“Speaking of tests,” Mom said—she could tell I was uncomfortable—“you have your test for your driver’s permit this week.”
I’d totally forgotten about it.
Ted pushed back from the table. He always finished eating way before everyone else. “The last thing this world needs is Jeff driving in it,” he said as he stood.
“Ted,” Mom said sharply. “Could you please ask to be excused?”
Ted sighed and sat back down. “May I be excused?” Mom looked over to Dad. He nodded.
“Please clear your plate,” Mom said. Ted did one of his eye rolls and left.
Dad didn’t go back to talking about epilepsy or Dr. Gourevik. Mom had successfully changed the subject. He asked if I felt prepared for the driving test, and I reminded him that Mom had been taking me out to practice in an abandoned parking lot in Arcadia, and I added that you’d have to be a moron to fail the California DMV’s written questions.
Dad seemed to agree. He then changed the subject to his current case, giving Mom and me an update. Ted never stuck around for them, and I only did to be polite. This one was seriously boring. After listening for a few minutes, I asked to be excused.
“What about NewsHour?” Dad said. He was referring to his favorite television program, the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, which Mom recorded for him every night on the VCR.
“I already watched it,” I said.
Dad raised an eyebrow. He often said how important it was for us to “stay abreast” of the news, and since it was one of the few things I could actually do with Dad, I’d often sit through it with him. Sometimes, like when the topic was politics and Dad got energized, it was even interesting.
“Really,” he said.
It seemed like a news quiz was coming, so I cut to the chase. “Yes, really,” I said. “What you’ll definitely find interesting is that the head of the Soviet Union—”
“Premier Gorbachev,” Dad interjected.
“Yeah, Mr. Gorbachev. He said that President Reagan will violate some treaty if he starts testing stuff for his Star Wars program.”
Dad seriously disliked that program, the one President Reagan said would defend us against nuclear weapons. Once, when Dad and I were watching NewsHour together and President Reagan was talking about the Strategic Defense Initiative—the Star Wars program—Dad flinched. “The notion that we can ever reliably defend ourselves against nuclear weapons is pure fantasy,” he said sharply, shaking his head.
Dad didn’t like the news I’d just shared. I could tell from his jaw, which was flaring. He was no longer doubting that I’d absorbed the news; he was irritated by the news itself. “So Mr. Reagan is considering withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty?” Dad used “Mr.” instead of “President” when he was really ticked off.
“I think that’s the treaty they were talking about.”
“Wonderful,” Dad said, with sarcasm in his voice. “Just wonderful.”
For a second, it seemed like he was going to blow his lid. Mom and I sat there, silent.
Dad drew in a long breath and slowly let it out. “That president of ours is endangering this nation with the increased threat of nuclear war. Not only that, he’s going to spend us into the ground.”
* * *
•
The first time Dad told me about nuclear weapons, when I presented my very first model rocket to him and he responded with a lecture on the danger of missiles, I wasn’t all that scared. I’d definitely heard of the atomic bomb—Dad was stationed on a minesweeper in the South Pacific when we dropped two of them on Japan in 1945, and very occasionally he’d talk about the war—but it didn’t feel like a major threat to me. That was in total contrast to the Holocaust, for example, because my grandma used to hold me in her lap when I was a little kid and tell me about the gas chambers. I had nightmares about the Nazis for years.
One evening when I was twelve, Dad announced at the dinner table that the whole family was going to watch a movie together over the weekend. We never went to the movies with Dad, so Ted and I were really excited at first, until Dad told us it was going to be on television.
Sunday came and Dad got us all assembled in front of the playroom TV. For the next two hours we watched The Day After, a fictional story about some American survivors of an all-out nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. I got so scared I almost peed in my pants. Even Ted looked freaked out, and he hardly ever cared about anything.
The second the movie was over, I turned to Dad and said, “Could that happen?” I was so anxious that I stammered when I said it. Mom tried to hug me but I pushed her away. “Dad,” I said, pleading with him. “Could that ever happen?”
Slowly, he considered my question. “I don’t think the film we saw was realistic,” he finally said. I felt my stomach lighten a bit. It was good to hear something like that was unlikely. I glanced over at Mom, who nodded at me.
Ted was frowning. “How wasn’t the film realistic?” he asked.
Dad cleared his throat. “Were there an actual nuclear exchange between our two countries, there would be no survivors. With the number of nuclear weapons in our arsenals, I’m afraid it would be the end of humanity.”
My stomach knotted up and I leaned forward. Mom moaned softly before touching my hand. She did the same to Ted, but he was frozen in place, his mouth half open.
Dad, on the other hand, wasn’t even with us. His eyes were turned up and to the left, as if he was trying to recall something. For several seconds, he didn’t say a word. “Bob,” Mom finally said, and then he looked at us.
He shook his head. “Boys, it’s impractical to spend your time worrying about nuclear war. What matters is politics—and policy. We have to vote the right leaders into office. And no matter who is there, we must do whatever is in our power to influence policy. Anxiety—in the absence of action—serves no purpose whatsoever.”
