Playground Zero

by Sarah Relyea

  “You can play when we get there,” her mother suggested, glancing back at them. “Only a few minutes more.”

  Soon they were in another motel, rounded up by a neon lasso. The game was nearing the end and close, but then her father brought the hamburgers and there was no more chess.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING the Raysons traveled up the mountain to Santa Fe.

  On a bench in Santa Fe’s old Spanish square, Alice was reading her mother’s book. She’d just begun a new tale: a princess had gone to free her father from a faraway kingdom. Her mother was there, in sunglasses and sandals. The book was long, having many tales of talking animals, and spells, and dense forests and the children who wandered there. She’d begun reading in the car days ago in Ohio, and now as her father and brother searched for a store selling baseball cards, she read through the tale. As the men emerged around a corner, her mother removed her sunglasses.

  “I’m glad you can enjoy long books. Maybe you could show your father how far you’ve read.”

  As her father approached, she jumped from the bench and held up the book. He grasped it and balanced the binding in one palm, opened at random, and began reading. She glanced up, perusing the sober face as he read. Then he lowered the page, heavy thumb pressed beneath the words.

  “Read me that,” he commanded.

  “The Tale of the Needle and Four Threads.” The tale was unfamiliar; she preferred reading of animals or brothers and sisters.

  Her father closed the book and turned it slowly around, examining the cover. It was an old book belonging to her mother and having a small tear along the binding. He fingered the tear, frowning.

  “Fine reading for someone your age—already ten.” He handed over the book with a bemused shrug, as though it held small value. The unassuming eyes surveyed her; she was aware of heavy shoulders and forearms, her father’s, and longish legs, her own. Her brother ran by, shoe laces undone; her father paused, glanced around, and then turned and demanded, resuming a familiar conversation, “How many people are there on the Supreme Court?”

  During the journey he’d moved on to new subjects, but she remembered the old drill.

  “Nine.”

  “And in the Senate?”

  “A hundred.”

  He grunted approval. “And how about the House of Representatives?”

  She could never remember that one. “Four hundred and twenty-five,” she proposed. She knew the answer was wrong even as she spoke.

  “No.” He unfastened a sleeve, folding it slowly and carefully along the muscular arm, the faded and impassive eyes gazing beyond her now, to the mountains. “Was that a guess?”

  “Four hundred and thirty-five?”

  “You’re sure?” He sounded calm but somehow surly. The only way to appease him was to fess up.

  “No.”

  “Well . . .”

  He continued gazing, measuring something behind her. She felt as though he’d caught her lying or even stealing. Wondering what there was to see, she turned and found the mountains, looming above the square as though from an enormous drive-in screen. It reminded her of an outdoor movie they’d seen one summer in the car: How the West Was Won. She was pulled back to the Spanish square by her father’s deep, colorless tone.

  “Don’t you want to learn the correct answer?”

  Though she no longer cared, there was no sense in saying so. She glanced at him and then away, appearing unconcerned.

  “Four hundred and thirty-five. You had it, but you were guessing.” As she turned to go, he remarked, “We’ll be in California soon. Do you remember the name of the capital?”

  Here was a new one; she would try to parry. “We’re not there yet.”

  “Can you tell me anyway?”

  “San Francisco.”

  He’d never asked before, so how could she remember? San Francisco was one of the few California place names she knew. Well, there was Los Angeles and the new name, Berkeley. But San Francisco made her think vaguely of gold and cable cars and lumber and hills, all the things a state capital should have, and then earthquakes; moreover her father, who worked for the government, would soon be working there. Yes, that made sense: San Francisco it was. Los Angeles had beaches and Hollywood, freeways and Watts, while Berkeley so far was only a name. Her mother had told them how her father had changed jobs—though he’d be staying with the federal government—but not much else, only that a family they knew from Washington had lived in Berkeley for a year and found it wonderful, as lovely as Barcelona. Barcelona was far away, in Europe. They’d known the other family, but only casually. She was confused why her parents would choose a place on so random a reference; they were following someone else, it seemed. She wondered why her parents so often seemed to be following someone else, as though they had no preferred ways of doing things. She wondered if they would have to go around that way forever, with people they hardly knew telling them where to buy a house, where to go for Chinese food, and what to read—her mother always had two or three books that someone had loaned her, saying she had to read them.

  “I told you in the car,” her father was saying.

  When had he told her? She must have been reading. “I forget.”

  “They call it Sacramento.”

  The word had an echoing sound, the name not of a city but of a lake or a monument in stone.

  Before he could ask anything more she ran off, and soon she was with her mother on the shaded bench in the Spanish square.

  “Well,” inquired her mother, “was he pleased that you’re reading such a long book?”

  Alice slumped on the bench, dangling her legs. “What’s the House of Representatives?” She and her mother had gone over these things before, she knew.

  “Oh, that’s one of the houses of Congress, the lower one. The upper house is called the Senate.”

  She’d seen the Congress building from the Mall in Washington, when they’d gone there for huge demonstrations. “Why upper and lower?”

  “The lower house is closer to the people.”

  That was always the response, though the meaning was unclear. “Tell me what Congress does.” Familiar as well, but she wanted to be sure.

