Cold War on Maplewood Street (2 page)

Eyes in the Window

JOANNA BOLTED DOWN THE STAIRS WITH DIXIE AS IF
Dracula, the Bride of Frankenstein, and Mrs. Strenge were all just inches behind them. Long after she'd slammed and locked the door, and Dixie was dozing under the table at her feet, Joanna kept feeling the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. She'd whirl around to make sure the old woman wasn't sneaking up behind her.

Each time she looked and saw no one, she felt relieved and then embarrassed. How could Mrs. Strenge get in? The door was locked. She was being silly. Still, the old woman had done something to that girl to make her cry and run away. What was it? The question haunted Joanna.

She rubbed Dixie's side gently with the toe of one loafer. Thank goodness Sam had been able to talk Mom
into letting Joanna have a dog. Without Dixie, Joanna would really truly be all alone, and just the thought made her shiver again.

She bit her lip. What was happening to her? Sure, Mrs. Strenge was creepy, but why was she letting the old woman get to her this way? She'd always thought of herself as brave. She'd zoomed up and down on the highest roller coasters at Riverview Park with Sam. And she wasn't afraid of thunderstorms or spooky movies like Pamela. But lately things bothered her that never had before, like the phone hang-up that morning, and weird noises after dark.

A low growl from Dixie startled Joanna. She looked up to where Dixie was staring. Two yellow eyes glittered back at her from the darkness that had settled outside the window. Her heart stopped. Dixie barked. The eyes disappeared.

Joanna sprang up and yanked the skimpy curtains closer together. The eyes had belonged to Mrs. Strenge's cat. Joanna heard the old woman call him sometimes in a creaky wail: “Haaaar-veeeey . . . Haaaar-veeeey.” Stupid cat. He was probably sniffing around the garbage cans again, looking for scraps of food.

He'd nearly given Joanna a heart attack! She patted Dixie. “Good girl,” she said. “Good,
good
girl.”

Dixie wagged her tail. “I'll bet you're hungry,” Joanna said. “Do you want your supper?”

Dixie knew the words
hungry
and
supper
, and scampered right over to the pantry door. She gave a little yip and tap-danced excitedly while Joanna retrieved the bag of dog kibble and poured some into her dish.

While Dixie happily crunched away, Joanna took her math book into the living room and turned on the television—something Mom would never have allowed if she were home. But Mom wasn't home, and Joanna refused to feel guilty. Once the sun went down—as it did earlier and earlier these days—the darkness seemed to press against the windows like that darned cat. Knowing that anyone could just crouch down and peer in between a tiny gap in the curtains was scary. Faces and voices, even if they were on the TV, made Joanna feel less alone.

Half an hour later, she finished her last decimal problem and slapped her book shut. She went to the kitchen and heated tomato soup in a pot on the stove. Thumps sounded overhead. One, two, three, four. Quiet. Then one, two, three, four again. Like a code! Was someone being held captive upstairs and signaling for help? The thumps ceased. Now there was a rattling noise like something made of metal was being dragged across the floor. Joanna gulped. Could it be—
chains
?

The soup had begun to boil. She turned off the burner and gave it a quick stir. Then she poured some into a bowl and crumbled crackers on top. During all of this she listened carefully, but it was quiet upstairs. Whatever had
been happening had stopped, and before it could start again, Joanna carried her soup carefully to the living room. Another thing Mom wouldn't have allowed if she'd been home.

A rerun of
Broken Arrow
would be coming on in a minute. But first was a commercial with a toothbrush singing, “You'll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.”

The music for
Broken Arrow
should have come next. Instead, a voice announced an important message from the president of the United States and the presidential seal appeared. Joanna groaned. She hated speeches. And she especially wasn't interested in anything President Kennedy had to say. If it weren't for him, Sam would still be home.

“Ask not what your country can do for you,” John F. Kennedy had said in his inauguration speech, which Sam had insisted Joanna listen to. “Ask what you can do for your country.” Right after that, Sam started talking about how great it would be to join the army or the navy and travel around the world. See new places. Learn new things. Maybe even go to college on the GI Bill when he came home again.

“You can't leave,” Joanna had protested. “You promised.”

He'd looked startled. He'd bitten his lip as if maybe, until she reminded him, he really had forgotten the promise he'd made her on the day their father had left.

She'd only been four, but she remembered it clear as anything.

She remembered how Mom kept clutching at Dad's arm as he flung shirts and socks and pants into a big brown suitcase. And how he kept shrugging her off, pulling free to pack even faster. But she just clung tighter and cried. How he swore and told her she was upsetting Joanna and Sam, and how she'd laugh-shrieked, “Me?
I'm
not the one that's leaving.” And how he'd sighed and snapped the suitcase shut and hefted it off the bed.

