All She Ever Wanted (12 page)
I
was glad that I had become a Christian when World War III almost started. For six tense days in October of 1962, it seemed like the world was about to come to an end in a fiery nuclear holocaust.
My family was watching TV one Monday night when President Kennedy appeared during prime time and told us that the Russians were building nuclear missile bases in Cuba, a mere ninety miles from the United States. The president had photographs to prove it, taken from a U.S. spy plane. To stop the buildup, he was placing an air and sea quarantine around the island of Cuba.
“He can’t do that!” Uncle Leonard shouted. “A naval blockade in international waters is an act of war!”
“Shh… Be quiet and listen, Len,” Mommy said.
I didn’t understand all the big words the president used, and it was hard to concentrate when his face kept disappearing into the top of the screen then reappearing at the bottom, like soap bubbles rising into the air and bursting. But I understood the gist of the matter: President Kennedy had told the Communists to tear down the missile bases—or else. If Khrushchev’s reaction was anything like my uncle’s, there was sure to be war.
“What gives Kennedy the right to tell Castro what to do?” Uncle Leonard sprang from his chair, unable to remain seated in the face of such an outrage. He paced around our tiny living room shouting, “The Cuban people have every right to purchase arms to defend themselves. Remember the Bay of Pigs invasion? If the U.S. can build missile bases all over the world, why can’t the Soviets?” He shook his fist at the TV set, which showed Castro and Khrushchev acting all chummy. “Don’t give in to Kennedy!” he told them. “If he wants a war, then give him one!”
The Russians took Uncle Leonard’s advice. They not only refused to stop building missile bases in Cuba, they told President Kennedy that if he tried to launch another invasion like the Bay of Pigs or if he interfered with Cuban shipping, the United States would be starting a nuclear war. Russia and the U.S. both went on full military alert. The next few days would be critical ones, deciding the fate of mankind.
The fact that we hovered on the brink of World War III upset a lot of people in Riverside. My uncle, the town Communist, made a convenient scapegoat for everyone’s fear and anger, a visible target to hate. The splotches of red paint that still set our house apart from all the others began to spread around to the sides and rear like poison ivy. If this kept up, our entire house would wind up red. Things grew so tense that Uncle Leonard decided to pack up and leave town for a few days.
May Elizabeth was the only person I knew who seemed excited about the idea of a nuclear war. “Guess what! My family is getting ready to live in our bomb shelter,” she told our seventh-grade class. “Daddy said we’re going to wait it out where it’s safe.” Her parents hadn’t divorced after all. In fact, they showed up together in church every week as if nothing had ever happened.
“Do you think there might be room in your fallout shelter for me, too?” I asked hopefully. “I don’t mind sleeping on the floor. And I don’t eat very much. You can copy all my math homework while we’re waiting for the smoke to clear. And any other homework you want to copy, too.” I knew I sounded desperate. I was.
May shook her head. She had been acting snooty and indifferent toward me ever since our first day in seventh grade. Debbie Harris was her new best friend now. “There’s only enough air and food for four people,” May told me.
I couldn’t bear the thought of being locked in our mouse-infested, dirtfloored cellar with Poke and JT—not to mention having to listen to Annie scream until the radiation count was safe. I decided to cast my lot with my uncle. I figured that maybe he had an “in” with his comrades Khrushchev and Castro, and we would be spared when the missiles started falling because of my uncle’s faithful devotion to the party.
“Can I leave town with you, Uncle Leonard? Please?” I begged. “I’ll join the Communist Party and come to all of the meetings, if you want.”
“No, you need to stay home and help your mother with the kids.”
“Oh, let her come, for goodness’sake,” his girlfriend, Connie, said. She had been dating my uncle for more than two years, but there didn’t seem to be any wedding plans in sight. The membership rolls of the Tri-County Communist Party had doubled when Connie converted to the cause. I was offering to increase it by fifty percent.
I never understood what Connie saw in my uncle. They were opposites in every conceivable way: She was small and round and fair, he was tall and thin and dark; she was always smiling and happy, he was perennially doleful; she never finished high school, he considered himself an intellectual. In every way, Connie’s glass was always half full, Uncle Leonard’s would forever be half empty.
“Let her come, Lennie,” she coaxed. “She deserves to have a little fun before the world comes to an end.”
