Lost, Almost Read online

My breath caught in my throat.

  “She told me you’d taken a job here, that you’d be here soon, that you were coming back to build a life here. And she made me promise not to tell you.”

  It took me some time to absorb this, to understand what she was telling me. Our first meeting in the drug store, her carefully constructed words, questions to which she must have already known the answers.

  “You stayed here because of me?“

  “I know, it’s pathetic, it’s terrible, but I was just so lonely, and when we were kids it was so overwhelming, and—”

  “I thought I’d made a huge mistake,” I said, tears of relief welling in my eyes. I gestured to the big open living room. “I thought I’d misread every signal. The last two weeks, I thought—I thought—”

  “I shouldn’t have lied to you,” she said. “I couldn’t keep lying to you. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Damnit,” I said. “Damnit, damnit, damnit.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  “Not you,” I said. “My mother. She set me up. She— she—”

  “She didn’t make either of us do anything. She can’t make us.” She paused. “I can leave if you want me to.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you,” Mel said. “Nobody can make me do that.”

  “I suppose not,” I said. I knew it wasn’t her fault. My mother had set me up, and Melanie was no more to blame than I was. Here we were, two pawns in the same game. And who else on this planet could possibly understand how that felt?

  We developed a weekend routine. Saturdays we did chores, laundry, grocery shopping, scrubbing the bathroom, raking up pine needles. We saw my parents on Saturday nights; dinner was at their house at six o’clock sharp. Sundays in the morning we relaxed with the paper; in the afternoon, we sat at opposite ends of the dining table and spread our work out. It was a good time for thinking, for moving things around in a way I didn’t in my lab, for contemplating things I might otherwise not have conceived.

  This particular Sunday, mid-October, it was chilly outside, and Melanie had made a pot of coffee. It sat between us on the table. She drank more of it than I did; I would drink a cup in the morning sometimes, but mostly I just liked to hold the warm cup between my hands. The cups had come from my parents’ house, a medium blue, speckled with white, not quite big enough to hold comfortably with both hands around them. I had three articles stacked in front of me that had collected on my desk during the week. Mel had papers everywhere, little crumpled scraps, a looseleaf notebook, xeroxes of journal articles, extending past the table’s midline. She seemed to know what they all were and where, reaching for one without looking up to search, keeping notes on a yellow pad resting in her lap.

  She had just refilled her coffee cup and was settling back into her chair when the doorbell rang. We looked at each other.

  “Beats me,” I said. “Want me to get it?”

  “I’ll get it.” Her end of the table was closer to the door. She opened the door and I expected voices, an introduction, a request from whoever was standing there, but instead there was silence. I couldn’t see the door from where I sat.

  “Mel?” I called. “Who is it?”

  “Who are you?” came a voice. A voice I knew. In an instant I was up. Celine was standing there in a thin black sweater.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. I looked down at my hands, sure that they must be shaking, but they appeared still. Cold air was pouring into the house. She gave no answer. Melanie was still standing beside me, looking at her. Somehow I was supposed to introduce them. Neither knew the other existed. No, I thought, that wasn’t completely accurate. Celine had known about Melanie, the Melanie in my past, her only predecessor of any note.

  “Celine,” I said, “this is Melanie. Mel, Celine is—we knew each other before I came back. In Boston.”

  “You’re going to freeze out there,” Melanie said. She moved aside, gesturing for Celine to come in. I stood dumbly, feeling that I couldn’t explain to either one of them about the other; that would entail a clear establishment of allegiance. Seconds ticked by.

  “Well,” Melanie said. “I’ve got to run some of these things back over to the lab.”

  “Wait,” I said. My heart was racing. “Mel—”

  “We can talk later,” she said. She held my gaze for several seconds. Her eyes were soft; she meant it. She disappeared back into the kitchen to gather her things, and all I could think in that moment was how incredibly kind she was. She was everything anyone had ever wanted for me.

