Fallout

He makes it sound like it’s going to be really awful when we go back up there. Almost like, as horrible as it is down here, we might be better off staying. Meanwhile, Dad turns to Paula’s father.

“You know, Herb,” he says. “In some ways, you’re a very smart guy, but in other ways, you’re one of the stupidest people I’ve ever met.”

In the shadows of our dungeon, tension once again begins to spread. I’ve never heard a grown-up call another grown-up a name before. Certainly not to his face. And not only that, but I never thought Dad would be the one to do it.

At first, Mr. McGovern clenches his teeth. But then he seems to relax and even smiles. “All right, Richard, perhaps you’d like to tell us what makes you say that.”

“You fought to get in here because when faced with death, you realized how precious life is,” Dad says. “I can’t imagine how horrible it must have been to leave your wife and son up there, but you made that choice. We all did, or we wouldn’t be down here. None of us really knows what it’s going to be like when we get back up there. In the meantime, all we’ve got to keep us going is hope. But you’re so damn intent on proving to everyone how smart you are that you don’t seem to care that you’re destroying the last bit of hope the rest of us are clinging to. So from now on, keep it to yourself.”

But we know who always has to have the last word. “According to Nietzsche,” Paula’s father replies, “‘In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man’s torments.’”

46

Dad brought home a brown-paper shopping bag with handles made from bamboo and wire.

“What is it?” Sparky asked eagerly.

“I’ll show you after dinner,” Dad said. That always drove Sparky and me crazy. Maybe it was supposed to teach us patience, but all it really did was make us rush through meals.

To make things worse, Mom served spinach. Except for canned asparagus, there was nothing Sparky and I hated more. But dinner couldn’t end until we finished it. I put lots of butter on mine and managed to eat most of it. About halfway through the meal, Sparky got up to go to the bathroom.

He didn’t come back.

After a while, Dad said, “Go see what Edward’s doing.”

As I went down the hall to the bathroom, I heard the toilet flush. Then it flushed again. I knocked.

“Who is it?” Sparky asked.

“Me,” I said in a low voice. “What’s going on?”

Sparky peeked out, then let me in and locked the door. In the toilet were a million little green pieces of spinach. “I spit it out,” he whispered, “but it won’t flush.”

This was bad. If Mom or Dad found out that Sparky had filled his mouth with spinach and then spit it out, we might not get to see what Dad brought home. I flushed the toilet. The water swirled around and disappeared, then reappeared with most of those little green pieces of spinach still there.

Rap! Rap! The knock on the door made us both jump. “Boys?”

Sparky’s eyes went wide.

“Open the door,” Dad ordered.

Sparky and I shared a frightened look. As I opened the door, Sparky quickly put down the toilet top and sat. Dad scowled at us. “What’s going on?”

“We were just talking,” Sparky said.

“With the door locked?” Dad asked.

“It was boy stuff,” I said.

Dad frowned. “Well, come on and see what I got.”

As we followed Dad down the hall, Sparky rolled his eyes in relief. In the bedroom, Dad took four olive-colored masks out of the shopping bag. Each was about the size of a football with U.S. NONCOMBATANT GAS MASK stenciled in black letters on the outside. They were made of rubber with two clear plastic see-through disks. At one end was a gray canister about the size of a Campbell’s soup can. At the other end were straps. Sparky put one on, instinctively knowing that the straps went around the back of his head and the clear plastic disks went where his eyes were. He looked like a green anteater with the gray can for a snout. I followed his example. Dad tightened the straps until the gas masks felt firm on our heads. The air inside quickly became warm and stale.

“What’s it for?” I asked, my voice muffled by the mask.

“So you won’t breathe in radioactive fallout,” Dad said.

Mom came in. When she saw Sparky and me, she frowned.

“They’re gas masks, Mom!” Sparky announced with muffled excitement.

Mom crossed her arms and said to Dad, “Scaring them again?”

“We’re not scared,” Sparky said. But then he turned to me and asked uncertainly. “Are we?”

“I’m not scared,” I said, because I didn’t want Dad to get into trouble.

“You better take those off,” Dad said.

“And go watch TV,” added Mom, in a way that indicated that Dad was in trouble anyway.

We went into the den and watched Sky King, but I could hear the sounds of an argument coming from Mom and Dad’s bedroom. Sparky’s eyes were fixed on the TV; I got up and quietly went down the hall to listen.

“The whole town’s talking,” Mom said. “They stare at me in the store. I can feel their eyes.”