NACH.COM

It had been swelling, and Anne knew disaster was imminent.
The air had stilled, the birds had nestled into trees or flown away, the insects had curled up and abandoned the necessary rituals, and for these last five months time itself had stopped altogether as the bubble Peter once mockingly dismissed as a growth on Anne’s empty heart grew to a round balloon, pulsing, protruding.

Anne could see it now with her own eyes, in plain daylight, as clearly as all the global village would see if only someone would bring a video camera. It was no longer the overactive fantasy of a crazy girl who lived in the woods and dreamed of disasters. This was real, this was happening, now, and maybe someone somewhere would take notice and sound the alarms to save the children and the cows and the kitty cats. The Oopsy Daisy nuclear reactor was going to blow.

Anne needed a cup of tea.

She had grown used to the silences of the newspapers and television stations, of the inspectors, and of the eminent scientists who insisted that Oopsy Daisy was state-of-the-art. No, they said, we don’t see any swelling. What are you talking about?

Peter had left and gone to graduate school in California. He said, “Anne, I love you, but you’ve flipped. You’ve got to get a grip.”

She warned him not to go to California. “Go if you must,” she said. “Go ahead, leave me. But for god’s sake, Peter, please, not California.” She sobbed on his shoulder. “It’s going to fall into the ocean. You know it as well as I do. What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with Wisconsin?”

But he left. He kissed her on the cheek and he brushed the long brown hair away from her damp face, he ran his fingers around the back of her neck and up to her jaws and ears and the silver earrings he bought her two years earlier. He touched her pale lips and he said, “Anne, I will always love you. Always,” and he hopped into his VW and drove to California.

He sent postcards of seals and misty beaches. Did he think that would show her that California was a nice place? He asked, “How are you doing? How’s Oopsy Daisy?”

Anne did not write to Peter. She wrote letters to the editor, to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to the President, and to the Secretary of Energy. She wrote to the Dalai Lama and to the Pope and to the Ayatollah Khomeini, and she wrote letters to friends of friends of friends, letters to anyone she thought might be able to spread the word that Oopsy Daisy was unstable.

Even from a mile away she could hear and feel that it was unstable. It shook the earth. It spit out plumes of white steam that filled the sky with clouds. Down wind corn fields were greened by Oopsy Daisy drizzle.

Anne stirred milk and honey into her English Breakfast tea and she shuffled in her slippers from the kitchen to the front porch. She sat on the top step and sipped and the hot tea seared the roof of her mouth and then the hot mug scorched her bare leg so she lifted the mug high above her head and waited for it to cool.

Peter always told her, “Just put it down. Anne, just put it down. You don’t have to hold it up in the air like that.”

At the end he complained about everything. He complained about the food, about the poor writing in the newspaper, about the high price of peanut butter. He complained about the flies in the kitchen and about the bureaucrats who wouldn’t take him seriously, and he complained about Anne. She was not helping the cause. She was going too far. She was losing respect.

“Maybe you should start wearing some clothes,” he said one day. “What if people come over?”

“I thought you loved my legs,” she said.

“I do Anne. They’re great. They’re fantastic. I love them. But you know, people come over and maybe you don’t want to be running around naked in front of them.”

Anne stared at the dusty driveway as the stillness of the summer heat scorched her bare legs. They were good legs. He loved them. He said so.

The telephone rang and Anne ran to answer it. She hoped it was someone from the newspaper. The newspaper would have to call and ask how she knew, so many months ago, that Oopsy Daisy was going to blow.

“I knew because I looked,” she would say. “I knew because I just opened my eyes and saw what was out there while you buried your head in the sand and prayed everything was okay. If you pulled your head up and took a look, you would have seen exactly what I saw.”

It was David Farmington on the phone. He was coming over again.

David was a public relations man for Oopsy Daisy Incorporated. He first came by about a month before Peter left, after receiving Anne’s tenth letter to the company.

“We do tell the truth,” he pleaded with her out on the porch. “The plant has not had any serious accidents, we disclose every event and we’ve admitted problems with certain safety systems. We’re not hiding anything.”