  It wasn’t until after Melanie brushed past us, her arms full of the papers she’d had spread out over the table, and gone out the door, car keys looped over her pinky, that Celine spoke.

  “I thought you’d be alone,” she said. My heart was still beating much too fast. I wouldn’t have thought, if anyone had asked, that her appearance would send me into such a state.

  “We can’t just stand in the hallway like this,” I said.

  “Mel,” she said. “Melanie. Jesus, was that her? The one?” I nodded. Celine hadn’t moved from where her feet were planted in the entryway. I could see that she was constructing a narrative in her head, one in which, rather than the job being irresistible, I had engineered this entire thing for the sake of reunion, behind her back. “And you’re apparently still in love with her.”

  Her anger shook me, and at the same time the intimacy of it plunged me into memory, the two of us talking by the Charles, her elegant signature right above mine on a lease.

  “No.” I said. “You have to believe me. I didn’t know she lived here. I hadn’t spoken to her in years and years.”

  “Oh,” she said. “How convenient.” She towered over me in high heels.

  “You don’t believe me,” I said. “You think I left my brilliant, beautiful girlfriend and my work in Boston to come home and be with my high school sweetheart.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. She sniffed.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I’ll go. I should have just called you. I should never have come.”

  “Stay,” I said. “Please.” I took her hand and pulled her to the living room. My palms were hot. She was wearing lipstick, an orangey shade of red, and her skin was so clear it practically looked damp. I hadn’t thought of her much in the last few months—I’d thought so much of my work, and of Mel—but now I couldn’t see how that had been the case.

  “I’m embarrassed,” she said. “I came here thinking you’d be on your own, and you’d let me in, and we’d, well, I don’t know, we’d figure it out.” I gestured to the small sofa, and we sat, both rather formal with two feet planted on the floor, several inches of cushion between us. I could barely fit it all together, Celine in my living room in Los Alamos, Melanie and Celine standing next to each other, the cold air blowing in, it made no sense, like a dream where you know where you are and who the people represent but nothing actually appears the way it does in real life.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I told her. “You said it yourself: There’s nothing here for you. It was an either/or proposition.”

  “That’s what he wanted you to think. Your dad. I wasn’t part of his plan. So I’d just disappear, I’d fade into the background and you could go back to being Mr. Brilliant Child Prodigy Research Guy. Apparently with Ms. Brilliant Child Prodigy Research Girl for a wife. I just didn’t think it was you that wanted it.”

  “It wasn’t me,” I said. “It was my mother. She convinced Mel to stay here after I took the job. I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t even know she was back until I got here. I swear, I had no idea.”

  She laughed, an insincere cackle. “Of course your mother arranged it. I’m not even surprised. Sweet Christ, Curt, doesn’t that make you mad?”

  “Yes,” I said. My voice cracked on the word. I wanted to put some force behind my words, to yell, but I could barely get the sounds out; my throat ached. “Of course it d
oes. I hate that she did it, behind my back like that.”

  “You don’t have to put up with it,” Celine said. She laid a hand on my arm. “God, I hate to see you like this. You can shake it off, Curt. You can break out of it.” She leaned in and locked her blue eyes on mine. “You can do this,” she said. “I know you can.”

  “She just wanted me to be happy.” I said. A tear slid down my right cheek. “And she wanted Mel to be happy.”

  “Never mind what you want.”

  I didn’t answer. What did I want? I couldn’t have said. We were happy, in a way. We had good jobs, and a comfortable house. We were well matched.

  “What would happen if you confronted her?” Celine asked. “If you went over there and knocked on the door, and said Mom, why on earth did you interfere in my life this way, please don’t ever do that again?”

  “She’d tell me that Dad wanted me to be successful, and she wanted me to be happy, and they tried their best to make that happen.”

  “So you tell her thank you, Mom, that’s sweet, but I’m an adult now and it’s my life, and please don’t.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t do that.” She gave a violent sigh and closed her eyes.

