The Glass Factory (21 page)

Trying to sound innocent, I just ask: “What’s cooking there?”

“What’s cooking indeed. He’s being very secretive,” says King. “Won’t even tell us—”

Just then a valet reappears and says, “Miss Filomena Buscarsela? Telephone.”

I look around at the other guests before I realize what I’m doing, and how stupid that looks. Fortunately the four men are all looking at the other guests as well, so they don’t see me looking stupid. I think. When they turn back I’ve had time to think and I say, “My partner. We get each other’s calls all the time.”

And I walk away, thinking
Shit.
Okay, what would
you
say? Poetry, no doubt.

The valet holds up a phone in a little alcove at the top of the stairs. I put it to my ear. “Hello?”

A voice I don’t recognize says, “Why aren’t you home watching your kid?” Click.

Oh shit. I try to call home and I get electronic garbage. Shit shit shit. I grab Kelly, make some excuse about the babysitter that kind of contradicts what I said before about my partner, but I’ve got to get Kelly to drive me to her place. Once there, I run inside, try to phone again. Nothing. Dead air. I make my apologies, thank her for everything, and rush home, speaking out loud to the Lord above asking him then and there to take me, take me, take me, don’t take her.

I cover the impossibly lengthened miles of twisted back roads and stoplights-every-fifty-feet highway in maybe twelve or thirteen endless, unreal minutes where time and space have been compressed and exploded beyond meaning. No cops stop me, though they couldn’t if they tried. I screech to a halt, raising a cloud of dust even in the darkness in front of Colomba’s house. The lights are on, I can hear the TV. I rush inside. Everyone’s there. Everyone’s okay. Antonia’s in bed. She’s okay. Even the phone’s okay.

For now.

CHAPTER NINE

Even in the greatest crises public money can always be found for a really stupid purpose.
—Manzoni,
I Promessi Sposi

THE NEXT MORNING
they’re interviewing neighbors and poking their heads into Colomba’s kitchen to “investigate” if the kid is being fed properly. Colomba gets rid of them quick for
that.
Yeah, I’m getting to like Colomba. (Too bad her brother’s a shit.)

They’re out of there, but not before they hand-deliver a letter to somebody named Flora Baskarseller, who is supposed to be me, I guess. It’s from the County of Suffolk, Department of Social Services, and it goes like this:

Dear
Ms. Baskarseller
,
This is to inform you that you are the subject or other person named in a report of suspected child abuse or maltreatment received by the New York State Child Abuse and Maltreatment Register on
5/22
of this year. This report has been transmitted to your local child protective service for commencement of an investigation and evaluation of the report as required by the New York State Child Protective Services Act.
      The Law allows your local Child Protective Service 90 days from the time of the receipt of the report to complete a full investigation of the allegations contained within the report as well as an evaluation of the care being provided to your child(ren). You will be notified in writing of the findings of the investigation. Where appropriate, services will be offered to assist you and your family.

Which is a polite way of saying, “We will take your kid and put her in a foster home.” And it goes on like that for several paragraphs.

Rotten way to start the day.

That afternoon a stranger rolls into town on the 3:15 from the city. A hush falls over the plains as she kicks the dust off her heels and squints her eyes at the disease-plagued town. A black crow watching from a dead branch shatters the silence with a screech and flutters away, casting its dark shadow across the flat, dry wasteland behind the 7-Eleven.

She spits in the dust, then reaches for the handle of her government-issue water sampling kit.

“Gina!”

She turns. She squints. She sniffs. She sneezes.

“Your hay fever acting up again?”

“Yeah,” she says. “What a way to reproduce. Like, why couldn’t there just
not
be pollen?”

“Well, sexual reproduction comes with some rather cumbersome of baggage of its own, too.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Get out your hankies, ’cause that burning in the air is only going to get worse.”

I can’t even wait to get her home. I throw her stuff in the car and show her the pictures while I’m driving her back. There’s one of a stack of fifty-five-gallon drums leaking bright orange foam.

“Sorry you can’t read the labels,” I say. “The kid didn’t get close enough.”

“That’s okay.”

“What is that stuff?”

“It ain’t cotton candy.”

“I got the film,” says Billy. He insisted on coming along.

I tell her to look at the series of black metal boxes. She flips through them. None are quality photos, but he took enough of them so you get a sense of what’s happening there.

“I
ran
and got the film,” says Billy, who hasn’t stopped staring at Gina since she got off the train. She’s not his porn-star fantasy—small frame and breasts to go with it—but she’s a dark-haired, Italian American beauty and, most important,
she’s real.

After a while, Gina pronounces sentence: “Those are transformers.”

