Chapter One: Roast

Edward Teller Dreams of Barbecuing People is an unpublished novel. It took life as a short story that kept growing and sprouting new direction until I gave in and structured it into the work it's become. Strangely enough, much of "Roast" came from the conclusion of the short story. When I began sketching out the structure of the novel, I realized it was an excellent introduction to the characters and setting. Other scenes from the short story worked themselves into later chapters.

The Petrenkos were barbecuing people. They barbecued in sweaters and jeans, they barbecued in swimming trunks and bikini tops. The first clear weekend of the year, they rolled their venerable Weber out from its corner in the gardening shed and ratcheted on the attachments. They arranged strips of steak and breasts of chicken on a marble slab, lit the mesquite and charcoal with a long match, and grilled into the sunset.

Devout barbecuing people, the Petrenkos faithfully miniaturized the Great Outdoors in their backyard. It was nineteenth-century Manifest Destiny with candy-striped patio furniture. The kidney-shaped pool was as blue as Tidy Bowl water, and the hose-fed slide, a kitsch Niagara Falls. Paths of crushed volcanic rock that stuck to bare feet wound between the tropical flowering bushes. The only way to leave without appearing desperate was through the patio door next to the grill, which Ives Petrenko guarded with an oversized barbecue fork.

My father liked these warm-weather get-togethers, but he never fully comprehended the whole barbecuing experience. The other scientists and their spouses wore T-shirts and sarongs and sunglasses. Nathan showed up in his work clothes: black turtleneck sweater, brown slacks, and a corduroy sports jacket with patches on the elbows. He picked up his fashion sense from Carl Sagan in Cosmos. My mother, an infinitely more sensible person, knew well enough to throw on a sun dress and a floppy-brimmed hat. A stripe of zinc ran from the bridge of her Wayfarer sunglasses to the tip of her nose. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and a pink plastic beach bag hung from the crook of her arm. Nathan and Esther came off like mismatched dolls, Art Professor Ken and Spring Break Barbie in the Malibu Pool 'n Fun play set.

Nathan and Esther waited politely at the patio door to be invited outside by Ives Petrenko, whose attention was on the grill. Coughing from the fumes, he prodded an array of chicken breasts with his fork like they'd overslept. Nathan finally cleared his throat. Ives swung around waving the smoke away.

"Well, if it isn't the Brockman clan," Ives said. A cartoon was printed on his apron, vanilla ice cream melting over a Greek letter. Under it, in Spencerian script: "Pi A La Mode." He wiped his free hand on his denim cutoffs. He exchanged a quick handshake with Nathan and offered the same to Esther. She fell forward and hugged him, trapping his arms.

"I'm so, so sorry Ives," she said. "It's so wrong what they've done to you."

Ives didn't return the hug, just blinked over her straw hat. The Petrenkos weren't touchy-feely people. They put on an air of casual formality, well-suited to Livermore's brie-and-Chardonnay PBS subculture. Esther finally released Ives and wiped a glint of moisture from the corner of her eyes. Zinc smeared the collar of Ives' aloha shirt.

"Really, Esther, let's not worry about it," he said. "Today's rule is, no discussion of loss, just future gains." He forced a smile for our benefit, stretching his pepper beard so wide it nearly split in half. "I hope making it here today was no inconvenience for you, with the short notice and such."

"Nyet, comrade," I said with a stupid grin.

Esther spun around and took me by my upper arm. "We had a talk about this, young man."

Ives dismissed my smart-ass remark with a wave. "I've had much, much worse slung at me in the past two weeks." He leaned forward and spoke sotto voce to me. "But I'd appreciate it if you could keep it under your hat. The rest of them," he swept his fork over the other guests like a magic wand, "they think MIT begged me back. Now, Gene, you think could you help me out with that?"

He playfully poked the fork at me. Considering what I'd said and the wringer he'd been pushed through, he was within his rights to spear me through my ribcage.

"I guess so," I said.

