“Ready?” he asked me.
“Ready. Bye, Dad. See you later.”
“Bye,” Dad said. “Have a nice time. And don’t be too late.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Wexler,” Hugh said.
Outside the sun was setting.
TWELVE
Stop! I tell myself. Stop thinking about that night. Concentrate on how good it feels to be alive. No matter what. Just to see the color of the sky, to smell the pine trees, to meet a stranger in the canyon.
I go to my room, tear a piece of paper from the yellow pad on my dresser and write one word. Alive. Then I tear off another piece and write Wolf.
I get pleasure from seeing my hand form the letters. I write it in all caps. WOLF. I write it in all lower case letters. wolf. I spell it backwards. flow. I’m surprised to find that it spells a word. Davey and Wolf. Wolf and Davey. I open the trunk at the foot of the bed and place both pieces of paper inside it, on the paisley lining. Then I decide to put my angora sweater set in there too, on top of the papers. And my fisherman’s pullover. Also, the letter from Lenaya, which she wrote and mailed on the day we left Atlantic City. And then the breadknife. I’ve been hiding it under my bed every morning but if Bitsy decides to vacuum and moves the bed, she’ll find it, and that will mean questions and more questions. Better to keep it in the trunk during the day and to take it out only at night, when I might need it.
At dinner Mom asks me how my day was.
“Very interesting,” I tell her. I see Bitsy raise her eyebrows. “And relaxing,” I add, hoping to avoid any questions. “How was Cochiti Lake?”
“Very nice,” Mom says. “Walter explained the whole history of the area to us.”
I’ll bet he did, I think.
“It’s a man-made lake,” Jason says. “And it’s big enough to sail a boat.”
“A small boat,” Walter says.
“A small boat,” Jason repeats.
“You missed a nice day, Davey,” Bitsy tells me.
I hide my smile in a glass of milk.
Later, I sit with Jason on the deck. We snuggle together in one lounge chair, star gazing. The sky is so clear here that without any trouble I can make out the Dipper. I am able to find Cassiopeia, too. Walter is so impressed with what he considers my interest in astronomy that he has given me a book: The Beginners Guide to Stars and Planets.
“Look, Jason,” I say. “There’s Cygnus. The swan. Can you make out the neck … the wings?”
“I think so,” Jason says, yawning. “I want to.”
Impulsively, I hug him.
“Watch it,” he says.
THIRTEEN
Two nights before we are due to fly home the phone rings. Walter answers. It is Audrey, my mother’s friend from Atlantic City. “She probably wants to pick us up at the airport,” Mom says, taking the call in the kitchen.
But when she comes back to the living room her face is deadly pale. “The store has been attacked by vandals,” she says, quietly. “They shot out the windows and the inside is a mess. They smashed everything they could get their hands on.”
Who would do such a terrible thing to us? I think. What have we ever done to anybody?
“The police have no leads,” Mom continues. “But they don’t think it’s related to the robbery … to the …” Her voice trails off. She manages to say, “To the last time,” before she covers her face with her hands.
The room is filled with the sound of a long, low wail. It sends shivers down my back. I look around, trying to identify it, then realize it is coming from my mother.
“Damn them!” she screams. “Damn them to hell!”
I know how she feels. I want to comfort her. To hold her close the way she held me when Jason had his nosebleed. But she is hysterical now, raving and ranting around the room, pulling at her own hair, screaming and crying and flinging aside whatever is in her way. Needlepoint cushions fly into the air, a stack of books is swept off the table with one movement of her arm, an amber glass ashtray smashes against the fireplace.
Jason stands in front of the grandfather clock, his hands over his ears. I can tell he is afraid. I am frightened, too. But even more, I am surprised. I’ve never seen my mother lose control. Not the night my father was killed, not at his funeral, not ever.
Until now.
