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LUCY SAUNDERS SWIRLED her brushes in the jelly jar of turpentine, as she did at the end of every oil painting session. This ritual caressed her. The only problem was the abrupt ending, which cut off its soothing rhythms from her domestic duties as wife and mother. Her younger self dreamed of the bold gestures and unconventional postures of an artist’s life in Greenwich Village. She tried not to leave that artistic self behind as she reentered her other life but found her vision and ambitions dulled by the sight of stark white kitchen cupboards and the scatter of dolls, books, and model car parts every day.
Routine could kill a girl.
She painted in the living room, the only viable work space for her. She delighted in the diffuse light but didn’t like being on display in the front room when unexpected guests dropped in. They often thought they had the right to comment on a painting in progress, so she kept a cloth ready to drop over her easel at a moment’s notice and at the end of her work sessions. She left the brushes to soak and draped the cloth over her latest canvas, hiding the overlapping splotches of blues and lavenders of a cityscape blurred by a sudden downpour. Dinah Washington had purred along with the quick blue strokes of the street scene and still crooned from the hi-fi.
Lucy stared through the picture window into the afternoon calm of a still October day. This was her third Air Force base. The first was Biggs in West Texas, the second Edwards in Southern California. The kids had known cold in those high desert abodes, but they had never seen snow before this place that cycled through all four seasons. In El Paso, the maples and oaks kept green leaves through the warm autumn, then dropped them—desiccated but still green—in the dry season of winter.
Right here and now, though, the sycamores and oaks that lined her street fluttered and flashed their fancy autumn colors in front of the rows of boxy duplexes. The street Lucy and Betty Ann lived on followed the usual plan—flat-topped ranch duplexes lined both sides of the street. The two friends lived on the same side of that street at opposite ends, Lucy in an “A” unit and Betty Ann in a “B” unit. Their homes were mirror images of each other.
Lucy found the relentless sameness of American military base housing stunning in its monotony, but even she could appreciate its benefits. A wife could close up her home, drive her kids a thousand miles away, and have them sleeping on sheets and pillows the night they arrive at their new home base. She could set up her couch and easy chairs with the same orientation to the living room window and the television. Light would fall on the pages of a book at the same slant (give or take a few degrees for latitude), and the kids could settle into their usual spots to watch after-dinner TV. Point an experienced wife toward the center of base, and she would find the commissary, the PX, the hospital, and the parade grounds on her own, if necessary. Not that she would be on her own. A base veteran would take the newbie under her wing, tell her about the liverwurst there or the fresh crabs here, which beauty shop to patronize, and who always brings the potato salad (not you) to the potluck picnics and cookouts.
Despite the tranquil scene in front of Lucy, peace was an illusion, since the airfield at the end of their neighborhood crackled with the comings and goings of personnel from all the military branches, not just the Air Force. Somewhere someone banged a hammer, each blow echoing from an unidentified direction. The sound cracked four times and stopped. A lone, scruffy white mutt trotted down the sidewalk as if he had an appointment to keep.
Sonny often complained about the cloying, pungent odor of her oil paints, although she wondered how he could detect it through a nose deafened by tobacco smoke. Erica thought it was how mommies smelled, and Tony never mentioned it. Out of habit, she cranked open a long window flanking the picture window, even though her husband was working a double shift again and wouldn’t be home with his sensitive nose until after she’d had another go at the street scene. Now her last task was to turn the easel to the wall.
Lucy glanced at her watch and scurried into the kitchen. Dinah would turn herself off at the end of the record, and Betty Ann would be over soon for a rare afternoon cup of tea. Lucy opened the cupboard and inspected the jumble of coffee cups and mugs. If she lived alone, they would be in neat rows. If she lived alone, she wouldn’t have to leave behind her artist self for most of the day. Of course, if she lived alone, her silences might grow into a fence too thick for anyone to penetrate. She took down two cups and saucers and put the kettle on.
Her friend was a sass who usually got away with her saucy behavior. Lucy liked her—she would say what you were thinking but wouldn’t dare utter—but some of the wives didn’t. They had to worry about their husbands’ wandering eyes. For those women, her curves, dimpled smile, and full-on gaze added up to trouble. Those and her martini habit. She offered husbands a wide-mouthed treat instead of their usual Pabst Blue Ribbon. Yes, trouble.