"It's not right," Nathan said. "Twenty-two years and they come at you with this ... pettiness."

"Now, you've already broken today's rule," Ives said. "No talk of loss, just future gains."

The fire leapt and a cloud of smoke hit Ives in the face. He pinched his sinuses and with his face down toward his feet for an uncomfortably long time. His shoulders, as wide as a mushroom cloud, slumped inward. Esther made a slew of unsubtle motions at Nathan, small nods and jerks, the semaphore alphabet that evolves out of nineteen years of marriage. Nathan, hands in his pockets, semaphored back with nervous head shakes and shrugs, then relented. He stood beside his friend and patted his back.

"Ah, so, Ives," he said. "How's that chicken coming along?"

I pointed to a cindered leg on the center of the grill. "I don't think that one's done enough."

Ives glanced at the leg, then shook a finger at me, smiling. "God, you've got a sharp mouth," he said with a wet voice. His laugh whipped into a hack. He slapped his chest to knock the blockage free, then painted the burnt leg with more sauce. He smiled again, this time to let us know he was okay, for real.

Across the backyard, sitting at a glass patio table, Cookie Petrenko sliced vegetables on a cutting board. She waved to the three of us like royalty greeting the peasantry. Around her, the other wives chatted and sunned themselves. Esther excused herself and hurried over to them, her flip-flops slap-slap-slapping. Nathan and Ives huddled closer to the grill. Nathan made idle comments about the weather while Ives barbecued away.

The sweet smell of coconut oil and fruity rum drinks wafted across the backyard like the breeze of a Pacific atoll. I wandered around the pool, kicking up water with a sneaker, listening to shards of conversation here and there. Wives complained about local schools and rated grocery stores. Someone's daughter had passed the bar. Someone else mentioned an up-and-coming stock. Three lean men—my father's colleagues—chuckled over a technical failure at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Nathan sidled up beside them, hands deep in his pockets. He asked if he could interest any of them in an eighty-million dollar Los Alamos doorstop. He kept his smirk to a low simmer while the others guffawed.

My father studied thermonuclear reactions. He could explain Nagasaki at the subatomic level. Ives Petrenko held degrees in optics, mathematics, and physics—Yale had a three-for-one that year, I suppose. Others around the pool specialized in supercomputing, laser technology, rocketry, et cetera. Our town supplied a comfortable environment for scientists to cogitate and tinker. Livermore, a permanent vacation resort for eggheads.

My parents were invited to Livermore. That's how Esther told it, as though everyone in town voted us into an exclusive club. In reality, only my father was invited, and not by a citywide quorum, but by The Lab's higher-ups. The Lab, that's how we referred to it. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to the world and to history, The Lab to us. Nathan's 1965 postdoc—a leatherbound tome on neutrino detection—drew the attention of the cold warriors there. Fresh out of school and newly wed, a phone caller invited him to one of the most important research centers in the world, to fight the Soviets through brainpower rather than brawn, to work alongside Edward Teller and his handpicked cadre.

"Doctor Teller," Nathan would remind me.

The Lab paid their moving expenses, found them a three-bedroom two-bath single-story, and even assisted with the mortgage. Growing up, I hunted Easter eggs on the Visitor's Center lawn and ate canned Thanksgiving hams purchased in bulk by the Federal government. A Santa Claus with a physics degree handed out gifts in The Lab's cafeteria, scaring the hell out of the youngest ones with his tinny ho-ho-ho. Now there's a titular dilemma for you—is it Dr. St. Nick or St. Dr. Nick? Can one be beatified and secular at the same time?

The most significant Lab benefit, however, was Livermore, California. The Ivy Leagues' snowstorms and Los Alamos' desert heat was as foreign and distant to us as the Siberian permafrost. In our minds, the blank grazing land scaling our valley's mountains extended thousands of miles past their peaks. Those peaks cast shadows over our valley of death all time of day, yet we thanked them for fencing out the nasty happenings we read about in the newspaper. Even when Nathan, Esther and I left Livermore—one at a time and on our own terms—none of us escaped its boundaries.

