Jim put in anxiously, “You see, Chuck, we’re not allowed to mention atom bombs or anything having to do with them in this household.”
“It’s emotionally destructive,” Ruth Williams said emphatically.
Charles realized his aunt was serious. A stiffness had come into her comfortable, plump body. He laughed. “You mean harmful to the kids? I don’t know. They were having a war on Venus when I arrived. The carnage was fabulous, they told me. I don’t believe hearing a few useful facts about what to do in case of enemy aggression—”
“It’s the school,” Jim said.
“It is not merely the school,” Ruth said heatedly. “It’s scientific information.”
Charles grinned, yet frowned a little, too. “I don’t get it.”
“She always goes to the P.T.A.” Jim yawned a little in spite of himself. He covered up by taking a sip of elderberry wine.
Ruth appealed to her soldier-nephew. “I can show you the facts, in the Bulletin! Every time they run off a series of atomic tests anywhere, the kids of the United States show a marked rise of nervousness, of nightmares, of delinquency. The Rorschach Tests prove it!” she shuffled in a stack of papers, schoolbooks, bills, checkbooks, women’s magazines on the top of a radiator.
The heap made a bulge in the lace curtains.
“I suppose kids do,” Charles agreed. “They react to things. Nevertheless, we have to run the weapons tests, don’t we?”