In the Unlikely Event

“My uncle is interviewing her family,” Miri said.

Natalie let go of Miri’s hand and sat up, intrigued by this information. “Do you think he’d interview me?”

“He’s only talking to people who knew her. Family. Friends. People who worked with her.”

Natalie’s voice went very low. “What I could tell him is just as important, maybe more important. Not that I’d want him to use my name.”

“Like what?”

“Swear you’ll never tell?”

“I already swore I wouldn’t, remember?”

“She’s the one who cried in the middle of the Christmas pageant today because she’ll never have another Christmas. She’s the one who keeps telling me about the babies inside the plane.” Natalie jumped off her bed. “I have to get ready for dance class. Come with me.”

“Wait, I thought…”

But Natalie grabbed her hatbox-shaped dance bag and ran down the stairs, with Miri trailing behind her. Natalie was full of surprises today, Miri thought. One minute, falling apart onstage, the next, with enough energy to light up the whole house.

“Tell Mom I’ve gone to dance class,” Natalie called to Mrs. Barnes.

Mrs. Barnes met her at the kitchen door. “I thought you weren’t feeling well.”

“I’m better now,” Natalie said. “And Miri’s coming with me. We’ll take the bus. Mom can pick me up at the usual time.”

At tap class Natalie was the best. Her feet led the way and the rest of her body followed. Double pullbacks, traveling time steps, wings—she could do it all. No one in her class could begin to keep up with her.

After class, Natalie gave her teacher, Erma Rankin, her Christmas gift, which Miri guessed from the size and shape of the box was a Volupté compact, tied with the same holiday paper and red ribbon her grandmother used.

Miss Rankin said, “Thank you, Natalie. I’m going to miss you. I hope you’ll still come to visit from time to time.”

“What do you mean?” Natalie asked.

“I’ve taught you all I can. As I told your mother a few weeks ago, you’re ready to study with the masters. I’m going to suggest a few teachers in New York.”

“You told my mother?”

“Yes, just after Thanksgiving.” Erma Rankin read the look on Natalie’s face. “Oops! I’ll bet she was saving that as a holiday surprise.”

“Did you hear that?” Natalie asked Miri in the changing room. “Did you hear what she said?”

Miri nodded. “Yes.”

“Do you know what this means?” Natalie asked.

“It means you have talent.”

“Yes,” Natalie said. “But it’s Ruby’s talent. Don’t you see? She’s dancing through me now. She’s living inside me.”

“But Miss Rankin said she told your mother at Thanksgiving.”

“But she didn’t tell me until today. Because today I was so much better than I was at Thanksgiving.”

Even though she swore she wouldn’t, Miri wondered again if she should tell someone about Natalie. But who would she tell and what would she say? She was still thinking about it at the pageant that night, and after, when Rusty took her to Schutt’s, the ice cream parlor on Morris Avenue, for a hot fudge sundae.

Elizabeth Daily Post

THAT GIRL

By Henry Ammerman

DEC. 19—She was 22, with the longest legs he’d ever seen. “She could dance,” Jimmy Bower said. “She could really dance! That girl was going places.”

That girl was Ruby Granik, on her way to dance at the Vagabond Club in Miami when she boarded the ill-fated Miami Airlines C-46 on a bitterly cold Sunday afternoon. The flight had already been delayed two hours and Ruby and the other passengers waited another three before they boarded.

“I begged her to wait,” her best friend, Dana Lynley, said, “but she insisted on taking the non-sked. It was less money and money was tight. She hadn’t been paid yet for her last job and she needed to get to Miami. You didn’t win an argument with Ruby. Once she made up her mind there was no going back. That’s how she lived her life.”

“I knew her since she was born,” Billy Morrison, owner of Billy’s Tavern and family friend, said. “I served her her first legal drink, a pink lady. I made it weak but it still made her tipsy. Her father was my best friend. There are no words,” he said, visibly shaken. “None.”

