The screen showed a pool of water, bubbling like a geyser. I inhaled sharply as the camera panned to show the horizon, and the scale became clear. The border of dark soil was a ring of scorched earth hundreds of miles in diameter. At the coast, the Chesapeake Bay had not simply flooded its banks. The banks had ceased to exist. I was looking at the sea.
And it was steaming.
I sucked in breath as if someone had punched me in the gut.
Mrs. Lindholm turned in her chair, and I could almost see her folding her own shock and grief away into neat squares so she could be a good hostess. “Oh! You look like you’re feeling a little better.”
“I—yes…” I took a step closer to the television, horrified and fascinated in equal measure.
“A state of emergency has been declared across the Eastern Seaboard. The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Red Cross have mobilized, and are providing aid to refugees in need.”
The camera cut to footage from the ground of aid workers gathering refugees. In the background, a little girl with burns on her arms toddled next to her mother. Another cut to what had been an elementary school. The children’s bodies … it must have been morning recess when the meteorite struck. I had thought that anything I could imagine would be worse than the reality. I was wrong.
Mrs. Lindholm turned off the television. “There now. You don’t need to be watching that. What you need is some dinner.”
“Oh, I don’t want to be a bother.”
“Nonsense. I wouldn’t have told Eugene to bring you if you were going to be a bother.” She tucked her handkerchief into the waistband of her skirt as she stood. “Come into the kitchen and let me get a little food into you.”
“I—thank you.” My etiquette instincts about being an unplanned-for guest warred with the simple reality that I should eat, even if I wasn’t hungry. Plus, if she was anything like my mother—I brushed the back of my hand over my eyes—if she was anything like my mother, then turning down food would be inhospitable.
Under my bare feet, the kitchen’s linoleum floor was cool. The walls had been painted mint green, and there were crisp white cabinets above pristine counters. Had she cleaned when they said I was coming, or was her house always this tidy? As she opened the refrigerator, I suspected the latter.
She must have a friend that sold Tupperware, or maybe she did. The food was all in matching pastel containers. If I hadn’t seen that moment of shock and grief as she watched the television, she might have stepped out of an advertisement for GE. “Now … how about a ham and cheese sandwich?”
“Oh … maybe just cheese?”
“After the day you’ve had? You need to have some protein.”
Mama said it was always better to get the conversation over with. “We’re Jewish.”
She straightened, brows rising. “Are you really? Well … I’d never have known to look at you.”
It was kindly meant. I know it was. I had to believe it was, because I was a guest in her home and had nowhere else to go. I swallowed and smiled. “So, just cheese would be fine.”
“What about tuna fish?”
“That sounds lovely, if it’s not too much trouble.” Neither of us came from families that had kept kosher, but after the war began, I’d stopped eating pork and shellfish. The discipline, if nothing else, helped me remember who I was, and why that was important.
“Not a bit.” She pulled a pale pink container from the fridge. “Eugene always has tuna fish for lunch, so I keep some made up for him.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Just sit down.” Another container, this one green, followed the first. “It would be harder to explain where everything was than to just do it.”
On the wall by the refrigerator hung a dull brown wall phone. Somehow, the sight of it hit me with guilt like a brick. “May I … I hate to impose, but may I borrow your phone? It would be a long-distance call, but…” I trailed off, uncertain of when I could repay her.
“Of course. You want me to step out?”
“No. It’s fine.” That was a lie. I desperately wanted the privacy, but I didn’t want to impose on her any more than I already had. “Thank you.”
She slid the sandwich fixings over on the counter and gestured to the phone. “It’s not a party line, so you shouldn’t have to worry about anyone listening in. One of the benefits of staying in a major’s house, hm?”
I crossed to the phone, wishing it was in another room in the house, or that I had the guts to tell her the truth. After I dialed, I got that damnable circuit busy sound. I managed not to curse. Well … not aloud, at any rate.
I tried again, and the phone rang.
