by Lynn Austin
“Kathleen! Kathleen, wait!” I turned around but couldn’t meet her gaze. “What happened to May Elizabeth? Why is she crying like that? Kathleen, please. You have to tell me what’s wrong.”
“I don’t know. …” I said with a shrug. But when I remembered how Mr. Hayworth and Miss Pfister had kissed, I began to cry, too. Mrs. Hayworth gently gripped my shoulders.
“I think you do. Please, honey. I’m not angry with you, I just want to help you and May. But I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong. Please… did someone hurt you or her?”
Oh, yes. We were hurt. My throat felt so tight that I could barely get the words out. “We were pretending to be detectives. …” I began. I told her how we had followed Mr. Hayworth’s car from the factory. I told her where he had gone and what we had seen. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. When I finished I felt sick inside.
Mrs. Hayworth’s face had turned very white. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Please don’t mention this to anyone else, Kathleen. Please,” she begged.
“I won’t. I promise.” She drew me into her arms for a long hug. Then she went back inside.
My mother started yelling at me as soon as I got home. “Since when do you take off without telling anyone where you’re going? Where have you been?”
I let myself get angry in return so I wouldn’t cry. If I did, Mom might start asking questions that I didn’t want to answer. Besides, as soon as Mommy started yelling, Annie had started crying loudly enough for both of us. After a lifetime of practice, my brothers had learned to ignore any and all yelling, even when it was directed at them. They appeared catatonic as they sat on the floor, staring at the bobbing TV.
“I was with May Elizabeth,” I said, sounding sullen. “Since when do you care?”
“You watch your mouth, young lady. You’re grounded for staying out until after dark. What are you doing running around until all hours of the night, anyway?” She snuffed out her cigarette then reached into the pack for another one.
I looked her straight in the eye, my anger building. I needed to know the truth. “Where’s Daddy?” I asked. Mommy looked surprised by the sudden change of subject.
“He’s away on business. And that’s too bad for you, isn’t it? He’s not around to take your side and spoil you rotten like he always does.”
“Where does he work?”
“I told you—he’s a traveling salesman. … Listen, you leave your father out of this. You’re still grounded. You can’t go over to your rich friend’s house for a week. You hear me?”
“You told me before that Daddy was a trucker.”
“Well… he was. Now he’s in sales.”
I could tell by the way that my mother glanced away as she blew smoke toward the ceiling that she wasn’t telling the truth. I was furious with Mr. Hayworth for lying to May and her mother, and furious with my parents for lying to me. I made up my mind to solve the mystery of my missing dad all by myself, no matter how ugly the truth turned out to be.
“What company does Daddy work for? What does he sell?”
“Don’t you take that tone with me. I’ve had about all I can take from you, Kathleen.”
“I want to write him a letter. What’s his address?”
My mother wrote a letter to him once a week, and she always made me fill a page of lined notebook paper, telling him what I was doing in school. Daddy sent letters back to us, and Mommy would read parts of them out loud to us, but Daddy never said anything that would provide a clue to his whereabouts. I had to find out his return address.
Mommy shook her finger at me, and the ribbon of ash on the end of her cigarette dribbled onto the couch. “If you think you’re going to get out of trouble by writing a letter, you’ve got another think coming! Now, go to your room!”
“My room? Ha! That’s a joke!” I stomped away, longing to vent my anger by slamming the bedroom door. I didn’t dare. It would probably fall off its hinges.
I pulled out a piece of notebook paper and started composing a letter to my father: Dear Daddy, How are you? Fine, I hope. I had to be careful not to mention being grounded or to plead with him to take my side against my mother because I knew she would read it—and she would never send it to him if I did. School is fine. I’m still getting A’s. … My tears started falling again when I remembered Miss Pfister’s betrayal, but I kept writing, determined to solve this mystery. I miss you, Daddy. When are you coming home?
