The Longest Night (14 page)

This line of thought was its own narcissism; he could tell because it almost felt good. It was easy to revel in murk. Fighting it was the much harder thing, an act of will, like a drunkard resisting the drink. He always tried and perhaps overcompensated. Nat teased him for his stiffness, the order he liked to create around him. She didn't know how easy it was to slip. She couldn't comprehend how effortless her own life was, and how fragile, but he knew.

N
at had waited up several hours for Paul's return. She didn't resent him for cutting loose with the boys—she liked to see him relaxed and carefree—but when he wasn't home by midnight she finally decided to turn in. The day seemed to have been incredibly long, what with the morning's exciting news, the disappointment of driving out to the reactor and back empty-handed, the stupid late urge to bake cookies, and the disproportionate penance of cleanup.

Just before turning out the lights she remembered she hadn't made Paul's lunch, so she set aside some Tupperware from dinner: meatloaf on Wonder bread, cold macaroni and cheese, mandarin oranges. It was oddly pleasurable to pack his lunch, to think of him opening it at noon like a little hello from her while she and the girls ate the same thing here at the table. Plus, it was a balanced meal.

As she finished up she had an idea: Here was a clever way to surprise him with the baby news. She took a napkin from its holder and over the thin, floral-pricked paper wrote, “Have a great day, father of THREE! Love, N.” The “H” from “THREE!” ripped through, so she tossed that one and tried again with a lighter hand. Grinning, feeling mischievous, she slid the note into the bag, crinkled down the top, and set the bag on the top shelf by the OJ so he wouldn't miss it.

Sometime very late, she heard Paul come in the front door. His shoes made soft twin thuds in the entryway; water ran and redoubled into a cup. There was the quiet clink of glasses and a few glugs of poured liquor. That surprised her because Paul was only a beer drinker; they kept some whiskey on hand but it had been the same bottle for years, moved with them in the moving truck. There was a long period where she didn't hear anything at all and she dozed off again.

Eventually she blinked awake to a thin vertical glare of light through the doorway, and he came in. He shut the door on the hall light and moved around the room in darkness.

“Paul?” she said.

“It's okay,” he said. “It's me.”

“I know,” she said, trying to follow his movements. “Did you have a good time?”

“It was fine,” he said. His voice was gruff and smoky, almost sore. She could smell the alcohol and cigarettes even across the room. She heard him shuffle to the dresser and toss his clothes onto it: the quiet, intimately familiar jingle of his dog tags as they shook free of his neck and head to land almost soundlessly on the fabric.

The bed shifted and Nat put her arm around him, pleased to find him in his white undershirt and briefs. She'd told him he reminded her of James Dean this way, which he said was silly; he had none of Dean's upsweep of hair and besides, Dean was a draft dodger. Nat had rolled her eyes at him. It was the
shirt,
she said. The
general impression
. And he'd laughed:
All right, Nat. Whatever you say
.

For a few minutes she lay there, her arm over his chest, her nose hitting the edge of his sleeve so that her breath ruffled fabric and her lips touched skin. She thought he had fallen asleep, an instant descent into the brain-pull of liquor and fatigue. But all at once he pushed up on one elbow, slid his hand behind her head, and was kissing her with such urgency that she squirmed to catch her breath.

“Geez,” she laughed, “what's gotten into you?”

He reached under her and flipped her up onto her knees, and she smiled back at him. Then, wordlessly, he gripped her hair. There followed a breakneck minute of startled discomfort, her hair pulled so tight that she looked up at the ceiling, swallowing with vertebral effort; a few nonrhythmic internal thumps, more like a creature ramming its head against a wall than anything else. It wasn't quite violent, it wasn't kind, and there was no love in it. It was more like a brief possession, a transfer of some dark thing she didn't want. Now, whatever it was, she held it.

He let out a hoarse, bleak groan and loosened her hair. She waited, feeling like an odd piece of equipment, until he slumped onto his side of the bed.

“Okay,” she whispered, mostly to herself, and patted her way to the nightstand for the box of tissues. She handed some to him and he cleaned up robotically, tossing them to the floor beside the bed.