The relief sapped my strength and left me leaning against the wall. With each ring of the phone, I prayed: Please let them be home. Please let them be home. Please—
“Hello? Wexler residence.” My brother’s voice was calm and professional.
Mine cracked. “Hershel? It’s Elma.”
A ragged gasp, and then just the crackle of a long-distance line.
“Hershel?”
I have never heard my brother sob before. Not even when he split his knee open to the bone.
In the background, I could hear Doris, his wife, asking a question—probably “What’s wrong?”
“Elma. No—no. She’s alive. Oh, praise God. She’s alive.” His voice came back to the microphone. “We saw the news. What … what about Mom and Pops?”
“No.” I pressed my hand over my eyes and leaned my forehead against the wall. Behind me, Mrs. Lindholm made the sandwich with unnatural quiet. I had to press the words out of my throat. “Nathaniel and I were out of town. Mama and Daddy were home.”
His breath shuddered in my ear. “But you and Nathaniel are alive.”
“Do you know … how did Charleston fare?”
“The city was hit by tidal waves, but a lot of people were able to evacuate.” Then he answered the question I was actually asking. “We haven’t heard from Grandma, or any of the aunts.”
“Well … I had a time getting a clear circuit through.”
Doris said something, and Hershel’s voice muffled for a moment. “What? Yes … yes, I’ll ask.”
His wife had always been the more organized of the two, even while they were courting. I smiled, picturing the list that she was probably making right now.
“Where are you? What do you need? Are you hurt?”
“We’re at the Wright-Patterson base in Ohio. Well, actually, we’re at the home of the Lindholms, who have taken us in tonight. So, don’t worry. I’m well taken care of.” I glanced over my shoulder. Mrs. Lindholm had cut the sandwich into neat quarters and trimmed the crust off. “In fact, I should probably go, since I’m calling on her phone.”
“Next time, call me collect.”
“I’ll call tomorrow, if the circuits aren’t busy. Give my love to Doris and the children.”
When I hung up, I stood with my head against the wall, as if the mint green paint could cool my forehead. I think it was only a moment.
One of the chairs creaked as if Mrs. Lindholm had sat down, so I gathered myself and straightened. Daddy had always said that deportment was important for an officer and a lady. “Thank you. My brother has been very worried.”
“I’m sure I would be too.” She had set the sandwich on a bright teal plate and then centered it in the middle of a placemat. Next to the plate stood a glass of water with beads of condensation on its side.
The mundanity of the kitchen, the ticking clock on the wall, the hum of the refrigerator, and this kind woman with her sandwiches, placemats, and flannel pajamas seemed completely separate from the world I had been in all day. The images of the burned children on the television might as well have been on Mars for all the connection they had to here.
The chair creaked as I sat, and my joints ached with frustration. As I’d been taught, I put the napkin in my lap, and picked up the first quarter of the sandwich. I was lucky. We had owned a plane and a
way to get out.
“Is the sandwich all right?”
I had eaten a quarter of it and not noticed. My mouth tasted of dying fish and rotting pickles. I smiled for my hostess. “Delicious.”
FIVE
TIDAL WAVE STRIKES VENEZUELA
CARACAS, Venezuela, March 4, 1952—(AP)—A tidal wave, believed to be caused by the meteorite which struck off the coast of North America, hit the port of Vela de Coro, inflicting heavy damages, reports to the Government said today. Ships anchored in the western Venezuela port were destroyed, and many houses along the waterfront were flattened, the reports said. The extent of the casualties is not yet known.
At some point, I must have fallen asleep on the couch. I woke up to Nathaniel’s touch on my forehead. The light from the kitchen streamed into the dark living room and caught on the white dress shirt he wore. He was clean and had showered, and for a disorienting moment, I thought that I had dreamed it all.
“Hey…” He smiled and brushed the hair back from my forehead again. “Do you want to sleep out here, or go to the bedroom?”