“Just fuck off,” Anne said, and she stormed back into the house to put on some pants.

Anne waited for David on the porch. The honeysuckle was blooming and the air was sweet, moist, heavy and still. No trace of wind. No chirp, no buzz, no rustle of leaves from the chipmunks in the woodpile. No sound at all until David’s pickup kicked up pebbles and dust as it rumbled down the long driveway back into the woods that edged the cow pasture.

“Hi Anne,” he said as he slammed the door.

He had grown used to her aversion to clothing, had seen her sitting on the porch in her underwear so many times that he no longer noticed.

“Hi David,” she said. “Looks like trouble today, huh?”

“No, everything’s fine.”

“David, I’m no nuclear physicist, but I’m no fool. That bulge is not normal today. Have you seen it?”

“No Anne, I haven’t.”

He stood in front of her and leaned on his right hip with his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his green canvas pants. He wore a white button down shirt and an Oopsy Daisy Inc. baseball cap that kept his brown face in shadow.

“What’s up?” Anne asked.

“Nothing. Just thought I’d stop by. Can I have a cup of tea?”

“Help yourself.”

He walked up the stairs and through the screen door of the little blue house and he poured himself a mug of tea. Anne had boiled enough water for two. David sat down beside her.

“Don’t you have work to do?” Anne asked.

“Yeah, I guess,” David said.

“You guess? Don’t you think people are going to want to know what the hell’s going on?”

As he had grown used to her state of near nakedness, David also had grown used to Anne’s worries about Oopsy Daisy. It was all part of the same game she’d always played, and he didn’t mind.

“Listen Anne, I can’t stay long.”

She was sorry to hear this, because she enjoyed his company. He had become something more than the enemy, something much more than a collaborator. David thought Anne was amusing, and that was what she disliked most about him. But he was friendly, seemed concerned, and despite who he was and what he worked for, she could like him. He was sweet. He was gentle. Even if he was like the others, even if he was like Peter and wouldn’t listen, he was still welcome. She had grown used to his visits.

“Busy day?” Anne asked.

“Yep. Going upstate to the Legislature. I’ll be up there three days.”

He was telling her that he would not be visiting for the rest of the work week.

“Be back next week?” Anne asked.

“You bet,” he said. “Maybe stop by Saturday.”

“Good.”

They sipped their teas.

“Anne, there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

He was staring out at the trees and grass and back beyond the driveway at the Oopsy Daisy nuclear plant’s 400-foot tall cooling tower. Anne stretched her neck back and pressed her braless breasts to the sky and she said, “What is it?”

“Anne, have you ever thought about moving from here?”

Her head straightened and she turned to him.

“Is that what you’ve been up to? Well for crying out loud, Peter. Maybe I am stupid. You just want to get rid of me. You lousy son of a bitch…”

“No, Anne…”

“You think you can get all friendly with me and then maybe I’ll get out of your hair, keep quiet? Well forget it. God Peter, you make me sick. I though maybe you were becoming a friend. Have you looked at the containment building today? Have you?”

“Anne, you don’t understand…”

“Have you looked at it?”

“No, but Anne…”

“Just shut up and look at it.” She handed him the binoculars and he sighed and put them up to his eyes and he looked at the plant. It was the same, humming along, chugging out 1,200-megawatts of power for all the people and aluminum plants within a 600-mile radius. He had been at the plant early in the morning. It was the same. No bulge. Just frothy water vapor pumping out of the cooling tower, a power station, and one small round containment building that looked like a planetarium. Inside, the reactor controlled the fission and the steam generator turned the turbines that generated the power. It was normal.

“It looks the same to me,” he said, and she looked at him in disbelief and grabbed the binoculars.

“David Farmington, you are the worst two faced evil liar on this planet, and those lives are your responsibility.”

David had hoped to avoid sinking into the argument about Oopsy Daisy.

“Anne Cornstalk, you shut your mouth and listen to what I have to say.”