For some reason this bothered Nat as much as anything else. “The girls will see that in the morning,” she cried, getting out and fetching the wastebasket to gather them up. She bumped back around the bed and returned the bin to the bathroom, catching a shadowy glimpse of herself in the mirror: wild hair, hormonally swollen breasts, stomach she liked to remember as smooth but which in reality was doodled with faint lavender parentheses. She'd kept up her good cheer but now it was time to admit that the entire day had been a terrible disappointment. This was the final blow, her quick stint as a pommel horse for Paul's drunken frustrations. His huffing breath in her ear, her neck craned up, the way he released her as if he already regretted the whole thing. She looked down at the wastebasket of stiff tissues and her eyes welled over.

When she climbed into bed she kept herself at her far edge, arms crossed. She pinched her nose and tried to take a deep breath.

“Nat,” he murmured, “I'm sorry.”

“Oh, it's just fine,” she snapped.

“I meant for something different.”

“Like
what
?”

“Come on.” He shifted closer to her, touched her elbow, imploring. Everything about him seemed oddly heavy: the way he moved, the way his body pushed down the bed.

“I'm fine,” she said. “I just had a bad day. Please go to sleep.”

He repeated her name in a choked way and she turned, startled, to see that he was nearly crying.

“What in the world?” she said. Here they were, in bed, both crying; it was a comedy of errors. She did not want to comfort him. She did not have a single ounce of human energy left, and yet the sight of him undone was terrible, turned a deep pity in her that was almost, on its own merits, a kind of love. “Jesus, Paul,” she said, “next time you drink like that, sleep on the couch.”

He rolled her all the way toward him and stared at her, his dark eyes apologetic. He had been like this before, but not often. She had the irritated, practical thought that it was going to be very hard for him to get up for work in the morning. He mumbled about how much he loved her, his hand loosely cupping her neck; he lay his thumb in the divot between her collar bones, a gentle pressure that her pulse bumped against, again and again. She didn't know if she should push him away, laugh grimly, or weep with sadness.

“Okay,” she said, putting his arm back around her waist. “Go to sleep now.”

He finally slept. Listening to his tranquilized breath she had the odd sensation that he was someone she had known too well and too long, a selfish brother, and not the person she wanted sharing her bed. The feeling passed in a heartbeat, shuddered away.

P
aul and Webb were quiet the next day at work. When they found themselves side by side at the lockers they didn't say anything at all. Later, in the lunchroom, Franks ribbed them through a mouthful of turkey sandwich. “So, you two went back to Sloke's place last night for a little intellectual conversation?”

“It wasn't anything special,” said Paul.

“You both look like shit.”

“I know,” Paul said. Webb was still too gray faced to speak. Paul could see Franks revving up for more, but since he couldn't stand around all day protecting Webb from having to talk, he took his cigarette outside. Richards's car wasn't in the lot; he hadn't showed.

Paul sleepwalked through the hours. He tried to focus, but his thoughts kept pulling back to the previous night as if attached to a lead sinker. Rose strapped to the car and the awful moment he'd realized it was not a joke. Nat telling him to go to sleep, his gurbled damp apologies; how she'd patted his shoulder in a motherly way while her eyes wandered to the ceiling. At one point he had the panicky insight that perhaps no woman on this earth truly loved a man; how could anyone expect them to? Then his thoughts manned up, came in and grabbed these neuroses and chucked them aside, saying,
Get ahold of yourself; you support your family, you put a roof over their heads, your wife seems happy with you 99 percent of the time. Don't lose your mind here. Everything is fine.

“Are you with us, Collier?” Franks shouted. “Shape up! You don't pay attention, one of us is going to get hurt.”

“Sorry,” Paul said. He finished his task, then dragged himself into the bathroom where he sat staring at the wall, feeling hangdog.

Not long before the end of the shift, Franks told them the rods needed to be raised again. Paul pointed out that the mid shift would be there, fresh and rested, in less than an hour.

Franks gave him a disappointed look. “We notice it, we fix it,” he said. “Since when do I work with a pair of pussies?”

When Webb went to lift the nine rod, it stuck the worst that Paul had ever seen. He immediately went to fetch the pipe wrench. It didn't work. Each man tried it; as the seconds ticked by they took on an odor of anxiety and exertion.

