Fallout

by Wil Mara

  “The plant had a rupture,” he said, hustling around the table to the window near the fireplace.

  “Plant? What pl—” Her eyes widened. “You don’t mean—”

  “Yeah, the nuke plant. Something blew, and now there’s radioactivity being blown all over the place.” He went around the desk in the kids’ workspace and pulled down the window behind it. “It’s mixing with the storm.”

  Taking his phone from his pocket, he reopened the emergency text.

  “Did you get this from Sarah Redmond?” he asked, holding the phone up so she could see the message.

  “My phone’s in my bag,” Kate replied, and went to get it.

  After he finished with the windows, Pete went next to the air conditioners as well as—per Sarah’s list—“… other vents that may be allowing air to come in from outside.” He hurried into the central hallway and went down to the basement.

  He had always been an organization freak, and at the moment he was thankful for that. Even as a child, he was the type whose clothes hung neatly in the closet and whose books were stacked to geometric perfection on his desk. It’s really not a neatness thing, he would insist to anyone who gave him crap about it (and quite a few had). It’s an organization thing. I don’t like to waste time looking for stuff when I need it. For the most part, this was a truthful self-assessment, but he had to admit that he felt a rarefied surge of joy seeing a freshly vacuumed carpet, a straight line of shoes, or a microwave oven with no fingerprints on its surface. He’d had a roommate during his sophomore year at UPenn who spent at least half an hour each day searching for his keys and/or wallet. Assuming the guy probably lost numerous other items on a daily basis, Pete conservatively figured he’d end up wasting about one-eighteenth of his life simply because he couldn’t subscribe to the oh-so-simple system of “a place for everything, and everything in its place.”

  In the basement, he grabbed three items which were precisely where he expected them to be: a new roll of duct tape, which sat stacked under a nearly spent one in the cabinet by the table saw; a long roll of plastic sheeting which was kept with other supplies used to prep a workspace; and a pair of steel shears that were hanging on the pegboard over the worktable. Once upstairs again, he went quickly through the dining room to the den, where there was a massive air-conditioning unit in the wall to the left of the fireplace. It was beyond ancient—mid-1970s, he and Kate had guessed based on style elements such as the plastic wood-grain accents and the faux-chrome analog dial—yet somehow it chugged out its Freon coolant every summer without complaint.

  Normally he would cover it only when winter really began bearing down—late October or early November. Pete usually went to great pains to cut a perfectly measured rectangle of plastic and apply it with double-sided tape that was all but invisible. Doing this just right took about a half an hour.

  The amount of time he invested in the procedure now was less than two minutes. He did not measure the sheet but rather eyeballed and guesstimated. He didn’t use an X-Acto knife to make a laser-perfect cut with a two-by-four as a guide—he set the open shears at one end of the sheet and ran them down to the other. Lengths of tape were ripped harshly from the roll and multiple pieces were used on each side, just to be safe. He knew he would lose some paint when he pulled the tape off, but he couldn’t care less. When he was finished, he did not step back, as he usually did, to admire the orderliness of his achievement—he just felt around the edges for leaks. The plastic swelled and deflated as if it was a living thing. Death, Pete thought, that’s what’s breathing in there. Steady respirations of death.

  As he headed for the living room to take care of the other wall unit, Kate reappeared.

  “I’ll do that,” she said, holding her hands out, “if you want to get into the attic.”

  She had read Sarah’s list, Pete realized, and knew that the next item was to check for roof leaks. He knew there were a few up there, dripping into little plastic garbage cans that Kate regularly carried down and emptied into the slop sink in the mudroom. Patching those leaks was one of this year’s projects.

  Kate was scared, Pete could tell, but doing her best to keep a lid on it. This warmed and comforted him. Her forge-ahead attitude in adverse situations had always been a source of inspiration; it was one of the qualities he loved most about her. He could see the fear swimming through her beautiful brown eyes, but she was clearly not going to let it take over the controls.

  “We’ll get things done faster if we work as a team,” she added.

  “Good idea. Thanks, sweetheart.”

  He handed her the supplies he was carrying and went to the closet in the main hallway, where they kept their “linens ’n things,” as Kate liked to say. He grabbed a stack of towels from the top shelf—not the good towels they used in the bathrooms, but rather the threadbare, retired towels that had been demoted for use as impromptu drop cloths, car polishers, or table coverings when Cary did a project that required paint or glue or whatever.

  Pete went up the steps three at a time. In the second-floor hallway, he grabbed the dangling cord with the little wooden ball on the end and pulled the stairs down, hearing the steel springs issue a wobbly, metallic groan. Tossing the towels up into the dark, rectangular orifice, he climbed into the attic with much less caution and more speed than usual. The fold-out steps had always felt cheaply made to him, as if the hinges might give way at any moment.

  The attic wasn’t much, although more than a crawl space. Pete couldn’t quite stand up all the way; if he did, the top of his head would press against the long wooden beam where the two angled sides of the roof came together. But there was more than enough room to get around in a low crouch. The Soameses had built a small city of boxes on either side, with a clear path up the center of the space. The rain was particularly noisy here, and Pete shuddered at the thought that the only thing keeping him from being drenched in a radioactive downpour was a thin layer of rotting shingles nailed over sheets of aging plywood.

