Woman Waving to the Future 4

PLANE ENGINES RUMBLED overhead as Lucy sat at her dressing table and filed her nails. The radio on Sonny’s side of the bed played Top Forty hits. The station would suspend the music for President Kennedy’s speech, which would begin in about an hour. Would he confirm the wives’ intel about a crisis in Cuba? She wanted to be on the right track, yet she hated its inevitable destination. She had been Tony’s age when she and her family had listened in stunned silence to the radio set in the living room as President Roosevelt described the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Now she was the mother. Now she had to stay calm and reassure her children that they would be all right regardless of the news from the president. She waited for Erica to finish her shower. Her daughter should have been in the tub in the main bathroom, but she was convinced that the incessant throttling up and down of takeoffs and landings at the air base meant that planes were falling straight toward their house. She believed this despite Tony’s repeated explanations of engine mechanics and the illusions of the Doppler effect. Lucy didn’t blame her. With an evening shift in the winds, the planes tacked to a new compass point and sounded as if they might leave tire marks on the flat roof of their house. Ordinarily, huge blocks of quiet separated the roar of the Air Force aloft, but now the caravan of craft arrived and departed in intervals of less than a minute. Lucy knew, because she had finished her nails and was watching the second hand spurt around the alarm clock.

“Mommy?” Erica’s voice pitched higher. She was so close to hiccup-weeping all the time now.

“Still here,” Lucy said louder. She clicked off the radio and went to slide the bathroom’s pocket door a little wider. “Here I am.”

Her daughter jumped at the sound of her voice and draped the towel in front of her. She still wore the purple shower cap. Her stance suggested that easy panic warred with the newly acquired and fierce desire for privacy.

Tony was at the dining room table, constructing sentences with the week’s spelling words. He had showered right after supper. Lucy wished Sonny was home and getting ready to watch the speech with them, but he had been gone more than forty-eight hours without a call. She and Betty Ann had assumed they would get together for the big announcement, but as they scrabbled back and forth about who would host, it became clear that each wanted to be near her own phone. Each imagined her husband wrangling a moment at a phone, and each wanted to be home to receive the call. The wives could talk with each other afterward. And since no formal officers or leaders had been elected by the other wives, they would look to Lucy and Betty Ann to devise the course of action once the president had spoken. Another plane screamed overhead. The crescendo and diminuendo of engines signaled the efficient movements of the US Air Force. Crescendo? God, she was thinking the way Betty Ann’s husband talked.

Erica struggled with the arm holes of her pajama top. She had fit into the baby doll top just two months ago, but it was already too small. The ruffles on the sleeves made her arms look scrawnier than they were. Time for that fall necessities shopping trip. Lucy imagined shopping for underwear as a nuclear mushroom bloomed on the horizon. She shook off the thought as Erica scooted past her. She had left the damp towel heaped on the floor and the shower cap on the toilet seat. Lucy called to her as she rounded the corner into the hallway. Her daughter either didn’t hear her—yet another jet roared overhead—or she pretended not to and disappeared. Lucy let her go. She didn’t have to engage in every skirmish. A sigh escaped her as she picked up the towel. She would have to watch that in front of the children. She would have to appear stronger than she felt.

After tidying the bathroom, Lucy settled down with the kids in the living room. Tony’s long limbs folded into his father’s recliner, and Erica sat cross-legged with a deck of cards on the floor. She pleaded with her brother to play War with her, but he was absorbed in a new Fantastic Four comic book and ignored her. Lucy shook her head when appealed to, so Erica bent over and laid out the seven piles of solitaire. In this way they would listen to the president and, God willing and with no more interruptions by the network, would continue on with the regular routine of To Tell the Truth and I’ve Got a Secret. At that point, Lucy would argue Erica into bed. God willing.

At Tony’s age, Lucy knew that the attack on Pearl Harbor was terrible but had no idea how much it would change everyone’s lives. Sonny’s crew still had to stagger the planes so they couldn’t all be easily targeted like the ones that had been parked in straight rows on that December day. Our nation was outraged at the cowardice of the preemptive strike by the Japanese, but would the president consider it a loss of honor if he used the same tactics? She prayed he would. She prayed again that the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs had pointed him and his advisers to a third way.

At Tony’s age, she had dreamed of the drama and spontaneity of an artist’s loft in Greenwich Village. What did her children dream of? Would they have the chance to see them come true?

Walter Cronkite announced President Kennedy. The president sat at a desk, his face drawn into a mask of deep seriousness, and addressed the nation.

Good evening, my fellow citizens:

This Government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned land. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.

Upon receiving the first preliminary hard information of this nature last Tuesday morning at 9 a.m., I directed that our surveillance be stepped up. And having now confirmed and completed our evaluation of the evidence and our decision on a course of action, this Government feels obliged to report this new crisis to you in fullest detail.

The characteristics of these new missile sites indicate two distinct types of installations. Several of them include medium range ballistic missiles, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead for a distance of more than 1,000 nautical miles. Each of these missiles, in short, is capable of striking Washington, DC, the Panama Canal, Cape Canaveral, Mexico City, or any other city in the southeastern part of the United States, in Central America, or in the Caribbean area.

Additional sites not yet completed appear to be designed for intermediate range ballistic missiles—capable of traveling more than twice as far—and thus capable of striking most of the major cities in the Western Hemisphere, ranging as far north as Hudson Bay, Canada, and as far south as Lima, Peru. In addition, jet bombers, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, are now being uncrated and assembled in Cuba, while the necessary air bases are being prepared.

This urgent transformation of Cuba into an important strategic base—by the presence of these large, long-range, and clearly offensive weapons of sudden mass destruction—constitutes an explicit threat to the peace and security of all the Americas . . .

