Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

There was a hand on my neck. Her hand, the librarian’s.

“Say, there,” she said. “You all right?”

“Of course I am,” I told her, and I tried to laugh, and then it hit me.

A funny experience. Way down inside, I didn’t feel all that terrible. I could hear myself sobbing, I could feel the thump in my chest, but I didn’t have that crying urge.

The librarian hustled me into her office and sat me down and went straight for the telephone. She must’ve known my parents, because she didn’t ask questions, she just dialed. Eyes closed, I listened as she told my mother the whole sorry tale. Dumbo, I thought. Sad and stupid. I could picture my mother’s face, and my father’s, and how their eyes would meet very briefly in panic, then separate, then slowly come together again.

I bawled until the librarian hung up, and then, like magic, it stopped. Just like that, it stopped. I was fine.

Stupidly, I wiped my forehead and then stared at the floor.

“There now,” said the librarian. “Better?”

She brought over a glass of water, but she didn’t make me drink, she simply sat there with the glass in one hand, the other hand lightly on my knee, and in that deep mooing voice of hers, cool and steady, she told me that things were under control, no problem. And she was right. Now and then I made a weak little moan, but not because I had to, not because I was feeling bad. I did it for her. So she’d know I wasn’t wasting her time. So she wouldn’t take that hand from my knee.

“There,” she kept saying, “just relax.”

When my parents showed up, they weren’t laughing anymore. They weren’t even smiling.

My mother kissed me, straight on the lips, and my dad took the librarian aside for a secret conference. I only heard one word: “sensitive.” A while later he came over and clomped me on the back and said we’d better get home.

“I’m okay now,” I told him.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, “I know you’re okay.” He locked his hands together, swaying back and forth on his heels. “Who says you’re not? Who? Up and at ’em—toss your bike in the trunk, we’ll give you a lift. Play her safe, right?”

He winked at the librarian.

It was one of those confidential, between-us-grown-ups winks, but, to her credit, the woman didn’t wink back at him. In fact she frowned, then almost scowled. I loved her for that. I wanted to crawl into her lap and curl up for a long sleep, just the two of us, cuddling, that gentle hand on my knee. All I did, though, was sigh and take a last fond look at her chest, then I headed for the door.

The ride home was tense. Every so often my father fired quick glances at me in the rearview mirror, jittery and unsure, almost shy, and my mother wouldn’t stop talking about how we really had to do something about that rattle in the car’s engine. She went on and on about it.

Then a crazy thing happened.

Quickly, without warning, my father offered to buy me a chemistry set. It popped right out of the blue. At first I wasn’t sure I understood him.

He was smiling.

“You know,” he said, “one of those elaborate jobbies. Beakers and bottles and everything. A chemistry set. A good one.”

I stared down at my fingernails.

Fathers, I thought.

His intention, I suppose, was to cheer me up, to get my mind off bombs and missiles, but even so it was hard to believe. I despised chemistry sets. I despised kids who played with them. Several years earlier, back in fourth grade, one of my ex-buddies used to own one, a chemistry set fanatic, and whenever you went over to his house you had to sit around and go gaga while he performed the dumbest experiments you ever saw—testing nails to see if they really contained iron. The guy was a turd. In fact, as far as I could tell, chemistry sets were originally invented for turds. Toy companies must’ve hired people to sit around and dream up ideas for goofballs like my ex-buddy—weirdos and losers and poor chumps who couldn’t play baseball.

But my father was enthusiastic about the idea, and all the way home he kept talking it up. It was obvious he had his heart set on it. “First-class,” he said. “A regular laboratory.”

“Can’t wait,” I told him.

I couldn’t hurt his feelings. By then I was mature enough, or wise enough, to understand that when your parents think you want something, they get upset when they find out you don’t.

My father was smart, though.

“Look,” he finally said, “what do you really want? Just name it.”

“Anything?”

“Anything, cowboy. Say the word.”

There was a short silence.

“A chemistry set,” I said.

I probably choked, because my dad’s eyes jerked up. He looked at me hard in the mirror.

“William,” he said.

“Well,” I admitted, “I could use a Geiger counter, too.”

Immediately I knew it was the wrong thing to say. My father blinked and squinted into the mirror. He wasn’t even watching the road.

The silence must’ve lasted thirty seconds.

“William,” he said, “we need to talk.”

I put it off as long as I could. For a while I holed up in the bathroom, which was the only place in the house where you could find any privacy. I locked myself in. I brushed my teeth and washed up and then sat on the can and read The Saturday Evening Post all the way through. Finally, though, I had to eat dinner.

Right away my parents started in.

“Here’s what disturbs us,” my father began. “It’s this. It’s the way you’ve been brooding. The Ping-Pong table, that episode at the library today. It’s not healthy, William, and that’s what we care about—your health.”

“Fallout,” I said. “I suppose that’s healthy?”

My father released a long, terribly patient sigh. “Of course not. Dangerous, I know. Scary as hell. And we understand—we’re on your side, got it? In fact… Hey, now, look at me… Your mother and I, we should’ve been paying closer attention to this—whatever you call it—this whole nuclear thing. Bombs and radiation, it’s enough to scare anybody. I mean anybody . So like I say, we should’ve noticed. I’m sorry we didn’t. Our mistake.”

He looked across the table at my mother, who nodded.

“But here’s the point,” he went on, soft and serious. “You can’t let these things get the best of you. You can’t stew in the bad juices. Can’t dwell on all the problems and dangers in this world. When it comes down to it, we all have to keep the faith, just hang in there, because otherwise you end up—”

“I’m not crazy!” I said.

My mother’s head snapped up.

“Darling,” she said quickly, “we know you’re not… disturbed. We worry, that’s all.”

“Well, I’m worried too,” I told her. “I worry about getting roasted. Thermal burns and shock waves and who knows what all. That junk gives me the willies.”

“Sweetheart—”

“And you guys act like I’m bonkers. Like I’m loony or something.”

My father clicked his spoon against the chicken platter.

“Easy does it,” he said.

“It’s true! Laughing at me, telling stupid jokes. I heard you.”

They were quiet for a moment.

“William,” my father said gently. He closed his eyes, then opened them. “We weren’t laughing at you. We weren’t.”

“Sure.”

“We were amused,” he said. “Fair enough? The Ping-Pong table, the charcoal. Just amusing.” His eyes fastened on me. He didn’t blink. “Think about it. Amusing, isn’t it?”

“Ha-ha,” I said.

“Come on, now. See the humor? A Ping-Pong table versus the bomb?”

“Right,” I said, “except I fixed it up. The bricks and pencils and stuff. I’m not stupid.”