“Get another wrench,” Franks said. Paul gritted his teeth and strained to force the wrench. The rod jerked upward, several inches.

“Oh shit,” said Webb.

Franks cursed. “Get it down,” he barked, and he and Paul pushed in the other direction. Veins bulged in Franks's forehead. Paul slid slowly backward; he let out something between a groan and a yell. The rod inched down.

For a moment they had to catch their breath and could not speak. They gasped for air, pacing, hands on their hips. Finally Paul said, “We should call Richards at home.”

“And tell him his day crew is so hungover and useless they can't even get through the chore list? You can go call him if you want.”

“It wasn't our fault the thing stuck,” said Webb.

Franks ignored him. “You had better be worth something when you get here tomorrow, Collier.”

“Are you going to write this up?” Paul asked. He jabbed his finger toward the logbook on the shelf, its blue leather binding and roughed-up pages.

Franks bristled. “ 'Course I will,” he said.

“You carry that damn thing all around like a diary but only record half the things that go wrong.”

“I've been writing things down.”

“Not all the time. Sometimes you record an incident, sometimes you skip it. I can't figure out your rhyme or reason.”

“Well, I'm writing it now.” Franks strode over and snatched up the book. “Mind your own damn business.”

“We're all tired,” said Webb. “Let's go easy on each other.” He appealed to Paul: “See? He's writing it down.”

“Yeah,” Paul said. He watched the shift leader's meticulous cursive swirl across the page and wanted to smack the short pencil right out of Franks's thick hand. His precious, useless logbook—what good it did them! But the shift leader looked so sincere, flipping to another page on his clipboard, sweat droplets chasing one another down his cheeks, as if writing down the stuck rod was going to solve their problem, as if the message would get past Richards and Harbaugh anyway. Webb gazed off to the side, chewing a thumbnail and jittering his foot. Paul felt a sudden stab of pity for them all. They could
die
for this nothingness, this shit hole. It was their life, this lifting and sweating and shuffling and dodging, this penning of warnings that no one would read, this making of endless excuses. It was a service no one would love them for, and they were veterans of nothing more than their own blank, tenuous days.

P
AUL HAD NOT BEEN
to Sergeant Richards's home since the night of the dinner party, so it was odd to see the house again, quiet and in daylight. It looked plain and demure, as if it were asleep and Paul would somehow startle it by walking to the door.

He parked on the street and strode up the drive past Richards's car. It was hard to believe that he'd been driving it the previous night—that Rose had been strapped to the top. It seemed an ugly, ridiculous dream.

Mrs. Richards answered, her eyes widening in surprise when she saw Paul. “Oh, Mr. Collier,” she cried. “Hello. What brings you here?”

She was as perfectly coiffed and manicured as ever. Her eyebrows were drawn onto her forehead in delicate red arches, her lipsticked mouth dainty and impeccable in its
O
of surprise, as if she were about to blow out one birthday candle.

“Is the master sergeant home?” Paul asked.

“He is,” said Mrs. Richards, looking cautious. “He had a headache today and didn't go in. I'm sure you knew that.” She opened the door fully and stepped back to let him in. “Please, have a seat.”

Paul heard her pad down the hallway, followed by whispering. He stood next to the couch, as if sitting would have been some kind of concession.

After a few moments Richards came in, wearing the masculine version of his wife's surprise. “Collier!” he said guardedly. “I wasn't expecting you. Sit down, have a drink.”

“No, thank you, Master Sergeant.” He could not bring himself to ask about the man's convenient headache. Richards fixed himself a drink and wandered over with a mellow ambivalence that set Paul's teeth on edge.

“So what's this about?” Richards settled onto the couch, stretched out his legs.

Paul cleared his throat. “We had a serious issue with the nine rod today. I thought you should know right away.”

“Well, all right, thank you. I'll get the specs from Franks next time I see him.”

“It's more urgent than that. I'm concerned that the reactor is failing.”

Richards, eyeing Paul, took a sip of his drink. He placed it on the table and sat back, one leg crossed on the opposite knee.

