TaraShea Nesbit - The Wives of Los Alamos

WE LOOKED CLOSER when we walked by the officers’ hall in midday and saw Army men and WACs, men and women enjoying the day dancing, and part of us wanted to join them in the fun, but we could not. We worried about what our husbands would say, and we had children to take care of, and come to think of it, who was watching these women’s children?

EVEN WITHOUT THE holidays, there was continually a cause for celebration—the Allies beat the Axis, or we beat the Army by getting artichoke hearts stocked at the commissary, by extending the length our golf course, or by decreasing the size of the firing range. We went to parties every weekend throughout the year, sometimes not knowing exactly what was being celebrated.

AT THE BRITISH parties we sipped mulled wine and listened to recitations of limericks. If we were given to self-pity, we resolved it through dancing, and through liquor. We undid our top buttons and smiled brightly at the few GIs who were invited or who were not invited but came anyway, at our husbands, at one another, and we danced.

THE FLUTTER OF the night felt a bit like college, when young men in starched white shirts or wrinkled cotton stood on front porches and asked us our names, or where we were from. And we replied with Iowa or Sally , common words, and felt the quiet embarrassment and excitement of what those questions might lead to.

WE DANCED AND sang along to Hit That Jive, Jack . We swayed to I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen . We did not like This Is the Army, Mr. Jones and slowed our movements, stepped aside, asked our partners if they would be so kind as to refresh our drink.

WE LEARNED HOW to drink cocktails before dinner. We learned how to notice the flirtations between people; we talked about who was now sleeping with whom and, if the bedrooms were currently occupied by revelers, about Musical Beds. We were beginning to prefer the company of other women and because we spent so much time with them, we noticed more acutely when we were interrupted, when the men turned toward one another and how some women let their voices trail off. At dinner parties when our men were on one side and we were on the other we gathered around fireplaces and talked about gas shortages, water shortages, and people. Kitty Oppenheimer always seems to have plenty of gas in her tank , Mildred said, and Katherine added, Enough to get her to Santa Fe and back twice a week. What is she doing down there? And Ingrid told us, I saw Frank pay a morning visit to Margaret’s house yesterday. Saw him while I was having my coffee. He sure stayed awhile.

WHEN AT A party late, when they insisted on dancing and stepped on our feet, when they slumped in a chair, we grasped our husbands by the hand. They asked, Where we were going now? and we said, It’s a surprise , and we took their hazy eyes to bed. Sometimes we wandered into someone else’s house thinking it was our own. And we saw someone reading a book on a sofa that looked like ours but wasn’t, and we apologized, saying, So sorry! and closed the door.

WE FELT THE freedom of living in isolation—no university president attended our parties, no department chair wife was around to observe the liberties we took with our dance moves or cocktails, and so on the weekends, fenced in as we were, we celebrated and square-danced, we let go. We often woke the next morning with no water and spent the day reeking of rum, and our lungs burned from smoking so many cigarettes. We wanted what we could many times not have: coffee, a shower.

LATER, ONCE THE secret was out, the rumors that we played Musical Beds got around and when we arrived back home our aunts asked us, gravely, Did you ever go to those parties? And we responded, Aunt Hilda! Don’t be silly .

WHEN WE HEARD Dresden was destroyed by firebombing some of us thought of the time our fathers took us to the market there, the pink heads of pigs all in a row. Or we thought about the time we toured towns by train with our parents, riding through the dense conifers of the Black Forest, arriving at a small town, a name we can’t recall, watching an older man cross the street in lederhosen, just like a postcard, and how the tall mountain framed him. One shop had all the quaint cuckoo clocks in the glass storefront timed exactly, and at noon on a Monday afternoon we watched as the balcony doors of fifty tiny wooden houses opened in unison, and fifty windup birds popped out and made the same resonant cu-ckoo .

THE BUILDINGS OF Dresden we saw in the newspaper were now the skeleton constructions of stage props—only one side of a church, a bank, and city hall stood—it was a city of leaning towers with steel wires hanging down from the fifth or fifteenth story like willow branches. But also it was a city of statues appearing desperate and ominous above the rubble, including Hercules, Martin Luther, and several pairs of lions with long flowing manes.

A CITY, GONE, and the Allies did this. We asked some of the wives, Can you believe it? Dresden! And some women said, Thank goodness! They should just bomb Germany to bits; nothing else is going to stop the war . And some women said, Isn’t it just awful. It was times like this we found an excuse to borrow a horse and head south and down to Edith’s house under the Otowi Bridge, because unlike us she moved to New Mexico years ago to avoid the pressure for success she felt in the East. We were introduced to her through the Director, who had invited us for dinner at her place: she occasionally hosted an invitation-only restaurant. Edith, and her Indian friend Tilano, who on holidays gave our children bows, arrows, and turkey feather headdresses, and for us, fireplace brooms and bundles of piñon kindling tied with red ribbon.

IT WAS RUMORED she had a nervous breakdown and her parents agreed to let her go west instead of continuing to be a teacher. She read everything, was often writing in a journal, knew the names of every bird and plant we saw, kept a vibrant garden, was curious, listened as if she cared, and rarely said a bad word about anyone. She was an island of culture in the wilderness. Tea? she would ask us before we got off the horse, and soon we felt better.

BUT WAR NEWS was inescapable and frequent: by late February, U.S. troops had raised their flag at the top of Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima, where the rocky slopes were red with the blood of soldiers and civilians.

FINALLY, TO OUR joy, spring arrived. The daffodils emerged. We heard the U.S. invaded Okinawa and kamikaze pilots flew their aircrafts into Allied ships. We thought about those we’d once loved, or loved presently, who were out there somewhere floating in the ocean.

AND THEN THE news of President Roosevelt’s death. It was frightening that he died before finishing his vow to end the war and we certainly were not comforted by the newscaster’s report that the new president, Truman, was very cognizant of his own shortcomings . But the balance sheet of the Allies and the Axis in Europe looked better for our side, and in late April, Mussolini was assassinated.

WOULD THE WAR in Europe be over? We grew hopeful, but not too hopeful; we did not want to be disappointed, and there was still the Pacific to think of.

TWO YEARS IN the New Mexico sun had worn our faces. And even though we got caught in late afternoon thunderstorms there was also the threat of a lightning strike and the gusty winds spreading wildfires through dry grasses. On a clear day we could see billows of smoke a hundred miles away, and in the mornings the wind carried the smell of burning wood so close to us, it was as if we had had a campfire the night before.