaking treetops without seeing them. Since it had happened, she had been afraid to go to sleep. She was terrified of the wilderness behind her eyes. Now, she held onto the counter in Oppenheimer’s swirling kitchen, forcing a frozen smile but trying not to show her teeth for fear they were stained grayish purple from the drink.
Across the room, Kitty refreshed her gin sour and reapplied her lipstick poorly, making her frown look crooked. She had given birth to her second baby, a girl, only a few weeks prior and seemed to be drinking away any recollection of it. She had kept the pregnancy secret so long and she had such a small frame that her delivery had taken much of the town by surprise.
Now, she looked pale and bone thin. Her lips were pressed into a thin line and her hair was swept up severely, tugging at the worried creases of her forehead. Her movements were jumpy and erratic like she was a marionette on a string. She seemed to have no interest in the baby, leaving the infant alone with the maid and throwing these parties.
“Maybe I should have an affair,” Kitty said to her audience of admirers. “To even things out.” Oppie’s previous mistress, Jean Tatlock, had died by suicide almost a year ago, but now that there were rumors swirling about her communist ideology, her autopsy, and the possibility that it hadn’t been a suicide at all, the news story had been resurrected and Kitty seemed especially fraught.
Alice winced. She knew Kitty didn’t know about her infidelity, but the fine hairs on her forearms stood on end and the nape of her neck tingled. She kept thinking someone was looking at her.
Kitty tried to make light of the tabloids among her drinking companions, but the more she drank the more bitter she sounded. “I can’t wrap my mind around why these women make such a fuss over him in the first place. He’s worthless in the bedroom.” She smirked. She always had loose lips when she drank, and regularly shared too much about their sex life. But tonight, she seemed in rare form. “Robert doesn’t bother with foreplay,” she announced. Around the room, women found nearby objects suddenly fascinating, averting their eyes. “I had to teach him that sex should be fun and not necessarily a religious experience.”
All around her, the wives were whispering. “Did you know that Oppie tried to murder his tutor in high school?” a woman said conspiratorially in the corner.
A nearby housewife in a headscarf nodded. “Made a poison apple, just like the fairy tale.”
“I smelled liquor on his breath at the commissary,” responded Judith, eyeing Kitty’s turned back. Her heavy eyebrows arched with feigned concern. “It wasn’t even noon.”
“I hear Oppie has enough gas in his tank to get to Taos and back,” whispered Bonnie over her bourbon. She wore a skintight floral dress that gathered in rolls around her hips and knee-high boots with a faux fur coat that had slipped down around her shoulders, revealing the angular gleam of her collarbone and the cleft of her bosom. She still wore her cooking apron, but she had uncinched the bow behind her back, and it hung from her neck like a decorative scarf.
Alice watched Kitty absently stirring the ice in her drink with her pointer finger. The guilt washed over her. Kitty and Warren were one and the same.
Oppenheimer launched out of the smoky study then and opened the front door, revealing three dolled-up ladies in feathered hats. “Welcome to Bourbon Manor.” He grinned. When they entered, a gush of cold air blew into the room from the open door, sending the drapes flapping and everyone’s hair blowing in their faces. Oppie fought the door closed with the force of his thin body like the wind was a wild animal he was desperate to hold back. He had been losing weight, drawing in his silver belt buckle by several notches. Alice estimated her thin professor weighing in at merely 120 pounds.
Oppenheimer seemed entirely blind to his wife’s agitations from his vantage point in the foyer. He shook up martinis and placed skewered olives in glasses. The three new women were young, bright-eyed schoolteachers—Madge, Barbara, and Belle. They wore their hair in matching bobs and each had a slightly different shade of nude nylon peeking out from beneath their tea-length skirts. Unwrapping their scarves and unzipping their coats, they revealed sweetheart necklines and keyhole backs. They peeled off layers of winter clothing, leaving their feathered hats and mittens discarded haphazardly between the entryway and the kitchen table: a breadcrumb trail of debauchery. They shrank smaller with each item removed, like Russian dolls.