“We know that boron is crumbling into the core of the machine,” Paul said. “The rods are sticking, and we have to try to force them around every four hours. Between the false alarms and exercising the rods all the time, all we do is busywork. We're running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Today the nine stuck worse than I've ever seen. When we jerked it loose it shot up three inches.”

He was gratified to see that this drained some color from Richards's face.

“We can't go above four,” Paul said, though of course Richards knew this; it was like telling an adult not to stick something in a light socket. Every operator had been told the four-inches rule until it was second nature. Never, ever, unless you are a goddamn death-craving lunatic, raise a reactor rod above four inches.

“Well, I have something to tell you.” Richards gathered himself, leaned forward, and opened and closed his hands as if this were big news. “The men don't know this yet, but we have a new core ordered for this winter.”

Paul blinked. “That's half a year away. And I did know that; Franks told me.”

“Oh.” Richards frowned. “He wasn't supposed to say anything.”

“I don't know if we can continue another six months like this,” Paul said.

“You can. Have some faith.”

“Some faith?” Paul cried. “It's not a matter of faith. We need to be honest here, Master Sergeant.”

Richards's false joviality was gone. “You remember what happened to Oppenheimer, don't you?” he said.

“I do,” Paul said after a moment, feeling his blood cool. J. Robert Oppenheimer had been one of the preeminent physicists on the Manhattan Project. Then, six years ago, he'd been stripped of his security clearance. Paul had still been in petroleum supply back then but he heard talk of the trial from time to time, the theories people had for the scientist's harsh punishment: political distaste, Communist affiliation, personality clashes. He didn't know the ins and outs of it all; he was, however, steeply aware that to lose one's security clearance was a humiliating insult. Even Paul, a rookie operator, now had a higher clearance than Oppenheimer did.

So he knew what Richards was getting at but didn't want to take the bait. “Luckily,” he muttered, looking away, “I'm no Oppenheimer.”

“But you could be,” Richards said, and it was not stardom he spoke of. He took a sip of his drink. “Try to just live your life,” he said, suddenly a pal. “Don't worry so much. Live your life!”

“Like you do?” Paul said, his heart speeding up. “Live like you do, not giving a shit about anybody else?”

Richards drew back, affronted. “What are you talking about?”

“You know what I'm talking about.”

There was a pause. Paul heard Mrs. Richards fumbling with something in a nearby room. Richards said in a low voice, “This is inappropriate.”

“ ‘Live your life.' I saw what you did last night,” Paul hissed. “You could have killed the woman. Now I feel like we're all just strapped to the roof of your car.”

“Aren't you a…
poet,
” Richards said, and his face fairly rippled. “The things a man does, the things men do, are not to be spoken of afterwards.”

“I'm tired of seeing the things you do. You've got men in harm's way every day to keep that reactor limping along, just so you'll look good—”

“The reactor is perfectly safe—”

“How can you say that? We keep patching it up like it's, I don't know, an old couch. It's a
nuclear reactor
. If something goes wrong, people die. And what about our families—what about your family? Do you want them fifty miles from a failing reactor? Wind can travel fifty miles in no time.”

Richards gave a hostile, incredulous laugh. “You're a hysterical woman. I wish you could hear yourself.”

Paul was pulled up short by the name-calling; he groped for a new tactic. “Maybe we could go to Harbaugh and whoever else and tell them that if something doesn't change soon—”

“Go for it,” Richards said, spreading his arms wide. “You go on and tell Harbaugh. I'm sure he'd love to hear all about it. The man's
dying
and he's got a job that provides life insurance for his family, so I'm sure he'd just love to start a big ruckus at work in his twilight moments.”

“Don't you see? It's time we started talking about what's going on—”

“Oh, good idea! Once we start talking, who knows where we'll stop? I can think of so many people who'd love to hear about all kinds of things. Your wife, for instance! She'd love to hear about the party you were at last night, and all that time you spent alone on an apartment building deck with a—” he stopped and shrugged, letting the silence hang.

Paul's stomach turned. “I was only there to drive
you,
you pig. I tried to go home.”

“That's a moving story.”

Paul struggled to control himself. “I need to know that you'll do something about the reactor.”