TaraShea Nesbit - The Wives of Los Alamos

ON THE New York Times Sunday front page was an image of the city grid overlaid with an illustration of what might happen if a bomb were dropped in the middle of Manhattan: the rubble of music halls, hotels, art museums, galleries, all of that cultural history. Like Hiroshima, perhaps all that would be left of Manhattan Island would be one sturdy bank made from marble and reinforced for earthquakes. It would be as flat as Kansas, an urban prairie with views of the water. We had thought the Gadget would bring relief, but as soon as the bomb was used there was a new fear: if we could detonate it, so, too, could any enemy.

ONE NIGHT WE found our husbands, or someone else’s husband, sitting in the middle of the children’s sandbox, still wearing work boots, and holding a rifle. Bill? we asked him from where we stood on the other side of the yard, but he disregarded our call or did not hear us. The sun was low behind the mountains and his back was to us—a blue-checkered shirt, we remember. Bill , we called again. He pointed the rifle to the sky. He pulled the trigger. The sound echoed, scattered a few starlings from the trees, and we shrieked. When we regained our wits we queried, What on earth were you doing? To which he replied, I just needed to do something , and got up from the sandbox. We turned and went back into the house.

MIGRAINE MEDICINE WAS still out of stock. A husband was injured at the Tech Area. His arms blistered, it spread up his body, the tissue died, and twenty-four days later he was dead. We asked, How did this happen? but we were not told.

ONE MORNING A husband from across the street called our name. We were out watering the flowers before anyone could see us using up water on such a luxury as a potted plant. With his arm he motioned for us to come over, and so we did, and once we got inside his house he raised his arm to our faces and we saw a welt across his forearm about four inches long. Did he smell like whiskey? We had never seen this man unreasonably distraught, or emotional much at all.

HE WENT TO his bedroom and pulled the covers up above his head. We asked, What happened? but he did not answer us. Around the room was a black burn mark up the wall from the oil heater, and it appeared as if it had malfunctioned, and burned his arm. What was a woman to do in this situation? Though we wanted to comfort him, we certainly did not want to find ourselves in another woman’s bed. We assured him everything would be okay, and then we said that we would be right back, and hurried home, and sent our son or daughter to the commissary to find his wife, and to notify a doctor.

WE SAW OUR men sob into their pillows. But when we went by the military service club we saw GIs dancing and singing When Johnny Comes Marching Home .

SINCE THE CENSORSHIP was lifted, we could see our families for the first time in years, and we begged our parents to visit: We think it would be tons of fun! Please think seriously about coming. But we did not sound positive enough, and our fathers said they could not get away from the department store, the bank, the lab, or the university, but our mothers wrote and said they would come by train or bus as quickly as they could.

OUR MOTHERS CAME and though the altitude left them short of breath they were delighted that our children could speak since they had last seen them, or that there were more of them than before. They were surprised that the commissary carried mayonnaise and Kleenex, and they were pleased to see that we were not starving, and they were thrilled that our friends began calling them Mom, too.

WE SAID IT was like going to a funeral, watching everyone leave. The construction workers and machinists left first, gathering up their families and departing in a procession of trailers. For three years we had not ironed the good tablecloths, brought out the fine china, or asked, Do you prefer white or red? about the wine. Soon we would be away from one another and in other towns we would befriend the university president’s wife by inviting her over for tea, and we would not be wearing blue jeans in her company. But we felt middle-aged at twenty-seven, and we would be thrilled to return to academic life afterward, if only because we would no longer be one of the oldest women in the room.

BEFORE WE LEFT we went to the Army office and when it was our turn we gave our claim tickets to a man in order to retrieve our cameras from the Army vault. Instead we were told they could not be found. We were called Lady then, as in Look, Lady, I have no way of finding them , and he told us to pick out any camera we preferred.

WE FOUND A better camera for ourselves. Or we felt bad about taking someone else’s things, and we could not find our own, and we returned home empty-handed. We brought back from those years very few pictures of that time, if any, and had no images of our children at three, at five, at seven, aside from those in our memories.

WE WENT TO Albuquerque or Santa Fe to celebrate our nearing and permanent departure as well as to buy university-appropriate attire to get our husbands ready for interviewing again. Our husbands said they could take academic jobs and we would starve or they could take industry jobs and we would eat well. Some of us encouraged our husbands to give up academia, saying, I’m tired of rationing , and some of us encouraged our husbands to give up physics entirely, saying, You do not want to spend your entire life figuring out how to kill people, do you? And some of us said, You’ll make the right choice .

WHILE WE HAD spent three years in Los Alamos, our husbands had been promoted to full professors and the dean of the university wrote to say our husbands would now have their own research lab. Or while we were away many more schools were hiring—they anticipated GIs returning home and entering college—and our husbands had accomplished something, and on the Hill they had made friends with scientists from several universities, and they were offered better-paying jobs, with higher ranks, at more prestigious places, in larger cities. Though the Director was stepping down to return to his lab at Berkeley, the General invited himself to dinner at our place and suggested our husbands seriously consider the financial rewards a position at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory could offer our family. Think of the stability. Some of our husbands did just that and signed up for another year at Los Alamos despite our protests.

OUR HUSBANDS WENT to cities to interview for jobs, and when they returned we discussed the options: an assistant professorship in New York or a job here at Los Alamos. Many of us had a bit of negotiating power since we’d been here so long and we protested, That’s three thousand miles away from Portland! Or, That’s two thousand miles away from Kansas City!

FOR A WHILE many of us were ravenous for news and thought that the more information we had, the better chance there was of making a smart decision. But that faded for some of us, and we finally said, Oh, to hell with it , and moved to the city, or the coast. Besides, we could have a heart attack, get hit by a car, choke on a ham bone. What we learned was this: there were no ways to control unknown threats.

OUR HUSBANDS CONSIDERED staying. We thought the town would remain a military post, or that our husbands would be forced to leave their academic positions to conduct war research whenever the military so desired. Many of our husbands said they did not want to sell their souls and many of our husbands said, I have to help see this thing through . Some husbands could not make up their mind if it was right or wrong for science to serve war. Some said they preferred to teach and do research without the restrictions of secrecy.