“What if we construct a model waste pool instead of a reactor?” I asked her.
“Oh, no,” she said, disappointment in her voice. “It sounds like a toilet. Oops, sorry, I’m becoming my students.”
I laughed. “It’s all right. I know how it sounds.”
“On the other hand, maybe the kids would rather work with garbage. Can we call it a nuclear garbage pool?”
I laughed again, amazed at how quickly she could translate into the language of her students. “Good idea. Why not? It is a kind of, uh, toilet.”
“Tell me more.”
Music to my ears. “As the fuel in the rods gets used up—it’s called spent—it’s not useful as a source of fission. But it’s still highly radioactive, so it has to be placed in an environment that will contain the radioactivity.”
“And this environment is the waste pool.”
“Right. I can forward some Web sites to you so you’ll see what they look like. A life-size spent fuel storage pool runs about twelve by twelve and forty feet deep,” I told Erin. I clicked on my calculator and keyed in the numbers. “If we use a scale of one inch to one foot, like a typical dollhouse, the thickness of the walls would have to be about five inches.”
I described the picture on the screen in front of me. I’d found a good photo of a hot cell technician maneuvering fuel assemblies—long, cylindrical containers—into the pool of liquid. According to the caption, in spite of her wearing an elaborate protective suit with two sets of gloves, the woman’s body was surveyed for radiation five times an hour.
“Wow. Fascinating. I think this will work.”
For the first time in days, I felt relaxed. Nothing like a little science talk and arithmetic to ease stress. I sat back and pictured the classroom activity. Erin’s high school students were probably too old to enjoy a purely construction project, but I didn’t think they’d mind a few such tasks, such as painting Styrofoam to look like concrete with a stainless-steel lining.
I went on, telling Erin about other components we’d have to model. Although I was determined to leave enough to the students’ imagination, I couldn’t resist having a store of backup ideas. An old milk crate might work for the rack at the bottom of the pool, the fuel rods could be fashioned from clay. Blue food coloring in the water would simulate boron and other moderating solutions.
“Some of my advanced students will want to know the physics of the waste problem,” Erin said.
“Nothing would please me more. We can place signs around the pool, with supplementary information. They can do the research themselves for the text.” I saw the placards already, with interesting icons and neat lines of type. THE TEMPERATURE OF THE POOL WATER IS ABOUT THIRTY-FIVE DEGREES CENTIGRADE, on one card. ONE-THIRD OF REACTOR FUEL IS REPLACED EACH YEAR, ADDING THAT MANY RODS TO THE WASTE POOL, on another.
“This all sounds terrific. I’m really grateful you’d give us your time. We’re on for next Wednesday, right?”
“I’ll be there around one.”
After I hung up with Erin, I continued to search nuclear sites, coming upon an Internet article on the Yucca Mountain waste disposal project—two hundred thirty square miles in the western part of Nevada, controlled by a number of federal agencies. It had been at least ten years since the site had been proposed as a feasible repository. I thought about having Erin’s students study the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which established the procedures for comparing and selecting potential sites. Waste from seventy-two commercial reactor sites and five Department of Energy sites had been waiting for safe burial for decades—the first commercial plant went on-line in Pennsylvania. It was certainly time to move the waste from the pools around the country to safe, underground burial.
But that was my personal political opinion, which I would try not to insert into the classroom discussion.
Before I had a chance to become overly annoyed at the illogic of government policy, my phone rang.
“Are you alone?” Elaine asked.
“Yes, unfortunately.” It amazed me how quickly I’d gotten used to having someone around on a consistent basis. Over the course of a year—not very fast by the standards of Generation X, but supersonic speed for most of my peer group—Matt and I had gone from weekend-only dating, to once-in-the-middle-of-the-week, to almost every evening.
Elaine laughed. “That’s how I feel. I’m between men again. But at least that means we can talk. Spill it, Gloria.”
I let out a long, noisy breath. “I don’t know what to think.”
“Try focusing on feeling, not thinking.” Heresy, for a scientist. “Now, tell me everything. The exact words.” I could hear a sipping noise and pictured Elaine reclining on her floral chintz sofa, with a delicate china cup of peppermint tea. Under the spell of that image, I carried the phone to my espresso maker and switched it on.
“He gave me a pin,” I said.
“A pin?”
My new boron pin was on the counter, still in its ring box. I picked up the velvet case and snapped it open. “The pin is a little square. You know, the way the elements are displayed on a periodic table chart. And it has a gold B for boron in the middle. And …”
It was Elaine’s turn to sigh loudly. “Terrific, Gloria, more science jewelry. Just what you need. I think that means you’re engaged.”
I laughed, and gave Elaine a report on Matt’s invitation, or what seemed like an invitation.
“Not an invitation, a proposal. It’s called a proposal.”
“I need your help, Elaine. What’s wrong with me?” I poured a cup of espresso, preparing myself for her answer.
“He said he wants you to move all your clothes and furniture to his place, and you’re wondering if he’s ready to commit?”
“He said ‘maybe’ …”
“Gloria.” Her voice was firm, the voice you use when a child is being stubborn. “OK, let’s review. We know you love him. You’ve told me, and you’ve told him and he’s told you, right?”
