“No, it’s not that…” She thanked him but refused his coat. Maybe she should have stayed home, but then Miri would have wanted to stay home, too, and it was important for her to set an example, to show Miri that no matter what, you take your responsibilities seriously.
She’d landed the Employee of the Year award more than once, and not just because of her exemplary attendance record. If Irene hadn’t stepped up to the plate when Miri was born, Rusty wouldn’t be executive secretary to Charles Whitten, senior partner at Whitten, Granger and White, one of the most respected law firms in the city. Rusty was lucky to have such a good job, such an important job, given that she’d never gone to college. She’d planned to go, had been accepted to Douglass, the women’s school of Rutgers University, but things happen, things that can change your life overnight. Not that she was going to dwell on that. She’d learned a long time ago to look ahead, not back. What’s done is done. Make the best of it and move on. And she had, hadn’t she?
None of the girls at the office asked her about the crash. They knew she commuted from New Jersey, but they were chatting about their weekends—about how their boyfriends couldn’t believe Joe DiMaggio had announced his retirement. Only Mrs. Yates, head of the secretarial pool, said, “You live in Elizabeth, don’t you, Rusty?”
“I do.”
“I heard about the crash. Tragic.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Glad you were able to make it to work today.”
“Me, too.”
And that was it except for her friend Naomi. Rusty’s family called her the “Other Naomi.” They met for grilled cheese sandwiches at the coffee shop around the corner from their offices. Naomi wanted to talk about the crash but Rusty kept changing the subject. Turned out she didn’t want to talk about it, after all, or even think about it. Instead, she bummed a Chesterfield off Naomi and asked for a refill on her coffee.
Miri
Miri expected school to be canceled on Monday morning but there was no announcement on the local radio station. She wished she could stay in bed under the covers with the quilt pulled over her head. She’d slept fitfully last night, waking every hour, finally winding up in Rusty’s bed, the two of them watching over each other. She’d never get rid of the stench in her nostrils, no matter how she washed them, sticking the soapy washcloth up as far as it would go, making her sneeze twenty times in a row. She’d tried telling herself it hadn’t happened. If she went to the river today there would be no sign of a plane. It had all been a bad dream.
Even before she got downstairs the aroma of freshly baked coffee cake wafted up from Irene’s kitchen. And if it hadn’t happened, why would Irene be up and baking this early?
“For the Red Cross, darling,” Irene told her, while Blanche Kessler, home-service chairman for the Elizabethtown chapter, packed the cakes into boxes.
“To serve at the hospitality table,” Blanche Kessler said, “outside the makeshift morgue behind Haines Funeral Home.”
If she still had any doubts, they vanished when she got to school. They were all buzzing about it in the hall outside their homerooms. Where were you when you heard the news? What were you doing?
SUZANNE: My mother and I had just sat down to Sunday dinner when we heard the roar, then the explosions. We put our faces into our dinner plates—pork chops, mashed potatoes and beets. You should have seen us when it was over. Beets stain everything. I swear, I thought it was a comet. It sounded like a comet.
ANGELO VENETTI: That was no comet—that was a bomb inside the plane.
PETE WOLF: That was no bomb. It was something from outer space, some alien thing, maybe Martians.
DONNY KELLEN: It’s a Commie plot!
ELEANOR (baiting Donny): You sure Senator Joe McCarthy didn’t take the plane down?
DONNY KELLEN: McCarthy’s the one person trying to save us from the Commies.
ELEANOR: McCarthy is an evil man. A bully.
DONNY KELLEN (shouting): I can’t help it if you’re too thick to see the truth, bitch.
ELEANOR: Idiot!
Eleanor Gordon was the most sophisticated in their crowd. She read The New Yorker. When it came to McCarthy, Miri’s family agreed with Eleanor.
Donny Kellen was always ranting about the Commies and how they were trying to take over the world. When the Dianetics were kicked out of town for starting a medical school without permission, he’d ranted about that, too, but Miri didn’t think the Dianetics had anything to do with the Commies, though she couldn’t be sure. Uncle Henry had covered the story for the Daily Post. That’s how Miri found out Donny’s aunt had left town with them, to follow some guy named L. Ron Hubbard to Kansas.
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