He had never spoken like this. He was rude, choked, insistent, masculine. He looked at her as a boxer looks at his opponent in an unspoken contest of will. He held her down with his eyes.

“How long have I been coming out here?” he asked.

“I don’t know?” she mumbled, running her hand through her hair.

“Three months, that’s how long.”

“That sounds right.”

“Yes, well, it is right. That’s when your boyfriend left you. Three months ago Tuesday. That was my first visit after he left. My next visit was on a Friday. Do you remember? Then I came the following Tuesday, Thursday, then Monday, Wednesday, Friday, then Monday, and then I came Tuesday. I came on a Monday and I came on a Tuesday. And then I came Wednesday. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Well Anne, I’ve got one question for you. Are you interested in me?”

She pulled her hand from her hair and looked away. She knew the question had been building, and she had wondered herself, was she interested, would he do, would he make her happy?

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You know what I mean. I mean as a man. I mean, is this some sort of a relationship, or what?”

She stood and walked in front of the porch and ran her toes in the dying flower bed.

“Well I don’t know,” she said. “I just sit out here every day looking at Oopsy Daisy, and you come by. You keep tabs on me. I write letters, you keep tabs on me. I don’t mind.”

“Anne,” he said. “I’m not keeping tabs on you.”

He followed her and she turned to face him.

“Sure you are,” she said.

“Anne,” he said, and he raised his hands to her shoulders. “Anne, I come by to spend time with you.”

She pushed his hands off her shoulders and walked back toward the porch. He followed. She was as tall as him, and standing on the bottom step she towered over him.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Anne, I’m asking if you want to move in with me.” He dropped his eyes and walked up the stairs and leaned on the porch railing. She followed him.

“Move in with you?” she said in a mocking tone. “I don’t think so,” she said, and she walked indoors. David got back into his car and drove away.

By noon the swelling at Oopsy Daisy appeared to be subsiding and Anne road her bicycle into town. She bought a newspaper and groceries and checked her post office box. There was another postcard from Peter, a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset.

“Anne: Please write. I miss you. Love, Peter.”

The town was busy and Anne could not stand riding her bicycle in the summer traffic. She wanted a strawberry milk shake at Beulah’s, but damn it was hot and David’s disappointment and Peter’s postcard had unnerved her and she just wanted to get back home. She felt she should feel proud that two men wanted her, but all she felt was the emptiness of her empty house that overlooked the Oopsy Daisy nuclear power plant, which was going to blow up and kill many people. She had dreamed it, and she knew it was true, and living with David or living in California was not going to stop it.

Anne took a dirt road home to avoid the exhaust of the highway that fed the mindless town that was built to serve the power plant. Now the town had children, but the parents didn’t care. The farmers didn’t care. The newspaper didn’t care. Peter didn’t care. David didn’t care. Nobody cared that horror was awaiting them all.

Anne got home and took off all her clothes and lay in front of the electric fan. David had laughed at the site of the fan.

“So you do use electricity after all,” he chided.

“Yes, I don’t live in the stone age,” she answered, and even then it seemed a feeble response.

David helped her pick out more energy efficient light bulbs and he helped insulate the basement. It was something Peter had refused to do.

“The landlord should do it,” Peter shouted. “How come the land owners are always sticking it to the peasants?”

Anne knew it was time to send out another volley of letters, but the day’s events had drained her. She would have to write home for money again. She dozed.

For dinner Anne pulled on underwear and a t-shirt and ate spaghetti with broccoli and peanuts out on the porch. A cool wind from the west had cleared away the heat and crickets sang their summer song to the nighttime shadows that flickered in the porch light. The swelling had reduced. The calm of the morning had fallen before no storm at all, only an aberration. An event is how they would describe it among themselves in a bug proof room. Gentlemen, we had an event today. It has been resolved.

If David were a man he would at least admit that this is what happened. But he is not a man. He is a lying cheat like the rest of them. He can not even look out for himself. He looks out for Oopsy Daisy.

If David had been a Roman, he would have been a foot soldier. He would have guarded the most barbarous Caesar with his life.

If he had been a German, he would have been a Nazi. A mid-level Nazi officer. He would have followed orders.