“When did you get ho—back?” I sat up, stretching the crick out of my neck. One of Mrs. Lindholm’s afghans had been pulled up over my shoulder, and the television was a dark ghost in the corner.
“Just now. Major Lindholm brought me.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “He’s making a sandwich.”
“Did you get something to eat?”
He nodded. “They fed us in the meeting.”
Nathaniel offered his hand and helped me to my feet. All of the cuts and aches and bruises that I had acquired during the day found me in the dark. The backs of my calves burned with each step. Even my arms protested, as I folded the afghan. Was it too soon to take another aspirin? “What time is it?”
“Nearly midnight.”
If he was only just now getting back, the situation was not good. In the dim light his features were too blurred to read. In the kitchen, Major Lindholm scraped his knife across a plate. I set the afghan down. “Let’s go back to the bedroom.”
He followed me down the dimly lit hall to the room that Mrs. Lindholm had put us in. It had belonged to her eldest son, Alfred, who was off at Caltech getting a degree in engineering. While there was a “Leopards” pennant from his high school, the partially assembled Erector set and the Jules Verne collection might have come out of my childhood room. Everything else was plaid or red, which I suspected was his mother’s touch.
When the door was closed, Nathaniel reached for the light, but I stopped him. For a little while longer, I wanted to be in the safety of the night. Here, with just the two of us, and no radio to remind us, we might just be visiting someone. My husband pulled me into his arms and I leaned against him, nestling my cheek into the contour of his chest.
Nathaniel rested his chin against my head and ran his hands through my still-damp hair. He smelled of an unfamiliar minty soap.
I nestled against him. “You showered on base?”
His chin rubbed the back of my head as he nodded. “I fell asleep at the table, so they took a break. I showered to wake up.”
Pulling back, I looked up at him. The shadows seemed deeper around his eyes. Those bastards. After everything he’d been through today, they kept him awake? “They didn’t just send you home?”
“They offered.” He squeezed my shoulders before releasing me. Unbuttoning his shirt, he meandered toward the bed. “I was afraid that, if I left, Colonel Parker would do something stupid. He still might.”
“He’s a schmuck.”
Nathaniel stopped undressing with his shirt halfway down his arms. “You mentioned knowing him.”
“He was a pilot in the war. Commanded a squadron, and haaaaaated having women fly his planes. Hated it. And he was grabby.”
In hindsight, I should not have mentioned that last bit to my husband. Not when he was exhausted. He straightened so fast, I thought he was going to rip his shirt. “What.”
Trying to soothe him, I held up my hands. “Not with me. And not with any of the women in my squad.” Well, not after I had a talk with Daddy. I shrugged. “Benefits of being a general’s daughter.”
He snorted and went back to sliding his shirt off. “That explains a lot.” Scrapes and bruises mottled his back. “I think I have him convinced that it wasn’t an A-bomb, but he’s certain that the Russians aimed the meteor.”
“They haven’t even gotten off the planet yet.”
“I pointed that out.” He sighed. “The good news is that the chain of command is not as broken as he would like us to believe. General Eisenhower is flying back from Europe. Should be here tomorrow morning, in fact.”
I took Nathaniel’s shirt from him and hung it on the back of a chair. “Here? As in Wright-Patterson, or as in America?”
“Here. It’s the closest intact base.”
The numbers sat quietly between us. We were more than five hundred miles from the impact site.
* * *
In the morning, I had my first glimpse of what we would be like as old people. Nathaniel could barely get out of bed on his own. During the earthquake, most of the debris had hit him. His back was a collection of hematomas and contusions that would have been better suited to one of Mama’s medical textbooks than a living man.
I was not much better. The only time I recalled feeling worse was the summer I’d had influenza. Still, I could get up, and I was fairly certain that once I was moving around, I’d be in better shape.
Nathaniel took two tries to push himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed.
“You should rest.”
He shook his head. “Can’t. Don’t want General Eisenhower to be swayed by Parker.”
