everything I’ve got just to keep up with them.”
Sylvia stared at his earnest face and shook her head.
There were women in the lab, of course: a couple of Caltech grads among the scientific staff; several engineers and technicians. A few of them were even good-looking. The Christmas parties were fun, although Harry always drove straight home afterward. Sylvia would scowl at him the next day as Harry nursed his hangover and thanked whatever gods there be that the Pasadena traffic cops hadn’t stopped him on the way home.
Sylvia had given up her teaching career, such as it was, once she became pregnant with Victoria. Then came Denise. Instead of a career in education, Sylvia pursued Causes. Women’s rights. Neighborhood beautification. Abused children. Political campaigns. Harry thought of them as hobbyhorses. Sylvia always had some Cause or other to keep her busy, as if raising two daughters wasn’t enough of a job. Through her Causes she met people, dragged Harry to meetings and cocktail parties, gave herself a sense of accomplishment.
Harry didn’t mind Sylvia’s hobbyhorses, as long as they didn’t interfere with the increasingly long hours he had to put in at the lab. He settled into middle-class Americana, his wispy hair thinning even more, his kids growing up amazingly fast, his wife slowly becoming more distant. Harry could never understand why Sylvia was resentful that his job absorbed so much of his time and interest, and that he enjoyed it.
“We never go anywhere,” she would complain.
“We took the kids to Disney World, didn’t we?”
“Last year.”
“So?”
“I was thinking about an ocean cruise. Maybe to Hawaii.”
Harry scratched his head. “The four of us? Do you know what that would cost?”
“We could leave the girls with the Sobelskis. Just you and me, Harry. On a beautiful ocean liner.”
He thought about how much time that would take but knew better than to mention that out loud. Besides, she knew he had amassed lots of unused vacation days.
“We’ll see,” he said.
Nearly a year later he finally gave in to her drumbeat of hints and accusations. They took a cruise to Hawaii. It wasn’t really romantic, just a different setting for the same pair of them. Hawaii actually depressed Harry with its obviously phony facade of tropical splendor and the locals debasing their native culture for tourist dollars.
As their cruise liner left Honolulu for the trip home, Harry stood at the rail and watched the pier gradually slipping away, more and more distant, the gulf of oily, trash-laden water separating the ship from the land slowly, slowly widening. Turning to Sylvia, standing beside him with tears in her eyes, he thought that the same thing was happening to them— they had already drifted apart, and the gulf between them was getting wider every day, every year.
Once they got back to Pasadena, Sylvia threw herself even deeper into neighborhood politics, circulating petitions and phoning city hall over this Cause or that. Harry worked longer and longer hours at the lab. The high- power laser project was moving along smartly. They called it the COIL: chemical oxygen iodine laser. Powerful stuff.
He knew he and Sylvia were becoming strangers to each other, but he didn’t know what to do about it. At her insistence they went to a marriage counselor, who recommended they both see a psychologist. Reluctantly, Harry agreed to it, secretly terrified that somebody at the lab might find out.
“You’re boringly normal,” the psychologist told him.
The marriage counselor recommended they take a romantic ocean cruise. Harry stopped going to her, although Sylvia continued weekly sessions for more than a year. Harry wondered what she found to talk about every week.
The years slid past relentlessly. Jacob Levy was one of the more supercilious physicists on the lab’s staff, but he got along pretty well with Harry. Levy knew how to keep his nose out of places where it shouldn’t be.
“I’ll do the thinking,” he often told Harry’s team of engineers. “All you have to do is make it work.”
They made a good team. With Jake’s brains and our hands, Harry thought, we’ll make this laser actually work.
Inevitably the COIL program moved into the testing stage, and they had to transport all the hardware out to the Mohave Desert.
Harry sensed Sylvia’s eyes boring into his back as he packed his soft-sided travel bag. He turned and, sure enough, his wife was standing in the bedroom doorway, looking distinctly displeased.
“So you’ll be gone for a week?” Sylvia asked. She had that accusing stare on her face; her district attorney look, Harry secretly called it. In school she’d been on the student council, combining earnestness and winning smiles to gather votes and move molehills. It had been a long time since he’d seen her smile—except when they were out with other couples. Then Sylvia could be the life of the party. At home, though, she was the district attorney.
“Maybe a little more than a week,” he said, feeling almost guilty about it. He brushed a hand through his thinning hair. Maybe I ought to get a crew cut, he thought idly. Save a lot of time trying to keep it looking neat.
“Vickie’s birthday is a week from Wednesday,” Sylvia said. “You’ll be home by then, won’t you?”
“Should be.”
“Should be? What do you mean, ‘should be’? It’s your daughter’s birthday, for god’s sake. Don’t you have any feelings for your own daughter? I know you’d rather play around with your buddies than be with me, but you’d better come back in time for her birthday!”
Harry fought down an impulse to throw something at her. Zipping the travel bag, he said tightly, “I’m not playing around out there. It’s strictly business, and it’s important.”
“Important. Sure. More important than me. More important than your daughters. They hardly ever see you! You’re out of here at the crack of dawn and you don’t come home until after dark. Now you’re traipsing out to the desert.”
“It’s my job, for Chrissakes!” he said, trying to keep his voice down.
“Your job,” Sylvia said, dripping acid.
“It’s important.”
“So important you can’t tell me anything about it.”
“That’s right. The program is classified, military secret.”
“Out in the desert.”
“Right.” Harry glanced at his wristwatch. Monk should be driving up soon.
“Where will you be staying out in the Mohave?”
“The Air Force is putting us up in a motel.”
“A motel?”
“That’s right.” He lifted his bag off the bed and started for the door. Sylvia stood in the doorway like an armed guard.
“What’s the name of this motel? The phone number?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll keep my cell phone on. You can call me on it if you need to.”
Sylvia looked up into his eyes. He saw resentment smoldering in hers, and anger, and plenty of suspicion.
“So you’re walking out on me.”
“Sylvia, it’s only for a goddamned week! Ten days at most.”
“Leaving me and the girls to fend for ourselves.”
He grasped her shoulder and pushed her back from the doorway, out into the hall. As he reached the stairs he heard the toot of Monk Delany’s car horn.
“I’ve got to go now,” Harry said, starting down the carpeted stairs.
Sylvia stayed in the upper hallway, glowering at him. Harry felt enormously relieved to be getting out of the house and away from her.
