In the Unlikely Event (9 page)

By Henry Ammerman

DEC. 18—The Miami Airlines C-46 that crashed here on Sunday was a doomed flight. It had been turned over to maintenance personnel just one hour before its scheduled departure that morning. They worked furiously behind the scenes as passengers fretted in the departure lounge. The flight was delayed five hours.

It was not long enough. As the aircraft climbed, air controllers saw smoke trailing from the right engine. They called the pilot and authorized him to return on any runway. He never answered that call, but witnesses saw the landing gear lowered. The pilot struggled to turn in the fatal moments before the flames and a collapsed wing deprived him of control.

Parts of the plane rained down on residential neighborhoods. Home owners on Verona Avenue, a mile from the crash, found pieces of aluminum and belting material in their yards. Joseph O. Fluet has been placed in charge of investigating the disaster for the Civil Aeronautics Board. He has put out a call for any found parts to be turned in to the police.

4

Miri

Some parents suggested it might be seen as inappropriate to hold a Christmas pageant this year. Others asked what could be more appropriate than celebrating the birth of Jesus and the spirit of the holiday season.

The principal decided the show must go on. It would be performed twice—once in the afternoon for the kids at school and the parents who didn't work, and again that night, for working parents and friends. That's when Rusty would come.

Miri marched in the choir. She loved the green choir robe with the white collar, and carrying the slim pencil flashlight that looked like a candle. The sound of their voices singing together gave her goose bumps it was so beautiful. She felt the same when she listened to the choir at Temple B'nai Israel but that was just on the High Holidays, the only time her family attended services, except for seventh grade, when the boys in her class had been bar mitzvahed and every week there was another celebration. Then she'd had to go with her friends to Friday night and Saturday morning services. The parties were lavish affairs at catering halls or places like Chi-Am Chateau.

But no matter how thrilling it was to Miri, she couldn't convince Irene to come to the pageant. Irene said it hurt to hear Miri singing songs about Jesus. Miri explained over and over that the songs didn't mean anything to her. They were just songs. So what if they were about Jesus? He was a Jew, wasn't he? They'd had this discussion every year since Miri joined the choir at Hamilton. Every year Irene told her it was against her principles. Why didn't they celebrate the story of Hanukkah and sing Hanukkah songs, too? Deep inside, Miri knew Irene was right. It was unfair to celebrate only one religion. Still, she continued to march down the aisle singing “Adeste Fidelis” in Latin.

Natalie's mother didn't mind that Natalie was portraying Mary, mother of Jesus, in the Christmas pageant.
It's about acting
, Corinne said.
Not about believing
. If only Miri could convince Irene of that.

On the day of the afternoon performance of the pageant, halfway through, something happened onstage, something Miri couldn't see because the choir was seated in front of the stage, facing the audience, and the pageant was unfolding behind them. A murmur went through the audience, and when Miri turned to see what was going on, Natalie was sobbing. This was not part of the pageant, although
the audience didn't know it yet. Natalie wasn't supposed to talk or cry or do anything but look holy while cradling the baby Jesus, who was played by a doll swaddled in a blanket.

“I hear the babies crying,” Natalie said once, clearly, before she ran offstage. The audience still didn't get it. They were probably thinking this was some new, hastily added tribute to those who had lost their lives in the crash—until the other Mary, the nighttime Mary, Lois Morano, took Natalie's place onstage. When Lois picked up the baby Jesus the pageant continued.

Miri was both surprised and not surprised. Since the crash Natalie had been acting weird—that business about the buzzing in her head and Ruby talking to her. Natalie could be overly dramatic but she would never give up the chance to be onstage. Miri caught sight of Corinne, rushing out of the auditorium as the choir sang “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” She wondered if she should leave, too, because, after all, she was Natalie's best friend. But that would be awkward since she was seated smack in the middle of the middle row of the choir.

After the recessional, when the choir marched out singing “Joy to the World,” Miri tried to find someone who could tell her what happened to Natalie. Mrs. Domanski, the choir director, explained that Natalie had suffered stomach pains, probably brought on by stage fright, and had gone home with her mother. Miri knew that Natalie never suffered stage fright, though she often had stomach pains.

