In The Unlikely Event Part 43

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 b.i.t.c.h. 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 gra.s.s around the pool, the only gra.s.s 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 cla.s.smates at school. If Natalie stayed they would be her cla.s.smates, 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 soph.o.m.ore 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. n.o.body 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 G.o.dforsaken 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 appliqued 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 pa.s.sengers 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.

The flight attendant gently nudges Miri. They're coming into Newark and her seat back has to be returned to its upright position. She's still a nervous flier, still digs her fingernails into the fabric of her seat cus.h.i.+on for landings. She could have waited until tonight and come with Christina and Jack on the company plane but she wanted to do this on her own.

It's not the first time she's flown into Newark Airport. The flight path no longer brings planes in or out over residential Elizabeth. Not since the airport reopened in November 1952. But that doesn't stop her from thinking about it every time. It doesn't stop her from rus.h.i.+ng to the doctor before a flight, sure she has a sinus infection, hoping to be told it's not safe for her to fly. She closes her eyes, sings a little song inside her head until they're safely on the ground. Then she's up and on her way with all the other pa.s.sengers.

Outside, she grabs a taxi to the old Elizabeth Carteret hotel, the hotel where Joseph Fluet stayed during the investigations, where Mr. Foster stayed while Betsy and Mrs. Foster were in the hospital, where Ben Sapphire stayed when he wasn't sleeping on Irene's couch. And where Dr. O went when Corinne kicked him out of the house. Miri had been inside the hotel just once, for a bar mitzvah party back in seventh grade. She can still remember the dress she wore, one of Charlotte Whitten's, though she didn't know it at the time. Black velvet top, sweetheart neckline, white net skirt. She tries to imagine Eliza wearing a party dress and gets a picture in her mind of her fifteen-year-old daughter, named for the city she's returning to, galloping on her beloved horse in one of Charlotte Whitten's dresses from Bonwit's. She laughs out loud. When is the last time she wore a c.o.c.ktail dress? No, wait-she remembers-Frank Sinatra's opening at the Sands, where they celebrated Rusty's sixty-fifth birthday. He'd dedicated "Fly Me to the Moon" to Rusty, which made her night.

Miri didn't want a big bash for her fiftieth. She made Andy promise, no surprise party. She hated surprise parties. Christina threw a barbecue at the ranch anyway, but at least it wasn't a surprise. She and Andy danced the Hustle, the b.u.mp, the Funky Chicken, to prove to their sons, Malcolm and Kenny, both college students, and to teenage Eliza, how young they were, how hip, never mind that their kids had moved on to new dance fads. Andy is a great dancer, much better than she is. He's still trying to get her to loosen up on the dance floor. He's a skier, a mountain biker, an easygoing, well-liked guy. He's made a name for himself in forensic dentistry. She fought him on that one. She had enough disasters in her life. But he won, promising not to bring the details of his work to the dinner table.

Her hotel room is nothing to write home about, but it's clean and light, looking out over Jersey Avenue. Christina and Jack are staying in a suite at the Pierre in New York. They offered her an adjoining room, but she opted for Elizabeth, explaining she was having dinner with Henry and Leah, who would also be staying at the Elizabeth Carteret. And she's been thinking about a story based on the thirties gangland slaying that took place in a suite on the eighth floor of this hotel. She's never lost her fascination for the Jewish gangsters.

She sits on the edge of the bed and dials Eliza at school. It's midafternoon there so she's surprised when Eliza answers in a sleepy voice. "Hullo?" She didn't expect her to answer at all, thought she'd just leave a message on her machine, the way she had this morning.

"Hi, honey. Are you all right?"

"Why wouldn't I be all right?"

"I expected you to be at cla.s.s. Or at the stables." She means to sound soft, maternal, but knows she sounds judgmental. The school, in the mountains of Colorado, was highly recommended by the counselor they'd consulted. It was supposed to do wonders for children like Eliza, bright but unmotivated, who would rather shovel manure than read.

"You're calling to check up on me?"

"No, I just wanted to tell you I'm at the hotel. In Elizabeth."

"I can't believe you actually went."

"Well, I did."

"It just seems really stupid to me. It's not like it's your high school reunion or anything."

"No." Miri resists a laugh. To Eliza a high school reunion must seem like one of life's major events.

"Well, it's your dime and your time. Just don't expect me to tell you to enjoy yourself."

"No, of course not." Miri no longer expects anything from her daughter, except to be challenged, berated and humiliated.

"So I'll see you when I see you," Eliza says. A statement, not a question.

"President's Weekend," Miri reminds her. "Tahoe."

"Oh, yeah. I forgot." Eliza yawns loudly. "Will everyone be there?"

"I hope so." Miri doesn't ask who Eliza means by everyone. Maybe the boys and their friends.

Silence.