When Betty Ann arrived she said, “Let’s have gin.”
“I don’t know, I usually wait for Sonny.” His double shift meant waiting for a cocktail until tomorrow at the earliest.
“This is serious: we’re preparing to be attacked.” Betty Ann hauled a bottle out of the liquor cabinet.
“What are you talking about? We’re always preparing. Look at those everlasting exercises.” Lucy pushed aside the cups and took down glass tumblers.
“No, I mean a real attack.” Betty Ann opened the gin. “Missiles. A-bombs.”
Lucy’s forearms prickled. “What makes you think that?”
“Two things the guys said last night.” Betty Ann and Ray had brought the kids over for hot dogs and beans. “One. As I stood right there with the coffee,” she pointed to the swing door leading into the dining room, “Sonny said that there were no dummies this time. Everything’s live. Everything.” As Lucy reached for the knob on the stove to turn off the flame under the kettle, she remembered Betty Ann’s silence, the swing door held open a crack by her elbow.
Betty Ann dropped ice into the glasses and filled them with gin and tonic. “Two,” she continued as she poured. “When I passed by on my way to the bathroom, Ray said everything is steaming south. Why south? Why not over to Germany, where they’re building that wall?”
“The only thing south of here we’re interested in is Cuba.” Lucy took a sip, then went to her fridge and took out a lime. She deftly sliced out two wedges, squeezed them, and dropped them into the drinks. “But we wouldn’t attack them now. That would be like a direct hit on Mother Russia.”
“Exactly. Despite all the demands for action, Kennedy’s already been burned once there. I bet he wouldn’t make these kinds of moves unless a real threat existed.”
“Any other possibilities?” Lucy asked.
They debated as they sipped. News about Berlin dominated the papers, but they were on the front lines with their Air Force husbands and knew other hotspots were brewing. Lucy didn’t mean to finish her drink but kept slurping as they speculated. Could they survive a nuclear war? If America launched, Russia would too.
“A-bombs,” Betty Ann said.
Lucy glanced at the clock. “Oh my God, the children.” Tony and Erica would be home any second.
“Yes, the children.” Betty Ann slumped in her chair. After a moment she said, “We have to plan. We have to.” She banged her fist on the counter. “We have to plan for the children.”
“What do you mean?”
Betty Ann swept up the glasses and dumped the dregs into the sink. “First, we have to stop drinking gin in the afternoon. Lord, it’s only three o’clock.” She grimaced, dimpling her face. “Second, we’re going to call a bunch of gals for a meeting tomorrow morning to decide what to do.”
“What to do about what?” Lucy didn’t quite follow Betty Ann, but she had caught her mood. In her agitation, she bumped her friend away from the sink and started to wash the glasses.
“You know we’re a first-strike target.” Betty Ann grabbed the dishtowel off the hook to dry.
“But we’re just wives.” Lucy was plenty scared.
“Exactly, no one will suspect anything we plan, as long as no one blabs.”
Action steadied them. They made a list of mothers, all Negro Air Force wives like themselves. Neither of them mentioned the scarcity of air raid shelters on base. They lived in Maryland; they assumed that the few spots in the shelters would not be offered to anyone who drank at the colored fountain. They were on their own, expected to leave thinking and non-domestic action to others. Lucy was tempted to withdraw into a terrified silence, but she knew that was not Betty Ann’s style, and most importantly, her own absence would do nothing to protect Tony and Erica.
Betty Ann mentioned Clara.
“Not Clara, we need allies,” Lucy said.
Clara Menendez and her husband were Mexican, but the crew thought of them as colored. She was mostly a housewife but had taken some accounting courses and kept books for a few small businesses. Her husband, Manny, though, posed a problem. Several times, when Betty Ann’s husband was on second shift, Manny escorted her home from a party and returned far later than he should have. His petite wife was no fan of Betty Ann.
“Oh, come on. She loves her kids more than she hates me. Besides, we need her. Manny’s in the supply depot.” They plotted until Erica tumbled in with her usual demands for attention.
