Falling Angels Read online

  He’d probably believe a note like that. He’d like a note that blamed the cold weather, which he hated, instead of blaming him. He might even let them go. She could picture him saying,“What the hell. They’ve got a point.”

  Not that it made any difference now.

  Disneyland 1961

  Christmas morning there was only one gift under the tree for each of them. Ugly green pedal pushers with the “sale item” tags still on for Norma and Lou, and for Sandy, a beatnik doll with a string in its back that you pulled to make it talk. Their father let them be miserable for a while, and then he sprang the surprise. He was going to take them to Disneyland in a top-of-the-line trailer that slept five.

  “When, Daddy? When?” the girls cried.

  He pulled the string on Sandy’s beatnik doll. “I’m hip, like, uh, you know, beatnik,” the doll said.

  “This summer,” their father answered. “So for the next six months, thrift is the watchword.”

  In January air-raid drills started at school for when the Russians dropped the bomb. The principal made a speech in the gymnasium. If it ever suddenly got very light, he said, like a huge flashbulb going off in the sky, you were to cover your eyes with your hands and crouch under your desks until the teacher said it was safe to come out. Then, two by two, you were to file down to the cellar. You were not to try to run home.

  “The hell with that,” their father said when they told him. “You run home.” In spite of the watchword being thrift, he had decided to build a fallout shelter. He had a pamphlet that he’d sent away for called “Pioneers of Self-Defence,” all about how to do it.

  As soon as the ground was soft enough, around the end of April, he hired a man with a bulldozer to dig a big hole in the back yard. The next day another man in a truck delivered a pile of concrete blocks and some pipes and boards and sheets of metal, and their father went right to work.

  It took a month. Every minute that their father wasn’t sleeping or working, he was down in that hole. He even ate his meals there. He let Norma help, and she got pretty good at mixing mortar and hammering nails, as long as he didn’t yell at her that she was doing it all wrong, which, if he stood over her shoulder, she did. In the morning she woke up yearning for the feel of the hammer in her hand, all day at school she dreamed about hammering. She wished she could do it when he wasn’t around, and yet sometimes, when he wasn’t mad or tired, she liked the fact that they worked as a team: she mixing the mortar, he setting the blocks; he sawing the boards, she nailing them down. He had to have everything perfect, and the longer she helped him, the more she wanted everything to be perfect, too, the more she couldn’t blame him for his tantrums. She wondered if he wished he had a son—Jimmy (who would have been thirteen by now)—to help instead of her.

  When the outside was done, the man came back with the bulldozer to shovel the earth back on the roof. Inside, Norma and their father built shelves and fold-up bunks and painted the walls canary yellow, which was supposed to add a note of cheerfulness. Even though Norma said that they never played hopscotch anymore, their father painted a hopscotch on the floor, as recommended by the pamphlet.

  He bought two weeks’ worth of canned food, jugs for the water, candles, lanterns, paper plates, a chemical toilet, canned heat, a fire extinguisher, a camping stove, and a bow and arrow for hunting game when the bullets ran out. The rest of what the pamphlet said he should buy—bedding, Band-Aids, a transistor radio, a flashlight, batteries, board games, a shovel in case they had to dig themselves out from the house falling on top of them—they already had. A small library of books on nature and American history would prove useful and inspirational, the pamphlet said, but he said, did they know how much a book cost nowadays? and he carried down a box of his old Life magazines. He also brought down his World War II gun and three cases of their mother’s whisky.

  Every Monday and Friday the girls had to empty the water jugs and refill them with a fresh supply. They didn’t mind this chore. It was small payment for the notoriety and security of being the safest children in the subdivision. Their friends begged to be able to come in when the bomb dropped, and Sandy said “Sure” to whoever asked her. Norma, understanding just how strictly the shelter was designed for a maximum of five people, said she didn’t think so—at first she always said that—but she ended up saying “Oh, all right,” because how could she leave her friends to die? “Cash in advance,” Lou said. By the end of the school year Lou had made three bucks.