Alice looked down at her practical trousers. Her elegant wardrobe was collecting dust in her closet. With the restrictions of the war, the abundance of wool and rayon grafted onto her pleated skirts had come to embarrass her. She realized, seeing herself more clearly in juxtaposition to these ladies who had dressed to the nines, how the desert had changed her.
“Join me on the patio for a toast,” Oppenheimer said, tipping his hat at the three young ladies, his eyes flickering.
“You must be crazy,” Madge retorted.
“We’ve just come in from the weather!” agreed Belle, checking her face in her compact. The tiny mirror reflected a glowing rectangle of light on her forehead.
Oppenheimer knocked his head back and belly laughed heartily. He turned his gaze on Alice. “This one’s tough enough for a frozen cocktail,” he said loud enough for everyone to hear. Alice braced. Oppie’s blue eyes traveled her body, adding up the poison oak on her arms and multiplying her frizzed hair, long since freed of its rolled curls. He offered her the crook of his elbow, but she didn’t want to go with him. She was conflicted by the bouts of attention he lavished on her. She wanted to be his equal, one of the guys, not an ornament paraded on his arm. But everyone was staring. She took his offered arm and he escorted her out the back door. She glanced back at Kitty, staring out the window. She longed to turn him away, to send him back inside to his depressed wife, but she did not protest.
Outside, the balcony was dark, making the white snow seem to glow all around them. She was having trouble keeping his face in focus. She held the railing to stop the stars from spinning.
He handed her a glass and she inspected the drink. “To the free world,” he said, downing his flask and nodding at her. She watched him stagger back and forth, tapping a cigarette out of the carton, sheltering the flame and sucking it in. He swaggered, walking a little bowlegged in his cowboy jeans as he stepped closer to her.
“Don’t fret, dear,” he said, chewing on the cigarette, “although the world is full of cruel and bitter things.” She realized her distress must be showing on her face and she tried to pull herself together. Oppie coughed into his fist, the hacking cough of a seasoned smoker. On the backside of his coughing fit, he looked up at her with sensitive eyes. “You know, I need physics more than friends.”
“Is Kitty OK?” She eyed Kitty’s rigid back, visible through the sliding glass door. She hadn’t moved. Inside, someone flipped on the patio light, and the brightness erased the faces inside the house, making them the only two people at the party. They both squinted, willing their eyes to adjust. Moths excited by the brightness danced in the light between them.
“She’s a drunk,” he said. Alice stopped herself from pointing out the obvious irony. “Ever since Katherine was born, she’s been falling asleep smoking, setting our linens on fire.”
He dropped his cigarette and stepped it out with the heel of his boot. It steamed in the snow.
“Not to worry. I placed a trusty fire extinguisher by the bedside,” he said, responding to the alarm in her look. Alice pictured the duvet filled with cigarette burns, a constellation of fever dreams. She worried about the infant, sleeping helplessly in a bassinette by the crackling flames. “You see, motherhood never suited Kitty,” he said. “She wants to talk big talk.” He looked at Alice, searching her face. “She’s like you.”
“It’s a pretty name,” she said, trying to keep the conversation lighthearted. She sensed something dangerous turning in his mood. “Katherine.”
He had been looking at her this whole time, studying her eyes, her curls, the geometry of her blouse, but now, he looked away, shame-faced, down at his hands. Even in his drunken state, he spoke such elegant words. That’s why it surprised her that he seemed to have trouble forming the next sentence. Finally, he asked, “Do you want to adopt her?”
Alice startled. This man who carried the weight of the world was running from a newborn. Her voice came out more cross than she intended. “Of course not. Why on earth would I do that? She has two perfectly good parents.”
“Because I can’t love her,” he said. His eyes on hers were hypnotic. A rush of wind swept around them, making her shudder. It lifted her hair. He held onto his hat.