Mom had grabbed him one last time, sobbing, “Don't do this, Rick—”

He'd jerked away so hard, she'd fallen onto the bed. She just lay there after that, crying and crying and crying. Joanna had never been so scared. She'd never seen her father so red-faced or looking so grim. She'd never seen him hurt her mother. She'd never seen her mother cry. Over and over again in her mind, she saw her father jerking away from Mom, and her falling onto the bed. She heard Mom crying and crying, even after Sam took her hand and led her to his room, closed the door, and turned on his record player really loud. She was frightened, so she cried and cried, too.

Sam had put his arms around her. “Ssshhhh. It's going to be okay, Jo. Don't cry.”

“But Daddy said he's not coming back,” Joanna had hiccupped between sobs.

“He's hardly ever here anyway,” Sam had said, wiping her tears with the bottom of his shirt. “We'll be just fine without him, you'll see. And me and Mom will always be here for you.”

“You won't ever go away like Daddy?” four-year-old Joanna had pressed. “Promise?”

He had crossed his heart solemnly. “Promise.”

Joanna remembered it all like it had happened yesterday. So she couldn't help feeling shocked and betrayed when the very first thing Sam did after he graduated from high school was enlist in the navy. Even though he'd told her again and again it was what he wanted more than anything, she hadn't believed he would really do it.

He'd never broken a promise to her before. Never.

Joanna scowled at the TV, where Kennedy was sitting behind a desk. The desk and his solemn expression reminded her of Mr. Egan when he gave a test. Ugh! She would have changed the channel except she knew he'd be on all four of them. Instead, she stuck out her tongue at the president and skimmed the weekly TV schedule between spoonfuls of soup. It wasn't until she heard “Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba” and “nuclear strike capability” that Joanna looked back at the TV screen and really listened.

“The cost of freedom is always high,” the president said, “but Americans have always paid it. And one
path we shall never choose is the path of surrender or submission.”

Surrender?
What did he mean? What had she missed?

The phone rang. With Dixie trotting at her heels, Joanna went to the kitchen to answer it, frowning uncertainly back at the TV. “Hello?”

“Hello, Joanna. Let me speak to your mother, please.”

“She's not here, Grandma.” Joanna stretched the cord of the phone as far as it would go, to see if she could hear the TV with one ear. She couldn't. At least not well enough to tell what was being said.

“Wouldn't you know she'd be out gadding about somewhere when she should be home keeping up with what's going on in the world!”

“She's at night school, Gram. You know, so she can get her high school diploma and get a better job.” Joanna was surprised to hear herself defending Mom when really she agreed that Mom should be home right now, with her.

Grandma's long sigh whistled through the phone. “Yes, well, a diploma won't do her much good if we go to war with the Russians!”

War?

JOANNA GASPED. “IS THAT WHAT PRESIDENT KENNEDY IS
saying—that we're going to
war
?”

“Depends on what those fool communists do,” Grandma replied in a grim voice. “The missiles they're setting up in Cuba could blow us all to kingdom come.”

Joanna's grandmother was not a jokey-smiley, knit-and-bake kind of grandmother. In fact, she could be positively cranky sometimes. Joanna had no problem picturing her scowl on the other end of the phone. There would be a deep Y-shaped groove between her bristly eyebrows, and her lips would be puckered like she was sucking on a Charms sour ball.

Grandma added, “We're sending ships to Cuba,
though, so poor Sam's probably going to be right in the thick of things. I told Lynn not to let him sign up!”

“Sam's in danger?” Joanna's voice quivered.

There was a silence. Then Grandma said in a much perkier voice, “No, honey, of course not. I'm just upset and talking crazy. Sammy will be fine. Don't you worry.”

Joanna gulped. She could tell Gram was just saying that to make her feel better, and it wasn't working.

“Tell your mother to call me when she gets home, will you?”

Joanna said she would and hung up. But her heart swelled with so much fear, she thought it might explode. Sam!

She hurried back to the living room, but the president wasn't on the screen anymore. There were just newscasters talking about the speech and what it might mean for Americans. They wore worried frowns and talked in serious voices. They spoke of possible consequences to the president's speech. The word
war
was mentioned many times.

Joanna sat on the scratchy rug so she could gather Dixie into her lap. “Don't worry, Dix,” she whispered. “Sam'll be all right. And so will we. I promise.” The warmth of Dixie's body helped ease some of the icy shivers that rippled through Joanna whenever she heard the word
war.

