Megan had a list of must-meet theorists—some for her own interests, and some assigned so she could bring back the skinny to NIH. She gathered her papers and got up.
The heat-shimmered tropical beauty of Havana stunned Megan. Plants waved and bobbed in the hot, humid breeze. Their leaves, a phantasmagoria of shape, size, and color, cast moving shadows on one another. Plumeria, hibiscus, and bougainvillea festooned the bricked courtyard Megan passed through on her way to the street, where a large marble fountain cascaded, creating a brief, cool zone. The songs of unseen tropical birds mingled with the distant, constant undertone of the seagulls massed at the harbor. She strolled downhill to the meeting center, through a mixture of business people, tourists, and shoppers. Everything was so open and friendly that it was hard to believe this had been an apex of terror in 1962.
The Dances had been living in Oberammergau, Germany, at the time; her father was teaching at the NATO school there. But her D.C. friends remembered it clearly: They had been hiding under their desks for years every Wednesday at noon when the air raid signal went off. Just a drill, kids, don’t worry.
“It was scary,” her friend Karen recalled, sipping her TGIF martini at an outdoor table on K Street while traffic roared by. Karen had grown up in Tall Oaks. “This time, the siren went off on a pretty fall day in October 1962. It wasn’t Wednesday. We hid under our desks but then we heard an announcement over the PA system. God, the PA was new too. Anyway, the principal said not to worry, we all were getting out of school early. The teachers were scared; they wanted to get home as fast as they could. Even though we lived just a block away from school, my mom was there in front of the school with the car, with about fifty other moms. The line stretched around the block. She honked the horn and rolled down the window and yelled, ‘Come on!’”
Karen swigged the last of her drink and signaled for another. “We didn’t go home. She already had my brother in the car, and we went to the Dillons’ house on Nutting Lane. They had an air raid shelter. I’ll bet it’s still there. We even had to bring one canned food a week to school for
their
air raid shelter. I think it was under the gym. Anyway, Mr. Dillon never came, and neither did my dad; they were both part of whatever operations or alert was going on. So we all played in the air raid shelter for three days. It was kind of fun once we were down there. There were lots of games—Cootie, Mouse Trap, Monopoly. Our moms were really strict about food and water. They’d taken all the food in our houses and brought it down and made us eat what would spoil easily first. Fruits and vegetables and meats. There was a ventilation system and a generator. Mr. Dillon had a huge antenna in his backyard for his ham radio. Mrs. Dillon talked to him a few times, and she talked to a lot of other people too.”
“How long did you stay there?”
“God! Over a week! We were pretty rowdy by that time. I don’t see how anybody could stand it for much longer.”
“Didn’t they let you out to stretch your legs?”
“Oh, once, but little Jack Dillon ran away and hid in the woods. He thought it was pretty funny, and the moms were frantic. I guess that if the Soviets had fired those missiles we would have been toast in five minutes, shelter or no shelter.”
World annihilation. It sounded strange right now; almost impossible to credit, walking down a sunny street in Havana. But Megan’s frequent interfaces with other government agencies made her realize that many people believed, even now, after nuclear weapons had been unilaterally dismantled and outlawed, that a “limited nuclear war” was possible.
How could one make nuclear fission impossible? It was a law of nature. And so some advocated evenly distributed nukes, kind of like the idea that if everyone knew that everyone else was carrying a gun, power situations would be equalized. Yes, I am a hundred-and-ten pound woman, but I can kill you. An odd sort of negative solution.
Megan, on the other hand, wanted to fill people’s minds with good pictures. Pictures of being loved and cared for. Pictures of being happy, and finding life on earth good, full of opportunities. She wanted to fill them with an appreciation of the very fact that they were alive, which to Megan was absolutely astounding.
The ideas she had for doing so were not very practical, nor were they very respectful. Everyone had false memories. So—what if people had good false memories? What if, instead of the terrible memories that disabled a rape victim, she had a memory of empowerment? What good would that be, if it wasn’t true?