The driving board sproinged and a splash of water dusted my corduroys. Sara Petrenko shimmied underwater to the end of the pool, flipped, kicked, and shot back to the board, all on two lungs of air. She surfaced and flicked her blond hair back with one clean movement. Bobbing with the waves, her blue one-piece swimsuit refracted and stretched and contorted every direction at once. She floated effortlessly, scissoring her feet and massaging the water with her palms.

My mother tried to hook me up with Sara once, one of Esther's many failed matchmaking attempts. I told her I wasn't interested, but Esther's proficiency at browbeating should not be underestimated. She gave me twenty dollars and told me to take Sara out for pizza. She wouldn't give me the car keys though. Sara drove that night.

Sara and I sat at a padded booth for two interminable hours. She talked as I studied the mozzarella shaker's symmetry. She ate a green salad and a single slice of pizza, first peeling off all the pepperoni, then sopping up the cheese grease with a napkin. Before biting in, she reminded herself out loud that she had to slide into her cheerleader outfit for that Friday's game.

"Go Atoms," I cheered weakly.

All she talked about was college. She desperately wanted to attend Yale. I told her I had my hopes up for Wassamatta U in Minnesota. She said that was fine and all, not that she was putting down my decision or anything, but careers depended on knowing the right people, and those people's kids attended Ivy League schools. Discussing these distinctions filled a lot of my high school years.

My parents were at the kitchen table in their robes when I got home. Esther made me file a full report.

"Too cerebral," I said, feeling generous.

"Swinging bachelor, huh?" Nathan grinned at me with a grin I've seen on him perhaps twice in my life, smarmy and knowing. "Looking for something with a little more bounce?"

Esther rapped his arm with a rolled-up magazine. "Sara has bounce. She's a cheerleader."

"She's a cheerleader because she wants to get into Yale." I forked my arms over my head. "Give me a Y."

"Cheerleading?" Nathan said. "To get into Yale?"

"It rounds out the application," I said dryly.

"She's a modern girl," Esther said. "Motivated and determined. You men need to climb out of the Stone Age."

"So Yale's idea of a well-rounded woman is short skirts and synchronized leg kicks?" I said. "These are the fruits of the Sexual Revolution?"

Esther said I do nothing but exaggerate and returned to her magazine. Nathan reminded me there were more fish in the sea—not that he's much of a fisherman.

After a week of silence on the matter, Esther began toying with the idea of another date. What if we invite some of your friends over for a little party—and Sara too? Or: We're going to the mall—why don't you call Sara and see if she wants to join us? It got so I suspected Esther had arranged a dowry with the Petrenkos, but she was simply worried I'd meet the wrong type of girl. Fortunately, Sara's candidacy was eliminated when the FBI discovered her grandfather was a Communist. It was one of America's little-known Cold War victories.

Communism, I'm convinced, is the only secular sin in our country. Even terrorism has the admirable quality of religious fundamentalism. Communism puts humans first, and that's as un-American as mock apple pie. Nathan affirmed as much the morning of the barbecue. He explained Ives' situation to me at the kitchen table.

"Rules are rules," he said, shaking his head, "but I find these consequences difficult to accept. This administration's run by Booleans." He drew two separate circles on the tablecloth with his finger. "To them, either you're Communist or Not Communist. Set theory just isn't the basis of good policy."

See, the FBI had screwed up Ives' background check twenty-two years earlier. Soon after taking office, Ronald Reagan ordered fresh checks. It turned out Ives' father had worked for the Communist Party during the Depression, probably handing out fliers or something equally paltry, but the FBI took it quite seriously.

All this was on my mind as Sara skimmed water in the pool.

"Did you bring your trunks?" she called to me. "If not, you can borrow a pair from Ives."

"I don't have that many notches on my belt."

She tilted her head back and smiled. "Careful. He's been dieting, if you can believe that."