If David Farmington had been an animal, he would have been a worker ant, or a honey bee. Then, at least, he would have made honey. If David Farmington had been an insect, he would have been harmless. But he was not an insect. He was not an insect.

Anne stared at her broccoli and she twirled her fork in her pasta. She could not hear the rumble of the nuclear plant that she sometimes heard in the evening and she could not see the tower. All she could see was its distant white glow in the evening sky. She walked around the house. The crickets fell silent as she approached and returned to their songs as she walked away. She washed the dishes that had piled in the sink since the night before and she washed David’s mug. She had given it to him two weeks earlier, for his birthday, and he asked if he could keep it in her house. It was a brown and white mug made by a potter in town. Anne had kept it for him, and washed it, and boiled water for tea. She had used it herself, but only once, the previous Sunday when David could not stop by. It was a nice mug. David brought honey, milk, a sample of exotic teas. She made him mint tea, and birch bark tea, and iced tea.

When David first came on a Saturday, it was cloudy and cool and they sat in wicker chairs on the porch wrapped in sweaters as fog rolled in and they could no longer see Oopsy Daisy.

“That’s what the view would look like if it was gone,” Anne said.

“Is that what it used to look like?” David asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “It was there before I moved here.”

“Why did you move here?” he asked.

“Because Peter moved here. I came because of Peter.”

“And why did he come?”

“To help close the nuclear plant.”

David was older, older than Anne and older than Peter. But Peter was more daring. Peter could walk down a street in a loin cloth and not notice the stares. He could coax a fly onto his thumb, he could coax Anne anywhere, and he could coax any woman into his bed. He had done so in college, and he had done so after they moved in together and went to work for Stop Oopsy!, the local anti-nuclear group.

“I’m sorry,” he said after sleeping with one of the interns, and Anne said, “There’s nothing to be sorry for. We’re not married.” She said this standing naked before him in the bedroom, and he said, “Thanks Anne. You’re great,” and then he turned to look for a book.

Maybe it was his long blond hair, or his relaxed shuffle, or the burning passion in his speeches downtown. “We have got to fight this,” he would shout as he raised his fist, “Fight today, fight tomorrow, fight for the rest of our lives if we have to!” The women loved it. He was so serious. So moral. And yet he couldn’t see the growing bulge on the cement walls of the containment building.

David was shorter, but stronger, with dark wavy hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He did not look like an Oopsy Daisy spokesman but more like a canoe instructor, like the college canoe instructor from Alabama who all the women swooned over until he raped one of them.

David was more reserved. When he first saw Anne sitting on the porch in her underwear, her legs spread wide in front of him and her hands on her knees, he turned a dark shade of purple and spent as much time as he could looking at Oopsy Daisy and at Anne’s roof, which was in need of repair.

There was a time when Peter would not have noticed or cared if he met a strange woman sitting in her underwear on a porch with her crotch staring him in the face. Peter would have faced the woman straight on and reached out to shake hands.

David’s mug was chipped. She hadn’t noticed this before. Had it happened that morning, when he asked her to move in with him? Or had she dropped the mug some time since then? Or had he dropped it before he left? What exactly had happened?

The afternoon newspaper said nothing about any event at Oopsy Daisy. The only mention of the plant was in an advertisement on page four, behind the editorial on page five. The Fourth of July fireworks were sponsored by Oopsy Daisy Incorporated. The editorial condemned foreign intervention in domestic affairs. Civil Wars are Civil Wars, the headline said. “We urge our government not to use our soldiers to stop foreign citizens from killing themselves,” the editorial said. “Leave the civil wars alone.”

Anne dried David’s chipped mug and placed it carefully in the drying rack. Then she took off her clothes and was headed out to the porch when the telephone rang. It was late. Who could it be? Was it David, hoping for a second chance? Was it Peter? Or the newspaper? Had they seen? Had they seen the bulge?

It was the wrong number.