It seemed obvious to Megan that the impulses some men had to hurt women and girls simply had to be expunged from their brain chemistry, from their physiology, much like polio and smallpox had been eliminated. She, for one, was tired from the wariness that just walking down the street in Washington—or, for that matter, here in Havana—entailed. Why should she be constantly afraid of being robbed, raped, kidnapped, or mugged? Why would unknown others—maybe that man there, behind that bland face, approaching on the sidewalk—intend to stab her, or stalk her? Why keep that part of “human nature”? There was a lot of other stuff that had to go too. The idea of women being the property of men, for instance. She understood why chastity had been such a big deal in the past—some men didn’t want to spend their lives raising another man’s child. But now DNA testing could easily establish paternity. Still, that made it all the more dangerous for women in many societies. It was easy to conclude that the world would be better without, not necessarily, men, but without men who indulged in these murderous urges, for whatever reason. Perhaps they needed to be sorted out? Preempted, reoriented?
She shivered again. Was Abbie safe at Jill’s? Maybe Jim was right. That man, roaming around the neighborhood—what was he up to? Anything? Nothing at all? What pathology made her think that all menace was aimed at her, or her family? How could she tell the intent of the Walking Man?
Maybe Jill was not the only nutsy person in their family. There was this lost, drafty place in her too; this feeling that something was not quite right. When—
look around! think!
—it most obviously was right. The perfume of gardenias, the sounds of a healthy, thriving harbor city, the laughter of people drinking
café Cubano
and eating mango pastries at small tables next to the sidewalk; the blue, blue sky and the saltwater tang of the faint, hot breeze—all was fine; all was very fine.
Megan passed shops filled with goods from around the world. Cuba was an international tourist destination, and her dollars were good here. Castro had relaxed his brand of Socialism after the U.S. recognized Cuba in 1965, after JFK’s reelection.
Megan shivered a bit despite the warm sun, and put down her program. Jill seemed obsessed about those times; she had books piled up to the ceiling about it. She insisted that it would have been a much different world if Kennedy had been killed, one in which dark forces of imperialism and the military industrial complex might have combined to produce a series of endless, useless, depleting wars.
But he hadn’t been. So why did that possibility constantly shadow her?
Megan’s phone rang. Abbie!
“Hi, Mommy. Guess what? There’s a ghost at Auntie Jill’s house! I love her!”
“You love Auntie Jill?”
“No! I mean, I love Auntie Jill but I love the ghost too.”
“Maybe you should go outside and play. Doesn’t Stevie have a new swing set?”
“His name is Whens. We’re playing games in the attic.”
“That’s awful hot, isn’t it?”
“It’s fun. We have a big jug of lemonade.”
“Not Slingers?”
“No. Auntie Jill doesn’t allow them.”
Megan was often baffled about what Jill did and didn’t allow. “Well, okay. Have fun, sweetie. Call me anytime.”
She supposed Jim had been right about Jill’s kooky house. But, after all, it was her house too! And her childhood. And there was nothing too much wrong with that. Except.
Except Mom and Dad weren’t there anymore.
She bought a Cuban coffee at a window on the street, and then, with an impulsiveness in which she rarely indulged, bought one more. The world brightened. Tangibly. The mangoes at a street vendor’s seemed almost to send forth the Kirilian tangles of energy that left-field spiritual nuts claimed to be able to photograph.
Wow,
she thought.
This coffee is really something.
A woman with long, white, curly hair, held behind her neck with a large silver barrette before it cascaded to her waist, fell in next to her. “Hello,” she said. “You are going to the meeting, no?” She laughed. “You are dressed like a scientist who is not really on vacation, like me.”
Megan looked sideways and saw almost-black eyes, a professional suit, high heels, and sweat on the woman’s forehead like her own: This was not a good way to dress in such a hot climate. The woman’s face was slightly lined with age, but her skin seemed to glow, like that of a much younger woman.
“Yes, I am. And you?”
“Yes.” She held out her hand. “Eliani Hadntz.”
“I’m Megan Dance.” They shook hands awkwardly as they walked.
“I’m going to the first memory lecture. Want to join me?” asked Megan.
“Certainly. I’m very interested in memory. In fact, I’ve just published an article.” She laughed. “It was hard to place, because it is cross-disciplinary. It’s called ‘The Physics of Memory.’”