Wasn’t it strange, she thought, that he wore his hat even at night. It must be meant to shield him from something more than the sun. The cigarette and hat were props that set him apart from the others, that made him instantly recognizable and iconic in a crowd. But when he removed them, he was mortal like everyone else.
Perhaps she could take advantage of his intoxication, charm him into telling her what they were building. She could see the years all the secrecy had already added to his face.
“Penny for your thoughts?” She stared down at her hands on the railing, trying to appear aloof.
He laughed and snorted, exhaling a plume of smoke. Then he sobered. “We’re the good guys, right? But I suppose the bad guys think they’re the good guys too.” He stared past her with glossy eyes. “We’re like two scorpions in a bottle. Each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.”
Alice’s mind raced back to her first day in the desert, the scorpions in her drainpipe. Her chest tightened and it was suddenly hard to breathe.
They were standing very close. She realized for the first time that those famous blue eyes seemed too light for his face, like they were too delicate for the things they had seen. She was suddenly afraid to leave him alone with himself. They all needed this man in one way or another.
“Let’s get you back inside,” she said. “You’ll catch a cold out here, and then where will we be?”
He smirked. “The only woman on the hill who will never love me back.”
“I think love is a choice,” she said, feeling somewhat sobered by the cold now and trying to talk reason into this broken man. She didn’t believe it, of course. She would have loved Warren if only she could have. She tried not to think of Caleb. He hadn’t made any effort to see her or to explain his mysterious disappearance the other night.
“Beautiful women are always so hung up on free will,” Oppie said. His eyes were fiery now. “We’re all just butterflies caught in a net.”
“There’s no net,” she said defiantly, “unless you believe there’s a net.”
“I love my wife, you know,” he said, turning suddenly defensive. “The problem is, I love too much. I love too easily, you see.”
Belle slid open the patio door and poked her head out. “You two will turn into snowmen out there.” The laughter of the party escaped through the open door and Oppenheimer seemed to snap out of his trance. She watched his whole face contort into a grinning mask of showmanship. He straightened the brim of his hat and staggered back into the room. Alice followed him back into the chaos.
All night, everyone had been stepping on the cat. Over and over, it had hissed and hopped sideways, then darted through the room. Now, a tall man had stooped to pet it, and the animal was purring, arching, and lifting its head to graze and nudge his hand. Alice tensed, recognizing Caleb’s brushed-back curls. The chemistry of his presence overrode the sobering effect of the cold.
She snatched a martini from a nearby tray. It was filled to the brim and she nearly spilled it bringing it to her lips. When had he arrived? She was still furious that he hadn’t called on her—that he’d been absent from Project Rufus and hadn’t shown up to drop off negatives in the darkroom. Now, days later, he had yet to apologize for hightailing it away from her under the full moon. More than anything, she was nervous. Her heartbeat drummed in her ears. In light of Warren’s death, she wasn’t sure how to face him. She had to put a stop to whatever they had become.
Caleb nodded at her, freshly shaven, baby-faced. He looked boyish that way, despite his size. “He’s going to kill us all,” he said, cozying up near her in the breakfast nook and trying for nonchalance, “with these martinis.”
Alice forced a smile. The cat was still rubbing up against Caleb’s legs and prancing figure eights around him “He’s self-medicating,” she said tightly, keeping her eyes locked on Oppenheimer. “He’s deciding the fate of the world every day with the flip of a coin. And he has to pay the price.”
“We all pay that price,” Caleb said. Meeting his eyes, she realized he had dark circles.
“Can’t imagine the pressure he’s under,” she said. “Playing God.”
“A strange pursuit for an avowed atheist.” He smirked.
“People need a leader.” Her voice came out forceful. She was surprised that she said it—she had never been more uncertain of Oppenheimer’s lead.
Caleb was acting strange. He still hadn’t apologized or addressed his disappearance. She decided to press him. She lifted her chin, a gesture learned from her mother. “Warren’s dead,” she blurted.
He turned to look at her head on. His eyes widened behind his lenses.
“My mother received a telegram.”