  Their father started to have drills, which were nothing like the ones they’d had at school, where the most important rule was to stay calm. He would blow a whistle, sometimes in the middle of the night, and the girls had to run like crazy to do their assigned tasks: Norma, shut and latch the windows and lock the front door; Lou, pull off the electricity switch and turn off the valve to the water heater; Sandy, shut off the furnace switch. The next morning their mother always claimed she’d slept right through, despite the fact that he went on blowing the whistle and shouting “Move it!” until they were lined up in front of the shelter hatch. Down inside he shone the flashlight on his stopwatch and announced how long it had taken. He shone the light in their faces and told them how they could shave off those precious seconds.

  He slept down there. He put in an electric outlet so that he could listen to his Judy Garland records. The girls imagined him dancing with the shovel, smooching it: “How’s about a little kiss, baby.” They loved him being out of the house in the evenings, because they could change the channels, say whatever they felt like and go to bed late. As long as their mother’s mug was filled with whisky, and the t? was on, she didn’t care what happened.

  The Saturday before the last week of school their father announced that they were going down the bomb shelter for two weeks. All of them, including their mother.

  The girls didn’t get it. Did he mean have a drill every day for two weeks? No, he meant stay down for two weeks. Sleep there? they asked. Sleep there, he said, eat there, not come out for two whole weeks.

  “Oh, my lord,” their mother said quietly.

  “Watch t? down there?” Norma asked.

  “No t?. We’ll be living as if the bomb’s dropped and all electricity is out.”

  Sandy wanted to know what if the phone rang?

  “We’ll tell everyone where we are beforehand.”

  “But won’t you have to go to work?”

  “Nope. I’ve got two weeks coming.”

  They still didn’t get it. “Two more weeks, Daddy?” Norma said.

  “Alrighty,” he said, clapping his hands,“we’ll be going down a week from today. So this Friday I want the sheets and blankets out on the line for an airing. I want the water changed. I want you all to have baths.”

  “But when are we going to Disneyland, then?” Lou asked.

  “We’re not,” he said.

  They weren’t down the shelter an hour when Norma got her first period. Thinking the cramps were from gas, she went into the little closet bathroom and sat on the toilet.

  A few seconds later she called Lou in. “I’m dying,” she whispered, touching the blood in the crotch of her underpants and holding her finger toward the lantern.

  “You moron,” Lou whispered. “It’s the curse.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, what else? What a goddamn moron.”

  “Do you have it?”

  “No,” Lou said, as if she wouldn’t be caught dead.

  Norma looked at the dark stain on her underpants. She was dripping blood into the toilet now. “What am I going to do?”

  “Use Kotex. But I guess there isn’t any down here.” She scanned the shelf beside the toilet. Band-Aids, toilet paper, Turns. “I know there’s some in Mommy’s closet, because I just bought her a box.” She opened the door. “Mommy? Can you come here?”

  “What’s going on?” their father asked.

  “Nothing. Mommy?”

  Their mother’s slippers flapped as she crossed the
floor.

  “Norma’s menstruating,” Lou whispered to her.

  Their mother covered her mouth with both hands.

  “Do we have any Kotex down here?” Lou asked.

  “Jim,” their mother said, turning around. “Lou just has to scoot up to the house for a sec.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he yelled. “There’s radiation out there.”

  “Well, there isn’t really, Jim.”

  “Yeah, but we have to act like there is, or we ruin the whole exercise.”

  “Norma has become a woman.”

  Silence. Norma shut her eyes.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” their father asked again.

  Their mother said, very distinctly,“Ruby Keeler,” which must have been a code name, because their father said,“Jesus Christ.”

  “So Lou just has to scoot up and bring down some napkins,” their mother said.

  “She’s really bleeding?” he said.

  ‘Well, yes, Jim.”

