If she still had any doubts, they vanished when she got to school. They were all buzzing about it in the hall outside their homerooms. Where were you when you heard the news? What were you doing?
SUZANNE: My mother and I had just sat down to Sunday dinner when we heard the roar, then the explosions. We put our faces into our dinner plates—pork chops, mashed potatoes and beets. You should have seen us when it was over. Beets stain everything. I swear, I thought it was a comet. It sounded like a comet.
ANGELO VENETTI: That was no comet—that was a bomb inside the plane.
PETE WOLF: That was no bomb. It was something from outer space, some alien thing, maybe Martians.
DONNY KELLEN: It’s a Commie plot!
ELEANOR (baiting Donny): You sure Senator Joe McCarthy didn’t take the plane down?
DONNY KELLEN: McCarthy’s the one person trying to save us from the Commies.
ELEANOR: McCarthy is an evil man. A bully.
DONNY KELLEN (shouting): I can’t help it if you’re too thick to see the truth, bitch.
ELEANOR: Idiot!
Eleanor Gordon was the most sophisticated in their crowd. She read The New Yorker. When it came to McCarthy, Miri’s family agreed with Eleanor.
Donny Kellen was always ranting about the Commies and how they were trying to take over the world. When the Dianetics were kicked out of town for starting a medical school without permission, he’d ranted about that, too, but Miri didn’t think the Dianetics had anything to do with the Commies, though she couldn’t be sure. Uncle Henry had covered the story for the Daily Post. That’s how Miri found out Donny’s aunt had left town with them, to follow some guy named L. Ron Hubbard to Kansas.
—
WHEN THE BELL RANG they headed for their homerooms, Suzanne, Miri and Eleanor to 9-201, Natalie and Robo to 9-202, but that didn’t stop them from jabbering.
“Settle down, boys and girls,” Mrs. Wallace, their homeroom teacher, said. Mrs. Wallace was so small, not even five feet, they called her “Tiny” behind her back, not Theresa, her real first name. Rumor had it she weighed under ninety pounds. Yet she was married and had two children, both of them in elementary school. In addition to teaching English, Tiny was the adviser to the school paper, Hamilton Headlines. Eleanor was editor in chief. The paper came out just three times during the school year and the stories covered only school-related activities. Nothing about the rest of the world, or even the rest of the city. Miri had very little interest in the stories she was assigned to write, but she did her best, getting in the who, what, where, when and why.
On the day the paper came out most of the kids just glanced at it, then tossed it into the wastebasket. Some didn’t even bother to look before throwing it away. It galled Miri to see that, because even if it wasn’t exciting to read, it was still a lot of work.
Tiny said, “I can see you’re upset about yesterday’s situation, but now it’s time to get back to normal.”
Situation? Miri thought. Normal?
“Mrs. Wallace,” Suzanne called, waving her hand in the air.
“What is it, Suzanne?” Tiny asked.
“Miri was there. She saw it happen.”
Why did Suzanne think she had to tell the whole world she was there? Natalie had let the girls know last night. Not that it was a secret, not that she didn’t want her friends to know, but having Suzanne announce it in homeroom felt wrong, it felt like a betrayal, as if your friend blurted out one of your deepest secrets, something you never wanted anyone else to know.
Everyone turned to look at Miri, including Tiny. “Then it’s only right that Miri should get to choose today’s psalm,” Tiny said.
Every day since they’d started junior high, the morning routine in homeroom was the same—Pledge of Allegiance, followed by the singing of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” the reading of a psalm, then reciting the Lord’s Prayer together.
Tiny walked to Miri’s desk and laid the Bible on it.
“Psalm one hundred,” Miri said, without opening the book. It was the only psalm she knew by heart, the one she chose whenever it was her turn to read from the Bible.
“Would you read that for us, Miri?” Tiny said.
Miri thumbed through the Bible until she came to it. She cleared her throat and began very quietly. “ ‘Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands….’ ” Usually the words meant nothing to her but today every word left her picturing the crash, hearing the explosions. The ringing in her ears returned. She couldn’t finish. She felt like she might cry or scream or both. Suzanne took the Bible from her and finished reading the psalm.