My foolish husband held out a hand, and I pulled him to his feet. “General Eisenhower does not strike me as the sort of man to be swayed by an idiot.”
“Even geniuses can be stupid when they’re scared.” He grunted as he stood, which did not fill me with anything like confidence. But I know my husband, and he’s the sort of man who will work until his death. He reached for his shirt and winced.
I picked up the bathrobe he’d been loaned and held it out. “Do you want to shower first? Might loosen you up.”
He nodded and let me help him into the bathrobe, then shuffled down the hall. I went to the kitchen to find Mrs. Lindholm. The unmistakable aroma of bacon met me before I was through the door.
I braced myself to have that conversation with every meal. They were kind people, and we’d be sleeping in a field if not for them. Well … maybe that was a little melodramatic. We would have slept in the plane, but still. And then I heard what they were talking about, and the bacon became insignificant.
“… keep thinking about the girls I went to school with. Pearl was in Baltimore.” Mrs. Lindholm’s voice broke.
“There now…”
“Sorry—I’m being such a goose. You want raspberry or strawberry jam with your toast?”
I rounded the corner while the topic was innocuous. Mrs. Lindholm bustled at the counter, with her back to me. She wiped a hand under her eyes.
Major Lindholm sat at the kitchen table. Coffee steamed in a cup held loosely in his right hand. He had a newspaper in the left, but was frowning over it at his wife.
As I entered, he looked around and put a smile on like a mask. “Hope we didn’t wake you last night.”
“Nathaniel did, which was just as well, or I would have woken with the worst crick in my neck.” We went through the requisite pleasantries while he supplied me with a cup of coffee.
Do I have to explain the glories of a fresh cup of coffee? The deep redolent steam rising from the cup woke me before the first gloriously bitter drop even touched my lips. Not just bitter, but caressing waves of dark alertness. I sighed and relaxed into my chair. “Thank you.”
“What about breakfast? Eggs? Bacon? Toast?” Mrs. Lindholm pulled a plate out of the cupboard. Her eyes were only a little red. “I have some grapefruit.”
&nb
sp; How far inland had Florida’s citrus groves been? “Eggs and toast would be lovely, thank you.”
Major Lindholm folded his paper and pushed it away from him. “That’s right. Myrtle mentioned that you were Jews. Come over during the war?”
“No, sir. Oh—” I looked up as Mrs. Lindholm set a plate with eggs and toast in front of me. The eggs had been fried in the bacon grease. They smelled very good. Damn it. I used the act of buttering my toast to collect my thoughts. “My family came over in the 1700s and settled in Charleston.”
“Is that so?” He sipped his coffee. “I never met a Jew before the war.”
“Oh, you probably did, but they had their horns hidden.”
“Ha!” He slapped his knee. “Fair point.”
“Actually, my grandmother…” The toast and butter required all of my attention. “My grandmother and her sisters still spoke Yiddish in the home.”
Mrs. Lindholm settled in the chair next to me and watched, as if I were an exhibition at the museum. “Well, I never.” A little frown deepened the creases in her forehead. “And did they … well, you said Charleston, did they have Southern accents?”
I turned up the accent, which I’d learned to tone down in Washington. “Y’all want to come over for Rosh Hashanah? Well, mazel tov, y’all!”
They laughed until tears streamed down their faces as I went through the Yiddish I knew, with the Charleston accent turned on high. It hadn’t sounded strange when I was growing up. I’d just thought that was the way Yiddish was pronounced, until we started going to synagogue in D.C.
Nathaniel appeared in the doorway, moving with a little more ease. “Something smells good.”
Mrs. Lindholm jumped up and fixed a plate for him. The major talked genially about nothing. We were all pre tending so desperately that nothing was out of place. But the newspaper lying on the table showed a picture of New York City, transformed into a misshapen Venice, where the streets were watery canals framed by windowless skyscrapers.
The Calculating Stars Page 4