  “Alrighty. We tear up a sheet.” He grabbed a green-striped flannelette sheet from the shelf where the linen was and ripped it in half. “What do ya think the pioneers did?” he asked.

  For the rest of the morning Norma was allowed to lie on the bunk with their mother, who read the TV Guide, smoked cigarettes and sipped whisky from her coffee mug. When their father wasn’t looking, she let Norma have a sip to ease her cramps.

  Lou and Sandy had to stick to The Regime. This was a chart that their father had written out on a piece of yellow Bristol board and nailed to the wall. Down one side was the time of day, and down the other was what they were supposed to do at that time. “Eight o’clock—rise; eight o’clock to eight-fifteen—use toilet in the following order: Dad, Sandy, Norma, Lou, Mom.” Et cetera. In front of some of the events were the initials “l.o.,” standing for “lights out” to save on candles and fuel. For instance, the singsong and afternoon exercises had an l.o. in front of them.

  Ten-thirty to eleven-thirty in the morning was exercises with the lights on. For the first part their father led Lou and Sandy in a march round and round the shelter, hollering,“Hup two three four! Left! Left!” Next was touching toes twenty-five times, and after that was twenty-five push-ups. The floor was cold on their hands, and Lou and Sandy could only do a couple of pushups before their arms gave out.

  “Five! Six! Seven!” their father went on counting. Between each of his push-ups he clapped, holding himself in the air for a second. He glared out of the corner of his eye for them to keep on going, and they managed to do a few more, but it was just too hard.

  He did fifty. Then he bounced up like a jack-in-the-box and shouted,“Stride jumps!”

  They jumped facing him, stepping on each other’s toes and hitting each other’s hands because there wasn’t enough room. His mouth was open in a circle that gusted coffee-smelling breath at them. Sweat streamed down his face. If they’d seen a man on the street looking like he was, they’d have run away.

  “Okay, play hopscotch,” he said after the stride jumps.

  “We need stones,” Lou said.

  “Play without ‘em.” He cranked the blower for air, then poured himself a glass of water. Lou asked if she could have one.

  “Wait ‘til lunch,” he said. “We have to ration.”

  “Psst.” It was their mother. She crooked her finger, and when Lou went over, she sneaked her a sip from her mug. Lou gasped at the fire in her throat.

  “You get used to it,” Norma whispered.

  “We’ll never make it to curtain call otherwise,” their mother whispered.

  Their father lay down on a bottom bunk and had a smoke. Every few seconds he checked his watch until it was time for the next event—“l.o. Singsong.”

  “Alrighty,” he said after he’d put out the lights. “What do you want to sing?”

  “Um,” Lou said. “Um,” she said again to hear her thin voice, like a pin of light in the pitch black. All she could think of was the Jiminy Cricket encyclopedia song, which their father wouldn’t know.

  “It’s a long way to Tipperary,” their father started singing. “Come on! Everybody! Sandy! Norma!”

  “It’s a long way to go,” their mother sang from the bunk in her high, shaky voice.

  Sandy squeezed a hand … their mother’s—she could tell by the smallness. She was half sitting, half lying across their mother’s and Norma’s legs. The dark didn’t scare her anymore up in the house, but in this dark she felt as if she were falling— the whole bed with the three of them on it swirling down. Also there was suddenly a rotting smell that she thought must be Rapunzel, who was buried under the clothesline tree. Was that where the air vent was? Down here, Sandy couldn’t tell directions. The smell was so strong, though, that she figured the air vent must be right next to where Rapunzel was.

  They sang “The British Grenadiers,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Marching to Pretoria” and “You’re a Sap, Mister Jap.” Then they switched to songs from Judy Garland movies, singing these quietly. Dulcet tones was what their father demanded for Judy Garland songs, even for “Ballin’ the Jack” and “The Trolley Bus Song.” They ended with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Their father had a really good voice (it sounded even better in the dark, not seeing him singing), and at the last line of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” the line that goes “Why, oh, why can’t I?” where the girls and their mother knew to slow right down, his voice rose clear and smooth as a boy’s before their higher voices, making a sound in the blackness so beautiful that they were quiet for a moment afterward.

