"I can't."
"You will."
He cleared the rest of the dishes off the table, turned to the sink and cleaned them up, then left the kitchen, left Meena there to finish by herself. She spit the bite out into her soggy napkin, cut another, put it in her mouth and chewed. Spit it out, took another. She managed to eat the whole steak that way, so that by the time she was finished, her napkin was full of chewed meat. She slipped it under her shirt, tucked it beneath her arm and held it there, waiting for him to come back. When he saw that her plate was empty, he clapped his hands. He grinned. Planted a kiss on top of her head, just at the part. "That's my girl," he said. He smelled of pipe smoke, lemons, scotch.
Upstairs in her room, Meena stuffed the meat-filled napkin in a drawer, then turned and fled, from it and from her father and from her deception of him, which felt like a crime.
That night she slept over at Libbie's. And the next morning Mr. Grandon had an early golf game, and he took the girls with him to the Country Club to swim. So it wasn't until the next night, when Meena came upstairs to bed, that she remembered the napkin and the meat. She opened the drawer and that smell of rotted flesh, cooked and chewed and spat back out, then left to sit in an un-air-conditioned room in the middle of summer... it's the same smell that floated up from her father's corpse when she touched him yesterday.
The Jetta jerks and swerves as Meena pulls it over, hard, and slams to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. And then she has the door open and she's tumbling out. A truck screams past and she buckles, bends, and vomits on the road.
Gasping, Meena leans a hip against the warm front fender of the car. She does not know what to do. She could turn back, go home, and face whatever is waiting for her there. But it seems so far away, worlds behind her, miles at her back. Or, she could continue on ahead, without any expectation except that sooner or later she'll be caught. Or, she might stay put, wait until a trooper comes along, pulls over, asks her what's the trouble.
And then she will be able to tell him everything and he'll put her in his car and he'll carry her back to Linwood, back to Otis Road again. She folds her arms across her chest, shivers, holds herself. I'm all I have, she thinks. She tilts her face up at the sun, feels its heat—as if that might burn away the surface and bring some clarity to things—and closes her eyes. When she opens them again, what she sees is the green sign with white letters that's been posted on the roadside several yards ahead: Junction I-76 to Denver, it says. Beyond Denver, Meena knows, are the mountains. And beyond them, the desert. And after that comes the sea. California.
She will climb back into her car, she will shift into gear, she will signal, wait, then pull carefully out into the flow of traffic again, and drive on.
Foreverland
1961
Wellington Heights was a place that was supposed to be safe, that's why people wanted to live there. It was a place where nothing happened. Where any threat of danger was just a story, abstract and exaggerated and remote—whether it was the improbable grotesqueries that Matka concocted and brought to life in her heavily accented Bohemian slur, or the snowy television reports and movie newsreels that Mrs. Grandon watched and couldn't turn away from. Images of foreign countries that she had never seen with her own eyes—to you they were mere splatters of color on a canvas classroom map—and black-and-white snapshots of bearded madmen shaking their fists, angered by the sleepy indifference of the rest of the world and promising to use their supposed hidden arsenals of guns and rockets and bombs and who knows what else to wake everybody up and bring this old world to its glorious end. Living in Wellington Heights, you simply didn't believe it.
But then at the end of that summer, just before Labor Day, a girl went missing from Otis Road, and all of Mrs. Grandon's fears were confirmed. It happened just like that. Like magic. Like a story. Like something that wasn't real. There you have a little girl and then, Abracadabra and poof! Nothing. One day she was there, and then the next day she was gone, and that was that. She was as gone as if she'd never been. No trace, no trail, no body, no blood, no nothing. Just: gone.
Her name was Julia Bell, and she was no one. She was just a girl like any other; there was nothing special about her, nothing that would have let anybody know that she was special. You and Libbie didn't even like her very much in the first place, and then after she was gone, you liked her even less, maybe because it felt like it was her disappearance that had caused everything to change, as if the world had been darkened by that event, and it would never be the same again. Libbie said, "It's not the world that's changed, it's us," but you disagreed and so did Libbie's mother. Mrs. Grandon didn't see how anyone could ever feel safe in Linwood again after that.