  “They make laws, honey, for the whole country.”

  “How many laws are there?”

  “Oh my goodness, there must be thousands.”

  “Thousands? How can anyone remember them all?” Alice paused; the problem emerged, amorphous as the sunshine gleaming everywhere beyond the small globe of shade under the trees. “How can I learn all thousands of them?”

  “You probably know many of the important ones already. Most laws cover unusual or specialized situations, and even your father knows only a part of the law.”

  She could never learn so many laws. It would use up all her time, just knowing whether Congress would be mad at her for demonstrating on the Mall, or pushing a boy in the hallway when he teased her, or jaywalking, or reading her mother’s books when they made her father mad.

  She abandoned the bench as her father approached, unfolding a map to show her mother a place called Los Alamos. As her mother turned away, frowning, her brother ran up with a handful of baseball cards, torn already from the wrapper. A few moments later, they were heading for the car.

  Then came the narrow, swerving road up the canyon to a small town, so far from anything that it hovered there, a sandbar under the sky, surrounded by faraway swells of land. They passed fences of barbed wire, guarding seemingly deserted buildings. Her father meandered around, peering one way and then another as though searching for something he’d lost. Her mother rode beside him, scowling through her window, hands folded grimly in her lap.

  The sun glared. The parched breeze rushed through the window, rubbing Alice’s face sandpaper smooth. No one had told her why they were here, and she sensed there would be no response if she inquired. Maybe there was no reason; maybe they’d come only to see sandbar and sky, and then leave. They’d done so before, on summer beaches—why, th
en, was her mother so upset to be here?

  Alice opened her book and began to read, but the canyon road had made her queasy and the words hovered, meaningless, before her eyes. She closed the book. She whispered to her brother, “Where are we?”

  He shot her a glance. “Dummy, it’s where they made the Bomb.”

  In the pause that followed, her father murmured inaudibly, and her mother groaned, “I just feel so ashamed . . .” Soon they returned as they had come, through the canyon toward Santa Fe and then beyond, reaching Gallup at dusk.

  As they approached Gallup, her father reached an arm over the frayed seat cover and dropped a pack of baseball cards on her leg.

  “You should have your own,” he remarked, with a sidelong glance.

  Later, in the motel, she tore the wrapper from the cards and pretended to study the numbers on the back, the way her brother would do.

  “Who’d you get?” he demanded, eyes gleaming, urgent and chummy.

  She showed him, slyly, as though flashing a poker hand.

  “Trade ya,” he cajoled.

  Curt searched through her cards, humming to himself as he replaced a few with players he already had.

  BY THE EDGE of the Grand Canyon, the Raysons gaped in wonder and shared a bag of apples. A warm breeze mingled the dust of eons.

  Then they drove through hours of searing desert.

  “After the unbearable heat, let’s have a proper meal,” her mother suggested as they began seeing signs for Las Vegas.

  “That’s why I recommended going through there in the evening,” her father responded.

  “Through the desert at night?”

  “No more whining,” he snapped, tossing a surly glance at the back seat, as though the challenge had come from Alice. “We’re almost there.”

  “How much longer?” Curt demanded. He’d slept on a cot in Flagstaff and was feeling edgy.

  “Please, dear,” her mother soothed.

  “I’m hungry,” Alice complained.

  Her father glanced around. “How hungry?”

  She made no response as Curt glowered around at the moonscape, humming tunelessly, one leg bouncing with nervous energy. Alice slumped, knee pressing on the front seat where her father rode.

  “Who’s pushing on my seat?” he demanded.

  She moved the offending knee. “Not me.”

  Her father glanced around. “Do you want any dinner?”

  She made no response.

  “No more tantrums from you, lady.”

  “Tom, you need a good swim,” her mother murmured.

  One evening the summer before, her father had rounded up Alice and Curt and herded them to the local swimming pool. Soon they’d begun swimming every evening after her father came home from work. There in the pool together, away from her mother, he swam underwater laps or had them jump from the high board. She enjoyed the pool, splashing with Curt and gliding submerged as long as they could in search of coins—or maybe pearls.

  Alice wondered if they would swim in Las Vegas, as her glance followed a passing Joshua tree—a desert pine. A world of wonders was rushing by. “When are we—”

  “Soon,” her mother responded sharply, “very soon.”

  Her father glanced over one shoulder and changed lanes, then slowed, pulling up on the shoulder of the road. A truck passed close by, rocking the Chevy.

  “Have the tantrum here,” he commanded, bland and surly, one arm reaching over the seat as though he would go for her leg.

  As she glanced away, he turned around and gunned the car.

  Soon they reached Las Vegas. Her father found a large hotel with a family restaurant on the balcony level overlooking an enormous, bean-shaped pool with a small palm grove sprouting from an island in the center. As they waited in the restaurant to be served, a few sunbathers lounged by the edge of the pool, in the waning rays of day. Her mother and father were now smiling, while her brother rehearsed the rules for poker. There was even lemonade. She was sure her father would go down to the pool, for he disapproved of gambling, or so she’d been told, but when they returned to the room her mother glanced around, as though wondering something.