You couldn’t invite that many women over and not offer them something to eat, so the next morning both Lucy and Betty Ann got up early to make coffee cakes. Lucy marveled at all the affirmatives they’d gotten on short notice of an urgent matter that couldn’t be discussed on the phone. As the women arrived at her house, they chatted and fussed over Betty Ann’s lemon ice cake, but didn’t ask questions. Perhaps they sought some last carefree moments before the “urgent matter” reared up. All of the invitees attended: Dorothy, Gladys, Debbie, Shirley, Linda, the other Gladys, Peggy, Pepper, Judy, May, and Lavonia. Most sat on the folding chairs Lucy used for canasta nights. Dorothy, feet planted wide, watched the youngest kids in the back yard through the dining room window. She was formidable. Even an MP would think twice about tangling with her. Clara was there too, tucked beside the television and with her knees pressed firmly together. Although short Gladys had light skin, she still looked black, unlike Clara, whose dark, thick hair and broad face proclaimed her Mexican origins.
Lucy leaned against the wall between her clean worktable and the hi-fi and chatted with the women closest to her. As a last napkin passed down a row, Betty Ann squeezed into the space in front of the hi-fi. Lucy hopped onto her worktable to make room for her.
Lavonia, seated right up against the television, rested a piece of iced-lemon coffee cake over a saucer under her chin. “Lord, here’s Miss Betty Ann and her White House co-miss-shun. I’m surprised Miss Betty Ann would have time for us little folk.”
Pepper, sitting beside her, scratched the inside of her elbow. Everyone knew the wiry mother of two got hives when she was anxious, but her big alto voice fluttered with amusement. “What you mean, Lavonia? I do believe Miss Betty Ann is here to take your dress order. Just add a couple of zeros onto the price of the last one.” As with one of her solos at the church on base, the chorus responded.
“Um hmm.”
“I know that’s right.”
“Said she’s only sewing with gold thread from now on.”
“Real gold, I heard.”
“Ladies.” Lucy leaned forward from her perch on the table, her hands gripping its edge. “We can order our gold lamé dresses later. The kindergartners have an eleven thirty pick-up time.” Several women glanced at their watches and most straightened to attention. Time for the urgent matter, their postures said. “Betty Ann?”
Betty Ann clasped her hands and held her pointer fingers to her lips. Her smile settled into a more somber look as she waited a moment before speaking. She then recapped their conversation from the day before. Tall Gladys gasped when Betty Ann said, “Everything’s live.” Twice jets roared overhead as if to underscore the urgency of her talk. When she finished, there was silence.
The sideboard clock tocked four beats. On the fifth, as if released by a starter’s gun, the women all nattered at once. Betty Ann let the sound crest, then held up a hand. The room quieted. “Dorothy, what does Mac hear in the officers’ mess?” Her husband was a cook.
“He does not speak out of turn,” Dorothy said.
“Of course not,” Betty Ann said.
Dorothy rapped on the window to get some child’s attention. She wagged her finger, no. “I did, however, happen to overhear him comparing notes with another cook. The other guy said we’ve lost a plane over Cuba.”
“Oh sweet Jesus,” someone said.
“Maybe it’s just a rumor,” Clara said.
“Don’t count on it,” Betty Ann said.
Clara ducked her head.
“Okay, there are a couple of things we can do,” Betty Ann continued. “First, we must show faith in our husbands and our country. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” the women said in unison.
“However, we must be prepared to act if the situation becomes dire. Agreed?”
“Act how?” The crook of Pepper’s arm was scored red. “We’re just wives,” she said, echoing Lucy.
“And mothers,” Betty Ann said. “Anything happens, we’re our children’s only line of defense, right?” Voices murmured. “Agreed?”
“Agreed.” The word staggered into the air from many mouths.
Betty Ann waited for a dissenting voice, but none rose. “So what are we going to do?”
“How long would it take a missile to get here?” Dorothy asked.
They all knew the answer: not long enough. But they had to hold onto something. They had to believe that their smart, beautiful president had learned the right Cuban lessons from the Bay of Pigs. They had to hope that if he couldn’t avert a nuclear launch, they still could do something to save their children, and so they planned.
“We need some kind of early warning system,” Lucy said.
“Does anyone have radio equipment?” Betty Ann asked.
No one answered.
“Even if we did, we wouldn’t know what to listen for,” Dorothy said.
Heads nodded.
Then Clara came through for them, in her way. She sat up straighter. “Manny supplies the specialty aircraft.”
“Yes, we know.” Lucy spoke to keep Betty Ann from asking what that had to do with warning systems.
