In the Unlikely Event (43 page)

The smooth air had turned choppy on the final descent into Las Vegas. Miri didn't like it. It wasn't like riding a bucking bronco. Not that she'd ever been on a bucking bronco but she'd seen them in cowboy movies. These bumps were unpredictable. The stewardess told them to keep their seat belts fastened until they'd landed.

Rusty turned to Miri. “How're you doing, honey?”

“I'm fine.” A lie. She was so terrified she dug her fingernails into the fabric of her seat cushion. “How about you?”

“Good.” But Rusty didn't look good. She was pale, with beads of sweat on her forehead and upper lip.

As they came lower and lower in their descent, the scene out the window looked to Miri like a moonscape, or how she imagined a moonscape would look. Sandy and flat with tall, dark mountains rising out of nowhere.

Lower and lower out of the wild blue yonder, lower and lower until the wheels hit the ground with a thud and the pilot reversed the engines, making a grinding noise. The captain spoke to them over the loudspeaker. “Welcome to McCarran Field, ladies and gentlemen. Enjoy your stay in Las Vegas. We hope you'll join us again.”

She'd survived the trip. Even if she never flew again, which she was sure she wouldn't, at least she'd gone up into the wild blue yonder three times. At least she'd done that.

The passengers applauded as if they'd been watching a show. They were all yakking, thrilled to have landed at McCarran Field or maybe thrilled just to have landed. When they were told they were free to unbuckle their seat belts, Fern jumped into Dr. O's arms. Rusty, still looking unwell, draped an arm over Miri's shoulder. “We made it.”

Yes, they'd made it, but this was just the beginning.

JULY 5—Thousands of holiday tourists on the Las Vegas strip celebrated dawn with the sight of an atomic flash at the Yucca Flat test site 78 miles away. The mushroom cloud was clearly seen, but there was disappointment at the slight shock.

A thousand soldiers, positioned in foxholes only 7,000 yards away from the blast, surged forward minutes after the explosion in a simulated attack to encircle and capture the devastated area.

“There were no casualties,” the Army announced.

35

Miri and Natalie

Natalie came to visit after camp, just before school started. “Don't get the wrong idea,” she said to Miri. “I'm curious, that's all. I still hate
them
.”

“What about me?”

“I don't know about you. Maybe yes, maybe no.”

By then they were living in a furnished stucco ranch house east of the city in a neighborhood of other ranch houses called Rancho Circle. They were all ugly and looked the same. The three girls shared a room. Irene and Ben rented an identical house across the street. Their furniture and boxes of stuff were in storage while Rusty and Dr. O looked for a permanent place. Miri hoped it would be better than this one.

Irene kept Natalie busy, kept her away from Rusty, who was pregnant but not yet showing and suffering from morning sickness that sometimes lasted all day. It disgusted Natalie to learn Rusty was pregnant. “So, you're not going to be the only child anymore,” she said to Miri.

“So?” Miri was equally shocked to learn Rusty was pregnant, but she wasn't going to admit it to Natalie.

“So, you won't be the center of attention anymore,” Natalie told her.

“I've never been the center of attention.” But the truth was, it had occurred to Miri that she would have to share Rusty's love once there was a new baby. And maybe Irene's, too.

“I hope you like dirty diapers,” Natalie said, “because they're going to expect you to be the babysitter.”

“I like babies.” She'd never lived with a baby, had never wished for a sibling, like some only children.

“I'm just warning you.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“You have to admit it's embarrassing that she's pregnant at thirty-three. And he's eleven years older. I feel sorry for their baby. Think of it—when the baby is our age your mother will be almost fifty and my father will be sixty. They'll be more like grandparents than parents.”

But Miri didn't want to think about that.

Some mornings Natalie and Fern rode horses together, and Miri would go along to watch. Dr. O drove them to a ranch twenty miles out of town. Fern named her horse Trigger—no surprise there. Dr. O encouraged Natalie to name a horse, too. Natalie refused, saying he was just trying to buy her love, and her love wasn't for sale.

Miri knew from Dr. O that Steve had enlisted in the army the day after high school graduation. Natalie said it was her father's fault. If her parents had stayed together Steve would be going off to Lehigh with Phil Stein. Now Steve would probably be sent to
Ko-fucking-rea
. Miri had never heard Natalie use such language.

Nobody cared what Natalie did or didn't eat. She developed a taste for the whites of hard-boiled eggs dipped in salt water, like at a Seder, and on some days ate that three times a day. Dr. O was more
concerned about Rusty's constant nausea. The doctor assured them the nausea was a good sign, a sign that it was a strong pregnancy.
Eat whatever you can keep down
.

Rusty told Miri she was hardly sick when she was pregnant with her. Miri said, “Maybe it's a boy this time.”

“Maybe,” Rusty said.

Irene and Ben took the three girls on a daylong trip to Hoover Dam, including a guided tour that Natalie yawned through, though she had to admit the place was impressive,
if you happen to like wonders of the world
. The tour guide, a friendly western type, was a different story. Natalie swore he'd made up his mind, from the moment he first saw her, that she was a stuck-up East Coast bitch. She acted like one, muttering, “Cowboy,” loud enough for him to hear. But she didn't mind shopping for western boots, choosing a two-color style, the most expensive in the store. Irene didn't bat an eyelash. Just told her she hoped they were as comfortable as they were beautiful.

In the afternoons, in the scorching summer sun, 100-plus degrees, she and Natalie drifted on rafts at the pool at the Flamingo hotel, working on their tans. The pool at the Flamingo was the only thing Natalie liked about this ugly bone-dry place. At the Flamingo there was grass around the pool, the only grass Natalie had seen in Las Vegas.