  “Your father wants some fun,” she told them. “I have no plans to gamble, but I can look around. Stay here and keep each other company. You’ve had a long day.”

  Her father was already in the hallway. Her mother closed the door; and Alice and Curt found themselves alone.

  “Hey—” Curt was being chummy, but she’d had enough chess.

  “I’m gonna read.”

  “You saw the pool. Wanna go?”

  “She’ll come back.”

  “Unh-unh. They’re on a splurge.”

  “Where?”

  “Gambling, dummy. Slot machines, poker, blackjack. Vegas has everything. People go for days, never see the sun.”

  “How do you know?”

  He made no response.

  “Mom and Dad never—”

  “They are now.”

  Curt rummaged in the duffel and hauled up some navy-blue trunks. “You coming? Hurry up.”

  They changed in the room and headed for the lobby. The hall led around and around before they found an elevator; it was empty, as though reserved for them alone. Curt held the room key, large and brass, stamped with the number 729. In moments they emerged in the lobby, each bearing a towel slung over one shoulder.

  “Look like you know where you’re going,” murmured Curt. He headed across the huge lacquered floor past the front desk, which was surrounded by a tour group. Beyond an enormous chandelier, raucous sounds flowed from the gaming rooms. She followed her brother, who followed some arrows. When they’d reached the end of the lobby, the pool lay beyond a small door.

  The sun hung low, and few people were in the water. The island and palm grove had an abandoned appearance—there were four trees on supple stems, overhanging a phony beach and gray boulders. She shaded her eyes from the glare and approached the pool. The water was glassy and blue as the cornflowers in the yard in Washington. Curt shed towel and shoes and jumped in, splashing her. She plunged after, thrashing her way to the pool floor, colored a glimmering blue. A few bubbles escaped her mouth as she peered around through the water. When she could no longer hold her breath she crouched on the floor and sprang, soaring upwards. Curt splashed her as she surfaced. Gulping for air, she splashed and moved off underwater.

  When she came up, her brother was nowhere to be seen. Then he surfaced, one hand holding up the room key. He waved, flashing the treasure.

  “Race you,” he called, and flung the key over the water. It plunged, a quavering gleam. She followed, pushing her way down and along the blue floor, searching for the key. Her brother rose, returning to the surface; he’d won the race, it seemed. She came up gasping: there he was.

  “Go ahead, toss it,” he called.

  “But you have it.”

  “Nope.” He paused. “Uh-oh.”

  Together they swam down, scanning the blue depths. The key was gone.

  There was no problem, he assured her. She should stay by the pool, he would go for another key, he told her. He headed for the lobby. She paddled around the area where the key had fallen. There on the blue floor something gleamed, and she dove down, sure of having found the key—but no, only a leaf. Nearby, beams of light surged from the depths of the pool.

  She swam on. The beams were coming toward her, blazing in golden pillars from the pool floor, as though she’d swum through the darker bands of a rainbow to some purer inner core. She passed the beam, brushing the glass covering with her hand, as the water returned to a blue and darkening glow. Above the surface of the water glimmered a small sun, the hotel searchlight, sending up rays through the evening sky.

  The pool widened ahead; she rose breathless to the surface and found herself near the small island. No one was there, only a pale stone statue of a boy, one arm hanging as though he’d just thrown a spear. From the hotel ballroom, across the pool, there came the sound of
hunting horns played to a jazzy rhythm. Knowing she would never go there, she turned to hear. Then she climbed from the water and lay beneath the swaying palms.

  Her face was dry, and her shoulders and arms. Once wholly dry, she would not choose to return to the water; so she dove, with a splash.

  The water had grown cool. She peered through the murky glow; and there, on the floor of the pool, was a brass glimmer—a key. She darted down and grasped for the metal, which blew along the floor as she approached, like some living thing; then she came up gasping by the edge of the pool.

  A man approached her. “Are you here alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll have to leave, then.”

  She held up her hand, showing the key. “My brother’s coming back.”

  “No one under twelve in the pool area alone. I’m sorry.”

  The man watched her climb from the pool and followed her toward the lobby door, as if he supposed she would make trouble. There was nothing to do but leave; her brother would have to understand.

  When she found the room, the door was open. All three of them were there.

  “Here she is,” her mother said, frowning.

  Her brother lay propped on a plush bed, reading the sports news. He was damp and drowsy and wearing pajamas, as though he’d showered. “Told ya she was swimming,” he drawled, yawning.

  She heard her father’s bland but somehow surly tone. “Well, lady, I was about to go and haul you from the water.”

  “Yes,” her mother reprimanded, “there’ll be no nonsense when we reach Berkeley. No roaming around, unless I say.”

  Alice was unsure what had happened, only that she’d been caught, while her brother had seemingly fooled them. He leaned over the newspaper, conversing with her father about a baseball game. “Howard’s in a slump,” she heard him say. “Howard only got a single.”

  Her mother was looking dismayed. “Now Bobby Kennedy’s gone, along with King—and we’re here in Las Vegas, of all places,” she said, her face flushing in anger. “All this killing—can’t we just stop?” She paused, shaking her head. “Please, no more news—I’ve had enough for now.”