There, he had said it. It was out in the open now. She and the other wives were no longer alone with this terrible knowledge. The president was precise in his evidence through quoting words from Soviet officials that directly contradicted the photographic images from the spy planes. He didn’t use that phrase—he called it “surveillance”—but Lucy was married to the Air Force and knew how we surveyed our foes. Friends too.

Tony’s comic book laid open on his lap but his attention was directed to the television. Erica flipped over the played out cards and messed them about in a pile.

. . . Our policy has been one of patience and restraint, as befits a peaceful and powerful nation which leads a worldwide alliance. We have been determined not to be diverted from our central concerns by mere irritants and fanatics. But now further action is required, and it is underway, and these actions may only be the beginning. We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth; but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.

Ashes and afterimages. That’s all nuclear war would bring. What was the sense in that? What was worth that?

. . . Finally, I want to say a few words to the captive people of Cuba, to whom this speech is being directly carried by special radio facilities. I speak to you as a friend, as one who knows of your deep attachment to your fatherland, as one who shares your aspirations for liberty and justice for all. And I have watched and the American people have watched with deep sorrow how your nationalist revolution was betrayed—and how your fatherland fell under foreign domination. Now your leaders are no longer Cuban leaders inspired by Cuban ideals. They are puppets and agents of an international conspiracy, which has turned Cuba against your friends and neighbors in the Americas, and turned it into the first Latin American country to become a target for nuclear war—the first Latin American country to have these weapons on its soil.

These new weapons are not in your interest. They contribute nothing to your peace and well-being. They can only undermine it. But this country has no wish to cause you to suffer or to impose any system upon you. We know that your lives and land are being used as pawns by those who deny your freedom. Many times in the past, the Cuban people have risen to throw out tyrants who destroyed their liberty. And I have no doubt that most Cubans today look forward to the time when they will be truly free—free from foreign domination, free to choose their own leaders, free to select their own system, free to own their own land, free to speak and write and worship without fear or degradation. And then shall Cuba be welcomed back to the society of free nations and to the associations of this hemisphere . . .

Three hundred eighty-seven miles. That’s how far it was from Lucy’s house to her mother’s. That’s how far she would have to travel with the kids if they activated their plan on her watch. Most of it was on interstate highways that were built to move the very weapons they would be trying to escape. How big was Cuba? Would a woman on the coast run out of land if she tried to flee the same distance? Would she wind up standing hip-deep in the ocean, watching its indifferent surf wash away her chances of survival? Would a mere three hundred eighty-seven miles be far enough for safety in either place? Lucy couldn’t afford to think that way.

. . . Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right; not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.

Thank you and good night.

Kennedy had just confirmed what Lucy and her friends had guessed from keeping their eyes and ears open on the Maryland base where they lived. The nuclear phantom had just become flesh. Lucy wondered if they should activate the plan now, before any missiles flew. She would consult Betty Ann. She would know what to do.

Lucy shooed Tony and Erica down the hall for teeth brushing before their other shows came on. She had just settled into the old, faded pink armchair when the phone rang. The first call was from her mother. She asked Lucy if what Kennedy said about Russian missiles in America’s backyard was true. What a strange position to be in, to have a crisis elevate her authority above that of the president, in her mother’s eyes. But then, you always trusted the people you knew, the ones who loaded the planes and cooked for the officers. Then her mother complained that Lucy’s letters lacked detail, especially about the daily lives of her grandchildren.

She insisted on talking to Tony and Erica, although precious long-distance minutes were not usually wasted on the children’s awkward silences. They were at each other more than usual and didn’t respond well to this odd Monday night call from their grandmother, whom they called Dee Dee. They mumbled, “Yes . . . no . . . good . . . me too . . .” and so on before Dee Dee let them off the hook.

Lucy retrieved the phone from her oldest, and of course, her mother brought up her usual lament. “You never visit.”

“Maybe next summer,” Lucy said automatically. This rote answer didn’t seem to strike the right note this time, not with so many dangerous unknowns just acknowledged. “Or maybe Thanksgiving.”

The rest of Lucy’s family was still in Cleveland. They didn’t like to travel, especially her mother. To her, a car trip to Pittsburgh in the next state east was a major undertaking and entailed a level of planning worthy of a transatlantic voyage. “We can’t. The kids are in school. Why don’t you come here?”

“Are you sure?” Lucy wondered if she had surprised herself as much as she had her daughter with her sudden willingness to travel. Her mother had never visited their assignments, even when the children were born. They always had to trek back to home base to see her.

“Okay, that’s great. You and Miles work out the details and let me know.” Lucy was unsure whether her mother would actually have the nerve to see this through, but perhaps, under the influence of this nuclear dream, she would.

“Yes, ma’am.” Lucy was ten again and safe in her mother’s rules, if only for a moment.

“Oh my Lord,” her mother said. “Look how long we’ve been talking.” Apparently she just awoke from one level of the dream. “This will cost me a fortune. I won’t be able to eat for a month.”

They signed off. Instead of returning the handset to its cradle, Lucy pinched it between her shoulder and neck and pushed down the plunger. She held it while she retrieved the address book and flipped it open to her brother’s number in Toledo. The phone’s bell buzzed against her thighs and startled her. It was her sister. The call to her brother came next. Everyone mentioned the president’s speech, but no one asked what it might mean for Lucy or her Air Force husband.

She knew he couldn’t really say anything, but she had to ask. “Are you going to be reassigned . . . anyplace?”

There was a pause. “No,” he said. “At least not right now.” She had to be satisfied with that. “Let me talk to Tony.”

She called her son and put him on the phone. He didn’t say much at all and sometimes just nodded without speaking. When he was finished, Lucy asked what his father had said to him.

To him, the adults must have been acting strange. He slumped back into the recliner and turned his attention to the television.