Memory and physics. The words combined for Megan, as powerfully as a neurolinguistic programming anchor: physics, as in atomic bombs; memory, as in,
Why do I seem to worry about a memory that doesn’t even exist?
And out of her mouth came, “What if Khrushchev hadn’t backed down?” Her mind filled with pictures
. Children running naked down the road, screaming. And then she and Brian and Jill, orphaned, tried to take care of one another as everyone around them died from the vomiting sickness. They walked out on a rise above Washington, on Shirley Highway, that their mother had always loved, that view, and saw fires rage in twisted buildings, and nothing was recognizable. There was no food or water.
Megan’s field of vision swirled, and a flat, transparent plane in her head flipped over. She saw that she was falling; watched her program scatter in the breeze. Dr. Hadntz grabbed Megan around the waist as she fell forward, and pulled her to a low wall next to the sidewalk.
“Sit.”
Megan recovered, breathing hard. “Sorry. I got a little dizzy. Maybe I’ve got a flu. Oh, I know! Too much coffee.”
The eyes of Megan’s fellow scientist were sympathetic; even sorrowful. Megan continued to gasp for breath, and looked away.
“Is that what you think?” asked the woman. “Really?”
Megan tried to smile. “I’ve never been to Havana before. It’s a lot hotter than I expected. I’m from the U.S. You’re not?”
“You’re right. I’m Hungarian.”
“Well, you’ve probably heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
Hadntz nodded.
“I just … suddenly … had a vision of what might have happened if things had gone the other way.”
“They might have, easily,” said Hadntz. “And then the world would have been completely different, would it have not?” She sighed and said so softly that Megan almost didn’t hear her, “The nightmare sometimes breaks through.”
“Yes.” Megan took a deep breath. “It would have been different. It’s not, though. Everything is fine, here, now. It’s a beautiful day. Isn’t it?” The thoughts she often had—that she was just a temporary vessel for identity, an attractor, a pattern that incorporated the molecules of food to maintain the pattern—suddenly seemed not exhilarating, but frightening, as if she were suspended above a raging, infinite sea by just a thread. Maybe, she thought suddenly, it’s a familial thing. First Jill cracks up, now me. Oh, shit. If she’d known, she’d never have had Abbie—
“Of course it is,” said Hadntz firmly. “It is an absolutely beautiful day.” She looked away for a moment, and seemed to be thinking. Finally she said, “Let’s go in, shall we? The air-conditioning might be exactly what you need.”
* * *
It was so. The cool air inside refreshed Megan, and the familiar reality of being in a lecture hall enveloped her. She loved the frisson of intellectual sharing, of thoughts building on one another. And she loved arguing about these ideas as well.
She took the translation headphones offered her by Hadntz, and they took seats near the front of the auditorium.
The first talk was about mirror neurons. Nothing could restore Megan to full power like new information about the brain. It was her language, her deep reality.
She relaxed, and her relaxation swallowed up her morning’s visions.
* * *
For lunch, Megan and Hadntz found a café a few blocks from the meeting that wasn’t overflowing with people from the conference. Hadntz spoke Spanish, and translated for Megan, who ended up having a salad and another cup of
café Cubano
. Hadntz ordered a sandwich, which arrived looking strangely flat. Megan eyed it.
Hadntz laughed. “They press them. It makes them much better.”
“Really?”
“What did you think of the talks?”
“This paper was about mirror neurons and violence, of course, but I have wondered if at some point in the future we might be able to distinguish between mirror neurons of empathy for others and mirror neurons that encourage us to imitate violent actions.”
“And then?”
“Oh, then, of course, I’d like to do something entirely unprofessional and invasive. I’d like to zap the violence-causing neurons and enhance the empathic neurons. I’d ratchet those up to intense levels.”
“That’s one approach,” said Hadntz thoughtfully. “There might be a way to do that.”
“How?”
“I will send some information that might be applicable,” she said. “Keep an eye out for it. I think we need to get back to the meeting right now.”
* * *
Later in the afternoon, the group went on a tour to the site where the Soviet missiles had been placed, twenty-two years earlier. A museum stood there now. Megan had wanted to ask Eliani Hadntz to go, but hadn’t seen her anywhere after lunch.