Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

“He does. Love, love, love.”

I waited a moment.

“So look,” I said, “what about that warhead?”

Sarah coughed and rubbed her eyes. She’d lost some weight—too much, I thought—and without the mink she seemed skinny and poor-looking. Unhealthy, too. The blister at her lip was hard to ignore.

“The warhead,” she said, and shrugged. “Actually, I guess, we could’ve built our own—Ollie had the blueprints. Who doesn’t? But that wouldn’t make the same waves. Had to swipe it. These days, it takes real drama.”

She stared at the ceiling.

“God, William, I do miss you. But anyhow. The bomb. Ebenezer—it was his brainstorm. Proliferation, you know. Dramatize the problem. Show what could happen. One last shot, so we got organized and pulled it off like you wouldn’t believe. Like with the guns, that easy.”

“And now?”

“Yes, now’s the problem.” Sarah pulled off my wedding ring and popped it in her mouth and swallowed. “They wanted to use the damned thing.”

“Use it? You mean—”

“Blackmail. A demonstration project or some such shit. Set it off in the desert, wake up the rattlesnakes. I don’t know. Headlines. Ollie was crazy about the idea—Tina, too—she wouldn’t stop quoting Chekhov. Some terrorists. Threats , that’s what scares people. A difference of opinion, you could say. So Ned and I, we had to reswipe the warhead. Packed it up one night and took off. And now we’re badly wanted.”

“I see.”

“By our own comrades. That old gang of ours. They want the bomb back.”

We were quiet for a time. It occurred to me that life has a way of tidying up after itself. I remembered my Ping-Pong days, but then I remembered the grief.

“Sarah,” I said, “I want that ring back.”

“In due time,” she said.

Later we put on our coats and went outside.

It was snowing hard. Sarah lay down and made angels on the lawn, then she led me to the jeep and pulled back a tarp and showed me the warhead.

“There’s your mountain,” she said.

She brushed snow from the nose cone. It was the size of a large cantaloupe, smoothly polished.

“Seventy-two pounds,” she said, “but think what it would do to Las Vegas. New model—Mark 24 or something, I forget.” She slipped her arm through mine. Her voice seemed faraway. “Graceful lines, don’t you think? Like me. Bombshell. If you want, we can run away together, you and me and Mark. Tuck us in at night, tell us bedtime stories. Great sex, I bet.”

“Enough,” I said.

“Touch it, William.”

“Not necessary. No.”

“Your big chance. Cop a quickie. Feel it.”

“No.”

“ Touch .”

She took me by the hand and pressed it down. The metal was cold. No surprise, I thought. Just cold and real. I felt a slight adhesion to the fingers when I pulled away. I nodded and said, “Get rid of it.”

“Of course.”

“I mean it, Sarah.”

“Yes. You always do.” She tapped the warhead. “For now, though, we need storage space. Three weeks. A month, max. Look at it as a good deed. For me.”

“Temporary?” I said.

“Oh, sure,” said Sarah. “Just temporary. Like everything.”

We lugged the bomb into the tool shed, covered it with rugs, and locked the door.

Outside, Sarah hugged me hard.

“I love you,” she whispered, “and that’s final.”

We celebrated the holidays like a family. Rafferty and I chopped down a tree, Bobbi and Sarah made pudding and pies, there was mistletoe everywhere. On Christmas Eve we set up an electric train for Melinda. We opened gifts and sang carols and drank rum toddies. On Christmas morning, before breakfast, Sarah returned my wedding ring.

The days afterward were lazy. I remember snowshoeing and quiet reminiscence. Beneath the surface, however, there was renewed velocity: that Doppler feeling.

Late one night I heard crying. It was Sarah—she was crying hard—and it went on for a long time, all night it seemed. But in the morning, when I asked about it, she shook her head and laughed and said, “No way, man. Not crying. I don’t indulge.” It was that kind of velocity. The kind that moves beneath things, as blood moves beneath skin. There were no flashes. No sirens or pigeons, nothing so vivid. I’d sometimes find myself gazing at the tool shed. Normal, I’d think. Things in their place; the absolute normality of the abnormal.

There was some apprehension, yes, but the bomb didn’t disturb me nearly as much as Sarah’s lip.

It was badly inflamed. Bruised-looking and scary—movement beneath the surface.

Dangerous, I thought, and one morning I told her so.

Sarah smiled and touched my wedding ring. “A love disease,” she said. “It’ll clear up once we get married.”

“Seriously.”

“Ugly, am I?”

“It should be looked at,” I said. “By a doctor.”

Sarah laughed.

Not funny, however. At the end of January, she complained of fatigue. A dark, thimble-sized scab formed at the corner of her mouth. Tiny black veins snaked across the surface of the blister. Her speech faltered. She had trouble coordinating past with present.

In February there were periods of dizziness; at night there was crying.

“Mommy!” she’d scream.

She’d press a pillow to her face and curl up at the foot of the bed and scream, “I’m dead!”

For a week or two it got better. Then it got much worse.

“Dead!” she’d yell.

One evening she used a needle to drain the lip. There was infection and severe swelling. In the morning, when I brought breakfast to her room, she pulled a pillowcase over her head.

She was cogent, though.

“Well,” she said cheerfully, “this smart-ass mouth of mine.”

Rafferty sat in a rocking chair near the bed. His eyes were dull. He looked at her for a while, then left us alone.

Gently, I tried to lift off the pillowcase, but Sarah stopped me.

“No, please,” she said. “Leave it be. Just for now.”

The room smelled of medicines, Campho-Phenique and Xy-locaine. For several minutes I sat in the rocking chair and tried for silence.

“A doctor,” I finally said. “You know that?”

“Not quite yet.”

“Sarah, I won’t let—”

“Not yet,” she said. “No hospitals. I can’t be alone like that.”

“You’re not alone.”

“I can’t be.”

She turned away from me. It was a bright winter morning, and the curtains were open, and the sunlight made little trails along the flesh at her arms and ankles.

Lying back, she seemed to doze off.

Then she said, “William, you know what I wish? I wish—don’t get upset or anything—but I wish we’d had some things together. The two of us. Just certain things. I wish I was pregnant. It’s corny, I know, but I really wish that.”

“It’s not so corny,” I said.

“I guess not. Sounds that way, but… You know what else? I wish there was more time. A billion years. I wish I was floating on this raft in the ocean somewhere, like somewhere romantic, and there’s this island with palm trees and waterfalls and stuff, but it’s not exactly a desert island because we’ve got all these kids running around barefoot, and I’m pregnant again and it’s a real hot day and I’m just floating on this raft—no sharks or anything—so whenever I want I just sort of slip into the water and go down to the bottom and get cool, and there’s this baby inside me, this thing we have together, and then when I’m cool I come up to the raft again and lie there and get hot. Pretty corny, I told you. But that’s what I wish. I wish we could just float. I wish you’d make love to me. You can’t, I know, but I still wish it.”