In the Unlikely Event (44 page)

T
he flight attendant gently nudges Miri. They're coming into Newark and her seat back has to be returned to its upright position. She's still a nervous flier, still digs her fingernails into the fabric of her seat cushion for landings. She could have waited until tonight and come with Christina and Jack on the company plane but she wanted to do this on her own.

It's not the first time she's flown into Newark Airport. The flight path no longer brings planes in or out over residential Elizabeth. Not since the airport reopened in November 1952. But that doesn't stop her from thinking about it every time. It doesn't stop her from rushing to the doctor before a flight, sure she has a sinus infection, hoping to be told it's not safe for her to fly. She closes her eyes, sings a little song inside her head until they're safely on the ground. Then she's up and on her way with all the other passengers.

Outside, she grabs a taxi to the old Elizabeth Carteret hotel, the hotel where Joseph Fluet stayed during the investigations, where Mr. Foster stayed while Betsy and Mrs. Foster were in the hospital, where Ben Sapphire stayed when he wasn't sleeping on Irene's couch. And where Dr. O went when Corinne kicked him out of the house. Miri had been inside the hotel just once, for a bar mitzvah party back in seventh grade. She can still remember the dress she wore, one of Charlotte Whitten's, though she didn't know it at the time. Black velvet top, sweetheart neckline, white net skirt. She tries to
imagine Eliza wearing a party dress and gets a picture in her mind of her fifteen-year-old daughter, named for the city she's returning to, galloping on her beloved horse in one of Charlotte Whitten's dresses from Bonwit's. She laughs out loud. When is the last time
she
wore a cocktail dress? No, wait—she remembers—Frank Sinatra's opening at the Sands, where they celebrated Rusty's sixty-fifth birthday. He'd dedicated “Fly Me to the Moon” to Rusty, which made her night.

Miri didn't want a big bash for her fiftieth. She made Andy promise, no surprise party. She hated surprise parties. Christina threw a barbecue at the ranch anyway, but at least it wasn't a surprise. She and Andy danced the Hustle, the Bump, the Funky Chicken, to prove to their sons, Malcolm and Kenny, both college students, and to teenage Eliza, how young they were, how hip, never mind that their kids had moved on to new dance fads. Andy is a great dancer, much better than she is. He's still trying to get her to loosen up on the dance floor. He's a skier, a mountain biker, an easygoing, well-liked guy. He's made a name for himself in forensic dentistry. She fought him on that one. She had enough disasters in her life. But he won, promising not to bring the details of his work to the dinner table.

Her hotel room is nothing to write home about, but it's clean and light, looking out over Jersey Avenue. Christina and Jack are staying in a suite at the Pierre in New York. They offered her an adjoining room, but she opted for Elizabeth, explaining she was having dinner with Henry and Leah, who would also be staying at the Elizabeth Carteret. And she's been thinking about a story based on the thirties gangland slaying that took place in a suite on the eighth floor of this hotel. She's never lost her fascination for the Jewish gangsters.

She sits on the edge of the bed and dials Eliza at school. It's midafternoon there so she's surprised when Eliza answers in a sleepy voice. “Hullo?” She didn't expect her to answer at all, thought she'd just leave a message on her machine, the way she had this morning.

“Hi, honey. Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn't I be all right?”

“I expected you to be at class. Or at the stables.” She means to sound soft, maternal, but knows she sounds judgmental. The school, in the mountains of Colorado, was highly recommended by the counselor they'd consulted. It was supposed to do wonders for children like Eliza, bright but unmotivated, who would rather shovel manure than read.

“You're calling to check up on me?”

“No, I just wanted to tell you I'm at the hotel. In Elizabeth.”

“I can't believe you actually went.”

“Well, I did.”

“It just seems really stupid to me. It's not like it's your high school reunion or anything.”

“No.” Miri resists a laugh. To Eliza a high school reunion must seem like one of life's major events.

“Well, it's your dime and your time. Just don't expect me to tell you to enjoy yourself.”

“No, of course not.” Miri no longer expects anything from her daughter, except to be challenged, berated and humiliated.