Mom knocks over a lamp. I wait for Walter or Bitsy to stop her. Why are they just standing there like zombies? Why doesn’t somebody do something! But then Mom kicks the wall with her bare foot and cries out in pain. She has hurt herself. The shock is enough to stop her. She begins to cry, but now it is a different kind of crying. She collapses against Bitsy, who takes her in her arms.
“I’m sorry,” Mom whimpers. “I’m sorry … but I just can’t take any more. I just can’t …”
“Mommy …” Jason runs to her. “Mommy … don’t do that again.”
“I won’t,” Mom says, holding him close. “I just couldn’t help myself this time.” She looks over at me. I look back, trying to let her know I understand, without saying a word.
Three of Mom’s toes turn blue and swollen. Bitsy gets an ice pack. Mom yelps when Walter tries to touch her foot. They discuss whether or not they should go to the emergency room for X rays. They decide against it.
“There’s nothing to do for broken toes but tape them together,” Bitsy says. She once took a first aid course and this is what she learned. Besides, Mom doesn’t want to go. She’s embarrassed.
But the next day the pain is worse and Bitsy takes Mom for X rays anyway. Two of the toes are broken. The doctor tapes them together. Bitsy is pleased that her treatment was correct. Mom hobbles around in a pair of old tennis shoes with a hole cut out for her toes.
She can’t decide what to do about the store. She can’t decide what to do about anything. Walter and Bitsy convince her to stay a while longer.
“I’ll take care of everything,” Walter promises.
The next morning I walk down to Central Avenue and buy two postcards in TG&Y. One shows an aerial view of Los Alamos. Greetings from the Atomic City is printed across it. This one I will send to Lenaya. The other is a photo of Camel Rock at sunset. This one is for Hugh.
I cross the street and go to the post office, where I write messages on each of the cards. Hi, Future Scientist, I write to Lenaya. And then I can’t think of anything else I want to say. So I write in big letters. Lots to tell you. See you soon.
I address the Camel Rock card to Hugh and write Did you hear about the store? It’s the last straw. I don’t know when we’re coming home now.
I mail the cards, then remember that I haven’t signed either one of them. Oh well. They’ll know they are from me.
I decide to go to the library since it is next to the post office. I browse around, picking a book off the best seller shelves, skimming it, then putting it back. I don’t see anything I want to read. Nothing interests me. I’m having trouble concentrating, except on my star book. I am able to memorize what I read in that.
Outside, I pass a shoe store and in the window is a pair of hiking boots. They are on sale for $32.50, marked down from $59.95. I go in and ask to try them on.
The saleswoman tells me they are a very good buy, and asks what size I wear.
“Eight,” I tell her. “Eight, narrow.”
She goes into the back room and comes out carrying a big box, which she sets down on the floor. She whips off the cover and holds one boot up. “Vibram soles,” she says. “The real McCoy.”
I nod, as if I understand.
When she sees that I am wearing my Adidas barefooted she reaches over for a basket filled with socks. “Let’s see,” she says, rummaging through it. “We want to see how they fit with heavy socks … wool would be best …” She shakes out a heavy gray sock. “Put this on, dear, and we’ll see how they fit.”
It is the same kind of sock Wolf was wearing. I pull it onto my left foot because I know that that one is slightly bigger than my right. The saleswoman helps me into the boot.
It is stiff. She laces it up and tells me to stand.
“How does that feel?” she asks.
“I can’t tell,” I say. “I think I should try on the other one, too.”
She looks in the basket for a matching sock. There is none. Instead, she hands me a pink knitted sock. I pull it on, wondering whose sock it was. I think about a girl, my age, taking off her pink sock to try on a pair of summer shoes, then forgetting it. Maybe that’s how it wound up in the stray sock basket.
I get up and walk around in both boots, feeling as if my feet are encased in cement.
“You have to break them in,” the saleswoman says. “Wear them around the house, wear them to school, get them nice and comfortable before you wear them hiking.”
I turn around in front of the mirror.
“A terrific buy,” she tells me again. “And you can weatherproof the suede. It will turn the color darker, but I think they look even nicer that way.”
