In the Unlikely Event (6 page)

“I'm Paul Stefanelli, by the way,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Ruby Granik,” she told him, letting him shake hers.

“How's the book, Ruby?” He nodded at the book on her lap.

“Can't put it down,” she said. “So if you'll excuse me…”

“Sure. I get it.” He got up and wandered away.

Leah

Leah Cohen was hoping Henry Ammerman would pop the question soon, maybe over the holidays. She was going to his house later today to celebrate his sister Rusty's birthday. Henry's mother sold Volupté compacts wholesale. A girl could never have too many Voluptés. She'd probably get a few from the mothers of the children in her second-grade class. Last year she did. They sure beat fruitcakes, which she gave away, or bad perfume, which she poured down the toilet.

She knew in order to win Henry she'd have to win the rest of his family, and she felt she was doing a pretty good job of it, mainly by keeping her mouth shut. They thought she was shy, quiet, a nice girl from a nice Cleveland family. A teacher. And she was all that, wasn't she?

She'd been seeing Henry for almost eighteen months. She'd met him at a party given by one of the other teachers at her school after she'd moved to New Jersey to live with her aunt Alma. Her mother swore the only way she'd let Leah leave Cleveland was if she lived with family. Alma, her mother's sister, liked the idea of Leah sharing her house and helping with the expenses. As far as Leah was concerned, anything was better than staying in Cleveland and living with her parents. Aunt Alma was a retired school secretary who'd never married. A maiden aunt, Leah's mother called her, but one who played canasta with her friends three afternoons a week, and volunteered at the hospital every Friday morning.

Alma approved of Henry and had told Leah's mother so. Well, who in her right mind wouldn't approve of Henry, a reporter for the
Elizabeth Daily Post
? Henry was smart, kind, funny and very attractive. When he'd first enlisted, right out of high school, he hoped to serve as a reporter for
Stars and Stripes
, since he'd been editor in chief of the
Monticello Times
, the school newspaper at Jefferson High. But after just three months of training he'd been sent into battle. He said he was lucky to get out alive. Most of his company didn't. He was in the hospital for two months with a shot-up leg. After that he got his wish, a desk job with
Stars and Stripes
in London, until six months after the war ended. He said he learned more from those journalists than he ever did at college.

As much as Aunt Alma said she liked Henry, lately she'd been warning Leah about men in general, and Henry, in particular.
Why should he buy the cow if he can get the milk for free?
Aunt Alma's advice, when it came to romance, was so old-world. Besides, Henry never pushed her to go too far. She might not have minded a little push. It wasn't like they were teenagers, after all. Henry had turned twenty-eight over the summer and she would be twenty-four on her next birthday. And guess what, Aunt Alma? He wasn't getting much at all, never mind for free. Though, honestly, if she turned twenty-five and she still wasn't engaged, she saw no point in saving it. She might as well enjoy it while she still could. She was pretty sure Aunt Alma had never enjoyed hers.

When the notice had come around at school asking for volunteers, especially teachers who had experience with young children, to chaperone a holiday party at the Elks Club in Elizabeth, Leah thought her principal might be impressed to see what a community-minded young woman she was, willing to give her time on a Sunday afternoon the week before Christmas.

Another teacher at her school, Harriet Makenna, also volunteered and, better yet, offered to drive Leah, saving her from waiting for the bus from Cranford to Elizabeth in this weather. When she told Henry, he said he'd be covering the event for the
Daily Post
and he'd have a photographer with him. So Leah chose a pretty dress in a deep winter blue, even though she knew the picture in the paper
wouldn't be in color. At the last minute she tied on an apron. You never knew when some child was going to be sick or fling something that would land on you.

More than a hundred kids came to the holiday party. There were plenty of volunteers, many of them parents, and they divided the children into groups by age. She and Harriet and two of the mothers took the four- to seven-year-olds and handed out Dixie Cups to get things going. Right away a little girl shouted, “I got Lassie!” She licked the cover of her Dixie Cup clean to show Leah.

Another began to cry. “I want Lassie, too.”