  “I’ll go, then,” She said. She stood. “I’m terribly sorry. I hope I didn’t just ruin your marriage.”

  “Don’t go,” I said. It was all I could think, in that moment—I didn’t want her to go. A feeling had started to stir in me that I hadn’t felt since my return. It was different, I was different, and I knew as she stood there, tears welling in her eyes, that whatever it was, I wouldn’t have it here, not without her, not ever again.

  “I’m going to Paris for the year,” she said. “And I—God, I’m such an idiot. I did some research, and asked around, and there’s a lab there where they’re working in your area, and I really thought there was a chance that you’d come.” She cast her eyes around the house, the table where Mel and I had been working, the two sets of shoes lined up neatly by the door. They fit perfectly there. I thought of my lab, the window sill with its line of houseplants in mismatched pots.

  “I need to think,” I said.

  “No,” she said, “you don’t. It’s all you do, think, think, think. Just come. Please just for once in your life, just come with me right now.” I wasn’t getting enough air into my lungs.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “You mean you won’t.”

  “I can’t,” I said again, but I knew she was right. It was all there, the data to support the conclusion: they had set me up, the pair of them, and comprehending this, and that it had always been so, I stood, watching the only person who had ever stood a chance of pulling me out get into a rental car and drive away.

  I called Mel’s office. “She’s gone,” I said. “Mel, I didn’t ask her to come.” The line was silent for a long time. “Are you there?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I mean it,” I said. “We split up when I left Boston, and I hadn’t heard from her.”

  “I believe you,” she said. Her voice was tiny, far away. Then, “She’s very tall.”

  “Yes,” I said, “too tall, much too tall.”

  “Are you in love with her?” Melanie asked.

  “Oh, Mel,” I said, “what does it matter?”

  Adam Brooks, 1957

  It isn’t that they’d been expecting a grand welcome—the lab is a busy place, their arrival a minor event—but there was no need for the guard at the gate to bark at them the way he did. They had their passes, carefully arranged ahead of time, and soon enough their station wagon would have a decal and the guards would come to recognize them.

  Adam and Angeline are both frightened by the guard’s rifle. He isn’t exactly pointing it at them, but the angle at which he holds it suggests that a wrong move could prove fatal. Adam tries to steady himself, his hands tight on the wheel. Hundreds of scientists have come here before him, in times much more dire than these.

  Once they are inside the gates, things seem a little calmer. There are streets with street signs, just like Iowa, just like Pasadena. They have been given directions to a particular office, where a woman they have spoken to on the phone, Mrs. Harding, will show them to their assigned unit, and later, when they’ve had a chance to settle in, give them a more complete tour.

  The house is tiny; they can see that from the outside as they follow Mrs. Harding’s car to the short gravel driveway. It is packed between two equally tiny houses that look like they came off a conveyor belt. It has just two rooms, a bedroom and a living room, each with a sad assortment of dormitory-style furniture, plus an impossibly small kitchen with a two-burner stove and a bathroom where two people cannot stand side by side. There is a large round stain on the carpet in the bedroom, right at the foot of the rickety bed, and everywhere the paint is flaking. Angeline puts one finger on the living room wall and pulls it away covered in fine, white dust.

  “You’ll be able to move,” Mrs. Harding says apologetically. “They’re continuing to build new structures, and as people move out, spaces open up.” Adam looks around at the dim rooms, the stain. He looks at his new wife, her forehead wrinkled, her lips pressed stoically together. It is late afternoon, the sky already pink-orange.

  “Thank you,” he says to Mrs. Harding, positioning himself between her and the doorway that leads to the bedroom, giving her no choice but to edge toward the door. “What time shall we come by in the morning for the tour?”

  “How about ten o’clock?” she says. “You can get yourselves some dinner at the lodge tonight. It’ll open up at five. Do you know where it is?”

  “We’ll find it,” Adam says.