She hadn't expected to see Henry. “Thank you for coming,” she said, hugging him. She knew how busy he was.

“I was in the last row. Missed the processional, but caught the change of Marys onstage. What was that about?”

Miri shrugged. “I don't know.”

Henry was the only one in their family to own a car—a '38 green Chevy coupe with a rumble seat. But today was no day to sit in a rumble seat, unless you wanted to wind up frozen to death, so Miri sat up front with Henry and asked him to drop her at Natalie's house. He glanced over at her but didn't ask any questions.

MRS. BARNES WAS TALL
, with excellent posture, and wore her silvery hair pulled back in a bun. “Natalie is upstairs, resting,” Mrs. Barnes told Miri, when Miri rang the bell.

Miri didn't ask for permission to go up. She took the wide stairs two at a time, but before she reached the landing, Mrs. Barnes called, “Miri!”

Miri stopped.

“I hear you were there when the plane crashed.”

She nodded.

Mrs. Barnes said, “My son Tim is a pilot.”

She nodded again. Mrs. Barnes was always talking about her son, the pilot.

“He says the pilot of that plane tried to avoid the residential area. That's why he brought it down in the riverbed. He saved a lot of lives.”

“I know. My uncle wrote about it in the
Daily Post
.”

“I forgot your uncle is a reporter. He should talk to Tim. He says it was maintenance. That's the problem with those non-scheduled airlines—you don't know who's doing the maintenance. They don't have the same standards as the majors. It's a risk to fly them. Tim flies with American. Top-notch. You can trust them.”

“I've never flown,” Miri said.

“When you do.”

“I doubt I will.”

“Of course you will.”

Miri shook her head. When she learned the fiery thing that fell from the sky was a plane, she vowed she would never set foot on one.

Natalie was lying on her bed, her pale curls fanned out on the pillow. She looked like an angel, her cheeks still rosy from stage makeup, the Pixie Pink lipstick not yet worn off. Miri sat on the edge of the bed and reached for Natalie's hand.

“I made a complete fool of myself,” Natalie said. “I'll never be able to go back to school.”

“Everyone will understand.”

“Understand what?”

“You know.”

Natalie looked at Miri, waiting for her to spell it out.

“Understand that you're…” Miri began.

“What?”

“Understand that you're sensitive.” Miri was proud for coming up with such a good word.

“Is that like saying I'm dramatic, or crazy?”

Miri was careful now. “
Sensitive
is better than
dramatic
, and it's definitely not as bad as
crazy
.”

“
You
saw the crash but
you
didn't cry in the middle of the Christmas pageant.”

“Everyone is different.” Miri didn't add,
You don't know what's inside of me. You don't know about the smell in my nostrils, you don't know how I have to sleep in bed with my mother half the night, or that the only thing she'll say about it is
, It's over and it's never going to happen again.

Natalie held on to Miri's hand, and looked around as if there might be someone else in her room. Then she lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “You know that dancer, Ruby Granik?”

“My uncle is interviewing her family,” Miri said.

Natalie let go of Miri's hand and sat up, intrigued by this information. “Do you think he'd interview me?”

“He's only talking to people who knew her. Family. Friends. People who worked with her.”

Natalie's voice went very low. “What I could tell him is just as important, maybe more important. Not that I'd want him to use my name.”

“Like what?”

“Swear you'll never tell?”

“I already swore I wouldn't, remember?”

“She's the one who cried in the middle of the Christmas pageant today because she'll never have another Christmas. She's the one who keeps telling me about the babies inside the plane.” Natalie jumped off her bed. “I have to get ready for dance class. Come with me.”

“Wait, I thought…”

But Natalie grabbed her hatbox-shaped dance bag and ran down
the stairs, with Miri trailing behind her. Natalie was full of surprises today, Miri thought. One minute, falling apart onstage, the next, with enough energy to light up the whole house.

“Tell Mom I've gone to dance class,” Natalie called to Mrs. Barnes.

Mrs. Barnes met her at the kitchen door. “I thought you weren't feeling well.”