“Then what’s leaking out? Oil?”

“Yeah, oil: PCB-laden oil.”

“PCBs? I keep hearing about those. What are they?”

“Polychlorinated biphenyls. The proposed MCL is point five ppb.”

“The proposed what?”

“Sorry. The proposed Maximum Contaminant Level for the National Safe Drinking Water Standard is half a part per billion.”

“Half a part per
billion?
That’s pretty damn toxic. How much would it take to kill a man?”

“Well, dermal exposure and inhalation are the primary routes of occupational exposure to PCBs, not drinking water.”

“So how much would it take to kill a man, say, if he got it on his fingers?”

“It’s even more toxic in the vapor phase, but since it’s not volatile, it wouldn’t tend to get into the air.”

“But how would it get into the air?”

“If it caught fire, for example.”

“Like if it got on somebody’s cigarettes?”

“No, that’d only be a trace. I mean like a big electrical transformer fire.”

“Oh. Think it’ll get on the Superfund list?”

“I don’t know yet. There are more than twenty-nine thousand candidates for seven hundred and seventy slots, but if it’s bad enough we’ll take it.”

“Now I’ve got to ask you, Gina, if it’s so goddamn deadly, why would anyone want to use that stuff? What’s it good for?”

“Electrical conductivity. It’s chemically heavy, with a low viscosity—”

“And what are the health effects?”

“Well, that’s not really my turf—”

“Ballpark.”

“Ballpark?” And she recites a litany of symptoms, each one tolling like an iron bell in my brain: “Tightening of the throat, hoarseness when speaking, three-day migraines, skin rashes, constant coughs, burning and watery eyes, ulcers, inner ear problems, high blood-lead level, breathing difficulties, pain in extremities, abdominal cramps, blood clots, even cases of complete immune system breakdown in children, so we’re not talking about fifty years of accumulation here.”

“Gina, I’ve seen workers with those symptoms.”

“How many cases?”

“A couple of dozen.”

“That means hundreds. Maybe thousands.”

Gina sets her sampler case next to the sink, takes a glass of water straight from the tap, holds it close. Her nose wrinkles in disgust. She lets the water run for a few minutes.

“Why are you doing that?” asks Billy.

“To get a representative sample.”

“Oh.”

“We’ve all heard stories,” says Gina, “of old-fashioned housewives, the early risers who got up every morning and made tea for themselves, then made breakfast for the family, and fifteen years later
she’s
dead of lead poisoning but nobody else is. The lead builds up in these old pipes and the first few gallons to come out of them is usually full of it.”

Billy asks, “What does lead do to you?”

“Hoo-boy,” says Gina. “You got your brain and kidney damage, your gastrointestinal colic, anemia, slowed nerve conduction in peripheral nerves, interference with vitamin D metabolism, high blood pressure—”

And I say out loud, “Oh my God: Mrs. Einhorn.”

“What’s that?”

“No, no, Gina. It’s something else.” Something we’re too late to do anything about.

She unwraps her own sterilized beaker, fills it with tap water and shuts off the flow. “We’ll see in a second,” she says, centering the beaker on the dial-crammed board of the portable sampler. She submerges a pen-sized metal tube into the beaker, about five inches long on the end of a coiled black cord, and stirs it around for a few seconds, then watches it settle. She whistles.

“What? What?”

“Have to shift it up a couple of decimals,” says Gina, adjusting a knob past the 100s into the 1,000s.

She completes the procedure in about fifteen seconds. Then: “Goddamn,” she says softly. “Over ten thousand—”

“What?” I ask.

“Well, I don’t know what’s responsible for it. I’ll have to send it to the lab. But the conductivity’s practically off the scale.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that ain’t water, sister. You better tell everyone to stop drinking it. Give me the phone. I’ll get a public notice to the town supervisor immediately.”

“If ten thousand’s high, what’s normal?”

“For drinking water? Two hundred fifty to three hundred’s nice if you can get it.”

“Is that good for us or bad for us?” asks Billy.

I tell him, “Both.”

“Hello, Ron? Gina. Yeah. Well tell them it can wait. Listen, I’m authorizing a full-scale investigation of the Kim Tungsten Steel and Glass site at East Carthage. Can you fax the public health warnings to Fairhaven Township before five o’clock? Standard language. Great.” She lowers the phone, speaks to us: “And tell those kids to stay the hell away from those barrels. The orange stuff’s probably low-level radioactive. Ron? Right. Okay. Now?” To me: “Can you take me back to the station, Fil? I’ve got to make a train.”

“Can I go?” begs Billy.

“Yeah, yeah …”