“No. Not everyone. ‘Increased incidence.’ ‘Statistically higher than average occurrence.’ ‘Greater than expected number of cases.’ Those are the words they use. But lots of people. Especially the people who worked in the plant. My dad.”
“Got sick?”
“Died.”
“He died?” Like he never met anyone who died before. Maybe he hasn’t. “When?”
“Six weeks before we were born.”
“That’s horrible.”
I nod. It is. “And then when we were born, well, there were some … unexpected challenges.”
“I mean three is a lot of babies.” He looks relieved to be back on solid ground conversation-wise. “My mom said she didn’t sleep through the night for three months after I was born. And she had my dad to help out. Whereas your mother…” He trails back off his solid ground.
“Not just for my mother.” I make sure to keep the irritation out of my voice. “Challenges for lots of families because another thing there was an increased incidence of was congenital anomalies.”
“Congenital anomalies?”
“Birth defects.”
His eyes are wide now. Wild. “And it was because of the plant?”
“Well, not the plant itself. The chemical. Or the runoff from the chemical. Or the runoff from the process of making the chemical. I’m not sure exactly. I don’t know if anyone is. Point is you dumped a ton of shit in the river. And it turned out, among other things, it also caused congenital anomalies.”
I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I think he probably doesn’t want to talk about it anymore either. But I also don’t see how we’re going to talk about anything else. He’s looking at the patterns my sneakers are making in the mud in front of us, hands laced behind his head, chin pressed into his chest, forearms clamped against his ears like it will block out what I’m saying. After a minute he says, “You and Monday are fine.”
As if this were consolation enough. Two out of three ain’t bad. As if Monday and I are fine.
“Monday doesn’t seem a little … high-strung to you?” I’m genuinely curious. He’s like a visitor from outer space or one of those naked kids they find who’s been raised by wolves.
“Why? Because she got kind of upset at my house?” At first I think he’s being snarky with that “kind of,” but when I meet his eyes, I realize he’s genuinely confused. I nod, also confused. “Oh no, I totally get that.” He waves his hand in front of him like my concerns are cobwebs, that slight (Petra would say “attenuate”), that easily wiped away. “It’s got to be a shock when you’ve been going to your hometown library your whole life, and then one day it’s some dude’s bedroom.”
I think of her shrieking on his floor, fists clamped over her ears. “And how she wouldn’t eat the muffins?”
I don’t add the reason—they were the wrong color—so maybe that’s why he says, “We had tons of kids like that in my school in Boston.”
“You did?”
“Totally. My best friend growing up was like that. Super weird about his clothes and his headphones and this one cartoon he was obsessed with. But crazy smart and really fun as long as you didn’t let any of the foods on his plate touch.” He pauses to think about it. “We mostly ate at his house, and it was fine.”
Which makes it my turn to be stunned. There are Mondays in Boston?
So it takes me a minute to remember what we were talking about when he asks, “When did they figure it out?”
“Figure what out?”
“When did they figure out it was the GL606? It was the plant? Belsum.”
“You knew all along.”
“Would you stop saying ‘you’?” Annoyed. More than annoyed. Angry almost. “It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. Here. Anywhere.” Something changed in him while we were talking about Monday, opened maybe or relaxed. He was just a kid for a second there. Now he’s closing back up again, guarding himself, defensive as if I’m the one who’s dangerous.
“They knew all along,” I amend.
“What do you mean?”
“They claim they didn’t, but—”
“What are you talking about? You think Belsum knew all along GL606 was getting into the water and making people sick?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?” He’s watching me so hard.
“Yes.”
He can’t believe it. He so thoroughly can’t believe it he’s sure he’s misunderstanding what I’m saying.
“They—we—wouldn’t do that,” he insists. “No one would do that.”
I hate to break it to him. I’m desperate to break it to him. But also there’s this small but loud (Petra would say “niggling”) part of my brain realizing for the first time this is how I’m supposed to be. A teenager. A kid. Not jaded and scarred and wise about all the shit. For the first time in my life what strikes me as tragic is not what happened to my family or my town. What breaks my heart is that I regard another sixteen-year-old’s faith that a company wouldn’t sacrifice human life to make a profit as hopeless youth and pitiable naivete. I almost never feel sorry for myself—I live with everything I need to ward off that particular vice—but that’s what I feel now.
“That’s why they put the plant here,” I say. “We’re just a small nowhere town. No industry, no tourism, no money, no prospects. No one to object or really even notice if things go bad. Maybe they—you—weren’t sure it would kill us, but you weren’t sure it wouldn’t.”
My mother would hate to hear me admit even this much, even as a possibility. Negligence means failure to take reasonable care like a normal person would. Lawyers have fancier language than that, but that’s their point. It’s easier to prove, but you can only claim compensatory damages—here’s how much my medical expenses were; here’s how much income I lost.
Whereas if you want to hurt them as much as they hurt you, if you want to make sure they can never do it again, if you want to punish them into oblivion, if you want to send a warning to others, if you want to make sure they don’t decide that your measly compensatory damage award costs them so little compared to what they make damaging you that they’re thrilled with the trade-off never mind that an award that was actually compensatory would bankrupt them forever because your suffering is high as the moon, and your town and your family and your whole entire life will never be the same ever again, if that is the case, you don’t settle for negligence. You go for recklessness, maybe even intent. That’s how you get punitive damages. That’s how you shut a company down. That’s how you see justice served.
If they knew what could happen before they started doing it, if they knew how bad it would be and did it anyway, then they can be made to pay. My mother, therefore, has spent the last two almost-decades searching for incontrovertible proof they knew all along, something no one can deny.
River’s not buying it. He’s not even understanding it. “So by the time they figured it out”—he so wants this to be a tragic trick of timing—“it was too late?”