  The only light in the attic was a bare-bulb fixture with a pull-string. Just as he grasped the bob, Pete saw something that made his heart freeze. At the end of the cleared pathway, horizontal lines of muted light sliced through in the darkness.

  The exhaust fan.…

  It had been installed by the previous owners as a way of expelling excessive summer heat. Pete and Kate had gone a step further and, working together one Saturday afternoon, connected it to a thermostat so they wouldn’t have to keep running upstairs to turn it on. Then, in their anal-retentive zeal, they oiled the pivot points on the louvered vents to make them turn more easily. Now those vents were rising and falling with every gust.

  Pete grabbed one of the towels and used it to cover his nose and mouth, wondering how much of the floating poison he’d already inhaled. Then the obvious occurred to him, and he flicked on the power switch that overrode the thermostatic control. The vents wavered open as the fan roared to life. That should blow it back out, he thought, and keep it out.

  One leak at a time, Pete thought. He stacked boxes under each of the drips, first moving the garbage cans out of the way. When each box-tower just touched the angled roofline, he stuffed towels under each leak until those spaces were tightly packed. He realized this was a temporary and wildly imperfect solution, but it would have to do for now.

  Finished, he poured the liquid from three garbage cans into a fourth, intending to dump it all down the second-floor toilet. He struggled to keep his abject terror at bay as he went back down the folding steps, cradling the three-quarters-full plastic can against his chest. It required the discipline of a lifetime to shove back the unspeakable image of the hinges giving way, the steps collapsing, him crashing to the floor, and the deadly contents of the can spilling all over his face.

  He flushed the toilet five times, then lifted the bathroom window just enough to throw the can out. It would land in the backyard, he knew. And it can damn well stay there.

  Before he could go downstairs and s
ee how Kate made out with the other air conditioner, the door to Cary’s bedroom opened and the boy stepped out.

  “Hey, big guy,” Pete began. “Look, I’m sorry I yelled at you before. I didn’t mean to.”

  Cary shrugged but didn’t make eye contact. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not, and I really am sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong.” He smiled. “Let’s talk more about this later. I want to get your thoughts on it. But right now I have to go see if Mom needs my help, okay?”

  A nod. “Sure.”

  Pete turned and started down the stairs, then stopped and spun back. He still had the all-is-well smile on his face, but it was taking a supreme effort to keep it there.

  “By the way, what did Mark say?”

  Cary was looking down at his phone, and Pete could tell by his thumb movements that he was playing a game of some sort.

  “I couldn’t get him,” Cary said plainly. “I think his phone’s turned off.”

  12

  Mark Soames sat in the apartment’s tiny kitchen thinking what he always did when he was here—It’s so depressing. Colonial-style cabinets, peeling floral wallpaper, and a stained porcelain sink … this place always gave him a sinking feeling of hopelessness.

  “Do you want something to drink?” his host inquired. Sharon was a remarkably pretty girl of eighteen, a strawberry blonde with soft features and a nicely proportioned figure that was obscured by an untucked, half-buttoned denim shirt. Mark assumed the untucking and half-buttoning was done so as not to put any unnecessary pressure on the growing baby bump beneath.

  “Sure,” he said, “Cherry Coke, please.” He went to reach for his cellphone, tucked in its usual place in his front right pocket. It was an unbreakable habit now, checking it every five minutes or so. Then he pulled his hand back when he remembered he’d turned it off to make ignoring his father that much easier.

  Sharon opened the fridge and said, “No soda. There’s water, nonfat milk, orange juice, and apple juice.”

  “No soda? Really?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Wow, since when?”

  “Since now.”

  “Okay then, orange juice is fine.”

  Sharon set the container on the counter, and Mark’s heart broke when he saw that it was just about empty. I should’ve guessed that. I should’ve said, “Nothing for me, thanks.” She opened one of the outdated cabinets to retrieve a small glass, and Mark caught sight of the meager contents within—a handful of other glasses and what appeared to be a sugar bowl. Nothing else.

  There was only enough juice to fill the glass halfway, and when she brought it to him he had to fight the urge to scream, “No, please—just keep it!”

  After tossing the container into a recycling bucket, Sharon sat down. Mark was watching her closely now, trying to see through the facade, but she was determinedly impassive. Her eyes were trained on the window over the sink, which was receiving a thorough cleansing by the storm.

  Countless memories had been forged in this room, times when the two of them sat at this table just like they were now. Party after party, drink after drink, smoke after smoke. The jokes, the laughs. They’d known each other since they were toddlers, and her sense of humor had always been one of her most attractive qualities. She had a particular fondness for dirty poems and a possibly related gift for rewriting the lyrics of any song on the fly, usually altering them from PG-13 to triple-X.