Natalie bet the other kids at the pool were sons and daughters of gangsters. Her mother had told her about the Jewish gangsters who were building this town. She'd told her about Bugsy Siegel, who'd built the Flamingo, and Longy Zwillman, her father's patient, who had lured him here and was a partner in the fanciest new hotel in town, the Sands, due to open in December. These kids would be Miri's classmates at school. If Natalie stayed they would be her classmates, too. She talked to no one, but Miri did, to a girl whose uncle was involved in the casinos. Janine was her name. She would be a sophomore at the high school, too. Well,
la-di-dah
, Natalie thought, Miri would have one friend. Not that
she
cared. Why would she give two cents if Miri had a friend or didn't?

Natalie and Miri didn't talk about school or anything else. Miri had no idea Corinne told her if she didn't like it in Birmingham
she could go to boarding school in a year. Which she was definitely going to do. Nobody knew about that, including her father.

One time Miri tried to draw her into the conversation, introducing her as her
stepsister
.

“Not so fast, cowgirl—there hasn't been a wedding yet, or am I missing something?”

“When they get married we'll be stepsisters,” Miri said to Natalie.

“Why would I want to be your sister, step or otherwise?”

Miri was stung—not that she'd expected anything different, but still.

All Natalie really wanted was to see the mushroom cloud from an A-bomb, detonated every few weeks at Yucca Flats, not that far from town. But her father said absolutely not. Which made it easier to hate him. That and the pregnancy.

HER FATHER TOOK
Natalie to the new office to check her teeth, then took her out to lunch, just the two of them. The whole time they were together she wanted to cry, she wanted to yell and scream and cry, then have him hold her and say everything was going to be all right. She wanted him to beg her to stay, to live with him, but then she remembered living with him would mean this godforsaken desert in the middle of nowhere. It would mean Rusty and a new baby and Miri. She and Miri would never be best friends again. She saw the writing on the wall. It was over between them.

She ordered a Waldorf salad without dressing.

ON HER LAST NIGHT
in town Natalie rolled over in the twin bed next to Miri's, propped herself up on an elbow and asked, “Is it true about Mason?”

“Is what true?”

“That he had another girlfriend?”

“Who told you that?”

Natalie shrugged. “You can't trust any of them. Not even after twenty years of marriage. Just ask my mother.”

Miri lay on her back, trying to dismiss the pain spreading through her body.

“I'm never going to let a boy break my heart,” Natalie said. “Not that friends can't break your heart, too. And family. You think you can trust them, then you find out you were wrong. That's all I'm going to say.”

She turned away then, leaving Miri awake, tears rolling down her cheeks.

FERN DIDN
'
T WANT
to leave. She wanted to be flower girl at the wedding.

“We're not having that kind of wedding,” Rusty told her.

“What kind are you having?” Fern asked.

“It will be a very quiet wedding in the rabbi's study. You won't be missing anything.”

Still, Fern cried. “I want to be
your
sister,” she told Miri. “I like you better than Natalie.”

“Don't tell that to anyone else, okay?” Miri said.

“You mean it's a secret?”

“Not so much a secret as something only the two of us know.”

“I wish I could stay here and ride Trigger to school. I don't want to go back to Mommy. She's mean. She only cares about good manners.”

“Good manners are important.”

“Natalie doesn't have good manners.”

“She used to.”

“But she doesn't anymore.”

“No, she doesn't.”

Miri went to the airport with them, to say goodbye. Fern wore her appliquéd jacket with the silver wings, a second set of wings still pinned to Roy Rabbit's vest. Natalie wore dungarees, her new western boots and a fringed jacket she'd seen in a shopwindow on Fremont Street. All that was missing was a ten-gallon hat. “Mommy's going to be surprised to see you wearing that,” Fern said.

“That's the idea,” Natalie told her.

“She's going to be mad.”

“That's the idea.”

“Are you going to be mean forever?” Fern asked.

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Natalie said, laughing.

Miri would have hugged her for old times' sake, but Natalie kept her distance, turning once, halfway out the tarmac to the plane, to wave to her. “So long, cowgirl,” she called. “I'll see you in my dreams.”

“Not if I see you first,” Miri called back.

Dr. O was accompanying the girls to Birmingham. They'd have to change planes and he didn't think they were experienced enough travelers to do it on their own. Natalie disagreed.

Rusty was teary-eyed saying goodbye to him.

“I'll be back in five days,” he promised.

“That's five days too many,” Rusty said.

When Dr. O kissed Rusty goodbye, Miri looked away. Getting used to her mother in love was going to take time. Getting used to her mother pregnant—that was a whole different story.

The plane's engines revved up. It taxied to the runway, then picked up speed until it rose into the air.
Into the air, Junior Birdman
, she imagined Fern singing, her hands making upside-down goggles over her eyes.

Miri waved at the plane even though the passengers couldn't see her. Inside her head she said a little prayer to keep them safe, to return Dr. O to Rusty, and the girls to Corinne.

Rusty took a cracker from her pocket, put it in her mouth and chewed. “I think I'm starting to feel better,” she said to Miri.

“I'm glad.”

They stood together, mother and daughter, their hair blowing back in the wind.

“I think I'll learn to ride a horse,” Miri said.

Rusty didn't miss a beat. “I think I'll learn to drive a car.”

“We can learn together because you can get a license here at fifteen.”

“Fifteen? Who told you that?”

“This girl I met at the Flamingo.”

“You made a friend?”

“It's too soon to call her a friend.”

Rusty drew her close. “We're going to be okay. This is all going to work out. I can feel it in my bones.”

Miri wished she could feel it, too. Until she could, she hoped Rusty was right.