Free The Nuclear Age by Tim O’Brien

fingers and turquoise eyes, a way of gliding from spot to spot as if under the spell of a fairy tale, but she makes the mistake of assuming that her beauty is armor against the facts of fission. Funny how people hide. Behind art, behind Jesus, behind the sunny face of the present tense. Bobbi finds comfort in poetry; Melinda finds it in youth. For others it’s platitudes or blind optimism or the biological fantasies of reproduction and continuity.
    I prefer a hole.
    So dig. I won’t be stopped.
    I’ll admit it, though, these past two weeks have been murder, and at times the tension has turned into rage. This morning, for example. After a night of insomnia and celibacy, I came to the breakfast table a bit under the weather. It was hard to see the humor in finding another of Bobbi’s snide ditties stapled to the Cheerios box. I wanted to laugh it off, I just couldn’t muster the resources. Besides, the poem was cruel, an ultimatum.
Fission
, she called it.
    Protons, neutrons
.
Break the bonds
,
Break the heart
.
Fuse is lit
.
Time to split
.
    I can read between the lines. Split, it’s not even cute.
    Who could blame me? I lost my head for a minute. Nothing serious—some bad language, some table-thumping.
    “God,” Melinda squealed. “Crackers!”
    Bobbi remained silent. She lifted her shoulders in a gesturethat meant: Yes, crackers, but let’s not discuss it in front of your father.
    “Daffy Duck,” said my daughter. “Hey, look at him! Look, he’s eating—”
    I smiled. It was a mark of sanity, the cheerful face of a man in tip-top health—I smiled and chewed and swallowed
Fission
—and then I asked if they’d kindly put a lid on all the name-calling stuff, I was fed up with wisecracks and Mother Goose innuendo. “A little respect,” I said. “Fair enough? Time for some understanding.”
    Melinda stared at her mother.
    “You see that?” she said. “He ate your poem.”
    My wife shrugged.
    “I think he’s flipped!” Melinda yelled. “He did, he
ate
it, I saw him.”
    “Now wait a minute—”
    “Daddy’s flippo!”
    “No,” I said, “Daddy’s smart. He’s a goddamn genius.”
    Melinda snorted and flicked her pale eyebrows.
    “Selfish Sam,” she said. “What about
my
feelings? What happens when everybody at school finds out? God, they’ll think I’ve got the screwiest family in history.”
    “They laughed at Noah, princess.”
    “God!”
    I tapped the table. “Eat your Cheerios,” I said. “And cut out the swearing.”
    “
You
swear.”
    “Hardly ever.”
    “I just heard it, you said—”
    “Hustle up, you’ll be late for school.”
    Authority, I thought. Don’t bend. Don’t crack. I ignored their coded mother-daughter glances. I made happy chitchat, humming, stacking the dishes, buttoning Melinda’s coat and then marching her out to meet the school bus. A splendid morning, despite everything. That smooth blue sky, wildflowers everywhere, the wide-open spaces. And the Sweetheart Mountains—beautiful, yes, but also functional, a buffer between now and forever. Shockabsorbers. Heat deflectors.
    But Melinda had no appreciation for these facts. She wouldn’t look at me. We stood a few feet apart along the tar road.
    “Well, Flub-a-dub,” she finally said, “I hope you enjoyed your breakfast.”
    I reached out toward her, but she yelped and spun away. Again I offered extravagant apologies. Too much tension, I told her. Too little sleep. A lot on my mind.
    “Holes,” Melinda said, and glanced up for a moment, soberly, as if taking a measurement. “God, can’t you just stop acting so screwy? Is that so hard?”
    “I suppose it is sometimes.”
    “Eating
paper
.”
    She closed her eyes.
    “You know what Mommy says? She says you’re pretty sick. Like a breakdown or something.”
    “No way, baby.”
    “Yeah, but—” Melinda’s voice went ragged. She bit down on her lower lip. “But you always act that way, real flippy, and it makes me feel … You know what else