Red Menace

by Lois Ruby

  In the kitchen, Mom’s rolling two walnuts across the table.

  “Aw, Mom, you’re not putting nuts in the cookies, are you?”

  “No, I want the sheer pleasure of cracking them.” She grabs the walnuts and rolls them in her hand, where they click like dice. “See these two shrunken heads? This one’s Milgrim, and this littler one is Kluski.” She locks Milgrim in the vise of the nutcracker and coldly smashes him. A curvy smile spreads across her face as she hands me the nutcracker. “Want to take care of Kluski?”

  “Ooh, yeah!” I crack him open, and it feels as good as a line drive to centerfield.

  Chapter 22

  Friday, May 15

  “For heaven’s sake, Marty, put that confounded bugle away!” Mom cries. Sheesh, I’ve only played about three wrong notes . . . out of six. But she’s in a funk and not up for a serenade. Why? Partly because the Rosenbergs lost another appeal, probably their last, and their execution date is looming closer. Thirty-four days, now. But the bigger part is that she’s scared—we all are—because she’s decided to testify if the committee calls her. I would have tried to talk her out of it, but anything’s better than sending her (us?) to Poland.

  The National Lawyers’ Guild has sent over a lawyer and some volunteer law students from Washburn University, over in Topeka, to prepare Mom to testify in front of the SISS. They’ve set up cots in the attic so they can work around the clock—even brought in a private eye to sweep the place for bugs. There’s always somebody thundering up and down the stairs, or peering in our fridge, when they’re not arguing up in the attic.

  The lawyer, Mr. Quincy, and Vic, the immigration intern, have different game plans for Mom, and nobody seems to be coaching the series. They argue and work up in the attic, with Dad refereeing.

  But everybody agrees Bubbie better find those citizenship papers, and pronto. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has no record of a Sylvia Sandler Weitz or Avrum Weitz becoming naturalized way back in 1907. Mom remembers that picture of Bubbie and Zeyde in the Uncle Sam hats, the day they took the citizenship oath, but maybe her memory is bogus. Maybe Bubbie and Zeyde lied about becoming citizens for so many years that Bubbie believes it really happened.

  “More likely the papers have been disappeared,” Quincy notes.

  Mom’s spitting mad. “You mean the INS and the FBI are in cahoots against me? They’re supposed to be for the people, not against.”

  “Theoretically,” Dad says, fanning himself with a sheaf of lawyer papers he’s been monitoring. Documents. We’re living in the Grand Canyon of documents.

  There’s lots of talk about whether Mom should read from a prepared statement, or whether she should plead one of the Amendments. Should she battle the committee on the grounds that the entire thing is unconstitutional?

  Or should she simply name names?

  Mom says, “I will not inform on other people, and that’s final.”

  Mr. Quincy, who doesn’t know yet how stubborn my mother is, dares to ask, “Even if the committee already has those names, Rosalie? Even if they’re merely asking for confirmation?”

  “Not even if the people are six feet under!” Rosalie shouts. “I refuse to implicate anyone else. In the Torah, there’s a word for informing on someone. It means eating someone else’s flesh. Cogitate on that image, people: eating someone else’s flesh. This I will not do.”

  Who’d expect that Rosalie Rafner would suddenly thump the Bible?

  Mom turns to me with a sickly smile. “Check the Yankees schedule, Marty. Maybe we can take in a game while we’re in New York.”

  Mr. Quincy growls and slams his briefcase. He just doesn’t appreciate a woman like my mom. Some days, I know how he feels.

  ♢

  So, it’s totally insane at my house, but Luke’s easy to be with. No demands, no complications, no storm of words or papers. He used to be the crackerjack key grinder in town, and I’ll use any excuse to go across the street.

  “Hey, can you make a copy of this to hide in the petunias in case I forget my house key, or the FBI needs a surefire way to get inside when we’re out?” Always ready to help the U.S. gov.

  Luke studies the other key on my chain, the one to Whittier Tower, Connor’s birthday present to me. He says hoarsely, “Key’s . . . new . . . but . . . real . . . old cut . . . of . . . teeth.”

  I don’t know if I should tell him, but what the heck. He doesn’t talk to anybody else, so the secret’s safe. “You know that clock tower on campus? Okay, I’m not exactly saying this key unlocks it.”