“Oh, Alice.” He reached for her, but his hand fell short.
“Where have you been?” She was determined not to cry. She blamed him for everything, but she also longed for him to hold her, to envelop her in his enormous arms, to move her hair around with his breath.
“Saul.” He rubbed his neck. “There was an accident.”
Something inside her jolted at the word. “An accident?”
“An accident,” he repeated.
“When you two went missing at work, they just said it was shift changes.”
Caleb shrugged. “Siloes are siloes,” he said. “It only concerned the recruits involved. Other than that, they kept it quiet. Didn’t want a panic.”
“Is he OK?”
“He’ll live,” Caleb said, his face setting. His lip twitched at the corner like there were more words trying to get out. “The fool is lucky he didn’t croak.” As soon as he said it, he seemed to realize his error, speaking crudely of a near-death escape to one who just lost her betrothed. His eyes filled with alarm and his palm covered the gasp that escaped his mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to …”
It was no use. She was crying. He reached for her again, this time his hands finding her shaking shoulders. “I didn’t mean it,” he whispered. “Alice, Alice,” he tried again. He seemed convinced that if he repeated her name, he could knock the words out of the air between them.
At his touch, her heart somersaulted. She couldn’t take the concern in his eyes. The longer she stood there with his hands tingling on her shoulders, her skin smoldering for him, the harder she would shake and heave and cry. She knew that any moment now, she would embrace him in front of everyone, take solace in his arms.
Alice turned and ran from the room. She felt his eyes burn into the back of her head as he chased her through the crowd, following her outside into the weather.
She crunched through the knee-high snow, escaping the swirling lights of Oppenheimer’s house, fading into the dark landscape of the garden. Groves still hadn’t allowed streetlights for fear of giving away the location of the secret city, so as she descended into the dark landscape, the stars splashed brightly across the sky. She tore through the snowdrifts until the snow scattered like glitter in her peripheral vision and her trousers were wet up to the knees. She paused at the edge of the property to catch her breath, consumed in the darkness and the quiet. Caleb trotted up and paused a step behind her. She could see the plumes of his breath floating in the cold—small globes of the past excised from the curve of time. Without a word, he removed his coat and wrapped it around her, pulling her to him.
The second he touched her, Warren’s war-torn body and his platoon of soldiers crouching in foxholes vanished from her mind. The party behind them disappeared into the night. She could only see Caleb.
He looked at her like he was starving. It was nothing like the way Warren had looked at her. It had nothing to do with her fine dresses or her notable mentions in the society pages. It was not about her lipstick, which she still painted on out of habit even when her outfits derailed into trousers and hiking boots. For the most part, she had shed her frills as remnants of her past life, but she couldn’t go out, even to get the mail, without that lipstick. In that respect, she couldn’t shake her mother. A lady never left the house without her face painted on. But Caleb saw past that. In what he saw, she felt possibility take hold.
Maybe it was his Orthodoxy that set him apart. He never stared at other women the way Warren had. He never looked her up and down like the other men here did. He didn’t rest his palm on the small of her back, copping a feel of her hips when he passed by. Instead, he lit up when she spoke, looking deeply into her eyes. It made her nervous to be listened to with such close attention, but it also excited her. In his presence, the horror of Warren’s death and her overactive imagination quieted. Shadows shrank down to appropriate sizes. Some of the darkness lifted.
He pulled her close. He smelled like cigars and campfire.
Like she was bewitched, Alice took Caleb’s hand and guided him to the edge of the property. They scraped the snow from the handle of her Dodge. He rushed to open the door for her, but she opened it first. He grinned sheepishly. She suspected he liked a woman who could open doors for herself.
She shook the powder from her boots and settled into the driver’s seat. When she turned the key, the engine coughed before turning over. He walked all the way around the back of the car, his tall, thin body glowing red in the taillights. As they drove, soft cowboy music came on the radio. Almost immediately, the windshield fogged over, and she blasted the heater. It ran cold for a few minutes before it warmed.