Ives watched me from the grill, his fork trembling over a hamburger patty. The smoke billowing up around him grew darker and darker. His grim look said to me, Remember: We have a deal. MIT begged me back, nothing more.

Sara breaststroked over to me and rested her hands and chin on the edge of the pool. "I wish we didn't have to move to Massachusetts." She watched her parents out of the corners of her eyes. "The winters, and those horrible accents. Wat-ah. New Yawk."

"Like, omigod. And they're, like, such flakeoids."

She giggled with her hand on her nose. "Please tell me I don't sound like that."

"Okay. You don't sound like that."

Her smile evaporated. Her rosy sun-kissed cheeks fell. I couldn't have hit her harder with my hand. She lowered herself in the pool until the water lapped at her chin. "Well, anyway, it was nice knowing you, Gene. Really. I mean that." She snapped a shoulder strap, pouting a little bit. "Ives said I don't have to attend school until we get to Cambridge, so I probably won't see you after today. I wish I knew why he's so rushed to get out of Livermore."

Before I could get a word out, she slipped underwater. With two sharp kicks she was at the other end of the pool. I tried to catch her eye when she surfaced, but she focused on the glassy waves, unwilling to look at me. Then, starting with a determined breath, she began stroking across the pool. That's the last image I have of Sara Petrenko, her precise swimming form and the minute splashes of her hands and feet.

I could make a laundry list of things I detested about Sara, but no one deserved her family's fate. Our government wrecked a man's career and his reputation over some petty ideological zit in his family's past. And worse, Sara's parents had lied to her. She was as mature a kid as any parent could want, and yet they'd shielded her from the truth.

"Honey," I imagine Ives saying to his wife, Sara in the room, "they discovered pop was a C-O-M-M-I-E."

Cookie touches the faux pearls coiled around her neck. "M-A-R-X-I-S-T?"

"Worse. L-E-N-I-N-I-S-T."

I wonder if they ever came clean with Sara. I wonder if she ever learned she was expelled from Eden for a fifty year-old bite from a Red apple. Just thinking about it makes a hollow pulse in my chest, just under my sternum. Hypocrisy makes me ill that way. And discovering one's been lied to, and regret. A balloon fills my chest and throbs and makes me ache. It throbbed then too, as she kicked laps.

I continued around the pool until I reached the ice coolers. The red one was for the adults and the blue one for the youngsters. When no one was looking, I opened the red one and stuffed two cans of Budweiser under my sweat jacket. Then I headed into the backyard overgrowth.

At a previous barbecue I discovered a shaded pocket in the corner of the Petrenkos' plywood fence. It was off the lava rock path, hidden behind two prickly shrubs. Bushes with floppy green leaves walled off the rest of the backyard, leaving a quarter-circle of bare ground for me to hide in. Rotting leaves matted the dirt and kept it moist year-round. It was my personal bunker, my last line of defense from the Petrenkos' now-mangled slice of Livermore's promise.

The first two sips of beer made me shudder, but once my tongue got used to the taste, it went down easy enough. I laid back and crossed my ankles. Moisture soaked into my pants and chilled my butt. After a few hours, Esther would decide we'd overstayed our welcome. I relaxed and waited for her to call my name. Mostly, I tried to shoo Sara out of my mind as well as the way her parents had cheated her. It was more difficult than I'm letting on.

I laid there long enough to grow sleepy. Lava rock crunched nearby and jostled me alert. I went supine—partly to hide, partly to peek under the bushes—and was amazed. Gwen Carlson was walking up the path.

Gwen had a notoriety that was hard to ignore. She was always too loud. She yelled when she talked and screamed when she shouted. She grew fascinated with razor blades in the seventh grade, a hobby she expanded into scarring her arms our freshman year. She argued with the vice-principal from the auditorium bleachers and elicited boos and cheers from the assembly when she was escorted away. I remember, once they suspended her for teaching the student body treasurer how to get high with nasal spray. She wore a variety of costumes, but usually she strutted the school halls in black lace, silver chains, and a studded glove with all the fingers cut off except the middle one. Her hair was an upright black tangle, exposing shaven swaths of her scalp.

