The April 1979 cover of Time is a full-bleed photo of two big, purple towers and red alarm lights blinking in the twilight. I had never seen one of these structures before last week. But there isn’t a person alive who doesn’t know what they are now: cooling towers for a nuclear power plant. They are in a place called Three Mile Island and they are not cool. The headline is two words long:
NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE
The adults stop talking about it when I come into the room but it’s impossible to miss the new vocabulary: fallout, core breach, radiation poisoning. I read the newspaper every day, trying and failing to convince myself that apocalyptic disasters only happen in the movies. A few weeks ago it was The China Syndrome. Now it’s Three Mile Island. And if The China Syndrome is real, then what else can be?
President Carter and Rosalynn fly to the site to prove it’s safe, but there aren’t many people there to greet Air Force One because they’ve all fled their homes. Headlines in The New York Times proclaim “Milk Safe” and “Area Now Safe for Pregnant Women” but do little to calm the panic.
Howie has taken the “accident” in Pennsylvania more seriously than anyone else, retiring to bed for the past two days. My disappointment in him softens as his own frailty and fear come into stark relief. “We’re getting whacked. Again,” he says from under the covers when I try, unsuccessfully, to draw him out.
There’s lots of pot smoking in the house but none of the giggles. The fissures in our nuclear family—the one that includes Howie and Carly—are illuminated and 31 Chestnut is now lonelier and more solemn than it’s ever been. But it can’t just be because a stuck valve in a power plant in Pennsylvania spewed coolant and torched the heart out of reactor number two. Howie is offline. Answers from Mama and Papa as to how to survive in a world with a nuclear meltdown are few, and I suspect the adults in my life don’t have any. I retreat to my Secure Position but there’s little here beyond the shrieking bite of the March wind. I’m losing all my hiding places.
Well, almost all.
Penny calls. Her husky voice is oddly high. She’s scared. “Sleep over tonight?”
It’s Friday so I don’t even ask. I just go and call Mama later: announcing, not requesting.
Penny, clad in loose waffle long underwear and black T-shirt, pulls me into her room as soon as I arrive, brings out a thick, furry blanket, and invites me under, side by side, knees bumping. Occasional shivers rumble up my spine.
“Spike,” she whispers. I look into her eyes, wet and desperate, and nod. “I don’t think, if something happened. Like the radiation meltdown thing. I don’t think my mom…”
“She’ll always protect you. She knows how.”
“Not this.”
And it’s true. It’s Three Mile Island, not pet dander. And she’s the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.
“I always wished that, one day, my powers would come out. Superpowers. When they were needed most. Just … flame on!” I say.
“That’s a comic book, not real life,” Penny says.
“I know. But things happen. Look at you. Look at your mom.”
“It’s different.”
“Why?” I shift closer to her. She sits up.
“Let’s change the subject.”
I turn onto my back, rest my head on her thigh, and stare up at Leif Garrett, visible in the moonlight.
“What if I had the power to … I don’t know … something like Johnny Storm.”
“I don’t think being a flying flame is going to help you if a nuclear power plant blows up.”
“OK. Sue Storm, then. She can create force fields, like protective bubbles.”
“Great. Then you can be like the boy in the plastic bubble. You have a John Travolta thing, kind of. A Jewish John Travolta—”
“No, not that kind of bubble—”
“Like a shorter, not hairy John Travolta.”
“A force field bubble. They’re impenetrable. And they make it so she can fly, so it’s better than Johnny.”
“I really need you to stop,” she says, lifting her knees to her chest and pushing me off.
“OK.” I drop it and we sit in silence for a long time.
“I’m sorry,” she says finally. “Let’s just go to sleep.”
We curl together under the warm blanket. I’m actually spooning a girl, I think. Penny’s hair smells like the woods, making my penis swell, and I have to pull back a bit so she doesn’t feel it.
“Come back,” she says.
I try to get as close as I can, folding at the waist so just that one part of me doesn’t touch. But it’s sticking out so I have to pull my hand back to tuck it under the waistband of my underwear. I pretend I’m just scratching.
Penny flips over to face me again. “Where are you going?” she whispers.
“Nowhere,” I promise.
She puts her face right up to mine and kisses me. The touch of her lips overrides the emergency cooling system of my internal reactor and my face floods with radioactive isotopes. She pulls back, smiles softly. Fusion.
“I thought you said—”
“Shhhh.”
“—they don’t last.” I remind her, unable to stop. I need to hear her say they do. It will.
“Don’t.”
I lean in to kiss her again but she shakes her head, smiling. It’s over. “Once is enough. Now go to sleep.”
I know that nothing will ever be enough, but this is so much more than I could have hoped for. I tuck my raging plutonium fuel rod away again, press my chest against her back, wrap my arms around her stomach and feel the bottom of her breasts graze my forearm every time she exhales.
Nothing but a thin layer of waffled cotton between us. Then the door opens and Laurie comes in, robes catching the twilight.
“Is someone in here with you?”
“It’s Lou,” Penny says without sitting up. I hold my breath.
“Oh, good,” Laurie says. “I’m glad you’re not alone. Louis, it’s nice that you came over tonight. This is such a terrible time and friends need friends.”
“Uh huh,” I say from under the blanket.
“So just take care of each other,” she says finally, closing the door. “And sleep on the floor, Louis. OK?”
“Uh huh.”
“You two are so good to one another,” she says from the crack she’s left open in the door. “Maybe you’ll get married one day. Wouldn’t that be something?”
Penny’s face is hidden in the pillows so I can’t see her reaction. Mine could light up the room.
* * *
Laurie leaves the next morning to join the Red Sox in Florida for spring training and help them break the Curse of the Bambino. I stay over a second night and we kiss once more. Just once. I don’t dare touch Penny in any way that could screw the pooch and she doesn’t invite it.
I get home Sunday night, blood racing. Amanda grabs me the moment I walk through the door—she wants to show me the loft Mama built in her bedroom. “And she let me pick out new wallpaper! It’s bright green with yellow flowers and we painted the loft bright yellow to match!”
I indulge her briefly on the way to my room. It’s a sight, for sure. Mama’s skills are undeniable.
Behind closed doors I flop onto my bed, close my eyes, and think of waffled long underwear and black cats.