Julia Bell lived in the brick house four doors down from the Grandons, five from you. Mr. Bell, whose first name was Louis, owned the dry-cleaner's on First Avenue, and Mrs. Bell sold magazine subscriptions over the telephone at home. There was a baby sister, too, less than a year old, who slept in a crib in the hallway outside her parents' bedroom or napped in a white wicker basket on the porch.
Julia's straight brown hair was cut in a bowl, and the splatter of freckles on her face and neck and arms gave her a grimy look, as if her skin were always smudged with a fine dusting of dirt. She was a daydreamer, too, often to be seen dawdling along the sidewalk, lost in her own world, talking or humming or singing softly to herself. You and Libbie didn't go over to her house much, not if you could help it anyway—Mrs. Bell wouldn't allow it, for one thing, because the baby always seemed to be sleeping, and for another, you just didn't like to. It seemed dirty there, or shabby anyway. But maybe it was only old. Maybe they were poor. The few times you did go, Mrs. Bell sat you down at the kitchen table—its speckled Formica surface was warped and buckled at the edges, worn through to the wood in places—and then she served up bowls of wheat germ cereal and milk, or crackers with slices of some cheese so redolent with age that it made Libbie grimace and gag and even you wouldn't touch it. Upstairs, on a table beside the master bed, there was a bowl of foil-wrapped anise drops that Julia encouraged you to steal.
Years later the taste of licorice would have the power to bring back the close dim air of the Bells' crowded bedroom. The red foil wrappers, the chipped crystal bowl, the yellowed lace doily, the hairbrush snagged with hair, the cloying smell of foot powder and perfume, and the sound of Mrs. Bell's voice—on the phone, selling magazines—rising up through the heating ducts, its annoying wheedle as constant and demanding as the high whine of an insect or the squeak of an unoiled hinge.
Josef Krejci thought that Jack Grandon was a fool, and he was not afraid to say so. Mr. Grandon's head was full of names and places and facts that he was quick to cite, as if they were evidence of something, answers to questions that no one else had ever even thought to ask, and he was adamantly convinced that the United States would go to war with the Russians. He believed that it was only a matter of time before one or the other dropped the bomb, and when that happened, he was going to see to it that his family, at least, survived.
Josef Krejci insisted that Mr. Grandon's argument had less to do with survival than real estate, which was his business. He would build a bomb shelter in his back yard and when other people saw what he had, then they would want the same, and so he'd sell them his plans and show them how to build more shelters, just like his, for themselves. It was a racket, Josef said, playing off the deepest fears of the families in Wellington Heights, promising hope in a situation that, if it ever actually came about, would be spectacularly hopeless. At school you heard the sirens wail and ducked down under your desks with your arms folded over your heads—drills that your father claimed were ludicrous. If the bombs were dropped, he said, then that would be the end of it—everyone would be dead. The trick, he argued, was not going to be figuring out how to survive, but finding a way to keep the disaster from ever happening at all.
Mr. Grandon smiled at this—blue eyes sparkling, white teeth shining in his handsome, tanned fac
e—and took old Josef Krejci's reluctant hand and shook it. "Well, then we agree to disagree," he said, "and pray that they can indeed keep it from ever going that far." Meanwhile, the Grandons would continue to prepare.
All that summer long, while you and Libbie were wandering up to the park and back or poking around down at the river, while school was out and the boys were free, Mr. Grandon came home at night and in the long hours before it got dark, he built his fallout shelter. On weekends, sweating in the sun, shirtless, a red bandana tied around his head to keep the sweat out of his eyes, he labored. Digging out the hole in the side of the hill, laying down a cement slab, piling sandbags to reinforce the walls, placing rebar and cinderblock and pouring the concrete to hold it all in place. He paid John and Leo to help him, and you and Libbie, too, although you didn't last as long at it as the boys did. They hauled wheelbarrows of dirt and sand and troweled grout and stirred cement while you and Libbie sat together in the shade eating cherries and spitting out the pits.