“Right.” I gulped. The way Elaine put it, it sounded very serious, very final.
“So let’s run through the usual reasons people don’t jump at the chance to take that next step. Number one, fear of commitment. That’s obvious. Number two, you think you’re unworthy of him or you don’t deserve happiness. This could be a holdover from growing up with your mother telling you that. Number three, it might not work and one of you will get hurt.”
I felt like a case study assignment for Psych 101 students. I’d thought my fears were unique, but it turned out my first three were from a textbook list.
The fourth, I knew, was more unique, and I was ready to share it with Elaine. I’d barely articulated it to myself.
“I think it might be Al,” I told her, hesitation in my voice, nervousness throughout my body. I thought of my fiance as I knew him more than thirty years ago.
The last time I’d seen Al Gravese—short and dark, with a low hairline, like a younger version of Matt Gennaro—was on a Friday before Christmas, three months before our planned wedding. He’d dropped by the flat I shared with my father after my mother died.
“I’m not going to be able to take you to the show,” he’d said, in his gravelly voice, also not too different from Matt’s. He was wearing a dark blue tie I’d given him for his mid-November birthday. “I got some business.” In his uneducated pronunciation, it sounded like, “I gut some bidness.”
I never knew the nature of Al’s business, but I remembered being thrilled by his secret life, as if that gave me status I didn’t otherwise have. I was so proud of the way he lavished gifts on my father and me. My mother had died by then. Al showered us with fine leather goods, silk robes, gold cuff links and earrings. “Go have a good time at the track,” he’d tell my father, peeling off bills from the roll he always carried.
I shook away the memory, happy I was no longer young and foolish. At least not young.
It took Elaine less time than I expected to figure out what I meant. I assumed she’d t
hink I was confessing to loyalty to Al’s memory. But she was smarter than that. “So, if you get engaged to Matt, or whatever it is he wants to do, he might die?” The line between us crackled, and I wished it were a call-waiting signal for one of us. I felt Elaine had reached into my soul and pulled out something I hadn’t dared look at.
“You’re good,” I said, when I recovered.
“You’re easy, Gloria. I wish I could be this insightful with my own relationships. Now, let’s work on this. Didn’t you tell me you found out exactly how Al died?”
“I did.”
“It was a hit, wasn’t it? The car crash was set up by his enemies.”
“I love your television language, but yes, it was deliberate.”
“Not exactly your fault, was it?”
“No.” I took a sip of my espresso and shifted on my rocker.
“It’s not like he contracted some disease by having sex with you.”
“Elaine!” I said.
She laughed at the mock horror in my voice. “You’ve got to get used to the S word, Gloria. And you’ve got to realize Matt is not Al and you are not the Gloria of 1963.”
She had a point. Several points.
COMPARED TO MY conversation with Elaine, turning back to thoughts of murder seemed easy. I lined up everyone I’d talked to in connection with the case, placing them behind my mental two-way mirror. Which one looked like a killer? In my limited experience, there was no way to tell. They came in all sizes, ages, and genders.
One of Matt’s friends, who taught in an administration of justice program, had written a new book on murderers. “This looks like something you’d enjoy,” he’d told me. About as romantic a present as my boron pin, but I loved them both.
I took it from the shelf and flipped through the pages. Are killers chillingly aberrant monsters, the author asked, or are they a part, however perverse, of something in our culture as a whole? The jacket copy was provoking. Only recently, it said, have scholars begun to focus intensely on murder as a window on society and a revealing subject for social historians. In the days of the Puritans, murderers were seen as chief sinners in a community of sinners. Their fall was a warning to everyone. In today’s society, the killer is often seen as an alien monster whose crimes reflect his separation from the rest of us.
Insider or outsider? The topic was almost as interesting as the measurement problem in quantum mechanics.
The digression on the nature of killers didn’t get me very far, so I turned to the victim. What did I know about her? Born in Detroit, living in Revere five years, many boyfriends, an activist, fired from the lab. My information about her outlook on life had come from John Galigani, whose behavior would seem suspicious to anyone but those who loved him.
Before I had to consider the many points against John, my phone rang again.
“Gloria, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this,” Andrea said, her breathing labored as usual. “The lab’s Open House. It’s this coming weekend, and it’s a perfect way for you to walk all around the site and, you know, investigate.”
Indeed it was.
SEVENTEEN
I’D DREADED FAMILY DAYS, as we called them at my Berkeley lab, and not only because it meant an extra cleanup effort. We were also required to secure all levels of sensitive information, think up clever ways of explaining our programs to the families and friends of colleagues, and maintain a cheery countenance and positive attitude toward our place of employment. And this throughout two long weekend days.
Tutoring Matt and the RPD was rewarding, as was explaining scientific concepts to Peter Mastrone’s captive audience of high school students, but I didn’t enjoy entertaining little Josh and Stacey, or Grandpa Ned, who never stayed around long enough to learn anything. The children just wanted a balloon and a hot dog from the special vendors brought in for the event, and the grandparents looked at their watches every two minutes.
