Эбби Луби - Nuclear Romance

She kept her head in her hands and wept silently. Lou moved to console her, but then he stopped. He let her cry and looked at the picture. He fought back his own tears.

“She looks like a great kid from her picture,” he said softly.

“Yes. She was a great kid,” Jen whispered. She raised her head and looked at Lou.

“She was the smartest kid in her class….”

An hour later Lou cranked the ignition key and pulled away from Jen’s house. It had taken him quite a while to get her to open up and talk freely. As she loosened up, he matched her sentiment, met her level of emotion. He finally convinced her she had a story to tell. She stopped, nodded, and then continued to talk. Her grief subdued her anger about Kaylee’s still inexplicable death, the dreary days of doctors shaking their heads as her little girl slipped away.

Lou pulled out his notepad and jotted down a few key phrases that would later jog his memory. Most of Kaylee’s story was in his head. If he had time, he wanted to check in with the medical community for the autopsy report. Perhaps some doctor would eventually gander a guess about the real cause of the child’s death.

He headed down the broad, winding road toward the river. The park was on the other side of the train tracks and about a mile out on a peninsula that jutted into the river. When he reached the river, he got out and started walking toward the beach area where he could hear kids splashing around in the water. When he got to the beach, he imagined Ricky and Kaylee playing here just a few weeks ago.

He took off his shoes and rolled up his pants. It was a perfect day for a swim. The distant whistle of the train pealed through the air as it headed north from the city, hauling workers home to the burbs. Lou wiggled his toes in the cool water. Without knowing exactly why, he knelt down and scooped up a glop of wet sand to smell it. Still crouched down, he held the innocuous clump of mud and looked around the cove. Maybe there was a large waste pipe, or something that might possibly taint the water. His gaze followed the curve of the cove and stopped abruptly on the two large domes of the power plant. He stood up robotically, eyes fixed on the rounded structures as the wet sand slid off his hand and into the water.

The strong headline ran right above the picture of Jen and Ricky on their front porch, standing next to a white wicker chair that eerily held Kaylee’s rag doll. Lou thought the picture was over the top. Just how did the photographer convince Jen to include the doll? A small inset picture of the lone pink bike also made Lou cringe; the picture pushed the emotional spin.

Lou’s insightful prose brought the girl to life. It was an unfamiliar style of writing that at first he was unsure of, a voice untapped. But when he thought about Jen’s despair, the words surfaced, hitting the page in a rush of raw grief over Kaylee’s tragic and untimely death. It was gripping.

The story touched briefly around the cryptic cause of the girl’s death. The doctors held that her weakened state as a highly allergic child with asthma compromised her immune system, and it was difficult to pinpoint exactly what killed the girl. Tissue from the autopsy was still being studied. For Lou it was too murky and slippery. It irked him that the cause of death was “inconclusive.” But he wasn’t all that invested in the story and didn’t pursue it. After all, it wasn’t his real beat.

Owen was thrilled and doled out a single compliment couched with a bit of sarcasm.

“Well looky here! A classic tear jerker. You really can write about anything, can’t you, Padera?”

The backhanded compliment became a vehicle for the young editor to press his agenda. Lou saw what was coming.

“Thanks, but don’t get any ideas. This was a one-time deal.”

Owen chuckled, shaking his head.

“Not anymore, Padera. This piece puts you smack in the arena for other stories.”

Then he added, “But I’ll go easy on you. Sports stories get priority—they’re the ones that sell.”

Just a few miles north of the news room, the Daily Suburban was spread open to Lou’s story on the large oak desk of Bob Stalinksy, the head of communications for ALLPower, the company that owned the nuclear power plant. His top-floor office in the eight-story glass tower had a panoramic view of the Hudson River. Two windows at the back looked out behind the building at the plant’s raw industrial sprawl. An opaque gunmetal window shade muted the outlines of the nuclear power domes, the generator building, and the structure that housed the fuel pool holding radioactive waste.

Bob leaned forward in his mahogany-and-leather chair and studied the picture of Kaylee, his brow furrowed. His phone intercom buzzed.

“Bob, it’s your wife. You want to take this, or should I give the usual excuse?”

He bit his lip. What did he forget this time?

“I’ll take it.” He plucked up the phone.

“Hey, Babe. What’s up?”

His wife, Morgan, cackled on the other end.

“Did you remember about the fund-raising dinner tonight? I’m the chairwoman pushing this one. It’s black tie. You do remember, don’t you?”

He looked at his desk calendar. It said “Basketball game—ALLPower Trophy.”

“Oh geez, Babe. I didn’t forget, but the boss just asked me to stand in for him tonight and award a trophy at a high school basketball game. We sponsor them, you know. It’s great for the company’s image.”

He heard the long, frustrated inhale. Then she said, “The image I have of you right now makes a gorilla shitting in the woods look appealing.”

The woman had a way with words. He winced. Here we go, he thought. He leaned back and started to rock in small, quick movements. In just another minute she would slam down the phone. Just count to ten.

Bob had been working at the plant for five years. When he started he was thirty and newly married. Now, at thirty-five his temples were peppered gray, contrasting his cropped dark brown hair. His soft stubble beard was a hint of scruff, slimming his paunchy jowls. Dark, bushy eyebrows framed his gray, squinty eyes, like gashes that sparked out from a pasty complexion. Square built, he struggled to keep his heft under control.

Bob possessed an affable charm and a winning smile. He was good at promoting the company, and his work was highly valued by the ALLPower top brass. He was rewarded with substantial yearly raises.

The science of nuclear power wasn’t exactly Bob’s forte, but he understood the basics. He reluctantly majored in Communications in college, a suggestion that came from his overbearing mother, Stella. Out of habit, he’d balked, then acquiesced. Even though she was his mother, she was usually right.

By the time Bob graduated college, the country was demanding green energy, favoring nuclear over the dirty coal-fired plants that spewed nasty particulates into the air. For Bob it was a no-brainer: coal was dirty, nuclear was clean and didn’t pollute the air. The nuclear industry was here to stay, an easy sell right now, and in the future. You have to believe in what you sell, right?

But a lot could go wrong at a nuclear power plant. Devastating accidents at Three Mile Island and a few years later at the Russian plant in Chernobyl shook the world and severely marred the reputation of the nuclear power industry. Panic over doomsday meltdowns fed a skittish level of fear. Movies like The China Syndrome pushed that fear to front and center, and anti-nuclear, grass-roots groups cropped up all over the country, waging a war against the dangers of nuclear power, feeding fear about the increasing accidents at aging plants.