  They’d had serious discussions as well, about family struggles, financial struggles, and academic struggles; of the future and the past. They’d talked about why the world was the way it was, and how it worked, and who did what to whom, and what did it all mean anyway? Mark had always been fascinated by Sharon’s dreamy, philosophical side, the part of her that appreciated art, flowers, and butterflies and saw what the world could be rather than what it was. He also admired the way she could get down to business when a situation called for it. It was a trait he had not yet acquired, although he hoped he would one day. It was this almost machinelike aspect of her personality that kept her on the honor roll year after year. That, too, had always impressed him. Her smarts, her beauty, her sense of fun—there were so many things about her he loved.…

  But at the moment it was as if the circumstances surrounding them had swallowed the Sharon Blake he had known since childhood and replaced her with this blank-eyed cipher. He had come here to try to comfort her, maybe even cheer her up. It had never been difficult before. But this was something else. Something worse.

  “You know what the rain makes me think about?” he asked, grinning and nodding toward the window. “That night we were coming back from the mall in Tommy’s Bronco. Remember? The big curb over in Wellington Court?”

  It was an old and well-loved tale, and Mark was aware that Sharon already knew it down to the finest detail. Tommy Bissett had just gotten his driver’s license, followed by his first vehicle—a used Ford Bronco. On the night in question, during their sophomore year in high school, Tommy had taken the two of them to the mall over in Hydebrook. They prowled from store to store until closing time, and by then a storm system had moved in and was soaking the area with a vengeance. For Tommy Bissett, this meant opportunity.

  With Mark and Sharon giggling their heads off, he hydroplaned and fishtailed his way down the darkened, rainswept Route 161 to the Silver Lake exit, then toward the residential district via Shepherd Boulevard. Nodding at the rainpool that had gathered at the intersection of Shepherd and Broadway, Tommy grinned and said keenly, Now that’s what I call a puddle. He backed up a short distance and gunned the engine, and the resulting wave was, in his view, good but not good enough. Four more attempts were made, each starting farther back than the last, after which Mark and Sharon felt sick to their stomachs. Just one more, Tommy told them, his eyes wild as he threw the engine into reverse. This one’ll be the BEST. Then something went wrong—Tommy spun the wheel to avoid the curb just as he had before, but this time the steering system didn’t respond and the vehicle slammed into the blunt barrier at high speed. When the Bronco came to rest, there was a distinct tilt to its bearing.

  Cursing, Tommy undid his belt and scrambled out. The axle was fine, but the wheel was bent beneath it like the folded leg of some sleeping animal. Worst of all, Tommy didn’t have a spare. The trio then had to walk three miles in the downpour, Tommy a few steps ahead of them and continuing to showcase his expertise in the field of profanity while Mark and Sharon tried to stifle their laughter. Whenever Mark thought of this story, he was reminded of her fun and easygoing nature—a part of her that didn’t seem to be anywhere in view now.

  “Yeah, that was funny,” Sharon said flatly, with a nod that was all but imperceptible. She could’ve been reading from a script cast in a language she didn’t understand.

  Mark sipped the juice and thought about conjuring another tale of days gone by; there were plenty to choose from. Then a question struck him—If you find yourself saying “Remember the time” a lot, is that a sign of something? His gut told him it probably was. A sign that there had been a fundamental change in the whole equation. He wasn’t much older than her; just a few weeks. And as his dad sometimes liked to remind him, “I have shoes older than you.” So how could he be so young and yet feel so … worn?

  He groped a new topic, something upbeat, but nothing presented itself. Her family? No—nothing but a horror show there. School? Another no—we’re just a few months away from graduation, and all we want to do is get out of there and move on. Music? Movies? Television? Nothing seemed right, and that birthed a new kind of fear. He had never found it difficult to strike up a conversation with her before.

  “Hey, are those new curtains over the sink?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice was straw-dry.

  “You put them up recently, right?”

  “A few days ago.”

  “They look nice.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And those throw pillows on the couch in the living room.”
He motioned in that direction with his thumb. “They’re new, too, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You got them at the store?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  By “store” he meant the dollar store where she’d been working part-time for the last three months, after school and on weekends.

  “They look good, too.”

  She nodded. “They look okay.”

  “You know, I never asked you this before, but do you think—”

  “How are your parents doing?” she cut in, becoming animate at the same time. A trace of a smile touched the corners of her mouth. “I haven’t seen them around town much.”

  “They’re okay,” he said. Sharon had always gotten along famously with both of them; a point that bugged him a little bit, although he planned to keep that classified as top secret for eternity. His mom thought Sharon had tremendous natural beauty and never hesitated to tell her. And his father habitually remarked, “She’s really got it up here,” while tapping the side of his head.

  “My dad and I had a big blowout this morning,” he told her, “and I left.” He held up his phone. “I’ve got this turned off because I don’t want to talk with him. I don’t even have to look to know he’s tried calling or texting me. Probably both.”

  “I hear you,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Mark said back, softly. “I know you do.”

  They were looking directly at one another now, so much being communicated without language, desperate and sincere and yet jumbled by the confusion that is the exclusive property of teenagers stuck in a situation beyond their comprehension.

  “So … what’s going to happen after graduation?” Mark asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Have you talked about it with your family?”

  “They won’t help me out. I don’t even have to think about that one.”

  “That sucks.”

  She nodded absently. “It sure does.”