In the Unlikely Event

“I haven’t been called up yet,” he whispered. “I was just saying it’s what you could tell your family.”

“You’re saying I should lie to my parents?”

He didn’t answer, which made her burst into tears again. Her life was turning into such a mess.

—

SHE HAD TO make up an excuse for not working on Saturday morning and felt guilty for lying to Daisy, telling her she was going down the shore for a family reunion. But Daisy said she’d cover for her. She told Christina to have a good day, told her she deserved a good day.

They set out on Saturday morning in Jack’s truck, only to find out, when they reached Elkton, there was now a forty-eight-hour waiting period. Christina begged the clerk to make an exception. “Please,” she cried, “you don’t understand…”

“I think I do, dear,” the clerk said.

They bought their license for a dollar, arranged for a pastor to marry them on Wednesday, April 2, because Christina would not marry on April Fool’s Day, paid five dollars in advance for a corsage, then drove back home. On Wednesday, Christina skipped school. She’d write a note tomorrow about having a twenty-four-hour virus. All the girls were coming down with it. She wore her sheer white blouse, full black taffeta skirt, heels and her best jewelry—a small gold cross around her neck, which Yaya and Papou had given her for her sixteenth birthday, and an ankle bracelet from Jack. This was, after all, her wedding day. After the brief ceremony conducted by one of the marrying parsons, the witnesses threw rice. She kept twisting the slim gold band from Goldblatt Jewelers on her finger, a ring she wouldn’t be able to wear in public.

Jack wanted to have sex before they started out for home, so they stopped at Boyd’s motel and spent nine dollars on a room. But she was too scared to let go and enjoy it even though he used a rubber. After, they stopped at a diner for lunch. She ordered something called “Wedding Cake” for dessert, a white layer cake with lemon filling. Actually, it was pretty good.

That night she pressed her wedding corsage in her scrapbook, hid her ring under the false bottom of her jewelry box and cried herself to sleep.

A week later she got her period.

Elizabeth Daily Post

NO HOME LIFE FOR FLUET

MARCH 26—Joseph O. Fluet, the government’s chief airline crash investigator for this area, hasn’t been able to spend much time at his home in Great Neck, N.Y. According to his wife, he’s been there for only two hours in the last month. Fluet is staying at the Elizabeth Carteret hotel. The lonesome Mrs. Fluet says she’s weaving a rug to pass the time.

27

Miri

On most days Irene picked up the afternoon mail, but she was away for two weeks in Miami Beach with Ben Sapphire. Rusty tried to get her to promise to call home every night so she’d know Irene was okay, but Irene laughed at the idea. “Don’t worry, darling, I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

“I’ll look after her like she’s a queen,” Ben promised.

“I’ll send postcards,” Irene sang, looking smart in her new travel suit, and blowing them kisses as she and Ben left for Newark’s Penn Station, where they’d board the Silver Meteor to Miami.

“Postcards,” Rusty mumbled as the car pulled away.

So on this late-March day Miri was the one to pick up the mail. She’d already walked Mason and Fred to Edison Lanes, where a bum came out of nowhere, pulling on Mason’s sleeve, frightening Miri. He was filthy and he reeked of alcohol.

“Get off me,” Mason told him.

“Come on, son. You’re a big shot now, a hero,” the bum said. “People must be throwing money at you. How about something for your dear old dad?”

She could see the anger in Mason’s face, his jaw tightening, his teeth clenched. “I said, get off me!”

The bum looked at Miri. “Who’s this? Your girlfriend?”

“Don’t touch her,” Mason said, shielding Miri with his body.

Fred barked.

“Well, well…it’s Fred, is it?” He tried to pet the dog but Fred growled. Miri had never heard Fred growl.

“If you don’t get out of here I’m calling the police,” Mason said.

“I am the police, son.”

“You were the police, but not anymore. And stop calling me son.”

“Jacky always gives me a fiver.”

“Yeah, to get rid of you.”

“You want to get rid of me, son? Give me some change.”

“Let’s go,” Mason said, grabbing Miri’s hand. He led her inside but turned back to the bum once and called, “You better be gone when I come out. You hear? You better be gone!”