Anne stepped naked through the screen door and sat down on the top step. She picked up the binoculars and focused on the containment building, its shape barely visible. But she could see it clear enough. The bulge on its side had returned, swelled to twice the size it was in the morning. This is it, she thought. She began to perspire and her heart rate increased. This is it. No more letters. No more anything.

Anne put down the binoculars and leaned back under the porch light. She felt the peeling blue paint, rough against her bare back and backside, and she rested her head on the porch and felt the first bites of the mosquitoes joyously dining on a naked body while the moths swirled around the bare bulb that lit the tiny blue house in the woods by the cow pasture next to the Oopsy Daisy nuclear plant that neither Peter nor David could see was going to blow. The breeze rustled the leaves of the trees and Anne thought, this is it. Me and the mosquitoes. We’re here to watch it blow, and who can laugh at me now? Where is David now?

And she asked herself again, where is David now? She sat up and looked again through the binoculars. It was true, the bulge had grown, the plant was going to blow. And where was David? Was he still upstate? Or was he in the office, frantically answering calls from reporters demanding an explanation?

Anne ran indoors and dialed David’s number at home. She left a message on his answering machine. She called him at the office and left a message with the answering service, which reminded her that he had gone upstate to talk to the Legislature. But surely they would call him back for an emergency? She pulled on some clothes and ran out to her bicycle.

Anne had a battery powered headlight but still it was difficult to see on the dirt driveway and out on the asphalt. She pedaled quickly on the empty road that led to the Oopsy Daisy entry gate. A security guard dressed in black with some sort of rifle sashed to his back stepped in front of the road and put up his hand.

“Can I help you?” he said. She could not see his face clearly, but it had a mustache and square jaws.

“Yes,” she said, nearly out of breath. “I’m trying to find David Farmington. Is he here?”

The security guard looked to his partner in the guard house, who shook his head.

“No m’am, I’m afraid not,” the guard standing in the road said.

“Do you expect him?”

“I believe Mr. Farmington works days m’am. That means he won’t be back until morning.”

“Yes, but what about the bulge?”

“Pardon me m’am?”

“The bulge. Look, turn around. It’s right there behind you. Can’t you see it?”

The guard half turned his head to see what she was talking about. Then he turned back.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about m’am. Would you like to leave a message for Mr. Farmington?”

Didn’t he understand that all hell was about to break loose? Didn’t he understand that he was about to die?

“Don’t you see?” she shouted and she stepped forward, pointing at the containment building shrouded in white spotlights. The guard pulled his rifle from his back and aimed it at Anne.

“Now just stop right there m’am. ” He cocked the bolt. “Just hold it right there.”

The other guard hurried out of the guard booth. Anne was still half pointing at the containment building but her eyes were fixed on the rifle fixed on her heart beating hard enough to break through her chest cavity like a bull in a rodeo pen, trapped in a space too small and getting smaller with each beat, and with each beat a beat closer to one explosion or another, the plant or the gun.

“Hold on Joe,” the security guard from the guardhouse said. He was older, shorter, and he shuffled over to the commotion. “Joe, disarm,” he shouted. “Put it down.”

The rifle dropped and Anne’s arm that had been loosely pointing to the Oopsy Daisy containment building fell to her side. As the rifle dropped, the bulge disappeared.

Anne turned and got back on her bicycle and she pedaled slowly home to watch Oopsy Daisy one last time, to study the light reflecting off the clouds and the sturdy round containment building that from a distance looked like a planetarium, that could blow, that some day could be a disaster like Peter and his heartbreaking indifference. Oopsy Daisy was not going to blow and Anne saw that even if it was she could not stop it. She could not stop time, she could not stop a security guard from shooting her in the heart, she could not stop a nuclear accident, and she could not stop Peter from leaving. She let her bicycle fall to the ground and she pulled off her clothes and sat on the porch where she had sat naked day after day waiting for the explosion that she had dreamed a thousand times a thousand different ways all ending in a mushroom cloud that shattered the empty blue house that she once shared with Peter. She sat out on the porch one last time and felt the wind awaken her breasts. It was a wonderful house, but it was time to leave. She waited for David to call.