"Eliza...are you still there?"

"Where else would I be?"

"Okay, then," Miri says, trying her best to keep it upbeat, positive. "Take care and I'll see you soon. Bye, honey."

Eliza shouts, "You know I don't like goodbyes!" She slams down the receiver.

How is it that Miri, who longed for a daughter after two sons, has wound up with an angry, sullen child like Eliza? She's still trying to figure out where it went wrong but can't put her finger on it.

She unpacks, hanging up her suit for tomorrow, and sets her toiletries on the little shelf above the bathroom sink. She studies herself in the mirror. It's unsettling how different she looks away from home, away from the familiar reflection in her bathroom mirror. Last time she looked at herself in a mirror in Elizabeth she was fifteen and growing out her Elizabeth Taylor haircut. Now she's fifty. Jesus, fifty! And her hair is long, lightly permed, with golden highlights. An improvement, she thinks. She's in good shape, runs five miles a day, but instead of running from someone-Rusty, Mason, Natalie-the way she did that year, she runs to clear her head, to give herself a burst of energy that carries her through the day.

Christina has been trying to prepare her for seeing Mason tomorrow by dis.h.i.+ng out small bits of information-his wife, Rebecca, will be visiting her ailing parents in Sarasota, his daughter and twin sons are all at college-but Miri hasn't been willing to talk about it. "Please..." she said to Christina. "That was so long ago. We were just kids." She knows Christina doesn't buy her nonchalance but she lets it go.

Miri can't admit she's nervous about seeing him. Come on, who wouldn't be nervous about seeing her first love? Who wouldn't want her old boyfriend to find her attractive? If you don't want that, you don't go to high school reunions, you don't go to the thirty-fifth commemoration of the worst year of your life. Besides, she's not fifteen anymore. She's not that girl whose heart was broken on a sunny afternoon in May. She's a woman, married with three children and a career. She's responsible, dependable, mature. Right? she asks herself. Right, she answers.

She stays up too late that night, watching A Place in the Sun on TV. She'd seen it with Rusty at the Regent movie theater that winter, the year it won six Academy Awards. They'd each gone through two handkerchiefs, bawling over the young Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. Rusty planned to come with her to Elizabeth for tomorrow's commemorative event, but Dr. O's health is too fragile, even though Fern is a doctor and offered to stay at the house.

- THEY GATHER the next morning at the site of the third crash, in the field behind Janet Memorial. The old home is in disrepair, no longer used to house children in need, children without parents or family to care for them. She wonders where those children go now. It's a bright, sunny day, mild compared to the bitterly cold winter of 1952.

Miri stands between Christina and Henry, oversize sungla.s.ses covering half her face, a cashmere shawl thrown over her new suit.

She and Christina had gone shopping for today's event. They'd each bought a designer suit with big shoulders, right out of Dynasty. They'd laughed their heads off in the dressing room. Christina is the best friend Miri always wanted. The real deal. When it comes to dynasties, Christina and Jack have their own. Irish Jack, that's what they called him in the early days. He'd built his dynasty slowly, shrewdly-though he swears he didn't have a clue back then, just knew he wanted to work hard and be successful for Christina and their girls. An understatement, if ever there was one. Went from being an electrician to an electrical contractor to a general contractor to owning one of the biggest commercial construction companies in the West, with IRISH JACK lettered on the side of his plane.

- THE MAYOR, Thomas Dunn, who was a Sixth Ward councilman that winter, speaks from a platform. "The fifty-eight-day period that ended here on February eleventh, 1952, at twelve-twenty a.m., was the most memorable of my life, outside of World War Two. Our mayor at the time called it 'The Umbrella of Death.' Others referred to our town as 'Plane Crash City.' But we know better. We know our city survived the American Revolution. George Was.h.i.+ngton slept here, as we learned as schoolchildren. We have been and always will be a proud revolutionary city, a welcoming city to immigrants from all over the world, where your parents and grandparents and even great-grandparents settled. Today I welcome all of you and ask that you bow your heads in remembrance of those we lost, both on the ground and from the air. One hundred sixteen died in that fifty-eight-day period, senselessly, needlessly, randomly. It could have been any of us."

Already, Miri feels herself choking up.

Three clergymen take turns reading out the names of the dead, beginning with the first crash. Miri waits for the familiar names. Ruby Granik, twenty-two, Estelle Sapphire, fifty-nine. Then the second crash. Kathy Stein, eighteen. Penny Foster, seven. She lets out a small, unexpected cry when Penny's name is read. Henry reaches for her hand. Christina pa.s.ses her a packet of Kleenex. She wipes her eyes, glad she didn't use mascara, and blows her nose. When all the names have been read, a children's chorus sings a medley-"April Showers," "Pennies from Heaven," "Keep on Smiling." Someone with style has orchestrated this day of events.