The feet I am looking at in the mirror seem to belong to someone else. They don’t look like my feet at all.
“And the sale ends this Saturday,” she reminds me.
But she doesn’t have to worry. I have already made up my mind. I made it up the minute I saw them in the window. “I’ll take them,” I tell her. “And I’d like a pair of wool socks.”
“Certainly, dear. White or gray?”
“Gray.”
“And a bottle of Sno-Seal so you can weatherproof them right away?” she asks, reaching up to a shelf lined with Sno-Seals.
“Yes.”
“And will that be all?”
“Yes.”
“Cash or charge?”
“Cash,” I say, opening my wallet. I have exactly $74.68 saved up from my summer job. I worked as a beach girl at the Park Place Hotel, handing out towels and carrying chairs for guests. I was paid in tips. On a good day I could pocket $15. I had planned to blow it all on a back-to-school shopping spree. Once I was shopping in Bamberger’s with my mother and I saw this girl piling up sweaters and skirts and jeans and shirts. I couldn’t take my eyes off that pile. And I guess she noticed because she turned to me and smiled. “I’m going away to college,” she said, as if she had to explain. And I just smiled back and thought about what it must be like to have so much money that you can buy whatever you want, more, much more than you need. And that’s what I’d planned to do with my $74.68, although I knew I wouldn’t get much of a pile.
I hand my money to the saleswoman, who never stops smiling. “Thank you, dear,” she says. Normally I’m put off by anyone who calls people dear yet she sounds as if she really means it and looks as if she is glad I came in and bought the hiking boots. She isn’t just putting it on. Maybe it’s because I am the only customer. Maybe business is slow this fall. Who knows?
On the way home I am hit with the guilties. What will my mother say? A waste. What are you going to do with hiking boots in Atlantic City, Davey? Did you think it over carefully or was it just impulse buying? You know how hard it is to make ends meet, and especially now, with Daddy …
Never mind. I won’t show them to my mother, or to anyone else. They will be my secret. All I can think of is going to the canyon, finding Wolf, and showing him my hiking boots. Actually, all I can think about is going to the canyon and finding Wolf. I want to see if being around him still makes me feel glad to be alive.
I want to go this afternoon, right after lunch, but Bitsy has other plans. We haven’t been to the Bradbury Science Museum yet. She is a volunteer guide there every Wednesday and since this is Wednesday we will all go together.
Bitsy wears a red jacket with a name tag that says Elizabeth Kronick, Guide. She wears black pants and a white shirt with a black string tie. She explains that there is no official uniform for guides at the museum, but that this is what she wears every week. It makes her feel official.
I am not too hot on going to the science museum but Jason can’t wait. We walk over. It is another beautiful afternoon. The air is clear, the sky is a perfect blue color, the sun warming, yet through it you can feel just a hint of fall. My mother limps a little but her toes aren’t giving her that much trouble. She doesn’t say much. I hope she’s going to be okay. I hope she’s not going to explode again.
Bitsy whisks us through the museum and out to a courtyard where there are replicas of the atom bomb. There is a sign saying: Displayed here are ballistic cases like those of the two atomic bombs detonated over Japan in August 1945, the only atomic weapons ever used in warfare. Each was the equivalent of about 20,000 tons of TNT. The result of twenty seven months of unprecedented effort by thousands of scientists and technicians, they represent one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time. Both bombs were designed, fabricated, and assembled at Los Alamos.
Jason is really turned on by the bombs. He runs his hand along the surface of the one called Little Boy, which was dropped on Hiroshima. “And they were invented here, in Los Alamos?”
“That’s right,” Bitsy tells him.
“And they killed a lot of people?”
“Yes.”
“How many people did this bomb kill?”
“A lot,” Bitsy says. “Hundreds?” Jason asks.
“Yes.”
“Thousands?”
“Yes, I don’t know the exact numbers.”
I think it’s peculiar for a guide not to be able to answer Jason’s question. Maybe it is that she doesn’t want to answer him.