Mr. Grandon had ordered a special steel door, painted red with black letters stenciled in—FOREVERLAND—and at the end of the summer it was delivered on the back of a flatbed truck. Ironic or optimistic, however you wanted to read it, that was the shelter's name. After this door had been installed, with a lot of cursing and sweating and groaning from Mr. Grandon and the boys, then the whole thing was done and he let you go inside to have a look. It wasn't anything more than a windowless concrete bunker, as dark and dank as a cave. The door, left ajar, let in a blade of sunlight that cut across the floor and revealed the meager furnishings and supplies that Mr. Grandon had, in his calculations, figured his family would need: cots and blankets, cans of food and bottles of water, books and candles, a kerosene stove and a lantern, a radio and some old board games—checkers and Monopoly and Parcheesi and chess. In one corner, still in its crate, sat a chemical toilet that never would be unpacked, but would be among the other things that Mrs. Grandon dumped on the sidewalk outside the real estate offices years later, when she kicked Mr. Grandon out of the house. And on one wall there hung a plaster crucifix: bowed head, bloodied palms, pale limbs, sinewy with pain.
"How long will we have to live in there?' Mrs. Grandon wanted to know now.
Her husband squinted thoughtfully, then shrugged. Who knew? "Months," he said. "Maybe years." Forever?
"Can Meena come with us?" Libbie asked.
Mrs. Grandon was quick to answer that you were welcome to go in her place, because she was not going to live in a cave with her husband or anybody else. Ever. "I'd go crazy for sure," she said. "I think I'd rather die."
But then when he described for her what that death would be like—hair falling out, skin scabbed over, teeth dropping—she didn't want to know anything more about that either. Those stories were almost as bad as Matka's, you and Libbie agreed.
"What about Rags?" John asked.
But by then his parents were arguing and didn't hear. It looked like the cocker would have to be left behind with Mrs. Grandon, then.
Everybody in the neighborhood wanted to see the shelter, which only confirmed Josef's initial suspicions about why Mr. Grandon had built the thing in the first place. Mrs. Bickel, the old lady who lived next door to the Spivaks, refused to go inside, would only stand cringing in the doorway, peering in with a look of horror and disgust. It didn't take her long to make up her mind: she was in total agreement with Libbie's mother—not even the hard reality of a nuclear attack would ever induce her to spend more than a moment inside that place.
Leo's parents came by for a look, too, but they didn't say a word about it. Only frowned and shrugged, as if the whole idea were beyond them. "What's it for again?" Mrs. Spivak asked, but before Mr. Grandon could answer, Leo's father had pulled her out into the sunshine again, where she stood squinting, blinded by the sudden light and baffled by the prospect of the kind of devastation that would require such a drastic shelter. She spread her hands out on her belly—she was pregnant with Leo's little sister that summer—and wondered, what kind of a world was she bringing this child into? Meanwhile, Mr. Spivak, who was an insurance agent, calculated whether it might be profitable to sell some kind of policy against a thing like that.
The Bells, on the other hand, were very interested in hearing what Libbie's dad had to say, and so it turned out to be Julia's mother who suggested that you three girls sleep over inside the bomb shelter for a night, just to see what that would be like. It seemed like a great idea, a good adventure, you all agreed.
So Mr. Grandon unfolded the cots and unwrapped the blankets and lit the lanterns for you. Mrs. Grandon brought out a thermos of hot chocolate and a bag of cookies and wished you a safe and happy good night, before she slipped away and closed the steel door behind her. You lay in the half-light of the lamplight and pretended that the worst had happened, that the bombs were dropped and all your families were dead. You pretended that beyond the concrete walls there was a barren world, destroyed. But the fright of that soon wore off and it all began to seem tiresome and dull. There wasn't anything to do. How could anybody be expected to live that way for days and weeks and months and years? Libbie suggested a game of cards. Julia had tuned into a top-40 station on the radio, and you were lying on your back on your cot imagining how it would be if what you'd been rehearsing for turned out to be the case after all, and there was nothing left of the world beyond the cinderblock shelter walls, with you and Libbie alone together safe and sound behind them. And Julia Bell, who you figured you'd have to eventually kill and eat as meat.