She knew Russia—technically the Soviet Union—had
been an enemy of the United States for a long time. People talked about the Cold War between them. That had confused Joanna. “What's a cold war? Do they only fight in winter?” she'd asked Sam once.

His chipped tooth had flashed in a grin. “No, it means they don't fight at all—at least not directly. They know that if they fought one another, it might end in a nuclear war that would destroy both of them.”

“But if they're not fighting, why do they call it a war?”

Sam had frowned. “It's kind of hard to explain. But they fight in other ways, usually by supporting opposite sides in wars in smaller countries.”

“That sounds awfully sneaky,” Joanna had said.

“It is. But it's better than fighting each other outright.” Sam had said this with such certainty that Joanna didn't doubt that he was right.

Still, she had to say, “I don't get it. Why can't everybody just get along? Why do there have to be wars at all?”

“I don't know, Jo,” he'd said, shaking his head. “It seems stupid, doesn't it? But I guess it just comes down to people wanting different things and trying to force what they want on everyone else.”

Joanna remembered their conversation now with a shudder. Was Russia suddenly ready to end the Cold War and risk a nuclear one? She was still huddled on the floor with Dixie, trying to make sense out of what the newscasters on TV were saying, when a key turned in
the lock and Mom came through the door with a whoosh of cool air.

Dixie ran to greet her and Joanna sprang up from the floor. “You're home early! I'm so glad. Did you hear the president's speech?”

Mom dropped her books and purse on the couch and went straight to Joanna to wrap her in a hug. “Yes, Jo, I heard.”

“Do you think there's going to be a war?” It seemed impossible that Joanna was even asking such a question. War was something that happened in other countries, not here in the United States. Not in Chicago on Maplewood Street.

“Of course not,” Mom said, stroking Joanna's curls.

“Gram thinks there might be,” Joanna said, her cheek still pressed into Mom's coat. “She said that Sam will be right in the middle of it.”

Mom stepped back and looked Joanna in the eye. “There won't be a war,” she said firmly. “And no matter what your grandmother said, Sam will be fine.”

“How do you
know
?” Joanna pressed.

“I just do, that's all,” Mom said briskly, turning off the television before hanging up her coat. Then, carrying an armful of books, she led the way to the kitchen. She glanced at the pot on the stove. “Leftovers?” she asked, setting her books on the table.

“Huh? Oh. Yes. Cream of tomato soup.” Joanna frowned
as her mother lit the burner and gave the pot a stir. In an instant, she seemed to have forgotten all about the president's speech and Sam.

Mom turned around and raised her eyebrows when she saw Joanna watching her. “Don't you have homework to do? It's getting late.”

Joanna sat down and hunched over her books, but from behind her bangs she watched her mother step out of her high heels and wiggle her toes. She nibbled a cracker, then blew tiny crumbs off the front of her dress. She acted so normal, so everything-as-usual, that Joanna felt herself relax. Of
course
there wouldn't be a war.

Joanna opened her social studies book to read about life in a rain forest. At the start of the chapter she found the small white envelope she'd tucked inside the book last Friday. It said
Joanna
in Sherry's fancy lettering, in the beautiful peacock-blue ink she'd discovered for her fountain pen.

“Mom,” Joanna said, tugging the invitation out of the envelope. “Have you thought some more about Sherry's party? Her mother's making homemade pizzas and there's going to be games and dancing and everything.” She held out the invitation decorated with colorful cartoon boys and girls jitterbugging. Mom barely glanced at it. She was arranging her books on the table.

“No, I haven't,” she said, “because I already told you that you can't go.”

Joanna's heart dipped. Mom was sticking to her guns. But she could still change her mind. Joanna just had to keep asking and either wear her down or catch her at just the right moment. “But I
have
to go, Mom,” she continued. “Everyone in our class is going. It's all they're talking about.”

Mom looked at Joanna. “You're too young to go to a boy-girl party at night.”

“But Sherry's father is going to drive us home after—”

“Joanna, please. I'm not going to change my mind, so let's not waste time arguing when we both have work to do.” She reached over to pat Joanna's hand but Joanna scowled and jerked her hand away. She stuffed the invitation back in her book and lowered her eyes to the page. The letters wobbled. She had to blink and blink before she could see the words clearly enough to read them.

When she finished her homework, Joanna walked Dixie to the empty lot two doors down. It was a mix of grass and weeds and rocks, and seemed to always have lots of interesting smells. Dixie sniffed for a long time before she found just the right place to do her business. Joanna didn't mind. She was angry at her mother and in no rush to see her again, although eventually, of course, she had to.