I never dreamed how much fun Open House could be from the other side—as a visitor. On Saturday morning, Matt and I were escorted by lab-employee-in-good-standing Andrea Cabrini. Her green badge sat high on her wide chest, hanging on a flat black shoelace. As I expected, she gushed over my boron pin.
“Wow. Did you have that made up special?”
I looked at Matt and smiled. “Matt found it, and he won’t say where.”
“Wow,” Andrea said again, looking back and forth between the boron pin and Matt. I had the feeling she wanted one of each. I also felt very lucky.
We walked past the requisite souvenir booths—T-shirts, pens, water bottles, balloons, all in maroon and gold with the lab logo. The Charger Street lab was technically a division of the Massachusetts University Department of Physics, which had its main campus in Boston. But hardly anyone remembered the connection unless they read the fine print on their paychecks, a lost art in the days of electronic funds transfer.
“Where do we start?” Matt asked, looking at the program and map, specially prepared for the Open House.
In normal circumstances, I’d have been eager to visit one of the extraordinary installations I’d read about. The Charger Street lab had developed world-class precision engineering tools, for example, plus other intriguing projects—decoding the human genome, optical switching, supercomputers, biocounterterrorism, seismography.
But today the overriding circumstance for me was the Yolanda Fiore investigation and John Galigani’s alleged role in her murder.
“Let’s see the Reactor Safety Program is showing,” I said.
ONLY TEN IN THE MORNING, and the temperature was already near ninety degrees. Relative humidity not much less, I guessed, waving my program in front of my face. The respite from the brief rainstorm two days earlier had faded from my memory, replaced by stickiness and discomfort. Rose had told me if I could survive the first summer back in Revere, I was a true native. I’d passed the test—I’d begun my second round of seasons—but the credential didn’t make it any more comfortable.
We took advantage of the lab’s taxi service, a regular feature of any large national laboratory I’d ever visited, and rode one of the outsized, air-conditioned, white vans to a large, old building on the north side of the facility. Since the Reactor Safety Program generated mainly reports and white papers, the staff had offices in what used to be military barracks. The “real” buildings, the ones with amenities such as foundations and indoor plumbing, were reserved for programs that used mainframe computers and other sensitive equipment.
We entered a faded green wooden structure, one sprawling story high, housing all the projects related to commercial nuclear reactors. The scientists and engineers in this building had served for many years as technical consultants to the congressional oversight committees that regulated nuclear energy.
On display in the lobby was a large model. For a minute I thought I’d landed back in the Revere Public Library, but this was a replica of a pressurized water reactor, a PWR in the trade. I was beginning to see my life as a series of miniature representations. If only I could shrink to their size, I might learn what was going on in the real world.
The PWR model dominated the lobby area, at least three times the size of dollhouses I’d seen on my rare, reluctant trips to toy stores.
More colorful than the real thing, the model reactor had a row of buttons along the front panel—push a button and a particular area lit up. The three main sections were color-coded. The auxiliary building, which housed the control room, fuel handling and storage equipment, and emergency systems, was crayon green. The rounded cement containment section was fiery red. Not a good idea, I thought, unless the designers wanted the visiting public to think meltdown. The last building, which housed the turbines, condensers, and the generator to produce the electricity, was California-sky-blue.
We were early enough to have beaten the rush of little Joshes, Staceys, and Grandpa Neds, so Andrea and I took turns pushing buttons. We watched the water pressurizer turn bright orange, the control rods purple, the reactor cor
e a sunshine yellow.
“There’s the steam generator,” Andrea said.
“And the heat exchanger.”
“And the pump.” I
“And the exit line to the turbine.”
No lacy curtains, floral dining-room chairs, Victorian lamps, miniature pets—here was a dollhouse I would have liked as a kid.
Matt stood by, grinning, as if he were watching children in a toy store. He finally made a contribution to our animated chatter.
“Look at the little people,” he said, pointing to the tiny plastic figures that represented plant workers.
“How come there aren’t any women?” I asked, making a note to have equal numbers of male and female workers in my model waste pool for Erin Wong’s class.
While I pictured little women in radiation suits and hard hats, Tony Taruffi’s voice intruded.
“A great oversight,” he said. “Maybe you could make a female inspector for us.” Garth Allen was by his side, in a seersucker suit, a fashion statement I hadn’t seen since I was in high school.
“I’ll do that.” I smiled, and introduced the men to Matt.
“The real police?” Allen’s graying eyebrows went up. “Is this another official call?”
“Not at all,” Matt said, with a disarming grin. “I’m here to learn about nuclear physics.” With a little coaching from me, Matt had overcome the tendency of many lay people to say “noo’-cue-lar” instead of “noo’-clee-ar.”
“Are you impressed by our model? There’s a lot more action.” Taruffi pushed a button on the side of the structure, and a puff of pretend steam came out of the bright red containment building. From inside the model, a deep, broadcast-quality male voice announced: Millions of atoms of uranium 235 hit each other and break apart in a chain reaction. The process, called fission, creates heat, which turns the water to steam. The cloud of lavender vapor traveled from the heat exchanger down an elaborate system of pipes until it reached the turbine shaft. The steam drives the turbines and electricity is generated.
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