Dad’s words didn’t soothe me, but I’d never forget them.
* * *
•
I ended up acing my driver’s permit test. I nailed the written questions, and the middle-aged guy who graded me said, “Wow, perfect score.” Mom high-fived me when I told her the results and she took me straight to Fair Oaks Pharmacy to celebrate with an ice cream.
Test number two, the CT scan of my brain, took place the next day, at nine o’clock in the morning. Like always, Mom drove me there. She kept rubbing her nose on the way, something she did when she was nervous.
“Chill out, Mom,” I said. It always made her laugh.
Mom filled out a bunch of paperwork. When she was done, a plump woman in her thirties appeared. “Come with me,” she said, smiling. She escorted me to a changing room, where she handed me a gown.
“What do I need a gown for? You’re scanning my head, right?”
She smiled again, this time more plasticlike. “It’s just our procedure.”
A minute later, she walked me down a long hallway, stopping in front of an open metal door. There was a sign above it that had a large, red, three-bladed radiation symbol, along with the words CAUTION: RADIATION AREA. The lady smiled a third time, like I’d arrived at Disneyland or something, and she gestured toward the room.
A guy took over, probably the same age as her, and also pudgy. “Have you ever had a CT scan?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Well, they’re pretty easy. We’ll have you lie down on the white table there, we hold you in place with some soft straps across your forehead, and then we slide you back into that vertical tubelike structure, which is the CT scanner.” I looked over at it, then back at him. “I can assure you, it’s absolutely painless.”
“Okay,” I said. “How long is it gonna take?”
“Probably about twenty minutes.” Just like the lady before him, he put on a completely artif
icial smile. “Shall we get started?”
The scan itself wasn’t that bad. I didn’t particularly like being strapped down, but it wasn’t painful or anything. Just boring. I spent my time trying to count the number of perforations in one of the overhead ceiling panels, but each time they slid the table deeper into the scanner, I had to restart.
The guy returned a while later. It seemed like twenty minutes had passed. I figured I was finished.
“Please don’t move,” he said. “We’re not done yet.”
“I thought you said it was gonna be over in twenty minutes.”
“Well, the technologist would like to get some additional images, so we’re going to use some contrast dye, if that’s okay.”
I swallowed. “Why does the technologist want extra images?”
“I’m just an assistant, so I can’t tell you the reason for it. Sometimes it’s just to get a better perspective. Anyway, have you ever had an injection?”
“What, like a vaccination?” He nodded. “Of course.”
“Great. We’ll inject the dye into a vein in your arm, and then it’ll be just a few more minutes in the scanner, okay?”
“Fine,” I said. It wasn’t like he was really giving me an option.
The whole thing ended up taking twice as long as they said it would. I felt like complaining to someone, like the lady who had walked me in—right up to the point when she returned to escort me out.
Her face looked different—a little pale. Her smile was gone. She didn’t make eye contact. She just asked me to follow her, walking me back to the changing area, and then, when I got my shirt back on, to the waiting room.
Mom hopped to her feet the second she saw me. She wrapped me in a hug. It felt so soothing.
The lady who’d dropped me off hadn’t left. She was just standing there. She dipped her head toward Mom, who nodded politely. I ignored her and started toward the door. Mom followed. Just as I reached it, the lady said, “Good luck.”
* * *
•
The next morning, I woke up late. It had taken me ages to fall asleep, with that lady back at the CT lab swirling around in my mind, but around two in the morning I finally nodded off.
I swung out of bed and walked over to the corner window, raising the blinds. No one could see in from there, so it was like my private space, and just a foot back was where I had my laser project set up.
It was so close to being finished. I just needed the power supply. Maybe Mom could head up to C&H Surplus with me, I thought.
I took a quick shower, threw on some clothes, and headed upstairs. Ted was sitting at the kitchen counter, flipping through a magazine. “Hey, man,” he said, half smiling. I only got a greeting like that when he was in a really good mood. The norm was more like “The doofus has emerged.”
I grabbed a bowl from the cabinet and poured myself some cereal. “Where’s Mom?”
“On the phone.”
From the kitchen you could see all the way down to the other end of the house, where Mom had her office. Probably 99 percent of her time at home—at least while she was awake—was spent either there or in the kitchen. Her office was empty.
I looked back at Ted. “What, like on the phone in their bedroom?”
“Yeah,” Ted said, setting down his magazine and stepping off the stool. He looked at the clock. “I’m gonna take a shower.”
As I munched on my cereal, I thought about Mom. Maybe something was going on with her mother. She’d had Alzheimer’s for years and could no longer speak, and recently she’d had two serious bouts of pneumonia.
Just as I started my second bowl, Mom appeared.
“Everything okay?” I said.
She walked over and gave me a hug. “Good morning, honey.”
“Is your mom okay? You can totally tell me.”
“She’s fine, Jeff. Nothing new, at least.”
“Oh, good.” I was happy I’d gotten it wrong. Which was also good because maybe we could take that ride together. “How about we head up to C&H Surplus today so I can actually finish my project? And since I’ve got my permit now, maybe you could let me drive your car.”