That weekend we drove to Pennsylvania in my uncle’s twelve-year-old Ford. It didn’t have a muffler or a heater, and the car’s body had more rust than metal, but you could still see the crude hammer and sickle daubed in red paint on the trunk.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we chugged along the highway. Not that it mattered; anyplace was better than home.
“Deer Falls,” he said, as if I should know exactly where that was.
“Where?”
“It’s the town where your mother and I grew up. We’re staying with your grandmother.”
Grandmother?
I had a grandmother? The astonishing news made me feel a little dizzy. I’d had no idea that she even existed. I began imagining a cozy cottage in the woods and a sweet little white-haired woman who would bake cookies and hug me a lot.
“How come we never visited her before?” I asked, but my uncle didn’t seem to hear me. He was too busy explaining to Connie about the battle of wills that was taking place between President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev, and how the United States had no right to dictate foreign policy to Cuba or anyone else. Connie smiled and nodded and made comforting noises whenever Uncle Leonard paused for breath, but nothing seemed to soothe him.
After the first hour my ears throbbed from the missing muffler and the nonstop drone of my uncle’s voice. I started to regret my decision to come. But when we finally pulled into town, I knew it had been worth suffering through two-and-a-half hours of Communist rhetoric to come to this enchanting place.
Deer Falls was such a beautiful little town that I couldn’t imagine why Mommy and Uncle Leonard would ever want to leave it—especially to live in a nowhere place like Riverside. The village sat at the edge of a secluded lake, nestled among the Pocono Mountains, and there were all sorts of things to do: fishing, sailing, water skiing, or just walking around town and looking at all the quaint little shops and inns. Connie told me that Deer Falls was a very popular tourist destination during the summer. And it was surprisingly crowded that weekend, too. Thousands of city people who didn’t own bomb shelters had evidently fled to the mountains, hoping to escape the holocaust when the Russians flattened New York and Philadelphia and Washington. Traffic had been very heavy on the highway. Everyone, including me, wanted to forget all about the Cuban missile crisis, and Deer Falls offered a perfect refuge from all the tension and worry.
The woods in the state park on the edge of town were the stuff of fairy tales: dense and green and mysterious. The weather was too cold for swimming and we didn’t have a boat, but Uncle Leonard parked the car down by the lake, and Connie and I went for a walk along the shoreline to stretch our legs.
“Just imagine, Kathleen, this might be the very last time we ever see trees,” she said with a happy smile. “And look at that sky! We may never see such a brilliant blue sky again, so let’s just soak it up!” Coming from someone other than optimistic Connie, those words might have sounded morbid. She made the threat of global annihilation seem like an exciting adventure.
“Are we all going to die?” I asked her.
She smiled, her eyes bright with excitement, and I waited to hear words of comfort and reassurance. They didn’t come. “Yes, I believe we are,” she said happily. “But I’m not afraid, and you shouldn’t be, either.
Death will be a wonderful surprise.”
I swallowed a knot of fear. “Our Sunday school teacher said we’ll go to heaven when we die if we know Jesus.”
“Oh, what a sweet thought,” Connie said. “You hold on to those words if they help you, sweetie. Leonard’s always telling me that religion is a drug for the masses, and I can see how he’s right. It
has
given you a happy feeling, hasn’t it, wiping out all your fears. You go ahead and use that drug, Kathleen.”
Connie rambled on and on about nuclear war and “darling Leonard,” and the more she talked, the more I began to doubt that she was the committed Communist that my uncle believed her to be. I got the feeling she was more interested in marrying Leonard than in helping the Communists take over the world. I wouldn’t mind having cheerful Connie for an aunt, but I couldn’t see how she and my uncle would both fit on our sofa at night. She was fairly plump.
Connie had been a Girl Scout, and as we walked along she reassured me that she knew how to survive in the woods. “If the nuclear fallout doesn’t kill us or poison all this wonderful vegetation,” she said, “I’ll show you how to live off the land. It’ll be so much fun. I can make a lean-to and cook over a campfire, and I know how to use leaves and herbs to cure common ailments, too.”
I wanted to ask her if she had a home remedy for radiation sickness, but she seemed so happy and carefree as we ambled along the path, hand-in-hand, that I hated to spoil her mood with a dose of reality.
