Fallout
Jacob Appel
Fallout
Jacob Appel
© 2004 by Jacob Appel
Fallout, initially published in the Fall/Winter 2004 print edition of the Colorado Review, received a “Special mention” for the 2006 Pushcart Prize.
Copyright for digital edition for all languages
© Digitpub srl 2010
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ISBN 978-88-6586-005-2
Cover by Roberto Grassilli
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This title is also available in português e italiano.
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Converted in epub format in July 2010
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Fallout
Jacob Appel
After a long day manufacturing musical sex toys, Maggie's husband studies chemical warfare at the mahogany table in their dining room. He insists his expertise will transfer. Genius is genius. First he gathers up all of his experimental merchandise – panties that sing "God Bless America," clarinet-shaped phalluses that play Benny Goodman's greatest hits – and stashes them under the sink. In their place he stacks volumes with the most menacing of titles: Tomorrow's Chemical Holocaust; An Idiot's Guide to Bioterrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction. He's checked out almost an entire section at the branch library and Maggie fears what the librarians must think. She is trying to be patient and giving – that's what pediatric nurses do, after all – but Frank's nightly lectures on paralytic gasses and blistering agents are wearing her down.
The acute fear Maggie senses behind his jittery humor surprises her. It is she – not he – who should be traumatized: she was downtown renewing her driver's license when the Trade Center crumbled; she was among the refugees who streamed aimlessly over the 59th Street Bridge. He was at his Jersey City office watching CNN. But three days into the tragedy, once they've checked that all of their friends are alive and she's switched her radio from news back to Oldies, when she's thinking that tonight they should try for a baby again, Frank returns from his office lugging three milk crates of books. He smiles with his lips but not his eyes. He says: "I just want to look into some things." She remembers this phrase from his final months of law school, when he brought home the books on starting up a business. He'd read ravenously for several weeks and then predicted: "Well, darling, we're going to be rich." Now he slaps shut the last of his books and announces, with equal assurance: "We're all going to die."
Maggie slides behind her husband's chair and massages his shoulders. She's ordered in pad thai with oysters, even lit a candle in the kitchen. "If that's the way it's going to be," she says, raking her fingertips across his chest and under his tie, "let's die like rabbits."
"I'm being serious," says Frank. He shifts his weight; she removes her hand. "What are you going to do when they start spraying sarin on the subways?
"Please, Frank," she says. "I've been up since five a.m."
"I know you don't want to hear this," he persists. "But you're going to listen. I love you too much to let you die of anthrax or botulism."
"Nobody's dying of anything," she says.
"Not yet."
Maggie takes hold of his big broad hand and presses his palm against the flesh of her abdomen. This is their code for "Let's go make a baby."
Frank extricates himself. "That's something I've been thinking about too," he says. "Do you really want to bring another life into a world like this one?"
She retreats to the kitchen and packs his untouched meal in foil. He follows her and tries to wrap his arm around her waist, but now she shakes herself free. "I want to have a baby," she snaps. "Three weeks ago we wanted to have a baby. What's happening, Frank?"
"Maybe it's just something in the air," he says. "I don't know."
When Maggie sees him slumped in a kitchen chair, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his exposed hairy forearms resting on the table, she soften quickly. She asks: "Is there anything I can do?"
"It's just something I feel inside me," says Frank. "When I told you five years ago that singing dildos were going to send our kids to college, you believed in me. Have some faith in me now."
"I'm trying. You have to believe me."
"Let's move to the country," he says. "To the middle of nowhere."
She doesn't say anything, at first. She hears the hum of the refrigerator, and at a distance the lonely mewing of the neighbor's cat.
"What's really keeping us in New York?" he asks. "We could go out to the Canadian Rockies. We could do anything. We could start a dairy farm in Vermont."
"We're Jews," says Maggie. "What do we know from dairy farming?"
"That's exactly what my Uncle Mendel said in Grodno. 'We're Jews. What do we know from America?'"
They've been married six years and she still can't keep his relatives straight. "Mendel's the one who tried to assassinate the Czar, right?"
"No," he says. "That's my cousin, Little Mendel. My Uncle Mendel's the one who died at Treblinka."
They compromise on three acres in Millbrook Heights. It's a converted carriage house that was once attached to the estate of a Dutch patroon, but the quaint half doors and yellow brick exterior of the seventeenth century structure are complimented by a new wing with an elevated veranda and an indoor Jacuzzi. A three-hundred year old oak – once a treaty oak – forms a canopy over the belly of the yard. Financially, of course, the place is a stretch. Maybe even a leap. It also adds another hour to Maggie's commute. Yet the upside is that they're an hour up the Hudson, that they're well beyond what Frank calls the strike zone. If Times Square were strafed with napalm, they might not even notice. And there are other advantages too: they will be able to send their children to the public schools and they will be able to grow their own vegetables and they will be able to visit Maggie's father on the weekends. When spring rolls around, they'll even be able to bring the old man home-grown zucchini and patty pan squash.
Maggie's father is serving three years for art fraud: he'd doctored several seascapes purchased at an oyster bar and sold them to a software mogul as Winslow Homers. Since the jury acquitted him of the more serious offense – using the proceeds of the sale to take out a hit on his mistress – he is confined to the minimum security prison at Wardelsburg. Maggie has taken his side against their mother. She brings him pickles from Riverdale and maatjes herring and back copies of Equestrian Life. Her younger sister, a librarian on a cruise ship, sends cigars from overseas. Then her sister gets laid off unexpectedly and takes a job as a cocktail waitress. She comes to stay with them until she can get back on her feet. It all happens fast. On their first Sunday in the new house, less than a month after the Trade Center disaster, all three of them drive up to Wardelsburg for the afternoon.
The Wardelsburg prison used to be an antebellum fort; Maggie brings a picnic lunch to eat on the parade ground. She has told her sister several times to dress modestly, but Carreen's idea of modesty permits a bare midriff.
Frank drops the sisters at the gate, but does not follow. There is no love lost between him and Jack Sheldrake: the old man vehemently disapproves of his son-in-law's business ("You have to draw a line somewhere!" he bellows), while Frank calls Sheldrake "Old Fuss 'n’ Feathers" behind his back. If Maggie or Carreen knew how to drive, he would stay home. When he picks them up at the curbside six hours later, he can't resist a barb. He asks: "Is the Boston Strangler cheating Old Fuss 'n’ Feathers at poker again?"
"You know it's not that kind of prison," Maggie says. "I told you Daddy rooms with two state senators and a former federal judge."
"The Boston Strangler is dead," says Carreen. "He was stabbed to death in prison."
Frank grins. "Did Old Fuss ‘n' Feathers call the hit on that one too?"
"Knock it off, Frank," says Carreen. "You're playing the wrong crowd."
"Please," begs Maggie. "Let's talk about something else."
They drive silently through the reds and yellows of the valley. Cabins and bungalows speckle the wooded foothills that climb to the horizon. At intervals the foliage breaks to reveal a jaded farmhouse set in a clump of pasture, or a giant plywood apple and an exhortation to "Pick Your Own" at an upcoming exit. There are also goats and stupid-looking cattle. Maggie is relieved they haven't moved this far into the country.
"Different topic," says Carreen suddenly. "How are you two making out in the baby-hatching department? I've been stockpiling names all summer."
Maggie throws Frank a searching glance. He looks about to speak when she says, "We've actually decided to hold off for a bit. Maybe next year."