“Let's see who you have,” Leah said, wiping the child's tears. “Go ahead and lick it clean so we can see.” She did and held it up to Leah.

“Ooh, you have Natalie Wood!” Leah told her. “You're lucky because Natalie Wood is a very famous movie star, and look how pretty she is. And you know what? She was a movie star when she was your age.”

“I'm six.”

“Well, that's swell. Six is a good age to be.”

When Henry arrived with the photographer, who didn't look old enough to drive, Leah took off her apron, smoothed out her blue dress and reapplied her lipstick. Harriet, who knew Leah and Henry were seeing each other, whispered, “You look good enough to be the photo on a Dixie Cup.”

“As good as Lassie?” Leah whispered.

“Nobody can compete with Lassie.”

Leah laughed, then clapped her hands to get the children's attention. “Boys and girls,” Leah said. “This is Mr. Henry Ammerman. He's a reporter for the
Elizabeth Daily Post
and he's going to write a story about us.” She liked saying his name out loud.
Henry Ammerman
. When she did, Henry waved at the children.

“And this is Todd Dirkson,” Henry said of the boy photographer. “He's going to take a picture. Maybe you'll see it in tomorrow's paper.” Todd held up his Speed Graphic, so the children could see his camera.

Henry and Todd conferred, then suggested they gather around the piano.

Leah sat down and began to play the introduction to “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” She motioned for the children to sit on the floor around her. Some were still eating their Dixie Cups with the little wooden spoons, some faces were already smeared with chocolate frosting from the cupcakes. Harriet ran around with a damp cloth trying to wipe their faces clean, knowing the parents would want their children to look their Sunday best in the paper.

“All eyes here, please,” Leah said, as she continued to play and sing.
“Then one foggy Christmas eve, Santa came to say…”
Half of the children sang along with Leah, the other half were more interested in the camera or looking out the windows. Todd clicked while Leah was at her most animated. Henry waited until she'd finished the song, then called, “Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Miss Cohen!”

“You're very welcome, Mr. Ammerman!”

“Happy holidays, Miss Cohen!”

“Same to you, Mr. Ammerman.”

Oh, she really,
really
liked Henry Ammerman! She might say
loved
but she was superstitious about using that word too soon.

Ruby

In the departure lounge at Newark Airport Ruby was nodding off. She'd been up since 5 a.m., finishing her last-minute packing before rushing into Manhattan for the radio show. The ice cream soda at Hanson's felt like eons ago. She pulled out the sandwich bag her mother had packed for her and lifted out a cream cheese and pimento sandwich on white bread, crusts cut off as if she were still a little girl going off to school. She was so hungry she wolfed down that sandwich plus another, turkey and Swiss. And then an oatmeal-raisin cookie. All of that made her thirsty, but her mother had filled a thermos with chamomile tea. Her mother was a big believer in the powers of herbal teas.

When they finally boarded, close to 3 p.m., Ruby was seated on the right side of the cabin, next to a girl about her age traveling with a baby. The girl's mother was seated across the aisle, holding a toddler on her lap. Ruby offered to change seats so she and her daughter
could be together. “Thank you, dear,” the mother said, “but we both want to be on the aisle.”

Ruby was fine with that. She liked the window seat.

She saw the lady whose husband was driving to Miami board, and right behind her, the young man with six brothers. He waved and gave her a big smile. While her seatmate burped the baby, Ruby opened her book and picked up reading where she'd left off.

“He's seven months, almost eight,” her seatmate said, though Ruby hadn't asked. “The older boy is two. My husband's coming down in a few days. It's the first time we've been apart. We're going to visit family for the holidays.” She glanced over and eyed the book Ruby was holding. “Oh, Mickey Spillane! He grew up in Elizabeth. My uncle taught him at the high school. Not that I've read it. My husband says it might be too much for me.” Ruby could swear her seatmate blushed. “This is my first flight,” she confided. “What about you?”

“I've flown a lot.” Ruby shuddered at the thought that this girl's life could be hers, except for her talent and determination.