“He always stocks the copters for the foreign ministers that visit the White House,” Clara went on. “He had to find special bottled water for that official from Algeria.”
Betty Ann rustled. Lucy put a hand on her arm to still her. Clara could be easily derailed, and the women couldn’t afford a loss of focus. They needed every bit of intelligence on the table, relevant or not.
“Anyway, have you noticed the Sea Kings on the apron of runway 31L, you know, at the end of Cedar Street?” Most of the women nodded. “Manny said that he had to put diapers and baby formula in one of them. ‘Diapers, are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Why?’ I asked.” She swung a look around the room and then took a sip from her coffee.
Lord, help the poor, that girl could milk the spotlight, Lucy thought. She hoped her impatience didn’t show.
“The supplies are for families of White House personnel if . . . you know.” Clara’s voice trailed off.
“Wait a minute,” Lucy said. Betty Ann cocked her head and waited a minute. At first Lucy imagined a mad dash of police cars and limousines through their neighborhoods. Then she realized that the copters would just take off for the White House lawn. “They’d fly over to the District.”
Clara nodded.
Lucy remembered Mr. Gorale’s Ford Coupe that she had passed every morning on the way into school when she was a kid. He was her dreamy fifth grade teacher who drove a fast car and had a pretty new wife. One day no Coupe sat at the end of the row where the teachers parked. Mr. Gorale never missed a day of school, but then his new wife was eight months pregnant. Lucy ran around the far corner of the school to peer across the river at the big brick pile of a hospital perched on the opposite hillside. Sure enough, she could just barely trace the outline of a Coupe through the winter-bare trees. It was parked at the end of the row on the side of the building that meant you were going to be there awhile. Other people must’ve owned black Ford Coupes, but observation met intuition and she guessed that the baby had arrived early.
She gathered coins from the girls that loved Mr. Gorale as much as she did, and even from some of the boys who wanted to drive a car like his, and persuaded Mrs. Nelson to give her a discount on a cute little knit coverlet for the baby. When the Coupe was back in its customary place on Monday, she had the blanket all wrapped up and ready to give to him when he told the class about the unexpected arrival. She made her best friend take the present up to his desk, but the handwriting was hers, and he looked directly at her as he thanked them. Plus everyone said it had been her idea, but she never told anyone how she knew. Still, she knew before everyone else did, and all because she noticed a missing car.
“So if those copters stay put . . .” A grin tugged at her lips as she slipped off her perch and waved a prompting hand in the air.
“ . . . We stay put,” Pepper sang out. She rested her hand in the crook of her elbow.
“We stay put,” others echoed. They had discovered a simple warning system, courtesy of the government.
“Clara, you’re a genius.” Betty Ann sliced a cymbal-splash clap through the air. “Yes, ma’am.” She threaded a path to the dining table and slid the last piece of her coffee cake onto a saucer. She sidestepped around knees and stopped in front of Clara. “Sugar, I do believe you haven’t had any of my world famous iced-lemon coffee cake.”
Closed lipped, Clara smiled, but she giggled when the other women clapped and cheered. Betty Ann curtsied as far as she could in the tight quarters and laid the saucer in Clara’s lap.
The wives set up a schedule of patrols down Cedar Street and devised simple signals. The logistics came easily to them—the husbands would have been proud—but it was harder for them to decide what to do in case they discovered an empty apron at 31L.
“Who’ll go with the children?” Dorothy asked from her post by the window. No one volunteered.
Gladys, the tall one, stood. “I’d rather be with Ted, if I knew the children were safe, or at least in good hands.” The other women nodded.
“My mom lives in Cincinnati,” Lucy said. “I know she’d take in anybody who had her grandbabies in tow.”
It was also Dorothy’s hometown. “Yeah, and who would bother to bomb Cincinnati?” she said.
Soon the women were all talking at once:
“How many cars do we need to fit all the kids?”
“Should they all go to one place?”
“My family has a farm in West Virginia.”
“We have a bunch of those big water jugs from when we were stationed out at Alamogordo.”
“What do we tell our husbands?” Clara asked.
Lucy and Betty Ann looked at each other as the room quieted.
“Nothing,” Betty Ann said.
“But—”
“They have too much to worry about already, right? They take care of the world, we take care of the kids,” Lucy said.
The women murmured.
“Why bother them with plans for something that may never happen?” Lucy crossed the fingers of both hands.