“So I'll see you when I see you,” Eliza says. A statement, not a question.

“President's Weekend,” Miri reminds her. “Tahoe.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot.” Eliza yawns loudly. “Will everyone be there?”

“I hope so.” Miri doesn't ask who Eliza means by
everyone
. Maybe the boys and their friends.

Silence.

“Eliza…are you still there?”

“Where else would I be?”

“Okay, then,” Miri says, trying her best to keep it upbeat, positive. “Take care and I'll see you soon. Bye, honey.”

Eliza shouts, “You know I don't like goodbyes!” She slams down the receiver.

How is it that Miri, who longed for a daughter after two sons, has
wound up with an angry, sullen child like Eliza? She's still trying to figure out where it went wrong but can't put her finger on it.

She unpacks, hanging up her suit for tomorrow, and sets her toiletries on the little shelf above the bathroom sink. She studies herself in the mirror. It's unsettling how different she looks away from home, away from the familiar reflection in her bathroom mirror. Last time she looked at herself in a mirror in Elizabeth she was fifteen and growing out her Elizabeth Taylor haircut. Now she's fifty.
Jesus, fifty!
And her hair is long, lightly permed, with golden highlights. An improvement, she thinks. She's in good shape, runs five miles a day, but instead of running from someone—Rusty, Mason, Natalie—the way she did that year, she runs to clear her head, to give herself a burst of energy that carries her through the day.

Christina has been trying to prepare her for seeing Mason tomorrow by dishing out small bits of information—his wife, Rebecca, will be visiting her ailing parents in Sarasota, his daughter and twin sons are all at college—but Miri hasn't been willing to talk about it. “Please…” she said to Christina. “That was so long ago. We were just kids.” She knows Christina doesn't buy her nonchalance but she lets it go.

Miri can't admit she's nervous about seeing him.
Come on, who wouldn't be nervous about seeing her first love? Who wouldn't want her old boyfriend to find her attractive?
If you don't want that, you don't go to high school reunions, you don't go to the thirty-fifth commemoration of the worst year of your life. Besides, she's not fifteen anymore. She's not that girl whose heart was broken on a sunny afternoon in May. She's a woman, married with three children and a career. She's responsible, dependable, mature.
Right?
she asks herself.
Right
, she answers.

She stays up too late that night, watching
A Place in the Sun
on TV. She'd seen it with Rusty at the Regent movie theater
that
winter, the year it won six Academy Awards. They'd each gone through two handkerchiefs, bawling over the young Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. Rusty planned to come with her to Elizabeth for tomorrow's commemorative event, but Dr. O's health is
too fragile, even though Fern is a doctor and offered to stay at the house.

THEY GATHER
the next morning at the site of the third crash, in the field behind Janet Memorial. The old home is in disrepair, no longer used to house children in need, children without parents or family to care for them. She wonders where those children go now. It's a bright, sunny day, mild compared to the bitterly cold winter of 1952.

Miri stands between Christina and Henry, oversize sunglasses covering half her face, a cashmere shawl thrown over her new suit.

She and Christina had gone shopping for today's event. They'd each bought a designer suit with big shoulders, right out of
Dynasty
. They'd laughed their heads off in the dressing room. Christina is the best friend Miri always wanted. The real deal. When it comes to dynasties, Christina and Jack have their own.
Irish Jack
, that's what they called him in the early days. He'd built his dynasty slowly, shrewdly—though he swears he didn't have a clue back then, just knew he wanted to work hard and be successful for Christina and their girls. An understatement, if ever there was one. Went from being an electrician to an electrical contractor to a general contractor to owning one of the biggest commercial construction companies in the West, with
IRISH JACK
lettered on the side of his plane.

THE MAYOR
, Thomas Dunn, who was a Sixth Ward councilman that winter, speaks from a platform. “The fifty-eight-day period that ended here on February eleventh, 1952, at twelve-twenty a.m., was the most memorable of my life, outside of World War Two. Our mayor at the time called it ‘The Umbrella of Death.' Others referred to our town as ‘Plane Crash City.' But we know better. We know our city survived the American Revolution. George Washington slept here, as we learned as schoolchildren. We have been and always
will be a proud revolutionary city, a welcoming city to immigrants from all over the world, where your parents and grandparents and even great-grandparents settled. Today I welcome all of you and ask that you bow your heads in remembrance of those we lost, both on the ground and from the air. One hundred sixteen died in that fifty-eight-day period, senselessly, needlessly, randomly. It could have been any of us.”