“I'm better now,” Natalie said. “And Miri's coming with me. We'll take the bus. Mom can pick me up at the usual time.”

At tap class Natalie was the best. Her feet led the way and the rest of her body followed. Double pullbacks, traveling time steps, wings—she could do it all. No one in her class could begin to keep up with her.

After class, Natalie gave her teacher, Erma Rankin, her Christmas gift, which Miri guessed from the size and shape of the box was a Volupté compact, tied with the same holiday paper and red ribbon her grandmother used.

Miss Rankin said, “Thank you, Natalie. I'm going to miss you. I hope you'll still come to visit from time to time.”

“What do you mean?” Natalie asked.

“I've taught you all I can. As I told your mother a few weeks ago, you're ready to study with the masters. I'm going to suggest a few teachers in New York.”

“You told my mother?”

“Yes, just after Thanksgiving.” Erma Rankin read the look on Natalie's face. “Oops! I'll bet she was saving that as a holiday surprise.”

“Did you hear that?” Natalie asked Miri in the changing room. “Did you hear what she said?”

Miri nodded. “Yes.”

“Do you know what this means?” Natalie asked.

“It means you have talent.”

“Yes,” Natalie said. “But it's Ruby's talent. Don't you see? She's dancing through me now. She's living inside me.”

“But Miss Rankin said she told your mother at Thanksgiving.”

“But she didn't tell
me
until today. Because today I was so much better than I was at Thanksgiving.”

Even though she swore she wouldn't, Miri wondered again if she should tell someone about Natalie. But who would she tell and what would she say? She was still thinking about it at the pageant that night, and after, when Rusty took her to Schutt's, the ice cream parlor on Morris Avenue, for a hot fudge sundae.

By Henry Ammerman

DEC. 19—She was 22, with the longest legs he'd ever seen. “She could dance,” Jimmy Bower said. “She could really dance! That girl was going places.”

That girl was Ruby Granik, on her way to dance at the Vagabond Club in Miami when she boarded the ill-fated Miami Airlines C-46 on a bitterly cold Sunday afternoon. The flight had already been delayed two hours and Ruby and the other passengers waited another three before they boarded.

“I begged her to wait,” her best friend, Dana Lynley, said, “but she insisted on taking the non-sked. It was less money and money was tight. She hadn't been paid yet for her last job and she needed to get to Miami. You didn't win an argument with Ruby. Once she made up her mind there was no going back. That's how she lived her life.”

“I knew her since she was born,” Billy Morrison, owner of Billy's Tavern and family friend, said. “I served her her first legal drink, a pink lady. I made it weak but it still made her tipsy. Her father was my best friend. There are no words,” he said, visibly shaken. “None.”

Her uncle, Fire Captain Victor Szabo, of Elizabeth Engine Company #3 said, “I knew Ruby was on that plane. I knew it and yet when the call came in and my unit sped to the scene of the crash, I had to force myself not to think of her inside that broken pile in the Elizabeth River. I had to do my job. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. My wife and Ruby's mother are sisters. My wife had gone out to Queens to keep Ruby's parents company for a few days. We have no children so we thought of Ruby as our daughter, too. We couldn't have been more proud. It's a devastating loss.” He paused and turned away, using a handkerchief to dab at his eyes. When he regained his composure he said, voice breaking, “There was nothing left of Ruby but that Bulova watch and the infant in her arms.”

The infant belonged to Ruby's seatmate. At 7 months, he was the youngest member of a family—his mother, his grandmother and his 2-year-old brother—all of whom died when the C-46 crashed and exploded.

Ruby's last stop before leaving New York for the airport was Hanson's Drug Store. Jimmy Bower, who worked behind the counter and had once danced with Ruby in a show, was distraught. “She loved all things strawberry,” he said. “I made her a strawberry ice cream soda. I kidded her about eating the Maraschino cherry on top. She enjoyed it down to the last lick. Sunday was the saddest day of my life. A lot of the dancers who hang out here feel the same way. Ruby lit up the room, always ready to enjoy a joke, always with that dynamite smile.”