He wouldn’t let Miri leave until the coast was clear. “I’m sorry you had to see that drunken excuse of a father,” he told her.

That was his father? The father who’d chased him with an ax?

Miri was still reeling when she dropped Fred at Mrs. Stein’s house. She walked home looking over her shoulder, making sure the bum who was Mason’s father wasn’t following her. It must be terrible having a father like him, Miri thought, someone you couldn’t trust, someone so unpredictable. Better to have no father or a father in California you never had to see.

She let herself into the house, collected the mail from the floor, where it had come in through the slot in the door, and thumbed through it, separating Irene’s and Henry’s from hers and Rusty’s. There was a postcard for her from Irene, showing a wide white beach with one palm tree leaning toward the blue-green ocean. The third postcard this week. Each one had a message beginning, Darling Miri. Then there would be a one-line message: Wish you were here, or You would love this weather, or Having a wonderful time.

She tucked the postcard into the waistband of her skirt and headed upstairs, where she dropped the mail on the kitchen table. On top was a creamy white envelope addressed to Naomi Ammerman in slanted handwriting that looked vaguely familiar. She turned it over to find an engraved return address.

Mrs. J. J. Strasser

Redmond Road

South Orange, N.J.

Why was Frekki writing to Rusty? She didn’t like this. She sat at the kitchen table for a while, considering her options. Maybe she should steam the envelope open, read the letter, then reglue the envelope. Suzanne had done that once with a letter to her parents from her sister, Dorrie, the one who’d been expelled by Mr. Royer. She’d run off with a guy her parents didn’t approve of, before she’d graduated from high school. Another option—she could open it, read it, then burn it, or hide it in her sock drawer the way she’d hidden the letter from Mike Monsky. But she wouldn’t want Rusty to do that to her. Rusty, who said trust was the single most important part of a relationship. “Remember that, Miri. If you can’t trust, you can’t love.” It was bad enough she’d hidden Mike Monsky’s letter. But that was, at least, addressed to her. This was different.

Rusty would be home soon enough. Without Irene to cook for them, they’d been eating pizza, deli sandwiches or scrambled eggs for supper, but tonight they were going to have a roast chicken. Rusty had left instructions from Irene. Miri was to light the oven, season the chicken and put it in to roast. “You can’t go wrong with a roast chicken, baked potatoes and fresh carrots,” Irene told her before she’d left. She’d never tell Irene that Rusty had picked up Birds Eye frozen carrots instead of fresh.

At six o’clock Miri heard the front door open and Rusty sang, “I’m home…” She came up the stairs and into the kitchen, where Miri was basting the chicken, per Irene’s instructions.

“It smells good in here,” Rusty said, kicking off her shoes and getting out of her coat. She bent over and dropped a kiss on top of Miri’s head. Then she picked up the mail and riffled through it. Miri was almost afraid to watch. She opened Frekki’s note first. Her breathing changed as she read it. “What the hell is this?”

“What?” Miri asked. “Did somebody die?”

Rusty waved the note in front of Miri’s face. “You met him? You met Mike Monsky and you never told me.”

“Mom, I—”

“How could you keep such a secret from me? I’m your mother, for god’s sake. How could you betray me this way?”

“Mom, I’d never—”

“Don’t lie to me!”

“I’m not lying. What does it say?”

Rusty shoved the note at Miri, and she grabbed it, reading quickly. It said that Mike Monsky was in town and wanted to make a plan regarding their daughter, a plan that would include financial support and visiting rights. It said ever since Mike met Miri he’d been thinking about her. Frekki suggested they meet in the study of Rabbi Beiderman, who counsels many families in difficult situations. Rusty should also feel free to consult a lawyer. “ ‘Feel free to consult a lawyer?’ ” Miri asked.

“Feel free!” Rusty repeated. “Who does that bitch think she is?” Rusty went crazy, throwing her shoes against the wall. “He thinks he can walk into my life and destroy everything just like he did sixteen years ago? I’ll kill him first.”

Miri was sure that at that moment, Rusty meant it. Her ferocity scared Miri. “Did you think I’d never find out?” she asked Miri.