Do you want to stop?

Yes. I’m sorry.

III

Good morning. How have you been?

Never better.

I’m sure you’re being facetious. Are you okay?

Yes.

Is there anything from our last meeting that you’d like to go over?

No. You dont have your folder.

I pretty much know what’s in it. I thought we might just begin.

Okay.

What would you like to talk about?

Bell’s Inequality.

I’m sorry?

You say. I dont care. The weather.

Tell me about your father.

Eliza.

Sorry. Is it true that even the people who developed the program would sign up for therapeutic sessions?

So I’ve heard.

Your father died some time after your mother.

About four years.

After a long illness.

Long enough to kill him.

That sounds a bit harsh.

Look. When you quote lines to me from newspaper obituaries I dont respond well.

Sorry. I’ll try to bear that in mind. How old were you?

Fifteen.

Did you see much of him at this time?

No. He was living in a cabin in the mountains. Above Lake Tahoe.

Had you had a falling-out with him?

No.

He was a physicist on the Manhattan Project. Did he ever talk about that?

Mostly with Bobby. This is beginning to sound like a congressional hearing.

Maybe you should just tell me whatever comes to mind.

No. Carry on. I suppose you want to know if he felt guilty about building the bomb. He didnt. But he’s dead. And my brother is brain-dead and I’m in the nuthouse.

All right. What else?

What else. He was one of a group of scientists who went into Hiroshima after the war to report on the damage. I think he was sobered by what he saw. I cant really speak for him. Whoever made the bomb was going to blow something up with it and I’m sure he thought better us than them. Whoever them might turn out to be. The arguments about Truman’s decision generally center around the loss of life in a land invasion. My father had another take on it. He thought that if Japan had been defeated in a land invasion there would have been no miracle of reconstruction after the war. That Japan would have been humiliated as a nation and would have entered into a long decline. But as it was, they were not defeated in battle. They were defeated by witchcraft.

That doesnt seem a bit self-serving?

If you like. It might also be true.

Do you think that it’s true?

I dont know. It’s a theory. Invented and patented by my father. I dont have any politics. And I’m pacifist to the bone. Only a nation can make war—in the modern sense—and I dont like nations. I believe in running away. Much as you’d step out of the path of an oncoming bus. If we’d had a child I would take it to where war seemed least probable. Although it’s hard to outguess history. But you can try. No I dont, to answer your next question.