“Does Uncle Walter make bombs?” Jason asks.
“Uncle Walter doesn’t make them,” Bitsy says. “He’s involved in designing … and research.”
“He is?” I say. “For bombs?”
“For weapons in general,” Bitsy says.
“I had no idea,” I say.
“You know Uncle Walter is a group leader in W Division,” Bitsy says, proudly.
“But I don’t know what W Division is,” I say.
“It’s the weapons division,” Bitsy tells me. “Half of the Lab is involved in weapons research and the other half is involved in basic research. Medicine, energy …”
Bitsy is ticking off a list but I have tuned her out. I am thinking of Walter, instead. I can’t picture him designing bombs. I always thought a person who designs weapons would be hard and cruel. A kind of wild-eyed mad scientist, intent on blowing up the world. But Walter is so ordinary. I just can’t get over the fact that he is somehow involved in building bombs. In killing people.
A tourist couple asks if they can take a picture of Jason standing next to the replica of the bomb called Fat Boy, the bomb we dropped on Nagasaki. Jason poses and smiles.
That night, while we are having dinner, my mother develops an intense headache. “It’s been coming on all day,” she tells us, excusing herself from the table.
Maybe that’s why she was so quiet in the museum this afternoon. She didn’t say three words.
“I think I’d better take some aspirin and go to bed,” she says.
“You’ll feel better in the morning,” Bitsy calls after her. “It’s probably just the altitude.” The altitude is Bitsy’s excuse for every problem.
But I am not thinking about my mother or her intense headache. I am still thinking about Walter. I look at him differently now. I feel myself tensing up, growing more hostile toward him by the minute.
As if he can read my mind he leans across the table and says, “Davey … what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I manage to say.
“Oh yes.” He gives me a scrutinizing look. “I can tell … something is wrong.”
“Well,” I begin. “It’s just that I can’t believe you design weapons.”
“Oh, so that’s it.”
“Yes. I’m surprised.”
“It’s my job,” he says. “And I do it as well as I can.”
“Couldn’t you find another job?” I ask.
“That’s not the point.”
“What is?”
“We’re in this business to design the best
weapons we can, so that no one will ever think they can win a war against us.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Think of us as watchdogs, Davey, making sure that no one will ever attack us. But if they do, we’ll be ready. And being ready is more than half the battle.”
“But if nobody made bombs in the first place …”
“I wish it could be that way.”
“Why can’t it?”
“Because that’s not the way of the world.”
“It should be.”
“You’re right,” Walter says. “But it’s not.”
Later, when I am in bed, I try to think of Walter as a watchdog, but the only picture I get in my mind is of a German shepherd, or a Doberman, named Walter. I imagine Walter sitting at his desk at the Lab, thinking up new ways to kill people. Walter, who hoses down the Blazer every time he drives it off The Hill. Walter, who helps clear away the dinner plates. Walter, who reads Jason a chapter from Stuart Little every night.
I tuck the breadknife under my pillow and sleep with one hand wrapped around it.
FOURTEEN
The next day I sneak my hiking boots down to the garage and bury one in each of Bitsy’s canvas bike bags. I find a canteen on a shelf, rinse it and fill it with water.
When I go back to the house Jason is sitting on the living room floor playing Dominoes and Mom is stretched out on the sofa, twirling a rubber band around her fingers. Bitsy is in the kitchen. She tells me that she is going to a Bridge party and will be gone for lunch. “Do you want me to make you a sandwich before I leave?” she asks.
“No, don’t worry about me. I’m going out for my exercise.”
If I put it that way Bitsy doesn’t object. She and Walter are very big on exercise. Walter jogs every day at noon and Bitsy leaves the house every morning at eight, for a brisk walk around the block with her friends. So there is no problem as long as I promise to wear the helmet and to ride facing traffic.
“Where do you go, Davey?” Bitsy asks, as she covers a freshly baked apple pie with aluminum foil.
“Oh, around,” I say. “I like to explore.”