She rubbed the back of her neck. “Well…”
“C’mon, Mom. I’ll be super super careful. I promise.”
“It’s…not that.”
I jolted my head back. “Well, what is it, then?”
Mom hesitated. “We’ve got an appointment with Dr. Gourevik today at noon.”
I rolled my eyes, then glanced at the clock. That was in less than an hour. I looked back at Mom. She was rubbing her nose. “Wait a second, were you just on the phone with Dr. Gourevik—in your bedroom?”
“Not with him.” Mom swallowed. “But yes, with someone from his office.”
I tossed my spoon into the cereal bowl. Milk splashed onto the counter. She didn’t react. “Mom, just what the heck is going on?”
She sighed. “I honestly don’t know, Jeff. They called this morning—you were asleep—and asked if the family could come in today.”
“The family?”
“I checked with your dad and was just now calling them back. He’s going to meet us there.” I looked away, squeezing my eyes shut. “Jeff, would you like your brother to come?”
I spun back to her and shook my head. “No, Mom. I don’t want my brother to come.” His hello that morning—the unusually warm one—came to mind. I squinted at Mom. “Did you tell Ted?”
“I did.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was like I’d woken up into an especially weird episode of The Twilight Zone.
Thirty minutes later, as Mom and I were heading out the front door, Ted called my name. I stopped and looked back at him. “What’s up?” I said.
“I, um, just wanted to wish you good luck.”
* * *
•
Unlike our first visit to Dr. Gourevik, this time we didn’t have to wait at all to see him. He even stood up to welcome us when we walked into his office. That was all I needed. Dr. Gourevik was a social Neanderthal. The fact that he was being polite could only mean I was in serious trouble.
He started with something right out of a television script. “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news. The scan revealed a tumor in the left-temporal lobe of your brain. That’s in this area,” he said, running his finger in a circle above his left ear. He said it had nothing to do with the car crash, though the crash led to the discovery by causing the seizures. He looked at me. “You’re going to need surgery right away, Jeff.”
I sat there for several seconds, staring back at Dr. Gourevik, slowly shaking my head. I understood what he was saying, but it all seemed crazy. I mean, I felt fine. I hadn’t even had one of those weird episodes recently.
A thought popped into my head. “Maybe they gave you someone else’s scan by mistake. I feel totally normal.”
“They’re exceedingly careful about that. And brain tumors often do not present any noticeable symptoms until—” Dr. Gourevik suddenly paused.
“Until what?”
He coughed into his hand, then cleared his throat. “Until they’ve substantially developed.”
I looked at my parents. I wanted them to intervene, but they didn’t say a word. Mom had been taking detailed notes, something she’d once done professionally as a stenographer. But now she was underlining a single word—“surgery”—over and over, with her mouth ajar. Dad looked like he was working on a question, his eyes tilting up to one side, but he couldn’t manage to ask it.
It didn’t feel like either of them was with me. It got me agitated.
“Could we focus for a second?” I barked out. My parents snapped to attention. Dr. Gourevik shut up. “Are you absolutely positively certain I need to have brain surgery?”
“Yes,” he said.
Maybe I
could delay it. That was it. If we held off for a while, and the tumor didn’t get any larger, then maybe I wouldn’t need surgery after all. I could even get my project done. I definitely needed to finish that project. It was what would get me into a top science school. And then I could join NASA.
I straightened up in my chair. “I’m working on a very important project, Dr. Gourevik. I need to finish it. It won’t take long—I can get the whole project done this summer. Then we can reevaluate the surgery idea—”
Dr. Gourevik interrupted. “I’m afraid there’s nothing to reevaluate, Jeff. I understand this is very difficult for you to hear, but you have a tumor growing in your brain. It has to be removed.”
I swallowed. “I did hear that. A tumor growing. And surgery. I’m just saying, like, realistically, when would that need to happen? How about a month from now—would that work?”
Dr. Gourevik sighed. “It would not. You should undergo surgery the moment you find a neurosurgeon.”
That gave me hope. It would probably take some time to do that.
Dr. Gourevik slid a sheet of paper across the table, with a list of neurosurgeons and their phone numbers typed across it. He focused his eyes tightly on mine. “Those are the best names in Southern California. You should find the first available. Were you to find that person today, my very strong recommendation is that you have the surgery performed tomorrow.”
I slumped in my seat then, my shoulders curling forward. I began to rock back and forth. It was like the moment in my childhood when a riptide had pulled me out to sea and I’d given up on trying to make it back to shore. My brother was the one who saved me, swimming out to meet me and then guiding me back. This time it was different. I was back out there at sea, but the shoreline was empty, and, behind me, a massive wave was forming.
Mom had clasped my hand. Dad was clutching my arm. I could barely feel them. It felt like I was falling. Down, down, with nothing below me but darkness.
I woke to Dad knocking on my bedroom door. “Come in,” I said groggily. Lucia had been in my dream, the girl Paul had asked me if I’d hooked up with yet. She was waving to me from the end of a hallway that was lengthening. That was all I remembered.
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