  He nods and goes into the house, while I stand there like an idiot. Through the little square of a basement window, I watch the light flash on in his shop, then flicker the way it does when you run a grinding machine like a key-cutter.

  In ten minutes, I’ve got a new house key. I go home and test it: it works like a knife sliding through warm spit.

  ♢

  “Luke made this. Seems like he’s coming around.” I flash the shiny new key at Amy Lynn, who’s sitting on her porch looking like she’s just seen that 3-D horror movie, House of Wax. In fact, she looks like a wax figure herself.

  “Dreamer,” she says flatly. “He’s not coming around. In fact, Wendy’s planning to take Carrie and move back to her parents in Newton, at least for a while until she gets her own place.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I overheard her talking to her mother on the phone. She’s packing.”

  I plunk down on the step next to Amy Lynn. “That’ll kill him.”

  Amy Lynn shrugs. “Luke won’t even notice.”

  I don’t agree, but I decide it’s best to drop the subject. “How’s your father’s hearing in D.C. going?”

  “He’s there, but they keep postponing it.” She answers sharply, then turns away from me.

  Something’s up. I don’t want to bug her. Guess she’ll spill it when she’s ready. I’m not telling her the whole story yet, either.

  Before the day’s out, two weird things happen. First, there’s a guy at our door with his sleeves rolled up, a quart of sweat dripping down his neck, and a dark band of it circling his hat.

  “I’ve been fixing a flat,” he explains. “Is your mother home?”

  “She’s in the kitchen, but trust me, she doesn’t know the first thing about changing tires.”

  “Oh, I can handle the tire. I just wonder if she’d bring me a nice, tall glass of water. It’s mighty hot out there.”

  I could go for the water myself, but I’m nervous about leaving this guy in our front hall. What if he’s a robber casing our joint? So I yell, “Mom! There’s a man out here needs a glass of ice water.”

  Mom comes out with the glass, and the guy says, “Dr. Rafner? Rosalie Wieitz Rafner?”

  How’s he know her name? Maybe he was one of her students a long time ago.

  “Yes?” Mom offers him the glass.

  He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out an envelope with an official seal. “Subpoena from SISS, ma’am,” and he slaps the envelope into Mom’s hand.

  Water flies everywhere.

  The guy turns on his heels.

  Mom rips the envelope open, and I read it over her shoulder:

  One ROSALIE WEITZ, also known as ROSALIE RAFNER, is hereby summoned to be and appear before the Internal Security Sub-Committee of the United States Senate, of which the Honorable William Jenner of Wisconsin is chairman, in a special session to be held in New York on June 3, 1953, at the hour of 9:00 A.M.

  There’s more, but we both sink into chairs and can’t handle it all at once. Mom stashes it in the junk drawer with unidentifiable keys and old trading stamps and other random stuff we never throw away.

  The doorbell rings again, and my first impulse is to dash out the back door. But I don’t. This time it’s just the mailman. Nervously glancing across the street at the feds, he slips me a special delivery envelope addressed to Mom, with no return address, but postmarked from Poughkeepsie, New York. My antenna goes
up. Another threat?

  “What else can they do to me?” Mom says with a weary sigh. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “Let me open it, Mom, and if it’s something disgusting, I’ll swallow it.” That gets a weary sigh out of her.

  Folded inside is a piece of onionskin paper with a short note typed on it: For your New York expenses. From Friends of McCarran and Smith Act Victims.

  Wrapped in that onionskin is a bank draft for three-hundred dollars. No name, no address.

  “I’m not swallowing this!”

  “I’m touched,” Mom murmurs. “I’ve heard they take care of people who are forced to testify, but how could they have known since I just got the subpoena?” She catches her breath. “Oh, they’ve got people planted on the inside.” Spies of the spies. She fans herself with the check. “It’s also a kind of bribe, isn’t it, Marty? Guaranteeing that I don’t name names? But I’m going to assume it’s a gesture of support, and God knows, we need support.”

  Chapter 23

  Tuesday, May 19 – Wednesday, May 20

  I have a sudden inspiration to clear my fuzzy brain, so I run over to the College. Been doing that a lot lately, as if I’m missing Hawthorne already in Poland.