The owner of the Vagabond in Miami, where Ruby was heading, said there was no replacing Ruby. “Oh, sure, there are plenty of dancers out there, but Ruby had that certain something. That je ne sais quoi, if you'll pardon my French,” Frank Viti said. “She made the audience feel special, as if every dance move was just for them. Not that many dancers connect on a personal level, but Ruby Granik gave it her all.”

Her mother said she was an ambitious girl. “Since she was a child she knew what she wanted and she figured out how to get it. She didn't depend on anyone to hand it to her. Not Ruby. We named her for Ruby Keeler, my favorite movie star. Who knew our Ruby would also be a dancer, a star? When our family hit rough times and I had to give up my job to care for my husband, Ruby became our sole support. But our girl never complained. She was a gem, just like her name.”

Her boyfriend, brother of actor and entertainer Danny Thomas, declined this reporter's request for an interview. He was in seclusion, according to family members, mourning the loss of a wonderful girl.

5

Christina

Christina Demetrious was done in by that news story.
Ruby was an ambitious girl…she knew what she wanted
, Ruby's mother said. She couldn't get that line out of her head. If
she
died suddenly, would her
mother say that about her? She didn't think so. Her mother didn't know who she was or what she wanted. And that thought made her cry as much as the story in the paper.

Christina and her family had been at an anniversary party for her aunt and uncle in Metuchen on the day the plane crashed. The next morning, when Papou, her grandfather, had taken out the trash, he'd found pieces of the plane in their yard. Her father dropped them off at the police station on his way to work at his restaurant, Three Brothers Luncheonette. Baba was disappointed she wasn't coming to work with him at the restaurant after graduation. She might have if there weren't already four male cousins waiting to take over when Baba and her uncles retired. None of them believed a girl had any place working in a restaurant except as a waitress, a cashier or maybe a bookkeeper. Athena was smart to go into business with Mama, where she had a real future.

Christina was sure Dr. O would cancel the annual holiday outing to New York. She could see the toll the crash had taken, the way Dr. O worked all day, then rushed to the makeshift morgue to help identify bodies by their dental records. That would take the steam out of anyone. Sure, Dr. O still told jokes in the office—the one about the guy with the carrot in his ear was his latest—and he still whistled his patients' favorite tunes while he worked on their teeth, but she could see it in his eyes, a sadness that was never there before.

This was the third year Christina had worked for Dr. O after school. He'd asked her to work for him full-time starting in June, when she graduated from Battin High School, and she was going to take him up on his offer.

If her mother knew who sometimes came to Dr. O's office she would faint. Faint and then forbid her ever to return. Or maybe the other way around. Forbid, then faint. Her mother lived to see her girls safely married to Greek husbands, as if then nothing bad could happen to them. She already had her eye on someone for Christina, Zak Galanos. He was a senior at Newark State, majoring in education. Next year he'd be teaching. His father worked at Singer's and was known around town as the Sewing Machine Man because he
could repair or recondition any Singer. Christina's father thought she could do better. A businessman, maybe, or a lawyer.

If her father knew she'd met Longy Zwillman, New Jersey's most notorious gangster, at Dr. O's office, let alone held a dental mirror in his mouth, she didn't know what he'd do. But it wouldn't be good. Now that Longy had a fancy society wife, two children, and lived in an ivy-covered mansion in West Orange, he was considered a wealthy businessman, not a gangster. He was active in the community, philanthropic, giving money to synagogues and other Jewish charities. No more talk of murder or other crimes. Still, everyone in her parents' generation knew about him.

We don't discuss what happens in the office
, Daisy always reminded her. Daisy Dupree had worked as Dr. O's secretary forever, since he set up his dental practice nearly twenty years ago. She was considered family by the Osners. Christina was learning from Daisy how to be discreet.
Discretion
. A word most of her classmates had never heard, and certainly never practiced.

Yesterday, Daisy had taken her aside to explain the rules for this year's holiday outing. “Mrs. Osner has imposed a moratorium on crash talk,” Daisy said. “And, Christina…why don't you wear the sweater set Mrs. Osner gave you for your birthday? I know she'd like to see it on you.”

