Fallout (13 page)

Once a week, Janet came to clean our house and babysit Sparky and me so that our parents could go out. She'd sleep on a cot in the laundry room and go home in the morning with a Negro man who drove a dented green car with a cracked windshield. Sometimes when Sparky and I left for school in the morning, the car would be parked in front of our house and the man would be inside it, waiting.

One afternoon back in September, I was playing with my plastic army men on the white shag carpet when Mom called, “Get in the car, kids. We're driving Janet home.”

“She's not staying over?” Sparky asked.

“No, your father and I aren't going out tonight.”

Mom and Janet got in the front, and Sparky and I sat in the back.

“You'll have to tell me how to get there,” Mom said as we backed out of the driveway.

“I'm not exactly sure, Mrs. Porter. Elmore does the driving.”

“Oh, I know,” Mom said. “I'm that way when Richard drives.”

It sounded strange when Mom referred to Dad by his first name. She seemed to know where to go for a while, but then we got to a corner and she stopped and glanced at Janet.

“I think it's a right turn, Mrs. Porter.”

It was starting to feel like an adventure. At the next light, Mom asked, “Does this look familiar?”

Janet looked out the window and pulled her lips in. “'Fraid not, Mrs. Porter.”

“I wonder if we missed a turn,” Mom said. The light changed, and we had to start going again. At an Esso gas station at the next corner, Mom pulled in. “I'll be right back.”

While she was in the office, a man in dark-green coveralls strolled past our car. His hands were almost black with grime and grease. When he stopped and squinted at us, Janet looked down. The man took a dirty rag out of his back pocket and wiped his hands. “Everything okay?” he asked me.

I nodded. The man glanced at Janet again and then walked toward a car waiting for gas.

Mom came out of the office and got into the car. “It's a little farther.” She started to drive.

“A man asked if everything was okay,” Sparky said from the back.

“Why?”

“I think because of Janet.”

Janet stared down at her lap again.

“I'm sorry,” Mom said.

“It's not your fault, Mrs. Porter.”

I wasn't sure if Mom was sorry that Sparky had said it or sorry that the man had asked in the first place.

“Oh, there! There!” Janet suddenly got excited and pointed. “That's the street!”

Mom turned so quickly that the tires screeched, and we all slid to the right. “Aha!” She let out a gasping laugh that sounded like half relief and half surprise that the car didn't wind up on the sidewalk. Lining the street were small brick houses with white shutters. The houses were so close together that there was barely room for a driveway between them. The small yards had low metal fences and gates. In our neighborhood one lawn blended into the next, and no one had a fence. Some Negro boys around my age were playing baseball in the street, and inside a gated yard, some girls were playing teatime with dolls around a small table. The boys eyed us warily as we passed. When my friends and I played on the street, we rarely looked to see who was in the cars that went by.

“There.” Janet pointed to the right. “The one with the sunflowers.”

Mom pulled to the curb. Parked in the driveway was the dented green car with the cracked windshield. The hood was raised, and tools were scattered on the ground. Tall yellow sunflowers lined the yard. A tricycle lay on the grass.

Janet gathered her things. “Thank you so much for driving me home, Mrs. Porter.”

“It was no bother, Janet.” Mom looked at the flowers. “How pretty.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Porter,” Janet said as she got out. “Elmore loves to roast the seeds, but he better pick them quick before the birds get 'em.”

The kids in the street were still watching us. It was hard to imagine how they could play when the balls must have constantly rolled under the parked cars that lined the curb.

Then I noticed that two small faces had come to a window in Janet's house. It felt like
High Noon
when the bad men rode into town and everyone peeked from behind curtains.

Mom started back the way we came. When we passed the Esso station, the man in the dark green coveralls was pumping gas.

“Why did he ask if everything was okay?” Sparky said.

I expected Mom to say she didn't know, but instead she said, “That's just the way some people are, Edward.”

“They don't like Negroes sitting in the same car as white people?” I asked.

Mom nodded.

“I thought that was only in the South,” I said.

“I think there's a little bit of it everywhere.”

Dad tries the radio again: nothing.

“Could it mean the Russians won?” Ronnie asks.

“Nobody won,” mutters Mr. Shaw. “We destroyed them, and they destroyed us.”

“Maybe not,” Dad says. “Maybe Kennedy ordered our side not to retaliate.”

“What are you talking about?” asks Mr. McGovern.

“There's no sense in destroying everything,” says Dad.

Paula's father laughs contemptuously. “Ridiculous. He'd never let the Russians win.”

“How do you know?”

“It's obvious you're no student of history, Richard.” Mr. McGovern sounds like he thinks he's so smart and Dad's so dumb. Now I know where Paula gets it. “Great men think of their place in history. They think about what they'll be remembered for. You really believe Kennedy would risk being remembered as the leader of the free world who refused to fight back? As the coward who allowed the Communists to take over? You actually think the president is hiding in a bunker somewhere waiting to surrender?”

I hate the way Mr. McGovern talks to Dad, but what I hate almost as much is how what he says sounds right. When Dad doesn't reply, I wonder if he also thinks Mr. McGovern is right.

“If the Russians did win, would we be their prisoners?” Ronnie asks.

Mr. McGovern snorts. “Just what they need. More mouths to feed. I suppose they'd need men and women for work camps, but they're no strangers to atrocities. Anyone who's familiar with their actions during the war would know that.”

Sparky tugs at Dad. “What's he mean?”

