my brain.
The migraines and the fear of an impending nuclear holocaust became intertwined. A woman on NPR explained that once bombs were launched, it would not be possible to un-launch them. Our missiles were pointed at Russia; theirs were pointed at us. The Russians would have bombs trained on NASA, I thought, because it was strategically important. NASA was only a few miles from us.
That fall I became certain there would be a nuclear attack at Christmas. I also felt it was up to me to stop it, to get the adults to believe me, even though I was only eleven. One day, another migraine starting, my mother called Ron, who still worked at NASA. I hadn’t seen him for a few years. I was lying on my bed with the blinds drawn, dreading the start of the pain. My nerve endings spread out to touch every worry on the planet—each individual suffering, actual or potential.
“How you doing, kid?” Ron asked, walking into my room, where I was lying in bed, the curtains drawn.
“I’m worried about a bomb,” I said. “They’d want to hit NASA, right?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But if it happened—and I’m not saying it would, because it won’t—you wouldn’t feel anything. Not a thing. It would be like, poof. Over.”
“But in Hiroshima—”
“The bombs are a thousand times more powerful now,” he said.
“You mean, faster?” I asked. “Or covering more space?”
“Both,” he said.
“But what about just before it hits? Those minutes after we know it’s on the way but before it explodes?”
“You’d be vaporized before you had any idea. You’d be dead”—he snapped his fingers—”like that.”
“Thanks for coming by,” I said weakly. I didn’t believe anything he said. There would be at least a second when I knew it was coming, when the world still existed and I was still material. I could catch that moment if I was vigilant.
A few days later my father came over, biting triangles off an oversize Toblerone bar. He didn’t usually eat chocolate. A gift, he said, from a woman he’d just started dating.
“It’s mine,” he said, when I asked for a piece. “You know, she’s really smart,” he said. “She’s pretty too. She looks like that model, Claudia Schiffer.” Who was Claudia Schiffer?
It had been only a month or two since the last break with Tina. I figured the attraction would blow over, so I wasn’t very interested. It was too much to keep track of. But I’d never heard him talk about smart before. I hadn’t known to want both: pretty, smart. I felt as if I’d been duped, trying for pretty when pretty was not enough.
“You know, at the end of things, you forget how easy and great the beginnings are,” he said.
When the bomb didn’t come on Christmas, I became sure it would come just past midnight on New Year’s Eve. My migraines continued. My father and Mona had reserved a long table upstairs at Chez Panisse in Berkeley on New Year’s Eve, and my mother and I were invited to come along. At least she and I would be vaporized together.
My father invited his new girlfriend, Laurene, who brought a friend and arrived separately. After the party, my father would drive Mona, my mother, and me back home. I didn’t notice Laurene or her friend, and I don’t remember him introducing them, but there were many people I didn’t know and it didn’t matter. We were all about to perish.
Mona’s friends were there too, including a petite woman with short hair.
“Hello, sweetheart,” she said, leaning down to look into my eyes. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Lisa. Mona’s niece.”
“Ah,” she said. “That’s right. I’m so happy to meet you. And how old are you?”
“Eleven.”
“And that’s—what grade?”
“Sixth.”
“Well isn’t that wonderful,” she said. “And are you having fun?”
Every sound startled me. I looked around for my mother, so I could beg to go home. But she loved parties; we didn’t go to many, and when she would finally agree to leave, she had to say goodbye to everyone she’d spoken with, initiating a new round of conversations, so that the leaving was sometimes longer than the party that came before.
As I walked through the clot of mingling adults, the same petite woman found me again and asked me all the same questions. I’d never encountered a drunken adult before and didn’t understand what it was that made her forget me so soon—unless it was proof that the fabric of the world was in decay, that any minute the bomb would hit.
At midnight