  When she’s gone, he takes his wife in his arms. “Don’t worry,” he says. “These are quarters for the new man. And damned if anybody will call me junior for more than a couple of months.”

  “We can make do,” she says, bravely. Her voice suggests that she doesn’t believe it herself, and he can’t blame her. She goes to the tiny, chipped sink in the kitchen and turns on the tap; she washes the dust off her hands as best she can. She is hunting around for something on which to dry her hands when there is a forceful knock at the door. She draws in a great breath through her nose, a sign Adam has come to recognize that she is trying to gather her composure.

  He opens the door, prepared to accept some piece of paperwork or additional unwanted advice from Mrs. Harding, hoping to run her off quickly so he can be alone with Angeline, but it isn’t Mrs. Harding. It is a tall man with silver hair combed straight back from his face. He wears a jacket and tie.

  “Dr. Brooks,” he says. “I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you at the gate. I was tied up on a phone call to Washington. I’m Norris Bradbury.” Adam’s mouth falls open. Dr. Bradbury is the head of the laboratory, successor to Oppenheimer, responsible for keeping the lab going now that the immediate urgencies of war have passed. He hadn’t imagined he’d meet him at all in the early stages of his work here.

  Dr. Bradbury offers his hand. “Welcome,” he says. “Welcome, welcome, welcome. I think, I do believe, that you will learn to feel at home here quickly.”

  Adam turns to Angeline, who looks stunned. She wipes her hands on her skirt, and Adam introduces her. Dr. Bradbury smiles.

  “Don’t you worry,” he says. “We’ll get both of you into a nicer place just as soon as we can. Adam, I was hoping I could bring you over to the technical area. Just for an hour or so, show you a few things, get the last bit of paperwork squared away so we can hit the ground running tomorrow.”

  “Well,” Adam says. “You don’t waste any time.” He looks at Angeline, her lips set once again in that tight line. She gives the slightest of nods.

  “Go,” she says. “Do what needs to be done.” This is not the first time she has told him this, and it won’t be the last, and he loves her for it. Good God, he loves her.

  Ceiling

  It was never her plan to hide the letter. It was on Thursday that she opened the mailbox to
find the big white envelope, postmarked Pasadena, addressed to Curtis. They had been expecting this—an acceptance from the California Institute of Technology—any day. She didn’t know who had been more anxious, her son, who would go there, or her husband, who had already been. She brought the envelope inside and set it on the kitchen table, propped against the salt shaker so there would be no missing it.

  It wasn’t yet two o’clock, and the house was quiet. She wasn’t used to being home so much, but she’d had her gall bladder out the week before, and had been instructed not to return to work for a full two weeks. It had been nice the first few days, padding around the one-story house in her socks, sitting in whichever room she liked, but she’d quickly come to look forward to Curtis’s arrival home from school. His comings and goings gave shape to her days.

  The good news, she decided, warranted a celebration. It would be nice for Curtis, for Adam, and perhaps the effort would help her to build the enthusiasm she knew she ought to feel. There was time to go to the store. There was time to make the lemon chicken Curtis loved, the dish she made for his birthday every year. She wasn’t much of a cook, but this, she could do. Every time she served it, there was none left over. Those little tight smiles they gave when she cooked much of anything else were nowhere to be found.

  She picked up the envelope. Every once in a while, Curtis came home early, some activity or another having been canceled, or some necessary piece of equipment left in his bedroom. She would hate for him to come home to an empty house, no one there to be a part of that scene that would be in his memory forever. She carried it with her and set it on the front seat of her car. It sat there in the thin April sunshine while she passed up and down the aisles, gathering the ingredients from the list she knew by heart.

  These days, when Curtis wanted to impress his father, he read obscure books and wrote out complicated proofs that he left lying in conspicuous places, but it had started with backyard experiments. Adam worked long hours and some weekends at the lab, but Sunday afternoons were set aside for Curtis, who by the age of eight summarily refused to make any other plans for the day, no matter what Angeline offered.