“You’ll see.”
Miri thought about shaking Natalie. Shaking and shaking until Ruby came tumbling out headfirst, her dark hair spilling toward the floor, her blue eyes outlined in black, her lips painted bright red to match her short red dress and at last her shiny black tap shoes. But despite all the color Ruby would still look dead because that’s what she was—dead. She wanted to shake Natalie until she was the old Nat, the one Miri became best friends with in seventh grade.
When Miri didn’t respond Natalie asked, “You think I’m crazy?”
“Are you?”
“Maybe,” Natalie said. “I just want to stop seeing Phil’s cousin dead, and Mrs. Barnes’s son in his captain’s uniform, all broken and burned.”
“Stop it,” Miri said softly. “Just stop it.”
“You’ll see,” Natalie said. Then she closed her eyes and hid under the quilt.
—
IN THE KITCHEN, Daisy forked whatever was browning in the pan, put it on a plate, covered it with wax paper and slid it into the fridge. She tapped Ajax into the pan and started scrubbing, as Fern sang, “Use Ajax, boom boom, the foaming cleanser, boom boom boom boom boom…”
Miri said, “I have to go home. My grandmother will be worrying.” She grabbed her coat and her books.
“Thank you for helping,” Daisy said.
As she was leaving Steve opened the kitchen door and pushed past her. “Where’s Mom?” he asked Daisy.
“She’s on her way home,” Daisy told him.
“She was playing mah-jongg at Ceil Rubin’s house,” Fern said. “They didn’t have the radio on so they didn’t know what happened.” Fern looked at Daisy. “Right?”
Daisy nodded.
“What about Dad?” Steve asked.
“He took Mrs. Barnes home,” Daisy said.
“Her son was the pilot of the plane that crashed,” Fern added, hugging Roy Rabbit to her chest.
“Shut up about planes crashing,” Steve shouted. “Just shut up!”
Daisy touched Steve’s shoulder.
He flinched. “Don’t!”
Miri asked, “Was Phil’s cousin on that plane?”
Steve shot her a look. “How did you know?”
“Natalie told me.”
“How did she know?”
Miri shrugged, pushed past Steve out the kitchen door and trudged up the hill to the bus stop. When the bus pulled up, Miri boarded and took a seat, forgetting to pay. The driver didn’t say anything. Miri was thinking that just a little while ago she and Natalie were munching grapes in the den, waiting for Kate Smith to come on singing “God Bless America.” Miri hoped if there was a god, and she was less sure about that every day, he would bless America and especially Elizabeth, New Jersey, and that he had the power to stop this thing that was happening.
—
SUZANNE, in her yellow rain slicker and white rubber boots, was waiting on the front steps of Miri’s house, a polka-dot umbrella opened over her head though it was hardly raining by the time Miri got home. “Where were you?” Suzanne asked.
“At Natalie’s.”
“Did you hear?”
“Yes, it’s horrible.”
“I know, but at least they say Betsy is still alive and so is Mrs. Foster. They’re both at Saint Elizabeth’s. My mother’s on duty this afternoon.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The crash. It hit the apartment building next to the Fosters’ and set their house on fire. Penny…she didn’t get out. Mrs. Foster tried, but the fire…”
Miri slumped to the porch steps, her hand over her mouth. She tasted bile coming up.
“Mother of god…you didn’t know?”
Miri shook her head. It wasn’t possible. It had to be a mistake. But even as she thought it, wished it, she knew it was true.
—
“BAD THINGS HAPPEN in threes,” Irene said that night, doling out homemade vegetable soup and passing around warm bread—not that anyone was hungry, but Irene knew how to tempt them.
“Stop it, Mama,” Rusty said. “You’re scaring Miri.”
“Darling,” Irene said to Miri, “am I scaring you?”
“No!” Miri said defiantly. But she’d never get Irene’s superstitions out of her head.
Later Suzanne came by again, to go with Miri to the site of the crash, even though Rusty objected. “There’s no reason in hell for you to go there. You’ve seen one plane crash. Why do you have to see another?”
“Because the Fosters lived in that house,” Miri argued. “Because a week ago we were babysitting Betsy and Penny and now Penny is dead and Betsy is burned.” Her voice caught, thinking of how Penny always folded her little eyeglasses and placed them on her bedside table before she went to sleep. And Betsy’s tiny pink toenails, newly polished, making her toes look like little shrimp. Maybe Mrs. Foster knew to worry. Maybe she’d had a sixth sense about an impending disaster. She’d heard mothers know these things instinctively.
“There’s nothing to see,” Rusty told them. “Just rubble and burned buildings.”