Fallout

Sometimes Ronnie’s dad had a strange way of talking, as if even he knew the words sounded funny when he said them. Like it was some kind of inside joke. Now he turned to me. “So, Scott, how about an aperitif while Sport attends to the nether regions?”

I followed him into the den, wondering what half those words meant. Everything in the Shaws’ house was new and modern. Instead of white-washed wooden walls, theirs were dark and shiny. Instead of couches made of Naugahyde, which was a kind of plastic imitation leather that stuck to your skin on hot days, theirs were soft and black and made of real leather. In the den, Mr. Shaw opened a cabinet filled with shelves of glimmering glasses. “What’ll it be?” he asked himself, and sorted through some bottles. “Ah! Dubonnet!” He took a bottle by the neck. “Hey, Sweet Bumps!” he called cheerfully toward the kitchen. “Wet your whistle?”

“Is the pope Catholic?” Mrs. Shaw called back.

It was like speaking a foreign language using words I knew. I heard the clink of ice in glasses and the splash of liquid. “Be right back,” Mr. Shaw said, and left.

A magazine lay open on the black leather ottoman that went with Mr. Shaw’s easy chair. With a jolt I realized that it had to be a Playboy, because there was a photo of a naked woman. How could it be just lying there, out in the open, in the middle of the Shaws’ den?

The magazine was turned away, so the woman was upside down. I wanted to go over and look at her right-side up, but I was afraid that Mr. Shaw would come back and catch me.

Ronnie’s dad returned and gave me a glass with ice and some deep red liquid in it. “Cheers.”

We clinked glasses, and I took a sip. It tasted cold and sweet and strange. A little piece of lemon rind made it tangy. Mr. Shaw settled into his chair and propped the Playboy open on his lap. The cover showed the upper half of a naked woman wearing a tie, her arms crossed over her breasts. “How’s that bomb shelter, Scott?”

“Dad says I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

Mr. Shaw nodded. “Your parents let you drink wine?”

“No, sir.”

Mr. Shaw turned a page in the magazine like it was the most natural thing in the world to give your son’s friend wine and look at pictures of naked women while you chatted. “In France, children are offered wine at dinner. By the time they’re teenagers, it’s a natural part of life. You don’t have kids going out on Friday night and getting smashed the way they do here. A much more mature and reasonable approach, don’t you think?”

I took another sip and nodded.

“French women go topless at the beach,” Mr. Shaw continued. “They’re so much more relaxed about the human body. I mean, if a man can go around without a shirt, why can’t a woman?”

I didn’t know how to answer. Women going around without shirts on? Kids drinking wine? You’d think French people were the strange ones, but Mr. Shaw, sitting there thumbing through his Playboy, was implying that we were.

“It’s time this country got past its Puritan roots,” Ronnie’s dad said. “This isn’t the sixteen hundreds anymore; we’ve put men in space and broken the sound barrier. We transmit television wirelessly into people’s homes and have X-rays that see through their bodies. But socially and sexually we’re still back in the Stone Age.”

I was tempted to tell him he was wrong because I’d seen a drawing of a caveman carrying a big club and dragging a woman around by her hair, and nobody did that anymore. By then I’d finished my drink and felt fuzzy and warm, and wished I could be alone in the den and look at the pictures in Playboy. Then Ronnie came in with wet hair and wearing shorts and a different shirt and said dinner was ready.

Mrs. Shaw’s fried chicken came in a tinfoil tray with whipped potatoes and carrots and peas. The chicken was a little soggy, and the carrots and peas were watery, but I didn’t care. They let me feed little bits of chicken to Leader, and almost everything Mr. Shaw said sounded funny and made me giggle. Later I went home, got into my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. If Mom or Dad came in to kiss me good night, I didn’t hear them.

37

We’ve run out of toilet paper, mostly because the women use it even when they pee. And we all pee a lot because water is the only thing we have to relieve the gnawing ache of hunger between our tiny meals.

When the air starts to feel stale and even after a deep breath you feel like you need more, it’s time to use the ventilator. Dad heaves himself up and starts to crank, but after a few moments, he stops to catch his breath.

He starts again, then stops.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Just tired,” he answers. “It’s hard to keep your strength up.”

“Which is exactly why we should eat more,” Mr. McGovern says.

“Which is why it would be helpful if you took a turn,” Dad counters, gesturing at the crank handle.

Mr. McGovern shakes his head. “No, thanks. I’m saving my energy.”