When we got back to the car, Uncle Leonard had his transistor radio pressed to his ear and was listening to the news. “Has the nuclear war started, honey?” Connie asked as she slid across the seat to cuddle beside him. “We didn’t hear any missiles falling, did we, Kathleen? But then, I’m not really sure what a nuclear missile sounds like.”
“I never heard one fall, either,” Uncle Leonard said, “but I guarantee we’ll know it when it does.”
Connie laughed and squeezed his arm. “Oh, you know so many things, Lenny.”
We drove down the picturesque main street of the village and parked in front of a florist’s shop. Uncle Leonard shut off the engine, and the car shuddered to a stop. “This is it,” he said.
“You’re buying flowers for your mother?” Connie asked. “What a sweet idea, Lenny.”
“No, I’m not buying flowers. This is where she lives. It used to be a hat shop. Mother ran it when Eleanor and I were kids, and we lived in the apartment upstairs. She still lives there.”
This was news. Not only did I have a grandmother but she was a capitalist. No wonder Uncle Leonard left home. We took our grocery sack “suitcases” out of the trunk and walked around to the rear entrance, climbing a rickety set of wooden stairs to a tilting porch on the second floor.
Grandma Fiona met us at the door, enveloping my uncle in a long, warm embrace. “It’s so lovely to see you, Leonard… so lovely. I’ve missed you so!”
I had never seen my uncle behave so tenderly. His eyes misted over, and he looked almost human as he hugged her in return and said, “I’ve missed you, too, Mother.” Then he cleared his throat and he was grumpy old Uncle Leonard again. “I’ve brought company. This is my comrade, Connie Miller… and this is Eleanor’s daughter Kathleen.”
My grandmother’s face lit up when she heard who I was, and she moved right past poor Connie to take me into her arms. Her hug was even more wonderful than one of my daddy’s hugs because it lasted so much longer, and she made a contented purring sound as she rocked me back and forth in her embrace.
“Kathleen…” she murmured. “Oh, Kathleen…”
Grandma Fiona had a creamy Irish accent, and I loved the musical sound of it. She did something wonderful with her tongue when she said my name—“Kathleen.” It seemed to roll from her mouth like a marble on glass. She was beautiful and elegant, even at age sixty, with the same air of money and privilege that I saw in Cynthia Hayworth. I’d call it class. Fiona had class. I couldn’t believe that my frumpy, bedraggled mother was her daughter. How could two such opposite people be related?
Fiona was slender and graceful and sweet-smelling. She dressed in silky dresses and feathery, gossamer shawls and satin slippers. She wore tinkling bracelets and sparkling earrings and bright red lipstick, even when she wasn’t leaving the house. Her lips made a mark on my cheek when she kissed me.
Her apartment was as lovely as she was, filled with beautiful, delicate trinkets made of porcelain and crystal and silver, expensive-looking things that seemed as though they came from another era. It didn’t take a genius to understand why my brothers had never been invited for a visit.
Fiona must have been expecting us because she had prepared roast beef for dinner. We sat down to eat it at her dining-room table, which had been set with china and silver on a white damask tablecloth. I felt like I was dining in Buckingham Palace with the queen. It was the best meal I’d eaten in my whole life—even better than the food at May Elizabeth’s house—and I ate it slowly, reverently, the way people do in dreams. If the world did come to an end tomorrow, at least my final meal had been a wonderful one.
Afterward, I helped Grandma and Connie wash and dry the dishes while my uncle switched on his transistor radio again so he could hear the latest news of the missile crisis.
“Turn that noisy old thing off,” Fiona scolded when we were finished. “Why do you want to be upsetting yourself and everyone else by listening to that nonsense?”
“We’re in the middle of a world crisis, Mother.”
“Well, take your blooming world crisis outside. I don’t want to be hearing about it, and neither does Kathleen.”
He retreated to the second-floor back porch, taking a reluctant Connie with him.
“Now then, luv,” Fiona said with a girlish smile. “Let’s you and me listen to some music, shall we?”
She didn’t own a television set, but she did have a wonderful old phonograph and stacks and stacks of records. The music had an oldfashioned, muffled sound, as if the orchestra had been seated inside May Elizabeth’s fallout shelter for the recording session. Some of the records were so scratchy from overuse they sounded as if the musicians were playing in the shower.