“We say nothing. Agreed?” Betty Ann asked.
“Agreed.” The chorus was loud.
Dorothy wanted to run a practice drill for getting the kids out of school. The guys always said that practice eliminates mistakes in combat. “Naw, wait a minute,” she said. She seesawed her head and folded her stout arms across her ample chest. “Someone might notice that all of the colored kids were gone and think we were about to riot. Won’t work.”
The wives continued to make concrete plans for evacuation. It came naturally as they and their families were all veterans of military moves. Even the youngest children playing in the yard sensed that they shouldn’t get too attached to anything or anyone that didn’t fit in the family car. They had all learned to make friends quickly but not to love too deeply. Meanwhile, training dictated that thorough task identification and assignment and absolute trust in your comrades increased the chance of a successful mission.
“How many of us drive?” Dorothy asked. She counted the raised hands. Lucy’s was not among them. “Six. Sure would make assignments easier if we had an even seven—each one could take a day of the week.”
Betty Ann stared at Lucy, her face dimpled into a puzzled smile. “Hon, you didn’t raise your hand.”
“I can’t.”
“Yeah.” Clara touched the edge of her napkin to the corner of her mouth. “I just learned to drive last year and I’m doing it.”
They all turned their faces to Lucy, waiting, but she could say nothing.
“Dorothy, you go ahead while we get that other coffee cake.” Betty Ann nudged Lucy and then picked her way through the gathering. She accepted the empty cake platter that was passed to her while Lucy trailed her into the kitchen and felt the slight push of air as the door swung closed. She uncovered her cinnamon and walnut coffee cake and carefully folded the crinkled foil. Betty Ann rinsed and dried the knife before dropping it next to the cake. She backed up to lean a shoulder on the fridge. “So what gives?”
How could Lucy tell her about her silent days? About not being sure she could keep her own two safe on her own, let alone shoulder the responsibility for other women’s children? She just wasn’t up to it.
“Your husband,” Betty Ann said. “He came to me.”
First Betty Ann ropes her into a scheme with Mrs. H. and risks her husband’s career because of an affair, then Betty Ann convinces her that they may be bombed out of existence at any moment, then Betty Ann expects her to blithely accept responsibility for taking a brood of children across state lines, and in the middle of it all, she brings up Sonny. The nerve. She trusted him, but Betty Ann could always take what she wanted. Lucy slid the cake onto the platter and attacked it with the knife. Each stroke ended with a dull thud against the dish, but the slices broke cleanly and stayed in a perfect circle.
Betty Ann straightened and turned to examine the pictures and alphabet magnets stuck to the fridge. She touched a photo of Lucy and the kids in front of a rocket monument. “He wanted to talk,” she said.
“Sure. That’s how it starts.” Lucy dropped the knife, which clattered into the sink.
“I know, believe me, but not this time. He just asked me to keep an eye on you. Never said why.”
Look at what happened between Betty Ann and that white officer. Quiet Lucy knew a thing or two about cutting, but this wasn’t the right blade. At most, its rounded tip and serrated edge would leave only a small, pretty scar and a good cocktail party anecdote. Some distant part of her was amused with herself for thinking in such crude terms. No, she needed a much more subtle weapon.
“I’ll be there,” Betty Ann said. “You know I will. And if by some crazy chance I’m not, you’ll do what you have to. I know it.”
Why did women have to be so complicated? In the midst of Lucy’s righteous anger, her friend had zeroed in on her darkness and had offered the one condition that could make it bearable. Besides, with each step, Betty Ann’s desires had left her vulnerable to betrayal, by the officer, by Mrs. H., and now by Lucy. Her best weapon was trust.
“These women are counting on us. What do you say?” Betty Ann asked.
Lucy picked up the platter. “Okay. Yes. For now.”
“Now is all we have.” Her ally swung open the door and held it.
Lucy followed through the opening. She bent to offer cake to tall Gladys, who took a piece and then took the plate to pass it to her right. Lucy returned to her perch before saying, “I’m in.”
“Good,” Dorothy said. “An even seven.”
Before wrapping up, the wives devised a rotating scheduled that ensured no one mother got stuck with a high target day like Sunday. Any woman could be chosen purely by circumstance to evacuate. During the entire meeting, not one comment or question came near to wondering about another woman’s ability to take care of the children. In the end, they even planned for a return.