When I finished, I walked out to the living room and handed the letter to my mother. “I’m sorry I stayed out after dark,” I said. It was the truth. I was also sorry I had decided to become a detective and follow Mr. Hayworth into the cemetery, so my heartfelt apology came easily. “Will you mail this to Daddy for me?”
“Fine.” She took the letter from me. Her eyes never left the drifting TV screen.
“If you want, I can print the envelope myself,” I told her. “We learned how to do it in school last year.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll put your letter in with mine.”
This dead end frustrated me. I went back to my room and racked my brain for another idea. If I could just keep my mind focused on finding Daddy, I wouldn’t have to picture Miss Pfister kissing May’s father. I wouldn’t have to remember how devastated May had been or how Mrs. Hayworth’s arms had trembled as she’d hugged me.
I was still thinking about how to find my dad when Annie drifted into the bedroom a little while later and lay down on our bed, yawning. None of us had a fixed bedtime. My brothers might sleep in their bed at night or they might sleep on the living room floor in front of the TV. In our house, you slept wherever you fell asleep and nobody ever bothered to move you.
“You need to brush your teeth before you go to bed,” I told Annie.
“I don’t want to,” she whined. Annie couldn’t even say “hello” or “good-bye” without whining.
“Well, at least put your pajamas on,” I said.
“I don’t want to.” She turned toward the wall and fell asleep.
I kept the light on, still trying to plan my strategy. When I heard Uncle Leonard come home a little while later, I crept down the hallway toward the living room so I could hear what he and my mother were saying. At first they made a lot of stupid small talk, but when Mommy said, “Will you mail this for me tomorrow?” I hurried into the room as if I were on my way to the kitchen to scrounge something to eat. I saw him take an envelope from my mother and put it into the pocket of his ratty overcoat. He tossed the coat over the back of a dining room chair.
I hoped that he wasn’t going to stay up all night writing manifestoes because I was exhausted from the evening’s traumatic events and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could remain awake. My mom went to bed while I was fixing myself a can of tomato soup. I couldn’t find a clean bowl and there was no room at the table to sit down, so I leaned against the sink and ate the soup out of the pot. By the time I finished, my uncle had turned off the TV and was pulling his blanket and pillow from behind the couch to make his “bed.” He tossed the unraveling afghan that Daddy got at the thrift store over my sleeping brothers on the floor.
“Good night, Uncle Leonard,” I said on my way back to my room.
“Night,” he grunted. Nothing was “good” when you were a Communist living in a capitalistic society.
I put on my nightgown and brushed my teeth, then turned off the light and stood near my bedroom door, waiting for my uncle to fall asleep. I knew that if I got comfortable I’d fall asleep myself, and I couldn’t allow that to happen.
After a very long time, I heard Uncle Leonard snoring. The house was dark and shadowy, reminding me of my earlier trip into the cemetery. I almost changed my mind when I remembered what we had discovered there. But I was May Elizabeth’s best friend, and it was only fair that we both find our missing fathers on the same night. I tiptoed into the living room, careful not to make a sound, and fished the letter from my uncle’s coat pocket. It was too dark to read the addr
ess. I went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door a crack so the light would come on. The odor of sour milk drifted out as I read the envelope:
Donald Gallagher # K21633–277 County Correctional Center Bensenville, New York
I slammed the refrigerator door shut as if that would make the horrible truth vanish with the light and the stench. My daddy was in jail? He had a number?
For a long moment I stood frozen, trying to comprehend it. Then the envelope fluttered to the floor as I fled to the bathroom and threw up the tomato soup I’d eaten. I felt as though my heart had died and turned to stone. My wonderful, laughing daddy really, truly was a thief. He had been caught and sent to prison. How many other times had he been locked away behind bars when he’d gone missing? I understood why May Elizabeth hadn’t been able to stop crying, because for a long time I couldn’t stop, either. In fact, I cried myself sick and couldn’t go to school the next day.