She'd be happy to wear the sweater set. It was beautiful. Mrs. Osner's gifts always were. As for happy talk, she could do that. Who wanted to talk about the crash, anyway? Who wanted to think that only eight people could be identified by their faces?
Only eight
. They all needed a break, didn't they?

THE TRIP FROM ELIZABETH
to New York on the train took twenty-three minutes, with one stop in Newark. Christina brought along her knitting. She was making argyle socks for Jack for Christmas. The contrasting colors hung on dangling bobbins, not easy to keep straight on a herky-jerky train. She couldn't work on them at home, except alone in her bedroom, because everyone knew you knitted
argyle socks only for a boyfriend. When she was with the family she worked on the scarf she was knitting for Jack's younger brother, Mason, or the matching coat for Mason's dog, Fred. If Mama asked,
Who is that for, Christina?
she could say it was for Mr. Durkee, her favorite teacher, and Mama would approve.

Daisy, who was sitting next to her on the train, leaned over and said, “I love those socks!”

“They're for Jack.” Daisy knew Christina had a boyfriend. She'd met him once, when he'd brought his brother to the office. Christina was proud of Jack. He knew how to shake hands and look a person right in the eye. Plus, he had a great smile without ever having had orthodontia. She couldn't tell Mama or Baba about Jack because he wasn't Greek, which was too bad, because she was sure they'd like him.

“Lucky Jack!” Daisy said. Then she went back to the book she was reading. Christina couldn't see the title because Daisy covered her books in oilcloth to keep them clean, the same pattern as the covering on the kitchen table at Christina's house.

This year Natalie brought her friend Miri on the holiday outing, and the two girls sat together in their matching camel-hair coats, yakking away. They seemed so young to Christina, even though she knew they'd be in tenth grade at Battin next year. Had she been that young three years ago? She didn't think so.

Steve was reading that new book
The Catcher in the Rye
. Christina had no idea what the title meant. Some of the girls at school went on dates to Staten Island, where you could be legally served at eighteen. Some of them had fake IDs. They drank rye-and-ginger ales. Maybe that's what the title meant.
The Catcher in the Rye and Ginger Ale
. The idea made her laugh. If she wanted to know more she'd have to go to the public library and reserve a copy of the book. Maybe she would.

The train swerved, causing Christina to drop a stitch. She rested her knitting on her lap and looked over at Mrs. Osner, who sat with Fern. She didn't get why they let Fern drag that cowboy bunny everywhere, and even worse, let her tell people he had no penis. In Christina's family Fern would get her mouth washed out with soap just for saying that word out loud.

Mrs. Osner was wearing her mink coat and alligator pumps. She carried a matching alligator pocketbook. A small mink hat was perched on top of her short blond hair. Her nails were perfectly manicured. She used just a touch of makeup to accent her eyes and a bit of rouge to give her a healthy glow. Christina couldn't help imagining Mrs. Osner's underwear. She'd grown up playing on the floor of her mother's shop, Nia's Lingerie, with the packing boxes from the girdles and brassieres as her toys. She'd watched as her mother had gently guided excess flesh into boned and padded girdles, lifted sagging breasts into brassiere cups, telling each customer to take a big breath and hold it as she hooked the bottoms of the brassieres into the tops of the girdles. But Mrs. Osner was trim and probably wore just a panty girdle, bra and slip. No bones or hooks for her.

She shifted in her seat and picked up her knitting. She felt bloated. She'd doubled her pads, sprinkled them with baby powder, and neatly pinned them to her sanitary belt. Her mother had forbidden her to use Tampax until after she was safely married. “It could spoil you,” Mama said. Christina got the message. It's good her mother didn't know how far she'd already gone with Jack.

EVERY YEAR
their first stop in the city was lining up to see the Christmas windows at Lord & Taylor, followed by the viewing of the huge, beautiful tree at Rockefeller Center and the skaters in the rink below. Christina sometimes skated on the frozen pond in Warinanco Park, but she had never worn a velvet skating skirt or learned to twirl with her head tilted back.