Already, Miri feels herself choking up.

Three clergymen take turns reading out the names of the dead, beginning with the first crash. Miri waits for the familiar names. Ruby Granik, twenty-two, Estelle Sapphire, fifty-nine. Then the second crash. Kathy Stein, eighteen. Penny Foster, seven. She lets out a small, unexpected cry when Penny's name is read. Henry reaches for her hand. Christina passes her a packet of Kleenex. She wipes her eyes, glad she didn't use mascara, and blows her nose. When all the names have been read, a children's chorus sings a medley—“April Showers,” “Pennies from Heaven,” “Keep on Smiling.” Someone with style has orchestrated this day of events.

After, they form a circle and toss flowers into the center. Most of them have daffodils or tulips but Miri special-ordered a dozen sunflowers through a local florist. Penny loved sunflowers, was always drawing pictures of the sunflowers in the print hanging over her family's fireplace. Then they join hands and close their eyes for a silent prayer.

The ceremony lasts just half an hour. Their personal remarks are to be saved for the luncheon to follow at the Elizabeth Carteret hotel. The mayor makes an announcement that the lunch will be hosted by Natalie Renso, who will be signing books following the program.

Miri looks around the circle but can't find Natalie. She thought Natalie might show up to honor Ruby. Instead, she spots Gaby Wenders, the stewardess, in her old uniform. She must be in good shape, Miri thinks, to fit into that uniform thirty-five years later. And next to Gaby, the boy who rescued her, the boy who saved her life. Miri half expects to see the boy he was then. The boy she loved. Instead, she sees a grown man. Still, her knees grow weak.
For god's
sake
, she thinks, trying to remember what her yoga teacher has taught her about breathing in stressful situations.

He makes the first move, walking briskly across the field to where she is standing. “Miri,” he says. “
Jesus
…Miri…” He wraps his arms around her. Now she can't breathe at all. When he lets go, she pushes her sunglasses up so she can get a look at him. Did she hope he wouldn't be attractive?

He grabs her hand. “I'm so glad to see you.”

“I'm glad to see you, too.” The voice that comes out doesn't sound like hers.

“Can I give you a ride to the lunch?” he asks.

Christina and Jack have a car, so do Henry and Leah, but Miri says, “Sure,” and walks with Mason around the block to his red Mazda RX-7. She almost laughs because Andy drives the same car.

“I'd know you anywhere,” he says, “even with the
hair
.”

“I'd know you, too, even without it.” He's not really without it, just has less on his head, more on his face.

He laughs. And just like that, she's fifteen again. Except she's not.

THEY
'
RE SEATED
at different tables at lunch. She's with Christina and Jack, Henry and Leah, four others. He's across the room with Gaby and her handsome husband, their grown children and young grandchildren, and two men who were boys at Janet then, boys who helped rescue the trapped passengers.

None of her old crowd is here. Suzanne lives in Seattle, married to a neurosurgeon. Miri tries to see her every year. Robo is divorced and has a gift shop in Westfield. Aside from two years at Boston U, she's never left New Jersey. Eleanor is a professor of mathematics at Purdue, married to an economist. She hasn't won the Nobel Prize yet and didn't laugh when, a few years ago, Miri mentioned the possibility.
Some things aren't funny
, Eleanor told her.

Miri and Mason steal looks at one another through lunch. Miri doesn't blush the way Rusty does, but she feels her cheeks flush. She drinks two glasses of wine, too fast. It goes straight to her head.
You go to my head…

She must have sung that line out loud because the woman next to her, a daughter of the Secretary of War who was killed when the second plane crashed, says, “What?”

Miri knows she sometimes sings a line from a song out loud when she means to sing it only inside her head. “I was just thinking of an old song,” she says.