Her uncle, Fire Captain Victor Szabo, of Elizabeth Engine Company #3 said, “I knew Ruby was on that plane. I knew it and yet when the call came in and my unit sped to the scene of the crash, I had to force myself not to think of her inside that broken pile in the Elizabeth River. I had to do my job. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. My wife and Ruby’s mother are sisters. My wife had gone out to Queens to keep Ruby’s parents company for a few days. We have no children so we thought of Ruby as our daughter, too. We couldn’t have been more proud. It’s a devastating loss.” He paused and turned away, using a handkerchief to dab at his eyes. When he regained his composure he said, voice breaking, “There was nothing left of Ruby but that Bulova watch and the infant in her arms.”

The infant belonged to Ruby’s seatmate. At 7 months, he was the youngest member of a family—his mother, his grandmother and his 2-year-old brother—all of whom died when the C-46 crashed and exploded.

Ruby’s last stop before leaving New York for the airport was Hanson’s Drug Store. Jimmy Bower, who worked behind the counter and had once danced with Ruby in a show, was distraught. “She loved all things strawberry,” he said. “I made her a strawberry ice cream soda. I kidded her about eating the Maraschino cherry on top. She enjoyed it down to the last lick. Sunday was the saddest day of my life. A lot of the dancers who hang out here feel the same way. Ruby lit up the room, always ready to enjoy a joke, always with that dynamite smile.”

The owner of the Vagabond in Miami, where Ruby was heading, said there was no replacing Ruby. “Oh, sure, there are plenty of dancers out there, but Ruby had that certain something. That je ne sais quoi, if you’ll pardon my French,” Frank Viti said. “She made the audience feel special, as if every dance move was just for them. Not that many dancers connect on a personal level, but Ruby Granik gave it her all.”

Her mother said she was an ambitious girl. “Since she was a child she knew what she wanted and she figured out how to get it. She didn’t depend on anyone to hand it to her. Not Ruby. We named her for Ruby Keeler, my favorite movie star. Who knew our Ruby would also be a dancer, a star? When our family hit rough times and I had to give up my job to care for my husband, Ruby became our sole support. But our girl never complained. She was a gem, just like her name.”

Her boyfriend, brother of actor and entertainer Danny Thomas, declined this reporter’s request for an interview. He was in seclusion, according to family members, mourning the loss of a wonderful girl.

5

Christina

Christina Demetrious was done in by that news story. Ruby was an ambitious girl…she knew what she wanted, Ruby’s mother said. She couldn’t get that line out of her head. If she died suddenly, would her mother say that about her? She didn’t think so. Her mother didn’t know who she was or what she wanted. And that thought made her cry as much as the story in the paper.

Christina and her family had been at an anniversary party for her aunt and uncle in Metuchen on the day the plane crashed. The next morning, when Papou, her grandfather, had taken out the trash, he’d found pieces of the plane in their yard. Her father dropped them off at the police station on his way to work at his restaurant, Three Brothers Luncheonette. Baba was disappointed she wasn’t coming to work with him at the restaurant after graduation. She might have if there weren’t already four male cousins waiting to take over when Baba and her uncles retired. None of them believed a girl had any place working in a restaurant except as a waitress, a cashier or maybe a bookkeeper. Athena was smart to go into business with Mama, where she had a real future.

Christina was sure Dr. O would cancel the annual holiday outing to New York. She could see the toll the crash had taken, the way Dr. O worked all day, then rushed to the makeshift morgue to help identify bodies by their dental records. That would take the steam out of anyone. Sure, Dr. O still told jokes in the office—the one about the guy with the carrot in his ear was his latest—and he still whistled his patients’ favorite tunes while he worked on their teeth, but she could see it in his eyes, a sadness that was never there before.

This was the third year Christina had worked for Dr. O after school. He’d asked her to work for him full-time starting in June, when she graduated from Battin High School, and she was going to take him up on his offer.

If her mother knew who sometimes came to Dr. O’s office she would faint. Faint and then forbid her ever to return. Or maybe the other way around. Forbid, then faint. Her mother lived to see her girls safely married to Greek husbands, as if then nothing bad could happen to them. She already had her eye on someone for Christina, Zak Galanos. He was a senior at Newark State, majoring in education. Next year he’d be teaching. His father worked at Singer’s and was known around town as the Sewing Machine Man because he could repair or recondition any Singer. Christina’s father thought she could do better. A businessman, maybe, or a lawyer.