Crane smiled at them and said, “It’s nice of you guys to ask me along. I haven’t been doing much lately except study.”
“Not that it shows,” Roger said.
Crane shrugged. “I missed a few deadlines.”
“Yeah, and had some pieces rejected.”
“What’s the problem, Crane?” Judy asked.
Roger said, “He’s going to lose his spot on the Daily Iowan, is the problem. You know how many journalism majors are lined up in back of you, Crane, wanting on that staff?”
“Just all of them,” Crane said.
“So what’s the problem?” Judy asked again.
“He’s still got his head back in New Jersey,” Roger said.
Crane didn’t say anything.
Their waitress brought the food: Roger had a small pizza, Judy spaghetti, Crane vegetarian lasagna.
Roger and Judy began to eat.
Crane poked at his food with his fork.
“Why don’t you call her?” Roger said.
“Roger. Please.”
“I know you don’t want to talk about it in front of Judy, but I already told her all about it.”
“Thanks, Roger. Confiding in you is like taking out an ad.”
Judy said, “Why don’t you call her, Crane? See what’s been happening? It’s been a month.”
“Five weeks,” he said.
“And you wrote her one letter and she didn’t answer it. That isn’t much of an effort to get through to her.”
“Who says I should try to get through to her?”
“Nobody,” Roger said. “But you better start getting with it.”
“Getting with it.”
“Yeah. Do your work. Have some fun. You know. Live a little.”
“Can I quote you?”
“Go ahead. Maybe if you use my stuff you won’t get rejected.”
Judy touched Roger’s arm and gave him a sharp look. Roger shook his head and took his frustration out on a slice of pizza.
Crane took a bit of lasagna: it was cold; he ate it anyway.
After the meal they had some wine and Crane said, “I know you two are trying to help, and I appreciate it. Really. I’m glad to be out among the living again. But your advice... well, it’s just that I’ve been over all of this in my own head so many times that...”
“Do you still think about Mary Beth?” Judy asked.
“Of course I still think about Mary Beth! I still sleep in the same bed I slept in with her, damnit.”
“From the way you just snapped at me,” Judy said, giving him her slow, long-lashed look, “I’d say you’ve got a bad case of the guilts.”
“The guilts.”
“That’s right. You went to your girlfriend’s funeral, and you met this Boone and went home with her. And you feel guilty about it, and that’s why you haven’t made any real effort to get back in touch with her. You’re punishing yourself.”
“Judy, I know you mean well, but you just don’t understand.”
“Maybe not. But I’d like to. So would Roger.”
Crane didn’t say anything.
Neither did Judy or Roger, for a few long minutes.
Then Crane said, “All right, maybe I do feel guilty about Boone and me, getting together so soon after what happened to Mary Beth...” He shook his head. “But that isn’t what... you see, what came between Boone and me was the goddamn Kemco thing. I couldn’t get her to accept that Mary Beth’s death was really suicide.”
“It probably was,” Judy said, nodding.
“What probably was?”
“Mary Beth’s death. It probably was suicide. I agree with you.”
“That sounds like an expert opinion.”
“Well, maybe it is. When Roger started talking about all this, telling me some of what you told him about the Kemco situation, I did some reading up. They make Agent Orange at that plant, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
“So we’re talking dioxin, among other goodies.”
“That’s right.”
“Keep it simple,” Roger interrupted, between sips of red wine. “We’re not all science majors, here, you know.”
Judy said, “Three ounces of dioxin in the New York City water supply could wipe out the city’s population. At Love Canal — you’ve heard of Love Canal, Roger? At Love Canal, they buried 130 pounds of the stuff.”
“Judas,” Roger said.
“Here’s the point, Crane,” Judy continued. “In addition to being one terrific carcinogen, and the bearer of such glad tidings as liver disease and miscarriages, dioxin can cause psychological disturbances. And what is a suicide victim, other than a psychologically disturbed person?”
“Very few well-balanced folks kill themselves,” Roger conceded.
Crane leaned forward. “Then the depressed state Mary Beth and the other suicides were in might’ve been brought on... or anyway, amplified... by chemicals they’d been exposed to?”
“Why not?” Judy asked. “They all worked at that plant, didn’t they? Now if a non-Kemco employee in Greenwood committed suicide — particularly somebody who’d been asking embarrassing questions around town, like you had — that would be suspicious. Then I’d be inclined to agree with your Boone that people were being murdered to look like suicide.”
“There’s something I don’t get,” Roger said. “The Kemco plant is twenty miles or so from Greenwood, right? Then why the high rate of illnesses and such among the families of employees? The families aren’t directly exposed to any Kemco pollution.”
“Yet the wives and husbands and children are affected,” Judy said, nodding.
“Skin rashes for the kids,” Crane said, “miscarriages for mom, loss of sex drive for dad, fun for the whole family.”
“It really does sound like Love Canal,” Judy said. “Same kinds of things were reported there, only the reason for it all became obvious, when corroded waste drums started to break up through the ground in backyards. Did you know one backyard swimming pool popped up right out of its foundation? Floating in chemical shit. And people had pools of this stuff, oozing, bubbling up in their basements.”
“Thanks for waiting till after dinner to get into this,” Roger said, pale.
“The government moved a lot of people out of Love Canal,” Judy went on, “but some had to stay behind. Out of less than 200 homes, bordering on the condemned area, there were twenty-some birth defects, thirty-some miscarriages, forty-some cases of respiratory disease. I don’t know the exact figures, of course, but you get the idea.”
Roger pointed a thumb at her and said, “She doesn’t know the exact figures, of course.”
“I do know that there were something like twenty nervous breakdowns and three or four suicides... suicides, Crane.”
“In less than 200 homes?”
“That’s right. Wrap the national suicide rate around that one.”
“Maybe... maybe I should talk to Boone again.”
“Of course you should,” Roger said. “Go use the pay phone.”
“It’s long distance...”
Roger grinned and pulled a roll of quarters out from somewhere. “Here you go,” he said; he rolled the roll toward Crane, who caught it.
“Why do I get the feeling I’ve been set up?” Crane said, smiling at his two friends; they shrugged and smiled back at him as he got out of the booth.
He went to the phone on the wall over by the rest rooms and made the station-to-station call. He let it ring a dozen times. It was a big house, after all. No answer. He called information and got another number. He made the second station-to-station call, and on the third ring, Mary Beth’s mother answered.