When I did return, I felt so ashamed of who I was that I kept my chin tucked against my chest, unable to meet anyone’s gaze. May Elizabeth missed three days of school, and when she came back, I found out she’d transferred into the other sixth-grade classroom across the hall. I saw her on the playground at recess, standing alone near the jungle gym. She was usually so animated, but now she looked like a windup toy with a broken spring. I went over to stand alongside her.
“You okay?” I asked.
“No… I’m afraid my parents are going to get a divorce,” she said tearfully.
I remained silent for a moment as we both grieved, then I said, “Don’t feel bad. I found my missing dad, too. …He’s in jail.”
“Oh, Kathleen!” May gave me a hug—a long, shaky one like her mother’s—then we walked away from each other so we both wouldn’t start bawling.
We never discussed it, but we scrapped our plans to open a detective agency after solving our first case. I never read another Nancy Drew mystery, either. We both grew up that spring of 1962, our innocence gone, our childhood at an end.
Chapter
10
I was glad that I had become a Christian when World War III almost started. For six tense days in October of 1962, it seemed like the world was about to come to an end in a fiery nuclear holocaust.
My family was watching TV one Monday night when President Kennedy appeared during prime time and told us that the Russians were building nuclear missile bases in Cuba, a mere ninety miles from the United States. The president had photographs to prove it, taken from a U.S. spy plane. To stop the buildup, he was placing an air and sea quarantine around the island of Cuba.
“He can’t do that!” Uncle Leonard shouted. “A naval blockade in international waters is an act of war!”
“Shh… Be quiet and listen, Len,” Mommy said.
I didn’t understand all the big words the president used, and it was hard to concentrate when his face kept disappearing into the top of the screen then reappearing at the bottom, like soap bubbles rising into the air and bursting. But I understood the gist of the matter: President Kennedy had told the Communists to tear down the missile bases—or else. If Khrushchev’s reaction was anything like my uncle’s, there was sure to be war.
“What gives Kennedy the right to tell Castro what to do?” Uncle Leonard sprang from his chair, unable to remain seated in the face of such an outrage. He paced around our tiny living room shouting, “The Cuban people have every right to purchase arms to defend themselves. Remember the Bay of Pigs invasion? If the U.S. can build missile bases all over the world, why can’t the Soviets?” He shook his fist at the TV set, which showed Castro and Khrushchev acting all chummy. “Don’t give in to Kennedy!” he told them. “If he wants a war, then give him one!”
The Russians took Uncle Leonard’s advice. They not only refused to stop building missile bases in Cuba, they told President Kennedy that if he tried to launch another invasion like the Bay of Pigs or if he interfered with Cuban shipping, the United States would be starting a nuclear war. Russia and the U.S. both went on full military alert. The next few days would be critical ones, deciding the fate of mankind.
The fact that we hovered on the brink of World War III upset a lot of people in Riverside. My uncle, the town Communist, made a convenient scapegoat for everyone’s fear and anger, a visible target to hate. The splotches of red paint that still set our house apart from all the others began to spread around to the sides and rear like poison ivy. If this kept up, our entire house would wind up red. Things grew so tense that Uncle Leonard decided to pack up and leave town for a few days.
May Elizabeth was the only person I knew who seemed excited about the idea of a nuclear war. “Guess what! My family is getting ready to live in our bomb shelter,” she told our seventh-grade class. “Daddy said we’re going to wait it out where it’s safe.” Her parents hadn’t divorced after all. In fact, they showed up together in church every week as if nothing had ever happened.
“Do you think there might be room in your fallout shelter for me, too?” I asked hopefully. “I don’t mind sleeping on the floor. And I don’t eat very much. You can copy all my math homework while we’re waiting for the smoke to clear. And any other homework you want to copy, too.” I knew I sounded desperate. I was.
May shook her head. She had been acting snooty and indifferent toward me ever since our first day in seventh grade. Debbie Harris was her new best friend now. “There’s only enough air and food for four people,” May told me.
