Tilting the Balance

“What is it? ” Barbara asked warily. She’d been reading the letter again. He couldn’t blame her for that, either, but just the same he wished she hadn’t been.

He took her hands in his. She let him do it, but she didn’t grab hold of him back the way she usually did. The edge of the sheet of paper scraped against the side of his palm. He made himself ignore it, concentrated on what he had to do as if he were trying to pick up the spin of a curveball right out of the pitcher’s hand.

“Honey, ” he said again, and then paused to feel for the perfect words even though Barbara knew a thousand times more about words than he’d learn if he lived to be a hundred. He went on, one tough phrase at a time, “Honey, the most important thing in the whole world for me-is for you to be happy. So you-go ahead and do-whatever it is you’ve got to do-and that’ll be all right with me. Because I love you and-like I said-I want you to be happy. ”

She started crying again, hard this time, and buried her head in the hollow of his shoulder. “What am I supposed to do, Sam? ” she said between sobs, her voice so small and broken he could hardly understand her. “I love you, too, and Jens. And the baby-”

He kept his arms around her. He wasn’t more than an inch from breaking down and blubbering himself, either. Enrico Fermi picked that precise moment to walk up, hand in hand, with his wife Laura. “Is something wrong? ” he asked, concern in his accented voice.

“You might say so, sir, ” Yeager answered. Then he remembered the physicist needed to know Jens Larssen was alive, too. He patted Barbara on the back and said, “Honey, you’d better show Dr. Fermi the letter. ”

She handed it to Fermi. The physicist put on reading glasses, peered owlishly through them at the sheet of paper. “But this is wonderful news! ” he exclaimed, his face lighting up in a smile. He spoke rapidly in Italian to his wife. She answered more hesitantly. Fermi’s smile went out. “Oh, ” he said. “It is, ah, complicated. ” He nodded to himself, pleased at finding the right word. “Si, complicated. ”

“It sure is, ” Yeager said bleakly.

“It’s more than just complicated, ” Barbara added. “I’m going to have a baby. ”

“Oh, ” Fermi said again, this time echoed by Laura. He tried again: “Oh, my. ” He was completely at home in abstruse realms of thought which Sam Yeager knew he could never enter. But when it came to merely human ways of messing up your life, the Nobel laureate was just as lost as anybody else. Somehow that heartened Sam.

“We like to say congratulations. ” Laura Fermi’s accent was thicker than her husband’s. She spread her hands helplessly. “But-”

“Yeah, ” Yeager said. “But-”

Fermi handed the letter back to Barbara. He said, “You are good people. One way or another, I am sure you will work this out in the fashion that is best for all of you, ” He touched a hand to the brim of his hat and walked on with his wife.

At first, Yeager was touched at the physicist’s compliment. Then he realized Fermi had just said, It’s not my problem, Jack. He started to get angry. But what was the point of that? The man was right. One way or another, he and Barbara and Jens would work it out.

The only trouble was, he had no idea what that way might be.

They made about thirteen miles that day, almost all of them in silence. Barbara seemed lost in her own thoughts, and Sam didn’t want to break in. He had plenty on his mind, too; maybe she also avoided intruding on him. Ullhass and Ristin, oblivious to what was going on around them, chattered with each other, but whenever they ventured into English, the answers they got were so monosyllabic, they soon gave up.

The St. Louis Hotel on St. Louis Avenue in Loveland had seen better days. The food wasn’t up to college cafeteria standards, and the room Sam and Barbara got wasn’t much bigger than the one at the college dorm. It wasn’t very clean, either.

It had a double bed. At first Sam was glad to see that; sleeping with Barbara warm and soft beside him was one of the joys of his life. Doing other things on a roomy mattress was wonderful, too. Or it had been, anyhow.

Barbara looked at the bed, at him, back again. He could see the same set of thoughts going through her mind as were in his. He didn’t say anything. It wasn’t really up to him.

Barbara quickly scanned the rest of the room. Other than the bed, it held only a night table, a couple of rickety chairs, and a chamber pot-the plumbing didn’t work, then. She shook her head. “I’m not going to put you on the floor, Sam, ” she said. “That wouldn’t be right. ”

“Thank you, hon. ” He’d slept hard while he was out in the field against the Lizards. He knew he could do it… but doing it with his wife in the room would have been unbearably lonely.

“This is even more complicated than I thought it was going to be, ” Barbara said. She managed a shaky laugh. “They said it couldn’t be done. ”

“Yeah-tell me about it. ” Sam sat down on one of the chairs, pulled off his shoes and let them fall to the threadbare carpet with two loud clunks.

Barbara peeled back the bedspread. The blankets underneath were the best thing about the room; there were lots of them and they were nice and thick. She clucked approvingly, opened her suitcase and took out a long cotton flannel nightgown. “We won’t have to sleep in all our clothes tonight, ” she said. She reached up to her neck to pull off her sweater, then froze, her eyes on Sam.

“Do you want me to turn my back? ” he asked, though every word hurt.

He watched her think about it. That hurt, too. But finally she shook her head. “No, never mind, don’t be silly, ” she said. “I mean, we’re married, after all-kind of married, anyway. ”

Kind of married indeed, Yeager thought, and had another vision of swarming lawyers. He got out of his shirt and chinos while she was taking off the sweater and slacks. The flannel nightgown rustled as it slid down over her smooth skin. He liked to sleep with as few clothes as the weather would allow. Tonight, with all those heavy blankets, that meant socks and boxer shorts and undershirt. He dove under the covers in a hurry; the room itself was cold.

Barbara slipped in beside him. She blew out the candle on the night table. Darkness enfolded them; with the blinds closed and the curtains drawn, it was almost absolute. “Good night, honey, ” he said, and without thinking, leaned over for a kiss. He got it, but her lips didn’t welcome his the way they had before.