“I’m sorry,” Suzanne said when the bell rang and they left for their first-period classes. “I didn’t know she’d make you read the morning psalm.”
“It’s okay,” Miri told her. “Just, please, don’t tell anyone else.”
“I won’t.”
No other teacher mentioned the crash.
Right after fifth period algebra, Natalie took Miri aside in the girls’ room and said, “I have this buzzing inside my head.”
“You want to go to the nurse?”
“No, it’s not like that.”
“Maybe it’s your period,” Miri said.
“This is different,” Natalie told her. “And when the buzzing stops, Ruby starts talking to me.”
“Ruby?”
“The dancer who was on that plane. Didn’t you listen to Walter Winchell last night? He spent half his show talking about her.” As soon as she admitted Ruby was talking to her, before Miri even had the chance to take it in, Natalie grabbed her shoulders. “Swear you won’t tell anyone what I just said.”
What could Miri do? Natalie was her best friend. She had no choice but to swear she would never tell. For the rest of the day, whenever the other kids were buzzing about the crash, Miri was thinking about the buzzing in Natalie’s head.
OBITUARIES—Mrs. Estelle Sapphire of Bayonne was among the first identified at the makeshift morgue set up in the two garages behind Haines Funeral Home. She was identified by her wedding ring. Her husband, Benjamin Sapphire, collapsed at the scene and was taken by police car to the home of a friend.
—
THE CHRISTMAS PAGEANT WAS just days away, and Miri had choir rehearsal after school. When she got home she found a strange man in Irene’s living room, sitting in the wing chair, wrapped in one of Irene’s crocheted afghans, his feet soaking in a pan of warm water, his trouser legs rolled up to reveal the hairiest legs Miri had ever seen. Even his toes were covered with dark hair. If she didn’t know better she’d have sworn they were animal legs.
“Miri, darling, this is Ben Sapphire,” Irene said, handing him a steaming cup of tea, or maybe it was soup. “He was freezing cold,” Irene told her. “His hands and feet were blue. I thought for sure they’d have to take him to the hospital.”
He was still shivering but he managed to say, “Irene was serving home-baked coffee cake.”
“Which one?” Miri asked. “Sour cream with cinnamon and walnuts, or streusel?”
He looked to Irene for an answer. “Sour cream,” she said, leading Miri into the kitchen where she whispered, “We knew each other in the old days, in Bayonne. He lost his wife in the crash.”
Miri didn’t want to think about the crash. “I’ll be upstairs,” she told Irene. “Call me when it’s time to set the table for supper.”
She and Rusty and Uncle Henry ate at Irene’s every night. Irene was a great cook, which was Rusty’s excuse for never having learned. Instead of encouraging her, Rusty said Irene shooed her out of the kitchen. Rusty was always harping that Miri should learn to cook, that Irene would have more patience with Miri than she’d had with her. Learning to cook from Irene would be a lot better than making lumpy and disgusting white sauce in the required cooking class at Hamilton Junior High.
—
THE LEG OF LAMB materialized as lamb stew that night. Tasty, with little potatoes, green beans, carrots and celery, seasoned with rosemary. Ben Sapphire joined Miri and Rusty at Irene’s table. He broke down several times, covering his eyes with his hand, blowing his nose with a handkerchief. “I can’t think of her inside that plane…my darling wife, my Estelle…” Irene patted his hand.
“We took a place in Miami Beach for the season,” he told Rusty. “She was flying down early to get it ready. I was going to drive down with the luggage. She gets carsick—got carsick—never liked long drives.” He broke down again.
“I’m so sorry,” Rusty said. “I spoke with her on the phone on Saturday. She ordered six Volupté compacts to take to Florida.”
“The compacts,” he said, hitting his forehead with his hand. “I forgot about the compacts.”
Again, Irene patted his hand. “Never mind about that.”
“No, I want to pay.”
“Please, Ben…” Irene shook her head.
Miri stole a look at Rusty, who took her hand under the table and gave it a gentle squeeze. Rusty’s fingers were warm.
Henry came home as they were finishing what was left of Rusty’s birthday cake. He was flushed with excitement, dropping a stack of papers on one end of the table, then handing each of them a copy of the Daily Post, with his story and byline on the front page.