“Nothing.” Dad shushes him.

“Far from it,” says Mr. McGovern.

Dad gets to his feet and steps toward Mr. McGovern, who is sitting with Paula. You can feel everyone grow tense. “That's it, Herb,” Dad growls. “If you know what's good for you.”

But Mr. McGovern doesn't look afraid. Maybe because he knows Dad would never do anything in front of Paula and us. I almost wish he would, though.

When Janet isn't helping Mom, she sits alone and hugs her knees, staring at a spot on the floor. She hasn't been mean or done anything bad to anyone. It must be awful for her, knowing Mr. McGovern doesn't want her here.

I go sit next to her. Pulling the blanket around his skinny bare shoulders, Sparky sits on her other side and takes her hand. She sniffs and quietly starts to cry.

Sometimes Mom bought bread at the bakery, and it would still be warm on the inside. Sparky and I would spread butter and jelly on it and eat slice after slice. Sometimes she made a pizza, and we would help her press the dough out flat on the pan and cover it with tomato sauce. Sparky loved the chocolate pudding she made, but he hated the thick, gummy layer on top and would give it to me because I liked to eat it with Cool Whip. Or she'd make chocolate-chip cookies and let us eat the batter, which was always better than the cookies themselves. And at breakfast sometimes she would let us pour heavy cream over our Rice Krispies, then Sparky and I would dump sugar all over it, and it was like eating candy.

All I think about is food. I would eat anything anyone gave me right now. Even spinach.

In school, Dickie Keller said that in some parts of Russia they practiced cannibalism. When I got home, Mom was sitting at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette and reading an article in a magazine about decorating bomb shelters. Sparky was in the den watching TV. Recently, she'd started letting him watch all the TV he wanted. And she said I could go to Ronnie's house, even though I hadn't finished my homework.

On the floor in his room, Ronnie and I played game after game of Nok-Hockey with small wooden hockey sticks and a flat wooden puck the size of a fifty-cent piece. Ronnie won most of the time. After a while the door opened, and Mrs. Shaw came in. Her hair was all poofed up, and she had black stuff around her eyes and bright-red lips like Brigitte Bardot. “Phew!” She pinched her nose and fanned her face. “Somebody better start using deodorant.”

When Ronnie lifted his arm to sniff, I saw a dark sweat stain. I felt under my arm. It was as dry as the desert.

“Scotty, your mom called,” Mrs. Shaw said. “It's time for dinner.”

“He can't go,” Ronnie said. “We're in the middle of a huge series. If he goes now, it'll ruin everything.”

That was a lie. We weren't playing a series. Ronnie just didn't want me to leave.

“I'll call her back,” Mrs. Shaw said. “Maybe you can stay.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Shaw.”

She left, and Ronnie gave me a knowing smile. “Another game?”

While we played, I wondered how Ronnie had gotten so good at lying. When I told a lie, I really had to work at it. First I had to stop myself from telling the truth. Then I had to think of the lie I wanted to tell. Then I had to think about whether it was believable or not. Then I had to consider what would happen if I got caught. And only after all that would I dare tell it. But Ronnie was a natural. It was almost like he thought of the lie before he thought of the truth. And they were perfect lies, too. Completely believable if you didn't already know.

We were in the middle of the next game when Mrs. Shaw came in again. “Your mom says you can stay for dinner. Fried chicken, okay?”

“Great, thanks.”

We must have lost track of time because the next thing I knew, the door opened, and there was Mr. Shaw in a business suit. He took a deep sniff and wrinkled his tanned forehead.

“I believe a shower will be de rigueur before you're permitted to attend tonight's soirée, my son,” he said.

Sometimes Ronnie's dad had a strange way of talking, as if even he knew the words sounded funny when he said them. Like it was some kind of inside joke. Now he turned to me. “So, Scott, how about an aperitif while Sport attends to the nether regions?”

I followed him into the den, wondering what half those words meant. Everything in the Shaws' house was new and modern. Instead of white-washed wooden walls, theirs were dark and shiny. Instead of couches made of Naugahyde, which was a kind of plastic imitation leather that stuck to your skin on hot days, theirs were soft and black and made of real leather. In the den, Mr. Shaw opened a cabinet filled with shelves of glimmering glasses. “What'll it be?” he asked himself, and sorted through some bottles. “Ah! Dubonnet!” He took a bottle by the neck. “Hey, Sweet Bumps!” he called cheerfully toward the kitchen. “Wet your whistle?”

“Is the pope Catholic?” Mrs. Shaw called back.

It was like speaking a foreign language using words I knew. I heard the clink of ice in glasses and the splash of liquid. “Be right back,” Mr. Shaw said, and left.

A magazine lay open on the black leather ottoman that went with Mr. Shaw's easy chair. With a jolt I realized that it had to be a
Playboy,
because there was a photo of a naked woman. How could it be just lying there, out in the open, in the middle of the Shaws' den?

The magazine was turned away, so the woman was upside down. I wanted to go over and look at her right-side up, but I was afraid that Mr. Shaw would come back and catch me.

Ronnie's dad returned and gave me a glass with ice and some deep red liquid in it. “Cheers.”

We clinked glasses, and I took a sip. It tasted cold and sweet and strange. A little piece of lemon rind made it tangy. Mr. Shaw settled into his chair and propped the
Playboy
open on his lap. The cover showed the upper half of a naked woman wearing a tie, her arms crossed over her breasts. “How's that bomb shelter, Scott?”