But now, in my corner, peering through the bushes, I witnessed a purer incarnation of Gwen. She wore a simple beige gown, no makeup, no jewelry. Her crown of hair was combed down into a pageboy. Sneering through the shrubbery at the adults, she took a pack of cigarettes from a dainty red snap purse and lit up.

Now, I enjoyed my isolation. I liked sitting back there, staring up at the sky and letting my mind drift. Sometimes an interesting outburst from the party would entertain me for a while. Or the dog next door would snuffle at the cracks in the fence. If I had some food, I'd break off a chunk and toss it over to him. My corner view of Livermore's test-tube world was a distant one. I didn't want Gwen in there with me, screaming and howling, ruining the quiet afternoon I looked forward to. I told myself if I was patient, she'd finish her cigarette and rejoin the party. But I had to watch her. She had that effect on me.

Gwen shifted the cigarette in her hand, pinching it between two fingers and cupping her palm. It looked unnaturally European. It also made her more mysterious. At age seventeen, that goes a long way. And she was hiding from everyone else, just like me. Maybe she needed some assistance. A dragon to rescue her from society's royal court. A monster to usher her into his lair.

"Warning," I said loud enough. "The Surgeon General has determined that smoking makes you look really, really cool."

She peered around, cigarette erect between her pursed lips. She pulled back the prickly bushes.

"Wow," she murmured. "Man, you've got the right idea."

I popped open the second can and offered it to her, just as I'd seen the cool people do in the beer commercials. She plunked down beside me and chugged. Her clove cigarette made the musty corner a little more savory.

"What are you doing here?" I said. I'd never seen her at the Petrenkos' before.

"You know that fat guy? Manning the barbecue?" She was huffing from the long swallow. "My dad took over his program. I guess fatso and his perfect wife and daughter are moving to Massachusetts."

"Oh, Sara's not so bad."

"Eh. Whatever." She took another drag. "Well, in any case, now my dad's in charge of blowing up the world twenty times over." She tugged at her gown. "I mean, look at this. Can't believe he made me wear this shit."

She handed me her beer and cigarette. She rolled back and forth until her dress was damp and sticky with mud. Leaves clung here and there to her flat figure. She crimped her hair and shook it wildly until it was fanned in all directions, then dug through her purse for an earring stud. She clipped it through her eyebrow without wincing.

"Feel better?" I asked.

"Tons."

She took my wrist and inhaled from the cigarette still burning between my fingers. Smoke streaming out of her nose, she pushed it back for me to try. My lungs went hot and buckled, and clove smoke shot out in coughs.

"Quiet down," she whispered, grinning at the spectacle.

I cleared my throat with more beer.

"Did you hear about the fat guy, though?" She hissed it as though discussing an incurable disease. "My dad said they're calling him a Commie."

"A man named Ivan Petrenko?" I cupped my mouth. "A Red?"

At first that puzzled her, then she leaned back and laughed hard, one right from the belly. The dog next door sniffed and whimpered through the fence.

"What's the punishment for being pink these days?" I stroked my chin. "Hanging by the thumbs is so ... McCarthyite. Maybe the rack?"

"No, water torture! See if he floats in the pool!"

"That's it. We'll stage The Crucible right here in the backyard."

Gwen stared at me like I'd devised the craziest idea of all time. "We'll nail him to a crucible, just like Jesus!"

"A crown of ice picks for the Trotskyite!" I was having too much fun to correct her.

We laughed together until we were empty of laughs, and we returned to our beers. She slurped and swallowed and slurped some more. Cheeks full of beer, she forced it out between her front teeth. She adjusted the stream's arc until it hit the prickly bushes between us and the path. When the last ounce was out, she drew her face close to mine and belched softly. Little bags of alcohol had grown beneath her eyes.

"Excuse me," she whispered.

"No problem." Please. Belch all over me.