  The afternoon sun’s fried the lawn around Whittier Tower. Even the make-out artists usually rolling around in the grass have the sense to stay in the shade, so no one sees me unlock the tower door. This time I pace myself climbing the winding stairs, and when I finally reach the top, I’m pumped with energy.

  Beautiful up here, but terrifying. The platform is pentagon-shaped. I find the exact middle under the bell and spread my legs to root myself here, safe from the wind, with my arms spread wide. They’re wings. I could actually fly off this tower. The wind would carry me awhile before I went into freefall and had the fantastic feeling of letting myself go to the forces of nature.

  Instead I just do a three-sixty, hands up, feeling the weight of the wind on my palms and sucking in the breeze that never stops blowing here on the Kansas plains.

  I’m totally alone, but not lonely. I am free as the wind. If that’s not power, I don’t know what is.

  ♢

  The next day, Mom is still in her enraged army cook phase, slamming a pan of peanut butter cookies into the oven and hurling fuzzy leftovers from the fridge across the room into the garbage. She doesn’t bother giving me a disapproving glare when I scoop fingers of cookie dough into my mouth. Now she’s got her face buried in a head of lettuce. Not a good sign.

  The back door starts jumping with somebody’s fist pounding at it. Mom sucks in a bunch of loose stuff in her throat and dries her eyes with a dish towel. As I open the door, Amy Lynn falls into the kitchen. She’s soaked, and her shoes squish on our linoleum.

  “It’s raining torrents out there! I climbed the fence and ran through your sloshy backyard to sneak over here so they wouldn’t see me.” Finger jabs toward the front of the house, meaning the FBI, and she whispers, “We waited all night to hear from Pop. He’s gone. Vanished!”

  Before Amy Lynn can say more, Mom clutches her shoulders and pantomimes We’re going out to the backyard so we can talk freely.

  Outside we huddle at the picnic table, with newspapers tented over our heads against the rain.

  “Now, tell me what’s happened,” Mom says.

  Between sobs, Amy Lynn sputters and gasps through the story. “Yesterday they sent him to jail! But this morning they let him out to work with his lawyer for the wind-up of the hearing. He promised to call us the minute he was free. We never heard from him and neither did his lawyer.”

  I pull the dish towel off Rosalie’s shoulder and hand it to Amy Lynn to soak up her tears. She gives me a weak smile, smears the cloth across her face, then jams the soggy thing back in my hand.

  “And?” Mom says calmly. “Take a deep breath and tell me the rest.”

  “Okay, all right. So the lawyer’s staff called everyone, the police, the FBI, hospitals, all that kind of stuff. He’s not anywhere! My mother’s frantic. She’s calling everybody they ever knew. Mother thinks the FBI’s got him. I think he’s been kidnapped for ransom, or he has amnesia, or, oh, God, he could be lying in a ditch right now, half dead. Nine hours have passed since he left the jail. Nine hours!”

  “There’s got to be a logical explanation.” Mom pushes the back door open and yells, “Irwin, could you come out here and kill this carnivorous centipede?” Clever, my mom.

  He recognizes the code word, comes flying and makes Amy Lynn repeat the whole story. By now we’re all drenched. I run inside for a glass of milk for her and pull a smoking pan of cookies out of the oven. Back outside, handing her a stack of blackened cookies, I say dumb stuff like, “Don’t worry, he’ll turn up. He probably just went bowling or something.” Bowling? How’d I come up with that?

  Everybody looks grim.

  “Irwin, any thoughts you’d care to share?” asks Mom.

  “Theo and I touched on something. A radical plan.” His eyes flick between Mom and me. “I said something to you about it, remember?”

  Yeah, the word disappear pops into my mind, in Dad’s voice.

  Amy Lynn brightens. “You know where he is, Dr. Irwin?”

  “No.” Dad hunches forward and whispers, “I suspect he’s gone underground.”

  Prairie dogs go underground, moles, potatoes, root cellars, gophers, coffins. Not somebody’s living-breathing father.

  “What’s that mean, Dr. Irwin, underground?”

  “Some of his compatriots spirited him to safety. They’re hiding him. He’s in good hands.”

  “You mean in communist hands, Dr. Irwin?”