In the meantime, she raised her face to peer up at the night sky. It looked like black velvet studded with sparkly rhinestones or diamonds . . . A thought struck her.
Maybe Sam was looking up at these very same stars from his ship! He
could
be. So, in a way, they were still sort of linked. It was like a giant dot-to-dot connection, but it was a
connection.
A knot in her chest loosened.

“G'night, Sam,” she whispered at the brightest star. She walked home with a heart that was a tiny bit lighter than it had been before.

When she opened the front door, she heard her mother's voice. “What were you thinking of, saying those things to Joanna? You scared her half to death.”

So Mom was talking to Grandma. Joanna forgot the party and wondered again about what her grandmother had said. Was Mom right about there not being anything to worry about? Was Sam really not in any danger?

As she was putting on her pajamas and brushing her teeth, Joanna's mind jumped from worrying about Sam and the Russians back to worrying about the party. She had to find a way to change Mom's mind. Maybe if Sherry's mother called and assured her the party would be carefully chaperoned? No, that would be way too embarrassing. Joanna gritted her teeth. She had to think of something.

When she came out of the bathroom, ready for bed, Mom was cranking a sheet of paper into the battered old typewriter Sam had found at a junk shop and repaired for her. She practiced typing every night for fifteen minutes in hopes that typing skills along with a diploma would
help her get a better job than being a sales clerk in the linens department at Goldblatt's.

Mom looked up at Joanna, her fingers poised over the keys. “Will the noise bother you? I'm getting a late start tonight.”

Joanna shook her head. “No. It's okay.” Sometimes the uneven click-clacks, thumps, and dings of the machine did bother her. But Joanna was pretty sure that between the party and President Kennedy's speech, if she had a hard time getting to sleep, it wouldn't be because of the typewriter.

Her bedroom used to be Sam's room. Before he joined the navy, Joanna had shared her mother's bedroom. She'd slept in a fold-up cot that never got folded up. The cot's mattress had a little dip in the middle from all the years when it
had
been folded up, and the metal wires below had squeaked and squealed every time she rolled over. She'd hated the cot. She'd wanted a real bed and a room of her own more than anything. But if she'd known that getting them would mean losing Sam, she would have gladly slept on that awful cot forever.

The wall above her bed had pictures of horses taped all over it—black-and-white pintos, golden palominos, brown-speckled Appaloosas, and more. Some of the horses stood in beautiful green pastures, others were mid-jump over a fence, others galloped through fields with
manes and tails streaming out behind them. All of them were beautiful enough to make Joanna's breath catch sometimes just looking at them. Someday she would have a horse of her own.

Next to her bed was a small table with a lamp. A black-and-white photo of Sam on his graduation day stood leaning against the base of the lamp. He was wearing his funny, flat-topped graduation cap and a long robe that still wasn't long enough to cover his long,
long
legs. The photo wasn't a particularly good one. It had been taken from far away in order to get all of Sam in, so his face was too small to really see. But Joanna remembered how extra wide his grin had been that day.

If the photo had been taken from closer up, she would have been able to see his chipped tooth—the result of a game of stickball when he was ten. Sam said the navy dentists were going to fix it, which pleased Mom but saddened Joanna. She wanted Sam to come home from the navy exactly the way he was when he left.

She slid into bed, pulled up the covers, and snapped off the lamp. She told herself that everything was going to be okay. Sam was going to be safe. There wasn't going to be a war. And she would find a way to talk Mom into changing her mind about Sherry's party. Then she closed her eyes.

The typewriter keys smacked the ribbon.
Click, click, click-clack. Click . . .

• • •

Joanna was on her way home when she heard it. A far-off rat-a-tat sound that was followed by a buzzing sound somewhere behind her. Bees! Joanna had been stung once and wasn't eager to be stung again. She broke into a run. But the buzzing got louder.

Suddenly home was just ahead and Sam was standing in the doorway with his arms spread wide. Joanna put on a burst of speed just as a siren pierced the air with a horrible wail. She stopped to look up and saw that the sky was dark, but not with bees—with planes.

Sam called, “Joanna! Come to me! Hurry!”

Bombs fell from the planes. They whistled through the air just like in the movies.

Joanna couldn't move. The whistles got louder as the bombs came closer . . . closer . . .

“Jo!” Strong arms grabbed Joanna and half carried, half dragged her to safety.

“You came back!” Joanna cried. “You came back!”

There was an ear-shattering roar just as Sam slammed the door shut.

Joanna jerked awake. The dim green glow of her alarm clock lit Sam's photo on the bedside table. Dixie yawned and blinked up at her sleepily from the rug beside the bed. Joanna fell back against her pillow, breathing hard. Just a dream. It was just a dream.