Dad's
A-bomb
by
Jill
Zeller
SMASHWORDS EDITION
******
PUBLISHED BY:
J
Z Morrison Press on Smashwords
Dad's A-bomb
Copyright
2012
by Jill Zeller
Cover art by http://depositphotos.com
Smashwords
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Dad's A-Bomb
That Christmas of 1966 when I went though my science fiction phase, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 was etched in my brain. The film was just released, but my parents, certainly my mother, who had been given charge of our social training by our father, refused to let me see it. I would stand in the kitchen and read phrases to her, like: “It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.” She ignored me.
That day I read the book again, curled on the couch on a rainy afternoon, and I thought the phrase applied most aptly to Iris, who lay on the carpet furiously flipping the pages of Seventeen magazine, angry that she was grounded again.
We were all trapped in the small house that day. A foot ball game sizzled from the TV in the corner of the dining area, peppered with excited male voices and cheering crowds. Our dad sat there, Sunday afternoon football being the only time he dominated the television, wrested its control away from his children. It was also the only time he drank, and he held a can of beer in his hand. Maddy was in our bedroom, trying on makeup, worrying and amending her wardrobe, getting ready to meet her friends at the movies. In the back room, an addition my father had added to the house when we moved in so we could all have our own rooms, and only accessible through a sliding glass door from the patio, Dick was reading, or drawing his silly cartoons. The library was closed today. Otherwise he would be there, staring murkily over the edge of a book at the new librarian, who was young and pretty.
Our mother stood in the kitchen preparing a roast. Cigarette smoke circled around her, even though she was careful to blow the smoke out the kitchen vent. Dad hated her smoking. To him only a pipe was permissible mouth candy. Cigarettes were the pacifiers of the working class, beneath a Lab chemical scientist and his family.
“The air seemed charged with a special calm as if someone had waited there, quietly, and only a moment before he came, simply turned to a shadow and let him through.”
Rain pattered the window, blown in by a westward gust. Iris turned on her back and stared at the ceiling, and the house went silent; even the TV noise seemed to falter, as if a shock wave fled through the house and took all sound with it. I shook my head as if I had gone deaf. Sudden deafness or blindness, a fear that came at me out of the dark. But the TV rustled on again, my mother coughed. Iris sighed impatiently, and I watched her stare at the ceiling.
It made me nervous that she wasn't reading her magazine. And she wasn't safely hidden in her room, plotting escape from her prison. She had only me for company. A moment later, she sat up and I felt her staring at me as I turned my eyes back to the book.
“The room was cold but nonetheless he felt he could not breathe.”
I read the sentence over a few more times. Iris shifted and leaned back against the couch.
“I'm so bored I could scream. The stupid football game, the stupid smell of meat. The stupid rain.” She put her head back. Her bulbous red hair dusted my ankles. “This family is so stodgy. Do you know what that means, Eddi? Stodgy? Thick, boring, dull. Nothing ever happens here.”
Not until now, I thought. Not until you came to live with us. I kept my eyes in my book, but comprehension stopped. I left the land of parlor walls and fun parks and book-burning firemen and came to rest in my own living room, encircled by a gray egg of rain and ennui.
Iris knew she had me. Resting her chin on one arm she looked at me. Her fingernails were painted pink, her lashes dark with mascara and eyeliner. “C'mon, let's take off. We could be gone hours and they wouldn't even notice.”
“You'll get into trouble. They'll ground you for the rest of your life.”
Shrugging, she sighed. “They've tried everything. I don't care. There's so much they don't even know about.”
I put the book down, keeping my voice quiet. “Like what? What other stuff?”
But she smiled and shook her head. She was grounded for leaving the house at night last weekend. My mother heard a noise, got dad to check it out. He found Iris's room empty. He sat in there and waited until she crawled back in the window. First he made her stay in her room for an entire day. Then he grounded her. No dates, no outings, no driving, no phone calls. For the last week she had grudgingly obeyed us. But an anger ran under it all. I wondered if it had more to do with what happened to her when she went out that night, than any punishment my father could attempt to mete.
Iris sighed again. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”
I gave her a what I hoped was a reproachful look. As usual, she was making things up again. I had come to believe, as I was the one person in the family with whom she spoke regularly in the three years she had been living with us, that what Iris promised in the way of excitement and danger generally fell short of the deal.