  “We’re like stars,” Norma said. She meant the stars in the sky.

  “Look out, Broadway,” their father said. He struck a match, lit a candle and checked his watch. “Twelve on the dot,” he said. “Lunch time.”

  While Lou mixed up the powdered milk and spread margarine on slices of bread, he heated up two cans of spaghetti on the camping stove. They ate sitting on the edge of the bottom bunks. After one mouthful Norma found she wasn’t hungry. She gave her plate back to their father and asked if she could go to the toilet.

  Her rag was soaking. She couldn’t understand how so much blood could be coming out of her and she was still alive. Her stomach didn’t hurt any longer, but she was dizzy. What if she really was bleeding to death?

  She unpinned the old rag, wrapped it in toilet paper and pinned on another from the pile. On the way back to their mother’s bunk she opened the lid of the garbage pail and dropped the balled-up rag in. The pail was lined with polyethylene, and there was a container of disinfectant on the floor for sprinkling inside. She wondered if she bled to death whether he would keep her down here for two weeks.

  The Regime said lunch and cleanup were to take one hour, but the dishes were dried and back on the shelves by twelve-forty-two.

  “What’ll we do until one?” Lou asked, sneaking a sip of their mother’s whisky. One o’clock to three o’clock was cards and board games.

  Their father tapped his watch. “I guess we can start the games early,” he said grimly. “But tomorrow we stretch lunch out. Eat slower. Talk. I want you all to think up topics of conversation.”

  He spread a blanket on the floor over the hopscotch, and they sat in a circle. Although their mother never played games in the house, she came over, too, saying that she just couldn’t get used to no t?. It was like losing one of your senses, she said, like not being able to see or hear.

  Their father reached across the floor for the whisky and topped up her mug.

  First they played cards. Rummy. Usually the girls hated playing cards with him. He told them to hurry up and discard, and then said “Are you kidding?” when they did. He yelled at them to hold their cards up—they were showing everyone their hand. When they won, he said it was luck, but when he won, he said it was eighty percent skill, twenty percent luck. “It’s only a game,” he told them if they got upset or excited, but he shouted,“Yes Momma!” and “Jesus H. Chris
t!” How the games usually ended was with him either sending them to bed or storming out of the room.

  Today, though, because their mother was playing or maybe because he couldn’t storm out, he was nicer. He used his nice voice. It made the girls giggle. Everything he said and did, just picking up a card and frowning at it, struck them as really funny.

  Over the perfect fan of her cards their mother smiled. She kept winning, a surprise to the girls but not to her, and they realized that rummy must be something else, like sewing and tap-dancing, that she was secretly good at.

  “Mommy!” they cried, hugging her when she laid down her cards in neat rows, catching them all with mitts full.

  “Well, well,” their father said, his smile stopping at the edges of his mouth. The girls laughed. “Settle down,” he said nicely.

  They were having a great time. It was fun down here; it was like being in a fort. They played hearts next, and their mother went on winning, going for all the cards twice and getting them.

  Between deals their father started pacing. “There’s something going on,” he said, wagging his cigarette at them. “This is a trick on your old dad.”

  He wanted to play Scrabble, a game of every man for himself. Except that only four could play, so Sandy and their mother were a team.

  He went first and made the word bounce. That broke the three of them up. Their mother and Sandy made tinkle, which was even funnier. Norma used the b to make bust. They shrieked with laughter. Lou did fuse, and they couldn’t stand it, it seemed so funny.

  “Settle down,” their father said again. The vein that was like a fork of lightning down his forehead emerged—a danger sign—but they couldn’t stop laughing.

  It was his turn. Using the k, he made kidny.

  “Alrighty,” he said enthusiastically, starting to add up his score. “Double word—”