  He ignores this and says, “I’m sure he’s safe, Amy Lynn. Safe from harm, and safe from the clutches of the government. When the time is right, you’ll get a message from him. For now, let’s go talk to your mother together.” He starts out the garden gate with her; he’s not going to be catapulting over the back fence. Then he looks over his shoulder. “Martin, why don’t you stop by the Sonfelters’ house a little later today? Amy Lynn could use a friend.”

  ♢

  Man, so could Mom. All the lawyers are fussing over Mom and arguing with one another in the attic war room. They’re spooked by Dr. Sonfelter’s disappearance. And now that Mom’s actually been summoned, the stakes are higher. More legal beagles are swarming in and out of the house.

  “At least we’re not paying them,” Dad says, as a bunch of law students thunder up the stairs to the attic.

  I wish I knew where the friends hide fugitives who go AWOL, in case we need to find Mom if she vanishes into thin air.

  Seems like now would be a good time to check in with Amy Lynn. I take her Mom’s latest kitchen disaster, a beef steak and kidney pie that weighs as much as a tire. Amy Lynn and I toss around some stupid talk, until, trying to sound real casual, I say, “Oh, by the way, been meaning to tell you, my mom got her summons to testify.”

  “No!” Amy Lynn shrieks. “I can’t go through this again.”

  Burns me a little, because she’s not going through it; I am. “So, we’re going to New York in a couple weeks for the hearing. Different committee, but just as rank. Oh, yeah, and they might deport her. Next month we could be living in Poland.”

  “Poland?” Amy Lynn drops the pie; I catch it on the first bounce. It’s indestructible.

  Chapter 24

  Friday, May 22

  The Yankees/White Sox game in Chicago: that’s what I’ve got to zero in on, instead of Mom’s hearing and the scheming and strategizing and yelling that pour out of our attic.

  It’s not working. I break out the memos.

  From the desk of

  IRWIN RAFNER, Ph.D.’s son Marty

  DATE: May 22, 1953

  TO: Mickey Mantle

  Guess what, Mick? I’m gonna see you play next week. White Sox at Yankee Stadium, June 2. Except it’s only because the feds are building a case against my mom. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. What if th
e SISS guy comes down hard and she’s sentenced to—

  I scratch out that last bit. I can’t put the words out there in the sunlight. For the first time I get it, I understand why Luke can’t say the things that eat him up inside.

  We could all end up in Poland, Mick. They don’t even play Triple A minor league in Poland.

  ♢

  I’ve been keeping a close watch on the Everlys since I heard Wendy was planning to split. Man, the FBI could hire me as a part-time spy. I need a summer job.

  Luke and Wendy are having a fight. At least it gets him talking. She’s flinging her hands in the air, jabbing her finger into Luke’s chest, and dragging Carrie around, glopped on to her leg. Next thing, Wendy stashes Carrie into the car and screeches up Oxbow Road.

  Luke will just sit there as usual, sure. But after a minute he leaps out of his chair, lets out an agonizing wolf howl, jumps a couple feet in the air, and grabs the basketball ring hanging over the garage. He’s swinging from it until it rips away from the wall. He comes whooping down with his arms wrapped around the orange ring, hollering at the top of his lungs. Drops to the ground. Whoa! He’s rolling down the driveway!

  I sprint across the street and grab him before he hits the muddy gutter. “You okay, Luke?” Stupid question. Gimme something better to say.

  He turns his eyes up to me, the eyes I expect to be not there, as usual, but they’re screwed into small, dark bullets of rage, which he fires my way.

  “Hey, sorry, man!” I back off.

  Milgrim’s out of the car now. “Need help, kid?”

  “Not from you.”

  Luke hurls that basketball ring as hard as he can. It makes a sharp dent in the driver’s door of the Studebaker.

  “Hey!” Kluski jumps out.

  My heart stampedes as I pick up the hoop and clutch it to my chest. If they want to confiscate it for proof of an attack on government property, they’ll have to claw through last night’s corn chowder to pull it out of our trash can.

  Luke stomps up and down the driveway, yowling like a tomcat. His chest heaves so hard that you can see his heart thumping through his T-shirt. What if he has a heart attack? My mind races through that first-aid movie we saw in gym, Disaster on a Hunting Trip. How to do artificial respiration. Mouth-to-mouth. Pinch the nostrils while you breathe in? How many breaths? Pound the chest? Turn on his side—left or right?