Then wasn't anything like now—the girls knew nothing about anything, especially not sex. There weren't pictures and movies and magazines that you could look at anytime, any day. The health classes at school would come later. Libbie asked her mother to explain, but Mrs. Grandon was embarrassed and she brushed the questions off. "Oh, you don't want to know about all that," she said. "It's mostly just a mess." And you, how could you ask your father about something like that? He would have thumped you. When you asked Matka she told a story about an old witch who lived alone in the woods and made a baby out of vegetables from her garden.
But there was Leo Spivak, and he was wild and reckless enough to show up at the bomb shelter that night.
Leo Spivak: a scrawny boy in a striped T-shirt, baggy shorts, sagging socks, black high-tops. Crew-cut. Freckles. Standing there in the middle of Otis Road, where everyone could see him as he aimed his shotgun upward. And Mrs. Grandon out on the front porch, her hands on her hips, her face mottled, pale with fear, flushed with anger. Screaming his name, but he ignored her. Mrs. Grandon, shouting, later, as she slammed dishes into the sink: "Who gives a boy like Leo Spivak a gun?" Leo squinting, firing, then whooping in triumph when a bat fell from the sky to land at his feet with a moist thump. It was John who told you the truth: it's no great feat to bring down a bat. Blind, they fly right into the spray, thinking it's a swarm of winged bugs, some providential meal.
A knock at the door, and Libbie was the one who got up off her cot and opened it to find a goblin there in the dark. Rags was barking like crazy and Libbie yelped and Julia started to cry, but you knew it was only Leo Spivak, holding a flashlight under his chin.
"What do you want?" Libbie asked him.
He shouldered past her, into the crowded room.
At first you were afraid, but then you liked that he was there. Leo was funny. He could do things. He was a boy of many talents and no fear. He could play the accordion, for example. He could do magic tricks. He could juggle oranges. You played a game called The Variety Show. You were the host, and you introduced the acts. First Libbie—and she had talent. She could sing. She could do a back cartwheel. Then Julia, who didn't know what to do. Her dumb face. Can't you do anything? Libbie asked. One thing: she could fit her fist into her mouth. That had you rolling on the floor.
Libbie said that if there was a bomb and her mother didn't want to come hide out in Foreverland, Leo was welcome for sure. He had beer in his backpack. Cans and an o
pener. And then Julia was complaining—"That tastes awful," and "I'm going to tell."
So you changed the game to Captive. Libbie grabbed Julia and held her and said she'd kill her if she breathed a word of it to anyone. You helped tie her up with her hands behind her back. Her feet were bound at the ankles, too. She was the prisoner. She wanted to go home, but that was impossible. "There are goblins out there, you idiot!" Libbie said. "Go out there, and they'll eat you!" Julia sat on her cot and pouted, unsure which was worse, Libbie Grandon or goblins or an atom bomb.
Then Libbie had the radio on, and it was the Twist, and she was dancing. You were dancing, too, crazy and wild, because Leo was there and Julia was mad. Loud because you all knew no one could hear. Maybe everybody else was disintegrated anyway. For all you knew, they were all dead. Go ahead and scream, Libbie told Julia. Nobody will ever come to save you.
But it was hot. That was something that Mr. Grandon was going to have to work on, the air. Rags farted and it smelled the whole place up. Leo took off his shirt. Though he could have left at any time, of course, he didn't. He was in just his shorts and sneakers. Libbie said, "I wish I could take my shirt off, too," and he said, "You can," and so she did.
And then there was more dancing and the music was playing and Julia was tied up on the cot. Her eyes were closed, and it looked like maybe she was sleeping. Eventually you untied her and tried to get her to dance, too. Libbie was stomping and whirling and making herself delirious. Leo unbuckled his belt. He unzipped his fly and let his shorts drop to the floor around his ankles and then there was Leo Spivak, swaggering in the spotlight of the flashlights, his face in flames, his knees and elbows ragged with scabs—it was a sight that had you all gaping, with Libbie smiling behind her hand and you honking with laughter.
The radio was playing "Purple People Eater" and Julia was whimpering. "What's he doing? Leo, what are you doing?"
The Minor Apocalypse of Meena Krejci Page 8