The stewardess, blond and pretty, with a lisp—
Fathen your theat belths
—sashayed up and down the aisles, checking on them. When they finally began to roll, the young mother's face went white. “I'm a little bit nervous,” she whispered to Ruby.

“Take deep breaths,” Ruby told her.

But as soon as they took off, Ruby knew something was wrong.

“Does it always feel like this?” her seatmate asked.

Ruby didn't tell her that, no, it didn't feel like this. They were too low. They should be climbing. Why weren't they climbing?

“Can you hold the baby for a minute?” and she shoved the baby at Ruby. “I think I'm going to be sick.”

Ruby took the baby. He clutched her necklace, a golden strawberry on a thin chain, while his mother retched. The chain broke. So what?

For seven horrible minutes, seven minutes that felt like hours, years, a whole lifetime, everything seemed to be in slow motion. Ruby heard only the thump of her own heart, not the screaming, not
the wailing, not the two-hundred-pound wrestler seated behind her reciting the Lord's Prayer.

This is it? This is how it's going to end? No, it has to be a mistake. Please, God, make it be a mistake
. She held the baby close, feeling the warmth of his little body, kissing his soft cheek. He looked right into her eyes.

Outside the window the wing broke away from the plane.

Then they were falling…falling diagonally out of the sky.

Henry

As Henry and Todd came out of the Elks Club and started down the long flight of stairs to the street, they heard a roaring sound. “Jesus, is that what I think it is?” Todd asked, looking skyward. He opened his camera, framed the image, then clicked. Henry hoped he'd captured the plane trailing smoke, flames billowing back nearly to the tail, maybe one hundred feet above them and banking steeply to the left.

“Your car or mine?” Todd shouted.

“Mine. Let's go!”

Henry already knew this would be his first front-page story. He drove with his hand on the horn, following the path of the plane. “Get everything you can,” he told Todd, who had no experience but was the nephew of the managing editor. “Every detail. Don't stop to think—just do it or you'll miss your chance.” He was talking as much to himself as to Todd.

Miri

Outside the theater, the weather had grown even worse. Miri and Rusty locked arms and walked quickly with their heads down. Miri had never felt so cold, so weak from hunger. The candy bar at the movies was the only thing she'd had to eat today. A few more blocks and they'd be home. She could almost smell the leg of lamb rubbed with garlic and rosemary that would be waiting, with pan-roasted
potatoes, mint jelly, and green beans, plus a wedge of iceberg lettuce with Russian dressing. Irene would have already frosted the birthday cake she'd baked for Rusty. Miri's mouth was watering just thinking about it.

At the corner of Westfield Avenue and Lowden Street a small child, one of the Bell kids, probably, was sledding in front of her house. There was a Bell in every grade. Miri knew at least four of them. Suddenly the child screamed and pointed to the sky. Miri and Rusty looked up to see a ball of fire rushing toward them. Miri could feel the heat from above as Rusty grabbed her, pulling her across the street. They ran as fast as they could but the fireball kept coming. They heard a deafening roar. Then a splintering crash, followed by two explosions only a second apart. They were knocked down by the force, Rusty covering Miri's body with her own, trying to protect her.

When Miri opened her eyes she saw feet, dozens of feet, and at first she was so disoriented she didn't know where she was. She couldn't hear anything. There was a ringing in her ears. From every direction people were running toward the flames that were shooting up, toward the thing that had crashed and was burning in the frozen bed of the Elizabeth River.

Rusty helped Miri to her feet. “Go home and tell Nana we're okay,” she shouted. “Hurry!” Rusty gave her a gentle shove. “Go, Miri!”

She ran for home. Her feet were numb in her saddle shoes. Snot ran down her face and froze on her upper lip, on her chin, as she rounded the corner of Sayre Street and raced up the front steps. “Nana,” she called, bursting into the house. “Nana, where are you? Nana!” she shouted. “Nana!”

She found her under the dining room table. “A bomb?” Irene asked.

“No,” Miri told her. “Something crashed in the river. They say it's a plane.”

Irene clutched her chest. Miri grabbed her pills from the kitchen counter. Irene put one under her tongue. “Rusty?” she asked.