I couldn’t bear the thought of being locked in our mouse-infested, dirtfloored cellar with Poke and JT—not to mention having to listen to Annie scream until the radiation count was safe. I decided to cast my lot with my uncle. I figured that maybe he had an “in” with his comrades Khrushchev and Castro, and we would be spared when the missiles started falling because of my uncle’s faithful devotion to the party.
“Can I leave town with you, Uncle Leonard? Please?” I begged. “I’ll join the Communist Party and come to all of the meetings, if you want.”
“No, you need to stay home and help your mother with the kids.”
“Oh, let her come, for goodness’sake,” his girlfriend, Connie, said. She had been dating my uncle for more than two years, but there didn’t seem to be any wedding plans in sight. The membership rolls of the Tri-County Communist Party had doubled when Connie converted to the cause. I was offering to increase it by fifty percent.
I never understood what Connie saw in my uncle. They were opposites in every conceivable way: She was small and round and fair, he was tall and thin and dark; she was always smiling and happy, he was perennially doleful; she never finished high school, he considered himself an intellectual. In every way, Connie’s glass was always half full, Uncle Leonard’s would forever be half empty.
“Let her come, Lennie,” she coaxed. “She deserves to have a little fun before the world comes to an end.”
That weekend we drove to Pennsylvania in my uncle’s twelve-year-old Ford. It didn’t have a muffler or a heater, and the car’s body had more rust than metal, but you could still see the crude hammer and sickle daubed in red paint on the trunk.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we chugged along the highway. Not that it mattered; anyplace was better than home.
“Deer Falls,” he said, as if I should know exactly where that was.
“Where?”
“It’s the town where your mother and I grew up. We’re staying with your grandmother.”
Grandmother? I had a grandmother? The astonishing news made me feel a little dizzy. I’d had no idea that she even existed. I began imagining a cozy cottage in the woods and a sweet little white-haired woman who would bake cookies and hug me a lot.
“How come we never visited her before?” I asked, but my uncle didn’t seem to hear me. He was too busy explaining to Connie about the battle of wills that was taking place between President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev, and how the United States had no right to dictate foreign policy to Cuba or anyone else. Connie smil
ed and nodded and made comforting noises whenever Uncle Leonard paused for breath, but nothing seemed to soothe him.
After the first hour my ears throbbed from the missing muffler and the nonstop drone of my uncle’s voice. I started to regret my decision to come. But when we finally pulled into town, I knew it had been worth suffering through two-and-a-half hours of Communist rhetoric to come to this enchanting place.
Deer Falls was such a beautiful little town that I couldn’t imagine why Mommy and Uncle Leonard would ever want to leave it—especially to live in a nowhere place like Riverside. The village sat at the edge of a secluded lake, nestled among the Pocono Mountains, and there were all sorts of things to do: fishing, sailing, water skiing, or just walking around town and looking at all the quaint little shops and inns. Connie told me that Deer Falls was a very popular tourist destination during the summer. And it was surprisingly crowded that weekend, too. Thousands of city people who didn’t own bomb shelters had evidently fled to the mountains, hoping to escape the holocaust when the Russians flattened New York and Philadelphia and Washington. Traffic had been very heavy on the highway. Everyone, including me, wanted to forget all about the Cuban missile crisis, and Deer Falls offered a perfect refuge from all the tension and worry.
The woods in the state park on the edge of town were the stuff of fairy tales: dense and green and mysterious. The weather was too cold for swimming and we didn’t have a boat, but Uncle Leonard parked the car down by the lake, and Connie and I went for a walk along the shoreline to stretch our legs.
“Just imagine, Kathleen, this might be the very last time we ever see trees,” she said with a happy smile. “And look at that sky! We may never see such a brilliant blue sky again, so let’s just soak it up!” Coming from someone other than optimistic Connie, those words might have sounded morbid. She made the threat of global annihilation seem like an exciting adventure.
“Are we all going to die?” I asked her.
She smiled, her eyes bright with excitement, and I waited to hear words of comfort and reassurance. They didn’t come. “Yes, I believe we are,” she said happily. “But I’m not afraid, and you shouldn’t be, either.