I followed, the heavy door shutting behind us. I followed him all the way to Second Avenue without speaking.
“Billy — is he your boyfriend?” he asked.
Boyfriend, fiancé, or love I had to part with. Because if I said no to marriage, he would ship out and it would be over. No letters, no dreaming, no waiting. Suddenly, I felt empty, thinking of that.
“Honestly, I don’t know what he is now.”
We didn’t say anything for a few crosstown blocks. I guess the talk about Billy dampened the conversation, and Hank seemed lost in his troubles. A little girl was walking in front of us, carrying three balloons. Yellow, blue, and red. They bobbed in the wind over her shoulder. I tried to catch Hank’s eye, but he was walking fast, eyes straight ahead.
“In my family, balloons are magic,” I said. He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Really,” I said. “Once, we —”
Suddenly, a siren went off. People on the sidewalks stopped in their tracks. A traffic cop up ahead held up a white-gloved hand, and all the traffic stopped on Lexington Avenue.
“What’s going on?” I asked as a woman grabbed her child and hurried away.
“It’s the air-raid drill,” Hank said. “We’re only a block from the subway. Come on.”
“Air raid?” I asked, struggling to keep up with his long stride.
“Didn’t you see it in the paper last week?”
“I only read the gossip columns and the headlines.”
“Today is A-day. You know, in case Russia drops the Bomb on us. We’ve got to prepare. Duck and cover, remember?” Hank said the words with a sour twist.
People were getting out of their cars, pulling over and abandoning them right on the street. The man with the little girl and the balloons picked her up when she began to cry.
It was eerie. I knew it was a phony drill, but I could still feel the apprehension in the air. People were walking faster, some almost running to the office buildings that had yellow-and-black FALLOUT SHELTER signs. Nobody spoke, and without the roar of traffic the city was quiet. You could hear footsteps on Lexington Avenue. It felt like the world was actually ending.
“It’s all stupid,” Hank muttered. “If there was a real bomb, we could go underground, but when we’d come up, we’d be dead from radiation in a couple of weeks anyway.”
“That’s comforting, thanks.”
“Sorry. I hear about it at dinner. Who wants to talk about Hiroshima while you’re eating roast chicken? Not me.”
There were a couple of men in white helmets directing us toward the subway stairs. We joined the people waiting to go down. All we could hear was the shuffle of footsteps, like everyone in Manhattan was doing the soft shoe.
We followed a crowd of people into the subway station. Most people just stood around, and Hank and I found a place to lean against the wall. There were so many people pressed close, and I felt a sudden flutter of panic. I’d seen pictures of people doing this in London, during the Blitz, while the bombs rained down. Now we only needed one Bomb, so powerful it had a capital B. And it could destroy a whole city. Everything gone in one bright flash.
“You look scared,” Hank said. “It’s only supposed to last ten minutes. Don’t worry.”
I had no idea how to do that. Not worry. There was way too much to worry about.
I squeezed my eyes shut. A body in a chair, arms flung out, like the end of the very last dance. A dark pool of blood on the floor. The eager photographer, angling for the shot. The police, asking questions. Who knew the guy, what was he doing there, who talked to him, who knew him.
Everything gone, in one bright flash.
Twenty-one
Providence, Rhode Island
May 1937
It was Muddie who saw them first. Three balloons, floating on the breeze, heading straight for us.
She reached out her arms. “Look — it’s our present!”
Jamie and I followed her, all of us racing to be first to catch the waving strings. It was our fourth birthday, so of course the balloons had to be for us.
Muddie clutched the string of her blue balloon. She wound it tightly around her index finger. “It’s our present,” she repeated. Her eyes shone. “From heaven. It’s from her.”
“Don’t be a dope,” Jamie said. “She’s dead.”
“She’s an angel,” Muddie insisted. “Da says so. And she sent them!” She stamped her foot.
I tipped my head back and looked up at my red balloon. Behind the balloon, blue sky. And heaven,