"I think being a Communist's cool, personally. I'm kind of one myself."

"And you're sort of pregnant, too, I bet."

That snapped her out of her lull. "The hell's that mean?"

I cleared away some of the leaves between us. I drew Nathan's diagram in the moist dirt, this time interlocking the circles. "Communist or Not Communist. Boolean set theory." I pressed a dot in the intersection. "You're sort of Communist."

"And sort of pregnant? What, you heard that around school? Gwen's a sweet lay, she opens up her legs real easy?"

"No, see, what I'm saying is you can't be sort of pregnant but you can be sort of Communist."

"You think I'm back here to fuck your brains out? 'Hey, listen up guys, Gwen and I did it all in the backyard --'"

I madly tapped the dot. "It's a Venn diagram. You're sort of a Communist."

She studied it, fuming. "Whatever."

She moved her eyes to the fence, the bushes, then her beer. I ducked my head to catch her glance, but she avoided me. The pulsing balloon returned to my ribcage. Once again I'd opened up my freaking mouth, I'd destroyed yet another potential relationship. That's why I talk to myself so much. No one else wants to listen.

The Petrenkos' backyard stereo came on. Inane Sixties music droned from the waterproof speakers installed around the pool. Yesterday's rebellion is today's Muzak. I let the rest of the beer slither down my throat and crushed the can. Feeling drained, I laid back and peered through the bushes. The men enumerated physics jokes. Sara was gone; a few kids played Marco Polo in the shallow end. Wives sunned themselves and guzzled their spiked drinks. Barbecue smoke and one-point-five pets and a built-in pool with a fiberglass slide. Livermore's safety belt tightened a little more around me. Keep quiet, stay in line, and you'll do okay.

Gwen stood and brushed off her rump. She reached down to me. I offered my hand, thinking she wanted to help me up. Instead, she took the cigarette and stamped it out.

"Don't go," I blurted.

She removed her eyebrow stud and dropped it in her purse. "Why not?"

I was seventeen, male, and full of beer. Reasonable conversation with the opposite sex was chemically impossible.

"You're ... you're kind of pregnant," I said, forcing a grin. "You shouldn't be on your feet."

"Uh-huh. Yeah, keep that up, diagram boy. I'll knock out every tooth in your head after I tell everyone you're a virgin."

She slid through the bushes to the pathway, tugging her gown free from the prickly leaves. The sound of crunching lava rock faded off. The hollowness in my ribs swelled. It filled every cavity in my body.

The dog next door panted in my ear. I squeezed a fingertip through the fence and he licked it. I love dogs. I wanted one since I was a kid, but Nathan and Esther flat-out refused every time I asked. Dogs listen and dogs understand. I talked to this one for a while. I waited for Gwen to come back, waited until I suspected I was being really, really dense. Then I hopped the fence and let the beagle smell my hand. The house seemed empty, so I rubbed his belly and scratched his chops. He didn't ask about college; I kept my smart-ass remarks to myself. We played a little ball until I heard an automatic garage door shudder open at the front of the residence. I exited through a side gate and made it to the street undetected. The smell of the Petrenkos' barbecue stayed with me all the way home. When I opened our refrigerator, I realized I had no appetite.

Recounting the barbecue kills my appetite to this day. The Petrenkos' going-away party was my Big Bang into adulthood. The self I am today erupted from it. Events seemingly connected to nothing are joined at that barbecue, an invisible force stringing them together, all of them downward falling like Galileo's rocks and feathers but never reaching the earth. Without that barbecue all the things I'm about to tell you wouldn't have happened. Nathan's X-ray lasers and orbiting killer satellites. Esther leaving us behind without even saying goodbye to me. And me sitting here in a dark empty cage, wishing I was the Communist ejected from this malignant Eden. Wishing I could go back in time and make one change, alter one detail in the story I'm about to tell you. So much life lived over such a short span of time. Now, today, time seems boundless.

Enough lighthearted talk. Let's get serious.