“About what?”
“These babies. With the missing skulls. You don’t really think the subs have anything to do with them, right?”
“Oh,” I said, slowly. “I don’t know.”
“Make note of the fact that she is not pregnant,” said Beverly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Laura.
“Just that Eileen’s husband is an attractive guy, and if she thought this whole birth-defect thing was no big deal, she’d probably be procreating with him.”
Laura was pretty wrung out, what with the bomb Janet had dropped, so she couldn’t just let a comment like that go. “For all you know, sheistrying.”
“I’m not,” I told the group in a low voice. “I mean we’re not. Trying.”
“Because you think there’s stuff in the water?” asked Janet.
I looked at her, then over at Rita. “Well… we know there’s stuff in the water.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No buts. For real. Manganese-54 and cobalt-60 are two nuclear by-products, and they’re showing up in water samples. There’s a whole research team here tracking it. They’re giving talks and writing papers, although the papers have a funny way of disappearing.”
I swear, from across the room, I heard Paul clear his throat. I recalibrated. “The question isn’t whether I think there’s stuff in the water. It’s whether the stuff in the water has any effect on health outcomes.”
“And so does it?” asked Janet.
The movie was still playing, but the whole room had otherwise gone quiet. Even the guys at Paul’s table had stopped talking. I glanced at Paul, who was running a finger along the rim of his water glass. It was hard to tell if he was listening, but I thought he probably was.
“God, Janet,” I said, “I don’t think right now there’s any way to know.”
120.
BACK IN LA MADDALENA,those of us who didn’t have to relieve babysitters went out for a nightcap at Club 56.
Paul hadn’t looked at me once since we’d left the wardroom, and at the bar he threw back several drinks in short order. On the walk back to our car, he finally said something. “You know, it wouldn’t have killed you to say,The water’s fine.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t fine.”
“You said it was contaminated.”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“There is no fucking evidence that either cobalt-60 or manganese-54 causes cranioschisis. So I don’t know why—in a room that included several of my superiors—you couldn’t have said as much.”
I stopped in my tracks. “Because there’s no evidence that cobalt-60 and manganese-54 don’t cause cranioschisis.”
Paul shook his head as if what I’d said disgusted him, then pulled the car keys from his pocket and dropped them—not once but twice—on the pavement.
“You can’t drive,” I said.
“I’m fine.”
I nodded in the direction of Shore Patrol. “Want me to go knock on their door and ask if they think you’re fine?”
“You don’t have to be such a bitch,” he said, and the tone, not to mention his word choice, surprised me.
“That’s not very nice.”
